Monthly Archives: March 2012

From the Chicago-Sun Times (via Ego Trip):

Here’s more from David Hoekstra.

[Photo Credit: Brian Jackson]

“Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Rose,” by Francisco de Zurbaran (1633)

Detail…

You can see this gorgeous painting–reproductions don’t do it justice–at the Frick.

Pictures

by

Louis Stettner

You’re Welcome.

Alex Rodriguez had a great spring training last year and it didn’t carry over to the regular season because of injuries. He’s not going to be too happy about having a good game yesterday, according to Chad Jennings. Here’s more from Wallace Matthews.

Yanks and Phils on YES this afternoon.

Knicks vs. Celtics. Then Heat-Lakers.

Happy Sunday.

[Photo Credit: Richard Prince via the most incredible This Isn’t Happiness]

Sunday Morning Fats.

1-06 My Very Good Friend The Milkman

[Photo Credit: She is Glorious]

According to Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports, Alex Rodriguez addressed the team for 10 minutes.

Yanks and Phil are on the MLB Network this afternoon. Wallace Matthews at ESPN New York has the lineups.

Enjoy, y’all.

[Photo Credit: MrBrnMkg]

Cold Chillin’:

[Photo Via: Refused Unicorn]

[Photograph by Reka Nyari]

Via Serious Eats: Hot Chili Chutney.

[Photo Credit: Joshua Bousel]

Gangsta Gangsta

We’ve heard it before, but c’mon, Klap, tell us again.

[Drawing by Tim Souers]

Overheard on the subway this morning:

“I’m almost fifty, I can’t be locked up again, what kind of shit is that? It’s ridiculous. I need me a Jew lawyer.”

I looked up. Two women stood above me. The one talking wore black-rimmed glasses, a white turtleneck, underneath a navy blue pea coat, tight jeans, high heels. She and her friend spoke quickly in English and then Spanish. I wished I understood Spanish but I just picked up some familiar words and phrases: siempre, tam bein, mi amore, ay dios mio.

“…Yo, that fucking bitch is fierce as fuck,” the woman said. “I fucking love her.” I looked down and smiled.

Next to me a girl was doodling on the front page of a packet that read: AP Psychology, Mr. Wilson.

Pack of butts is $12 if not more these days. It’s hard to believe.

Check out this photo gallery of jocks and their smokes over at SI.com.

Prince Hal:

“I’m a finance geek,” Steinbrenner said Thursday. “I just feel that if you do well on the player development side, and you have a good farm system, you don’t need a $220 million payroll. You don’t. You can field every bit as good a team with young talent.”

To which our friend William Juliano tweeted:

Here’s what I heard Hal S’brenner say: “We don’t have to pay lux tax to win”. I would have problem if he said: “We won’t pay lux tax to win”

[Photo Credit: Volcalo89.5]

Peep this gallery of MAD magazine covers, 1952-55 from the wunnerful peoples at How to Be a Retronaut.

Dig it:

Check out this good article over at Nation’s Restaurant News by Bret Thorn on Szechuan Peppercorns:

Americans might not be drawn immediately to something that makes their mouth go numb, but Szechuan peppercorns, an Asian spice that does just that, is gaining popularity among some chefs.

Szechuan peppercorns are a key ingredient in Chinese five spice — which usually contains star anise, cloves, cinnamon and fennel as well — and the source of the numbness you might experience when eating a really good kung pao chicken.

“It’s a different spice than most people are used to,” said Steven Devereaux Green, the new executive chef of An New World Cuisine — “An” is Mandarin for “tranquility — in Cary, N.C. “It’s a lighter, more floral peppercorn, and it gives a distinct flavor,” he said.

Technically, Szechuan peppercorns aren’t peppercorns at all, but the fruit of the Zanthoxylum piperitum plant, a member of the citrus family — think of the numbing effect a twist from a lemon or orange peel can have. The Chinese call that sensation ma, and if you combine that with la — or the spicy burn of chile peppers — you have the ma la experience that is very much appreciated in Szechuan and other provinces in China’s chile belt, stretching from Yunnan to Hunan.

[Photo Credit: Steamy Kitchen]

Check out Bill Morris’ terrific interview with Scott Donaldson on the “Impossible Craft” of writing biography over at The Millions:

TM: Leon Edel, the biographer of Henry James, used to say that writing a biography is a little like falling in love. Would you agree with that?

SD: That’s a dodgy issue. If you fall in love with your subject, you can so identify with your subject that you lose something of your own self to it. The first two biographers of Malcolm Lowry, who was a suicide, they both killed themselves. Maybe they had that inclination to begin with. But there is this sense of falling out of one’s own personality into someone else’s. That can happen.

TM: There are also cases where the biographer comes to loathe the subject.

SD: Exactly.

TM: Look at Geoffrey Wolff writing about John O’Hara. That was a dark book. I saw Wolff give a talk in New York once, and he said he came to a point where he despised the man.

SD: I hadn’t heard that about Geoffrey, that’s interesting. Another case like that would be Jonathan Yardley writing a biography of Frederick Exley, and ending up hating the guy. There wasn’t much to like about him as a person, but he did some wonderful writing.

…TM: Why the impossible craft?

SD: Well, because if you try to construct the ideal figure for a biographer, you realize he or she has to be so many different kinds of things that no human being could possibly achieve. You’ve got to be a detective, you’ve got to be a drudge, tracking down every possible fact you can; at the same time you’ve got to be insightful as hell, you have to be psychologically acute, you have to take an objective view of things without losing sympathy for your subject. You don’t have to be unnecessarily tough. There’s a blurb from Peter Matthiessen on the back of my Fenton book that says I was tough where I needed to be. And that’s good. You want to be honest and tell the whole story, you don’t want it to be wrapped in any more concealments than are necessary, if any are. And let’s say that the most important reason of all it’s an impossible craft is that you cannot know what someone else’s life was like. You can try to come close. Charlie Fenton’s brother said to me recently that he thinks I caught Charlie. Well, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. That’s what you want to do.