The current rounds of the N Cereal AA will close tomorrow; we'll return with the Sweet 16 on Monday. While you wait, enjoy the Wimbledon Drinking Game I helped Joe R to craft, or vote in his brackets, the movie trailer tournament.
Breakfast; Wimbledon
July 2nd, 2009The Vine: July 1, 2009
July 1st, 2009Hi Sars,
The story is this: I am a 21-year-old high-school graduate who has spent about four years on a two-year degree because of lack of focus, lack of money, and lack of "motivation."
Oh, also home-schooled a lot 4th-12th grades. My personality is generally extroverted, to the point where I only seem to get attention I don't want from even more socially crippled weeaboos than myself.
N Cereal AA Round of 32, Flights 3 and 4: Fiberfest and Sugar Shock
July 1st, 2009
Ready to vote? Click here. Confused? Click here.
1 Quaker Oat(meal) Squares vs. 8 oatmeal. I can't say I'm particularly surprised that traditional oatmeal triumphed over Puffed Rice, the John Tesh of breakfast cereals. But it's got a tougher contest in this round, because Quaker Oat Squares are fucking GREAT. Yeah, I'm going to just go ahead and curse in a write-up about breakfast foods: THAT IS HOW GOOD THEY ARE, PEOPLE. But too few people know the glories of these hard little oat pillows, so oatmeal will probably win, "deserving" having nothing to do with it.
5 Yogurt Burst Cheerios vs. 13 Chex. This is another matchup where I think nostalgia will trump actual quality. The Yogurt Burst Cheerio hasn't had the advantage of years in the marketplace to capture all the hearts and minds it should, for its appealing combination of traditional oaty Os and weirdly sweet/creamy freak Os. Chex have nothing to recommend them except your memories of mixing them with pretzels at your seventh-grade birthday party, and yet I think that's why you will carry them to victory.
6 Honey Nut Cheerios vs. 3 Cracklin' Oat Bran. If you had asked me about this matchup two weeks ago, I would have called this for Honey Nut Cheerios in a runaway spree. But then I read in the comments that some of you have detected a switch to an inferior sweetener of late (I guess my palate is not as refined, or else I shovel the cereal in too quickly to taste it. It could be both). So maybe allegiances will switch to the crunchy delights of COB? I think maybe so.
N Cereal AA Round of 32, Flights 1 and 2: Classics and Fruit/Nut
July 1st, 2009
Ready to vote? Click here. Confused? Click here.
1 Rice Krispies vs. 9 Shredded Wheat. Each of these unadorned Classics had a relatively easy path to the Round of 32, but despite the mid-to-low seeding of the Shred, it's a tough match to call — Rice Krispies don't feature as robust a flavor, but they also don't rip up the mouth quite as much, and it's hard to argue with the signature snap, crackle, and pop (though the characters based on those sounds can shut up aaaaaany time now). Shredded Wheat's taste is fuller, and while that's not a good thing in everyone's opinion, the Shred works better with fruit and other toppings than the Krispie. I don't love either cereal, because they're what I got stick with as a kid instead of the sugary stuff, but I think the association with the eponymous treat carries the day for Rice Krispies.
12 Cocoa Krispies vs. 4 Lucky Charms. Cocoa Krispies's surprising defeat of Corn Flakes in the last round leads to an unexpectedly sugary early match-up in the Classics draw, and CK's luck probably runs out here. It had a hard enough time beating a workmanlike flake in the Round of 64; against colored marshmallows, it has no shot. The leprechaun, without breaking a sweat.
6 Frosted Mini-Wheats vs. 3 Cheerios. I can't vote for plain Cheerios. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the smell of them — chewed, drooled on, hucked at my head from the highchair and then left to molder where they'd rolled under the stove — is insupportable. Mini-Wheats have enough sugar on them to make the packing-materials-esque texture palatable, while still letting me feel smugly healthy about eating them. This is folly, no doubt, but it beats the humid stench of partially digested oat. (…You're welcome!) Mini-Wheats for a narrow victory.
Shea Good-Bye
June 29th, 2009
I like Keith Hernandez, but as a TV commentator, he has weaknesses. Leaving aside the "what's that betty doing in the dugout" incident, Hernandez tends to dwell more than I'd like on the kind of analysis Bill James calls "Old Ballplayers Never Die" — the "in my day, we used to play offense and defense uphill, both ways, in the snow, and we fought off bad hops with a loose-leaf notebook" remarks bemoaning various changes in the game.
When he's in the booth with Gary and Ron, I don't notice it as much, or it reads as an almost Catskills-humorous contrast to the better researched, less self-serious comments of the other two — and compared with the customary idiocies of Michael Kay et al. in the Yankee booth, it's practically a cold drink — but an entire book's worth is too much, and as a result, Shea Good-Bye is a disappointment. Hernandez is smarter than most ex-players and has always chosen good co-writers, and in his defense (I guess), the portentous tone is not new; he strays into I, Pompous Veteran territory any number of times in If At First as well.
It's just not leavened here, and I might not really have noticed it if Hernandez and Matthew Silverman had provided more behind-the-scenes information or a more in-depth investigation of the 2008 season. The book bills itself right on the back cover as "a behind-the-scenes look at the Mets' final season at Shea," and as individual-team seasons go, that one provided no shortage of drama on and off the field, but Hernandez doesn't tell us anything we don't know about, say, what led to Randolph's ouster, or the decision to keep Ryan Church off the DL. Hernandez is typically unenlightening about the dust-up between himself and Jose Reyes, after an on-field Reyes mini-tantrum lit the fuse on a typical Hernandez rant about manners and class in baseball today:
I won't go into specifics of my conversation with Jose on the plane after the game. He was upset; I was not. He said his piece; I said my piece. … Based on the comments Jose gave to the media, he still seems to think that I criticized him about the error. If that is really what he thinks, he doesn't get it and he never will. (127)
N Cereal AA: Monday-morning status report
June 29th, 2009Round of 64 voting for Classics, Fruit/Nut, and Fiberfest has closed. You can see the results here; I won't list every cereal moving on, but highlights include the street-fight upset of Corn Flakes by Cocoa Krispies, the surprise victory of Kashi, Chex upsetting Crispix, and almost every Cheerio in the draw still standing…although I don't think they'll all survive the next round.
Sugar Shock voting is still going on, so make your voice heard before the polls close tomorrow; the Round of 32 will begin on Wednesday.
3-2-1 Launch: Monday 29 June! Freeee!
June 29th, 2009
Come on down to the Bell House on June 29 at 7 PM for a FREE Night Of Rock, to celebrate the launch of two new Brooklyn-based businesses — King Killer Studios and xtrapulp — and the fourth anniversary of a third local business, Realty Collective.
What's in store? Five (5) bands; tacos by Calexico (first 50 free!); and a raffle, featuring sunglasses, King Killer t-shirts, an iPod nano, and more! And that's free, too!
Yeah, it's Monday — no excuse. It's summertime, and half your workmates are totally pasadena-ing the work week because of July 4th anyway.
Come on out! Raise the devil horns to Wounded Buffalo Theory, Kabona Zombies, Mike Hunchback and the Weird Fantasy Band, Condo, and In Musth, with DJ sets by Robot Hot Dog! Eat free stuff; win free stuff! Say hellew!
More info on Facebook, or just show up at 7 with your dancing shoes on.
The Vine: June 26, 2009
June 26th, 2009Dear Sarah,
I am currently living in London but will be moving back to the good ol' U.S. of A this summer. My Irish boyfriend is set to follow and, being the thoughtful and intellectually curious person he is, wants to read a book on U.S. history before he moves stateside.
I really don't know of any — all my knowledge comes from elementary/middle/high school and college textbooks of which I have no specific memories. I suppose a textbook would work for him if it's written for an adult and is interesting, but perhaps another format would be better.
Can you or any of your readers recommend a well-written book that generally covers U.S. history?
I hope I don't have to settle for U.S. History for Dummies (unless it's actually a good book)
Dear Hope,
I haven't read it, but I hear good things about Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and I suspect the readers will recommend that one (or will at least have read it). Beyond that, while I can recommend histories of periods, I can't think of any other books off the top of my head that are considered complete primers on the country's history and well-written also.
Readers, any books to add?
N Cereal AA Round of 64, Flight 4: Sugar Shock
June 26th, 2009
Ready to vote? Click here. Confused? Click here.
1 Captain Crunch/Crunchberry vs. 16 Krusty-Os. Well, we had to have one fictional cereal in here, right? Krusty-Os don't exist outside the Simpsons-verse, so I can't speak to their actual quality. I will say that, because I hate milk, I eat all cereals dry, and because of that, Captain Crunch has ripped up the roof of my mouth for the last time. Still, the Captain (or the "Cap'n," as it is properly branded, but I find that folksy abbreviation annoying) will steer his ship to a win. …Don't get up; I'll let myself out.
8 Sugar/Honey Smacks vs. 9 Sugar/Golden Crisp. I have to assume that both of these cereals got renamed in the last decade in order to hoodwink parents into thinking they had some nutritional value. I wouldn't know firsthand, as my mother would sooner have served us a bowl of bees in vodka sauce than let either a Smack (aptly named) or a Crisp into her kitchen…and in fact I've never tasted the Crisp, but if dim sleepover memory serves, Smacks tasted kinda plasticky, like a Corn Nut with Jordan-almond coating. Which should have tasted rad, but didn't, really. Smacks probably wins, but I vote Crisp.
The bitter end
June 25th, 2009
It all happened very fast — within a couple years of the Motown special. But even at the time of the "Motown 25" moonwalk, fame was old hat to Michael Jackson. He hadn't even turned 25 himself, but he'd been a star for more than half his life. He was given the nickname the "King of Pop" — a spin on Elvis Presley's status as "the King of Rock 'n' Roll" — and few questioned the moniker.
…
But, as the showbiz saying has it, when you're on top of the world, there's nowhere to go but down.
– "Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50," CNN.com
I used to have a crush on Michael Jackson. For my eleventh birthday, Troop got me the Off the Wall album on cassette, and throughout the evening, my whole sleepover party took breaks from such important business as gorging on candy and painting our nails to bug out to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" on my parents' ancient 30-pound cassette deck. Jackson looked so foxy on the cover: cool, in control, ready to dance and then have a nice quiet talk about horses. Tween-nip, he was.