My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad takes two pop culture things that occupy the same slot, and determines which would, or should, win in a fight. Or whatever. Look, this isn't rocket science, okay? Rules? The rules is, there ain't no rules.
TODAY'S FIGHT: Wile E. Coyote
vs
Tom.
Introductions are in order:
Wile E. Coyote, super genius, has a literary pedigree. Chuck Jones, who created the Wile E./Road Runner cartoons to parody "chase" cartoons like Tom & Jerry (and who reportedly was disappointed when the cartoons caught on) based the character on Mark Twain's description of a coyote from Roughin' It:
The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolfskin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spirtless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely! -so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.
Wile E. is frequently referred to by his Latin names. Do you have a Latin name? I do. It's Boniface Tullus, which I kind of like. Boniface Tullus. (I got that from this Latin Name generator.)
As I, Boniface Tullus, was saying, Wile E oftentimes is referred to by his Latin names, which include "Eatibus Anythingus," "Famishus-famishus," and "Famishius vulgaris ingeniusi," which if you put that through a reverse translator comes to the exact same thing, indicating to me that perhaps the universe is no longer expanding but that instead at the exact moment that I hit translate the universe began to contract and so time reversed itself and we're all now running backwards, which might alarm you except you probably won't notice anything. If every physical law in the universe reversed itself, you would remember the future and be ignorant of the past.
Wouldn't you?
I don't know.
Tom, meanwhile, appears to have a much shakier past, including an alias: when he first came into the public eye, Tom was known as "Jasper." To be fair, this may have been a stage name to separate himself from other Tom cats in Hollywood, including Sylvester, who originally went by Thomas.
But it's probably not, as "Tom & Jerry" is a phrase long associated with hooliganism, or at least rakish behavior.
In January 1821, a well-known journalist and sportswriter (sport meaning prize fighting and horse racing) called Pierce Egan wrote a monthly journal under the title: “The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their rambles and sprees through the Metropolis.”
Says "Victorian Footnotes," which goes on to note that beer houses in London were referred to as "Tom And Jerry" shops, from which we can learn that Victorian England was not what we would call pithy with its titles.
Strengths: That stuff is all well and good, a phrase that suffers from the same extra wordage as "cease and desist." The other day I got a letter from a lawyer demanding that my client "cease and desist" something, and I was tempted to write back "We will cease, but we will NEVER desist."
It's all well and good to get caught up in talking about phrases, but what about what each of these animals can do? I am ready to give you an answer on that, or, rather, I would be if I were actually ready to give you an answer on that.
I have been diligently researching that very question -- what can these animals do? -- since almost 10 minutes before I started writing this post, when I sat down with some cold pizza for breakfast and decided to watch a "Wile E. Coyote" cartoon. I watched that cartoon, which was this one:
But that one wasn't really very good; it was just the first one I found. But as I watched it I began wondering about how Wile E would stack up to Tom, and so I watched a Tom & Jerry cartoon, too, the first one I found being this one:
Which honestly is a little creepy. I watched about 1/3 of that, getting up to where Jerry tracks tar onto the deck, before giving up because I was bored, and going back to Wile E cartoons, which I had playing in the background as I typed up all that introduction to this post, including this cartoon:
But I had them playing on my Kindle, next to me, because I had to type this post and what I learned in college is that you do not research-and-then-write, you just make it up as you go along, reading only as much as is necessary to make your point. That is how American knowledge works.
Unfortunately, my Kindle battery was low because I was up late last night, alternating between taking Mr F for rides three times (at 9 p.m., 10 p.m., and 11 p.m.) and reading Girl Genius because I was too tired to read anything else, and I forgot to charge it, so my Kindle ran out of power and I asked Mr Bunches if I could use his iPad to continue my research, but he said "no" because he is watching "My Friends Tigger & Pooh" on his iPad, so that was the end of my research.
Instead, I will go off my memory, which, if I am wrong about the course of time reversing, ought to be at least reasonably accurate, and also off of Wikipedia, which fortunately for us completely neglects telling anyone anything about the government program for allowing drone strikes on US citizens, but does list all of the ACME products Wile E. Coyote uses in his efforts to capture the Road Runner, including ACME Giant Kites
Beyond his solid-gold credit rating and apparently unlimited ACME account, Wile E. Coyote is pretty fast, and pretty strong (for brief moments), can sometimes hover, and has the ability to create new realities that intersect with ours:
And survive even the heat at the center of the Earth:
And those abilities are what separates Wile E from the regular person. Absent his unique reality-twisting powers, Wile E is pretty much a poor man's Bruce Wayne, above-average physical skills combined with a bunch of expensive gadgets to pursue a single-minded obsession that is more about his own personal gratification than of giving benefit to the world.
Tom, on the other hand... paw? No, I'm not going to stoop to the lowest common denominator, here. For a change.
Tom's powers appear more limited, and, frankly, less obsessive, as noted by Wikipedia, which comments that many times, Tom and Jerry cooperate with little to no friction, and also that Tom has a real love for the ladies:
Tom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is Toots who appears in Puss n' Toots, and calls him "Tommy" in The Mouse Comes to Dinner. He is also interested in a cat called Toots inThe Zoot Cat although she has a different appearance to the original Toots. The most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in the cartoons.
Tom is, in short, a pretty skillful guy who seems to more or less lack the financial wherewithal of Wile E, and also has no real powers whatsoever other than his ability to come back from the dead.
WAIT WHAT?
Despite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent; he even reads about his own death in a flashback in Jerry's Diary. He appears to die in explosions in Mouse Trouble (after which he is seen in heaven), Yankee Doodle Mouse and in Safety Second, while in The Two Mouseketeers he is guillotined offscreen.
Yep. Tom is some sort of demigod, who uses his power to woo earthly females. That being pretty much what demigods do, if my understanding of them based on reading 1/3 of The Odyssey is correct, which I will assume it is (see "research methods in US," supra).
Like other demigods and minor deities, Tom has a variety of abilities that crop up when necessary, a jack-of-all-trades whose one major symbolic purpose (catching mice) has come to be overshadowed by the plethora of other traits tacked on over time.
But still, a demigod.
So who would win in a fight?
It seems as thought Wile E would never win, doesn't it? Despite his better financing and his inability to be killed, how can he fight a god? In fact, his inability to win in this fight might be presaged by his inability to win, ever, against a lowly roadrunner.
But, then, would Tom even fight? The gods are mercurial, after all - -sometimes they decide to make one guy's life miserable for decades and decades and sometimes they just go back to trapping Ares having an affair and laughing at him while he's trapped on the bed. The Attention Span Of The Gods needs a little work, is my point, while Wile E. Coyote's single-minded obsessiveness suggests that he would never give up.
Can obsession win out over near-absolute, but dissolute power? That is the question that has plagued me, and mankind, ever since I posed it way back at the beginning of this paragraph.
Despite the fact that Tom has lingered on in cartoons and movies that apparently are aired to this day, I am going to give this one to obsession. We all know that Batman beat Superman the time they fought, not by actually physically overpowering him, but through treachery and deceit:
...that eventually helped corrupt even the incorruptible Superman.
Tom is no Superman. He wasn't raised by Ma and Pa Kent, and is obviously prone to giving in to his more dissolute pursuits -- women, golf, pizza, whatever -- and it would be easy to see Wile E. Coyote wearing him down over the years until finally, one day, Wile E. Coyote tricks Tom into running into a wall that doesn't turn into a tunnel, and then disintegrates him.
Which leaves just one lingering question. Since it's been decided that Wile E. Coyote would beat Tom in a fight, all that is left to wonder is:
Just how afraid of the Road Runner should we all be?
If that thing ever stops just wanting to run, and instead starts wanting to subjugate all of humanity to its will, we are in trouble.
Born in Havana in 1909, Pepe's family was a powerful, wealthy group until Fidel Castro took over in Cuba, taking all their assets and causing Pepe's family to flee and seek asylum in New York.
That didn't stop Pepe, who only a year later purchased 4,000 acres of land and began sugar production here in the States. Pepe Fanjul got his sons involved in the company, and before long his family was helping run the Florida Sugar Cane League, the Florida Sugar Marketing and Terminal Association, and other groups. One of Pepe's sons founded Biscayne College; his daughter was a co-founder of a charity.
This family had everything, then nothing, and has now built up the American Dream again, proving that hard work can lead you to success, and that inspiration is almost everywhere you care to look.
The least important thing this guy has to deal with in his life is not getting that t-shirt back.
The most important thing? The fact that the cat is clearly trying to hypnotize him back into bed. Creepy.
T-shirt maker ads confuse me. I can honestly say that I have never given even a single second's thought to who makes my t-shirt. While I have t-shirts I like (my long-lost Green Lantern t-shirt which is irreplaceable...*tears up*), I could not name a t-shirt manufacturer except for Hanes and that's only because they featured Black Hitler in one of their commercials:
Which brings up an important point: Is it mustache? Or moustache? Because it's Saturday morning and I think I've got low blood sugar, I will investigate for you.
Mustache is the U.S. spelling of the word referring to hair on the upper lip. Moustacheis the preferred spelling in all major varieties of English other than American English. Mustachiowas originally a variant of mustache, but it now usually refers to an especially luxuriantmustache. The past-participle adjectives corresponding to these words are mustached,moustached, and mustachioed.
You know what freaked me out the most about that? In order: 1. The fact that there are past-participleadjectives. 2. The fact that some people know what those are.
Why do we bother naming the types of words we use? Think about that for a while. Why do verbs have to have a name? Man, now I'm not going to sleep at all tonight.
UPDATE BASED ON PT DILLOWAY'S COMMENT:
THIS:
So what are we supposed to make of that? That the pig is a person? Because that commercial where he goes to the restaurant makes pretty clear that (A) he is a pig and (B) in the world in which he lives, we EAT pigs.
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It kind of smells like warm metal, unless that is just the smell of the stove which I used to cook a pizza last night and sort of forgot to turn off, and have been sitting here hoping Sweetie wouldn't notice, only to have her exactly as I typed that sentence say:
"The oven's on!"
To which I said:
"It's... um... off" because I had turned it off 10 minutes ago.
To which she said "Was it on all night?"
And I said "Sort of," and looked squarely into the Face of Disappointment In Me, which I see a lot these days.
So I added "In my defense, we were doing a lot of stuff last night," which is absolutely true in the completely nonsexy way it was meant, as last night between 8:15 and 9:15 while I cooked that pizza I also had to find a helmet for an Imaginext pilot, give Mr F a bath, clean up the house and go up on our roof and get the snow off the satellite dish, for the second time this year.
That's all part of the Wonder Of Super Bowl Eve, that and the little miracles like Sweetie noticing the oven was on at the exact moment I typed that it was. It's little magical moments like that which we'll remember in the future, when we look back at pictures of Mr F and Mr Bunches, their eyes wide with the excitement of freshly-fallen snow on the lawn and the house brimming with the sights and sounds of Super Bowl Sunday, which today are:
The Imaginext Sky Racers show Mr Bunches is watching next to me:
And Sweetie's disapproving frown:
Note: I am not allowed to put pictures of Sweetie on my blogs.
Which is not ordinarily thought of as a sound, but if you're ever on the receiving end of it, you'll know what I mean.
You may have noticed that I am not talking much about the Super Bowl in my annual Super Bowl post, and there is a good reason for that: There's not much new to say about the Super Bowl, which doesn't stop people from saying the same old things about the Super Bowl every year, but it does give me pause.
Have you heard, for example, that there is a shortage of chicken wings this year for the Super Bowl? You probably have:
It's hard to say something NEW about the Super Bowl, is my point. Every year, it's the same thing: Chicken wings, the ads, the cost of the ads, whether Colin Kaepernick's biological mother is trying to get in touch with him only after he became a superstar, as she's denying she's not. It's completely coincidental that she realized she wanted to get to know him at the exact same time as he was becoming an NFL star!
and the trend continues, with even East Coast Liberal Elites stealing my thunder before I know I have a thunder, by which I mean: I thought perhaps I would post some great music about the Super Bowl only to find that The New Yorker already did just that, and it's a pretty good list, too, even though none of the songs are actually about Super Bowls, per se.
So what can possibly be said about the Super Bowl, or this Super Bowl, or any Super Bowl, that hasn't been said before? THAT is the mission of WHODATHUNKIT!?, the only feature anywhere that dares to tell you what it is you, sitting there reading this, actually want to know, even if you didn't know that you wanted to know it.
So sit back, enjoy the ride, maybe put on some Imaginext Sky Racers cartoons for a soundtrack, and let's get to
WHODATHUNKIT?! THE THREE THINGS YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SUPER BOWL 2013!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But first, it's time for the NONSPORTSMAN! of the YEAR! award. Every year, provided you don't go actually check that statistic, I have given out the NONSPORTSMAN! of the YEAR! award to that one person or thing who most affected sports in the year... without actually being an athlete or sports figure at all.
Past winners include collective bargaining, the city of Cleveland,Barack Obama, and asterisk, and it's safe to say that this year's winner will match easily with that elite crew to join the most prestigious, exclusive club in the world, the holders of the Nonsportsman! of the Year! award.
We begin, as always, with a stirring piece of music to get the blood flowing:
AH! I love the smell of cartoon themes in the morning.
The runner up for Nonsportsman! of the Year! award, a position that in the past has been held by Elin Woods:
and...um... and... and probably others... where was I?
The runner-up for Nonsportsman! of the Year! goes to sports media!
Who demonstrated their dedication to not actually working for a living this year by complete missing the boat on a variety of news stories, leaving the "real" "reporting" to people like Oprah:
Note: Also not allowed to post pictures of Oprah.
And Katie Couric:
Note: did you really want a picture of Katie Couric?
to get the "real" "scoop" after everyone in the world knew it.
As I've said before, to be a sports reporter these days, all you need to do is act as though you are an SNL parody of a character in a sitcom based on a wacky version of a sports reporter. Sports reporting not needed. As long as radio shows can feature people calling in to talk about how they would, if they could, ask Ray Lewis what he thinks of Colin Kaepernick's being a born-again Christian -- an actual call on Jay Mohr's actual radio show, which I recommend nobody ever actually listen to,
as long as sports fans are happy with stuff like that, sports reporters have the easiest job in the world, far easier, even, than 'regular' reporters, who simply have to cut-and-paste press releases into the newspapers nobody reads. Sports reporters can simply take call-ins from fans, and make incoherent rants (i.e., "to Jim Rome it") and then be wrong... over and over and over again.
I listened, briefly, to three guys on the radio this week get ready to make their picks for the Super Bowl. Before they made their picks, they said what their season record was picking games. The records were 34-16, 25-25, and 27-23.
The best among them had a success rate of 66%, and he does this for a living.
AND NOW it is time for the greatest honor bestowed by this blog, the 2013 NONSPORTSMAN! OF THE YEAR! AWARD which goes to...
LYING!!!
I actually suprised myself there because my notes say: truth and I was going to award truth the Nonsportsman! of the Year!trophy (there's no trophy) right up until I typed lying, instead, but I realized even as I typed it that truth cannot win the Nonsportsman! of the Year! award, because the award goes to the Nonsportsman! who had the greatest impact on sports, and truth be told (zing!), truth had zero impact on sports this year.
It might seem just the opposite, because, after all, we learned a lot of things this year that had been hidden from us before. We learned that Manti Te'O didn't really have a girlfriend, we learned that Lance Armstrong had doped all those years, we learned that Packer fans have no idea what "cause and effect" is and we learned that athletes will spray deer urine on their muscles, which also meant we learned that the only easier job than sports reporting is sports medicine.
The truth, in 2012, was that Jeremy Lin wasn't that great a basketball player. The truth in 2012 was that the Saints didn't really have much of a Bounty Pool and that the NFL couldn't do much of anything to stop head injuries. The truth was that those head injuries were causing even bigger problems than anyone had suspected, including causing former NFL players to kill themselves. The truth was that Ohio State and USC had pretty good football teams that couldn't compete in the postseason because of things past coaches had done, while those past coaches enjoyed themselves in new jobs. The truth was that playoffs sent the University of Wisconsin to a tournament when it wasn't even the best team in its division in the Big 10, and the truth about the Big 10 was that it had more than 10 teams in it and added some more.
The truth was that Penn State's lionized, revered football coach covered decades of child abuse because he didn't want it to hurt the football program, and the truth was that in the end, it did not hurt that football program even after people learned that their unquestioning love of that football program was, in truth, a big reason why their coach could cover up all that abuse.
Lance Armstrong lost all those victories... technically speaking, but what did that matter? If you were in those Tours, you didn't get to ever wear the yellow jersey, and it appears that nobody ever won them, now. Manti Te'O will still get an NFL contract and nobody is asking why a religious school helped cover up a huge human interest story fraud that might have helped Notre Dame play for a national championship -- this being the last year that opinions mattered in determining who was the number one team in college football, it couldn't have hurt that Manti Te'O had such an inspiring lie going on.
And that is the crux of it.
Lying.
The Redskins lied about their star quarterback's injury, probably twice, to keep him playing, and they made the playoffs. Lance Armstrong actually won lawsuits in the past by accusing people of lying about him. He isn't exactly declaring bankruptcy these days, is he? ESPN got busted twice by Deadspin for lying: once hiring a con artist to write for it, and once faking a story about how Tim Tebow might play on a Monday Night Football game to get ratings up. (That last link shows how most of the Tebow news this year was entirely manufactured by ESPN for ratings purposes.)
All of those people profited handsomely by lying. They rose to fame, fortune, and glory, got to start in a national championship, got to head foundations, got to work in the sports field and go to Super Bowl week and mingle with legends -- a Super Bowl week that, by the way, has largely revolved around the story that it is the last game of a man whose career highlight is lying:
My nephew was brutally beaten and murdered and nobody is paying for
it," Baker's uncle, Greg Wilson, told USA TODAY Sports. "Everything is
so fresh in our mind, it's just like it happened yesterday. We'll never
forget this."
Only Lewis pleaded guilty in relation to the
case: for obstruction of justice, a misdemeanor. He originally was
charged with two counts of murder but struck a deal with prosecutors in
exchange for his testimony against two of his companions that night,
Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting.
Lewis never directly
linked his two friends to the killings, and they were acquitted. Lewis
had testified that Oakley, Sweeting and another man had gone to a
sporting goods store the previous day to buy knives. Baker's blood later
was found in Lewis' limo. Having fled the crime scene, Lewis told the
limo's passengers to "keep their mouths shut." The white suit Lewis was
wearing that night — on Super Bowl Sunday — never was found.
"I'm not trying to end my career like this," Lewis said in his hotel
that night, according to the testimony of a female passenger in the
limo.
He didn't. For his punishment, Lewis received one year of probation and a $250,000 fine by the NFL.
That's an excerpt from a longer story centering around the feelings of a family that has never received justice. Lewis did settle a $13,000,000 lawsuit brought on behalf of the dead man's daughter, for an undisclosed sum.
Ray Lewis has earned about $26,000,000 in the past four years. I'd say lying has been very lucrative to him. That $26,000,000 figure is before deducting the $250,000 for hiding what he knew about his and others' roles in a murder.
The lesson is clear, sports fans: Lying is what winners do. Not good people -- winners. There is (now) a difference. So if you want to play in the Super Bowl, hoist the yellow jersey, have your Catholic school play in the national championship, keep your football program running, hit more home runs than anyone else, or otherwise excel at sports, take a cue from the 2012 Nonsportsman! of the Year! and lie like you never met the truth and would punch it in the face if you could, and you will be successful at sports.
Anyway, with that depressing lead-in, back to WHODATHUNKIT!?, the BEST THINGS YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SUPER BOWL 2013, which is what I call it because I can't keep all those Roman numerals straight anymore.
As always, WHODATHUNKIT!? eschews (oooh, fancy!) those common sports stories for the story behind the story, or, more accurately, the story that is way off to the other side of the story. It is this post which is guaranteed to make you the life of the party by providing you with stuff to talk about that nobody else will be talking about at those Super Bowl parties, unless they read this post, which they didn't, judging by my blog stats.
Judging by my blog stats, only P.T. Dilloway and maybe Andrew Leon read this post. But they are both great authors, so you should click those links and bookmark their websites and then go back to them after you read this post. And no, that paragraph doesn't make sense if you think about it, so I suggest that you do what I do and never, ever, think about what it is I'm saying.
Instead, think about these three things that will amaze your friends, impress your enemies, and mystify total strangers who you approach at a bus stop and begin speaking to.
"Who was that masked man?" they will ask themselves, "And how did he know so much about obscure bits of information vaguely related to the Super Bowl?i"
Make sure you take off the mask before you get to your party! Unless it is a masked costume party in which you and your rich friends celebrate while trying to avoid a plague outside, in which case you are a character in an Edgar Allan Poe story and probably not watching the Super Bowl at all.
The rest of you, consider this: The First Real 49ers were sandwiches.
Or make that "Sandwiches." Turns out that when gold was discovered in 1848, the first people to get to the Gold Rush were people already in California, which makes sense when you think about how information traveled back then (it didn't.) But the next wave of Gold-diggers was not the Lohans (ha!) but instead were Sandwich Islanders, which might cause the bright folks among us (me) to ask this: What in the heck are the Sandwich Islands?
And also: Because they sound delicious!
The Sandwich Islands were the original name for Hawaii -- James Cook named them the "Sandwich Islands" in honor of his sponsor, the Earl of Sandwich.
That man, the Earl of Sandwich for whom the Sandwich Isles were named, became the Earl at the age of 10. In addition to possibly actually inventing the Sandwich, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich also was the Postmaster General in his career and held an admiralty position which he used to keep Cook exploring, and Cook paid him back by naming four islands or sets of islands after him. The name only stuck until 1819, when King Kamehameha renamed the islands.
The Earl of Sandwich may not have just invented the world's greatest meal; he might also be responsible for Oldies Radio as it exists today; Ol' Earl created a "Catch Club" which would perform "ancient" music, which Earl defined as "any music older than 20 years," which perhaps coincidentally is the exact same definition my kids use.
There's no sandwich I was able to find honoring Kaepernick, although there is one for 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh (the "Harbocalypse," featuring fried chicken, bacon, sweet chili glaze, avocado, and pepper jack cheese), and there isn't a "Flacco" sandwich for the Ravens' soon-to-be-more-multimillionaire-y quarterback.
But all that is besides the point, the point being why is "pumpernickel bread" called "pumpernickel?" a question I would answer except that in reading up on it I became aware that it is possible to work as a scientist who develops flavors, a scientist known as a "flavorist," and if you had that job you would be called on to create flavors for companies that can't be bothered to rely on natural flavors anymore.
It's funny. People talk about the 'rise of the machines' all the time, but nobody ever considers the dangers inherent in creating newer, weirder flavors, flavors that might destroy all of humanity. One site says that the FDA has approved over 1,700 different flavors, a stat I didn't find anywhere else and couldn't verify, so let's just say it's true and let's point out that since it is indisputably, scientifically true that there are at least 1,700 "safe," "government-approved" (SOCIALISM!) flavors in the world, we are about 1,690 flavors short on options for our Doritos.
Of course, one of those flavors is this:
HOW GREAT WOULD IT BE IF YOU WERE TO SERVE DUCK-FLAVORED POTATO CHIPS TO YOUR GUESTS TODAY? Soooooooooooooooooo very great.
DO IT.
"Hoisin" sauce, by the way, is "seafood" sauce. "Hoisin" is a corruption of the Chinese word for seafood. Those are duck-and-seafood sauce chips.
I want them and yet I REALLY REALLY DO NOT. But kind of I do.
Back to the point of this section: What we think of as "pumpernickel" bread here in America isn't pumpernickel at all. Traditional pumpernickel bread is rye bread that is slow-baked for a long time, with only a few alterations. Here in America, though, we ain't got time for that kind of nonsense, and so we get the dark, pumpernickel color by adding in molasses and some other stuff to rye bread, and then to make it taste different from rye bread, we add caraway seeds.
So our pumpernickel bread is a lie.
I say that just to keep with the theme of this post. And also 'cause it's true.
Which brings up my final point: Was there ever really a hasenpfeffer?
I say that because all that flavor-searching-around reminded me of "hasenpfeffer," and made me wonder if that was really a thing or if it was just something funny-sounding that Bugs Bunny made up:
But, as is true of most weird things, it exists and was invented by the Germans. Hasenpfeffer is "peppered rabbit," a kind of rabbit stew made by cooking chunks of rabbit in thickened blood, with spices.
Still hungry? Once Germans came to America, where apparently rabbits were scarcer or perhaps harder to catch, they made squirrelpfeffer.
(Perhaps, if you really have trouble getting chicken wings today, you could serve squirrel? We have about a zillion of them around my house.)
Those funny pioneers! Eating squirrels stewed in their own blood! Ha! Ha! And they lived in sod houses! We would never ever do that today.
Unless we could really pay a lot for the privilege. Squirrel is being served in some of the fanciest restaurants around, and by "fancy" I mean "British," and also "gross."
This is from the New York Times a scant three years ago:
RARE roast beef splashed with meaty jus, pork enrobed in luscious
crackling fat, perhaps a juicy, plump chicken ... these are feasts that
come to mind when one thinks of quintessential British food. Lately,
however, a new meat is gracing the British table: squirrel.
Squirrel is appearing on more menus, as at Fergus Henderson’s restaurant St. John, in London.
Though squirrel has appeared occasionally in British cookery, history
doesn’t deem it a dining favorite. Even during World War II and the
period of austerity that followed, the Ministry of Food valiantly
promoted the joys of squirrel soup and pie. British carnivores replied,
“No, thank you.”
These days, however, in farmers’ markets, butcher shops, village pubs
and elegant restaurants, squirrel is selling as fast as gamekeepers and
hunters can bring it in.
“Part of the interest is curiosity and novelty,” said Barry Shaw of Shaw
Meats, who sells squirrel meat at the Wirral Farmers Market near
Liverpool. “It’s a great conversation starter for dinner parties.”
Sample conversation:
HOST: Hey, great of you to come. Come on in, the game's just starting. Here, have a burger!
GUEST: Mmm. This sure is... unusually curious. What am I eating?
HOST: It's squirrel!
GUEST *spits food out, punches host in face, leaves.*
HOST: He never even tried the duck and seafood chips.
"But I can't see squirrel becoming commonplace in the supermarket meat
sections – it's hard enough to find rabbits in the shops these days."
"I'm told squirrel tastes like a cross between chicken and rabbit, but
David Simpson, who runs Kingsley Village shopping centre in Fraddon,
Cornwall, reckons it tastes like wild boar."
"...one drawback is that squirrels are difficult to skin: 'It's not like a
rabbit where it slips off like a sock – you really have to use the blade
and pull the skin back.'"
The Elvis Pedia has this recipe for fried squirrel:
Fried Squirrel
Fried squirrel is a southern food that's quite tasty when prepared correctly. To cook a squirrel, first go out and try to kill a very young one. This is
the most important thing as old ones are too tough.
When skinning the
squirrel, make extra sure to remove all the hairs.
-
2 young squirrels, skinned and cleaned
- Salt to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
After carefully washing the squirrels, pat dry. With a mallet, gently pound
the meat until the bones are crushed and the flesh is tender. Season the
meat with salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a skillet (preferably cast-
iron) over medium-low heat. Dredge the meat in flour, and add to the melted
butter.Brown and turn. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the
meat is golden brown and cooked through. (Pierce with a knife to check
doneness. The juices should run clear when cooked). The process should
take 25 to 30 minutes.)
This is what they say that looks like:
ENJOY THE GAME, and make sure to bring your own snacks.
On Sunday, I'll do my annual Super Bowl post, now combined with the naming of my Nonsportsman! of the Year! 2012. Until then, I've been reprinting past annuals, like today's, from the Super Bowl in Miami a few years back. Turns out that with Former "Senator" Scott "I'd Whore My Daughters For A Job" Brown musing about a Senate run, this is timely again! Everything old is new again, is my motto. (Next week: I will reprint the Cave Paintings from Lascaux and show how they demonstrate the fallacy of the debt ceiling argument).
"Jerral," according to this site,
is ranked 1185 on a list of the 1,220 most popular baby names.
("Somewhat popular", the site says.) It peaked in popularity in 1991 or
so, when it briefly rose to about 650th on the list. So somewhere,
there is a group of about 13 21-year-olds named "Jerral."
WHODATHUNKIT!?: The Three Best Things You Really WANT To Know About the 2010 Super Bowl:
You know what one of the most impressive things about the NFL is, to me?
They can get closed-captioners to do what they want.
There
are organizations that you assume have some power -- Wal-Mart, the
people who make Zhu Zhu pets -- and then there are organizations that really
have power, like the NFL. They don't go around showing how much power
they have all the time, not in an obvious way. (Unless you count "suing everyone in sight about everything imaginable" as an obvious way of "showing how much power they have" but I don't count that, because I don't want to get sued by the NFL.) No, the NFL is so powerful that it doesn't need to advertise its power, and it does not need to make blatant attempts to mis-use its power, by, say, using its position as a newly-elected famous Senator to get its daughter a record deal.
Here's
a question for you: Let's say you are a newly-elected Massachusetts
Senator whose election was so improbable that it made national news and
propelled you into the national spotlight, inviting comparisons to another newly elected Senator whose own election from a high-profile state had shortly thereafter springboarded him to higher office. Would you, if you were in that position:
(A)
Try to live up to the hype by learning as much about national issues
as you could so that you could 'hit the ground running,' or
(B)
Use your national position to really push those issues you think are
important and 'set the agenda' for a big political year for your party, or
(C)
Immediately blow what little credibility you actually had by making
your first official act be an attempt to use your office for personal
gain by attempting to intimidate American Idol into having your daughter come back on?
If you're Scott Brown, the choice is obvious: Opt for (D), which is the secret hidden correct answer and which is "Use the office for personal gain through American Idol," and also pimp out my daughters and make jokes about how they might be whores."
The
NFL does not need to pimp out its 17-year-olds or use its office for
personal gain. It's already powerful enough, as I said, to get what it
wants, as evidenced by the fact that this past week, I was watching TV
while jogging on the treadmill at my health club, and the TV was set to a
channel where the people on it mentioned something about the Super
Bowl. I don't listen to the TV; I listen to music while I work out, so I
had the closed captioning on, and when the captions got to the part of
the Super Bowl, they read:
Super Bowl XLIV.
Keep in mind that closed captioning doesn't always spell Obama right -- I've seen it Oh Bamma -- but they used
Roman numerals (the NFL's Numeral Of Choice, and the subject of a
lawsuit the NFL once filed against Romans, trying to get the numerals
called NFL Numerals) to number this Super Bowl.
That's power: Even if you're deaf, or listening to Karen O's All Is Love while you jog:
You'll know it's Super Bowl XLIV, and not Super Bowl 44. Or forty-four. Or Oh-Bamma.
The
NFL wants to make sure that people get it right because the Super Bowl
is big -- annually, more articles and television news stories are
written about the Super Bowl than the next top 10 entertainment and
sports stories combined, according to the website "Statistics That Sound About Right".
Don't go look for that site. I just made it up. But that would be an awesome site, wouldn't it? I call dibs.
So the NFL can't just leave things up to chance; they've got to ensure that their army of goons... I mean entertainment lawyers
... keep on top of things and control the message and stay focused and
present the best possible story and do all those other things that
somehow have completely eluded
the Obama administration's capabilities so far, all to make sure that
the NFL rakes in billions and billions of dollars... I mean presents you with a quality football game.
Unfortunately for the NFL, I'm not part of their media machine. Not for lack of trying; I'd love to be part of the NFL's media machine, making tons of money while sitting in Miami talking to Joe Montana about whether it's the catch or the throw, as Dan Patrick gets to do this week. Who wouldn't rather be doing that, instead of what I'm doing, which is sitting in my cold office, listening to Karen O's soundtrack for Where The Wild Things Are and getting ready to drive to Merrill, Wisconsin to argue about mortgages?
Not that this
Is bad, but it's no Miami-Plus-Joe-Montana, is what I'm saying.
Because I'm not part of the NFL's conglomerate, though, I am free to present to you the only article about the Super Bowl that's not sanctioned by The Man, that doesn't toe
the NFL's corporate line, that doesn't just rehash all the tired press
releases that Roger Goodell forces down the throats of those drones and
lackeys who call themselves real sportswriters.
I don't do that, because I don't get paid by the NFL to do that.
By the way, Sweetie thinks Roger Goodell is hunky, but I don't see it:
Instead
of meekly parroting back the NFL's tired stories like all the other
"sports" guys do, I go out on a limb annually and present to you:
Whodathunkit?! The Three Best Things You Want To Know About This Years' Super Bowl (Super Bowl 2010!)
And you can tell I'm not afraid of the NFL, or beholden to them, because I don't use Roman (NFL) Numerals. I call the Super Bowl what I want, dang it!
Pat Hill: Grandmother, real estate agent,and deadbeat season ticket holder.
Daniel Snyder: Redskins owner, billionaire, and the man who decided to sue Pat Hill. Also, according to insider knowledge I just made up, Snyder asked the judge if he could "eat her heart while it's still warm."
But
enough of this talk of lawsuits and billionaires eating people's
hearts! It's time to get to the point of this post, which is those Three Best Things You Want To Know About This Years' Super Bowl (Super Bowl 2010!). Here they are:
After all this time, nobody knows what the stadium is actually called. Where is Super Bowl 2010 going to actually be played? Who knows? Not the NFL, which says it's going to be played at Dolphins Stadium. Trouble is, "Dolphins Stadium" doesn't exist. It's called Sun Life Stadium now, and like everything else in creation, Sun Life Stadium has its own website. Which also doesn't know what the stadium is called. Witness this very first line from the "History" page of Sun Life Stadium: Entering its 22nd year of operation, Land Shark Stadium, originally known as Joe Robbie Stadium, was the first of its kind to be constructed entirely with private funds.
So, on a page labeled "Sun Life Stadium..."
...the stadium is called something else.
The confusion is understandable: Call-It-What-You-Want
Stadium has been, in its time, called "Joe Robbie Stadium," "Pro Player
Stadium," then "Dolphins Stadium," then finally it was called Land Shark Stadium
to celebrate a partnership with Jimmy Buffett, who not only still
exists but who also is the secret force behind this Super Bowl,
apparently, given that last week he had dinner with Saints' coach Sean
Payton and now he's responsible for renaming the stadium the game is
held at.
Don't be surprised to see Jimmy Buffett filling in for injured Dwight Freeney in the second quarter.
I'm not sure how much Jimmy Buffett, or Sun Life, or any other company or person paid to name the stadium whatever it's called this minute, but I suspect whatever it was, they overpaid. An article in the Journal Of Sports Economics(we all subscribe to that, right?) suggests that there's a 1.65% rate of return on the investment... for three days, beginning with the day before the official announcement of the naming rights being bought.
You may be thinking to yourself: How
can there be a return on an investment before that investment is
announced? Wouldn't that hint that insiders are secretly spreading the
word that MegaCorporation has just bought naming rights, and doesn't
that mean insider trading, and isn't that illegal?
If you did think that, though, then you're part of the old world where investing and banking was regulated. In the new world, regulators date lobbyists, and Senator-elects get their daughters onto American Idol.
Amongst other legislative priorities.
The
bottom line of that article -- the article I mentioned before all the
nudity, remember? -- includes several startling conclusions, and by "startling" I mean "not at all startling if you remember that business executives have shoe polish for brains." Those conclusions include:
"marketing executives acknowledge that they have no way to measure the value of naming rights to the firm..."
"companies that own naming rights saw their stock values decline more than twice the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2002..."
"our main finding is that naming rights offer no economic value."
Whew!
No wonder Sun Life doesn't want their name on it. The study also
includes a table showing that of 12 companies who bought naming rights
prior to the study, all twelve had run into financial trouble,
including 10 of the 12 filing for bankruptcy. But to be fair, it
probably wasn't the naming rights that drove them into ruin; it was the
fact that they were run by morons.
I'm sure things will go better for YOUR company, Jimmy. (Snicker.)
Did
you ever wonder if there truly is a "stadium naming curse?" You
probably did now, and, having now wondered that, consider this: The
Dolphins were 9-7 in 2005. In 2006, the stadium was renamed "Dolphins
Stadium" and they went 6-10. In 2007, renovation of "Dolphins Stadium" was complete and the new stadium was unveiled to the world. The Dolphins went 1-15 that year.
If
they'd kept the name, the odds are that the Dolphins would have ceased
to exist as a legitimate football playing operation (you know, the way
the Buffalo Bills have). Luckily, in 2008, a new guy bought 95% of the
Dolphins, and in 2009 the stadium was renamed. The Dolphins went 11-5
in 2008 and 7-9 in 2009, winning as many games in 2009 alone as they did
the entire time the stadium was named after them.
What Would YOU Do For Super Bowl Tickets? Remember the lady who tried to trade sex for World Series tickets? Didn't you kind of think her real crime was in making her offer too explicit? What if she'd told those cops, "Look, I just want to go to the World Series, have a beer or two, and, by the way, my friends say I'm really trampy?" What crime would be committed then? If it's no crime to decide to sleep with someone after the date, why is it a crime to let them know up front how the date will end up?
Or
is it a question of how subtle she was in letting them know? There are
are other ways of advertising the same message, the message that if you
take that person out, you'll be getting some:
Last week, this read "Sun Life Stadium."
Anyway,
because of that crack (HA! Pun intended!) police work by Philly cops who apparently think
the biggest threat to their city is sleazy Phillies phans...
Book 'em, Danno!
...
the world is safe for people who don't want other people to trade sex
for tickets. Instead, enterprising Craigslisters are playing on guilt
and other emotions to get their tickets. (No, sex is not an emotion.)
Like this guy who wants to take his wife to the game for their 15th anniversary.
That's sweet, right? Oh, and also, he's a policeman! So, you know,
you kind of owe him your tickets, 'cause of 9/11 and all. But just
because he's a cop with a wife doesn't mean he needs a bunch of spam
from you. Or, as he says: "I don't want spam or fraud so keep that shit to yourself."
Too bad you other posters didn't think to tell people not to defraud you. Caveat poster!
Those were all from the South Florida Craigslist. Things get weirder if you go elsewhere. This chef will trade his cooking services on Super Bowl Sunday, and says he's "looking to trade my time for anything of value." I know lots of movies that start out that way. Movies I'm not supposed to have watched.
Looking to turn misery into something happy. Looking to trade a Diamond Engagement ring with platinum setting for 2 Super Bowl tickets. Ring is appraised for $13,000. Willing to meet at any jeweler for exchange if trader wants ring verified. Email me for more details/questions.
Maybe
if she'd stayed with the guy who could afford to buy her a $13,000
engagement ring, she'd have been able to get him to buy some tickets to
the game, too?
TV Saves The Day, As Usual:The NFL may want to crack down on realtors, as well as on churches that want to show the game, but it certainly has no problem with convicted drug offenders referencing its work. Home Improvement is among the many TV shows that have made references to the Super Bowl or built episodes around the game. In Super Bowl Fever, hijinks no doubt ensued when Tim Allen invited friends over to watch the game... but Jill got the flu! Here's a sample exchange: Tim (about his Super Bowl party): I've been planning this for a long time, it's a tradition, honey.
Jill: You've never had one before.
Tim: Well, traditions start someplace.
Everybody Loves Raymond
went to the Super Bowl, too, when Ray took Gianni to the Super Bowl,
but then felt bad about not bringing Debra, so he ends up [SPOILER
ALERT!][REALLY?][YEAH, SOME PEOPLE MIGHT NOT HAVE SEEN THIS YET AND MAY
CARE][WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE, EXACTLY?][I DON'T KNOW, MY DAD,
MAYBE?][OKAY. CARRY ON.] inviting Debra down, and then tearing up his
tickets to the game just to show how much he loves her.
Debra then goes on to place an ad trying to trade her engagement ring, and maybe some cooking, for Super Bowl tickets.
Why
does the NFL let TV get away with so much, when grandmothers, churches,
and other so-called innocents are sued into submission for merely
mentioning the Super Bowl? Maybe it's because TV has saved the day for
the NFL, as shown in the movie Two-Minute Warning.
In that movie, which might just be a documentary, a sniper who hopes
to shoot fans at the Super Bowl is revealed on television by the
Goodyear Blimp camera, leaving the SWAT team -- headed by Charlton
Heston -- not much time to try to take him out before he can wreck
everyone's day.
[SPOILER ALERT! FOR REAL THIS TIME] They fail. (So I guess TV didn't save the day, after all. But it did show us how cops and the NFL failed to save the day, which is worthwhile.)
That
wasn't, by the way, Heston's only brush with Super Bowl fame: He also,
as it turns out, played "Cat" Catlan, a quarterback who had previously
led his team to the Super Bowl, but now, at age 40, ignores a tempting
job offer (executive at an auto-leasing company! Sweet!) and comes back
to try one more run for glory with his old team.
That team? The Saints. So after Jimmy Buffet lines up for the Colts, expect to see this as a surprise late fourth-quarter play:
