Mar 07

Would you like to try our patty melt? Tough luck!

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Serious Eats’ hamburger blog, A Hamburger Today, gave a generally favorable review to the new southwestern patty melt being featured by Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. It’s payday, so I decided I’d splurge and get one for lunch.
I pulled into the drive-through, and the first words I heard over the speaker were, “Would you like to try our southwestern patty melt?” I didn’t mind the suggestive sell, since that’s exactly what I was already planning to order.
“Yes! Make that a combo, with — ”
“We’re out of the bread, so we’ll have to serve it to you on a bun.”
One of the definitions of a patty melt is that it’s served on bread or toast. That’s one of the things that make it a patty melt. Now, any restaurant anywhere can run out of an ingredient, but my question is this: Why, in the name of all that is greasy, would you suggestive-sell a product you happen to have run out of? Anyone?
I turned around (not an easy feat given the layout of our Hardee’s, but fortunately I have a tiny car) and went to Shelbyville Sweet Shoppe, where I ordered one of their small pizzas.
I went to the Hardee’s web site to fill out a comment form, and discovered they have a discount coupon for the burger. I do still want to try it eventually, and so maybe it’s better that I waited. But I just can’t get over the idiocy of it all.

Mar 06

One small hop for beer, one giant leap for mankind

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I am not a beer drinker. I’ve had two, maybe three beers in my life, although I occasionally buy a single can of beer for making chili or beer can chicken. (I do enjoy a glass of wine every now and then.)

But when I was scanning the library-affiliated system for borrowing Kindle books, I came across this:

The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World, by Stephen Mansfield.

I’d read something in the past – perhaps it was a review of this book, which was published in 2009 – and I had, scampering around in the back of my head, the notion that Guinness, the legendary Irish brewer, had been founded by a religious man. The description of the book intrigued me, and I decided to give it a look.

I’m so glad I did. This is a fascinating tale, lovingly researched and told, about the history of a business and about the Guinness family, some of whom pursued religious vocation instead of brewing success. I hated to put it down.

The story starts with Arthur Guinness the first, a man heavily influenced by John Wesley, among others. Guinness played a key role in introducing  the Sunday School movement, which had only recently been created in England, to Ireland. While some tales of Guinness seeing his brewery as a divine calling have been overblown, it is clear that Guinness – like many other Christian leaders of his day – may have considered drunkenness a sin but saw beer in moderation as beneficial, even healthful. And, in fact, in Dublin of Arthur Guinness’ day the other choices – disease-ridden water or hard liquor – were both detrimental. Guinness had every reason to believe that he was producing a benign, perhaps even beneficial, product that was completely compatible with his devout Christian faith.

Guinness started his brewery with a 9,000-year lease (!) on a plot of land at St. James’ Gate, a historic entrance to Dublin. The signature used in some of the company’s packaging is Arthur Guinness’s signature from that lease.

Successive generations of the family went in their own separate directions. Some went into banking; others continued to run the beer company; but several went into the ministry.

As for the brewery, Mansfield tells the story of its remarkable operating principles and charitable efforts, at least in the 1800s and early 1900s. The firm was a leader in how it treated its employees, providing amenities like  on-call doctors and dentists, reading rooms, and expenses-paid vacation trips to the countryside. It spent enormous amounts of money addressing horrific poverty in Dublin and improving living conditions there.

Fans of the recent Ken Burns documentary will be interested in Mansfield’s claim that Prohibition, by shutting off the market for commercially-produced beer and wine, actually drove many Americans to harder forms of alcohol. I was fascinated to hear from Burns that many Americans who supported Prohibition did so under the misapprehension that it would apply only to hard liquor and were shocked when beer and wine were outlawed as well.

Mansfield – who, according to his blog, is not a beer drinker – lays out the story with obvious affection. He goes over the top and gets a little gushy in a few places, rather than letting the facts or the people being quoted speak for themselves. (In most cases, they speak  quite well for themselves, and would do so even more effectively without the gush.) But such excesses are relatively sparse, and seem to come from a deep affection for the subject matter.

You know, St. Patrick’s day is coming up. I’ve never had Guinness before ….

Mar 06

Brothers, partners, strangers

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I have wanted to see “The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story” ever since it was announced several years ago. I was thinking about it just last weekend – before I heard about the death of Robert Sherman.

To recap: Richard and Robert Sherman wrote about 10 times their share of unforgettable songs, many of which are wedged into your cerebral cortex at this very instant. Their output includes their tenure as staff songwriters for the Walt Disney Company, and I think they were the only ones to hold that title. Just think about the songs from “Mary Poppins” plus the “Winnie The Pooh” song plus the “Tigger” song plus the songs from “The Jungle Book” plus “It’s A Small World After All.” Their non-Disney product included “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” music from the animated “Charlotte’s Web,” one of the Charlie Brown feature films, and the Ringo Starr hit “You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine).”

But the story gets more interesting – for much of that storied career, the brothers were estranged from each other – professional collaborators and nothing else. When a stage version of “Mary Poppins” premiered a few years ago in London, one of Richard’s kids started talking to one of Robert’s kids, and the two cousins – who barely knew each other – came up with the idea for the documentary. They were able to get the backing of Ben Stiller as an executive producer, and the blessing of Disney, which distributed the documentary. (Without the ability to license Disney clips, it would have been a pretty short documentary.)

The documentary is available from Amazon, both as a DVD and as a digital download, but I kept looking for it to turn up on regular TV. I may have to go ahead and rent it from Amazon.
Mar 04

Aquabats, let’s go!

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I am always a little hesitant to recommend shows on The Hub, a channel based on a questionable partnership between Discovery Communications (parent of the Discovery Channel) and Hasbro Toys, intended to move Hasbro product. But the people programming The Hub definitely have a sense of fun.

I found out about The Aquabats Super Show! from this review on the AV Club. It’s a parody of old Sid & Marty Krofft live-action Saturday morning TV shows from the creators of “Yo Gabba Gabba.” It’s intentionally super-silly and over-the-top, the type of thing that young kids might laugh at and that adults might enjoy ironically. (I actually think the latter is more likely than the former.) Kids in between may be left scratching their heads. (“That’s just stupid!”) The episode I saw even featured an appearance by Rip Taylor, who is apparently still alive. With all of the Davy Jones coverage this week, I’m reminded of the Monkees, and the silly humor of “The Aquabats Super Show!” is not far off from the humor of the Monkees’ TV show.

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The Aquabats have apparently been a comedy stage show, presumably aimed at adults, punk band with comedy elements to their stage show [Thanks to my sister-in-law for the clarification] for some time. They are a team of superheroes led by the somewhat-clueless MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), second from left in the photo. The other members are, from left, Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), who grows to giant size when he becomes emotional; Jimmy The Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir) and EagleBones FalconHawk (Ian Fowles).

There’s also a little segment, done in anime style but with the same silly humor as the rest of the program, featuring an animated version of the team. And there’s a separate animated segment, in a different style, featuring the personification of the group’s logo.

At one point, there was a little parody ad – and while it was funny, it also reminded me that this is ostensibly a kids’ show, on a kids’ channel where the line between programming and advertising is already a little blurred.

Adult Swim, the late-night spinoff of Cartoon Network, had a similar Krofft parody, Saul of the Mole Men, but that one (like most of the programming on Adult Swim) was definitely not for children. The show is long since gone, although you can still watch it at the Adult Swim web site.

Mar 01

A good dill for everyone

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The other day on Pinterest, I re-pinned a recipe for oven-“fried” dill pickles with a homemade ranch dressing in which to dip them. I also printed out a couple copies of the recipe for co-workers I thought might enjoy it.

One of those co-workers, Carol Spray, got around to making the stuff before I did – and she came to work this morning talking about how good it was, both the pickles and the homemade dressing.

Well, I didn’t want to be left out, so I made it tonight:

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Good stuff. The dressing is wonderful, and what you see in this photo is just a small portion that I poured out to use for dipping. There’s plenty left over to enjoy on salad. It tastes better a few hours after you make it.

Be sure and use the Panko bread crumbs—they have a different consistency than regular bread crumbs and work well for this kind of use. You can usually find them next to the regular breadcrumbs, but if not, check the Asian foods aisle (the ones I found are made by Kikkoman, the soy sauce people). Also, don’t skip the fresh cilantro, even if you don’t like the flavor of cilantro on its own. A lot of people don’t, but when you combine it with other ingredients, as in this recipe, it adds something wonderful.

Go get the recipe.

Feb 28

There may not be such thing as a free lunch, but …

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In 2007, for National Novel Writing Month, I wrote a book called “Soapstone,” a work of fiction that drew heavily on my experiences on foreign mission trips to Kenya. I thought about marketing it, but I knew it wasn’t perfect, and the former professor of mine who promised to look at it and give me advice never did so. The following year, a publish-on-demand concern gave NaNoWriMo participants the chance to get a free proof copy, and I thought it might be fun to self-publish the novel.

It has been fun. I’ve probably sold about 100 copies – 35 online and the rest in person. I have been given to referring to it lately as “my bad self-published novel,” and it’s the nature of self-published stuff to be a little self-indulgent, but the truth of the matter is there are parts of it and things about it that I’m quite proud of. I also think I have another novel in me somewhere, one that maybe I can get more serious about editing and publishing.

Sales have slacked off lately, and I haven’t been actively trying to market the thing. I was debating at the end of 2011 whether or not to drop my publisher’s “pro plan” (you pay an annual fee in return for higher per-copy profits and other benefits), but they did away with the pro plan and upgraded everyone, saving me the decision.

Meanwhile, of course, I’ve bought a Kindle . I’ve enjoyed it, and I’ve benefitted greatly from various offers of free or deeply-discounted books.

I had set “Soapstone” up for Kindle sales way back when it was first published, but I don’t think I’ve sold any that way. Now that I’m a Kindle customer, I decided the book might be a dollar or two overpriced, and that led to me going onto the Kindle publishing site and making some changes in how the book was set up there. In addition to reducing the price, I switched the book from one marketing plan to another, and the second plan allowed me to give the book away for free for up to a certain number of days each year, if I think I can get some promotional benefit from it.

So I’ve decided to celebrate Leap Day, and how much I’m loving my Kindle, I will offer “Soapstone” for free all day tomorrow, Feb. 29. Amazon’s sales periods are based on the Pacific time zone, so the sale will run from midnight to midnight PST, or 2 a.m. to 2 a.m. Central time.

By the way, the changes I made this week also mean that the book can be borrowed anytime for free from the Kindle Owners Lending Library if you have an Amazon Prime account.

If you don’t own a Kindle yet, you can still benefit from this. There are free Kindle apps that will allow you to read Kindle books on your smartphone or your desktop or laptop computer. While I was waiting for my tax refund to arrive so that I could order my Kindle, I used the Windows Phone app to read two Jules Verne novels on my smartphone, and it was actually a lot better than I’d imagined it would be. (The Kindle is still way better.)

Please feel free to pass this deal along to your friends with Kindles. I have been following some of the web sites that list and link to free Kindle books, and I’m not sure exactly how they work, so I don’t know if my book will turn up on any of them or if I need to specifically ask them to list it. (If it’s the latter, I may have another free day later in the year, and promote it properly.) It will be fun to share the book with a wider community.

All I ask in return is that if you decide to buy a Kindle, you come here and click on one of the Amazon links on this site. It won’t affect your price, but I’ll get a commission.

 

Feb 26

Turn up the Rdio

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I have had the free Spotify account for about six months – almost six months exactly. I knew that, because of this, restrictions were about to kick in on my Spotify account – only 10 hours of listening per month, and only five plays of any given song. But I don’t want to sign up for any of their paid plans right now.

Then, yesterday, I had a technical glitch. I’m still not sure what happened – whether the six-month restrictions kicked in and triggered some sort of bug, or whether this was just some unrelated problem. But the service quit in the middle of a song. When I tried to log back in, it kept telling me it couldn’t sync with my Facebook account. (Spotify requires Facebook integration.) And yet, I kept getting e-mails from Facebook telling me that Spotify had successfully logged in to my Facebook account.

I finally got the error messages to go away, but when I did, I noticed that my playlist – the one I’d spent months building, containing hundreds of songs – was gone. Disappeared. Nowhere to be found.

Well, I’ve ditched Spotify for the time being. I’m trying out Rdio, another streaming service. I understand that Rdio has limits on its free service, but they’re sort of vague about what they are, except for a green progress indicator on the web site or desktop client, and they seem to be more generous than the ones I was about to run into on Spotify. Rdio doesn’t have as many songs as Spotify, from what I’ve read and from my quick experience, but they still have a lot to choose from.

Feb 25

Crossing the Delaware

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It was not my conscious plan to spend the President’s Day month of February reading books that focused on Abe Lincoln and George Washington; it just worked out that way, because both books were readily available. I guess that’s why Amazon and/or the publishers put them on special. (Sadly, both specials have since expired.)

The first book I read was The Siege of Washington : The Untold Story of the Twelve Days That Shook the Union, by John and Charles Lockwood, which I’ve already blogged about. It’s a terrific tale of the days immediately following the fall of Fort Sumter, when Lincoln and Gen. Winfield Scott braced for an immediate Confederate attack of Washington — an attack that, had it taken place, might have changed the course of history.

I moved on from that to Washington’s Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer. This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is about George Washington’s attack on Hessian forces in Trenton, N.J., in December 1776, as depicted in the famous painting by Emanuel Leutze.

Somewhat surprisingly, Fischer begins with an impassioned defense of the painting, derided in modern times for its supposed inaccuracies, among them the fact that Washington is standing up. Fischer notes the remarkable symbolism contained within the painting, and later points out that, given the types of boats being used, and the weather conditions, many of those crossing the Delaware that night would have been standing up in their boats. By the way, “night” is correct; the time of day is, in fact, one thing the painting gets wrong.

Fischer’s book is meticulously researched, with appendixes, footnotes and annotations nearly as long as the main body of the text. But it’s readable and inspiring. He notes how the American Revolution’s egalitarian spirit found its way into George Washington’s leadership style, and how that played a role in Washington’s success. At the same time, he is also quick to praise examples of integrity, courage and compassion among the British and the Hessians. Contrary to what you may have heard in history class, the Hessians were not, repeat not, drunk or hung over from Christmas merriment when Washington’s forces attacked Trenton.

Reading this book makes me want to re-watch “The Crossing,” an excellent TV movie starring Jeff Daniels as Washington. It was produced for A&E and pops up occasionally on the History channel. But I also now know that a few things in the movie were inaccurate; while Alexander Hamilton played a key role in the New Jersey campaign, Fischer doesn’t indicate that he was Washington’s right hand, as portrayed in the movie. (IMDb also lists this as a factual error.) But it’s still a terrific movie, and well worth watching.

Anyway, “Washington’s Crossing” is a wonderful book, and I can heartily recommend it. But my next non-fiction book won’t be American History; I’ll wait and tell you about it once I start reading it.

Feb 24

Jeremy

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It used to be, in the great old days of “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson,” if they came back after the first commercial break and it was Ed McMahon, rather than Johnny, addressing the camera, one felt a certain excitement. That meant that Carson was about to do one of his characters – perhaps Art Fern, Aunt Blabby or Floyd R. Turbo, American. If we were really, really lucky, it would be time for a visit by that seer, sage, soothsayer Carnac the Magnificent.

Anyway, it’s now a similar kind of good sign when “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” comes back from commercial and announcer/sidekick Steve Higgins is addressing the camera. It means Jimmy Fallon is getting ready to do one of his musical impersonations. Like, for example, this:

Feb 21

Music, mortality, music

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On Tuesday, May 8 of this year, I will be a half-century old.

Fortunately, I won’t have time to mope about it. Three days earlier, on May 5, the American Cancer Society Relay For Life of Bedford County, for which I’m an organizing committee member, will host the “Cancer Sucks” Crawfish Festival, which over the past few months has grown from the germ of an idea into a massive, 12-hour-long festival headlined by a major recording artist, Keith Anderson.

But once that’s over, I can relax and enjoy dread enjoy my 50th birthday, right?

Guess again, Clyde. Seven days after my birthday, on Tuesday, May 15, will be the event which has become one of the great passions of my adult life, Symphony At The Celebration, the annual concert by the Grammy-winning Nashville Symphony in Calsonic Arena on the Celebration grounds, featuring the Motlow College Jazz Ensemble and one of our local high school bands (this year, Shelbyville Central High School) as guest artists. I am also a member of the committee which puts on this event.

These two events are going to be an incredible amount of fun, and I will thoroughly enjoy being a part of both of them, provided I don’t go completely bonkers first.

Then, after the symphony concert, I’ll have more than two whole weeks until June 1, the actual date of the Relay For Life.

By the way, if you’re looking to get something for my birthday, I’d love for you to either buy Crawfish Festival tickets or just contribute directly towards my participation in the Relay For Life.