Trash Talk: Much Trash, Very Sport, So Talk

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Yes, it’s me, the golf widow, once again drafting a Trash Talk post.

And yes, I’m here at home alone enjoying the quiet of my remaining golf widowhood. This weekend is one of the last of regular play on the local course; next weekend there will be some celebratory golf outing shindig in which my kids will also golf while I dogsit.

Meanwhile I’m doing exciting things like cleaning carpets and scrubbing floors, washing draperies, and baking since I won’t be able to much next weekend with dogs and adult children underfoot.

What about you? Are you sportsing, or watching sportsing, or cleaning up after this week’s hurricane? Do tell.

~ ~ ~

Dreadful news came from Indonesia this week when at least 127 people died in a stampede at the Kanjuruhan Stadium after police used tear gas to disperse an angry crowd gathering on the football pitch.

This Reuters’ video shows how the crowd funneled toward an exit:

But this video reveals the animosity police displayed toward the attendees on the field which may also have led to panic:

The resulting death toll already exceeds that of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, making Kanjuruhan Stadium disaster in Malang the sixth deadliest sporting event related disaster in history.

Let’s hope there will be a thorough inquiry into this horror with accountability, and more quickly than followed the deadly Hillsborough crush. There are global repercussions in spite of the soccer match’s local nature; were there any stadium design problems which encouraged this crush? Were there lessons from policing at the stadium which might prevent future stampedes?

~ ~ ~

It’s been a shitty week in the National Football League – not because of any one game but because of players’ health and the league’s handling of the same.

Lots of buzz right now after this tweet by St. Louis Cardinal’s JJ Watt:

ahead of this news:

Atrial fibrillation (A-fib) is a particular kind of irregular heart beat rhythm. There are many underlying causes though it occurs most frequently in persons age 50 and older. Watt is a bit young and assuming his general health has been monitored by the team, conditions like heart disease and diabetes are unlikely.

Football fans are shocked by this development but they shouldn’t be; A-fib can also be caused by viruses, both during active infection and as sequelae. We should expect to see more younger persons developing cardiac sequelae because of exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

Watt may or may not have had COVID, but it’s not impossible for an exposure to have played a role in his A-fib event.

It should disturb football fans that Watt’s health care privacy was violated in spite of HIPAA privacy rules – especially since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision undermined citizens’ unenumerated right to privacy.

As distressing as it is to know an NFL player was treated for A-fib this week and is playing today, it’s also distressing that another NFL player’s career may be over because the NFL and their team didn’t handle the player’s recent injury with more caution.

The Miami Dolphins’ 24-year-old quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was injured during last weekend’s meetup with the Buffalo Bills:


In spite of what appears to be a head injury in the second quarter, Tagovailoa came back after halftime and finished the game throwing 186 yards after he was given a once-over by the team’s medical personnel which said Tagovailoa had a neck injury. The NFL Players’ Association demanded an investigation into what appeared to be the Dolphins’ skirting of the league’s concussion rules.

Before Thursday’s match against the Cincinnati Bengals, the concussion Legacy Foundation’s founder tweeted about Tagovailoa:

A sadly prescient opinion; Tagovailoa suffered head and neck injuries during the game, so severe that he manifested a fencing response on the field before the Dolphins’ medical team could reach him.

It was so awful and gruesome I won’t even share it, such an obvious sign of a head injury. He was seen at the local hospital but the team managed to get him packed up and on a plane with the rest of the team to head home to Miami. Goodness knows what all that handling including pressure changes did to Taigovaloa’s head and neck.

The NFLPA terminated the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant involved in the assessment of Tagovailoa after his Week 3 injury before Thursday night’s game, but too late for Tagovailoa whose career may be over.

How badly do football fans need sports? At what point will they demand the NFL do better by players?

Or have fans become numb after more than 31 months of death and disability chewing away at the country during the pandemic?

~ ~ ~

Finally, we get to my kind of sports.

The World Series kicked off last night in Kansas City, Missouri. Nope, not Major League Baseball, not any kind of ball sports but the American Royal World Series of BBQ.

I think we need to send our contributor Jim White to this event next year, provided a hurricane doesn’t bear down on his part of the country next September/October.

Better get to practicing, Jim!

~ ~ ~

Once again, this thread will be an overflow catch-all this week if the House January 6 Committee hearing is rescheduled to this week. Bring all your off-topic discussion here to this open thread.

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83 replies
  1. I Never Lie and am Always Right says:

    It was great to see Pujols pick up 3 RBIs in his final home game to tie Babe Ruth’s total RBIs. I’m looking forward to the post-season and hoping for a deep run by the Cards.

    • Thomas Paine says:

      JJ Watt is an Arizona Cardinal. The only Cardinals in STL are baseball players ! They look good and Molina and Pujols are on a roll with help from Goldschmidt and the next generation. If they can get by the Dodgers they be able to get Pujols another WS ring.

      Mahomes and the Chiefs looked pretty awesome tonite against Brady and the Buc’s. Brady can still throw the ball with pinpoint accuracy – an amazing athlete.

    • Ralph H white says:

      My Braves just swept the Mets in the one of the great end of season series ever. We whupped two of the best pitchers in baseball in Degrom and Sherzer. There are some really good teams, but Braves have a legit shot to repeat. Meanwhile my Falcons have won two in a row and my National Champion Bulldogs are undefeated, though Mizzou gave us a scare Saturday. Yeah, I’m kind of spoiled right now.

  3. jhinx says:

    On BBQ, here’s what I do with pork and chicken: brine both with a combo of 1/8 cup table salt, 1/4 brown sugar, 1 qt water (alter proportions for more meat/chicken). You’ll need a big bowl. Brine at least 6 hours. Place on grill over coals supplemented with wood chips (apple, hickory, maple – not too fond of mesquite, whatever you prefer). Cap the grill and let everything cook slowly (20 minutes about).

    … drinking…

    Did you set a timer? GAH! Next time set a timerI Run out and find out if your expensive meat is ruined!

    *Whew* You caught it before everything was ruined. Turn it.

    Back inside (don’t let any bugs in, spouses hate that).

    ‘nother drink. Umm, where was I?

    My favorite BBQ sauces are Sweet Baby Rays Regular (or spicy), or Jack Daniels BBQ sauce. Wife says they can go on at the table, but I like them burned on the meat. We go both ways.

    • Rayne says:

      Depends on what I’m barbecuing but I may brown the meat on the grill before the long slow cooking phase. I’ve adapted a recipe for beef brisket from my in-laws’ Texan branch of the family which calls for a dry rub and slow baking — but who turns on the fucking oven in the middle of summer in Texas? That’s insane. I apply the rub, let stand for an hour, grill until well browned all over, then slow cook in an electric roaster in my summer baking station out in the garage. Check it in about 6 hours when hubs comes in and asks what the hell smells so good in the garage. Apply sauce liberally and allow to slow cook another 30 minutes until hubs is pacing in the kitchen asking if there’s something he can help with (a sure sign of doneness).

      The rest of my barbecuing of late has been in the Instant Pot. Brown first outdoors after a rub, then cook 45 minutes under high pressure. Or apply rub and sous vide, then grill, but this method is not as consistently reliable as the Instant Pot.

      I never drink when cooking anymore, at least not until the meat is in the roaster or the Instant Pot and can be ignored for one or more hours.

      • Sara McIntire says:

        Delighted to learn I’m not the only one who uses an instant pot for pork. BBQ not my thing but a pork and tomatillo stew with hominy made is the IP is delish.

        • Rayne says:

          Love my IP for pork. Made a big batch of pork this week for string bean with pork stir fry and pork lo mein. I wish I’d had an IP back when my kids were in school, would have made dinners so much faster and easier, and the kids could have done more to help given how easy the IP is to use.

          Just remembered my mom has a recipe for asado de puerco — I think it’s a chilorio — which calls for ancho chiles and orange juice. I should ask her if I can have it because it’s probably perfect in the IP.

  4. Bobby Gladd says:

    Golf.

    My late dad was a life-long golf addict. I once asked him “OK, Pop, let me see if I’ve got this right. You spend thousands of dollars for this equipment, you can pay hundreds of dollars for a round on a good course, and the OBJECT of this game is to do LESS of it?”

    Football.

    Roll Tide (wife is Bama 1972). Back to AP #1? Not sure they deserve that after the AR Hogs game.

    My Baltimore Ravens. WTAF?

    • Rugger9 says:

      Bama’s #1 this week probably had to more to do with Georgia nearly getting beaten in Columbia, and not looking good either. It would seem that Mizzou just gave the SEC DCs a lot of ideas.

      Hey, bmaz, what really happened in Tempe with Herm?

      Also, somewhat under the radar, the AFA was busted for NCAA violations and will spend the next two years on (double-secret) probation. Getting in hot water with the NCAA isn’t really news, but the USAFA is one of the places where the honor code is front and center: “a cadet will not lie, cheat or steal and will report anyone that does” so to see a fundamental lack of morality there is a bit of a shock. Then again, it’s the USAFA which is routinelyin the crosshairs and beaten in court by the MRFF for excessive bible-thumping so maybe some of those fundamentalist chaplains imported the SEC win-at-any-costs model.

      Lastly, on Tua the NFL’s ‘independent’ neurologist signed off on his return, no matter how ill-advised. The questions about independence and I suspect the protocol used to assess Tua will need to be answered. The protocol likely is a subject of the NFLPA-NFL contract (or it will be now…) and one wonders if it is as much of a joke as Individual-1’s mental cognition exam was.

      Tua is not alone here or the first but he should be the last. There are probably hundreds of cases where concussive brain damage was a significant factor in severely anti-social behavior. The transitory nature of NFL fame (the average career is less than four years and the median probably less than that) means the risk/reward ratio is very unfavorable for all of us.

      • bmaz says:

        Dunno about Herm, but in addition to the pending sanctions, he was running the program into the ground. Players were fleeing and none really wanted to come here. It was getting bad.

        • Rayne says:

          Probably won’t get much interest in hockey here until 1) the NHL’s North America 2022-2023 season begins on October 11, and 2) snow begins to fall in earnest up north here, which might mean slowly growing interest over the next 8-10 weeks.

    • Pegleg55 says:

      Not sure about your golf logic. If you think about it sports like track and swimming has as their central goal spending less time on the activity.

      • Bobby Gladd says:

        Ok. Fair enough.

        Waft of “apples vs oranges” there?

        1,500 meters is still 1,500 meters irrespective of the relative velocities of the competing runners.

        Shooting 60 rather than 80 is doing 25% less “golf.”

        It was just a joke, anyway. We all know that the goal is to demo your eye-hand chops, quantified inversely via the end-of-round tally.

  5. Peterr says:

    I almost went to the American Royal this weekend, but other events intervened. It is a spectacular event for anyone remotely interested in BBQ.

    The big competition, though, is strictly for the cream of the BBQ crop. It is an invitational, and you have to win a state championship or a big regional competition to even have an opportunity to pay your competition registration fee. I’d love to see Jim next October, and even moreso if he was able to win some event in Florida that would qualify him for the Royal.

    My two favorite things to ‘cue are pork butt (aka pork shoulder) and turkey. I’ll do a turkey any time of the year, and the smoke from the BBQ gives it an amazing flavor. At Thanksgiving, our family is especially thankful that I do the turkey outside, as this frees up valuable oven space/time for Mrs Dr. Peterr’s pies (pick your flavor: pecan, apple, pumpkin, or whatever else strikes her fancy to make that year) and other sides requiring an oven.

    I also love smoking a whole salmon, though that was easier to get when I lived in the SF Bay area as opposed to KC. Then there’s Brazilian chicken thighs, which begins with a four hour soak in a garlic and Brazilian rum marinade. Yum!

    Oh hell. I just love bbq-ing damn near anything, and am good enough at it that the family asks what I’m bbq-ing next.

      • Peterr says:

        There is no such thing as a porkbutt that is too big. In the winter, Mrs Dr Peterr will take the leftovers and put it into a fantastic pot pie. Very very good stuff.

      • bmaz says:

        I am all for this. Have not talked to Jim since maybe Friday, but he may well be doing that, and would not have to travel far to do it.

      • Pegleg55 says:

        You may have addressed this in some previous post but have you ever tried golfing yourself? It’s actually a ton of fun.

    • jdmckay says:

      Turkey my favorite, for decades. Usually cook at least 8 every year.

      Over the years, I tried every single turkey cooking method out there. Brine, barbecue and bought (I think) 3 different smokers just for Turkey. Had plenty of pretty good turkeys through these lab experiments. It became a matter of personal pride: I am the turkey guy!!!

      About 10 years ago, had a friend I hadn’t seen for years visiting over Thanksgiving. He insisted on prepping/cooking it. Intruded in my sacred work space, but I relented. I watched his whole procedure:

      1) chop up lg. red onion.
      2) same with 4-5 celery stocks.
      3) throw it all in a Reynolds cooking bag with the bird, add about a qt. of Apple juice.

      Cut a few slices in bag around the top, cooks in about 2/3 the time w/out the bag.

      It was… the best turkey I ever had. Moist moist moist!!! A little sweet from the AJ.

      Been doing it that way ever since. Even cooking 45 minutes longer, was near perfect. Meat just fell off the bird. You cannot screw up a Turkey cooking this way.

  6. Peterr says:

    One more thing about the American Royal BBQ weekend. The Royal also runs the BBQ Hall of Fame, and this year they added a new honor to their program: the Impact Award. Here’s what the press release announcing this year’s honorees said about this new award and its first recipients:

    For the first time, the Barbecue Hall of Fame is honoring a group of people with an Impact Award in recognition of their commitment to the world of barbecue. The inaugural Impact Award is dedicated to all unsung black barbecue cooks whose contributions to the art of barbecue deserve to be remembered and memorialized. Many of these unknown pitmasters include talented cooks from the South during and after the Civil War who pioneered the barbecue of today.

    The roots of KC’s great BBQ tradition can be traced to a number of these talented cooks who came north and west at some point. The trail runs cold, though, when you try to trace back try to figure out who taught these pitmasters who came to KC. Glad to see the American Royal and the BBQ Hall of Fame recognizing them!

      • Peterr says:

        Knowing Jim, he’s probably off cooking for Operation BBQ Relief, helping to feed the folks who are without homes, the work crews trying to re-string power lines, hospital staffers working under crazy circumstances, etc.

        If you are looking to make a hurricane related relief donation, OBR is a great place to give.

  7. swmarks says:

    Well, I know it’s the NBA preseason and I didn’t watch the game, but I liked what I saw in the Boston Celtics box score. Malcolm Brogdon is for real. And so may be Sam Hauser. What Kevin Durant doing? Sorry, he’s a great player and beautiful to watch, but I’m glad the rumors didn’t come to fruition.

  8. jhinx says:

    Ok, them’s some good cookin’ tips. A few years ago I tempered the drinking after I dropped a full platter of grilled/smoked meats on the stoop right outside the kitchen door. I suffered quite a cussin’… plus the indignity of tap water rinsed grilled goodies. Better nights have been had, to use the passive.

    • Peterr says:

      As a pastor, I’m supposed to be good at the whole forgiveness thing, but this would be pushing my limit.

  9. Raven Eye says:

    In the UK, somewhere back at the early part of this century, I was a guest of the local constabulary during their preparation and briefings prior to a Football Association match (Level 2 team). The briefings included all the stakeholders and included review of national laws governing the events and also certain types of travel to and from a “designated sporting event”. It was very well organized, and reflected lessons learned from some disastrous events at the stadiums, and the UK’s experience with hooliganism at home and abroad.

    I was taken in tow by “Sgt. Bob” whom we’d been working with on something totally unrelated. He filled in the knowledge blanks, pointed out the areas of responsibility, and shared his experiences as a young constable. He also shared his booklet with the applicable laws. I was impressed.

    One thing that caught my eye was the use of tear gas by the Indonesian police. It’s against FIFA rules, which is pretty easy to understand.

  10. bbleh says:

    “How badly do football fans need sports? At what point will they demand the NFL do better by players?”

    The answer unfortunately is that it has become an aspect of “toxic masculinity” in American culture. It’s gladiators in the arena. See also crashes in car racing.

    A friend’s son just suffered a broken arm playing football. He refused to let them put it in a cast, because it would take him out for the remainder of the season. He has also had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR concussions. He is 18.

    So, pretty badly, and never, respectively.

  11. punaise says:

    I gave up on football for these reasons (health) plus the tolerance of violence and domestic abuse, among other things. The NFL is a rotten institution.

    My SF Giants stumbled through a .500ish season and missed the playoffs. That’s probably closer to their true selves than their over-performance in the regular season last year. Not holding my breath for any big off-season signings, that’s not how they roll.

    Bring on the Dubs! Let’s see what this Wiseman kid can do.

    My sport today was a 10 mile trail run in the hills behind the Cal campus (slow and steady) in preparation for the Berkeley Half Marathon in – yikes! – six weeks.

    • P J Evans says:

      If the weather around Berzerkley was anything like the weather in my corner of L.A. today, it was a great day for running. (I think it barely got up to 80.)

    • Molly Pitcher says:

      We watched the Warriors play The Washington Wizards in Japan at 10pm California time last night. This is going to be a VERY fun year if we can keep everyone healthy !!

      Wiseman is a Beast !! scoring 3’s at will, blocking shots. Klay didn’t play out of an abundance of caution, which was smart. Everyone else got playing time and the summer league was playing time well spent.

      It was fun to see Rui Hachimura, of the Wizards, speaking to the crowd in Japanese. He is a Japanese national who played for Gonzaga in college. HIs mother was from Tokyo and his father was from Benin.

      • bmaz says:

        I saw the highlights of that on ESPN. Wow, Warriors picking up where they left off. Am so glad the Dubs did not try to get Durant back. And glad the Suns did not try to get Durant either.

    • Ddub says:

      My reasons to ditch the NFL are varied. Kap started it, CTE, legalized gambling etc. Boredom played a part too.
      On the prosaic, at 62 I don’t have 3 1/2 hrs for a single game, not to mention the ads, and the unhealthy dollop of super masculinity and American exceptionalism.
      If I have to know I can watch the highlights in 15 minutes on Youtube.
      Oh and did I mention I was a Vikings fan. And no, they will never win the Championship. It is fated.
      Life is better with the original Football.

      • Rayne says:

        You know, I haven’t actually watched an NFL game since Kap. I only catch highlights in my Twitter feed for the purposes of Trash prep. “Watching a game” never really meant sitting still for hours around here because there’s always stuff to be done. One can get a lot of laundry done in 3.5 hours which coincidentally is about the same amount of time it takes to play an 18-hole round of golf. Kind of why I gave that up, too.

      • punaise says:

        Yes: Kap and gambling – two other solid reasons to eschew pro football. Thanks for the reminders.

  12. Alan Charbonneau says:

    I had atrial fibrillation—an ablation procedure fixed it. They take a CT scan of the heart. The instruments are inserted through a vein in the groin,. They use a live magnetic image of the heart to guide the instruments to the general area. The CT is overlaid on the magnetic image. Once they are ready to perform the ablation, they drop the magnetic image and use the highly-detailed CT. They find the unstable cells, zap them, and that’s it.

    I also liked the extremely high-tech way they stopped bleeding of my leg, a device called a sand bag applied pressure to the wound. What will they think of next?

    I am doing household chores and proving that, no matter how old you get, you are capable of immense stupidity. We bought a house with a garden shed that was a skeleton of rotted fence boards. They people who built used three 4×4’s and one landscape log. I should have cut them off and only used the shed base, but I tried to reuse as much as I could and made the job 5 times harder and I saved, at best, $15. Bummer. My next chore will be to build raised garden beds.

    I’m also in mourning of a sort. For the last 5 years I have attempted to develop a social equity-based solution for growers in the cannabis industry. I had to gain knowledge, develop a team, and get funding. That funding part was the sticking point. The market is so bad now, investors can buy distressed assets in the industry and equity deals are down 97% from last year.

    It’s a shame, I consider the business plan to be the finest work I’ve ever done. We would provide turnkey grow facilities and lease them out to licensed social equity growers. They would pay NO MONEY to move in and only pay after the first harvest. We would get 1/8 of the crop and for that we would provide all centralized business services, acctg, taxation, distribution, the whole thing. The growers only has to grow.

    Electricity would be generated by burning renewable natural gas (methane from landfills and dairies) and we would sell excess electricity to other growers through purchase power agreements. The technology partner had environmentally friendly technology — a Fogponics system with minimal water use, no effluent and brown in clean rooms with not pesticides or herbicides. It also uses chillers rather than hvac, which lowers electricity use and mimics the diurnal temp swing common in places like Humboldt county. That, in turn, stresses the plant causing increased terpene production (terpene are scent chemicals, slice a lemon and you smell the terpene “limonene”

    I’m proud of the nuances and depth of the plan. Using mind mapping software I had over 1,200 nodes. Lots of thinking there!

    I had Randy Lanier, 1986 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, as my Director of Social Equity. Randy funded his racing career by smuggling weed and received life without parole at age 33. He received a pardon from Obama after serving 27 years, exiting prison at age 60 (we were both born in 1954). Randy is on the board of FREEDOM Grow Forever, a non-profit dedicated to helping those convicted of cannabis crimes.

    We had public relations and marketing expertise and I wanted to keep a high profile to show what could be done if someone cared about the industry. But it was not to be.

    So now it’s on to raised beds. Maybe my grandkids down the street will want to sell vegetables, we’ll see.

    • bmaz says:

      For the record, JJ Watt not only played today, but seriously kicked ass. I watched the game, and he was superb. He is not one those dumb and reckless guys; I am sure his private specialists cleared him. He has held back before for not fully healed injuries, but played today easily

      As to Tua, my guess is he will be fine, but likely out for a bit to make sure.

      Thing is, these are grown men, they want to play football and make a living at it, and they get paid very well. That is their decision, they are not being forced to by the NFL. The NFL is horrible on a lot of fronts, but they really have tried to get better at head injuries and protocols, and they have already said they are immediately reformulating those protocols. If people do not wish to watch NFL football, then don’t. But don’t cry for the players in the league, they are doing what they want to do.

      • AlaskaReader says:

        Perhaps, …but the league continued to cover up until they were sued into submission and forced to attempt mitigation efforts.

        …and we can and should cry for the kids who emulate those players and play Pop Warner, HighSchool and College football, the evidence is in, CTE is nothing to brush off. Many kids can and do suffer, along with their families.

        As to the pros and their ‘choice’ in the matter, the few who make it to the pros aren’t all given the same options in life.

      • Bay State Librul says:

        I agree. You are dropped dead right – The NFL is doing their best to protect the brain.
        In our game with the Packers, the unlucky Hoyer was gone in a New York minute.
        I was happy with Zappe but the Patsies are sitting at the bottom of the AFC East.

      • DAT says:

        Bmaz,
        I think Mr. Tagovailoa’s situation can be productively contemplated through the lens of Lochner v. New York.

        In 1905 the Supreme Court said (I paraphrase) “You don’t want to work more than 10 hours a day, or 60 hours a week? You don’t have to! Just don’t sign the contract! Good Day!” That precedent has never been overturned, but it was operationally reversed in the mid thirties. Society decided that it was not in its interest to allow individuals to be exploited in that way.

        The biggest difference between the positions of Mr. Lochner’s employees and Mr. Tagovailoa is their standing relative to the general populaton. Mr. Lochner’s employees are nowhere as exalted as Mr. Tagovailoa is. On the other hand the positions of Mr. Tagovailoa and Mr. Lochner’s employees relative to their owner/employer is very similar.

        Perhaps some time in the future Society will decide that it is not in its interest to allow an individual to sign a contract that leads to the signee’s neurologic destruction.
        DAT

        • Rayne says:

          Freedom to contract is all well and good, but we the public don’t know what was in the contract in this case, and the NFLPA which likely does know is very unhappy with the way in which the contract was applied — specifically with Tagovailoa’s release after the Week 3 25-SEP injury, because Tagovailoa staggered when he got to his feet suggesting a head injury and not a skeletal/spine injury.

          That the NFLPA fired the independent neuro consultant also says something about the contract.

          Unlike bakers which are fungibles applied to a means of production a la Lochner v. New York, quarterbacks are semi-nonfungible to nonfungible. They ARE the means of production, and they expect to be cared for as if they are the means of production.

    • mamake says:

      To Alan C –
      Congrats on your successful treatment!

      I read your account with a great deal of sadness. It sounds like a wonderful plan – clearly, with lots of the best kind of thinking applied. Living through the golden era of true farmers committed to the land and to quality products, to me it has been heartbreaking to observe what has happened to California as pesticides, grifters, and earth-destroying, weaponized gangs descended. I’m so sorry you are having to abandon the work.

      May your grandchildren and raised beds bring you joy and peace.

  13. Jim White says:

    Okay, okay, I finally logged in again. It took a while to find the scrap of paper with my info scribbled on it. That’s just a low blow going all the way to barbecue to get me out of my benign stupor.

    To each their own, but to me it is a bit of a stretch for “barbecue” to feature a garage oven or Instant Pot as the primary cookers. Real fire for most of the cook is what gets me going.
    I have, however, just added a flat-top griddle that is fueled with propane and am enjoying learning to cook with it. We are in the process of planning my dream outdoor kitchen and the griddle will be part of it. I also will be retiring my giant Kamado. It’s a very large ceramic cooker (think Big Green Egg that was involved in a radiation accident) and as I age I find struggling with that heavy lid is a challenge. I have a versatile cooker that will be delivered in the next month or so that will let me cook many different ways with natural lump charcoal or even splits of real wood.

    I had hoped to deploy with either Operation BBQ Relief or World Central Kitchen to help here in Florida, but this week is full of things I really can’t reschedule, so I sent a donation to WCK instead.

    There is a brisket in my fridge that’s been wet aging and needs to be cooked. I actually got permission from Lisa to try something new with part of this one. As a Kansas City native, she has expected brisket cooks to include burnt ends. This time, though, I will remove the point before cooking and it will get cured into corned beef, then desalinated in water, hit with rub and smoked to turn into pastrami. This will be a fun adventure. The flat will just get smoked and sliced as usual.

    • Peterr says:

      It’s a good thing you got permission from Lisa to omit the burnt ends. Around KC, making a decision like that without permission . . . let’s just say it wouldn’t be pretty. Trying to convict someone of causing harm to a BBQ cook who unilaterally omitted the expected burnt ends would be damn near impossible, as the jury would say it was clearly justifiable.

    • Thomas Paine says:

      I used to have a big Char-Broil with a door on the front to feed the fire box. When it died I got a Traeger pellet smoker which I also wore out. I currently use a Memphis stainless steel pellet smoker which makes it so easy it feels like cheating. This thing can hold 180 degrees for 24 hours before refueling (via a remote hopper). Best BBQ rig I’ve ever used. Great for smoking salmon with alder wood pellets !

  14. newbroom says:

    Due to its inevitability of serious physical and mental health consequence, football, (and all the various fighting ‘sports’) is an anachronism best left in the ashes of the Roman Coliseum.
    Golf? What better representation of privilege? How much food or housing could be generated from the lands dedicated to growing and mowing grass while helping to limit contaminating runoff of nitrogen and pesticides?
    Who’s up for a cruise?

  15. ernesto1581 says:

    Reprinted as a public service, with a tip-o-the-hat to the lady in Limerick. (The term “footballer” applies to sportsmen of both hemispheres.)

    The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) player who played in front of 80,000 on the weekend will be teaching your children, selling you meat or fixing your drains on Monday morning. The footballer who plays in front of 80,000 will be wrapped up like a precious mummy and bundled off for rehab, two minutes after the final whistle. Later in the week, you’ll see him on the television, trying to sell you crypto or his personalised brand of leisure wear.
    GAA teams are numbered 1-15. A football team reads like the lottery results.
    How many footballers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: eleven. One to stick it in and ten to surround & kiss him after he does it.
    Footballers go to the doctors after a game. GAA players go to the pub.
    Television runs soccer. Schoolteachers run the GAA.
    No football team has a nickname quite as lovely as the Fighting Cocks of Carlow.
    Bidwells or Mark Davis can buy a team and jackass it all over the country, Abramovich can buy the League. You could never have bought Liam McCarthy or Sam McGuire.
    There’s no stupid offside rule in GAA.
    There’s no soccer commentator like Michael O’Murcheartaigh: ‘The goalie hits a very, very long ball way, way out on the field’ – what a legend!
    GAA players run faster, hit harder and last longer. Nobody acts like a grenade just went off if they get tripped.
    Croke Park.
    Footballers describe the game they have just played with the same proto-literate, guarded language every time. There is nothing like a GAA player cutting loose: “He ate the shite out of us,” said an Offaly player of Eamon Cregan’s half-time speech in the All-Ireland years ago. (Eamon Cregan, by the way, began playing sport sometime in the paleolithic era.)
    Rural villages = A church, A post-office, a pub and a pitch.
    GAA games don’t have eejits running around doing somersaults and cartwheels all over the pitch after putting a ball over the line or between two posts.

  16. bluebird says:

    At newbroom – Totally agree. Few men ever see the need to stay home and clean anything. Cruise time!

  17. J Weismann says:

    She left me alone all weekend to value my expertise at picking NFL winners. My superior wisdom led me to pick all home teams this week, so today I play golf believing I will get all pars.

  18. dadidoc1 says:

    Justice would be Tua Tagovailoa being announced as the new owner of the Miami Dolphins. He shouldn’t have been released to return to the field so soon after a head injury. Gross negligence should be very expensive.

  20. punaise says:

    paywalled?

    Bay Area author Michael Murphy finds ‘Golf in the Kingdom’ still resonates 50 years later

    Its tale of the game’s mystical and spiritual allure, conveyed through a fictitious Scottish sage/teaching pro named Shivas Irons, inspired a loyal following. Murphy wrote of a young American stopping in Scotland on his way to study in India — in real life, he practiced meditation there for 18 months in the mid-1950s — and how his round of golf and deep conversations with Shivas Irons open his consciousness and stir his soul.
    …
    Murphy didn’t try to explain how to play golf in his book. He took a meandering, entertaining path in trying to illustrate the game’s “peculiar genius” and why so many people find it fascinating.
    …

    In some ways, Murphy’s book foreshadowed modern sports chatter about climbing into “the zone.” One example: Stephen Curry launching a 3-point shot and turning to run downcourt before the ball rips through the net. He knows he made it.

  21. Pete T says:

    With all due credit to the Kingston Trip – Tom Dooley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaitJsO1_8w

    Hang down your head, Tom Brady
    Hang down your head and cry

    Hang down your head, Tom Brady
    Poor boy, you’re bound to lose

    I met them in Tampa
    There I took the job

    Met them in Tampa
    Won one more Super Bowl

    Hang down your head, Tom Brady
    Hang down your head and cry (poor boy)

    Hang down your head, Tom Brady
    Poor boy, you’re bound to lose

    This time next year
    Reckon where I’ll be

    Hadn’t been for New England
    I’d-a been in retirement

    Well now, boy
    …

  22. Ralph H white says:

    In three weeks I’ll be teeing it up at the 38th annual “Gators Eat Boogars” golf tourney on St. Simon’s Island. It’s a precursor to the Georgia Bulldog/Florida Gator game held In Jacksonville every year. The game is called the world’s largest outdoor cocktail party.

  24. harpie says:

    From: The Onion, Amicus Curiae

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf

    ANTHONY NOVAK, Petitioner,
    v.
    CITY OF PARMA, OHIO; KEVIN RILEY and THOMAS CONNOR, individually and in their official capacities as employees of the City of Parma, Ohio, Respondents.
    […]
    [pdf6/23] INTEREST OF THE AMICUS CURIAE […]

    [pdf7/23] The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a former president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even happened.2 [2 See Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering if Anyone Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase from Lost and Found, The Onion, Mar. 27, 2017, [link].]

    The Onion files this brief to protect its continued ability to create fiction that may ultimately merge into reality. As the globe’s premier parodists, The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists. This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment. […]

  25. Jan says:

    OT, but it’s trash talk so I’m taking advantage.
    Will Ed Walker be submitting again (in the Economics category)?
    Thoroughly enjoyed his contributions, and Rayne too, particulary now.

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