The Nippon Ham Fighters are my new favorite baseball team.  Do you think they fight with ham, or against ham?

Let the ham beware!

First there was miracle fruit, now there’s miracle powder. I tried a long-frozen miracle fruit a few months ago, but it didn’t have the desired taste-changing effect (too long in the freezer, I guess). I’m going to have to hunt down some of the powder and try again.

This sushi restaurant delivers sushi, and cans of soup. Via Lore Sjoberg.

Through a combination of garbage picking, oddly colored food and unfulfillable requirements, the Democrats plan to have the least fun convention ever!

50 Cent hates Taco Bell, but not for the same reason that most other people hate Taco Bell.

I knew it, I knew it!

NYTimes presents an interactive graphic detailing the best and worst foods at each of baseball’s 50 stadiums. Via Doobybrain.

Yuck.

Guess which Supreme Court justice likes Egg McMuffins…

Mini Donut Maker! Via Jacob Grier.

Students are largely rejecting free lunches due to social stigma.  I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

 Looks good, eh?

86% of those who claim to have food allergies are wrong.

You’re campaigning in DC and you don’t get your donuts from Krispy Kreme? For shame.

Picture via My Way.

After a lengthy knifemaker hiatus, the series returns with our sixth member of the 1981 Knifemakers Guild Directory: John (Mike) Bassney. John (Mike)’s picture looks something of a cross between John C. Reilly and Tom Selleck — in other words, like a totally awesome knifemaker. This is really our first knifemaker whose picture looks like someone I would want making my knife. He doesn’t look like a cowboy, or a family man, or a terror, he looks like the sort of guy who would take your knife order and just get right down to business. He’s even wearing what I presume to be a knifemaking apron. This guy would have gotten my business… if I would have ever ordered a custom made knife in 1981 in the greater Wisconsin region.

Something else great about John (Mike) — according to his bio, he went to SUNY Buffalo, graduated, and then moved to Wisconsin. Why is that great you ask? Well, I’m not sure, but I think this is our first confirmed college graduate knifemaker, which is something.

His motto is “I simply wish to make the best knife I can with the material available and at the same time work in line with the customer’s wishes.” That’s modern business-speak. He’s like a corporate executive. I love this guy.

John (Mike) Bassney today

Sadly John (Mike) Bassney is no longer a member of the Knifemakers Guild according to their member list. He was only a probationary member in 1981, so maybe he didn’t make the cut, or maybe he simply let his membership lapse. He might have lost interest in knifemaking altogether, it’s hard to know.

The Google record on Mr. Bassney is quite slim. John (Mike) Bassney turns up nothing that I didn’t write myself, John Bassney is likewise unhelpful.

Mike Bassney, though, does provide us with three hits. He apparently went to Painted Post High School in Painted Post, New York from 1958 to 1962. That would line up well with him graduating from SUNY Buffalo in 1968, so this is probably him. This guy thought he taught shop in Michigan during the 1970s (possible, since he ended up in Wisconsin by 1981). He still appears to live in Lodi, Wisconsin, and he has a job at a local Subway in Columbus, Wisconsin. He’s the host.

Knowing about his knife proclivities, I can surely say that this is one Subway I would never rob.

Previous knifemaker: Scott Barry
Next knifemaker: Pierce Franklin Beck, Jr.

Other 1981 Knifemaker’s Guild Directory Pages: first page, all pages, all pictures.

After a while, I can judge within a few seconds either way just how much laughter we can get. Sometimes, I’m dead wrong. In Silent Movie, there was a sequence that no one will ever see; it’s on the cutting room floor. The sequence is called “Lobsters in New York.” It starts with a shot of a neon sign that reads “Chez Lobster.” The camera drops down to restaurant doors and pulls back. The doors open, the camera goes inside, and we see greeting us a huge well-dressed lobster with claws and tails; around the camera come two other very well-dressed lobsters in evening clothes. The maitre d’ lobster leads them to a waiter lobster in a white jacket, who leads them to a table. They order, then follow the waiter lobster to a huge tank. In the tank, little people are swimming around. We thought this was hysterical. The lobsters choose some people, pick them up squirming around, and the sequence ends. Every time we saw this sequence, we were on the floor laughing. When we showed it to an audience… they did not laugh at all at “Lobsters in New York.” They stared at each other. Not one snicker. Finally we got some embarrassed sounds and yawns. We threw out the entire sequence as a result.

“My Movies: The Collision of Art and Money” by Mel Brooks, excerpted from The Movie Business Book by Jason Squire, ed. (1983).

I recently started reading Empire by Orson Scott Card. It’s generally vaguely crummy and has had a number of typos, but what’s most distracting is that he spells ‘cookie’ with a ‘y’ and no ‘ie’. Several times. Cooky. Really, who spells cookie that way? When he pluralizes it, he does spell it ‘cookies’, so he’s at least aware of the potential alternative construction.

Yes, the use of the word ‘crummy’ earlier was intentional, though I should have spelled it with a ‘b’.

Taurine, a major in ingredient in most energy drinks, is also a major ingredient in bile.  Delicious.

I watched Idiocracy for the second time tonight. It’s still pretty amusing, though I stick with my initial review of “decidedly uneven.” Anyway, it reminded me that kottke posted a link to a commercial for the then-fictional-soon-to-be real Gatorade drink from the movie: Brawndo. The commercial, if real, is possibly the best commercial I’ve ever seen:

It will make you win at things you’re not even supposed to win at, like yelling!

The retrospectively predictable, yet momentarily surprising results of placing something very hot into something relatively cold:

Goodbye glass cooking dish.  What will I make my brownies in now?

I do an awful impression of Andy Rooney when I’m feeling punchy. The impression is of a bit I saw him do once on 60 Minutes where he, for two minutes, simply listed different ways that people could mail things. “Some people send postcards, some people send airmail. One time I sent a letter…” for two minutes! It really is an amazing job that he has.

This is the closest bit I could find on YouTube, entitled Food for Thought, where Andy Rooney reads the labels on a few food products.

That’s it.

How did he get on TV doing this?

Dear Del Monte,

On Tuesday, October 16th I purchased a package of Del Monte Quality brand celery from my local Safeway that contained two celery hearts and one caterpillar. Obviously I only intended to purchase the celery hearts, so the caterpillar could be seen as something of a bonus. A very, very disgusting bonus.

Just today, when I opened the package, I was halfway through preparing a large, tasty salad for myself when I discovered the caterpillar. He seemed quite friendly, though disturbingly slimy and gross. While I might not mind having him as a friend, I certainly don’t want to find him crawling out of my lunch.

Here are some nice closeups of our friend the caterpillar:

And here the caterpillar is in its natural environment, surrounded by half eaten celery stalks and the Del Monte Quality celery packaging.

Before I threw away the celery, and shoved my friend the caterpillar into the garbage disposal, I took one last picture demonstrating my current opinion of Del Monte “Quality” products:

While I acknowledge there may be a limit to how much caterpillar prevention you as a corporation can undertake, if this represents your best I would ask that you hire a series of scientists to invent some sort of an x-ray caterpillar scanner because this sort of thing really, really puts me off eating produce… especially yours.

Thank you.

PS. To see larger versions of these images, click on them and then, once that page loads, click on them again.  

My local vending machines sometimes stock Hostess Cupcakes (the pinnacle of vending machine options). The problem is that sometimes they’re stocked behind other items, so you’ve got to wait for four people to buy coconut flavored mini-donuts before you can buy a tasty chocolate cupcake.

The worst part is that you can see the tasty cupcakes hiding in the machine and you know you can’t buy them until the donuts are gone. I always pray for the mini-donut people to hurry the hell up.