I posted something about the death of Robert Goulet on the TOC blog yesterday. I don’t have much more to add to that, except to point you to this 1993 story in the NY Times that fellow TOC‘er Tim Lowery hipped me to that tells you everything about the way Goulet crafted his persona. Plus, here’s a little lounge action for you with the near-definitive version (apologies to Sammy Davis Jr.) of “What Kind of Fool Am I?”
MP3 – Robert Goulet “What Kind of Fool Am I”
I’m no Grant Achatz in the kitchen, but I do have occasional moments of brilliance. Case in point: last week, when I whipped up some salmon burgers for the lady and myself (recipe at the end of this post). Just the same, when I’m making dinner for myself, I tend to do something that isn’t so much cooking as it is – in the words of my college girlfriend – heating. A Man, a Can and A Plan isn’t just a book, it’s a lifestyle choice.
But there’s simple, and then there’s stupid.
This evening, I was cooking up another masterpiece when I saw this on the back of a package of brown rice:
Chef’s Tips
Quick meal ideas to make your life easier
For a Quick Delicious Meal in Minutes:
Star with READY WHOLE GRAIN RICE Whole Grain Brown. Pick up a Rotisserie (or other cooked favorite) add a bagged salad and you have a quick, complete meal in minutes.
Let’s ignore, for a moment, the massive copy editing problems with this “tip.” I don’t care who you are, this is information that is so basic as to be useless. They might as well just say:
For a quick and delicious mean in minutes:
Go to the store and buy some groceries. Put a package of our rice in there, too.
Now for those salmon burgers…
2 lbs fresh salmon, do not buy the canned stuff, you’ve been working hard, you deserve the finer things
1 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 wheat buns, toasted
Olive oil
Parmesan cheese
Remove the skin from the salmon. This is the hardest part of this recipe. In fact, it is at this point that you will regret attempting this recipe. But it’s totally worth it. Place the salmon in a plastic bag, and pound the hell out of it. This will help get out some of your frustrations over removing the salmon skin. Dump the salmon into a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix them thoroughly, then form the mixture into equally sized burgers, or a couple of big ones and a couple of small ones if you preparing dinner for a light eater. Grill the burgers for about 5 minutes per side, or five minutes total if you rock the Foreman.
Toast the buns then pour some olive oil into a small dish, and add some Parmesan cheese, until it forms a liquidy paste. Spread the Parmesan paste on the top bun. Add lettuce and tomato for garnish, if you like, but it is only going to get in the way of the awesomeness.
I’m sorry to say I didn’t write any of the articles in TOC‘s sex issue, now on newsstands and online. But it doesn’t mean I’m not proud of what we put out there. I’ve liked the magazine since before I worked there, but I think we’ve been on a streak of excellent issues lately.
While we don’t shy away from the TOC voice, we still managed to write about an adult topic for adults, rather than layering the whole thing with innuendo and suggestion and robbing it of any weight and information. The whole thing is a great read, particularly our sex survey of Chicago (or rather the TOC readership) that was the result of a bunch of work on the online side.
As I said, I didn’t write any of this but I did enjoy putting together this morning’s sexed-up home page. Wednesday is usually my roughest day at work because we’re there late putting up the new pages. One of the highlights of my day is writing the dek for that week’s In & Out column (by our sex and relationships columnist Debby Herbenick who wrote the lion’s share of our feature package). So getting to write an entire page full of things like “Furries, age play and clown sex. Or as we like to call it: a TOC staff meeting” was a nice way to break up the day.
Visually speaking, there’s not too much in the package that’s NSFW. I’d suggest you wait until you get home before curling up with the public sex stories though.
As is obvious, I’m not always able to throw down substantial posts daily. But I was inspired by Whitney’s Lolla updates at Pop Candy and Matt’s recent addition at Wood-Tang to add Twitter updates to the OMIC blog. You’ll see them in the right rail under “I just thought of something…” which is a quite accurate way of describing those mini-brain explosions. Hopefully, it will give you daily readers of this blog (Hi, Marg Hicks!) a reason to continue checking in.
You know, I’ve long since come to grips with the knowledge that I will never have a job/career that allows me to rake in mad scads of cash. So this isn’t about jealousy and more about functionality: who keeps 22 grand in their checking account?
I also like how there are a bunch of question marks for “current balance.” Like the ATM was able to calculate how much he/she could take out presently, but this person has so much friggin’ money in an account not made for such things that it was running into a problem placing a decimal point.
Imagine me being so busy that I haven’t had time for self-promotion. The mind reels, but it’s true. Here’s what I’ve been working on lately:
As alluded to yesterday, TOC‘s beer issue is out. TOC editors can deliver on the bon mots, so the the story about the non-alcoholic beer came out pretty well. Also, check out our quiz on Chicago beer. You can win some fabulous TOC-related prizes including our Eating and Drinking 2008 guide, which hits the streets next month.
In addition, we’ve been running a Chicago sex survey online. We’re going to publish the results in an upcoming issue, but the survey expires on Monday so spill your secrets now. You may also notice a certain familiar brand of humor with some of the answers.
You know, the American Episcopalian Church has been going through a bit of troubles with the larger Anglican communion due to the openly gay bishop it ordained a couple years ago. Much has been made about an approaching schism, but the EC is dealing with the situation through prayer, love and consideration, which I know is confusing the hell out of the people who expect anger and conflict to follow any religious matters.
I’ve been holding out hope for the larger church to remain in communion with itself, but there’s probably room to trim a little chaff from the wheat. So John McCain? Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. I don’t even know who that guy is anymore. He’s taken on more positions lately than a copy of the Kama Sutra.
My Craigslist ad for free beer led to a surprisingly number of inquiries. Twenty-seven, to be exact. They ranged from one guy who seemed angry that I was criticizing dirt to a few people who told unexpectedly touching stories about friends who, for one medical reason or another, could not enjoy the sweet, sweet taste of real beer and would gladly settle for the non-alcoholic version.
So yesterday I met up with a really nice guy named Shon, and handed off the 12 remaining bottles of beer after he told me about his friend with pancreatitis. What had started out as a minor joke had turned into something a bit more profound: taking something worth very little to me and giving it to someone for whom it meant much more.
Look on Craiglist next week for my collection of Jewel plastic bags.
Just in case you thought I was kidding:
Further bulletins as events warrant.
Update: The link above is dead now. I’ve re-created the post after the jump.
I can already hear you asking “Who the hell would want free beer? And why would someone own it in the first place?”
Allow me to explain.
I work for a local, well-known, weekly magazine. As part of a story, I needed to purchase some non-alcoholic beer. Specifically, three brands: O’Doul’s Amber, Sharp’s, and Clausthaler. In writing the story, six bottles of the beer (two of each brand) were used. Twelve bottles of the beer were not used.
What with the country currently trying to live as “green” a life as possible, it seemed a shame to throw away this near-beer. So instead I am offering it for free to anyone who would like to pick it up from my apartment and take it off my hands.
Sure, this might seem a little odd. But let’s face it: people give away dirt on Craiglist, so this isn’t any odder than that. Of course, you could probably think up several reasons why you might need dirt, and not one single reason why you might want some non-alcoholic beer. Unless you really dig beer and don’t want to have to deal with all the pesky “getting shit-faced” aspects of it.
And at the very least, you will have a great story that begins “So this guy was offering free non-alcoholic beer on Craigslist” to tell at your next party. And how many people can say THAT?
The details:
You will be receiving 12 bottles of beer:
* Four bottles of O’Doul’s Amber, billed as “rich and flavorful”
* Four bottles of Sharp’s, advertised as “brewed for all” and featuring “the Crisp, Refreshing taste of Beer, Anytime” (their insane use of CAPS not mine)
* Four bottles of Clausthaler, winner of the World Beer Cup Association of Brewers USA, Milwaukee 200 and the 2000 Gold Award Non-Alcoholic-Malt Beverages and brewed according to the German Purity Law of 1516
You must pick up this beer yourself or send one of your assistants, minions, associates, lackeys, pledges, etc. to do it for you. I live not too far from a CTA Brown Line stop that they’ve managed to keep open for now. So get while the gettin’s good.
UPDATE: The beer has been claimed. Thanks to everyone who offered to take it off my hands.
At the risk of sounding redundant, work’s been a rather consuming force as of late. Today I put in a full workday, and left only because I knew I’d be doing another few hours of work at home. And yet still I won’t get done everything I want to do. While I’m able to have a sense of accomplishment, I tend to dwell on that which remains unfinished, or lacking. It’s one of those things I pull out in job interviews when they ask you to “three negative traits about yourself” because I’m able to turn it around and demonstrate what a hard worker I am, although thinking about it now, I could see how it might come off as obsessive-compulsive.
It is in moments like these that I try to remind myself why I love my job, and that other people (and those “people” include “me-a-year-ago”) would kill to have this gig.
So here are five things I did today, all of which were absolutely essential to me doing my job well.
1. Had two conversations with two different colleagues (it seems important to note here that they were both female), about the phrase “Standing, face-down, ass-up” and whether it was A) physically possible to arrange oneself in this manner; B) confusing for the reader to read this phrase and therefore C) necessary to change the copy to the less-confusing “standing” and, if so, D) too far away from the intended meaning. All of this was done while trying to pretend as if I was having a conversation about staples, lint, or something similarly innocuous so as to not do anything that we were told not to do during the sexual harassment seminar a few months ago.
2. Borrowed a third colleague’s action figures in order to resolve Part A of the above quandary. (Answer: Yes, thereby requiring the resolution of Parts B, C, and D, the answers to which were yes, yes, and no, respectively.)
3. Asked a superior whether “Tell us how you do it, you know you want to” was appropriate language for an e-mail that will eventually go out to over 20,000 people, only to have her reply “Sure, that’s cute.”
4. Resized a photo, which required me to spend an inordinate amount of time staring at a 25-year-old woman dressed in nothing more than a sequined bra, sequined hot pants and fishnets. Granted, that woman was Britney Spears, but still.
5. Purchased $17 worth of non-alcoholic beer, of which six dollars worth will be consumed by my colleagues for a work-related purpose. The remaining 12 dollars worth will probably end up getting thrown out, but I’m going to try to give it away on Craigslist first just to see if that’s possible. That last part isn’t job-related, I’m just curious.
I got paid to do all five of those things.
Seriously, my job is pretty cool sometimes.
