I should note that Harvest Astoria also publishes a recipe exchange on its blog, which is quite useful.

Garlic Scapes

Garlic scapes are curlycue stalks that would otherwise sprout flowers. Farmers cut them before they do so the growth doesn't rob the bulb of nutrients and it can grow big.

I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be getting garlic scapes in our weekly share. This is the only item that has rolled over into the next week so far. Only because we weren’t too fond of it in garlic scape pesto, which seems to be the one recipe all the foodos out there wet their pants over every season.

• Garlic Scape Pesto … I made this one. First time I’ve ever made this stuff. We ate it on pasta. I found it to be a bit too spicy and aggressive, though I’ve read it mellows with time. I suppose we’ll find out when we defrost our leftover scape pesto in The Future
• Another Garlic Scape Pesto (Plus some other suggestions, though no real recipes to go along with those suggestions)
• White Bean Dip with Garlic Scapes: Meg Cotner from We Heart Astoria recommended this one to me over on Google+
• Garlic Scape Tart … This looks kind of interesting
• Pickled Garlic Scapes: Angrywayne suggested doing this. It might be our solution to our growing collection of scapes
• Other ideas: My buddy Minty suggested using them as a bed for roasting a fish on. Says it looks beautiful and tastes good, too. I’m also considering cooking them whole on pizza

Swiss Chard

• Basic Sautéed Swiss Chard: This uses just the leaves. Reserve the stalks for something else … maybe …
• Sautéed Swiss Chard Ribs with Cream and Pasta … I made this and the one just above tonight. The chard rib recipe is killer rich. Watch it! It’s good, though. Damn.
• Cream Grits and Chard: Bookmarking this one. The wife loves grits
• Lidia Bastianich’s Swiss Chard and Crostata: This one sounds good, too
• Chard with Potatoes and Tomatoes

Fava Beans

I've read that the reason you see fava beans used more as an accent in many restaurants is that they're a pain to deal with in the shucking.

• Grilled Fava Beans: Fava beans are apparently a pain in the ass to cook. I wouldn’t know. The first and only time I’ve cooked them (so far) was after reading this recipe. You eat them like edamame, first popping them out of their pods and then slipping them out of their whitish skins. Makes for messy fingers. Lick them clean, if you’re among people who don’t care about your heathen ways
• Fava Bean and Brown Rice Salad: This is probably good if you want to poop. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t made it yet
• Mushroom Risotto with Asparagus and Fava Beans: Michael Natkin used to write a vegetarian column for SE, which I thought was spectacular. I miss that guy. This recipe looks promising

Pole Beans (Romano Beans)

Our CSA labeled the beans we got as “pole beans,” but I could not find that many recipes for “pole beans.” It wasn’t until I saw them called Romano beans that a world of recipes opened up to me…

• Grilled Pole Beans: Heck, the grilled fava beans were such a hit (with me anyway), that these seem like they’d be a good variation on the theme
• Garlicky Romano Beans: Looks simple yet flavorful, with its rosemary-infused olive oil and breadcrumbs
• Braised Romano Beans
• Zuni Romano Beans: I’ve never eaten at the SF restaurant Zuni. But I have heard GREAT things. I’m clipping this recipe to try against that hype. Warning: This takes a while

You may be asking how it’s different from, say, Twitter. The truth is that it’s very similar on the surface but different enough in a very fundamental and interesting way — at least so far. It’s essentially filtering and surfacing the best of the best stuff that your friends and followed are looking at or producing.

I’ve been using it for 3 weeks now and am kind of addicted to it. It reminds me a lot of Twitter circa 2006–2007, when it was more personal and had a higher signal-to-noise ratio — back before it became the brand-pimping behemoth it is today. (To be fair, if you’re careful about who you follow on Twitter and keep that list small, you’re probably still getting a more personal experience.)

It’s also similar to Twitter 1.0 in the fact that it’s very simple. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles to it — but the fact that it can back-favorite things across all the services it pulls from is pretty slick.

Small network of interesting people

I oversee six different Twitter accounts at Serious Eats — and then there’s my personal account. Between all those, I follow a lot of bloggers, writers, websites, chefs, etc., all of whom are trying to get attention for their posts, products, restaurants, what have you. Are all those links going to be worth clicking on? Of course not. But the majority of the items that come through my Stellar flow truly are clickworthy.

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be a huge number of people yet to follow on Stellar, and I’m only following 39, so things are naturally bound to be quieter there. Unlike Twitter, though, where I often feel compelled to follow people back across all accounts (even my personal) for “political” reasons (fostering/maintaining goodwill with the foodie community), on Stellar, I think I’m going to focus more on following people I find truly interesting and hope in turn that their favorites are clicked with sincerity.

Favoriting behavior affected

That brings me to an interesting point. I’ve seen a number of my friends & followeds mention in tweets that using Stellar has changed how they favorite things. It’s affected my favoriting behavior as well:

• I’ve favorited more things on Twitter and Flickr in the last 3 weeks than I have in the last 3 years*: Prior to using Stellar, I think I had starred a total of 3 tweets — and most of my Flickr faves were just “bookmarks” of pizza crap I wanted to come back to later. Now that faving these items shares them with my friends, I’m using that feature several times a day. But I’ve also noticed that…
• I do most of my favoriting from Stellar: Because I find much more faveworthy stuff on Stellar than in my Twitter feeds, I often end up starring stuff on Stellar visits. This essentially is a snowball effect — and it means one of my friends has to have found the thing first
• I am more conscious about what I fave now, too, knowing that there’s now a page that aggregates all the stuff I’ve liked across various networks
• Sometimes, when I’m really bored, I look for great stuff to fave in the hopes that my Stellar friends will pile on a snowball that I’ve started. (This rarely happens, though)
• Favoriting as a form of retweeting: Sometimes I just favorite things knowing my core of Stellar friends are going to see them. Sometimes that’s enough

* FWIW, I actually joined Flickr in August 2004 and Twitter (as @Slice, before opening my own account as @akuban) in November 2006,** so I’ve been using both more than 3 years. I just liked the parallelism of 3 weeks vs. 3 years — and the comparison still holds up.

** Officially the @Slice account registers as having been opened in March 2007, but that’s because I quit Twitter after a couple months and then rejoined a couple months later. Thank goodness @Slice was still available.

Stellar as a measure of wit

Like most people on Stellar, I suspect, I visit my Best Of page compulsively, secretly hoping people favorite a tweet of mine I think is especially witty or a photo I think is really strong. (This rarely happens, though.)

Trends are emerging

It’s not like I’m using any sort of analytics to measure Stellar trends (I’m sure Kottke is, though), but what I’ve noticed just from browsing day to day is that I can pretty accurately predict who among my friends & followeds has favorited an item before I even scroll down to the “Liked by” line.

• Baby-related: Jake Dobkin and David Jacobs
• Cycling: Matt Haughey
• Cocktails and concerts: Kathryn Yu
• Entrepreneurship: David Jacobs, Anil Dash, Wayne Surber
• Apps: Anil Dash, Marco Arment
• Prince: Anil Dash

I’m also surprised when I look at the faves of some people and see they’re relatively free of the things I most associate with them. Software developer Cabel Sasser*, for instance, doesn’t really favorite a lot of stuff that has to do with software dev. Mule design director Mike Monteiro doesn’t fave a lot of design things — but his flow is expectedly acerbic.

I would also point out that my own Faves have very little to do with pizza, despite what you might otherwise expect.

I should note that folks like Cabel Sasser or Marco Arment, who have an alphanumeric string in their Stellar profile URLs, seem to be people who are not members of Stellar but who have been placed on the network as follow candidates anyway — presumably by Jason or some sort of algorithm and presumably to give a larger pool of interesting people to follow. Trying to root out trends in their favoriting behavior is more problematic than usual as they are likely favoriting without mind toward how the Stellar community will receive them. They are, essentially, the observed, unaware of the observer.

Stellar is a Kottke.org preview

I’ve seen a lot of great stuff on Stellar eventually wind up on Kottke.org a few hours later or the next day. I can see why Jason built this thingamajigie. And if that’s not the reason why he built it, it’s interesting to see how closely the creation mirrors its creator — for now, that is. Stellar is still a closed community while it’s in beta — so the folks on there are only a degree or three away from Jason. Makes sense that the material surfacing there reflects his taste.

Jason better watch out! He might be building an auto-generating Kottkebot.

My Stellar.io Wishlist

I like the simplicity of Stellar, but there are at least two wishlist items I keep wanting to see …

• Filter: Would have been nice during SXSWi and surrounding the launch of that Color app thingy. I realize it would be difficult to filter things and maybe the filter is “STOP FOLLOWING XYZ-PERSON.” But whatever. A guy can dream
• Retweet option from Stellar page: Sometimes favoriting something for my friends to see is enough. But sometimes I’d like to RT something straight from Stellar. Yeah, I know I can click the “#” to go to the original item and RT it from there. But, hey, I’m lazy, too, and I like instant gratification

Anyway. Those are just a few of my thoughts on Stellar.

I had a student, a few years ago, who told he wanted to focus on being vegan as his platform. Great. But then I noticed that all the assignments he turned in, and all the time that he and I spoke, his real interest was in cooking with eggs. He was a great proponent of humanely grown eggs and how to use them in different dishes. Hmmm. So, I asked. “But that is not a hot topic right now,” was the sad reply. I had to ask him if he was truly ready to go without his fave ingredient and talk on a topic that he did not care about. It sounds silly, but think about it: if he wrote great articles and vegan became his platform, guess what? People would want him to talk to them about this topic all the time. ALL THE TIME. Was that something he really, really wanted to spend his life talking about? The answer, which came a few months later, was a no.

My passion is telling stories. I tell stories through food. My food writing is rarely about food. If you have read any of my work, I am sure you are smiling. Sure, I write service stories and I am appreciative of those as they help pay my bills. But my true passion, my true calling (at least in my eyes) is telling stories. If I don’t stay true to that and start talking from tomorrow about the issues of sustainability (just because it is a hot topic), I am staying true neither to my craft nor to my readers.

[via IndyGal on Serious Eats]

Impromptu pizza night tonight. Just two pies. This is one of them. (Didn’t bother shooting the other; it sucked.) Made with the fennel sausage recipe I posted today on Slice.

It’s like this … I found some Italian type “00″ pizza flour last week at Rosario’s Deli in Astoria. Made dough with it Sunday night and fridged it off for a cold-ferment/retarded rise. It was pretty much use it or lose it tonight. I really wanted to see how the “00″ stuff would work. First pizza sucked. Again, it was “creepy bagel.” This one was better. Think because I stretched it thinner. Might start making the dough balls a little small. These were all between 230 and 240g. Might go for 200g and see where that takes us.

Figured it was time to push down the Christmas-music posts. Heard this at dinner on the 23rd. Love this song. Oh, Minnie Ripperton. That squeal … very Mariah.

5. ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’

I like how, as a song, “We Three Kings of Orient Are” starts out all SERIOUS and then pops into the peppy “star of wonder” part. This Beach Boys version is pretty damn good, IMO. As a bonus, here’s a cool version of them doing a snippet of it on a TV show:

And now let’s shift to this:

I wanted bring you THE BEST versions these songs. But that would have pretty much meant a post filled entirely with Mariah or Beach Boys videos. So I did some googling for alternate versions. And the people out there recommended this one of “We Three Kings.” It’s from Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration, which I have never seen, but I was surprised at its quality.

4. ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’

This is just one of my favorite Christmas songs ever. I flitted around on YouTube to find a good one to post here, and this Frank Sinatra version was one of the best.

3. ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’

I especially like when this one is arranged so that it starts with the Latin “Adeste Fidelis” version intro and then goes into English. Because as cool as Latin sounds, I don’t know but a lick of it. I know I’ve been foaming on Yuletide Mariah this year, but you really can’t beat Perry Como for Christmas songs. Go read the Wikipedia entry on him — he’s sort of a fascinating guy.

2. ‘O Holy Night’

OK. So here’s where I wanted to put in a non-Mariah version of this, but there really is no better version than hers — except … wait … what’s this? The people in Googleville recommended Michael Bolton’s version. Seriously? Oh, wow. It’s not bad. Following that trail, though, I found this mashup of Bolton’s rendition and Mariah’s into a “duet.” For my money, I don’t know if it gets any better than this.

Also while searching, I came across the version above from the Christmas episode of NBC’s now-defunct show Studio 60. In it, the producers of “Studio 60,” the SNL-like show within the show, hire refugee New Orleans musicians for their Christmas show as a way to get them cash and help them get union cards. Turns out that Aaron Sorkin and the producers of the actual Studio 60 did much the same thing. Confused, just read this. Anyway, the jazz band in that episode was called “The City of New Orleans,” but it doesn’t really exist. The trumpeter here, though, is Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews. [via 101 Squadron]

1. ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’

My favorite traditional Christmas song of all time. I love the line that says “To save us all from Satan’s power …” It’s so hardcore and old-school. But I guess if you’re getting traditional and getting into the religious aspects of the holiday, it all boils down to that.

Again, I wanted a version other than my old standbys, and this one came up. I’m just going to say now that I HATE Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlin’s stuff. But they do a great version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Even the wife here was asking who it was when she heard it coming out of my computer. Enjoy.

And, Merry Christmas!

5. ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over),’ John and Yoko, The Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir

I know I’m going to take some flak for this, but I do not like this song. It pretty much falls into my definition of “hippie music,” and I do not like “hippie music,” all of which depresses me in a mild and indescribable way. Like most hippie music (almost anything played at Woodstock, if you need examples), it expresses sentiments that, in my heart, I completely agree with but that are so naive as to be eyeroll-inducing. I think it depresses me exactly because it delivers its message effectively — most “hippie music” (as I define it) presents either an ideal world or laments the world as it is, sometimes both at once. On top of that, “hippie music” is nakedly earnest. There’s no wink-wink back door of irony to slip out of. It’s the disconnect between reality and idealism that depresses me, because I feel like “hippie music” is always urging me to do something I feel powerless to do anything about. Why can’t it just let me be blissfully ignorant?!?

“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” elicits this feeling in me — it’s also completely overplayed (see next two songs for that rant).

I also think that Lennon is just so damn smug in his delivery: “Oh, another year over, huh? And what have you done? … Play Angry Birds for hours on end?” I guess if I’m going to be preached to in a Christmas song, I’d prefer the old-fashioned carols, thankyouverymuch. (Note: Check back tomorrow for my Top 5 Traditional Christmas Song list.)

4. ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,’ Brenda Lee

In a perfect world, I would love this song. It’s kooky, vintage, and just up my alley. In my more hipster days, I would have owned it on vinyl and played it on my portable turntable. But radio stations like 106.7 Lite FM* have absolutely hammered the shit out of this song, and I now cannot stand it. Seriously, it’s on at my neighborhood market almost every time I go in there — which is quite often, as I have to maintain my Foursquare mayor status there.

So, sorry Brenda Lee. In another world, I would have loved your song.

3. ‘Jingle Bell Rock,’ Bobby Helms

Same with this song. I’ve heard it so damn many times that it drives me crazy. When I hear that twangy guitar intro, I want to drop my groceries and run out the door or complete my purchase as fast as possible. As with Brenda Lee’s song, I would have loved this song in a world where 106.7 FM did not exist — and I probably loved it when I was younger. Just not anymore.

An aside: It’s funny to complain about Christmas music being overplayed. I realize that songs like Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” and Mariah’s “All I Want for Christmas” get as much play as Nos. 5 and 4 here, but something about those I can stand. Just not these two songs — I think because they are a little too hokey.

Also, may I rant? Thank you. … WHY DOES 106.7 PLAY ONLY THE SAME 20 CHRISTMAS SONGS?! Go crawl around FaLaLaLaLa.com and see how many great Christmas songs are out there. I’d love to hear The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping,” or The Kinks’ “Father Christmas” or Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” — just three fairy accessible songs that would break up some of the monotony on commercial Christmas radio.

2. ‘Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,’

You know, this video actually makes me hate this song a little less. Dr. Elmo (left) and Randy Brooks really seem to be having fun here. (Note that Brooks is the song’s actual writer — it wasn’t written by Elmo & Patsy.) Still, I always picture a bunch of hicks from the sticks coming up with this song and then invading my life via the radio waves with it.

1. ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’

So fuggin’ repetitive. Boring-ass song. It’s the “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” of Christmas. Enough said.

* 106.7 Lite FM is the NYC radio station that plays Christmas music nonstop from around, oh, just after Thanksgiving until Christmas.

5. ‘The Little Drummer Boy’/'Peace on Earth,’ Bing Crosby and David Bowie

OK, so this one is pretty much traditional as most people would define it, but I think the fact that it’s a David Bowie and Bing Crosby duet, complete with cheesy banter at the beginning, puts it into post-modern pop territory. For a while, you think Crosby is going to overpower Bowie, but then the Thin White Duke pipes up, and … wow, that’s some beautiful harmonizing there.

From as early as I can remember, “The Little Drummer Boy” has always gotten to me. There’s something I’ve always found moving about stories like the drummer boy’s — people of modest means offering up all they have. Blah blah blah.

4. ‘Fairytale of New York,’ The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl

This one is less a Christmas song than it is a song that mentions Christmas, but I like to break it out at this time of year anyway. It’s a nice antidote to the relentless holly-jolly cheer and jingle bell rock. It’s also quite moving in a sort of co-dependent, abusive-partner, drunk/junkie kinda way. It’s like a Christmas song from an early Gus Van Sant film.

3. ‘Last Christmas,’ Wham!

OK. So now we move into 106.7 Lite FM territory — you know, the station here in NYC that plays Christmas music nonstop from just before Thanksgiving until the night Santa shows up. I think the Pogues/MacColl and Bowie/Bing songs have more artistic merit to them, but they’re only good in small doses. This one, and the next two, really stand up to repeated plays.

I pretty much love ’80s cheese-synth and most of Wham!’s and George Michael’s hits, so that explains this one. I love the sleigh bell that picks up in the chorus and the stutter drumbeat — and the falsetto “Once bitten, twice shy” line.

2. ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,’ Mariah Carey

OMG. How can you NOT love Christmas Mariah? Did you see her special on ABC last week? She was so cute. It’s clear that this woman LOVES Christmas — either that or she’s a great actress, milking the Christmas thing for a steady stream of royalties. … Naw, she loves Christmas, and it’s infectious. This video is great — it’s like a Super 8 Christmas memory.

1. ‘Christmas Wrapping,’ The Waitresses

“Christmas Wrapping” is No. 1 because A) it’s awesome and B) if you didn’t listen to the lyrics, you’d just think it was just a great early ’80s New Wave hit. I think that, all in one song, it combines “artistic merit” (whatever that is), an insane amount of catchiness, and enough of the Christmas sentiment to qualify as a true Christmas ditty. Bonus, too, for the fact that it starts a little grinchy but has a sweet ending, thus touching on the season’s disappointments but eventually lifting us out of them.

Also, this video? Whoever synched their Christmas display to this, well, good call.

But then I found there were foreign versions:

There’s also Моя прекрасная няня, the Russian version, but it’s not embeddable.

Also, Fran Drescher has had a heck of a personal life.

(George Michael’s favorite Wham! song, btw.)

[Andrew] Ridgeley now lives near Wadebridge, Cornwall, United Kingdom, in a restored 15th century farm property with his partner Keren Woodward[2] of the pop group Bananarama. The majority of his spare time is taken up by golf and he is a keen member of a local club where he plays off a handicap of 12; other interests include drinking real ale (he is a member of CAMRA). He is also a keen Manchester United football club fan.

[Bernard] Sumner lives in Alderley Edge, Cheshire with his second wife, Sarah. He has two sons and a daughter. He is a fan of Manchester United Football Club.

Irv’s Burgers: 8289 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood CA 90046 (at N. Sweetzer Ave.; map); 323-650-2456

In late August, Domino’s invited me and a bunch of other bloggers on a tour of its corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and also of a “supply chain center” outside of Ann Arbor. The supply chain center supplies regional Domino’s with dough, cheeses, condiments, and other varies supplies. Prior to this, I had no idea that there was such a thing as a beard net. Read more about my visit on Slice »

Night of the Weretot from Studio N8 on Vimeo.

Photograph: Nate Hofer

Like all aging folks, as I get older I slowly and belatedly accede to the wisdom of my parents. My dad has long talked about setting up snow cone stands outside the Walmarts near where he and my mom live. (Apparently there are a few Walmarts there that allow these stands in the parking lots in summer.)

Given the food truck trend raging through the U.S., he was probably ahead of his time, and maybe I should have jumped on board with the idea when he talked about it. Although I would say that if he ever does try doing this, he should use little trailers like the one pictured above. People eat up that retro-nostalgia stuff.

Update: This is the Fresher Than Fresh Snow Cones trailer.

Humphry Slocombe – crazy-flavor ice cream
2790 Harrison Street, San Francisco CA 94080 (24th & Harrison, Mission; map)
415-550-6971

Mr. & Mrs. Miscellaneous – ice cream
699 22nd Street, San Francisco CA 94107 (22nd & 3rd streets, Dogpatch; map)

Tartine Bakery
600 Guerrero Street, San Francisco CA 94110 (18th & Guerrero, Mission; map)
Recommended: country bread

There are more, but I will list them as I think of them.

I was sad to see last night that Six Apart has been bought out by VideoEgg forming a new company called Say Media.

I started using Six Apart‘s then-signature product, Movable Type, in mid 2003. It was the only option at the time if you wanted to host your own blog, on your own server, on your own terms — and by that I mean with complete control over its design templates, the look and feel of the site.

Yes, Blogger was around, and so was something called Grey Matter, but those were web-based and no-fuss, with templates (what would later come to be known as “themes”) that you couldn’t modify — not back then, at least. And what’s the fun in “no fuss”?

I loved that MT gave me the option to fool around endlessly with Slice and delve into the templates and codes (that’s an early version of Slice above, from 2004). I loved seeing something another blog or website was doing and then trying to replicate it on Slice (and, eventually, by 2005, with A Hamburger Today). It really let me exercise a part of my brain I hadn’t really used that much until then, and I would stay up hours and hours into the morning, tinkering with this or that. I enjoyed that aspect of blogging as much as the writing aspect of it. It’s something I really missed after Serious Eats acquired Slice and AHT.

Yes, eventually I moved over to WordPress for my personal blog after MT’s templating became so nested and confusing that I could no longer figure out what was going on, but I have always had a tech crush on the platform.

I wish all my friends and acquaintances at Six Apart the best of luck with their transition and hope to continue working with them on Serious Eats and its subsites, all if which are on an enterprise version of the CMS.

1) People are generally good.
2) The media lies.
3) The world is boring.
4) People don’t hate Americans….

I particularly liked No. 12:

12) Everyone is proud of where they are from. When you meet someone local in another country, most people will be quick to tell you something about their city/province/country that they are proud of. Pride and patriotism seem to be universal values. I remember trying to cross the street once in Palau, one of the smallest countries in the world, and a high school kid came up to me and said, “This is how we cross the street in PALAU!” Even crossing the street became an act to tell me about his pride in his country. People involved in making foreign policy should be very aware of this.

Yeah! People generally are PROUD of where they live. I don’t know how many times Claire and I have gone somewhere out of town and have had people say something insulting about NYC when they find out we’re New Yorkers. It’s especially perplexing when these folks are cab drivers or wait staff. Hello? Do you not care about your tip?

Anyway. Worth a read. [via Bailey Merge în România]

The new design began rolling out last night, with plenty of #NewTwitter tweets accompanying the relaunched website. Looks like things like photos and videos (from selected partners) will be shown in-line on website in a slide-out pane when you click a tweet.

Looks a lot like an iPhone app. Most of the people I know who use Twitter manage their accounts with third-party clients, so it may not be a huge change for them, but according toe PC magazine, 78 percent of all users do access the service via its website.

As of this posting, the rollout has not hit any of the accounts I manage. #stuckwitholdtwitter

Another one.

From a set of etchings I did on found transparencies in the late ’90s.

I worked at a newspaper in Oregon, where they were getting rid of old archives of transparencies from the entertainment desk.

Can you believe that newspapers used to be composed this way? The networks would send out press packs to papers with color slides to shoot and lay out in the paper.

The newspaper was throwing out a mess of them, so I grabbed some and did stupid free-association scratchiti on them.

There are other problems with the piece. You unfairly malign caterers, seemingly oblivious that many caterers are talented cooks. Also, the piece is couched as a set of “tips” to the readers as to how they should cater their own affairs. That’s useless advice, since virtually none of them could ask a gang of chefs to cook their wedding meal, and probably couldn’t afford it if they did. As a fellow food journalist noted, “It’s really a ‘let them eat cake’ kind of move.”

As a guy who has been helping plan his own wedding*, I can’t help but nod along in agreement. Even though I blog at a not-insignificant food website myself, there’s no way I could dream of roping in a bunch of NYC chefs to cater our affair.

I can’t say that Josh didn’t have a grain of a good idea here. Who wouldn’t want to feed their guests some awesome top-notch food? But when I read that column knowing that Ozerksy’s relationships with those chefs would make procuring their services substantially easier for him than it would his readers, I felt the whole thing was a bit disingenuous.

*Credit where due: The fiancée has taken most of the lead on the planning, and I am eternally grateful for that.

Full disclosure: I know Josh IRL and have met Robert a couple times but mostly know him through email correspondence and blogging.

I remember thinking how cool and “European” this video was. Mostly because it looked like something a repressed German would have made. Oh, and I LOVED the Isetta in the video.

Christian Hosoi

While browsing Wikipedia yesterday after getting hit by a Bones Brigade flashback, I began to see a pattern in which many ’80s skateboard luminaries had converted or gone back to Christianity. I suppose Christian Hosoi was either fated to accept Jesus as his lord and savior or just become a batshit-crazy Satan worshipper.

Steve Caballero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Caballero

He was brought up as a Catholic, studied Zen/Taoism for 6 years, and in 2005 returned to a non-denominational Christian church.

Lance Mountain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Mountain

Mountain is a Christian.[citation needed] He is married to Yvette Loveless and has one son, Lance Ronald Cyril Mountain.

Mark “Gator” Rogowski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rogowski

He converted to a strict Evangelical form of Christianity after a severe accident in Germany (he jumped out of a hotel window while drunk and landed on a fence). At the same time, spurred by girlfriend [Brandi] McClain leaving him, Mark began a period of severe alcoholism.

Rogowski said he had considered seeking psychiatric help at the time, but the born-again Christians he was involved with discouraged this.

Rogowski would later go on to beat, rape, and murder the mutual friend who introduced him to Brandi McClain.

Christian Hosoi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Hosoi

In June 2004 Hosoi’s sentence was reduced for good behavior and he was released on parole. Hosoi married girlfriend Jennifer Lee. He became a born-again Christian through the urging of his wife and her uncle, Pastor Christopher Swain. He also earned his high school diploma. Hosoi continues to be open about his new-found faith, having become ordained as an associate pastor, and has resumed his skateboarding career.

Fun note: Christian Hosoi has three sons, all of whom sound like their names could be skateboard products — Rhythm Hosoi, Classic Hosoi, and Endless Hosoi.

You don’t like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don’t like that I’m all over your sister-in-law’s blog? You don’t like that I’m on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I’m pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don’t all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can’t all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I’m standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.

[via @shopsinc]

This video uses Sims to act out the story in Kenny Rogers’ “Coward of the County.” At about 1:43 in, when Tommy’s love, Becky, is introduced, things get a little creepy. She basically looks like Tommy but with longer hair — and bad teeth. This video is really strange.

The Space Between: Arch, originally uploaded by Adam Kuban.

Took this Monday night while walking home along 33rd Street in Astoria from El Mariachi Mexican restaurant. I enjoy walking around Astoria. It’s probably due to the novelty of it all — I was thoroughly familiar with Park Slope after having lived there for eight years. It was beautiful but boring and there were few surprises. It may not be all brownstone beauty (actually, none of it is brownstone), but Astoria’s scatterpodge of residential architectural styles from the last hundred years at least leaves room for discovery.

Locals and Tourists #2 (GTWA #1): New York, originally uploaded by Eric Fischer.

Heat map of Flickr photo volume around NYC. Red is tourist-generated, blue is locals, yellow might be from either. [via City Room]

A) Haddaway, the original “What Is Love?” artist, actually has a pretty fascinating bio.

B) Diane Birch, who’s covering the song above, also has an interesting bio.

I’m writing this from the cabin of a JetBlue plane somewhere over the Atlantic.

I just looked out the window and saw the engine read “www.jetblue.com.”

Now why would they advertise their URL to people already on board, I thought.

But, aha! … It’s there for all the people who like to take photos out the window, with the jet engine in the foreground. Post that on Flickr or Facebook, and you’ve just advertised for JetBlue to your friends and family.

Smart.

A few things tied together with a very thin thread …

First, I read A. O. Scott’s “Gen X Has a Midlife Crisis” in the New York Times this morning. Online initially and then, yes, switching over to my iPhone when I had to leave the house for work. (Scott says, “I see you rolling your eyes. That’s right, you: the one in the fake-vintage rock ’n’ roll T-shirt and thick-framed glasses reading this on an iPhone at the sidelines of your daughter’s soccer game.”)

Anyway, thick-framed glasses, check. iPhone, check. Daughter, not yet. The passage that stung (emphasis, mine)…

The climax of Greenberg comes at a party where Roger excoriates a bunch of Millennials — a bunch of 20-somethings — for the meanness that he believes is a byproduct of perfect parenting and manifests itself by a lack of reverence for Duran Duran. John Cusack expresses similar resentment in Hot Tub Time Machine toward his character’s nephew, an inoffensive fellow, whose uncle sees him as a sexless, soulless video game addict. And Milo [in Sam Lipsyte's book The Ask] has Horace, an erstwhile co-worker and a more aggressive version of Milo himself, but with a virtuosity, scrambling cultural references and modes of diction that put Milo to shame. Horace is an iPod holding 10,000 songs on permanent shuffle, while Milo is a painstakingly assembled cassette mix tape.

Second item in the thread … This passage was hammered home today when, in our Monday meeting at the office, Serious Eats overlord Ed Levine made a reference to OMD and nobody but me and Alaina Browne got it.

“OMD?” Ed asked. “Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark? Nobody?”

Me: “Pretty in Pink?”

Alaina: “I got it.”

Ed: “OK. Moving on….”

My guess is that the folks in the room who didn’t get the reference probably do know the song — just not the band by name.

The last item to tie in here is the death of Frank Frazetta. Now, I’m actually a bit too young myself to have lived through Frazetta’s heyday. And, truth be told, my first exposure to his name came by way of a Coctails song called “Down in the Crypt:”

“… I’ve got a custom van with tinted bubble windows and a Frazetta copy on the side/ Down in the crypt …”

Now, if the young’uns in my office don’t know OMD on reference, could they ever be expected to know The Coctails? Or Frank Frazetta? Or get that the Coctails were referencing a very cheesy sort of ’70s/early ’80s stoner van with barbarian/sexy lady imagery murals painted on it? Probably not but, oh well.

And, you know what? I bought my first Coctails album on cassette tape.

See also: frankfrazetta.org

Mr. Elbaz, an immigrant from Egypt who lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, said he was relieved. It was only his second day running his Little Cupcake Lover cart. He sells coffee, bagels, croissants and other pastries in the morning before the red velvet, Oreo, Nutella mint and ocean-sprinkled cupcakes arrive.

At least one commenter on that post found it a little over the top, too, saying, “Was this an advertisement for the Little Cupcake Lover cart? If so, it worked.”

That passage also reminded me of the seemingly gratuitous amount of detail in last week’s Times Square car-bomb reporting by the paper, which was even crazier. Witness:

Some theaters were evacuated, but many were not, according to a spokeswoman for the Broadway League, the trade group of theater owners and producers. The spokeswoman, Elisa Shevitz, said she would not have all the details about how many theaters were affected until Sunday.

For some Broadway shows the curtains went up 15 to 30 minutes late. Shows that started late included “Red” and “God of Carnage” — which are both playing at houses on the block of 45th Street where the bomb was found — and “In the Heights.”

And this:

Gabrielle Zecha and Taj Heniser, visiting from Seattle, had tickets to see “Next to Normal” at the Booth Theater on 45th Street but could not get into the 8 p.m. show because the area was blocked off. But they made the best of the spectacle. “It’s a whole different kind of show,” Ms. Heniser said, adding, “It’s almost the equivalent of a $150 show.”

Wow, lady. Thanks. I’m glad the potential deaths or maiming of hundreds of people was the equivalent of an orchestra section ticket to Lion King.

Anyway, this part was also a bit priceless:

A group of people on a high school senior trip from Jacksonville, Fla., said they were stuck for about an hour and a half in the Bubba Gump restaurant at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue.

Well, as you know, life is like a box of chocolates.

[via Reddit]

The Space Between, originally uploaded by akuban.

Click screen shots to view larger.

Snow-covered exterior of the Grand Opera House at Elm Place and Fulton Street, Brooklyn, during the Blizzard of 1888. [Photograph: Wallace G. Levinson/Life]

OK, people. I am at the office today. BFD. I’m am now officially sick of people acting like it’s crazy that the office is open today.

It’s not that crazy outside. Sure, it’s unpleasant at intersections, where plows have piled snow and there are puddles of near-freezing slush to navigate. BUT IT’S NOT THAT BAD OUTSIDE.

There is no reason not to go about business as usual. We have become a city of wusses. May I remind you that the subway was built partially in reaction to the Great Blizzard of 1888, which dumped 40 to 50 inches of snow in parts of New York. From Wikipedia:

The first underground line of the subway opened on October 27, 1904, almost 35 years after the opening of the first elevated line in New York City, which became the IRT Ninth Avenue Line. The heavy 1888 snowstorm helped illustrate the benefits of an underground transportation system.

Get out there and get to work, weaklings.

Here’s the poem Shane Koyczan recited in the opening ceremony of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic games: “We Are More.”

I liked the pacing more in the opening ceremony more than here. I’m sure his Olympic performance will be up on the tubes soon enough. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on him.

We Are More

When defining Canada
you might list some statistics
you might mention our tallest building
or biggest lake
you might shake a tree in the fall
and call a red leaf Canada
you might rattle off some celebrities
might mention Buffy Sainte-Marie
might even mention the fact that we’ve got a few
Barenaked Ladies
or that we made these crazy things
like zippers
electric cars
and washing machines
when defining Canada
it seems the world’s anthem has been
” been there done that”
and maybe that’s where we used to be at
it’s true
we’ve done and we’ve been
we’ve seen
all the great themes get swallowed up by the machine
and turned into theme parks
but when defining Canada
don’t forget to mention that we have set sparks
we are not just fishing stories
about the one that got away
we do more than sit around and say “eh?”
and yes
we are the home of the Rocket and the Great One
who inspired little number nines
and little number ninety-nines
but we’re more than just hockey and fishing lines
off of the rocky coast of the Maritimes
and some say what defines us
is something as simple as please and thank you
and as for you’re welcome
well we say that too
but we are more
than genteel or civilized
we are an idea in the process
of being realized
we are young
we are cultures strung together
then woven into a tapestry
and the design
is what makes us more
than the sum total of our history
we are an experiment going right for a change
with influences that range from a to zed
and yes we say zed instead of zee
we are the colours of Chinatown and the coffee of Little Italy
we dream so big that there are those
who would call our ambition an industry
because we are more than sticky maple syrup and clean snow
we do more than grow wheat and brew beer
we are vineyards of good year after good year
we reforest what we clear
because we believe in generations beyond our own
knowing now that so many of us
have grown past what used to be
we can stand here today
filled with all the hope people have
when they say things like “someday”
someday we’ll be great
someday we’ll be this
or that
someday we’ll be at a point
when someday was yesterday
and all of our aspirations will pay the way
for those who on that day
look towards tomorrow
and still they say someday
we will reach the goals we set
and we will get interest on our inspiration
because we are more than a nation of whale watchers and lumberjacks
more than backpacks and hiking trails
we are hammers and nails building bridges
towards those who are willing to walk across
we are the lost-and-found for all those who might find themselves at a loss
we are not the see-through gloss or glamour
of those who clamour for the failings of others
we are fathers brothers sisters and mothers
uncles and nephews aunts and nieces
we are cousins
we are found missing puzzle pieces
we are families with room at the table for newcomers
we are more than summers and winters
more than on and off seasons
we are the reasons people have for wanting to stay
because we are more than what we say or do
we live to get past what we go through
and learn who we are
we are students
students who study the studiousness of studying
so we know what as well as why
we don’t have all the answers
but we try
and the effort is what makes us more
we don’t all know what it is in life we’re looking for
so keep exploring
go far and wide
or go inside but go deep
go deep
as if James Cameron was filming a sequel to The Abyss
and suddenly there was this location scout
trying to figure some way out
to get inside you
because you’ve been through hell and high water
and you went deep
keep exploring
because we are more
than a laundry list of things to do and places to see
we are more than hills to ski
or countryside ponds to skate
we are the abandoned hesitation of all those who can’t wait
we are first-rate greasy-spoon diners and healthy-living cafes
a country that is all the ways you choose to live
a land that can give you variety
because we are choices
we are millions upon millions of voices shouting
” keep exploring… we are more”
we are the surprise the world has in store for you
it’s true
Canada is the “what” in “what’s new?”
so don’t say “been there done that”
unless you’ve sat on the sidewalk
while chalk artists draw still lifes
on the concrete of a kid in the street
beatboxing to Neil Young for fun
don’t say you’ve been there done that
unless you’ve been here doing it
let this country be your first-aid kit
for all the times you get sick of the same old same old
let us be the story told to your friends
and when that story ends
leave chapters for the next time you’ll come back
next time pack for all the things
you didn’t pack for the first time
but don’t let your luggage define your travels
each life unravels differently
and experiences are what make up
the colours of our tapestry
we are the true north
strong and free
and what’s more
is that we didn’t just say it
we made it be.