Imagine If Kids Were Into Churchy Video Games!?

The fine gentlemen over at IfAnyoneIsAsking today bemoaned the very existence of the peculiar piece of excrement that opened last weekend, Evan Almighty.

Well, not so much the movie, but the fact that such a piece of crap could cost $175 million and how Hollywood plans to, you know, make money shelling out this kind of over-priced crap.

Avant garde, Mate (touché, touché, you know what I mean).

Back in the early 90s (a completely different era than the mid 90s, according to Hawk), I used to buy USA Today. There, I said it. Aside from the superior sports section, I liked to mock Larry King and check out movie news, and in particular, box office results. It was a sport. And I used to work in a video store and the success or failure of the theatrical run of a movie directly determined what was bought for rental, so it was mildly relevant to my so-called job (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

And even as recent as fifteen years ago, that success or failure at the box office largely determined the overall success of the film from a profit standpoint and the end-of-the-line when it came to the bulk of studio revenue.

Today, it's no longer even close to the case.

Mr. Mate Famber knows all this. He's a smart man. But looking at some of the financial dynamics of today's film industry reveals just how our world of the 'Total Entertainment Experience' has created an enormous safety-net for even the biggest pile of crap coming down the pike.

The Hollywood Economist over at Slate.com breaks it down. To start - and this is on average - for every dollar made at the domestic box office from a film, the studio will spend about $1.40 (budget, marketing, distribution, etc). So, on average, it's a losing venture. A bust. But domestic box office has become merely a springboard into the myriad of media arms after the fact.

Some numbers (linked by the Slate article). Total box office take worldwide for all the studios in 2004 was $7.4 billion; total take from worldwide video distribution was $20.9 billion; total take from selling TV rights (not taking a few particulars into account) was $17.7 billion!

Tack on a video game-friendly movie like Tomb Raider and creative accounting like finding a good German tax shelter and, puff, you're crapping money.


Let's extrapolate on the potential profit of Evan Almighty:

And remember, it's PG for mild rude humor and some peril ("look, it's my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can..."), so appeal is critical to the prospects for success.

Last week, it made $31 million in its opening weekend (well below expectations). But given its family-friendly focus and overt, mass appeal to the churchy-types, it should have moderate legs, pushing its domestic take to around $130 million, conservatively. It's worldwide appeal, being a distinctly American cast and having Christian overtones, limits it a bit, so $70 million seems reasonable given its extremely wide distribution and Steve Carell coming off The 40 Year-Old Virgin.

That brings the worldwide box office total to about $200 million. The reported budget was $175 million. Tack on about $80 million for marketing (usually 40% of movie's budget, especially of this size) and $30 million for distribution. That leaves $285 million as the total end-cost for the film.

DVD sales and rentals - again, given its mass family/churchy-Christian appeal - will easily top $120 million. Pay-per-view, a relatively new beast that studios have salivated over, usually add something close to DVD rental numbers. Tack on another $50 million.

TV rights are the gold mine, though, simply because of their long legs. Studios can sell and resell a movie over and over again in perpetuity. Say HBO buys Evan Almighty (which it probably will - it's reached that level of suckitude). The price HBO and other premium channels pay is usually 15-20% of domestic box office. Add $22 million. Basic cable is next (USA, F/X, etc), usually at 8-10% of domestic box office. Add $11 million. Broadcast networks fall in the middle, percentage-wise. Add $18 million. Say NBC buys and airs it two years from now. ABC might buy it for air five years from now for $5 million. It keeps going.

And this only takes into account deals done after the first few weeks of its box office opening, as bidding wars are happening more early each year. And imagine the added revenue when little Jimmy Blinkensop can download it directly to his iPhone (another Farhad Manjoo hummer given to Steve Jobs).

I have Universal's potential profit at $136 million before the movie even exits the theaters. And given its broad appeal, those numbers aren't that far-fetched and a bit conservative if the domestic take surpasses extrapolated forecasts.

Also, let's not forget, in this new world of vertical integration in the movie biz, selling a movie after its theatrical run is like selling something to yourself - robbing Peter to pay Peter - taking advantages of tax dodges, hiding money in a failing media wing and selling it off, transferring losses to a better performer to avoid capital gains and so on and so on and so on. In other words, just short of Enron.

Why Steve Carell took a piece of crap like this is beyond my comprehension. Maybe he had a mortgage payment due (hope it wasn't in Tahoe). But until smart people begin to shame stupid people into avoiding idiotic movies like this one, studios will continue to pump out drivel because it makes silly good money, even if it supposedly bombs.

Going Guerrilla...Over Wine?

French wine vintners are growing desperate.

A recent dispatch from the BBC chronicles a shadowy guerrilla group called the Crav, purportedly made up of wine growers that have given an ultimatum to the French government, saying it better raise wine prices or they're going to spill some blood.

This could get interesting.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's new president, hasn't commented publicly on the matter, but come Monday, France could become the equivalent of Monty Python's Hell's Grannies; hordes of 80 year-old, red-nosed and angry wine vintners blowing up stocks of Beringer White Zinfindel, crying, "Vive, la France!"

The problems with French wine and winemakers are voluminous. First, the wine bureucracy in France makes the world created in the movie Brazil look positively orderly. Second, as popularity and globalization hit the worldwide wine industry about ten years ago, France stubbornly stuck to old pricing structures and outmoded marketing in the face of such challenges. Really. Try to find a really good red wine from France in the $15-25 price range.

Also - and this is quality as well as a growing hinderance - French winemakers strictly adhere to the ideal of terrior, a concept simply defined as whatever the earth, wind and sky allows them in a given year. No irrigation. No manipulation. It's what the ideal of wine has been for centuries, a product of the life we live.

But heavy rains, droughts, early frosts or just a moderately damp season can make for extremely uneven reaps, and make wines with a distinctly different character from the year before, upsetting the growing hordes of novice wine drinkers, including me. With French wine, you never know what you're going to get from year to year. And with French wine, it takes upwards of $100 to find the character for which France has become famous. I've always wanted to understand French wine, but there's that whole 'paying my bills' thing. Other wine regions have found a way to adhere to idea of terrior and bring it to market in a reasonable price range.

The Crav has an uphill battle and the French government has a decision to make when it comes to what is uniquely French, thus deserving more subsidization. Check out the documentary, Mondovino to see just how dire things are getting. So dire in fact, French winemakers, as well as the greater European wine community, have such a surplus of unsold wine, they are considering selling tonnages equivalent to lakes-full of wine as biofuel.

So keep an eye out next week for Hell's Vintners. And go to How the World Works for the impetus to this post.

Pulling a Michael Moore on Michael Moore.

Um, I will be checking this out.

The Los Angeles Times has an article about two liberal filmmakers from Canada who followed Michael Moore during his 2004 college campus tour. The resulting documentary exposes, at length, a glut of fabrications and manipulations Moore has used in his documentaries.

It could be a load of crap, but there seems to be a level of credibility here that, in the least, warrants a viewing.

Moore's a tool and deserves a beatdown. There is a part of me that hopes it succeeds.

I applaud his targets but bemoan his methods. He's a manipulative whore that isn't even on the same continent as honest, both factually and emotionally.

And he invested in Halliburton?

Good nuggets here.

The cavalry is back! And then it's not.

In a fit of grinder dust, Darin Erstad made his return to the White Sox lineup yesterday. And as per usual, promptly went down in a fit of tweakiness.

The fact that he went down in the first inning, diving for a ball hit by Mike Fontenot, the second batter of the game, may have been a record for the shortest stint upon returning from the disabled list.

But Juan Gonzalez holds that record, grounding out to third base on the third pitch he saw after three years away from the game and pulling his hamstring on the trot down to first. He never even took the field.

I'm an Angels fan, so I had the privilege to watch, on a daily basis, Erstad's superior level of crapitude and tweakiness for 11 seasons. The 'he's sooo grindy' talk was present in Anaheim, too. In fact, the grindy, grindy, grindy mantra most likely started in its ubiquitous form in 2002 with the Angels' World Series run and the play of the pint-sized Superman, David Eckstein. You should have witnessed how much heart he showed grounding out to short.

And Erstad was part of that, that 'grindy' talk, mostly trumpeted by the worst TV tandem in the history of sports, Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler, a duo that brings (or brought, I thank all that is holy) new meaning to the phrase 'toeing the company line'. For a more encyclopedic list of this kind of silliness, visit FireJoeMorgan.com, particularly on Darin Erstad and David Eckstein.

While it seems a little late in the game, as it were, to critique Kenny Williams for signing Erstad (and they have many more problems than just Erstad), what Sox fans are witnessing right now - if they even care anymore - is, to the letter, a mirror of Erstad's last five seasons.

He came cheap, and may have been worth the risk, but adding this particular brand of tweakiness to a lineup already injury-prone (Podsednik, Crede, Thome) only aggravates the search for even a modicum of consistency, where Kenny rolled the dice one too many times and the reason they're fielding a Triple-A team. Oh, and the fact that their hitting is absolutely brutal.

But Erstad's season averages, taking away his one season that made his name seven years ago (.355, 25hr, 100rbi, .409 OBP), are .273, 8hr, 50rbi with an OBP of .327. In other words, worse than Jacque Jones, way worse, and someone the Sox are rumored to be looking to acquire!

While that trade will never happen, it almost makes sense for centerfield. It's an indicator of just how desperate things are getting and an example of how a seemingly solid signing in Erstad can royally screw up the works.

Odds on what inning Podsednik tweaks something? Fifth inning?

"There's no denying the smooth taste." - Rod Serling

Now my wife and I watch oodles of HGTV and select home-makeover shows, mainly to incessantly mock them, but some exhibit a superior level of design and creativity that's fun to see put together within a specified, half-hour time frame.

If anything, two years of watching these shows imparts an understanding of color, placement and design theory that my feeble brain never truly understood before and I'm probably a better man for it (you should have seen some of my apartments).

But a dirty virus has begun to creep into some of the crappier ones - prominent, and I mean PROMINENT, product placement. And it's not so much with product placement per se, it's the surreptitious nature in which they're placed.

It's been around forever. And the current level probably was ushered in with The Apprentice or maybe Fear Factor. Heck, Rod Serling used to smoke Chesterfields during his conclusions to the episodes of Twilight Zone and then immediately do a commercial for them, saying, "There's no denying the smooth taste."

On this note, since Dale Levitski is competing on Top Chef, I thought I'd check it out.


Let's go over, minute-by-minute, a product-placement account of last night's second episode of the third season:

0:00 - 1:00 - Food & Wine Magazine, Glad and Evian

Okay, they sponsor the show. Free pass.

1:00 - 3:00 - Evian and Glad

Maybe not okay. Random food being put into the fridge by contestants just waking up and getting some coffee are, what do you know!, Glad Press-n-Seal. Glad BigBag boxes are stacked just below the counter behind a contestant drinking coffee, talking about his hard life and reading the paper with a Glad Pop-Top lid sitting next to it. An Evian bottle is on the nightstand as a contestant is roused from sleep because everyone needs pure, artesian water refreshment in the middle of the night.

3:00 - 4:00 - General Electric

Segments segue from the contestant filing out of their suite to the QuickFire Challenge is a zoom in on a GE Monogram logo, not once but twice, in case you didn't catch it the first time.

4:00 - 5:00 - Florida Citrus Fruits, Calphalon cookware

They're using citrus fruits as the focus of the challenge, so some leniency here, but FLORIDA CITRUS is everywhere, a key product to the economy of Florida and huge advertiser nationwide. Calphalon pans, absolutely identifiable to people that know them, are ubiquitous.

11:00 - Kingsford

Elimination Challenge is a upscale BBQ event brought to you by Kingsford charcoal, because only Kingsford elicits the superlative nature of 'upscale' and 'BBQ'.

19:00 - Toyota Rav4

The contestants are given a budget for their BBQ challenge and go to shop for the ingredients at Fresh Market. Upon finishing, they load up the food into the back of an SUV and close the door. As the door closes, we get a zoom-in and close-up of the Toyota Rav4 logo on the back of SUV. No accounting for the clunky sound the door makes as it shuts.

20:00 - 24:00 - Glad is back.

While the contestants prepare the food in the kitchen, Glad containers, curiously still in their cardboard boxes with the big 'GLAD' across the side, sit right next to a chef as he mixes, completely in the way. This is a timed event so a clock in the kitchen is intermittently shown. Next to the clock sits a Glad box, turned just so.

As they pack up and put all their prepared food into the Igloo coolers, an orgy of Glad containers explode onto the scene. We are shown a chef sealing some food into Glad Pop-N-Seals with another prominent Glad cardboard box in camera-shot. Glad Freezer Bags are everywhere.

28:00 - And Evian's back in play.

The contestants, back at the apartment, get ready to go to the challenge. Spliced between testimonials and various packing up, a camera follows a contestant through the room and then stops. The contestant keeps walking but an Evian bottle is squared up and in focus, the only reason to stop precisely there.

Dale just turned a lotion bottle's label away from the camera. Could just be a coincidence but he was absolutely absent from this episode. Maybe he wasn't playing ball?

28:00 - 33:00 - Kingsford and Aqua Island Homes

The contest begins. As we are given an opening montage to the setting of the challenge, there's scantily-clad beach-goers, palm trees, sand and...a real estate sign for Aqua Island Homes? Being the Kingsford challenge, Kingsford litters the BBQ stations. More Calphalon, more Igloos, more Glad, more Evian. Now Kingsford is sponsoring it, but the killer is when a contestant extols the virtues of the various kinds of wood offered to cook with. Mesquite, hickory and Kingsford offers all of them! Now that's convenience...and upscale.

Oh, zoom-out of the meat in a pan of one of the contestants with an Evian bottle snuggled up against it. Cold water right up against a steaming hot plate of meat. Does everyone know Evian has the signature lipstick-red pop top. Get that?

33:00 - New one with Moët Champagne.

Champagne is poured for the upscale and sexy BBQ with the Moët label turned just right.

37:00 - More Glad and Evian

Time to pack up. Hey, let's use Glad ForceFlex garbage bags. They're the ones that never rip, even under the biggest stress. While we do this, let's drink some Evian because this is tiring work. Better yet, let's drink some Evian out of their large, decorated bottles with the embedded seal lid.

The rest is contestant elimination silliness. Oh, the drama. At least Sandie didn't pontificate about how strong she is and how other, better challenges await her and she can't be defeated, as is the M.O. for contestants on shows of this ilk.


Anyone feel like some Kingsford-smoked BBQ. We can wash it down with some Evian. Afterwards, we can pack up the leftovers in Glad containers while drinking some Moët Champagne. Anyone?

A&W commercial: Banking on the Stupidity of the People.

Advertising the use of 100% U.S. products has been a long-time, and occasionally abused, tradition for companies marketing in America. From U.S. car makers telling us that buying a Honda is somehow unpatriotic to Walmart advertising, in vague post-9/11 rhetoric with flags waving in the background, that shopping elsewhere may help the terrorists.

But A&W may have trumped them all.

In their new ad, an A&W loyalist sits next to Ronald McDonald and expresses his extreme disappointment that McDonald's uses New Zealand beef in their burgers while telling him A&W uses 100% U.S. beef in their PapaBurger.

It's a fairly new marketing device, used in the last ten years, where apparently our relationship with various companies/stores/restaurants can be something akin to a love affair, calling forth emotions usually reserved for intense love connections.

Playing on the recent fears of tainted pet food and toothpaste for China, A&W caters to the stupid by using loads of innuendo and insinuation - and most importantly plausible deniability - by saying McDonald's use of New Zealand beef betrays the very notion of 'being American'.

On the health issues of New Zealand beef, it is one of the least likely to be tainted with Mad Cow Disease, according to the United Nations. Not one reported case. Also, New Zealand beef is and has always been 100% organic, eliminating any threat related to hormonal 'frankenburger' concerns.

And curiously, A&W, a subsidiary of Yumi Brands, the people who bring you KFC, TacoBell and Long John Silver's, was recently sued and lost for their rampant cruel and unusual punishment in the killing of chickens for use in their products (in this case, PETA got it right).

But the best part is the plausible deniability. The ad makes no qualifying claims in association with the use of New Zealand beef, just that it apparently betrays the American consciousness, accompanied by the use of copious amounts of American flags and patriotic music in one form or another. The conclusion is there for only the viewer to draw. But with the timing with the pet food and toothpaste scare, the allusion is palpable.

And unbelievably pathetic.

Conservative bloggers are about as useless as a marzipan dildo.

Late last week, the immigration bill was resuscitated from the dead with a border security and enforcement attachment totaling $4.4 billion used to placate the fence-sitters.

And the conservative bloggers have given a unifying 'you're dead to me' in the direction of Bush.

Weeeell, bully for you!

I'm no fan of Bush. But if there was ever one issue that he accidentally got right, it's the understanding that immigration reform is so terribly long overdue, it boggles the mind.

Let's look at a few of the conservative bloggers' spewings:

"This is akin to amnesty."

No. This is amnesty. And there's nothing wrong with that. Cautious estimates say there are 12 illegal immigrants in the U.S. right now. More aggressive estimates put the number closer to 15-18 million. By the sheer magnitude of the situation, something have to be done. And we can knock off the 'they broke the law' bullshit. Have some level of compassion for your fellow man, or at least fake it for the purposes of a sane argument.

Let's say you live in Guatemala, have a wife and four kids and make the equivalent of $5 a day. Schools are shit. Working conditions blow. You're dirt-ass poor. You have two choices. Stay in your stupid situation...or...pay a border jumper $3000 and go to the United States where you can make fifteen times your current wage, live and work in something resembling sanitary conditions and be able to provide for you and your brood in a way never even imagined before. Or you could do it the 'legal' way and put yourself on a waiting list for migration to the United States through the U.S. Embassy and wait EIGHT years (on average) to be processed.

No choice.

"The government did this in 1986 and it didn't work."

It was the definition of a half-ass effort and didn't address the unforeseen dramatic increase in immigration the country saw in the 90s.

If you want to see a real immigration problem, look to Europe, particularly France, England and Amsterdam. Aside from the xenophobic asshats (LePen, etc.), real concerns like housing shortages, strain on infrastructure and educational systems along with true language and cultural barriers that have created something resembling a caste system (see the Paris riots last year). When it comes to xenophobic remarks, much of the rhetoric coming from some of the bloggers mimics, word for word, some of LePen's campaign speeches.

The United States does not have anything close to these issues, at least not near to the extent Europe does. The absorption, over the last decade, of millions of legal and illegal immigrants has been amazingly successful. And quit using the word 'plague' to describe the situation.

"All these illegal immigrants put a strain on the U.S. economy."

Bullshit.

Dozens of studies have analyzed the impact and nearly every one has shown the economic impact to be so minimal that it could be filed under 'within the margin of error', and that is only taking into account the tangible, concrete numbers.

"The cheap labor depresses wages."

Strike two.

This only happens at the lowest end of the U.S. economy (unskilled workers) and much of the deficit is made up by the corresponding price reduction in consumer products. Any U.S. citizen complaining about lower wages has every possible access to further education that their supposed illegal immigrant 'competitors' do not. That excuse doesn't wash with me, flapjack.

"They put on a strain on the social services network."

And strike three.

A great portion of the illegal immigrant population ARE on the payroll, complete with all the corresponding federal, state and FICA taxes withdrawn, yet, because of the fear of being deported, many simply do not use any service that would create a paper trail or send up a red flag. The numbers from most studies find the impact on this issue just as marginal as the supposed wage depression.

There is a noted strain on emergency hospital care and clinics but this is only seen as something near a problem in three states - California, Texas and New York - where a full two-thirds of the illegal immigrant population is concentrated.

But Social Security, something Congress has decided to avoid addressing in any meaningful way for two decades now, may be saved by illegal immigrants. With the U.S. population aging, the influx of young immigrant workers on the books and paying taxes, the ratio of beneficiary to worker tips the scales in favor of solvency, at least in the short term (20 years).

"The guest worker program won't work and will create a depressed underclass."

What do we have now?

It's flawed, but not dangerously flawed and, in some ways, bold in the sense that it tries something in order to find what works and what doesn't. If anything, it's an attempt to formalize and document who is here and what are their skills. So what is the argument?


In my experience, conversations with people who against any immigration reform begins to reek of xenophobic asshattedness. Usually, they don't know any illegal immigrants, or worse, know only one who happens to be a raging asshole. Oodles more could be written here that gets into the details of such conservative (and liberal) silliness, but I don't have the energy.

$20 says it doesn't pass.

Why was he taking his pants off?

This just in. Carlos Zambrano has a screw loose.

During the fight at Wrigley today, he had to be restrained from getting in on the melee but apparently, in his fit of frustration, decided that taking off his pants would do. (about 26 seconds in).

How FWB.

When will the lambs stop screaming!?

I was doing some trolling over at waiterrant.net today and couldn't resist the opportunity to tell the story of the one waiting job I ever quit in a huff.

Here's a copy and paste:

My first job ten years ago, at a failing chain restaurant just BELOW Applebee’s on the restaurant spectrum, was the only job I ever quit.

It was a weekday lunch, a Tuesday IRCC, one of those shifts waiters are forced to take in order to score the weekend shifts. I was resigned to the fact that I would be making $32 that day, but I wasn’t ready for the 16-top that sat in my section just as I was campaigning to be cut.

They were large people, big and sweaty with six equally round children in tow. Aside from the copious amounts of deep-fried food and Diet Cokes they ordered, I had never experienced a louder and more rude table up to that point in my waiting career.

But the kicker came when they asked for the check. Ten separate checks, multiple split items. This was the time when Micros REALLY sucked and this particular restaurant had decided to stay with the 1989 model. After much cursing and questions regarding who gets what and how much, I was spent. I had hit a waiting tables nadir.

Things were just finishing up and I glanced at the table from the waiter nook and saw the woman that caused it all. She was big, dressed in a moo-moo and sitting right in front of the bay window. The noon summer sun was shining through her moo-moo, revealing more than I wanted to see and she was going to town on the remnants of the chicken wing sampler, so loudly clacking I could hear it 20 feet away. In her arm was her three year-old doing the same, gnawing away, both open-mouthed chewing in unison. She saw me looking at her and asked through her chewing for a refill on her Diet Coke.

That was it. I was done. I couldn’t reconcile this with a good way to earn a living. I walked back to the kitchen, patted my manager on the back and put my book in his chest. I gave him a ‘thanks - nothing personal, just can’t do this’, and walked out, brimming with a restorative optimism of a Jack Kerouac hero.

Three days later, tail firmly implanted between legs, I tried to get my job back.

To this day, the most embarrassing, soul-crushing moment of my life.

Note: I forgot (truly) to mention the fact that, when asking (gulp!) for my job back, I was rebuffed...with extreme prejudice.

In Defense of Mike North???

This morning on the Mike North Morning Show, Chicago White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper, a regular and paid contributor to the show, took strong exception (audio) to North's characterization of the White Sox as 'laying down and quitting'. So much so, Cooper only rebuttal consisted of calling Mike a 'jerk-off'.

Aaaah, sports radio. Good stuff.

There's a very recent history here. A month ago, just about the time everyone began to understand the Sox were going to blow this year, A.J. Pierzynski, on North's show, expressed his relative displeasure over not being in the starting lineup to start the series against the Cubs.

Ozzie Guillen, always the wordsmith, immediately called in (he wasn't called) and proceeded to drop a load of F-bombs, over the air, with an 'I make the damn lineup!' sprinkled in. North responded with a convoluted and transparent diatribe against Ozzie that begged for an entry back into something approaching relevance. And it actually worked.

Now Mike North hasn't been on the same continent as interesting, smart or even mildly humorous for a loooong time. But this is his job. This is what he does. For fifteen years now. This is the gig.

Sports journalism fits only the nominal definition of journalism, for the most part. And sports radio is the bastard child of that. Nobody is under any delusions about it's importance in the grand scheme of things.

Except athletes and managers.

I understand that if Mike North said the things he said in the interview in the manner in which he said it, I'd want to pop him as well. And North's heading toward a Chet Coppock-like beatdown.

But Cooper and Guillen have to act like they've won something recently, which they have. Act like they've achieved something in the profession, which they have. Act like they have a job that demands a level of decorum, which they do. Most of all, GROW UP! Know what you're walking into. Know all the possibilities. Know how to react with a modicum of dignity when you're taking it in the nuts in life.

W/r/t the White Sox, the ship is sinking, my friends. The mice are fleeing. It's gettin' ugly.

It was a good run.

Nice Hair, Dale!

It's always nice to see people you know achieve some level of success.

A few months ago, my wife and I ate at Schwa, an silly-good restaurant on Ashland garnering national raves for it's innovative and quasi-experimental American cuisine with a Midwest bent. It's a tiny operation with a rather long waiting list for reservations.

Halfway through the meal, one of the chefs came out with a course - as they do - and gave an enthusiastic hello to us in the manner in which indicated that we knew him. After much searching of our silly brains trying to place him, we finally sucked it up and asked the waiter.

To my shock and dismay, we both had worked with him at a place in Iowa City for almost a year. After getting over my initial feeling of terdballness (I'm terrrible with names and apparently faces - I'm an arrogant ass), it was great to see someone we knew achieve such a level of success so quickly.

This brings us to Dale Levitski. Tonight, on Bravo, a show I've never watched, a guy I worked with and lived next to for two years in Iowa City will contend for the best foodie honor on the third season of Top Chef.

Dale started out as a line cook at the Ground Round, the place where I started my illustrious waiting career. I really only knew him through mutual drunk and stoned friends but the man knew how to cook.

I think he's bored.

Good Luck, Dale!

Read the article about his appearance in Metromix.com

I watch people chew for a living.

Farhad Manjoo, a tech columnist and fledging blogger for Salon, has always entertained when it comes to writing about technology without being too techy.

Aside from his man-crush on Steve Jobs, he usually writes smart, incisive articles that hit it in the nuts and gives a unique and accessible spin. Today, he juuuust missed it.

In writing about user reviews on websites ranging restaurants to consumer products, Manjoo nails the crux of the phenomenon.

Online ratings are beset by one main flaw, something pollsters call "response bias." Because people are more likely to rate products that have moved them in some way -- either positively or negatively -- ratings for most items brim with extreme opinions.

True, that.

A peculiar aspect of working in Chicago is how much the user review websites matter, especially with the start-ups. Metromix, the Chicago Reader, Lth Forum and a new entry Yelp have been poured over daily by the owners I've worked for in a vein attempt to find a vibe.

For poops and cackles, I check them out on a semi-regular basis. Aside from the copious amounts of spelling errors and general ignorance when it comes to the menu/cuisine, one thing sticks out above everything else and it's the thing Manjoo misses. These people are morons!

A restaurant atmosphere is like a sewing circle, everything talked about, gossiped about, cursed at and analyzed to the point that you can recall the excruciating minutiae of every second of every shift from the past week. That includes the customers you just know are going to review their experience later (I've seen notepads).

Scan the next restaurant you visit. Look for the cellphone on the belt. Look for the gray fright wig. Look for the fanny packs. Look for the hiked-up pants and pastel shirt. All these, in my experience, qualify as a probable reviewer. But more importantly, look for the people looking around, watching the bussers, the hostess, the owner. Most importantly, look for the middle-aged couple not talking to each other. At all. The whole meal.

And most, most importantly, look for her.

They're a miserable lot, lamenting a life passed by, dumpster-diving for a shred of importance to salvage, wipe off and place of their mantle. User reviews provide that elusive, that lost, that gone-by. It's a chance for people to scream into the dying of the light and say, "My opinion matters, Damn it!" In it's very worst incarnations, it allows their Ignatius J. Reilly to come out with a bellowing of "that meal was an abortion!"

It's not personal. I've come out relatively unscathed in my time in Chicago. The only quasi-bad review I personally have ever had was 'a little haughty, but informative and responsive'. I'm lucky to currently work at a restaurant that's impervious to such review website influence, though we've had some doozies.

And waiting tables for eleven years brings with it an 'I don't give a crap' attitude about nearly everything. But I've known these people, the situations and their beef when it comes to the bad ones. Trust me. They lie, they exaggerate, they misrepresent, they have a compulsive need to be appalled.

So the next time you scour the user reviews to pick a new restaurant and see a scathing review, think of the person you most hate in life and everything that entails. It's a good bet he or she or someone just like them probably wrote it.

Find it. Know it. Love it!

Holy crap!

Last year, we started dabbling in the world of Rosés. We found many we liked. Some we didn't. But mostly, we were stunned by the silliness that kept us from the drinking this perfect summer quaff. Today, we found one that surpasses everything that preceded.

It's a 2004 Peñascal Rosé, Vino de Mesa Rosado, semi-dry, semi-seco. For people that could give two shits about wine but are oddly/secretly curious, give this one a try. It could end up being a gateway drug.

I'm not a 'let's go sit on the patio and drink pink wine!' person. Restaurant patio people, in general, annoy me (a by-product of years of waiting on these particular terdballs). With this rosé, you get only a bit of the fizzy, a perfect balance of cherry notes and a hint (oh, so hint) of dryness. In other words, it doesn't sit in your throat for hours like Italian rosés and it doesn't make you want to clack.

Binny's sells it for $6! Six fuckin' dollars! Peñascal (Spain, Castilla y León) has pumped out some supremely good wines for the price for a few years now. Check out the 2004 Shiraz, which sells for about $8 everywhere. The Sauvignon Blanc blows and the Tempranillo is passable at best. But with the Shiraz, you can't beat the price. It's nothing mind-blowing, but always represents well with solid tannins, blackberry overtones and a little vanilla thrown in. If you're poor, like we are occasionally, you can't beat it.

If anything, when it comes to rosés, it's better than sucking down another Miller Lite and trying to convince yourself that is somehow refreshing.

"My ass is two big trash bags filled with ricotta cheese!"

If and when you should find the time, check out the DVD commentary of Sideways.

Paul Giamatti, always the indie darling who seems to make everyone and everything better with every role he takes, has a ball with this one. But it's Thomas Haden Church who steals the show. When it's over, you will immediately think that Church's career may be the worst example of Hollywood typecasting.

The most exposure I had of Church before Sideways was unfortunately Wings, a superlatively forgettable show starring Tim Daly (a man looking to set the record for failed ABC shows within a three year time frame).

Basically, Wings was Taxi set in a small airport in Nantucket with Thomas Haden Church playing the role of Andy Kaufman. If there was anything the show offered, it was Church (with a little Tony Shalhoub sprinkled in). While the show was absolute formulaic crap, Church displayed a keen sense for comedic nuance and timing even when his lines on paper offered none.

With the commentary, you are treated to a hilarious back-and-forth between Giamatti and Church. I watched it alone, late at night, and was audibly laughing my ass off. With Church, most of all, you want to know this guy.


Inter alia: The Sopranos is over. Yesterday, I finally met another person who couldn't give a fuck about the show. I've seen probably seven episodes (second season, mostly).

Maybe it's because I felt burned by the investment I gave to Six Feet Under. Maybe it's because so many more people found it so much more watchable than the supremely better show The Wire. Maybe it's because I never bought the causal relationship between being a murderous psychotic and honoring tradition/family while attempting to mitigate the resulting guilt by having a fucked-up relationship with his therapist. Funny/interesting but only at first.

It's nothing moral, just seemed sloppy, like the writers intentionally provided this wide-open setup in order to avoid a cohesive and thought-out story arc. In other words, Six Feet Under. Oh, the haphazardness!

Paris Hilton Sobs

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Hands on knees.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Stand up. Arch head back.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Hunch back over.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Aaahhh! It's. Good. To. Laugh!

"Roger Clemens is in George's Box!"

Never knew he was a woman. Be gentle, Roger.

Old clip, but still funny and telling every time I hear it. I liked the Yankees for a brief two-month period in 1987, mainly because I liked Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield growing up.

Then it began to feel wrong, like I was having an affair with stupidity. I thank Suzyn Waldman for allowing me to reminisce about those days of yore when one could flirt with the idiotic and blame it on youthful indiscretion.

Today begins the great exorcising of past Yankee demons with the return of Clemens. But let us remember that the Yankees began to play something resembling baseball before Jesus Christ returned to the team. Please?! It doesn't hurt they were given a gift with a four game series against the White Sox.

On that topic, he was supposed to pitch Monday against said White Sox but a mysterious groin injury arose. East Coast television markets and Saturday game of the week apparently beckoned. Media Whore!

As of this writing, his line is 4 ip, 5 hits, 3 runs, 3 earned, 2 walks, 5 k against the Pirates. Of all the dramatic things!

And according to this picture, it's odd he could even pitch at all given he's been dead for some time.

Ffffiiiinnnneeee!!!!

So I was tagged by those lovely people over at the All You Care To Eat blog. Basically, from what I understand, it's a blogger chain letter. Bastard! My superstitious nature will compel me to find eight other bloggers to torture with such pain in order to avert death next month. One upside may be that this will get me off my ass and write some more so this will be buried in 'Older Posts'.

The rules:

"Bloggers must post these rules and provide eight random facts about themselves. In the post, the tagged blogger tags eight other bloggers and notify them that they have been tagged."


1. A plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with sour cream and onion Pringles is hands-down the best meal on this or any known or theoretical universe.

2. In my 12 years in Iowa City, I lived in 16 different apartments, four in one calendar year. I was a little squirrelly in my 20s and had roommates who had a penchant for getting kicked out of school or attempting suicide.

3. When I was twelve, I took the career aptitude test designed to find what job I would be best suited for as an adult based on my personality traits and proficiency in math, science, etc.. The result? Insurance salesman. Still working through that one.

4. My sister-in-law owns a salon and cut my hair when I was growing up. When I was thirteen, she ever-so-gently predicted that I would be bald. Started losing it at nineteen.

5. Hitting a home run is the most pure, life-affirming feeling this world has to offer. And it's not even close.

6. I watched the Godfather trilogy for the first time three months ago. Worked in a video store for five years and never saw any of them. Throw Scarface on that pile.

7. In grade school, nobody could beat me at tetherball. Not even Clint Richmond, that punk. They all came and they all went home disappointed.

8. From 1998 to 2003, I didn't work on Wednesday nights. I never told anyone what I was doing. Never even hinted at it. It became a carefully calculated routine. I would go buy some Taco Bell - three baja gorditas, nacho chips and wild cherry Pepsi (combo no. 5) - and come home. Made sure everything is taken care of w/r/t phone messages and various college assignments. Put on some comfortable clothes, grabbed my food, drew the curtains, turned the television to the WB and settled in for a blissful hour of Dawson's Creek. Yes. I'm a woman.

That's all. MateFamber, you've been tagged.