Goat Cheese

I'm a foodie. I like to cook and I love to eat. I enjoy experimenting with a variety of cuisines, textures, and flavors. When I think about what I don't like to eat, there are only two common items that end up on my plate with any regularity that I will avoid at all cost: green peppers and goat cheese. Green peppers suck. They overwhelm whatever dish they infiltrate, impart a foul taste, and then prompt you to taste them twice - sometimes hours later - through their mysterious burping properties. However, they can usually be removed from a Chinese dish with a flick of the chopstick, or surgically removed from a slice of pizza with a thumb and forefinger.

For most of my adult life, the green pepper stood alone as my singular culinary enemy. That relative bliss changed about ten years ago when a once obscure variety of cheese began to make its way into mainstream cuisine: goat cheese. Once the strictly the provenance of Northern California trustafarian hippies, goat cheese has inexplicably oozed its way across the land like warm brie over a crostini. One theory is that while the hippies who bought farms in Marin County in the late 1960s knew that Imperialist America had to be destroyed, they didn't know shit about actual farming. Because cows are labor intensive (you have to wake before noon to tend to their needs), goats would be a far better option for this group. The hippies discovered that the goats could be milked much like cows, and while no one wants to drink their milk, it could be turned into a cheese and marketed as a gourmet product. Ultimately Alice Waters and some other Berkeley-based restaurateurs got wind (maybe literally) of what was happening across the Golden Gate and began serving this creation to aspiring eaters. Because they were dining at Chez Panisse, they would dare not question what they consumed.

For about the next thirty years, goat cheese was relegated to gourmet stores and high-end cheese shops, and maybe called for by the occasional recipe in Gourmet or Bon Appetite. But then it began turning up - first at wedding receptions - like the unwanted uncle. And now it won't go away.



Here are the main problems with goat cheese:

Its taste

Do people actually enjoy eating something that tastes like it was scraped from the bottom of a cloven hoof?

Its texture

It's mealy consistency clots and sticks to the roof of your mouth.



Two things that should never go together



It's seen as a more sophisticated option

Why? As long as your cheese isn't pre-sliced and individually wrapped in cellophane, we won't judge you.

It's called chèvre - in English.

We don't call cow's milk cheese vache, nor do use mouton to refer to sheep's milk cheese. It's over-the-top in its pretentiousness and that's unnecessary.

It masquerades and hides its identity.

That delicious slice of spinach and feta pizza. Those golden puffed layers of phyllo. Those crumbles on your salad. That crab cake next to your greens. Beware - they might all be goat cheese! 

So please, bring brie. More manchego. Pass the parmesan. Just no more goat cheese, okay? 









The NBA is Not a Sport

 

The NBA is not a sport

As the sun’s June heat nets us another exciting NBA finals, we’re spurred on to arrive at the foregone conclusion we all expected last July when LeBron decided to take all he offers to South Beach.

Fortunately I was out of the country that week so I missed the unprecedented sycophantic media jocksniffery surrounding this epic transfer of “talents”. The NBA (or N.B.A., if you’re a fan of the New York Times style guide) has been unwatchable for years, but these events take basketball suckery to a new high (or low). In what other sport can the best players in the league form an OPEC-like cabal and decide they want to play together for a certain team thereby disrupting the power balance of the league? Well, maybe the New York Yankees are guilty of this in baseball, but at least that’s management making that decision.

I’m not an NBA fan; never have been. But I do enjoy following sports, watching great displays of athletic talent, and witnessing superhuman feats that I was not capable of during my one season of playing high school tennis. These are all things you won’t find in the NBA. It’s my pleasure to share the top ten reasons the NBA sucks:

1)      Basketball is an aerobic activity, not a sport.

Creating the next basket-ball

Everyone knows the story: Dr. James Naismith – the Canadian, the peach baskets in Springfield, Mass., etc., etc. He tossed out a bouncy orb, and boom - basket-ball! What you may not know is that his creation was envisioned not as a ‘sport’, but rather as an ‘athletic distraction’ to keep athletes in shape during the harsh New England winter. Not unlike other ‘athletic distractions’ we enjoy today: kickball, tag, or jazzercise.

2)       Scoring is too frequent and therefore trivial.

Only 13 minutes and we get to go home

If a game ends with this score, 212 points will have been tallied. How exciting – or devastating – can it be when two points are scored by the ball falling through the hoop? Touchdowns in football, goals in hockey, and runs in baseball are exciting because they are rare – or at least they don’t happen every four seconds. The only impressive thing about too much scoring in the NBA is what Wilt Chamberlain did. Off the court.

3)      No skill needed.

Everyone remembers the Birmingham Barons years

Compared to what it takes to perform at a similar level in baseball, football, or hockey, little skill is required. Speed, reflexes, and accuracy are helpful in the NBA, but not needed or appreciated as much as in other sports. Michael Jordan, the ‘athlete of the century’ according to ESPN, quit b-ball to play baseball. After barely hitting .200 – in Double freakin’ A, MJ realized he could never make the bigs and went back to hoops. This, despite his ability to jump 47’ as depicted here (see caption, upper right). Do you think an NBA player could be fast enough to outrun DBs in the NFL? Throw blocks? How about carry the puck across the blue line on an odd-man rush? Ok, stand up on skates?

4)      Sloppiness



Whachotalkin' about, Willis?



Graceful passing has passed gracefully from the game. Every play ends up with a mass of sweaty, tattooed flesh and baggy shorts strewn about the hardwood, followed by finger pointing, accusations, and ultimately someone making an unavoidable trip to the foul line to attempt a free throw – the sporting equivalent of a quarterback tossing a football through a tire hanging from the goal post.

5)      The regular season is meaningless. They play 82 games to narrow the field of playoff teams to 16. In reality, only two or four teams ever have a chance of winning the championship – the teams with the best players. There’s no such equivalent to a hot goalie in hockey or a pitcher in baseball dominating and winning a game for a team.

6)      The trophy is lame.

Make mine strawberry

It’s ugly, lacks history, or even a recognizable name: the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Wha?!? Looks like something you’d “win” for participating in intramurals. Or make a milkshake with. Not exactly the same cachet as the Stanley Cup here.

7)      It’s minor league.

I can see Arkansas from here

What do Memphis, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City all have in common? If you guessed that they’re the fourth or fifth most important cities in their respective states, you win!

But they also all have NBA teams, so they lose.

8)      On-court seating.

"Yeah, so two - no, make it three large pepperoni..."

If there was ever an “ooo ooo – look at me” fan to go with an “ooo ooo – look at me sport”. You’ll find it here. A bunch of total d-bags sitting “courtside” paying five G’s to get man sweat dripped upon them. In no other sport can you sit so close to the action – save chess – because shit out of your control might actually come your way in those sports. Even first base coaches now wear batting helmets.

9)      Coaching is irrelevant

A management guru

                                                                                Remember when waitress-banging all-star egoist Rick Pitino was lured from Kentucky to coach the cellar dwelling Celtics? He was so confident in his coaching methods back then that he actually wrote management books sharing his wisdom so we could all take his amazing skills and apply them to our lowly lines of work. Well, when he got to Boston, he sucked. Big time. He’s best known for saying that ‘Larry Bird’s not walking through that door’. Either he failed to read his own books, or maybe in the NBA – where you can’t “recruit” (sic) your players – you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt and deal with it. His players sucked, and therefore, so did he. On the other side of the same coin, there’s current Celts coach, Doc Rivers. Doc sucked his way through several miserable seasons until ownership ponied up the dough to buy him the best players available at the time. And then – presto! A coveted NBA championship and a coach of the year award.

10)   It spawned the WNBA

WNBA Cares. We don't.

‘Nuff said!

Bullshit Branding

Today I received a letter in the mail from my business phone and internet supplier, Qwest. It was to inform me of some really exciting news - Qwest is becoming CenturyLink!!!! WOOOW!!! I can hardly contain myself...

I don't spend much time thinking about phone companies, but do I wish they could stop with the stupid, meaningless or made-up brand names. What was wrong with Bell of Pennsylvania? New England Telephone? Good, solid, reliable names, and you felt like you knew who you were dealing with. They had a hundred year reputation, and everyone knew someone who worked for 'the phone company'. When the Bell System was mercifully broken up, we were left with lower rates, greater innovation, and regional providers with idiotic names like NYNEX (computer language?) and Ameritech (superhero?) as their descendants.

Qwest wasn't much better - it wasn't even a word. I used to think that Qantas was the only word in English that contained a 'Q' not followed by a 'U'. But even that was an acronym. Verizon is just as hideous. Fans of Vertical Horizon (of Everything You Want fame) probably felt like they were getting a shout-out upon its entry into the world.

But now... CenturyLink?!? Wtf is that supposed to mean? Was MillenniumConnect already taken? It's a dumb name by all accounts, and why TheCamelScript?

As for the design, it looks like the result of BP and Fidelity Investments having a kid who wants to sell you a subprime mortgage:

Here's what a branding website has to say about it.

Crap Cars of Seattle

Seattle is a funny place. Although affluent, many of its denizens take great measures to hide their shameful wealth - especially the ones who came into it via a trust fund. In this episode, we'll explore the crap cars of the Phinney Ridge/Greenwood/Ballard neighborhood. Keep in mind, this is a neighborhood in which the median house price is >$450k. All of these vehicles were photographed on the same day during a 60 minute walk around the 'hood. Who would ever think shabby chic could be completely ostentatious?

It's newer, but the two-tone puts it on the list.

A VW Rabbit Pickup?

A Vanagon. Someday to be cleaned up and driven to a public sector union rally.

The part that's under the hood is the part that matters.

My dad had a van like this. But his was a GMC - now that's a real van!

Wasn't there an awful 70s hippie couple duet called "Chevy Van"?

Late 60's (?) Volvo - Uff Da!

1961 AMC Rambler?

Oldsmobile Silhouette - a real gem!

"If I had a million dollars - I would drive a K-car"

Early 70s (?) Dodge truck. That thing got a Hemi?

Shitty late 70s Caddy. Great GM design, same as the even shittier Monte Carlo.

84/85 Buick Century. The first car I learned to drive! Cherry rims.

Early 70s (?) Bronco?

Early 70s (?) Ford

All electric vehicle. Charging station is attached to the garage; solar panels on the garage roof. If Gaia had a heaven, they'd be going there.

Mid 80s Audi 5000. Money.

Early 80s Fleetwood or Brougham. Still has the showroom shine!

Mid 70s shitbox Pontiac Sunbird wagon. Must have been created to compete against the Pinto and the AMC Pacer.