And I Still Have It On Vinyl

It’s impossible to explain the Michael Jackson hysteria of the early-to-mid 80s if you weren’t there. Every person you knew owned a copy of Thriller. Even my pop culturally challenged parents caved in and bought the album, a precious piece of vinyl that I still own to this day. That music was everywhere. The video for the song “Thriller” was the first one that was helmed by a big-time director and cost over a million dollars to make. That kind of thing was unheard of then. Of course, it’s unheard of now, but that’s because the nature of music as a business has changed. In between, people kept trying to outdo it, to do it bigger than Michael Jackson. Nobody ever did.

When I was in the sixth grade, I was living in Germany. Even there, across the ocean, Michael Jackson was huge. My class was taking a ski trip to Austria. We were riding a bus on the way and made a pit stop to pick up sodas and snacks. That’s when we saw the headlines. They were too devastating for our ten-year-old hearts to bear. We couldn’t believe it. It was the worst thing that could have happend in the world short of the Soviet Union nuking our Army base in Berlin.

Michael Jackson’s hair had caught on fire while he was filming a Pepsi commercial.

Oh my God. Was he okay? Was he going to live? Would he be scarred? Can he still sing and dance? Did the Glove make it through?

I don’t know if you can picture it, but try to imagine a busload of pre-pre-pubescent girls on our way from Germany to Austria, bawling our eyes out because we didn’t know the answers to those questions. There was no internet then, at least not unless you worked at the Pentagon or something. Twitter wasn’t around for your online friends to provide up-to-the-second information courtesy of the hands greased by a sleazeball like Harvey Levin. All you knew was what was inked in the press that morning.

Michael Jackson’s hair had caught on fire.

I’m not one of those overwrought people who would drop everything to throw myself over his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I didn’t cry or light candles. I wouldn’t even name a pet after the guy. But I did have to take a moment last night to pull out that old copy of Thriller on vinyl -despite the fact that I now have it in CD and MP3 formats – and give it a spin, if only to contemplate the fact that Michael Jackson’s music has been in my life since the day I was born.

~Emily Beezwax

Pain And Suffering

No, really. They mean it.

I can do spicy. I love spicy. I suspect that twenty years of smoking has played a part in dulling my taste buds enough that I can eat garlic gloves whole and take bites of jalapenos without whincing. So, when a friend brought over a bottle of novelty pepper sauce called “The Hottest Fuckin’ Sauce,” the first thing I thought was bring it.

Oh, it was brought. I poured a tiny drop on my finger to give it a taste. My eyes immediately began to water. My ears were ringing. My tongue went numb. My colon clawed its way out through my butthole and demanded a habenero-flavored double espresso with shards of glass mixed in to ease the pain*. Lucky for both of us, it managed to crawl back in before I spent a less-than-leisurely hour trying to pinch a loaf the size of Rhode Island. Smallest state, my ass.

And that was just from one drop. Imagine what an entire bottle can do. It could melt steel or possibly be harnassed as an alternative energy source. We could declare war on North Korea with it and win. It is that fuckin’ hot.

*after visiting the website of the manufacturer, I have seen that they are also the makers of other hot sauces with names such as “Assplosion,” “The Devil’s Bitch,” and my personal favorite, “Pain and Suffering.” I can’t wait to try them, because I’m the kind of girl who never learns.

~Emily Beezwax

Handshakegate

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Sidney Crosby was a 21-year-old kid winning a Stanley Cup for the first time. Nicklas Lidstrom was a disappointed player who was a couple of goals away from making it happen who probably wanted to get off the ice as quick as possible. I can imagine watching your opponents waving the prize in celebration is a little like having salt rubbed into your wounds, so that’s understandable. Even Lidstrom himself said Crosby was probably just caught up in the fluster and flurry of the moment. He took three whole minutes to revel in it. There’s plenty to criticize Sid the Kid over, but he’s not a classless or rude guy and neither is Lidstrom. Nobody snubbed anybody. For us to all sit back now and point fingers in scrutiny at guys who were feeling either the best or the worst emotions of their lives and say they didn’t do things right is really easy. Then again, being an asshole always is. Get over it already. I’m sure they have.

Post-Lord Stanley Quips and Quivers

*I cannot even imagine how shitty Marian Hossa feels right now. He left Pittsburgh for Detroit this season, taking a pay cut to do it, because he thought he had a better chance at winning the Cup with the Red Wings. For Penguins fans that are harshing on the guy, consider cutting him some slack about now. Winning that trophy is something hockey players fantasize about from the time they put on their first pair of skates at the age of three. He had a dream and he did what he thought was the best way to make it come true. He gambled on the wrong franchise without the benefit of hindsight that we all have had since the third period horn sounded last night. Don’t give me any of that crap about team loyalty, especially not coming from fans that disappear in droves when the Penguins aren’t winning. How many bankruptcies has the team filed for due to lack of local support? It wasn’t that long ago that they were at risk of having to leave Pittsburgh entirely (you can thank your boy Mario Lemieux for caring enough to swoop to the rescue while you celebrate in the coming weeks and months). I didn’t hear any of you complaining about lack of loyalty while my boy Chris Kunitz was whooping tail for your team after being traded from the Ducks. The trash talk during the series was tolerable, but after? Way to kick a guy when he’s down.

*Getting that out of the way, pardon the contradiction while I write of how annoyed I was by all of the people shaking their fingers at the Malkin and Crosby bandwagoneers. Yes, miracle of miracles, sports fans tend to enjoy watching teams more when they are playing well. Bandwagoneers = more TV viewers and higher attendance = bigger ratings and revenues = higher hockey visibility = MORE STINKING HOCKEY! Please explain to me how this is a bad thing? Don’t you ever want hockey to pull itself out of the inaccessible gutter that is Versus to a larger and more widely-available network? So, some bandwagoneers disappear when there’s no title at stake, but some also become fans for life and stick around through thick and thin.

*No matter who wins in the end, I will never, ever get tired of watching the absolute glee of the players when it happens. Alternately, seeing the faces and cowered heads of the guys who lost hurts like a pain. It’s a great comfort to see both teams shake hands in the end, many opponents being old friends and ex-teammates willing to console the ones who are going home without the Cup.

*Number three for number 66. The moment Mario raised the Cup rocked my ass off.

*I know people can give the guy shit he sometimes doesn’t deserve just because he’s good, but I don’t want to hear the name Sidney Fucking Crosby for the next 100 days.

*I watched last night with some old family friends and my Auntie. The most they collectively knew about hockey was that it was played on ice and the object was to get the little rubber thingie in a net at one end or the other. One friend was only rooting for Detroit because he’s from Cleveland and hates Pittsburgh. Auntie only rooted for Detroit because I told her to. “Which one is Detroit?” she asked. “The guys in red,” I aswered. She spent the rest of the game shouting “woo! Go red! Go red!” and once cheered a Penguins goal because she didn’t realize what was going on. I was subjected to a billion questions all night – “what does ‘icing’ mean?” “why is a Penguins penalty a good thing?” “What’s with the octopus?” Friend from Cleveland, a fan of other sports besides hockey, apologized for asking “I know this is going to sound ignorant, but has Mario Lemieux ever won the Stanley Cup?” (me: “yes. Twice.” That number has changed slightly since last night).

*This experience reminded me of why I get irritated by hardcore fans that are so judgemental and condescending towards casual fans who don’t take their interest in the game to *ahem*… our larger obsessive levels. In the end, watching sports is supposed to be about having fun. If it’s had by a sixty-year-old lady who asks which one is the quarterback, or a guy who wouldn’t watch otherwise and is rooting harder for one team to lose than another to win, who cares? As long as they’re not being dilettantes and acting as if they could call it better than the pros, leave them alone. Let them enjoy it at a different level. You aren’t better than anyone because you know more. You simply have a deeper interest in something that, in the end, is just a silly game of grown men behaving like children while dressed in brightly colored uniforms. It’s meant to entertain. While I may love hockey more than anything else you can say the same thing about, I certainly don’t fault anyone else for not feeling the same way.

So long NHL ‘08-’09. Thanks for the ride and I promise to visit often in the history books.

Confessions of a Foode Snobbe

I admit it. I’m a snob when it comes to food. I don’t look down on people who don’t like cooking or enjoy their Nachos Bell Grande or what not. To each their own. But with rare exceptions, I’m a all-from-scratch kind of gal who shuns packaged or pre-made frozen foods like they could give me butt cancer. Cooking is a very relaxing and fun thing for me and the more people to feed, the better.

Food is a hard subject to write about without coming off like a stuck-up douche. I’ve tried and tried in the past and given up because everything seems to come out like elitist twattery. Some foodies really look down their noses at people who don’t share their hobby and I never want to be one of those a-holes.

Okay, that being said, will somebody please explain to me how in the fucking fuckity fucks Sandra Lee has not only her own cooking show on the Food Network, but appears to be amassing a Martha Stewart-like dynasty with published cook books and her own magazine? Her recipes are shit, if you can even call them recipes at all. Take this macaroni and cheese “recipe,” for instance. It’s a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese with some Lawry’s seasoning and a little extra cheese added in.

Again, nothing against Kraft macaroni and cheese. I even buy a box once or twice a year and throw in some cut-up hot dogs because it reminds me of being a kid. But for heaven’s sake, if you have your own cooking show, shouldn’t you actually know how to…cook? Besides, nobody that’s interested in cooking doesn’t know how to spice up generic foods on their own. I don’t need Lee’s advice on how to make mac and cheese taste like something more than powdered elbow noodles. Nobody that knows even the slightest bit about cooking does.

What next? Alerting her viewers that too much salt can ruin a recipe? Explaining how to work a pepper grinder and how to peel garlic. Oh, right. She wouldn’t do that. She buys her garlic in a can.

Her recipe for marinara sauce? Store-bought Newman’s Own with some garlic and red wine thrown in. I get it. Some people don’t have the time or energy to make meals from scratch all the time. Every now and then, you’re in a hurry and have to eat on the fly. Jarred sauce is just fine for those occasions. But it doesn’t belong on a cooking show, something people watch because they want ideas for recipes, not instructions on what kind of canned vegetables and factory sauce they should buy at the market to warm up in the microwave along with their Marie Calendar’s TV dinner. It’s not cooking. It’s a friggin’ shopping list. That’s it. Nothing to learn or anything new to try. It’s beyond useless and stupid and is a waste of television air time.

Sandra Lee’s Recipe of the Week

Tater Tots

Ingredients:
One bag of frozen Idaho Spuds Tater Tots
Salt to taste
Ketchup for dipping (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Arrange tots on a lightly greased baking sheet in a single layer. Cook for 20 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and then put your head inside until you die for needing somebody to tell you how to do this.

Ketchup

One bottle Del Monte Ketchup

Dear Sports Media

Hi. How are you? I’m fine. Thank you for asking.

Look, I get that hockey is a niche sport. I’m cool with that. It’s totally fine by me to watch other people be douchebag hypocrites and complain about the fighting and violence as they cheer on hard tackling in football, professional wrestling and NASCAR crashes, while Ultimate Fighting becomes the fastest growing sport in the country. I mean it. It’s all good. I get that you’re covering the NBA playoffs heavily right now. Basketball is awesome, even if I can’t be bothered to follow it most of the time.

But here’s the thing: there’s a little something going on right now called the Stanley Cup Finals. I know ESPN hates hockey. That’s too groovy, because I fucking hate ESPN, so there’s no love lost there. However, when the general sports media is reporting on Brett Favre’s family checking in to a hotel in Assfuck Nowhere, State Unknown Because I Don’t Give A Shit and Barry Bonds’ wife filing for divorce* before providing the score for a hockey game that just might have won a team the most famous sports trophy in the entire world, I think it’s time we talk about that substantial issue of your head being planted a little to firmly up your ass. Turn your beak to the left and right and say hello to your kidneys. They’re right beside you.

*and while we’re on the subject, matters relating to the private lives of athletes are generally not considered to be sports news. That’s fucking gossip, dumbasses. Respectable media outlets covering professional endeavors would, at their worst, report these matters as a footnote in a sidebar, not in a bleeding headline. Leave that shit to the E! Channel and other crotchstain outlets that suck that crap dry. Some of us – really, I know you can’t believe it, so you might want to sit down for this – actually care about the game.

~Beez