Coasting...

Got an awesome surprise in the mail today from an old blog buddy. Not that he's old, per se. Certainly not when compared to yours truly. Or at least as old as I feel some days. Anywho. He blogged under the screen name Badgerdaddy (although, I'm pretty sure it was a lower-case b), and I'd like to say I have no idea how we found each other in the great big blogosphere. But I actually know. I used to post a lot of comments on the boards over on IMDB. That was my social network in the mid-aughts. And, at the time, I was only guest-blogging over on Slyde's blog. So I would use his web address as my tagline or something. I don't recall. But from there, he started commenting over at Slyde's and then my blog when I started it up.

For a while there, that was pretty much my blog community. Me, Slyde, B(b)adgerdaddy, Kat and Liz. Slyde, B(b)adgerdaddy and myself even started our own collaborative blog, Moviegrenade. The idea was that we would watch bad movies and review them for your displeasure. That was a lot of fun. I sometimes go back to that blog just to read the old posts. Some of my favorite things I've ever done blogging-wise is on that site. But it slowly settled on the un-used blog shelf of my library. Sad.

All of us kinda went our individual ways. Slyde is still blogging. So am I, even if it's not as often. I still get the occasional  post from Liz in my reader, but B(b)adgerdaddy and Kat have stopped blogging. As far as I can tell. But they do comment from time to time.

And we've kept in touch via email and Twitter. Follow him here, if you like. Last week I got an email from him wanting to confirm my address, and, gasp, to ask for my real name because he had something to send me in the mail. After verifying that it was indeed him and not a spam request, I happily replied.

And today, I received a glorious set of Green Man coasters that he had picked up with me in mind a while back. Check it:

That's a shitty image from my crappy cell phone taken with my shaky hands, but you get the idea. This great vibrant, green color with in incredibly hand-drawn Green Man image in glass. If you want a better look at the Green Man, check out the artist's blog here. Her name is Jane Murphy, and she works in glass over in Shropshire in the UK. Brilliant stuff.

It was kind of a crappy day, to be honest. This kind gift made most of that crappiness go away. At least for a little while. I'm gonna put these bad boys to good use. Starting immediately.

Cheers, B(b)adgerdady!

Ramblings

Hey, kids? How's life?

So I made it. One whole month without blogging. It was rough, at times. I'd get that late night itch to tell y'all about some movie I just watched or some meal that I had just prepared. But I stuck to my guns and kept my vow of not blogging for an entire month. Phew! I did it!

Ah, I'm just fucking with ya. There was no vow or even a tiny wish to cut back on posting here. Just fucking happened. As it does from time to time for all of us. No excuses, no reasons. It just happens sometimes.  So I thought I'd just open up a post window and start rambling. Just in case any of you missed me. Yeah, right.

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I think I'd like an even more anonymous platform than this blog or my Twitter account to spew some hatred out at the void. Nothing specific. I just find that there are times when I want to shout out my demons to the world, only to be held back by the judgment of my better angels. A totally anonymous place to do that would be like a tree falling in the middle of the forest. If no one knew about it, would it really happen? Would it make me feel any better in that moment?

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Saw the third Iron Man flick with my gal-pal Slyde. And I'm already placing it at the very top of my superhero movie pantheon. The origin story in the first film was fantastic, but I was deeply unsatisfied with Jeff Bridges as the Big Bad. The second film had all kinds of problems, and Mickey Rourke should have been much more interesting that he actually was. But this third film, while not perfect, really worked for me. Even Gwyneth Paltrow didn't bother me. Yay for Marvel. Two thumbs up.

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Our diet or "life change of eating habits" has regressed a bit. Put back on a few of those pounds that I lost over the winter. Still eating MUCH healthier than we had been, but we haven't been sticking to the plan as much as we want. I'm finding that my biggest addiction isn't bourbon, baseball or beautiful women. It's snacking on chips. The easiest answer is to not have them in the house. Sure, tell that to my reptile brain when I'm food shopping and those things just jump into my cart. I'm a weak man.

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It's a wet and stormy day out there today. Lots of rain and thunder and lightning. Got to tell you...I kinda enjoy a day like this every now and again. Eddie Rabbit understands. I just want to sit outside under our deck and watch the weather porn while sipping on whiskey. So there's that.

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Speaking of whiskey, I had a little Twitter discussion yesterday or the day before about the current fad of white dog whiskey that I've been enjoying. For those not in the know, that's un-aged whiskey. Usually bourbon. Since it spends no time in the barrel, it retains it's clear white color. It's also, generally, a bit harsher. I've enjoyed Jacob's Ghost from Jim Beam along with several local artisan brands. But what bugs me about this fad is that many distillers are charging more for their un-aged product than for the regular aged stuff. That makes zero logical sense to me. It should be cheaper. MUCH cheaper. Jack Daniels released an un-aged white rye. I didn't even know they made a regular rye. Someone tweeted a pic of it with a price tag exceeding $50. That's ridiculous. It's inflating the cost to cash in on the fad. Knowledgeable whiskey drinkers should know better. Shame on JD.

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I'm a restless sleeper, usually. Always tossing and turning. But some nights I just crash hard and find myself waking up in exactly the same position that I fell asleep in. I usually feel pretty good about it. But sometimes I fall asleep on my left side, and I sleep with a pillow corner or something pressed against my left eye. That means almost a full morning of blurry vision out of that eye the next day. Does this happen to anyone else, or am I just a sleep retard?

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Yeah, no apologies for the retard comment in that last rambling. Sorry if you were offended, just not sorry I made the comment.

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I don't know if you are a fan of Marc Maron, but he's got a new show on IFC and it's the tits. It's basically an autobiographical show about his life. Derp, that's the definition of an autobiography, right? Sometimes I amaze myself at the things that I type/say. But these are ramblings, and I'm not going back to change anything. Back to Mr. Maron. We've only seen one show, but it was just our speed. Sarcastic, angry guy with a lot of cats. Sound like anyone you know?

OK, get outta here and be useful or something. Cheers!

Nowhere Man

Because it seems like that is exactly where I've been over the past month or so.

Nowhere...man.

No real reason for it. Just haven't had the urge to write my thoughts done in a while. The beginning of the baseball season will also do that to me sometimes. Lots and lots of baseball to watch and read about. Takes a lot of time.

And I'm a little peeved at Google for getting rid of Reader. I went as far as to begin using Bing as my default search tool. But that's about it. I've switched my feeds to The Old Reader. There was a big backlog, and they are a small operation right now, so it took a couple of weeks for my feeds to import. S'okay. I'm digging it now. Even though they don't currently have mobile apps (at least for Android), so it only works on my laptop. On my phone and tablet, I'm using Feedly. I'm not a huge fan, but maybe because it's different than Reader or The Old Reader. Whatever.

I still have a presence on Google. Google Mail, and this here blog on Blogger. Yup...another Google tool that they may eventually just give up on. Like Reader. I know it's a dollars and sense (hehehe) kinda thing, but...whatever.

Then we had a couple deaths in the family. One on my side and one on Gia's. Put a damper on the past few weeks, to say the very least. Gia's been blogging about it in a bit more detail over at her joint. A long time ago, I made the decision not to discuss my family or friends in this space. I'm going to stick with that decision. We are handling it, and we are attempting to move forward. What other choice do we have?

Do you remember Yellow Submarine, the animated film from 1968 featuring the music of The Beatles? Did it scare the living fuck out of you? Yeah...me too. And not just the Blue Meanies, the terrifying villains who were seemingly made of teeth and anger. Nope...Nowhere Man scared the crap outta me too. Well, his name was Jeremy Hillary Boob, but they sang Nowhere Man to him at one point in the film. So he was always Nowhere Man to me.

He was one of the good guys, and he was...horrific.

Whatthefuckisthat?

I would flat out die if that thing came bouncing down the driveway at me. Just die. ::chills::

Holmes

I've recently become semi-obsessed with Sherlock Holmes once again. I say "once again" because there was a time when I would read the complete run of Holmes stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle every few years. I was generally into contemporary authors when I was growing up. But we had a bound copy of the 4 novels and 50+ short stories that were written by him about Holmes, and a full set of bound Charles Dickens novels as well. And when I had nothing else to read, I would turn to these to re-read. Over and over again. The Holmes stuff never took that long, so I read those probably a dozen times or so.

But it's honestly been about two decades since I've read them. A lot of that has to do with me reading much, much less than I did when I was a teen or in my early twenties. That's kinda sad. Non-stop availability of just about anything I want to see streaming-wise has also been a big problem.

But problem solved! Well, at least in the Sherlock Holmes situation.

I watched the first season, ahem...series, of the BBC Sherlock production a year or so ago, and I loved it. Starring the immensely talented and oh-so-British-named Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, it's an extremely watchable contemporary update of the Sherlock Holmes stories. But I forgot about it until about a week ago. So I jumped into Series 2...and then watched all 6 episodes over again. Just because I could. I highly recommend this series.

Then I went and found Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows someplace, and I watched that too. And, since it had been awhile since I had seen its' predecessor, Sherlock Holmes, I watched that too. These are the Guy Ritchie films starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. Much, much different than the BBC series, but a lot of fun with Sherlock portrayed as more of an action hero.

And I didn't stop there. I had been hearing some good words about the American TV adaptation, Elementary. Mostly from this guy. Another contemporary update, this one stars Jonny Lee Miller as a former Scotland Yard consultant living and recovering from addiction in Brooklyn. Oh, and they made Watson an American. And female. Portrayed by the always wonderful Lucy Liu. Sure...why not.

So last night I gave it a try. And after one episode, I'm probably hooked again. Except I haven't been able to find anyplace that streams the earlier episodes from this first Season. Our cable company has the last 5 aired episodes (some re-runs) On Demand, but that's it. So that sucks. I thought it was going to be on Hulu Plus, but it's not. Durn.

I am NOT going to be happy if I cannot satisfy my Sherlock fix with Elementary. I may have to go back to, gasp, reading!

Any other Sherlock adaptations out there I should be watching? Zero Effect, starring Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller was loosely based on Sherlock, but it was a lot of fun. So I'm up for anything. Hit me.

Chicken Chili with Black-Eyed Peas

Fergie, amirite?

No, not those Black-Eyed Peas. I'm talking about the food. The legume. The main ingredient in Hoppin' John. Those black-eyed peas. And they've recently become one of our new favorite foods. As in yesterday. Yup...that recent.

I was whipping up a batch of chicken chili (see an old recipe here) and I usually add some small white beans to the mix. But I happened to see a bag of black-eyed peas right next to them at the grocery. So I says to myself "Self, howzabout you give them black-eyed peas a shot instead." Then the old woman next to me in the grocery aisle gave me a snide look and went in search of manager or security guard. So I moved on.

Cooking the black-eyed peas is as simple as...cooking black-eyed peas. You give them an overnight soak in some cold water, or you can do a quick soak per the instructions on the bag. But that's only if you are one of them lazy sumbitches. You aren't one of them lazy sumbitches, are you?  Then rinse the beans and give 'em a once through to make sure there aren't any stones or anthrax capsules hidden amongst them. Then simmer them in some vegetable broth for around 45 minutes or so. Or until just tender, but not mushy. I used 4 cups of broth for a 16 oz bag of beans. This left the cooked beans in a just a bit of delicious beany veggie broth. Is beany a word? Not beanie. That's a silly cap. Hmm...

Anyway, the beans tasted delicious just as is. Didn't need to add any salt or pepper or anything. Just delicious beans in a light broth. This would have been a delicious meal unto itself. Except...

White Chicken Chili

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground chicken
• 1 lb mild chicken sausage - removed from casing
• 1 lb fresh tomatillos - cleaned and roughly cubed
• 1 large green bell pepper - diced
• 1 large white onion - diced
• 4 celery stalks (include the leafy part) - diced
• 3-4 jalepeno peppers - seeded and diced
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp green curry paste
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 2 cups chicken broth
• juice of 2 limes

 - Brown the ground chicken and the chicken sausage. Separately or together. It doesn't matter to me and it didn't matter to them. Make sure you break up the meat from the chicken sausage with a spatula or wooden spoon. Set aside.

 - In a large stock pot, heat the olive oil and then add the green curry paste and heat for a minute or so to release the delicious flavor and aroma. Add the green pepper, white onion, celery and jalepenos. Simmer on medium-low heat for a few minutes. Until the onions get a bit translucent. Add the salt, white pepper, red pepper flakes and allspice and give it a give mix. Simmer for another minute or so.

 - Add the tomatillos, cilantro, chicken broth, lime juice and the cooked chicken you had previously set aside. Give it all a proper mix and get a nice little boil going. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for around an hour or so. The tomatillos should cook all the way down and leave you with a thick, delicious green sauce.

 - This is when I would normally say that you should now add the cooked beans to the chili and cook for a bit more. But the chili on it's own tasted awesome, and so did the black-eyed peas. Instead, I served the beans as a side dish to the chili. In the same bowl. Kinda like this:

Not sure what that shadow is there at the bottom. My nose?

Made all with fresh ingredients, this mother-fucker tasted like it was handed down from heaven by the baby Hay-zoos himself. I started alternating spoonfuls at first. One spoon of chili. One spoon of beans. But I was soon just scarfing the whole thing down like a prisoner huddled over the bowl, gripping the spoon like a weapon in case anyone rolled up on me. Yeah...it was that good.

Everyone go out shopping for ingredients and make this over the weekend. You kitchen will smell wonderful and you will most certainly thank me once you have begun putting it in your tummy.

That is all.

Nik Turley

Summer of 2011

My Gia is visiting her family in Charleston. The Yankees' Low-A affiliate, the Charleston Riverdogs, have a home series against one of the other teams in the South Atlantic League. Nik Turley pitches the first game she attends and he pitches well. A big lefty with a great pickoff move similar to Andy Pettitte.  The next game, she's sitting next to a young guy keeping score and tracking pitches. Turns out it's Nik Turley. Down at that level of the minors, the starting pitchers all take turns doing this on their off days. Was a real nice guy, and someone that we decided was a new favorite of ours in the Yankees organization. We've been keeping tabs on him ever since.


Today

Nik Turley is now an interesting prospect in the Yankees organization. Not much of a commanding fastball (despite his 6'6" 230lb frame), but great control of all of his pitches. Recently was made a member of the 40-man roster. And at 23 he's making a Spring Training start for the Yankees against the Orioles at 1PM. I'm going to be watching. And not only for young Mr. Turley. Another favorite, Slade Heathcott, will be manning CF for the Bombers. Heathcott has had an up and down minor-league career thus far, but he had a tremendous showing in the Arizona Fall League. And he's got a troubling but inspirational backstory. Someone that I'll be rooting for. Especially today.

Good luck, fellas!

UPDATE 1:12PM - Turley is NOT impressing right now. Walked the first batter, threw wide to 1st base on a pickoff attempt (runner reached second officially on interference from Dan Johnson), got behind the second batter before giving up an infield single. Then an RBI single to CF to give up his first run. All before getting an out. Yikes!

UPDATE 1:19PM - Nothing has gone right for Turley or the Yanks. Still no one out. 5 runs in for the Orioles. A few wild pitches for Turley. He and we may just want to forget about this one. HEY! He just struck out Lew Ford. In other news, Lew Ford sucks. Ugh. Turley is out of the game.

UPDATE 2:01PM - Heathcott reaches base in his first at-bat on a fielder's choice. Not a particularly great at-bat, but it was nice to hear Singleton and Flaherty rave about the potential for the AA Yank's outfield of Heathcott, Mason Williams and Tyler Austin. 

Blogogenesis

Yeah, I know. I'm not there when you wake up in the morning, and you hate that! Actually, I'm under the bed. Just waiting for you to leave for work so I can do nasty things with your underwear drawer.

Now do you feel better?

Anyway, this happens to me every Spring Training. I just don't care about anything except baseball. Well, I still care about bourbon. And food. And The Walking Dead. Oh, and Gia...crap, almost forgot Gia. You see what baseball does to my brain?

Speaking of baseball, it brought a big ole' smile to my ruggedly handsome face to see some people actually care about February baseball games on Twitter the past few days. Sure, it's February. And if March baseball doesn't fucking matter, then I don't know what the hell we are supposed to do with February baseball. Me? I'm taking it out behind the junior high and gettin' it pregnant. That's how much I love me some February baseball.

Speaking of Gia, we've both been doing well with our diets. Well, we are trying hard not to call it a diet because we don't plan on it ever ending. It's more of a healthy life-style change. A Live-it, if you prefer. Ugh...I really don't prefer that. In fact, I fucking hate that term. Purge it from your mind, forget that I ever mentioned it. Here's what we are doing; controlling portions, limiting caloric intake, fresh ingredients, lotsa water, weekend splurging. Lather, rinse, repeat. It can be a little boring, but I'm trying to keep things interesting in both the bedroom (heyooo!!!) and the kitchen. That's how I roll.

Speaking of The Walking Dead, it's been fucking fantastic this year thus far. Haven't watched this past Sunday's episode yet, but I'm sure I'm gonna dig. Maybe they will finally do something interesting with that great big black hole of suck that is Andrea. Right now, I just want a spin-off where Carl roams the country just shooting fucking zombies in the fucking head.  That's it. That's all I want the show to be about. It's faint praise that annoying, little Carl has become my favorite character on the show. Everyone else needs to take a big step up...RIGHT NOW!

Speaking of food, Gia's sister is still rocking her food blog. Her latest installment detailed a Hobbit-themed party that she threw for her son's birthday. You gotta go check it out. I helped a bit with the preparation of the menu, but that's all. And since it happened in warm SC while we were stuck in cold NY, I'm more than a little jealous. Sigh.

Speaking of bourbon, I've got a new inexpensive favorite. Old Grand-Dad 100 Proof. I never gave it a try because...well, the bottle looked so cheap. Bad orange label. Bad orange plastic cap. It's around the same price as Jim Beam, maybe a couple of bucks cheaper. And I recently found out the Old Grand-Dad himself is Basil Hayden, a founding member of the bourbon expansion into Kentucky back in the 1700's.  There is another, more premium bourbon eponymously named after him as well. And the two share the same mash bill (oooh....getting me hot with all these fancy bourbon terms!). Just aged 6 years instead of 8. It's delicious! A bit more rye than your normal bourbon, which is something that really appeals to me over some of the wheated bourbons on the market.  Needs a bit of ice to mellow it, but that's how I drink bourbon anyway. So it works out perfectly. Don't judge the book by it's awful cover and give it a try.

And I'm spent. Bye!