Grizzly Bear ft. Michael McDonald - While You Wait For the Others
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Obama Handball
Grizzly Bear ft. Michael McDonald - While You Wait For the Others
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I made beer!!!
5. Create the super secret chile mixture. I took three different kinds of chiles and toasted them, then crushed the toasted chiles into a powder. I roasted cacao beans and crushed them up into a fine mixture as well.
6. During the last 15 minutes of the boil, add some hops but be sure to smell their hoppy wonderfulness before you dump them in (see below). The chile/chocolate mixture from step 5 goes in at this time too.
7. Once the liquid has cooled from the boil, then you pour the yeast in. As John describes it, the yeast are having a massive party and they're pooping out alcohol and CO2. This goes on for a couple weeks and is known as "primary fermentation." During this time, we added some vanilla bean and some whole chiles.
9. After much anticipation, drink and hopefully enjoy.
In our case, we had a pretty big scare. John called me saying that we "had to talk about the beer." Uh oh. We talk and John explains that the night before, he tried the beer for the first time, then got violently ill about two hours later, which lasted through the night. After a moment of panic, I calmed myself and did some research. My research determined that there is no way one can get sick from a few sips of spoiled beer. In addition, you would know if it was bad immediately by the taste.
I decided to roll the dice and try this beer for myself. I can now report, after consuming four of these precious beverages, that I did not get ill in any way. In fact, the beer is delicious. The aroma of chocolate and spices is fantastic and the taste backs it up. It's got big cocoa and coffee flavors and hints of caramely sweetness with a spicy kick at the end. As it turns out, some bad chicken caesar salad was the culprit of John's malady. So, a deep sigh of relief because all that work going for naught would have been devastating.
Song of the Day:
Stereophonics (covering Rolling Stones) - Gimme Shelter
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Exorcism of Bad Music
This may be hard to understand as I don't really know the names of any of these songs, but I figured I'd name them by their most repeated and annoying lines. I wanted to put them in order of hatred but it's kind of like my friend KC once said, "It's like asking a kid, what do you like least - long division or state capitals?" It's hard to choose so I'll just list them all out:
All American Rejects - Hope it gives you hell, hope it gives yooooouuu hell (officially the worst song ever made)
Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
Lady Gaga - Poker Face
Nickelback - their latest single, and every other song they've ever made
Black Eyed Peas - Tonight's gonna be a good night
Pink - Something about not feeling good sober and party being over
Unknown - Please don't stop the music....music
The Fray - Everyone knows I'm in over my head, over my head
Unknown - Sometimes goodbye is a second chaaance...
The Fray? - You found me, you found meeeeee....
Taylor Swift - Why can't you seeeeeeeee, you belong with meeeeeeee
Unknown - And the suuuuun will shine for yoooouuuuuu......whine whine whine
Unknown - I'm livin without you babyyyy, but you're still with me all the time
I want you to knooooowwwww.....something something something.....I'm already gone
You can allllways turn the car around......
....brella brella brellla ay ay ay ay brella ay brellla brellla ay ay ay ay ay brella....ay...ay....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So anyways, that's what sucks in 2009. I guess a lot of people probably said the same thing about Christopher Cross in 1980 when he did "Sailing" but at least he's wearing an Earl Campbell jersey, playing a double necked guitar, and looking like he just did a two minute kegstand. I don't hate you Christopher Cross.
Song of the Day:
Anything but any of the above.....please
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Tim Hardaway
So my mom came to visit Chicago this weekend and we decided to take a trip to the museum at the Art Institute to show her how cultured I can pretend to be when she visits. Normally, I don't read the descriptions of the artists and artwork but this time I did because the ladies were and I had to wait on them anyways. The reason why I don't read these descriptions is because they just say nonsense like this:
"...challenging the reductive formalism of minimalism"
This seems like it would have been part of a good rebuttal to a poor paper grade in college. As in, I don't really know what it means but I think it sounds good, which is the name of the game when you want to get a good paper grade at Harvard. Something like:
TF: "This paper lacks direction, organization, and support"
Me: "Precisely. That's intentional. My objective was to challenge the reductive formalism of minimalism by writing a paper that may, on the surface, imply a haphazard effort at a thesis with an apparent lack of organization and support. However, this was merely a satirical commentary on the fallacy of the American education system."
Another good art museum quote:
"...takes pleasure in perversion and embraces bad taste."
My question is, if something is in bad taste, then why is it in the museum? Does this mean we are to appreciate bad taste? If so, wouldn't that make it good taste? When does something become so bad that it's good? Is there an inflection point somewhere near airport food, Sandra Bullock movies, or death metal? My head hurts. Moving on...
On Saturday, after watching Terrelle Pryor continue to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad quarterback, we went out to dinner at May Street Cafe. In addition to the phenomenal Puerto Rican food, they had a unisex bathroom with what looked to me like an observation or waiting stool right beside the toilet.
Talk about uncomfortable. Can you imagine doing your business with a critic sitting on the stool judging the whole time? I sure can't. Now apparently this is a frequent appearance in a women's bathroom and according to the ladies, it is used for "putting down one's purse/jacket/whatever." It's a decent alibi but this is clearly a cover up. If no one was sitting there, why would there be a seat cushion on the stool? Huh? A trip to the art museum and juvenile toilet humor in the same blog. That just happened.
Highlight of the weekend: finding this 1991 Fleer Tim Hardaway card in a flower bed on Division Street. At first I was so thrilled and grabbed it to take with me just because of the novelty of finding a 1991 basketball card. However, I put Tim back in his flower bed because I can only imagine how happy this made any number of people who walked by it that day.
For those who don't know Tim Hardaway, he's famous partly for having a sweet crossover dribble and a long NBA career, but mostly he's famous for this. I thought I'd title this post "Tim Hardaway" because I figure how often does Tim Hardaway get to be the title of a blog or any conversation whatsoever now? I remember when this happened but listening again, I actually laughed even though it's not funny because it's just so appalling and it's unimaginable that anyone would say that out loud on national radio. Anyways, time to stop before any sort of serious discussion starts on homosexuality....not that there's anything wrong with that.
Song of the Day:
Zero 7 - Mr. McGee
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Congrats Max and Elisabeth!
So I've been finding it really hard to write blogs lately if you haven't noticed from the complete and utter lack of posts. I was in Annapolis, Maryland for Max and Elisabeth's wedding and came back all jacked up to write a massive and hilarious post about it because so many crazy, fun things happened. However, I returned to Chicago completely exhausted, which carried into Monday and Tuesday. So now, between work, making dinner, and trying to maintain generally hospitable living conditions, we're sitting on Wednesday night and it just doesn't have the same effect after reliving the event multiple times with multiple people. Plus, I'm way funnier the less I have to talk about and the more time I have to do it. Thus, I can no longer do justice to how much fun Max and Elisabeth's wedding was. All that's important is that the bride and groom were clearly having fun, as shown above. So were the rest of us.
Song of the Day:
Wilco - You and I