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Gotham’s Villains (larger)

Can a $25 corndog be a bargain? Marc Normandin traveled to Chase Field in Arizona to sample the cheese-filled, 3,000-calorie D-Bat Dog in all its delicious, gloopy glory.

I didn't decide out of nowhere to travel around MLB's ballparks and eat giant food, you know. There was an origin point for this whole idea that was much smaller in scale -- the idea that is, not the food -- and it's located in Arizona at Chase Field. After downing a two-foot Korean sandwich, a triple-decker grilled cheese, and a four-pound burger, it was time to scarf down the concession that got this whole thing moving:

That is the D-Bat Dog, apparently because the Diamondbacks' concession people think this 18-inch corn dog looks like a baseball bat. In reality it looks like a breaded horse penis, but if you name it the Horse Dick Dog chances are good you will not sell hundreds of them per game.

Or maybe you will, considering this is the first of the enormous ballpark foods I've consumed that other people at the game I attended were also ordering on purpose. It was the first place where people didn't look at me strangely for ordering the monster of the week, and I still haven't decided if that's a comforting thought or not.

So, what'd I think of the D-Bat Dog? Thanks to help from the Internet's and Arizona's Eric Longenhagen, y'all get to find out.

Review: The D-Bat Dog

How It Was Made

The D-Bat Dog is sold at one concession stand in Chase Field, but it's hard to miss. They have one on display in the food case on the counter, and it's actually listed as a menu item on the board alongside foods that are only meant to kill you slowly instead of quickly -- I'm only half-kidding, because the D-Bat Dog comes in around 3,000 calories. After the debacle at Tropicana Field, I went straight to the customer care center to ask them where you could get it instead of wasting time doing laps around the stadium. They not only knew where to find it, but gave me clear directions to said concession stand.

I knew it was the right place when people with D-Bat Dogs walked by me, which gave me a brief sense of relief followed by dread: What if they ran out of 18-inch corn dogs before I could get a hold of one? This wasn't just paranoia, either: the Diamondbacks ran out of D-Bat Dogs on Opening Day after selling 300 of them, and back in April when people were still counting this sort of thing, they were selling between 120 and 300 per game.

When they run out, they run out, because it's a two-day process to make a D-Bat Dog. Michael Snoke, the executive chef for concession company Levy Restaurants, explained as much a few weeks into his creation's life, with the main reason being that the D-Bat Dog needs to be frozen overnight before it can be cooked, but only after they hollow out the very middle with a soda straw so hot dog guts can be replaced by cheese.

What's a little strange, besides that sentence you just read, is that almost everything that goes into the D-Bat Dog does so because it's the only way to make it work. The hot dog is 18 inches because that's as much as the Chase Field deep fryers could fit. The six slices of bacon wrapped around the hot dog exist not so much for taste, but because they allowed for melted cheese to live inside the hot dog: The bacon holds the insides together so that the cheese doesn't just leak out of the corn dog. Even the pound of french fries is there mostly for the sake of presentation, as they allow the D-Bat Dog to rest atop a mound of fried garnish.

The tray did the job of getting the D-Bat Dog to my seat safely well enough, but I would have felt safer if they slapped a handle on top of it and called it a carrying case instead. This thing is big enough for that, so maybe look into it for 2015, Diamondbacks.

The First Bite

I had no idea what this was going to taste like. Corn dogs can be great or terrible depending on how the batter tastes and the quality of the hot dog inside, and Arizona just had to go and add more variables into the mix that could potentially confuse things further:

Luckily, the batter had the sweetness that makes a corn dog a must-eat item, and the hot dog was plump and juicy. While the fried batter was delicious, it was dry to the point that its dryness outweighed both the juiciness of the hot dog and the gooey cheese contained within. With a regular size corn dog, that's maybe not an issue, but I was going to have to eat two-thirds of this thing before it was a regular size.

I barely noticed the bacon, not just on the first bite, but during the entire meal. That's a positive, though, when you consider that the star of a corn dog should be the dog and the fried goodness. The cheese was your typical gooey orange gloop, and it oozed a bit, but not to the point where it was falling out of the sandwich or all over me.

This Corn Dog Is Wrong

The laws of physics and probably nature say that the D-Bat Dog should not be. There's a little stick stuck in the bottom so you can hold the D-Bat Dog to eat it like a regular corn dog, but you can't actually hold it to eat it, or else gravity will lay waste to your not at all regular corn dog.

This happened after I had already eaten roughly one-third of the entire thing, too. There's a reason I had to pick it up with two hands for the first bite, because otherwise I would be wearing D-Bat Dog instead of eating it.

The bacon actually justified its existence when this happened, as it didn't rip as easily as the batter or even the hot dog. That kept the D-Bat Dog from just splitting completely in half and falling on the ground or in my lap or anywhere that wasn't my mouth. Thanks, bacon, you're a true friend (again).

Fries Should Not Be Garnish

I said earlier the fries were basically a one-pound garnish, and that's probably what they were best for. Taste is subjective and all, but they were essentially unsalted and a bit too potato-y when served with 18 inches of fried batter. They would have been better had they been maybe a little thinner to separate them from the fried batter some more, with a bit more salt on them, or any salt, really. I'll admit that all I could taste by the halfway point was corn dog batter, but that's even more reason to make the fries worthwhile. They could serve as a moment of respite for those who don't want to just pound through this enormity in one go.

Instead, I had to rely on radioactive cheese to break up the batter taste:

There was also a spicy mustard and spicy ketchup to dip into, once the corn dog got to a size where that wasn't an accident waiting to happen. The mustard was solid, while the ketchup didn't deliver on the spiciness its title alluded to, so I stuck with the former during the stretch run.

It's Like A Regular Corn Dog Now!

It took until I had eaten basically a foot of bacon-and-cheese-stuffed corn dog to get there, but eventually, this thing was knocked down to Standard Corn Dog size:

The batter had bunched up at the end, so bacon was exposed and the last few bites were guaranteed to be heavy on the fried goodness. I had slowed my pace a bit from the start, during which I had erased six inches of this thing in short order, but that's mostly because I didn't have to go nuts. This wasn't a timed challenge, and there was a whole lot of baseball left: I decided to take my time and enjoy what was still (surprisingly) an enjoyable concession.

The Last Bite

I know it looks like I'm tired of the D-Bat Dog in this last bite video, but I promise, I was far more tired of being awake in general. I don't know how baseball players fly across the country late at night or early in the morning and then play baseball later that day. Maybe they take naps? I should take naps.

Uh, right. Last bite. Sorry.

You probably didn't need me to tell you that I didn't bother with what fries were left over. We picked at them a little bit, but they just weren't good enough to make any real effort with. It's okay, though, as I had just managed to down a pound of corn dog stuffed with goodies and didn't entirely hate myself for it.

The Verdict

Was the D-Bat Dog worth it? As it was just $25, yes, it's worth it financially. You get a pound of fries in addition to the dog itself, so if you want them, cool. If not, you have a pound and 18 inches of corn dog anyway, why do you even need those fries besides for aesthetics? Is the D-Bat Dog worth it for the taste, though? I'm not a huge fan of corn dogs -- I like them, but I don't go out of my way to get them except for this particular time where I traveled all the way across the country and back to see what was up -- so I wasn't sure how I would feel about this. I enjoyed it, though. Even though the batter was dry and there was so much of it, a combination of sips of water and dips of mustard made it palatable from start to finish.

If you like corn dogs and have $25 to throw at one, then by all means grab a D-Bat Dog. They're limited to a few hundred per game, but it's also clearly become part of the Chase Field experience now given how many people I saw waiting in line or walking around with their own. If you want to go full Phoenix on your Diamondbacks visit, you're going to need to go big with your corn dog. Just make sure you have something to drink with it, or you will regret a whole lot about your evening.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Dave Wiskus, The Colour and the Shape:

Retina screens have once again placed typography at the forefront of design, allowing us to breathe life into words themselves as imagery. It’s a damn shame we’re not given more room to do so.

Dave asks for the ability to use custom fonts in alerts, share sheets, under-the-cell buttons, menus, and so on. I want that too — I’d be able to work more efficiently and use standard controls most of the time.

Wikipedia says, "Ushahidi, Inc. is a non-profit software company that develops free and open-source software (LGPL) for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping. Ushahidi (Swahili for 'testimony' or 'witness') created a website in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election (see 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis) that collected eyewitness reports of violence reported by email and text message and placed them on a Google Maps map." Ushahidi has also been used to map some of the BP oil spill damage in Louisiana and many other events both positive and negative around the globe. This is a mature project, headquarted in Kenya, that recently spun out the BRCK, a "go anywhere, do anything, self-powered, mobile WiFi device," which looks like it would be useful in bringing Internet connectivity to places where the electricity supply is unreliable. || According to Ushahidi, today's interviewee, Rob Baker, "is responsible for overseeing company deliverables and is a lead on communications strategies. Previously, with a 10-year background in software development and with his field experience for aid programs, Rob was a lead for Ushahidi deployments around the world, primarily working in East Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. He’s spoken at the United Nations, World Bank, government, hackathons, and at technical conferences." (Alternate Video Link)

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An anonymous reader writes Laptop Mag battery tested the leading phones on all four major U.S. carriers and found that the same models on T-Mobile typically last 1 to 3 hours longer on a charge. This trend is not new, but has continued for over 3 years of testing. The article says While we don’t know for certain why T-Mobile phones last longer on a charge, there are some strong possibilities. T-Mobile’s network could be more efficient at sending and receiving data because of the bands it uses, or maybe there are far fewer customers on its LTE network, easing the strain. Another possibility is that T-Mobile tends to pre-load less bloatware on its flagship devices relative to the other carriers. AT&T is firmly in second place in the battery life findings presented, with Verizon and Sprint jockeying for last of the four carriers measured. It woud be interesting to see a similar test battery for phones in marginal reception areas; searching for service seems to deplete my battery faster than talking does.

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The Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine (ORACLE), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1953.

Nicki Minaj is a great many things and sometimes it's tiring for her. But now she's pulling it together by not giving a fuck anymore, even as companies like Apple and Spotify are boasting parental advisory stickers over her butt.

For those unfamiliar with the difference between the two (a group which apparently includes the projectionists employed by at least one Regal Cinema), Guardians of the Galaxy is a hilarious, action-packed flick that debuted on August 1st. Rise of the Guardians is a PG-rated kids' animated movie from 2012. It earned a 74% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes! But it's not the debut movie that theater-goers were looking for, though they were subjected to it three times in a row. Hollywood Reporter says that Virginia wasn't the only place where theaters made the mix-up—tweeters in New Jersey also reported unintended screenings of Rise. CinemaBlend theorizes that the theaters where the mix-ups occurred had labeled the 2012 movie simply as Guardians, and played it at kiddie matinees, leading projectionists to mistakenly cue up the animated flick for opening night crowds.

He helped raise money for the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Red River Valley in Fargo, North Dakota. One of his other major acts was declaring ice cream a necessary food.

Those weird photos of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and some ladies hanging out in what appears to be a bathroom come with an equally bughouse backstory. They were first put on the internet by a man named Frank Hoover, who alleges that they were taken by people looking to set up Jerry Jones in an extortion plot. Hoover explains all of this in his 20-page manifesto, which also makes clear that Hoover is in fact the son of God.

Sports on Earth, a site 50% owned by USA Today Sports Media Group and 50% by MLB Advanced Media, was one of the casualties in the restructuring.

praggnificent:

rihbs:

gurlplantt:

THIS IS SO IMPORTANT.

LOOK AT THEIR FACES THEY ARE SO FUCKING HAPPY TOGETHER

clawfoottub

Another morning

the Spurs announced on their website Tuesday that six-time WNBA All-Star Becky Hammon will join the defending NBA championship coaching staff this season.

the highest-paid personality appearing on television today is… drumroll… Judge Judy! Yup, that's right: Judith Sheindlin pulls in $47 million a year for her daytime court show, according to TV Guide. That's like Oprah money, right there. After Judge Judy, we swing to late night for the second-highest earning star: The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, who reportedly makes $25 million-30 million a year.

Facebook: povo posta vídeo de 10 minutos e fala “assista até o final”
The Old Reader: os 5 segundos relevantes do vídeo numa gif animada e sem o áudio chato.

Director and writer Jennifer Lee has let Frozen go — and picked an ambitious new project.

The Oscar winner will bring the 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time to the silver screen, as Disney has picked Lee to write the film adaptation, Variety reported TuesdayMashable has reached out to Disney for further details about the project.

A Wrinkle in Time is a time-traveling tale, written 52 years ago by author Madeleine L'Engle, that follows two kids and their friend as they try to rescue the kids' captured dad from the Dark Thing. To do so, they travel through time to a planet called Camazotz. Read more...

More about Entertainment, Disney, Film, and Jennifer Lee

Levi’s Stadium has solar panels, a green roof, and Wi-Fi; people order food right to their seat via smartphone; and that’s pretty much it. Yes, Wi-Fi and cell signals often fall over in crowded places, such as stadiums, and making sure these services stay up and running through clever engineering is nice. But billing Wi-Fi as a testament to Silicon Valley’s technological mettle is embarrassing. And that green roof? It’s a tiny patch of shrubs on top of suites that I never even noticed while at the Earthquakes game.

What I did notice was that the parking lots around the stadium were at a standstill and that no one seemed to have thought through the public transportation system at all. The stadium is being fed by a light rail line that travels slowly around Silicon Valley. At the Levi’s Stadium station, thousands of people trying to access four different train lines were all funneled through the same area. Insanely, the path to get on the trains required people to walk across the tracks. As a result, the whole station had to come to a halt every time a new train arrived so that it could be filled up and then sent on its way. It typically takes me 15 minutes to drive from my house in Mountain View to the stadium. It took 90 minutes to get home by train. To get back to San Francisco, fans would then need to catch a larger train from Mountain View and ride another hour home. Things should get really exciting when the whole stadium is opened up for the 49ers and 70,000 people, or about one-third more than on Saturday.

hobolunchbox:

Game over. 

Playable Ganondorf Highlights New Details for Hyrule Warriors Video game fans will get the chance to play as the baddest bad guy of The Legend of Zelda video game series. Ganondorf, nemesis of Link and aspiring Triforce owner, will become a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming Hyrule Warriors video game, which launches Sept. 26 for the Wii U home console. Nintendo revealed new information about Hyrule Warriors during a Nintendo Direct video. Hyrule Warriors combines two classic video game franchises, The Legend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors, and challenges players to face off against hordes of enemies in epic battles. Some of the information discussed in the Nintendo Direct included: • Adventure Mode: Players are faced with a grid of challenges that looks like the map from The Legend of Zelda on NES. Completing each challenge unlocks a new region of the map, and with it, a new level of Adventure Mode. Certain characters and weapons can only be unlocked in Adventure Mode. • Costumes: Club Nintendo members who buy and register Hyrule Warriors within four weeks of launch will receive a set of alternate Ganondorf costumes as free in-game downloadable content. More details will be made available on club.nintendo.com. For certain other characters, Nintendo will make downloadable alternate costumes available as pre-order bonuses from select retailers in North America. Nintendo will announce more information about how to get these cosmetic add-ons in the future. • Playable Characters: In addition to Ganondorf, players can opt to play as various characters from The Legend of Zelda universe. Each character carries his or her own specialty weapons: Link (Hylian Sword), Princess Zelda (Rapier), Impa (Giant Blade), Midna (Shackle), Sheik (Harp), Agitha (Parasol), Darunia (Hammer), Princess Ruto (Zora Scale), Zant (Scimitar), Fi (Goddess Blade), Ghirahim (Demon Blade) and Lana (Book of Sorcery). • Weapons: A Chain Chomp will make a guest appearance as a weapon. As the story advances, new weapons will become available to some characters, such as the Magic Rod for Link, the Baton for Zelda and Spear for Lana. Weapons have special abilities called Skills that increase attack damage, or perhaps increase the chance of finding Hearts. Filling the Focus Spirit magic gauge will temporarily increase a character’s abilities and help to mow down huge numbers of enemies. And Bombchus are back, just bigger and more explosive. • Game Play: Players can level their characters up to increase HP and attack skill, or they can grab materials dropped by defeated monsters to craft Badges to increase a weapon’s number of attacks, create longer combos or extend Focus Spirit time. • Co-Op Mode: Two players can play a local co-op match, with one player looking at the TV and the other looking at the Wii U GamePad controller. Single players can also play on the TV, or using only the GamePad in off-TV play. • Locations: Players will face down hordes of enemies in familiar locations, such as Skyloft from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Lake Hylia from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Twilight Field from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. • Classic Zelda Elements: Players will recognize items from their favorite Zelda games, including bombs, arrows and a Hookshot. The game is filled with familiar Zelda staples, such as Cuccos, Rupees, Gold Skulltulas and plenty of grass cutting. For more information about Hyrule Warriors, visit zelda.com/hyrule-warriors.

kalidraws:

RYE
My bread baking bone breaking badass for Jenn Woodall’s FIGHT! zine!
Because nothing beats some hot ‘n crusty bread.

I made the gif just for kicks, but it’s wonky in places because it took waaaay longer than I planned for and I had to stop! Overall though, this has been probably one of the funnest pieces for me to draw. Definitely influenced by my everlasting love of Kiki’s Delivery Service & not-so-secret desire to live in a bakery. I wanna do more food-themed fighters!

Prints available from my Inprnt store.

Adore this, and everything about the concept and details.

Found on the tumblr dash radar, of all things.

The "Superman" creative team of Geoff Johns, John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson discuss their plans to bring a more "human" Man of Steel to DC Comics.

The former freshman All-American was arrested for allegedly punching a woman in the mouth in May.

Star LSU safety Jalen Mills, who was suspended indefinitely from the team in May after allegedly punching a woman in the mouth, is back with the Tigers as training camp begins in Baton Rouge.

Hours earlier, the second degree battery charge Mills had been arrested for was replaced with one for simple battery, a misdemeanor. Mills plans to plead not guilty, according to his attorney.

"We'll continue to discipline him in house, but he's back with the team," said head coach Les Miles after practice. "He was not charged as initially, and so misdemeanor being what it is, we're moving forward."

The original report was disturbing:

The victim, who notified authorities, stated she was at Mills' apartment complex when she knocked on Mills' door looking for her friend. Mills opened the door then closed it in the victim's face so she knocked again. When no one came to the door the victim walked away down the hall. She stated she heard someone say something to her while walking away and when she turned around Mills punched her in the mouth. She fell to the pavement and was unconscious briefly, according to the report. The victim required 4 stitches in her lip as a result of the attack.

The Mills situation is reminiscent of last season, when Jeremy Hill — already on probation for pressuring a girl into oral sex in high school — was sentenced to extended probation for punching a man outside a night club. Miles was heavily scrutinized for allowing Hill back on the team after just a one-game suspension, claiming it was the right thing to do and leaving the decision up to a team vote.

Mills' status with the team is still up in the air. A former freshman All-American, he was expected to be one of the key pieces to the LSU defense as a junior this fall.