Adobo a-go-go.

I listen to this great podcast called "The Splendid Table" with Lynn Rosetto Kasper. It's a show about food and cooking and all that jazz, and it's great.

I know. I'm a party animal.

She's been really big on this recipe for this Filipino dish called Chicken Adobo. (Adobo from the Spanish word for 'marinate'... Chipotle peppers, for example, are canned in adobo sauce. Which is mexican, but from the same Spanish root.) I've been meaning to try it and finally did.

It kicks ass.

You take chicken thighs (I used chicken quarters, and seperated them first into thighs and drumsticks) and marinate them for about a day in vinegar and soy sauce with a ton on garlic and black pepper. (You can also put in a tomato. The recipe calls for a whole canned tomato, but I didn't have those on hand. Instead I peeled and cut up a fresh tomato and threw it in the marinade. It turned out really well.)

After it's all marinated and awesome, you cook it in the marinade for 25-30 min at a low bubble, then pull out the chicken and brown it in olive oil.

Cook, then brown. It's a killer thing.

You skim off a little schmaltz from the marinade, boil it down by half, and pour it over the chicken on a bed of rice.

Full recipe here: http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/20985

It's tangy and peppery and garlicy and really good. You use around 5 times as much vinegar as soy, because if you use too much soy it gets stupid-salty when you reduce it. It all seems like too much when you put it in to marinate, but I can vouch for the fact that it is not.

I ate half for dinner last night and the other half for lunch today.

My cat, Sunkist, has been chilling down South for several months now, as I've been running all over the place being a deadbeat pet owner. That's okay, though, because she's been hanging out with Jen and Jen's giant cat, Stanley.

Stanley must way twenty pounds, and that's not twenty pounds of fat. It's twenty pounds of feline muscle.

Plus a little fat.

Anyway, I miss her, and miss having another creature in the apartment that has a pulse.

Jen just sent this picture, and I like to imagine that it's a picture of SK flying, ninja-warrior style, through the air with a smokey, overcast sky in the background.


Kitty-San! Attack!

Bizarro World, courtesy of the economy.

So, economy in shambles. 20,000 jobs a day going down the crapper. People freaking out.

Still, one of the strangest parts of this whole economic situation is the elevation of Paul Krugman to household-name-status. He's a star. It's only a matter of time before there's a calendar of hearthrob economists floating around out there.

"Hunkonomics"

"Kandid Keynesians"

"The Invisible Hand-some"

Sure, we'll all throw up in our mouths a little when we see them, skinny and pasty wearing only suspenders and cut-off chinos, but we'll all be smarter for it in the long run.

Tempeh.

So I'm trying not to eat so much red meat.

I know. It tastes amazing. I still love beef and REALLY love pork (more than anyone should love the meat of any animal that doesn't sweat), but both are pretty bad for you and pretty bad for the environment and generally better left as "sometimes food".

(Having said all that, I do have plans of one day building a structure on property I do not yet own specifically dedicated to curing my own ham. I'm especially interested in crafting my own proscuitto or serrano, and would love to make nice, salty country ham, too... but I digress...)

Still, cutting down on red meat has me trying some fun new things with fish, chicken, and... tempeh.

Now, for those who consider tempeh a pretender to tofu's crown as the top of the meat substitute heap, I say nay. Tempeh is a nice source of body and substance in a vegetarian dish, but should NOT be considered a meat substitute. It's nutty and hearty and really nice marinated and pan-cooked. It's got texture ENTIRELY different from tofu, which is good. Tofu is usually fairly gross.

My favorite lately is this:
Take tempeh (which, if you have a Trader Joes nearby, especially, is really inexpensive. 1.69 or so per package) and slice it into strips, each maybe a quarter to a half inch in thickness. Marinate that in some soy sauce, adding plenty of cinnamon, ground mustard, and paprika to the mix. Cook that in a nice hot pan for a few minutes per side, trying to get a nice crispy outside on the tempeh. ( use a non-stick pan with no added oil, but that can sometimes get a little problematic with the soy runoff burning in the hot pan. It doesn't hurt the tempeh, just might make your kitchen a little strong-smelling for a bit.)

Take some nice bread (I like a sourdough or tuscan pane) and put a little chevre or other creamy goat cheese on each slice of bread. Don't overdo it on the goat cheese, but make sure each slice has a nice coating. Add the cooked tempeh, make a tasty sandwich, and then grill that, either in a sandwich press or in a pan. Cut in half. Enjoy.

Flavorful. Filling. A nice meat-free dish is which even I, a raving omnivore, don't miss meat in the slightest.

"All the single ladies, All the single ladies."

Ok, Beyonce.

Seriously. Please, sit down for a second and listen to what I'm about to say. Get your producers in here. They need to hear this, too.

The fact that a song gets stuck in your head all day long doesn't mean it's a good song. Ask anyone who's ever heard that "song that never eeeeeends" from Lamb Chop's Playalong.

Therefore, when I'm walking around, unable to get "If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it" out of my head, I don't think you're a talented performer or a savvy marketer. All I think of is that I'd love to get that song out of my head without using a claw hammer to do so.

Furthermore, that song has usurped "Bombs Over Baghdad" as the top of the list of songs that white people like, but have no idea how to dance to. If we can't step-touch, we're basically lost. I'm sure people go nuts when that song comes on at a club or what-have-you, but roughly thirty confused, Caucasian seconds later, they're standing in a confused circle, moving erratically to syncopation their hips can't comprehend.

(Which leads me to another topic: White people insisting on standing in a circle on the dancefloor. It happens at every wedding where there's a DJ, and it never fails. I blame some sort of pagan-druid instinct in our WASPy reptile brain.... but I digress....)

So. In short, Beyonce, et. al., that song is annoying. And not in a good way.

Thanks for your time. You're really pretty and have a nice voice.

State of the New Year.

'ello, all.

It's been a bit. It's 2009 now. I'm not sure why we I'm not writing this from Low Earth Orbit, petting my robot dinosaur, but oh well. I guess the future isn't the future.

Then again, we also haven't had to fend off any zombie apocolypses, either, so take the good with the bad, I suppose.

What's new? Well, the above image is of an igloo that used to be my car. Its transmission decided to take a break before Christmas, so now it's just a tidy little curb ornament. That's useful, however, because it serves as an awesome snow collector. We're getting pounded here, people.

Pounded.

Christmas was great. So was New Years. My Grown Man brothers and I bought each other toys. Good toys. Remote controlled helicopters. Transformers Mr Potato Head. Belt-fed Nerf guns that fire 3 darts per second.

I guess it is the future.

I got to spend some time with the lovely Jen. We went up to the mountains for a bit. All great stuff. 2009 is fairly solid so far.

What's next? This week, I have a deadline, am participating in a mock trial, and am performing at Sketchfest. That's all by Thursday. Yowzers.

More on all that later. Here's a cool little random thing. I heard about this on an old This American Life on NPR. Back in the late '90s, a couple of artists (Komar and Melamid) hired a market research firm to find out what people wanted to see in a painting. They did this in several countries, and below you can see what they produced for the US, based entirely on poll data.

A blue-hued landscape with mountains, deer, a family, and George Washington.
You can see the most and least favorite paintings for all the countries here:
http://www.diacenter.org/km/painting.html

If you want to hear the episode, I recommend subscribing to the This American Life podcast.

Subscribe to Radiolab too. And The Splendid Table. And Filmspotting.

Mutterings.

Hey dudes.

Life's been crazy lately. I've been extremely busy.

I took the GRE today. I did okay, but am eager to take another crack at it. (In case we don't actually talk regularly, I'm looking into grad schools. It's... terrifying. And great.)

I've been working a lot, too. Which is fine. I work from home, though, so my apartment is taking on a distinctly den-like feel. Plus I've been talking to myself.

Add to that the fact that my cat is vacationing down South, and I walk around like this guy:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

(If you've never checked this out, it's genius. Actual Garfield cartoons with Garfield and his dialog taken out. John looks cuh-razy.)

Check that out. Laugh. Cry.

Shark "Virgin Birth"

This story is wild. Apparently, a female Atlantic Blacktip shark at the Virginia Aquarium carried a pup that contains no genetic material from a male.

Two things make this even more interesting:

1) It's not the first time this has happened in captivity. According to an AP article on MSN.com, "The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo."

2) That same article made zero biblical references. I don't know if I could have shown that same restraint.

Link to the full story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27107721/?GT1=43001

Also, I'd just like to say that this story makes me glad I'm not particularly afraid of sharks... because now they're replicating at will....

I realize only now that I never really gave an account of Joe and Shelby's wedding down in North Carolina (which was a month ago now... Crazy).

The wedding was amazing. Cowlick, pictured above, got together for the wedding (and for those who haven't been playing along, Cowlick is one of the improv teams I'm involved with in Chicago. They were the first team I joined here, are still the team with whom I play the most, and are basically like family to me...).

Knauf (first row, making the ridiculous face) lives in Denver now and Scotty (back row, center) lives in the NYC area, so it's a rare thing for us to all be in one place at one time.

I was honored to be able to deliver the remarks at the wedding, and take part in a few other ways as the officiant. There was also a minister on hand (Joe's uncle) to handle the religious and legal bits of the ceremony. I've included a few more pictures below.

The rehearsal dinner was pretty excellent. It was catered by Woodlands BBQ, based in Blowing Rock, NC. (One of my favorites back in college...) Apparently they nickname their catering trucks, and this one, "Trigger", happened to share the nickname we have for BJ (pictured here, far right) and Janelle Tregoning's lovely baby girl, Elyse.

BJ and Janelle don't think it's that funny that we have referred to the child as "Trigger Tregoning" since months before her birth.

The actual ceremony took place on the front steps of the Taylor House Inn outside of Valle Crucis, NC. The couple wrote their own vows and delivered them beautifully.

They are a very happy, and completely hilarious couple.

There was, of course, dancing. There was a kickass bluegrass band at the rehearsal dinner, and an amazing old-timey ragtime-style Jazz band at the reception. Great stuff. This is me dancing (sort of) with Jen, who was kind enough to accompany me to this crazy wedding. I'm sure you'll see more from her in future blogs.

After all was said and done, Shelbs and Joe took off on a bicycle built for two.

All said, it was quite the event.

Pimpology

Well. The last week has been crazy, in terms of national news. Economic woes. Presidential debates. Failed bailouts.

Still, my very favorite quote from the week was from George McGovern, former US Senator from South Dakota and several-times-defeated Presidential candidate.

On NPR's "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!" (The "NPR News Quiz"), McGovern said a lot of funny stuff (especially for an 86-year-old man). However, this quote, in reference to Mo Rocca referring to the fur-wearing Davey Crockett as "Pimped out", takes the cake:

"You can see I know very little about Pimpology."

You can hear the whole episode here: http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/

Mom

My Mom's under the knife today. Hip replacement. Should be totally routine, but keep her in your thoughts, eh?

If all goes according to plan, she'll be feeling like she did in the above picture in no time.

Odds and ends.

Blogs are truly bizarre. However, they keep you sharp, keep you writing, and mark time in a way that few other strange 'net constructs can. Therefore, I'm going to try to beat back my misgivings and, more importantly, my laziness, and blog more often.

(That, without fail, is the sort of thing you always see in the most recent post on a blog that hasn't been updated in months... Still. It's something to work towards.)

With that, here are a few random pictures that I found on my camera. They encapsulate some of the bits and pieces of my crazy summer.

For a week in June, I hung out with some great people on the Gulf Coast of Florida. We were in a particularly remote and, if I may, redneck section of the panhandle. I've gotta say, though... a week in Alligator Point, FL ain't too shabby. We got tans and saw cool thunderstorms and generally vegetated, enjoying every bit of it. Above was the view out of our back door.

I was also fortunate enough to spend plenty of QT with my family this summer. Above is the porch of the lake house that my family has had for God-knows-how-long. It's nothing fancy, but I spent just about every day of every summer there as a kid. This picture was taken sometime around my Grandmother's birthday, which is just a few days away from the 4th of July, and the two days serve as a sort of framework around which my family builds some reunion time.

My niece, Bailey, just turned 3. I figured I'd celebrate this event by putting up a picture from this summer of her doing something really weird. She made this whacked-out, avant-garde sculpture out of play-dough and a creepy back scratcher. I'm convinced she's a visionary. Who happens to love Cheetos.

This is just a random shot of the preparations for a party my Dad had at his place on July 5. There was music. There was fun. There were literally HUNDREDS of hot dogs. I think I ate at least 10 that day. In fact, over the week containing July 4, I probably consumed 20-25 hot dogs. I'm basically made of nitrates now.

I'm not a gambler. It has always struck me as pointless and destructive. However, if it's your birthday, you're in Vegas for work, and you've got a few hours to kill before your redeye back to a version of the world in which sin is generally frowned upon, why not lay out a few bucks and feed 'em into a one-armed bandit?

Just after this picture was taken, I won 50 bucks. I used to to screw around in the casino for the next few hours, and eventually gave it all back.


So there you have it. Some odds and ends. I'll have more soon.

Random Acts of Random Strikes Again.

A few random rumblings:

- I was walking to my part-time gig downtown today when I saw a guy on the street selling (wait for it) live iguanas. This was on Michigan Ave in the middle of a workday. Live iguanas. He had a cardboard box which contained (I assume) iguanas, with a handwritten sign on it declaring that these iguanas were, indeed, for sale.
The 3 foot long iguana on his shoulder seemed okay with it.

- I went to a Cubs game last night. The tickets were free, we were 13 rows back from the grass, the weather was nice, and the Cubs rallied in the 8th to win it. (Simple formula, really. Load the bases and hit the ball past where anyone can reach it.)

-I really enjoyed Barack Obama's speech last night. I don't often get political on this blog, as I prefer discourse, but I think it was one of the best speeches that I've seen at a political convention for as long as I've been interested in politics. If you disagree, hit me up sometime and we'll discuss.

- Appalachian State plays 2007 BCS Champion LSU tomorrow. Due to Hurricane Gustav, the game will begin at 10am. If, by some miracle, we win it, prepare for me to talk about ASU football for the next 11 months. If we lose, prepare for me to pretend the game either never happened or doesn't matter.

- I haven't left Chicago in two whole weeks. That must be why I'm ready for a road trip in a few days. I'm heading to NC for the wedding of my friends Shelby and Joe. I'm involved in the ceremony and am extremely excited.

- I had quail egg nigiri (sushi. Just a quail egg atop a lump of sushi rice wrapped in seaweed) the other day, and while I'm not positive I loved it, I've been thinking about it ever since.

- Pay your parking tickets. As soon as you receive them. Thats advice from someone who has seen the pain of avoidance and barely survived to tell the tale.

Reread.

I can't believe I got rid of some of the books I "read" in high school.

I have no idea what I did with them.

I, you, and everyone else we know must... must pick up a copy of something they were assigned in their teens but couldn't have hoped to understand or appreciate.

Then read these things again. Repeat that process.

I read The Sun Also Rises for the second (and apparently the first) time recently. Now I'm repeating that rediscovery dance with some other books. It's worthwhile.

I'm torn on what the hell we should assign 15-year-olds to read. Masterpieces they won't get? Tripe that'll do nothing for them? Fudge? At this point, no one reads anymore, so we should probably just pray that they can get through three pages without sending or receiving a text message.

Kids today. Someone bring me my Metamucil.

Oh.

This has nothing to do with anything I posted yesterday, or ANYTHING I've done in the past few months, but can we talk about this?

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/apr/spies/index.html

Julia Child was a freakin' spy?!?!?!

That's amazing. My world is richer for knowing this.

July 19, I rolled back into Chicago after 2+ months all over the place. My Dad was with me.

4 days after that, my Dad left, and I started to finally feel like I could start settling in.

9 days after THAT, I took off again for a weekend in NC for KegPig. (See previous post.)

On the way down, our muffler fell off and we spent hours on the side of a remote stretch of I-75 in the middle of the night... but that's for another post....

I got back the wee hours of August 4. On August 6, I headed to NYC.

I got pretty sick while I was there, but had a great time. (That'll be yet ANOTHER post...)

After yet more travel mayhem, I got back to the city on the 11th. I've been getting settle in ever since. Again.

It's strange to feel so out of place in your own apartment. Your own bed. Your own skin.

I'm excited to get some sense of normalcy back, but I have plans to leave town again at least once a month for... the rest of the year?

It seems appropriate, really. It feels like the right time for some changes. A little more vagabonding.

Anyway. That's the status. More to come.

KegPig '04: Boone, NC

KegPig '05: Bristol, TN

KegPig '06: Burnsville, NC

KegPig '07: Burnsville, NC
What is KegPig? To repurpose a classic TV theme song:

You take a pig
You take a keg
You cook the pig
and then you'll have
The Keggy Pig.
You'll eat a lotta pig...

(Ok. If you didn't get it on the first pass, go back and sing that to the tune of "The Facts of Life". Stay with me here.)

It's a tradition.

I'm off to KegPig '08. Our fifth annual. Wish me luck.

Just too much.

Well, I'm back in Chicago.

I was gone for two months and three days.

I documented some of what's been going on with me over the past few months, but it's tough to sum it all up.

I'll continue to give some highlights after I get settled back in here in Chicago.

For now, I feel like a total outsider.

Ah well. Here's a picture of me with my good friends Carson and Christy. They've recently moved back to Boone, NC where we all went to school. Boone's the kind of place that makes you want to do stuff like this:

I'm a bad blogger [stop]

Lots going on [stop]

Go see Wall-E [stop]

Back in the day.

Today is my Grandma's 81st birthday. My brothers and I got our hands on some old family photos and scanned them so we could print some out for my Grandma. We're going to give her a disk full of the scans, too.

It's nice to have copies of these old pictures. There are some great shots. I like this one of me, Jason, and Mom.