You have to click through to watch the video of Bauman throwing the pitch, but its worth it, if you like crying
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On Tuesday, the Boston Red Sox welcomed Boston Marathon bombing victim Jeff Bauman, whose legs were amputated after he was wounded in one of the explosions, to throw out one of two ceremonial first pitches. The other pitch was thrown by 52-year old Carlos Arredondo, who was one of the people who helped rescue people in the moments after the bombs went off, and he was immortalized in the AP photo of people wheeling Bauman to safety.
All I can say about Bauman is that he’s incredible. Watch that smile and joy as he throws an almost perfect strike and then try to complain about anything.
NBA Playoffs
Game 5: Pacers at Heat – 8:30 PM ET on TNT
It’s a shame that this wonderful playoff series and especially the coming of age of the young, exciting Indiana Pacers are being overshadowed by flopping and horrible officiating. I don’t get how David Stern is content with this being his legacy. Before he hands control over to Adam Silver, Stern should shove Joey Crawford into a bear cave.
*flips through TV Guide*
And that’s it. Geez, what a boring night. Thanks a lot, NHL. So let’s go ahead and celebrate John Tortorella while he waits for a new job.
Seeing that Gmail is adding tabs to help you organize your inbox, for some reason, got me worked up. I can’t pinpoint why exactly, but I think it’s giving in to lazy people who won’t invest a little bit of extra time upfront to make their lives easier in the future. Especially for something as easy as email. I tried out Mailbox and found it annoying as all get it out because it just added layers to something that already exists in Gmail. As much as Google is turning (has turned?) into the next evil empire, Gmail is still pretty amazing, extremely powerful, and it’s one of the few things that makes my life easier.
So, without anyone asking me, I have a full proof method to get you to the theoretical “Inbox Zero1” in Gmail that I use.
Short Version:
Select every email in your inbox.
Click “Archive”. Your inbox is now empty.
Whenever you get a new email, ask the following question: Now that I’ve read this email, do I still need this?
If the answer is no, delete it.
If the answer is yes, archive it.
If the answer is “I don’t know, I’m not done with it yet,” keep it in your inbox.
If the email is in your inbox more than three days, archive it.
Long Version (filled with opinion):
Go to your settings and remove “Priority Inbox” and “Important” from your inbox. Every email is important. Read them in the order you get them. Dividing them up by importance is a waste of time.
Unsubscribe from anything that is an advertisement. Do you really need to know about that sale? Do you really need to know about what your favorite band is up to? You don’t (at least by email.) If you really give a crap about something, you’ll find out about it on your own. For example, if the store you like to shop has a RSS feed for new announcements, throw that in your news reader of choice. You don’t need that email. If you forget about places or things because you don’t get an email anymore, then you never really cared about it in the first place.
Anything you can’t figure out how to unsubscribe from, mark it as spam. You’ll never see it again.
If you absolutely need to give your email address to something that you don’t really want to commit to, use a disposable email address. For example, if you want to see some deal website but they require an email address to set up an account to view it, then use an email address from mailinator.com. I might not want to use myemailaddress@gmail.com signing up for Fab.com, but I have no problem giving them iputmyballsonyourfood@mailinator.com.
Some websites have wised up and don’t allow throwaway email addresses. In this instance, use plus addresses. For example, your email address might be myemailaddress@gmail.com, but so is myemailaddress+books@gmail.com or myemailaddress+drugs@gmail.com. If you give your email address with the ‘+’ after your username, you will still receive it and you can even filter your emails from that address. This is especially helpful if you suspect a website is the source of a large amount of spam you’re receiving.
If you don’t know whether you should delete an email, archive it. It’s still there; it’s just not in your inbox anymore. You can always search for it. Don’t remember how to find it? Then it wasn’t important to you in the first place.
If you think emails are really important and need to find them quickly after you archive them, add a label to them. Adding labels is extremely easy and adds only a few seconds to your routine once you set it up. If you have something consistently coming in your inbox that’s important, banking information for example, you can automate it by having Gmail add the label automatically.
Start deleting emails in your inbox right now. Is it too overwhelming to decide? Then archive every single email right now. Remember, they’re still there, they just aren’t in your inbox anymore. You’ve essentially moved your email from the top of your desk into a drawer. If there are emails that are really that important to you, then label them. If you take a few minutes (or even hours) doing this once, you’ll never have to do it again.
If you’re wondering, I have two emails in my inbox right now. One IS an advertisement, but it’s something I’m seriously considering buying and leaving it there as a reminder to investigate it further. If I don’t do anything with it in three days, I know I’m not going to buy it so I’ll delete it then. The other is an email from a recruiter that was a very general “Hey, I’m keeping in touch with you!” email that I need to respond to. I need to respond to that quickly so I don’t look like an asshole.
Your inbox is cluttered because you’re lazy and have better things to do. Now, it’s a shitshow because you’re overwhelmed. You can make it (basically) empty everyday. Read every single email, delete ones you’re done with, archive ones you need to keep, anything in your inbox more than three days needs to be archived or deleted because you aren’t going to act on it. Unsubscribe ruthlessly from anything frivolous. Mark anything as spam that you can’t figure out how to get rid of. Use labels and automation to keep things with an extremely basic level of organization. Use the search box on Gmail to find archived emails. Google is a search company and pretty decent at searching your shit. If you can’t find it from searching, then it’s your fault not Gmail’s fault.
—
1Yes, I know Merlin contexualized this idea long before anyone else, but this is the method I came up with on my own then discovered his Inbox Zero presentation. It’s extremely good. You should really watch it.
I, for one, will see a Grumpy Cat movie because I love u grumpy cat
Grumpy Cat, a cat famous for having a constant look of disgust on her face and yes it's 2013 and this is what fame is like in the future, has been tapped to star in a "Garfield-like feature film." The movie will co-star Jack Black and Will Ferrell, and is considered a top priority at New Line Cinema. You cannot make this shit up — but if you had, you'd probably be a multi-gajabillionaire by now.
After more than a month of delays, El Salvador's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday to deny a critically ill woman a lifesaving abortion. The 22-year-old woman, identified only as Beatriz, is 26 weeks pregnant with a nonviable, anencephalic fetus; her doctors have warned that, due to severe health complications related to Beatriz's lupus, cardiovascular disease and kidney functioning, she may not survive the pregnancy.
Abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador, and the court's ruling is final, according to her lawyers. "The only way now is to go to the international courts," Victor Hugo Mata, one of Beatriz's lawyers, told CBS News.
346 N. Broadway, Milwaukee WI 53202 (map); 414-501-2500; cafebenelux.com Cooking Method: Grilled Short Order: Belgian-themed restaurant where you can enjoy their full-flavored burgers on their huge rooftop patio Want Fries With That? You could make a meal out of the fries. Don't forget to get a dipping sauce—sriracha mayo is my favorite Price: Sprocket burger, $13.95; King of the Mountain burger, $11.95; Southsider Bloody Mary, $8; dipping sauces, 75¢
We've been waiting a long time this year, but it's finally patio season in Milwaukee. When it's nice out, Wisconsinites tend to take full advantage, probably because we practically hibernate through the winter. Restaurants capitalize by creating great patio spaces, and people flock to the best ones.
One such patio is at Café Benelux in the Third Ward, a trendy area just south of downtown. The sprawling rooftop deck extends the entire footprint of the restaurant and even has bussing stations, POS systems, and restrooms so customers don't even have to go downstairs.
While you're enjoying the unobstructed sunshine, you can snack on a Belgian-inspired menu, including some pretty tasty burgers. They packed a lot of flavor into a relatively compact package, especially when it came to the Sprocket burger ($13.95).
Though I couldn't tell that the egg was fried in duck fat as the menu stated, you can't really go wrong with any kind of fried egg. I would have liked it to be a little more over easy, but at least it saved me some messy fingers. Benelux ups the ante on the classic combo of fried egg, bacon, and cheddar by adding "garlic aioli"—redundant, I know—and tomato jam.
The jam wasn't as sweet as a fruit jam, and not as gel-like either, thankfully. Its sweet and tangy flavors cut through the heavy toppings and beef well, and it wasn't too wet as to soak through the bun. Although I don't usually like pretzel buns, it was great in this application; it seemed thoughtfully chosen instead of slapped on as a trendy bun. The aioli got a little bit lost in the shuffle, just adding a mild background note of garlic.
That same aioli was much more prominent in the King of the Mountain burger ($11.95) since the toppings of portobello slices, caramelized onions, and Swiss cheese were all mild. While the mushrooms were good, there needed to be more of them in order to stand out between the beef and the aioli.
Par for the course around here, the grilled half-pound patties were overcooked past the requested medium. For medium-well beef, though, they were still juicy, relatively speaking. Both the pretzel bun and the (very good) standard bun had a lot to soak up. The beef flavor was clean and bold, but the patties could have used a little more seasoning.
Don't skip the fries, and definitely don't skip the optional dipping sauces, even though they'll cost you extra. You'd expect a Belgian-style restaurant to have good fries, and these deliver. They're crisp on the outside, not too thin, and perfectly seasoned. (I prefer these to the fries I had at Café Hollander, run by the same restaurant group.) For the dipping sauces, I ordered the trusty sriracha mayo—it's really amazing here—and red pepper mayo, which reminded me of a roasted red pepper hummus. There are a dozen or so other sauces to choose from; I suggest you pick at least one!
Milwaukeeans, including myself, also love their Bloody Marys, so I ordered the Southsider, one of five different bloodies on the menu. The homemade mix was delicious, though I expected it to be spicier since it included peppercorn-infused vodka and extra hot sauce. It's a refreshing drink for a patio.
Benelux's patio is great, and their food is arguably better than some of the other spots run by the same restaurant group. Unfortunately, you'll pay for your spot on that patio with relatively high prices and the touristy location, but it seems worth it every once in a while.
About the author:Lacey Muszynski is an editor, freelance writer and restaurant reviewer from Milwaukee, WI. When she's not burgerblogging on AHT, she might be updating her food blog, making fun of the Food Network, or wondering what her art degree has to do with all of this. Her idols growing up included Martin Yan, Chairman Kaga, and whoever was on Great Chefs, Great Cities that day.
The first thing you'll notice about this sandwich is that it has legs. This isn't a bunch of crab mashed into a nice patty for your sandwich pleasure. It's an entire soft shell crab, and it's a gem on Japonais's sushi-heavy menu.
The crispy soft shell crab sandwich ($14) tastes just how an entire living creature should: fresh. Take away the wow factor, and the truth is only about 50 percent of your bites have crab in them. But the crab you do get is worth it. It's soft on the inside with a thin but crispy shell, which breaks off easily. While presented nicely balanced on the bun, you'll end up having to use your knife and fork by the end (which in my opinion adds to the raw nature of tearing apart a whole animal at lunch).
The wasabi mayo and pickled veggies in the shallot escabeche give a great combination of spicy and vinegar flavor. The avocado and mayo together make it super creamy, almost excessively so, but the crab is good enough for me not to care too much.
It's time for another round of The Food Lab. Got a suggestion for an upcoming topic? Email Kenji here, and he'll do his best to answer your queries in a future post. Become a fan of The Food Lab on Facebook or follow it on Twitter for play-by-plays on future kitchen tests and recipe experiments.
In my earlier days as a real live line cook, I spent a good deal of time shucking oysters, frying clams, and steaming lobsters at Barbara Lynch's B&G Oysters in Boston's South End. On the charter menu: the B.L.T. with Lobster. It's a fantastic sandwich, perhaps one of the few lobster-and-bread concoctions I can think of to rival a classic lobster roll.
Hers came with sweet, tender chunks of lightly dressed lobster, crisp smoked bacon, slices of tomato, and iceberg lettuce on a butter-toasted ciabatta roll slathered with lemon juice-spiked Hellman's mayonnaise.
Over the years, it's become a staple in my summer sandwich repertoire. Enough so that I've managed to make a few tweaks in the process to edge it a bit closer to my own personal vision of perfection. A better method for cooking lobster, skinless tomato filets, a different variety of lettuce, homemade lemon-y mayonnaise, a unique bacon cooking technique to deliver more even coverage, bread toasted in bacon fat instead of butter and, well, avocado. Because, avocado.
Here's how I do it.
The Lobster
Steaming lobster
There are a number of ways to cook lobster, but none is ideal on its own. Boiling is the worst—it leeches flavor out of the meat and into the pot, where it then gets washed down the drain. Steaming is superior, but can be a bit harsh, causing the exterior of the meat to toughen up before the very center has a chance to finish cooking.
Roasting is best in terms of flavor and texture—it drives off excess moisture, concentrating flavor, and cooks the meat more gently and evenly than steaming. The only problem is that is also causes lobster meat to fuse to the inner surface of the shell (just like a hard-to-peel boiled egg).
Roasting lobster
My favorite way to cook lobster? Steam it for just 2 minutes in order to get the outer layers of meat set and prevent them from sticking to the inner surface of the shell, followed by roasting so that the meat can cook through gently and evenly.*
*For the record, a similar method will get you evenly cooked boiled eggs with stick-free shells. Drop the eggs in boiling water, boil for 30 seconds, then add a handful of ice to drop the water temp down to a more gentle pace, allowing the eggs to finish cooking slowly.
Lobster's got nothing to hide, and it's summer. The less it wears, the better. Once cooked, I dress my lobster very gently with a bit of lemon juice, salt, pepper, sliced chives, and just enough homemade mayonnaise to bind and moisten it.
The Bacon
The key to great bacon is to start with great bacon. Forget about that mass-produced supermarket junk with its injected, sprayed on flavors. They don't taste as good and they tend to buckle and bend as they cook. This is due to the injected water that rapidly evaporates, causing it to shrink.
Instead, go for high quality, thick-cut, traditionally cured and smoked stuff. There are plenty of good bacons on the market, but my favorite brands are Nueske's, North Country Smokehouse (the smokiest of the lot), and newcomer Vermont Smoke and Cure, which is brined in maple syrup and smoked over corn cobs and maplewood (they also happen to make my favorite pepperoni).
You can pan-fry the bacon if you'd like (remember: low and slow is the key to perfect crispness), but you're better off cooking it in the oven, where even heat leads to more even cooking.
But even better than that is to shingle the bacon into a large bacon-sheet before roasting. That way, once it's cooked, you can cut a shape that perfectly fits your sandwich, giving you completely even coverage.
Neat, huh?
The Lettuce
Sometime in the last decade and a half or so, iceberg lettuce started to become uncool. It's so watery. It's so bland. Arugula is better. Wah wah wah.
I don't get it. Yeah, it doesn't have the peppery bite of arugula, the bitter edge of romaine, or the minerality of baby spinach. So what? It's sweet, it's crisp, it's refreshing, and that's exactly what I want out of the lettuce in a sandwich.*
*or burger, for that matter. If there's one thing the Shake Shack gets wrong, it's that wan leaf of green leaf lettuce that sits on your burger, softening like wet tissue paper.
The Tomato
Plain slices of great, ripe tomato are perfectly fine. But we're going for ULTIMATE here, not just fine. For that, we want to get at only the best part of the tomato: the flesh around the outside.
To do this, we want to peel and seed them. Peeling tomatoes is easy. All you've got to do is score an X into their bottoms with a sharp knife, boil them for about 30 seconds to loosen the skin, then peel them under cold water. The skins slip right off.
After that, it's just a matter of quartering and fileting them with a sharp knife. You're left with the sweetest, fleshiest, most flavorful part of the fruit for your sandwich.*
*Some folks—particularly those of the modern Spanish persuasion—argue that the seeds and jelly around them are more flavorful than the filets. While this may be true, it's not the right kind of flavor or texture for a sandwich like this. Save it for garnishing your gazpacho.
For more on this, or an alternative knife-only method to the blanch-and-peel method, check out our Knife Skills post on How To Cut a Tomato
The Avocado
Ah, the avocado. The plant kingdom's answer to a stick of butter. The goal here, as with the bacon, is to lay it on in shingled slices for completely even coverage.
It looks fancy, but it's not hard to do. The key is to split the avocado in half and slice it while it's still in the shell. You can then scoop it out with a spoon and spread the slices out onto the 'wich.
For starters, you need good bread—I use mini ciabatta-style loaves, but any not-too-tough, hearty bread will do—and it needs to be warm and toasty.
See that rendered fat sitting over there from your bacon? Why not put it to good use? I spread it on the bread before toasting it under the broiler.
The order of ingredients in a sandwich can make or break its success. For instance, you never want to place slippery tomato filets right next to slippery iceberg lettuce leaves or you get a case of tectonic shift, the top half of the sandwich sliding off of the bottom half as it spills its guts.
On the other hand, piling all the mushier ingredints—the lobster and the avocado—into the center of the 'wich is a surefire recipe for sandwich backslide, the name for the lamentable condition that occurs when your sandwich ingredients squeeze out the back as you bit into it.
I start by laying a foundation of mayonnaise and avocado, which gets pressed into the bread, thereby forming a protective layer against the soggifying effect of tomato juice. Next comes a sheet of my bacon weave to anchor to slippery tomatoes firmly in place. Finally, the iceberg gets pressed hard into the top bun, forming a sort of concave indentation for the lobster salad, which gets piled in deep.
Press the two halves together, and get ready, because this sandwich means business.
1372 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 (b/n 73rd and 74th; map); 646-727-9056; tanoshisushinyc.com Setting: Run-down and cramped, but with character. 10 seats, sushi bar only. Service: Very friendly and about as knowledgeable as it gets—the chef or his assistant serve you directly. Compare To: Like Masa's rowdier, cheaper cousin. Must-Haves: Chef's choice only. Opt for the seasonal specials. Cost: $45 to $60 depending on fish cost. Recommendation: Go go go. You will not find a better sushi experience in New York.
I've never been to Sukiyabashi Jiro, the restaurant featured in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, so I can't attest to its quality. But the concepts of simplicity, a reach towards perfection, and the humility of a chef who is in service to his ingredients and not the other way around—concepts that the movie represents so effectively—are the hallmark of all of great sushiya in Japan.
Likewise, having no basis of comparison, I can't really say that Chef Toshio Oguma at Tanoshi Sushi is doing Jiro-level sh*t, but conceptually, he hits every mark, so I'm going to say it anyway: The sushi at Tanoshi sushi is some serious Jiro-level sh*t, the likes of which I haven't seen anywhere outside of Japan. It's a hole-in-the-wall, run-down-before-it-even-opened sushi bar in the public transportation limbo just below Yorkville on the Upper East Side, and it serves one of the best omakase meals I've had anywhere.
There are a number of things that are extraordinary about the restaurant, not the least of which is the arcane reservation system outlined on their website: You have to physically go to the restaurant—a good hour and a half round trip from anywhere you are likely to work in the city—at 2pm on the day you would like to dine to sign your name into one of only 10 seats available for each of a 6, 7:30, and 9 p.m. seating. Our hostess who doubled as a sous-chef claimed that you can call ahead, but a couple of exploratory calls I made after our visit met with no answer.
In a way, it's understandable. With only the chef—former executive sushi chef of Morimoto in New York and Napa—and his assistant along with a single waiter working at the restaurant and a full house every night, answering the phone or setting up a better reservation system is not a top priority. If this is one of the corners that needs to be cut to keep the cost of a meal down to the ridiculously fair price of $50 (it goes up to around $60 if you opt for the seasonal menu) for 10 pieces of nigiri, a roll, and a hand roll, I can always pay a taskrabbit a few extra bucks to go sign up for me with the money saved.
Tanoshi Sushi is not the type of sushi temple where waiters float by to the sounds of trickling water and shakuhachi flutes, boughs of chrysanthemum and bonsai trees accenting sparse but tastefully appointed room. This is the kind of restaurant where you'll bump elbows with your neighbor as your wobbly saw-horse stool bucks while the single waiter squeezes behind you to refill your BYOB sake glass as the the entire Saturday Night Fever soundtrack gracefully transitions into The Band's Music From Big Pink. The brick walls and fluorescent lights say barbershop more than they do sushiya.
Meals start with a selection of small appetizers. Aside from gently suggesting fish that you would or would not like to try during the sushi-section of the meal, this is your only chance to decide what is served to you (but don't worry, you're in good hands). You might find ankimo lightly cured in soy and citrus, the monkfish liver rolled up and poached in sake torchon style, very much like the foie gras whose richness and creamy texture it approaches.
Firm tongues of Santa Barbara sea urchin as fat as you've ever seen come piled high with mild soy sauce for dipping, their briny, metallic flavor cleaner than you knew it could be. The same sea urchin later makes an appearance paired with crisply toasted seaweed and a raw quail's egg yolk.
Then the sushi begins. Chef Oguma seasons his rice with akazu, a lightly sweet Japanese vinegar that is remarkably fresh and aromatic. He calls his style "loosey sushi," which where I'm from in Harlem would mean "sushi you buy by the single piece from a shady guy on the corner who caters to homeless people," but in Oguma's more refined approach, refers to the way the rice block immediately falls apart in your mouth, spreading its lightly vinegared aroma and allowing it to blend harmoniously with the fish without weighing it down.
To those used to dense blocks of rice served at the typical mid-range sushi joint, it's like tasting nigiri for the first time—like the first time you had a loosely packed hamburger made from fresh ground meat after a life of frozen patties—and that's before you even get to the fish.
Tanoshi Sushi is not the type of restaurant where red-topped bottles of soy sauce sit at every table and small mounds of wasabi come piled up next to your fish any more than Per Se would leave ketchup bottles and salt shakers on their tables. It's the kind of restaurant where every bite is placed in front of you a completed bite, ready to be eaten.
At some point in your meal you'll find yourself faced with lean bigeye tuna (a cut chosen as much for its relatively low price as its subtle flavor), glistening as it slowly relaxes after being set on the counter in front of you, its flesh revealing a series of fine slash-marks where Oguma-san has scored it, gently severing the tough connective tissues that separate the layers of flesh.
Bigeye tuna
You pick it up with your fingers—chopsticks wouldn't fare well against the loose rice—and bite in, your teeth sinking effortlessly through the tenderized flesh. The first aroma to hit your nose is of clean, meaty tuna with a hint of vinegar. On your tongue, rather than the nuance-destroying saltiness of straight soy sauce, you pick up something milder. Salty, yes, but also sweet, lightly acidic, and almost floral—the yeasty aroma of mirin in the nikiri, a thin, mild glaze that Oguma-san brushes onto the fish just before passing it to you.
As you continue to chew, new flavors emerge—a touch of heat from a thin smear of wasabi hidden under the flesh, and finally the more direct capsicum heat and bitterness of yuzu-kosho, a condiment made from chili peppers and Japanese citrus.
Braided kohara with shiso
It makes you reflect on the power of simplicity and balance, makes you feel a bit more zen about life as you reflect back on the bites that preceded the tuna: The braided, cured shad, its silvery skin glistening on top of rich flesh cut by a whisp of shiso leaf. The tiger prawn and its sweet-and-savory profile accented by the cured crumbled egg yolk it's topped with. The pickled cherry blossom leaf that pulls back to reveal a pearly white slab of fatty hamachi belly. You're instructed to inhale its sweet aroma as the fish dissolves on your palate.
This is the way sushi is supposed to be. Simple, balanced, subtle, and restrained.
Hamachi belly with pickled cherry blossom leaf
There's more: Glazed giant squid is scored so finely that it melts in your mouth like pork fat. Tiny squid strapped to a block of rice with crisp toasted seaweed secured with a dab of kani miso—the scooped out and pureed innards of a crab. King Salmon (oh, how pedestrian!) given new life with a brush of nikiri and a brief kiss of smoke from a blow torch, its rich flesh warmed by the rice it rests on, its fat melting over your tongue as soon as you put it in your mouth.
Giant squid with sweet soy glaze
Tanoshi sushi not the type of restaurant where chefs clad samurai-style in perfectly crisp pressed gi artfully arrange pristine slices of fish on hand-made Japanese clay plates artfully decorated with swoops of exotically flavored sauces. This is the kind of restaurant where a brawny chef in a bandanna and T-shirt that has seen better days places the same pristine fish on top of a block of rice and places it directly on the bamboo leaf-lined countertop in front of you, or sometimes directly in your hand, depending on the fleetingness of that particular piece's moments of perfection.
And when you're instructed to eat that piece quickly, you'd do best to heed the advice. The hand rolls that finish off your meal have a half life of seconds before the warm seasoned rice begins to soften the nori that was toasted mere seconds before being filled and passed to you.
Cured salmon roe come piled into a ship-shaped gunkan-maki, the brightly flavored beads threatening to spill over their crisp nori vessel. It looks like any other ikura gunkan-maki, but its seaweed crackles and beads pop in a way you're not used to. It's as much about textures as it is about flavor.
Makizushi—easily the most industrialized and bastardized form of sushi—is again revelatory, the seaweed snapping before melting away on your tongue to reveal the vinegared rice and mild fish within: tuna, salmon, or perhaps hamachi with a sprinkle of crisp pickled daikon radish.
At some point towards the close of your meal you'll get one final mind-blowingly familiar-yet-new experience: a small thimbleful of warm miso soup made from broth distilled from the bones of the fish you just ate, seasoned with just enough rich red miso to add depth.
In a city where sushi restaurants fall into either the transcendent-but-too-expensive-to-feel-good-about-eating-at or the cheap-but-too-questionable-to-feel-good-after-eating-at quality, we've been searching for a long time for what Ed calls the Holy Grail of Sushi: a sushi restaurant that is not only reasonably priced, but is also transcendentally good.
I'm officially calling off the search.
There is no dessert at Tanoshi, so your meal may seem to finish rather abruptly. Chances are by the time you are finished with your meal (and the BeeGees have looped back around) the next wave of patrons will be peering in from the street past the neon "open" sign and scoping out their seats.
That's totally fine. This is not the type of meal that you really want to end.
It takes a big woman to admit both her poor electoral chances and the investigation into all her crimes, in the first minute and a half of her speech announcing her upcoming retirement, or else it takes an amateurish speechwriter who isn’t really aware of stuff like “not bringing up poor electoral chances and the investigation into all her crimes in the first minute and a half of a retirement speech.” Six of one, and cetera!
Anyway, here is our greatest pal, Michele Bachmann, announcing that her upcoming retirement has nothing whatsoever to do with her poor electoral chances or the investigation into all her crimes. Then she says a lot more stuff, we were not listening, as the air started going all wavy around us, and suddenly we were slo-motioning in flashback, remembering the time we picked her a flower, and the time we smeared frosting on each other’s noses, and the time we sang into hairbrushes in our jamas, and all the other good times we had.
Remember when she ran away from Dana Bash, like, really fast, because Dana Bash was being a LIEBERAL MEDIA by asking her why she gotta lie all the time?
Remember all her debates that she got nothing wrong in?
Remember when she stiffed her staffers, or staffed her stiffers, or something of the like?
Talking about stiffing staffers, were you aware she is married to a Homosexican?
Remember when it was the left’s fault that Michele Bachmann had applied for Swiss citizenship even though she was not running for President of Swiss?
Remember when she called Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison a terrorist? And she called Hillary Clinton deputy Huma Abedin a terrorist? And she called the president a terrorist (probably)? Remember when she was the real victim of calling people terrorists? Good times.
Remember when her former campaign manager called her evil and nuts?
She did some other things too, but in honor of la Bachmann, we will just take the money and run.
Josh Shipp from Lifetime TV's Teen Trouble. (Image via)
If you like Army Wives, Preachers’ Daughters, Dance Moms, or any other TV show attempting to create a taxonomy of women based on the professions of their husbands, fathers, and children, then you may well have caught an episode of Teen Trouble. It’s a reality TV show on the Lifetime network where a guy named Josh Shipp sends “at-risk teens” to "alternative rehab centers," where they’re forced to endure emotional and physical abuse before being allowed to rejoin society.
Shipp is your classic Jerry Springer brand of therapist—no real qualifications, a huge ego, and a penchant for money and entertaining TV over science and genuine psychology. “I’m a teen behavior specialist,” he says in the intro. “My approach is gritty, gutsy, and in your face.”
But the show is a lot grittier than you might expect from that typical teleprompter spiel. The unregulated "troubled teen" industry is able to persist despite numerous allegations of physical and sexual abuse, torture, and death at various institutions, and Shipp is exploiting that same system for monetary gain. Even when they aren’t abusive and/or deadly, the pseudoscientific practices used at “tough love boarding schools” have often proven to be ineffective and can lead to PTSD, anxiety, depression, and drug addiction. Maia Szalavitz, author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, told me about some of the horror stories her own research uncovered.
“The classic list is food deprivation, sleep deprivation, public humiliation, beatings, and denial of access to the bathroom to the point where you wet or soil yourself. But I’m also constantly hearing stories of people being forced to re-enact various traumas, like being raped,” she told me.
A child at Family First Growth Camp in California is made to carry a truck tyre and screamed at until he is broken down.
Szalavitz continued, "At Mount Bachelor Academy, an investigation found bed sheets that had been used during re-enactments, and one of them had, ‘I am the yes girl, spray your cum on my tits,’ written on it. Let’s be real, this is not therapy.”
The methods used at these facilities are arguably traceable to an anti-drug cult in the 60s called the Church of Synanon. Their method was to abduct addicts and then “rehabilitate” them through beatings and humiliation. “I found that virtually all of the programs that exist today using the harshest tactics were either founded by former Synanon members or sent people to Synanon to learn the treatment,” Szalavitz told me.
Former patients have been airing their stories on Reddit and other websites, so I contacted a few of them to find out more. It soon became clear that today’s residential teen treatment centers still have all the trappings of a cult.
One night, Nick Quinn was roused from sleep at his home and taken to Aspen Education’s Outback program in Utah (the same program Josh Shipp sent Jacob to in episode two of Teen Trouble) because his parents caught him smoking weed.
“At 4:30 AM, I was woken up by two strangers holding handcuffs. They took my wallet and phone and told me that if I didn’t want to go easily they would make it hard for me. I thought I was being kidnapped. Next thing I know, I’m in a big white truck on my way to the airport,” he told me.
Once he arrived, Nick was given new clothes and survival gear, tied up and shipped into the wilderness, where he would remain for eight weeks. His boots were taken away at night to prevent him from escaping on the freezing cold ground. All of which seems a little aggressive for smoking a bit of weed.
Nick Quinn while he was at Swift River Academy.
After his ordeal, Nick was sent to another Aspen institute—the Swift River Academy in Massachusetts—where he was kept for seven months. “I was lucky my parents pulled me out. You could just tell they wanted the kids to be there as long as possible. They were milking it. My parents spent around $150,000.”
At Swift River, Nick endured the same kind of “therapy” I’d heard about from every other young victim, and which numerous academics had told me can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to Szalavitz, the goal is to break the child down psychologically and brainwash them: “The reasons these tactics sound similar to enhanced interrogation techniques, AKA torture, is because they're the ways you can break people and leave minimal marks.”
Now, years later, Nick has developed an anxiety disorder, experiences recurring nightmares from his time in “therapy” and still smokes weed. Understandably, his parents regret sending him there as it seems to have caused more damage than it prevented—something that appears to be a recurring theme with victims of troubled teen camps.
"Pretty much all the kids who I’m in touch with [from the camps] have dropped out of school," Nick told me. "Most get re-addicted to drugs. When you get out, you have all this freedom and you don’t know what to do with it. You lose control, you know?”
Aria Leonard, who was sent to the Monarch School in Montana seven years ago, had similar experiences. Aria told me her mother sent her there because she “disliked the friends she was making because they were ‘different’—black, gay, etc.” After a pricey $2,000 visit to an “educational consultant,” Aria was diagnosed as depressed, as a drug addict, and told by her parents she’d be going to “boarding school.”
Aria first realized it was no ordinary boarding school when her belongings were taken and she was strip-searched on entry.
Aria Leonard while she was at the Monarch School.
“Right after that I was taken directly to a group session. People were talking about drugs, sex, and alcohol, then everyone started screaming and crying. I was really confused and started to wonder if there had been some sort of mistake. I was then asked what drugs I'd done to be put there, and—despite my insistence that I'd never done drugs, was a virgin, and wasn’t violent—they didn't believe me.”
Aria was forced to undertake pointless physical labor, like cutting down huge trees and dragging them along the ground for half an hour, as well as being told to sit opposite a wall at night and continuously write stuff like, "I am a slut" and "I'm not good enough."
Like most victims of the troubled teen industry, Aria was forced to divulge “disclosures”—a form of ludicrously invasive confessional. “You had to write about everything bad you'd ever done, with an emphasis on ‘sexual disclosures.’ I had very little experience in sexual anything, but they wouldn’t believe me, so in the end I just made it up,” she said.
Aria was also put through the same emotional breaking-down sessions inflicted on Nick. During procedures known as “insights,” teens were denied bathroom access, food, and sleep for three to five days. They would also be made to perform role-playing exercises that ended in them acting out their own death—exercises Shia likened to the kind of “therapy” seen in this bizarre video.
Aria remained in the center for 18 months. Like Nick, she has since been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and continues to have nightmares about her experience.
Liz went to 39 residential treatment centres and describes being abused and raped multiple times. Rape claims are common in the industry, but – as the children are completely under staff's control for years – lawsuits rarely surface.
“The excessive use of punishment and humiliating procedures isn't only unhelpful, but also traumatizing for young people," said Professor Robert Friedman, a child psychologist. "As is the practice of having strangers wake them in the middle of the night and transport them far away without any preparation.”
And it’s not just the trauma-inducing methodology that makes the industry questionable. It’s also the diagnosis. "What is a 'troubled teen'?" Szalavitz wonders. “The idea that we put kids with Asperger’s, heroin addictions, depression, and extreme anxiety disorders in one program with a rigid, regimented schedule and expect it to help all of those kids—how could that be?
“Americans have this idea that addiction and drug use is about complete hedonistic abandon, seeking extra pleasure and defying your parents. They missed the fact that the people who really tend to have problems with drugs are people in pain seeking relief. Their idea is that these people don’t have enough pain, so we need to give them more pain to fix them,” she said.
No matter the intention, these forms of therapy aren't only pointless and outdated, but cruel and damaging. Any emotional trauma that teenagers suffer at Aspen Education’s institutes must only be matched by the neglect they feel at being abandoned by their parents for an important part of their formative years.
While these practices might seem abhorrent, the troubled teen industry is huge, powerful, and experienced in deflecting allegations. In 2002, Forbes magazine’s Erika Brown estimated its worth at $2 billion, and since then it's only been on the rise. The industry has managed to stick around in some incarnation since the 60s due to its powerful Republican and Christian roots. Many programs can be traced back to Straight, Incorporated, Nancy Reagan and George Bush Sr.'s favorite anti-drug program that was closed due to abuse lawsuits in the early 90s.
George Bush Sr voices his support for Straight, Incorporated.
Today, funding from Mitt Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital (of which he has resigned as CEO, but continues to profit from) has allowed the industry to thrive. The biggest name in the business, Aspen Education, is owned by CRC Health Group, which was bought by Bain Capital in 2006 and is responsible for many of the institutes used on Shipp’s show. Since the takeover, Aspen has seen six deaths occur in its facilities, mainly due to neglect. Worryingly, the US Department of State advertises Aspen programs for teens on their website.
I confronted Shipp about the issue, but he brushed it aside as an unfortunate change of staffing in a few of the programs, rather than a powerful nationwide industry that’s rotten to the core. “Treatment facilities can change ownership, management, and staffing quite regularly," Shipp told me. "Parents need to proceed with caution with any program at all and be armed with the right questions to ask.”
Shipp also assured me that, “A family therapist chose the aftercare for each kid based on the situation they were going through.” But if there’s one reason that the industry has managed to survive other than money, it’s that there’s almost no supervision for psychological treatments in the USA, which is kind of at odds with Shipp's claims. As Szalavitz told me, “If I wanted to start a addiction rehab center tomorrow where treatment just involves standing on your head for extended periods of time, then I could do just that.”
It’s not difficult for the industry to legitimize itself. Professor Friedman told me that “groups like Aspen are now trying to build an empirical case for their programs by hiring evaluators to conduct supposedly independent studies that validate the effectiveness of the programs. These studies aren't independent and are more of a marketing effort than a genuine evaluation.”
This kind of “therapy” comes from an older America: one which believes that society is subject to moral decay and that the solution is to force outliers to conform to Republican and Christian ideals of abstinence and hard work. It’s American to puts faith in the ecstatic emotional climaxes of TV evangelism and “tough love” over the tried scientific methods of modern psychology.
Where we see experimentation and the pushing of boundaries, it sees sin and societal corruption that must be violently scared out of people. Normal teenagers are being told that they are wrong and worthless, then broken and abused with the goal of making them “born again” as upstanding adults. And all the while, their parents’ bank accounts are being emptied straight into the coffers of America’s richest men. (The recession has dampened the industry’s growth, but CRC Health lists the net revenue per child in outdoor programs as $438.96 per day, and in residential programs as $257.87 per day.)
And yet, while minor investigations have forced individual rehab centers to change staff, the industry continues to thrive. That's because these institutions use the same methods, have the same roots, and are funded by the same people. Which begs the question: Why has there been no attempt at state regulation of treatment centers? Until there is, American kids are destined to continue suffering in these abusive institutions.
Welcome to a special Memorial Day edition of This Week In Horrible-Looking People, With Leather’s comprehensive guide to the worst, most ridiculous and amazing pro wrestling 8×10 promo photos, or “glamour shots.” This week we’re stepping out of our WWE comfort zone and into the IMPACT ZONE (see what I did there) of TNA Wrestling. You may know it as Impact Wrestling, you may know it as NWA TNA. You may know it as “that thing that comes on before Bellator and looks super embarrassing.”
However you know it, TNA Wrestling has some of the most wonderful promo photos you’ve ever seen, clearly divided into styles:
1. fire background 2. fire border 3. metal background 4. white with Olan Mills-style inset photo background
There’s a fifth style (“Lee South tries to get the women of TNA Wrestling as naked as possible, because he’s pro wrestling’s Terry Richardson”), but this gallery deals mostly with the first four. Inside you’ll find AJ Styles in a ladies’ coat, Raven in a sad hat, more than two Guitar Hero gimmicks and a guy whose name is RELLIK, which has a special meaning. I won’t spoil it for you.
Please click through to enjoy TNA Wrestling. Possibly for the first time.
Every time Austin Aries looks back at this photo, it must feel like a dick in the face.
Chicken-or-the-egg question: Did they photoshop Angelina Love to be this orange, or is she just that color all the time?
“Hey guys, we’ve got Goldust on the roster. We need to ruin him, and we need to do it fast. Ideas?” “A tribal garbage bag jacket!” “Give him a beloved pet rat!” “Make him team with a Muta cosplayer, and have matches ABOUT the rat” “Have him carry an evil backscratcher!” “I love you guys.”
“Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “A career bottoming out.”
(and it’s gonna bash your brains in)
Let’s all accompany Christy Hemme to her high school locker, which contains TNA bandanas and also FIRE.
Here’s something somebody thought was gonna work!
I legitimately do not remember who this is, but I think she had sex with Finch.
This picture made me laugh so hard I lost 30 minutes of work. If you want to know what the inside of Brandon’s brain looks like when its laughing, this is it, fire and all.
They’ll protect you from the Main Event Mafia AND keep your pet free of ticks and fleas!
Dixie Carter totally made this guy in create-a-wrestler and decided he should be real, didn’t she? Nice Bishop make-up, nerd.
TNA loves having guys hold novelty canes. At least the Sinister Minister was attacking you with the Green Goblin’s head, and not trying to bust you open with a backscratcher.
The perfect accessory for any cowboy: A black woman 13 years old than you, wearing a confederate flag hat.
that awkward moment when your founder’s hair is the same color as your fire background and you have to put a thick black border around him
For anyone who hasn’t seen this, CONGRATULATIONS, here’s the worst worked match in the history of wrestling.
MINUS FIVE STARS.
For the record, TNA gave a guy “Guitar Hero” as his gimmick once.
For the record, TNA gave a guy “Guitar Hero” as his gimmick twice. And they added “have a cigarette in your mouth, but don’t smoke it.”
For the record, they gave three people this gimmick.
Although I gotta say, it’s pretty funny that Christy Hemme never picked up on the fact that she was supposed to be the “infection” part.
Now and forever the Wrestling Society X Champion. Also, the most Wrestling Society X looking wrestler possible.
loooooooooool
THAT’S KILLER SPELLED BACKWARDS
WERE YOU AWARE
WERE YOU AWARE OF WHAT HIS NAME IS WHEN YOU SPELL IT BACKWARDS
TRY SPELLING RELLIK BACKWARDS
TRY IT, IT’S WILD
Here’s a picture of Lee South discovering how easy it is to get Shelly Martinez to take off her shirt.
Samoa Joe’s career in two lines of dialogue:
“We’re gonna make you carry a machete and draw a bunch of dicks on your face, is that cool?” “who cares”
Scott Hall, totally okay being here and wrestling without any supervision. Not going to immediately die from drugs if you shoulderblock him.
this looks shopped
More like Melatonin, am I right
“My finger is stuck in my teeth. Maybe if I can see it from a better angle …”
Alternate super hero name: Mustard Nipples
This would be cooler if you weren’t currently employed by the people with the worst belts you’re holding. Also, if you’d won those WCW belts in WCW.
AJ Styles, not afraid to make a Ric Flair robe look like it was made for ladies.
Why isn't this review just all caps "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH"
Fast & Furious 6 is equal parts Ocean’s movie, Road Runner cartoon, and WWE SmackDown. In other words, it’s more or less the same movie as its predecessor, 2011’s Fast Five—a surprise commercial and critical hit that didn’t so much reinvigorate the Fast & Furious franchise as reinvent it. The series, which began in 2001 with Rob Cohen’s throwback exploitation movie The Fast And The Furious, has dropped any pretense of grit; like Fast Five, Furious 6 is a big, colorful B-movie romp where the laws of physics are routinely ignored. There are long, mayhem-heavy setpieces involving armored race cars, tanks, harpoons, and cargo planes. There are logic-defying leaps, as well as leaps in logic. It’s dumb fun—nothing more, nothing less.
In the world of the Fast & Furious franchise, any crime can be committed using a car and every problem is solved by adding ...
I mixed up David's Bridal and Anthropologie, which I am sure Anthropologie is SUPER happy about
Times used to be, you wanted to buy a wedding dress, you had to go to bridal shops boasting designer creations, with the prices to match. But now retailers are getting into the wedding game, providing cheaper options for customers. Target just threw its veil into the ring with its new line of bridal gowns starting at the low price of $99, which made us wonder — can anyone even pick out the less expensive gowns from their pricier counterparts?
As such, we rounded up a few basic dresses from Target, Anthropologie/Urban Outfitters’ BHLDN line, the Vera Wang collection for David’s Bridal and J. Crew. Take a spin with our quiz and see if you can sort them out — you just might be surprised at the results.
Atlanta hip-hop group and original home of Cee-Lo GreenGoodie Mobhas set an August 27 release date for Age Against The Machine, its first album since reuniting last year and the first to feature the full line-up since 1999. “Special Education,” the just-released first single, sets a ridiculously high bar for the rest of the album. The track features an insane, almost industrial exploding funk beat, a stately chorus from fellow Dungeon Family member Janelle Monáe bemoaning uniformity in music, and a pretty killer verse from Cee-Lo himself.
Kmart follows up its horrible and stupid “ship my pants” ad with this “big gas savings” ad. What is even going on anymore? Is it 2013 still? Do we live in a world of adults? Everyone in this commercial might as well have a dick drawn on their face in Sharpie. Everyone in this commercial might as well get explosive diarrhea. That’s funny, right? The two things that are funny is words that sound like swear words and explosive diarrhea. Also homophobic and racial slurs. Those rule. They might as well just slap the Comic Relief stamp over the top of this and watch the money come pouring in, suddenly we have ended world hunger. What a treat. Such a pleasure. This commercial should host the Oscars.
After 13 seasons, 246 interventions, and years of viewer I’m-addicted-to-Intervention Twitter puns, A&E’s Intervention is ending. Five final episodes will air on Thursdays at 9PM ET starting June 13.
Throughout its tenure, the show has featured addictions to substances and experiences ranging from heroin to plastic surgery, and, according to a network press release, has a hand in the current sobriety of 156 people. It has also been part of a group reality television shows focusing on severe mental illness that toe (and sometimes stampede over) the line between genuine depiction of sickness and exploitative emotional voyeurism.
In recent seasons, Intervention has recently been largely outperformed by A&E’s Duck Dynasty, a reality show that toes the admittedly much lower stakes (and seemingly uncrossable) line between not enough duck calls and too many duck calls.
If the fetus is anencephalic and nonviable, how is it different in this situation from a deadly tumor? You can't abort a tumor. I hope El Salvador doesn't kill a woman to "save" a nonviable entity.
After more than a month of delays, El Salvador's Supreme Court has announced that it will decide whether or not a critically ill woman may receive a lifesaving abortion within the next two weeks. The 22-year-old woman, identified only as Beatriz, pleaded with the justices to spare her life last week, telling the court: "This baby inside me cannot survive. I am ill. I want to live."
"It's a tragedy. She is desperate as she nears her 25th week of pregnancy," Beatriz's lawyer Angelica Rivas told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Wednesday. "She trusts her doctors who say she needs to have an abortion."
Beatriz's doctors are not the only ones who have advocated for the lifesaving procedure. As Salon has previously reported, the young woman, who has been hospitalized for weeks due to life-threatening complications related to her lupus, hypertension and kidney function and whose anencephalic fetus has been pronounced nonviable by her doctors, has the support of El Salvador's Ministry of Health and President Mauricio Funes. In a statement last week, Funes said that Beatriz, who is already a mother to a young son, should be able to decide her own fate.
You may have missed it, but yesterday former MLB All Star and current Low Life Softball Salesman Jose Canseco tweeted the phone number of a woman he said was accusing him of rape in Nevada. He then deleted the tweet, and then tweeted that he did not ever delete tweets ever, and that is the last syllable you will have to read about tweets.
The real story now, you see, is about how we happened to have what we believed to be Jose’s cell number, and just happened to let it accidentally slip into the end of our blog post. Wonkette operative “Sean” took this as a cue to text him and — hey, look at that! — he responded, in a way that is just dumb enough to confirm the number was totally his.
“Is this the number to contact to suggest that you don’t publish a rape accusers phone # on twitter?” our anonymous text person sent yesterday.
Somebody from Canseco’s number responded about 90 minutes later: “Freedom of speech and confront ur accusers.”
Huzzah! Somebody has been reading his pocket copy of the Constitution. Now, Yr Wonket is not as law-smart as some of the other, lawyery types hanging out around here, but it is probably pretty safe to say that the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment does not refer to confronting your accuser, you know, in the road, or anything. It’s a cross-examination thing, not a “tweet shit out and ask for polygraph tests on television” thing.
Speaking of tweeting shit out, you will be happy to know that Jose’s beloved “freedom of speech” he thinks is in the First Amendment is probably not in there! It’s a gray area, but harassment is not an unconditionally protected speech. Actually, hey! Look! Nevada, where the alleged victim lives, has a specific law against this kind of stuff!
1. Any person who willfully makes a telephone call and addresses any obscene language, representation or suggestion to or about any person receiving such call or addresses to such other person any threat to inflict injury to the person or property of the person addressed or any member of the person’s family is guilty of a misdemeanor.
2. Every person who makes a telephone call with intent to annoy another is, whether or not conversation ensues from making the telephone call, guilty of a misdemeanor.
3. Any violation of subsections 1 and 2 is committed at the place at which the telephone call or calls were made and at the place where the telephone call or calls were received, and may be prosecuted at either place.
So in Nevada, if it’s illegal to call (or try to call) someone for no actual reason other than to wreck their day, it is presumably also illegal to send out someone’s telephone number to half a million followers and suggest they give her a ring.
But, again, we are not experts, not like Jose. And here’s the email we got about that text message:
While many of America's classrooms remain criminally regressive when it comes to their sexual education policies, today Illinois has helped put a kibosh on some of that bullshit by stepping slightly into the 21st Century.
The website Starcrush, whatever that is, has an exhaustive compendium of side-by-side photographs of 1990s teen heartthrobs in their “prime,” and what they look like today. Interestingly enough, all of the pictures are shot on the set of TV shows, or at red carpet premieres. Like, there isn’t a picture of Rider Strong on the set of Boy Meets World next to a picture of Rider Strong behind his desk at the local Coldwell Banker. These types of celebrity age-tracking things are always kind of weird, because it’s very difficult to decide what, exactly, is the point: are you supposed to feel bad for them because they are mildly less famous adults now? But who would want to be a child celebrity, that seems like the absolute worst? Would you hit it? If anything, this particular collection just goes to show you that while your life will continue to develop and change in ways you might not expect or prepare for, ultimately you should just keep at it, because you’ll probably be just fine. Look at JTT up there. Looking good, my man! Shoot for the moon and you might just land on a fake wine bar set. #YOLO
This week, With Leather’s search for the most ridiculous, hilarious, and amazing promo photos from the world of professional wrestling ventures into the previously untapped category of “candid 8 x 10s.” These are the publicity photos that didn’t get bordered and stacked in front of wrestlers during autograph signings, but were close enough to end up signed and sold in plastic card sheets at your local hobby store. These are just as good and sometimes even worse, if that is possible.
(On a personal note, I guess we’re calling them ‘glamour shots’ now, because since we started the regular feature, a lot of other sports sites have started posting galleries and calling them that. And, uh, sending them to With Leather as a “tip.” Thanks for the tip, other guys!)
Please click through to enjoy 31 of our favorite WCW, TNA Impact Wrestling and WWE glamour shots. If you need to be coerced, there’s a photo of a guy playing a WWF logo guitar in here somewhere.
If you thought baggy football jersey and novelty hat John Cena on page 1 was bad, remember — it could always be worse.
Here’s what Adrian Adonis looked like before WWF turned him into a fat guy who owned a flower shop and was so gay he couldn’t even properly apply makeup.
Aldo Montoya is giving conflicting turn signals, because even Aldo Montoya wants to see Aldo Montoya get hit by a car.
Andre The Giant, star of Zach Braff’s latest film.
Reminder: Road Dogg once called himself “B-Jizzle.” ON PURPOSE.
Battle Kat, aka “the most popular wrestler at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.”
As ridiculous looking as he is, the thing that bothers me most about this is that Busick writes “Big Bully” in his signature. Is that a weird thing to be bothered by? It’s not a complimentary description. Did he have to clear “Big Bully” as an alternate name when he set up his checking account?
Blitzkrieg, the most universally beloved wrestler to ever wrestle for like 3 months and vanish forever. We miss you, Blitzkrieg.
I hope he still has that jacket and wears it wherever he goes. I would buy that jacket.
Bobby Heenan, seen here going Full Bozo.
I’ll let you look at this for a while and decide whether it’s Bret Hart or current Impact Wrestling Mickie James. It’s like an optical illusion.
Pictured: Denzel, Denzel’s friend
Hey Dallas, if you didn’t spend so much money on Elton John sunglasses and bling rings you could buy some real gear, and wouldn’t have to wrestle in stonewashed jeans all the time.
Welcome to Jack Swagger’s Old West.
I take back what I said about Battle Kat … Brutus Beefcake’s Hollywood Hogan cosplay was the most popular thing at comic-con.
Rikishi, after borrowing Bob Holly’s cool jacket.
Look at Greg Valentine’s lavender, ye mighty, and despair.
If you’re wondering what Booker T is thinking, it’s “maybe we should’ve worn the underwear UNDER our pants.”
To the untrained eye, this is the most ridiculous looking dude of all time. To the trained eye, F**K YEAH TENZAN.
f**k the small dick airbrusher he is worse than the gay michael jordan f**k his ass make him hambell plz laugh at my types
Hey Jean-Pierre Lafitte, is that a condom on your eye, or am I seeing things?
New gimmick idea: Jean-Pierre “Left Eye” Lafitte
I could build a wonderful gallery of just Jimmy Hart’s jackets.
Santa Von Erich is ready for the most depressing Christmas ever!
Great La Parka photo or GREATEST La Parka photo?
oooooh no
I’m sorry, this is the opposite of the La Parka photo, please stand by
1999 called, it wants its everything back
Bray Wyatt’s teen years were pretty awkward
so were Konnan’s
Actual pro wrestler Super Leatherface, or close-up of a Mankind action figure? YOU DECIDE!
Norman Smiley provides a nice bookend to Football John Cena.
I do not know how to dress myself. I can never figure out what looks good on my body and clothing comes in way too many unstandardized sizes. I wear jeans and tshirts most days because that is literally all I can get on my body without looking or feeling super uncomfortable. I want to be more fashionable but I just do not know how.
When I moved from New York City to San Francisco, one of my initial reactions was "Damn, everyone here dresses a fright." I eventually acclimated, but it took a minute to get used to everybody doing everything in yoga pants. And then, suddenly, I was wearing yoga pants too.
I took Corey here for his birthday like 4 years ago and we haven't been back. I think we need to. COREY lets go back to The Publican.
[Photograph: Josh Conley]
It's all about the pork at The Publican. While Paul Kahan's place features just as much seafood, there's no hanging artwork of an oversized fish on the walls (I'm just saying). The interior is dominated by designer Thomas Schlesser's nod to 16th century banquet dining—a massive L-shaped communal dining table. But you also have the option of sitting in booths with table-height swinging doors, or at various 2- and 4-tops scattered about. Of course you can sit at the bar, or stand at the cocktail tables just behind the bar, or sit outside in the summer. You have options.
The bar is decent-sized, and beer director Michael McAvena keeps it lively with a Belgo-centric bottle list to pair with the food. While the menu does change daily, due to availability of locally sourced products, I feel like you can't really go too wrong in any direction.
The taste of 3 hams ($21) is a great way to begin. Not the stuff of the old ham 'n cheese sammich, these handsome debutantes have had nary the misfortune to even learn of such plebian things as white bread or American cheese. The Benton Country ham is a slow-cured, coddled ham that is graced with a modest dose of hickory smoke. It is pure silkiness in texture, and one you could just pick at all day. La Quercia Rossa is a mild prosciutto hailing from an organic family farm in Iowa. It is less silky than the first and lacks the gentle smokiness, but is every bit as approachable. The Serrano, straight from Spain, is another dry-cured ham. The saltiest of the bunch, its velvety texture offsets this to a degree that may cause serious brain to artery confusion.
The only word to describe the spicy pork rinds ($5) is crackly. Okay, there are some other words, sure, but crackly is just fun to say. Crackly. Pork rinds are not something I generally go for, but when you're in the porcine palace of The Publican, it just seems like the thing to do. Obviously not your 7-11 pork skins, they arrive like an ear of corn fresh off the grill, all pop and crackle. Painted with an orange Cajun spice blend, they are salt and savory forward, with just a hint of sweetness about half-way through. There's really no graceful way to eat these fist-sized monsters; best to just close your eyes and dive in.
The little gem salad ($10) reminds me of that scene in Casino with De Niro and the blueberry muffins, when he goes in and tells the chef he wants an equal number of blueberries put into each muffin. AN EQUAL NUMBER OF BLUEBERRIES. Seriously, when was the last time you had a salad that had the perfect amount of dressing in each bite? It's always too much, or not enough, or just on the side due to a fundamental lack of trust. But the painstaking attention paid to each leaf is why I'm writing two paragraphs about a salad.
This is probably the best salad I've had in my life. But for more reasons than just the application of the outstanding buttermilk vinaigrette dressing. It's also the sum of its parts, which are individually exquisite. The lettuce is crisp and unchopped. The radishes give it some bite, and the pig ears add a great, salty crunch. There's just enough black pepper to notice. There's also fennel, and, well, I would eat fennel off a Trans-Siberian railway station bathroom floor, so there's that. Vegetarians, go sans ears, and I think you will still be just as happy.
The Cajun boudin ($17) is a pork sausage encased with dirty rice and chicken livers, then emulsified. It is then plated with marinated kale, apple slices, mustard crème fraiche, and red onion. There is a lot going on in this dish, but I have to start with the kale. I know it's a superfood, but I still have this negative association with it as the stuff of garnishes. Or worse yet, the leafy stuff that decorated the salad bar as a kid. But this dish has shown me what kale can actually aspire to. It is tender and savory, and I swear there is some lime coming through. The rest of the dish is good—the apples are appropriately tart and the onions provide a nice bite. The sausage is rich, full-bodied, and extremely fresh-tasting; it reminded me of a gussied-up, less-greasy chorizo.
Fresh is the key at The Publican. Though obviously not true, it tastes as though everything was butchered that morning at Publican Quality Meats across the street. A self-labeled café/butcher shop/market with a general store feel, PQM peddles everything from bone marrow to fresh ramps to preserved tomatoes. Stop in afterwards and pick up some pimiento dip and house-made jerky, or what I like to call dessert.
Josh Conley is single-handedly trying to re-introduce the verb beget into the everyday lexicon. He traveled to Easter Island one Christmas out of sheer irony. He excises a hefty syntax, and shamelessly promotes the color orange. His wife begat him two small children that he regularly belittles HERE.
For Marvin Gapultos, canned sardines in tomato sauce were the ultimate bachelor comfort food. These days, however, he has ditched the can for a fresh version featured in his new cookbook, The Adobo Road. His sauce is a perfect example of the melting pot of culinary influences in the Philippines: tomatoes from the Americas, smoked paprika and white wine from Spain, and fish sauce and calamansi lime juice from Southeast Asia. Fresh sardines quickly broiled atop the fragrant sauce are a step above the canned variety and just as effortless to prepare.
Why I picked this recipe: I couldn't resist the unique (and easy) sauce, and the sardines make it a full meal.
What worked: Everything, from the stovetop sauce simmer to the quick trip under the broiler, was on point.
What didn't: Not a thing.
Suggested tweaks: If sardines aren't your thing, this could work with any small fish or fillet. Shrimp would also work well and would be just as easy. If you can't find calamansi limes, you can substitute lemon juice.
But... suicide is a mortal sin according to the Catholic church...
In an apparent response to France legalizing same-sex marriage last week, a far-right activist published his last essay online then killed himself at the altar in Notre Dame.
We got these when we closed on our place. We knew it was a scam because we'd get two of each letter. One for the house and one for the parking space (separate deed #). Its a total scammy thing but I bet a ton of people fall for it.
Are you a property owner? If someone sends you a solicitation or a bill asking for money in exchange for a copy of your deed, throw it away. That isn’t a thing.
The letters might come on fancy letterhead from a place called “Record Retrieval Department” or “National Deed Service,” and explain that you need a “certified” copy of your deed for some kind of important purpose. The solicitations are barely worth the paper they’re printed on.
In Vermont, for example, homeowners received letters claiming that the “State Record Regulation Department” recommended that people have a copy of their grant deed on hand. The problem: a fancy “grant deed” that costs at least $83 isn’t a thing, and there is no “State Record Regulation Department” in Vermont. The company behind the solicitations settled with the state attorney general.
Remember when Michele Bachmann said 
Remember all her 
Remember when it was 
Remember when her former campaign manager called her 
