Adventures in Boozeysitting

I am a bit of a teetotaler.

Well, let me rephrase.

I am a militant teetotalitarian.  I’ve never once had alcohol in my life.  I’ve never been in a bar that didn’t begin with “salad” or end with “and grill.”  I look down upon the drinkin’-folk.  Those plebes, frittering away their evenings with relaxation and fun while I sit around refreshing Google Reader and being a miserable old coot!

Last night, I was in a bind.  Should I follow Dorie’s Twofer Pie recipe to the letter of the law and use “dark rum,” or should I use the dreaded ruuuuuuummmmmm extraaaaaaaact (conveniently located on the shelf next to my vodka extract and my beer extract)?  Well, listen.  I’m no dick.  I knew that Dorie would be HEAPING MAD if I took liberties with her time-tested pie.  So I took my first-ever trip…to the liquor store.

In Pennsylvania, you can not buy booze all willy-nilly.  You must go to the state liquor store.  I am an employee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  I know about the bureaucracy.  Presumably, to buy alcohol at a state liquor repository, you need to fill out seven pages of forms.  Thankfully, this did not happen (although I certainly had time while I was waiting in line behind over a dozen people with questions about which box of fruit-wine really compliments a Hungry Man turkey dinner).

I felt like an outlaw pushing open those stupid, tiny doors at a saloon.  Except the door was automatic.  And instead of chaps and a bitching hat, I was wearing a Spider-man shirt.  Here I was, a 24-year-old CHILD, entering the hub of depravity in my small burg.  The legality of the whole affair didn’t make it feel any less dangerous.

I only needed two teaspoons of rum, so getting the $40 gallon jug was probably overkill.  I would have opted for the “fun-sized” bottles that they kept near the register, next to the baseball cards and the seasonal candy.  However, none of the bottles specifically said “rum.”  I don’t know Goldschlager from Guaro.  Of course, instead of asking I bought the $15 handle.

Now that I’ve used my two teaspoons, I’m at a loss.  What to do with all this booze.  Who likes rum?  Pirates like rum.  Coca Cola drinkers.  Tum-Tuggers.  Not I, and not my family.  Maybe my girlfriend.

I’m toying with the idea of throwing a “rum party,” although it seems like the rum would probably go pretty fast, and then what do I have left?  An empty bottle and a lot of uneaten, nasty Twofer Pie.

Also, because I don’t think I’m going to get the chance to insert it into another post, let me tell you a little bit about Drunkula.

Drunkula is a character I made up.  He is half vampire, half alcoholic.  His crippling alcoholism leads him to do stupid things, like wandering out in daylight, eating garlicky pasta, and biting the necks of department store manequins.  He hangs out with his good friends Frankenwine and The Rummy.

Please do not steal this idea.*  I currently have a script in the works utilizing this character, and I’d hate for its chances of big-budget production (nil) to be ruined.

In conclusion, alcohol.  It is a beverage of great comparisons and contrasts.

I wrote this post while watching an episode of House.  He’s both a doctor and a building!

*I stole portions of this idea from a friend.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Thanksgiving Poo-fer Pie

This week I tried to make Dorie Greenspan’s “Thanksgiving Twofer Pie” (a delightful medley of pumpkin and pecan pies), and I failed miserably.  My mind-brain wasn’t doing well in the first place, but since I like to share the gory details, here is a list of things about my pie.

• Accidentally made “double crust” instead of “single crust”
• Food processor jammed for some reason
• Decided to use the entire double-crust in a single pan, because I AM A GENIUS.
• I did not refrigerate my dough, so rolling did not work.  Instead, I patted it into my pie plate, nasty-ass fingerprints and all.
• My filling overflowed.
• I did not poke my pecans under the filling, leading to (presumably) burnt pecans.
• Filling remained liquid.
• Pie tasted good, consistency of baby vomit.

I promise there will be something creative or worthwhile soon.  Until then, have a happy Thanksgiving!

Listen up and listen good. At the grocery store, I use the self-checkout line for two reasons.

1) I would like to get out of there quickly.
2) I would like to avoid human contact.

And now you want to write a check. A CHECK. IN THE ANTISOCIAL SELF-SCAN LINE,

Because you had to write a check, I did not get out of there quickly. Because I murdered you, I did not avoid human contact. Thank you for ruining my evening.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Arborio Rice Pudding (Artoo-Detoo Rice Pudding?)

This was a nice, simple recipe.  I wasn’t expecting it.  Whole milk (still sitting around from last week’s Kugelhopf), sugar, vanilla, and rice.  A saucepan, a big-ass spoon, and some cups.  That’s it.  Sorry for plagiarizing the recipe, Dorie.

It’s damn good, though.  Creamy.  For the minimal amount of sugar (1/4 cup for the whole batch), I thought this would be kind of bland, but it’s really just perfect.

MEANWHILE!

I hope everyone is enjoying the more tangential posts I’ve been making recently.  Or at least some of you.  Whether I admitted it at the time or not, I started this food blog as an eating disorder recovery blog.  Now that I’m in a really good place, it’s time to stop defining myself by my shortcomings and start defining myself as the asshole I am.  And that means:  hypocritical/jokey posts about bizarre neighbors, weird comics, and guest posts from Ugly Dude’s girlfriend (Pretty Chick).

Uhhhhhh….this is all to preface the introduction of my new favorite topic.  Star Wars.  Well, it’s really an OLD favorite topic, but new to this blog.  This is a post I had in my “drafts” folder, and I knew I’d never finish it unless I tacked it on to something worthwhile.  It’s called “In defense of ‘The Clone Wars.’”

I grew up enjoying the Star Wars movies.  I rediscovered them and fell in love during the Special Edition releases in 1997.  I collected the action figures, bought the bedsheets, and stood in line for tickets to Episode I.

And then I learned to hate those starred wars in 1999, 2002, and 2005 with the awful prequels.  I didn’t really take offense to the prequels for the common reasons (acting, dialogue, etc).  I hated them for the general feel of the movies.  The original films were total B-movies, whittled from the best of the Flash Gordon serials and old Saturday afternoon matinees.  The focus was on adventure and weird aliens; heroes that dressed in white and villains that dressed in black; rogues, rebels, and robots.  Metal bikinis.  The prequels, on the other hand, were a drama about political uprising.  Stupid, humorless bullshit maneuvering by people wearing huge, space-Victorian costumes.  Even the Jedi sat around in a bureaucracy talking for 80% of their screen time.  Love him or hate him, at least the racist frogman Jar Jar Binks tried to have some fun.

That’s why I love “The Clone Wars” (9pm Fridays on Cartoon Network).  They’ve brought Star Wars back to its serial roots by literally serializing it.  Split about evenly with goofy one-offs and cliff-hanger-ridden miniseries, the show pits the good guys against the bad guys and that’s it.  There’s very little on the show that takes place outside of spaceships, and I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard the word “senator” once or twice.  It’s my favorite thing on television right now, and I’m proud to say that my Fridays revolve around it.

Geek Dude out.

Writer’s Block

I haven’t written anything of consequence for five years now.  I’ve used any number of excuses to explain away my writer’s block.  “Too lazy,” I’d say.  “I write better in short, incoherent bursts.  Plot is just a prison for bad writers.  The world isn’t fair, and as long as John Grisham has a career, I’m abstaining.  I’ve been really depressed lately, and frankly, all the good stuff has been written anyway.  Scrubs is on television five nights a week, so you can see that I’ve been pretty busy.  That’s why I’m not writing, Uncle Randy.  That’s why I’m not using my college education.”

These excuses are not particularly genuine, although they all have a certain ring of truthiness to them.  To be honest, though, I can attribute all of my problems (literary and otherwise) to one man:  Larry Baker.

Larry Baker is a terrible, terrible asshole.

I should preface by saying two things.  Number one:  all names in this story have been changed to protect the guilty.  Number two:  that’s all a lie, and the horsedick’s name is actually Larry Baker.

It gets really frustrating sometimes, thinking about Larry. In some ways, I am no better than him. I let the fact that he gets irritated by petty things (which is, itself, a petty thing) irritate me. Recognize, however, that Larry is an ogre. Every time I need to put a jerk or villain in a story, he is named Larry.  The story inevitably trails off until I can’t write anything at all except the word “Larry” over and over again, in increasingly disturbing fonts. Then I am just too infuriated to see straight.

I could turn this into a longwinded narrative, and the temptation is there. My own ninety-eight theses, all dedicated to the defamation and defacation of Mssr. L. Baker’s good name and hammered on the basketball-court door of some sprawling Baptist church. Nobody would read that. Instead, here is a list of things about Larry.

TEN THINGS ABOUT LARRY
in no particular order

1. Larry is a crap factory (quite literally). He quite literally produces crap. With his bowels. He chews his food (rotten meat, apple cores, tin cans). The mush travels down his esophagus into his stomach. It is churned with acid and turned to chyme. From there, the goo passes through his small intestine, his large intestine, and his rectum. We all do, of course, but the most effective way to introduce this disgusting man is through his GI tract.

2. Larry ruined my sister’s senior prom. My sister and her friends were getting into the limosine outside of our house, and Larry stood outside. With his arms crossed. Looking all surly. Later on, he called the police and reported all of my sister’s teenaged friends for parking on the unmetered, suburban street. There was, of course, nothing illegal, and the cops blow off most of the calls from Larry (see future items). Larry came over and screamed in the faces of the girls, and the ensuing drama ruined prom night, the sleepover, and my brother’s college graduation the following day.

3. Larry is ugly. The top of his head is bald, and he has made up for it with mounds and mounds of facial and neckal hair. When he does actually work up to motivation to shave his neck, the ensuing bramble blows down the street like an errant tumbleweed. The facial hair does not help the inherent uglitude, by the way. The spiky brown bundle of steel wool hugs his face, clinging to his disproportioned troll-features and actually enhancing the terror exponentially.

DID YOU KNOW that the sign outside Larry’s house says, “The Baker’s.” This is strictly a grammar error. That house does not belong to the baker. It is not the baker’s house. I would bet my bottom dollar that Larry has never baked anything in his life. How do I know that? Because baking is done by kind-hearted people. Larry has a jar labeled “sugar” in his kitchen, but it is surely filled with finely-ground glass particles.

4. Larry is a peeper. Larry cares so much about what his neighbors do that he cut eye-sized holes in every curtain in his house. He did not want to pull the curtains aside, because this would give away his position. Presumably unbeknownst to Larry, one could always tell when Larry was watching. His glassy gaze was clearly visible through the holes, and at night his eyes glowed like cat’s eyes. I began waving to Larry every time I came home. Less than a week later, Larry replaced his butchered curtains.

5. Larry’s wife is a beefalo.

Beefalo are a fertile hybrid offspring of domestic cattle, Bos taurus, and the American Bison, Bison bison (generally called buffalo). The breed was created to combine the best characteristics of both animals with a view towards beef production.

6. Larry strong-arms other people to do his dirty work. Always the parking Nazi (but aware that his prior tactics did not work), Larry strongarms the neighbors to do his dirty work for him. Two weeks ago, my carpool buddy parked on the street across from Larry’s house. We came home to see Larry scampering from that house across the street, turning around, crossing his arms, and staring. Shortly thereafter, the house’s owner apologetically spoke to my friend. “I don’t mind it, but he doesn’t like it when you park there.” My friend (a new convert to the cause) agreed and parked directly in front of Larry’s house every day from that point on.

7. Larry wants to trade favors like a mafioso. Larry will ineptly perform menial work for his neighbors in exchange for favors down the line. Larry will “kindly” shovel his neighbors’ snow into the street, blocking exit from their driveway. He will rake their lawns, tearing up large portions of grass, sod, and flowerbed. All of Larry’s so-called helpful actions are unrequested by the neighbors, and always result in more work for the involved home-owners.

Larry expects the favor to be returned in full. While I’d love to rip up the man’s lawn, Larry is very specific about what he wants. When neighbors refuse to deign to Larry’s wishes, his recourse is to build a fence between his house and his neighbor’s house (unknowingly rewarding his neighbors).

If a fence already exists, Larry will tear down the fence and build an even bigger fence. This has happened at least three times.

8. I hate Larry.

9. Larry does not understand laws and regulations. Judging by police phone calls, these are things he thinks are against the law:

Cars parking on the street.
Cats entering his yard.
Children playing and laughing in their own yard.
Old women ignoring his banal conversation and going back into their house to watch Jeopardy.
Any signage posted on any telephone poles in the entire development (including, but not limited to, “Lost Dog,” “Yard Sale,” and “Looking for Work?”)

10. Some day Larry will die. Breathe a sigh of relief.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Kugelhopf

See previous TWD post about unpronouncable names.

My house is sub-zero, so my dough did not rise very well.  Also, my Kugelhopf Pan must have been in the shop (heh), so I just used a plain ol’ bundt pan.  The end product looked like an enormous raisin bagel.

In conclusion, Rachel and I spent our anniversary waiting for dough to rise.

The good news?  After a disappointing couple of weeks (Pumpkin Muffins, Chocolate Cupcakes, and Rugelach), I’ve produced something that I am proud of.  It tastes pretty good.

Gotta run.  Lots of stuff to catch up on.

Twin Wieners

My girlfriend Rachel made a sandwich today called a Hot Dog Sandwich.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT GOES INTO A HOT DOG SANDWICH?

I will leave some space for you to answer this question in your heads.

.

.

.

.

You are wrong.  In the words of my girlfriend, here’s what’s on it.  I hope you like the recipe.  Rachel will be back@@!@!!!!
INGREDIENTS

• Two (2) pieces of bread–thick-crusted, plz
• Two (2) hot dogs (of the wiener variety)
• Ketchup (liberally)
• Mustard (conservatively)
• Banana peppers (independent)
• Pickled veggies (carrots, cauliflower, red peppers)
• NO OLIVES
• EVER
• Four shakes of salt

RULES AND REGULATIONS

1. Put bread on plate.
2. Put two dogs on bread (vertically, adjacently, perpendicular to the equator).
3. Spooge on the ketchup.
4. And then you squeege out some mustard.
5. And then you get a spoon.
6. And then you take out some banana peppers from the jar and you spill some of the juice all over.
7. And then you clean it up.
8. And then you get them out of the jar and put on however many banana peppers you want on your sandwich.
9. I don’t care.
10. Convice Mike to refrigerate the banana peppers after they are open.
11. Pick out some pickled vegetables from the big jar, making sure to avoid olives.
12. Put the top piece of bread on.
13. Realize you forgot the salt.
14. Salt the top, because it’s gotta be the perfect storm.
15. Eat it, dummy.

This sandwich is best complimented by a Sangria and three pink-flavored TUMS.

Enjoy.

Heh.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Rugelach?

In the long, storied tradition of things I don’t know how to pronounce, I made up a batch of rugelach this week.  For those of you who don’t know what rugelach is, you’ve come to the wrong place.  I have no idea.

What I do know is, it tastes pretty good.  Sure, I was a bit of a mess in the making, but that’s how I do my best work.  When it goes easily, I end up with freaking Pumpkin Muffins or Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes.  When my dough falls apart…well, that’s rugelach, baby.

I think I put too much jam on my dough, because it overflowed and burnt all over my parchment paper.  It was a little too sketchy to bring into work, but a little too delicious to throw in the rubbish bin.

DID YOU KNOW:  Rugelach is 80% cream cheese by volume.

My name is Mike and I approve this made-up fact.

The Grammarphile at Red Pen, Inc. tagged me for a meme.  Guess I’ll meme.  NB: I’m not going to tag any of you because nobody memes when I tag them.  Here are six random things about me.  This post will be relatively emo-free, too.

1.Today I stationary-biked for 85 minutes on the highest setting (20) of the “aerobic training” course.  It was very easy.  I think I am developing a callous to the bike.  I want to start running again, because my new goal is a marathon.

2.  I generally hate watching sports, but lately I’ve been getting the urge to go catch a baseball game sometime.  I don’t care about the sport at all, but I think there’s something to be said about the atmosphere of the park, the camaraderie of the crowd, the bad music, and the food.  I do not think any of my friends would be up for this endeavor.

3.  I feel like I’m cursed because I stopped hugging my grandmother. My maternal grandmother came down with shingles when I was fourteen years old. Every day I went over there and I gave her a hug. Afterwards, she always talked about how thankful she was that I would hug her, because everybody else was afraid they would hurt her and never touched her. When I was seventeen, my grandmother came down with a whole slew of illnesses. I never touched her again until the day she died, over three years later. I’ve never felt like a bigger piece of shit about anything in my life (and I feel like a piece of shit an awful lot). A year later, my paternal grandfather was suffering an equally miserable illness.  On Christmas day, my dad and I were with him.  I touched his knee and he died in an instant.  The exact moment I touched him.  It was like I had flipped a switch.  His breath disappeared, his eyes went glassier.  I had given him the touch of death.  I feel like if I had hugged my grandparents earlier, I could have saved them years of pain and trouble.  God complex much?

4. I know that I need to eat healthily and gain a little bit of weight for my own health.  However, it strikes the fear of bejeezus into my heart that I now fit into my 200-lb jeans and my “skinny jeans” are too tight.  I need to find the switch in my brain that tells me that gaining weight is not the most terrible thing in the world.  Also striking the fear into me:  I used the phrase “skinny jeans,” which should be relegated to Weight Watchers meetings and “Gilmore Girls” marathons.

5. I just bought the CD “Big Songs” from the old TV show Dinosaurs.  You know, the one with the big Muppet dinos that pretty much aped The Simpsons?  It was at the used record store marked for the low-low price of “$0.00.”  A reasonable bargain, right?  The cashier did not think that was right, and arbitrarily charged $5.99 for the thing (making it my most expensive music item of the purchase).  I gladly paid it.  You see, that album and I have a history.  There’s a song sung by the teenage male dinosaur (Robbie, I think) featuring the heartfelt lyric, “I want to be king/Of rocking Pangaea/And I want you to be my queen.”  In first grade, I would serenade the ladies at lunch with that very song (replacing the word “Pennsylvania” for “Pangaea,” natch).  I also serenaded them with “A Whole New World” from Aladdin.

6. I’m a little plagiarist piece of shit.  It all started with “Disney Adventures,” a magazine I subscribed to from the ages of 5 to 12.  My first plagiarized piece was a short, environmentally-themed poem from a user-submission contest.  The thing was cliched and trite and probably the best a kid could do.  I stole it and made it a rap for my first grade class.

“I’m Mother Nature/And I’m here to say/You gotta save the Earth/In a kind, kind way.”  Straight-up plagiarized.  Never got caught.  Who would catch me?  It wasn’t all that good.  Why would somebody be so bold to copy that trash?

I went on to compose many “raps” throughout that year.  I actually wrote these, yes, and I can’t say they were any better or worse than the aforementioned one, but they were statutorily worse because they were written by a plagiarist whore.  One rap was entitled “Can’t Live Without A Batman 3.”  At that point, my idealistic eight-year-old heart could not have imagined the horrors Joel Schumacher would bring to the Batman franchise, including rubber nipples and Chris O’Donnell.

I also composed an original song to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey.”  I called it “On Top of Old Shakey,” a reference to the Walnut Street Bridge that was damaged during Hurricane Agnes in 1972 (oh god why do I remember that?).  The lyrics began:  “On top of Old Shakey/All covered with cars/And if we should fall off/We’d fall off to Mars.”  This song was shit.  When the talent show came around, I abandoned my friends who wanted to sing it with me.  They sang it with no accompaniment and little reaction.

And what did I do instead?  I performed stand-up comedy the best way a second-grader could (also plagiarized from any number of “101 ____ Jokes” books).

In third grade, I plagiarized from “Disney Adventures” again.  This time, it was a poem by a staff writer retelling the tale of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”  My parents and grandparents were shocked and amazed at my newfound quality of writing.  Obviously, they caught on pretty quickly.

I gave up plagiarism for years, which led into a terrible, terrible high-school-poetry-writing phase.  Oh boy, could I have used some stealing then!  If I had to pick a stylistic influence, it probably would have been Jon Bon Jovi (ahem, Poet Laureate Jon Bon Jovi).  Lyrics like “You broke my heart/You broke my soul/Everything that made me whole/Was broken/And all I want/Is my money back.”  Really, really, really, terribly awful stuff.

Then college rolled around and I discovered a way that plagiarism was okay.  It was called “English major.”  Stealing…er, borrowing…uh, okay, “allusion” was most welcome in all of my writing classes.  I lifted entire lines from things I liked (poems, songs, cereal boxes).  Of course, this lazymania was probably enhanced by the fact that I was only eating 600 calories a day (3/4 of which were candy).  Why bother writing stuff when you can rearrange lines from an Elliott Smith song and call it a day?

I don’t know where this is going.  You can bet your bottom dollar that if I still plagiarized, this post would have been a lot more coherent, terse, and interesting.  Thanks, Nikki, for memeing me.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

So I don’t know. Once again, I’m left with something that isn’t all that special. Pretty dry and not great. I actually baked them for less time than recommended, and until the very moment a knife came out cleanly. I don’t know what else to do, and I’m ready for a non-cake-item next week. It’s almost embarrassing to take these into work tomorrow, knowing that they aren’t all that tremendously good. I’ll have to deal with all those patronizing looks: “Oh, look, the man tried to bake something;” “Oh, I swear, it’s really, really, really good;” etc. Still, what else am I going to do with the remaining 21 cupcakes (I doubled the recipe in anticipation of tremendous success)?

Halloween’s a-comin’, and here’s my first of two costumes.  This was for my friend Belinda’s “rock n’ roll” themed party.  I was the master of vocal and drum-related Rock Band gamin’.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Pumpkin Muffins (and a drawing)

I made two batches of this week’s Pumpkin Muffins (one with the sunflower seed topping and one without). I have to say, they may be my least favorite of the Dorie recipes I’ve tried thus far. They taste good. However, there’s nothing outstanding there that urges me to make them again. Definitely taste muffiny. Kind of taste pumpkiny. Not as moist as some of my favorite muffins. I don’t know.

Anything else interesting to note? Well, I didn’t have to take either batch to the full 25 minutes. They were done around 20 and probably could have stood to come out a little earlier. My sunflower-seedless muffins (not pictured) were a lot fuller and prettier, as I didn’t sample nearly as much batter in the second go-round.

What else is new?

I’ve becoming more and more open with people lately.  I think my new job is a main contributor, and more to the point my good friend/new coworker Derek Orion Shugar and the cavalcade of debauchery known as his family.  I’ve been getting social every day now for a while, and it’s opening me up to become an actual person instead of some mopey ideal or lacking wisp of humanity.

I guess this can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much you liked me back in high school and early college.  I was a bit of an ass.  I tended (and now, tend) to get a bit talkative, and probably annoying.  In the end, I’ll take it.  It’s better than starving myself.

I’m really beginning to feel feelings again, too.  Over the past five years or so, they’ve been few and far-between.  I mean, they’ve always been there.  I KNEW what made me happy and made me sad, but I never really felt the little endorphin push behind it.  I was pretty blase about everything.  Now I’m happy when I’m happy (which is pleasantly often), sad when I’m sad, and angry when I’m etc.  By introducing a little bit of chaos to my life, I feel like I’m conquering mental illness.

What an embarrassing post.  I’m sincerely glad that I’m not shaming myself in front of people who actually know me.

Here’s a little drawing I made called “M.D. Hammer.” Relive the early 1990’s!