It’s been a while since I have been able to upload a photo of the wee one. So, since the last one was done near her third birthday, why not post another in anticipation of the fourth birthday?
So, without further ado…
I’m sure there will be more after the party - provided I can get the machines to cooperate…
While I realize that this blog isn’t exactly setting any records for readership, I have tried to accomodate anyone who does read my little corner of the ‘net, whether or not I know them, making the blog as open as possible for comments and discussion.
Not so much anymore.
The last real comment I got about a post was in November, and since then I have been bombarded with spam, and it takes up enough time that I have decided to make one final change to the comments rules for this site.
If you want to comment, you have to set up a WordPress login for yourself, plain and simple. Sorry to go draconian, but it has become a necessary step to keep me from wasting as much as 20 minutes a day cleaning out spam.
With both the NBA and NHL embroiled in their semi-finals and the NFL starting training camps soon, and MLB figuring out who to suspend next, you would think that there is more than enough stuff to fill the schedule of a sports network.
But no… Apparently Fox Sports had a free hour.
Why else would they air The Best Damn Hooters Pageant Period 2008. Yes, you read that right.
And, of course, it was a train wreck I couldn’t avoid.
Beauty pageants haven’t exactly received great press of late, between the girl from South Carolina losing a potential MapQuest endorsement to Miss California being so beautiful that even noted ethicist Donald Trump looked past her short-sightedness. I didn’t exactly expect this pageant to change my mind.
It didn’t. In fact, it made me wonder when this particular genre of “entertainment contest” would die off. Supposedly, most pageants are for scholarships, but the Hooters pageant winner “just” gets cash and prizes.
By the way, why isn’t Perdue a sponsor with naming rights? Can’t you see it too? “Welcome to the 2009 Hooters Swimsuit Pageant, brought to you by Perdue’s Tender & Tasty Split Breasts!”
Moving on…
I should - in the interest of full disclosure - say that I have been to a Hooters restaurant a grand total of three times - sort of. I went out to lunch with some colleagues once, and we ate at Hooters (much to my stomach’s distress). The other two times were visits of all of five minutes each, when I went to the restaurant to see if they were showing the Penguins games from the 92 playoff season when they won the second Stanley Cup. I didn’t have cable then, and Hooters was the only local restaurant that showed sports on their TVs. They weren’t (every TV was tuned to a NASCAR race), so I left. However, in each visit, both the quick stop ins to the one time I actually stayed to eat, it took some time for the grease sheen to go away. No one I know tells me they go to Hooters for the food - which makes me wonder why they have a cookbook.
Again, I digress.
I had this moment of silliness when I thought that there might be something different with this pageant. After all, most young women who work food service are doing so to make money to pay for school.
Silly me…
No, this is exactly what it purported to be: a meat market. Virtually none of the women involved were real (either their chest or smile). I also wonder if the shiny bronzeness of each contestant was from excessive tanning or just proximity to the deep fryers.
“Highlights” included:
Voiceovers were used during the actual swimsuit round to reveal a few interesting facts:
The one thing I heard on the show that actually surprised me, and really had my head spinning?
“Representing Hooters of Isreal…”
And we wonder why we are not taken seriously across the world.
Shalom.
(End note: I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’m getting older, or if it’s just the fact that I’ve never found implanted plastic attractive, but none of the young women in this thing was remotely attractive. But then again, I doubt that this pageant is about natural looks anyway…)
Forgive me a moment of digression first… And yes, it matters:
Remember Designing Women, the CBS series featuring Dixie Carter and Annie Potts as decorators in Atlanta during the Reagan/Bush I years?
Okay… Good.
Remember the Alice Ghostley character Bernice Clifton, who had an unusual interest in Anthony, played by Meschach Taylor?
Remember how looney Bernice was?
Why am I bringing this up?
Because - and this is probably just me - every time I see President Obama and Nancy Pelosi in the same place, I cringe in fear that she will break out singing “Black Man! Black Man! Where did you come from?!” just like Bernice Clifton.
Another one of those multi-topic posts of whatever I’ve had on the brain of late. Starting with:
I found this in the TeeVee listings, and had to share it:
Shopping With Chefs Episode: Scallops, Grilling & Smoking, Home Brewed Deer (First Aired: May 03, 2008)
Shopping for scallops and saute pans; the latest in tongs; outdoor and indoor smokers as well as outdoor grills; a visit to a micro-brewery.
Sadly, the Molto Mario episode that followed it was not a venison-themed episode. That would’ve been special…
(By the way, I checked the Fine Living website, and they’ve since corrected the error. Darn.)
(NOTE to readers: I’ve adjusted the comments requirements so it should be less of a problem to post comments.)
There is a company called “I Heart Guts” that sells plush toys of various internal organs with smiley faces. I happened upon their site via Serious Eats, and found this sentence at the beginning of an announcement linked from their home page:
Voluntary safety recall of Plush Uterus due to potential choking hazard for children.
The potential for any toy to be a chocking hazard is no laughing matter for any parent… But… It’s damned near impossible to read the notice without getting a case of the giggles. (Particularly when such phrases as “If your plush uterus is NOT accessible to young children, and you wish to keep your beloved uterus” or “Look for a redesigned, kid-safe uterus plush in Spring 2009″ are peppered throughout.)
I gotta wonder, though, if a plush uterus isn’t just the perfect gift for some of the more nutty abortion protesters that clog DC every January.
Fine Living Network (FLN) is one of many networks owned by media giant E. W. Scripps. Sister networks include Food Network, HGTV, and DIY. Fine Living is the new home of Emeril and Martha Stewart, which right away should tell you about the network’s commitment to “fine living.” One good thing about FLN is that they are now running East Meets West and Molto Mario, long since jettisoned from Food Network when actually teaching people how to cook was no longer in vogue.
I stumbled onto another show on FLN while watching Molto Mario, a supposedly educational show called Shopping With Chefs. Now, you would think (hope?) that the idea is to give viewers tips on how to save money while getting the best quality product.
Well, not so if the episode I watched is any idea.
In our current economy, do you really want to watch a show where the hosts insist you simply must own a device that cuts a perfect circle into an eggshell? For $55? (By the way, an hour or less of practice and decent knife skills will do the same thing.)
The various items for the show - a breakfast themed episode - were showed off like they were prizes on a daytime game show. The hosts selected some of the most expensive toasters (none cheaper than $60 for a two-slice toaster) and coffee makers (a “manual drip” carafe and filter holder for only $60!) on the shelf, with one of the more common words used to describe each product being “cool.”
How about “practical,” “inexpensive,” or “value?” Sure, some of these items might work out great when you have a restaurant budget to work with, but the average family needs more info on a product than “cool.”
In addition to this infuriating level of stupidity, you have the mind-numbingly annoying hosts, Jill Davie and David Myers. Davie is the chef at Venice Beach Wines restaurant in Venice, California, and Myers is the owner and Chef at Sona in Los Angeles. I don’t think that their both being from California has anything to do with how equally annoying their personalities are, but the only thing I got from them was that I should never follow their advice.
Myers has won a few awards for his food from various Wine magazines (making one wonder what his food tastes like when not inebriated), and Davie’s list of achievements includes being one of the first contestants eliminated from The Next Iron Chef, and having been Sunkist’s Lemon Lady.
Not exactly resumes over-run with qualifications.
Honestly, if you want to really do well with a show titled Shopping With Chefs, you have it with chefs who have a little more understanding of the home kitchen, like Ming Tsai, Michael Ruhlman, or Alton Brown, the only “teacher” left on Food Network? If any of these chefs told me I needed a $55 eggshell cutter, at least I would know that they had taken the time to both test the device, and investigate the possibility of cheaper or easier options.
I guess all of this just reinforces the fact that the only two food shows worth making an effort to watch anymore are Good Eats or America’s Test Kitchen (the gods of kitchen product testing).
(NOTE: I deliberately did not link to either the Food Network or Fine Living, since they both fill their websites with automatically loading videos that slow down browsing their sites considerably.)
It’s been a pretty busy month for me - between work, family, and an independant web project. Despite not having much time to post anything of late, I couldn’t let these two somewhat-related items go:
Within days of each other, a man in Houston was injured during a bank robbery when the dye pack in the money he stuffed down his pants exploded, and a man in Florida was denied permits to open a nude dude ranch.
What I want to know is what kind of rope tricks you perform at a nude dude ranch. Also, was the dye in the pack blue? I think you know where I’m going with that…
I thought we had hit the bottom. With the introduction of Baconnaise, I thought culinary civilization had reached its nadir.
Nope.
Enter the “ingenuity” of the Swedes, resulting in…
Alright - it’s actually a joke from ThinkGeek. For now. The fact, however, that Baconnaise exists means that this well-produced April Fool’s joke is not far off from becoming a reality.
A while ago I talked about the nimrod on teevee shilling the Sham-Wow! and Slap Chop products. Well, he’s back - sort of.
Vince Shlomi, as reported by Keith Olberman recently, was arrested for getting into a fight with a hooker in Miami. Apparently, after seeing the Slap Chop infomercial, she wasn’t in love with his…
Nevermind.
Let this one write itself.
To those who have mentioned to me that commenting was a little difficult, I made it quite a bit easier two weeks or so ago. Since then, I have had to deal with an inordinate amount of spam comments that take away from my time to write.
So, for the time being, you will need to create a WordPress account to make comments.
Sorry for the trouble, but I would rather spend time on the blog writing, not going through spam.
