ATTN: WORLD
DO NOT DRIVE IN DOWNTOWN CHARLOTTE.
Downtown Charlotte looks like a people bomb went off. Everywhere you go, people scurrying this way and that. Granted, as a resident of a town of 300 people, my judgment may be skewed, but right now the place is a madhouse.
At any rate, we got ABL all credentialized and she is currently at the tent with the This Week In Blackness folks, and the last report I got was she was eating catfish. Heather was feeling tired, so I took her back to the hotel so she could rest, and I’m going to knock out some work.
BTW- we look like a really bad episode of a Three’s Company spinoff. Two well dressed hot young black women with a fat sweaty middle-aged guy whose attire is missing only a fanny pack and he’d be right at home in Disney World.
Patricia Kayden
How are you “middle-aged”? You’re the same age as me and I’m far from middle-aged!
You should have snuck into the Black event by claiming to be ABL’s lightskinned cousin. Sounds like she’s eating well.
raven
Drive on dawg.
Amir Khalid
I saw yesterday’s pictures, and I’m pretty sure only one of the women was black.
raven
@Amir Khalid: Her hand anyway.
JenJen
Hey! Disney World isn’t that bad.
lamh35
Yeah, JC, you should have gone with ABL to the event. You could be ABL’s “Gary Owens” (look him up white people), he’s an honorary “brutha” by lieu of his wife.
If for nothine else, then you might have actually learned scomething new about the Black experience from what you’d heard.
Next time hop on in with ABL, we Black folk treat random white people wondering in our ‘hood way better than vice versa…LOL!
ETA: I didn’t think Heather was Black, but doesn’t matter either way, if she is or not. Wouldn’t surprise me though, the hues in my immediate family run from pale to red to brown to dark. We are an eclectic mix thanks to NOLA vast history of race mixing.
The Dangerman
At the convention, I hope there is repeated use of the question “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” to the response “YES WE
CANARE”. Given the shit we were in during the fall of 2008, I can’t believe the Right is going there. They can make the argument the recovery is too slow (which they’ve been “assisting”), but are we better off? REALLY? Give me a damn break.numfar
Please tell me you’re wearing black socks with sandals and shorts…also, pix for proof.
Comrade Jake
Wasn’t that Charlie’s Angels?
trollhattan
“Three’s Company” eh? Do you have to pretend to be ghey for the motel folks? (NTTAWWT)
Looking forward to more hijinks and more photo
evidenceillustrations.Nellcote
Weather reports say it’s gonna rain. I hope you brought your raincoat. Oh wait, you didn’t bring pants. Nevermind.
Southern Beale
Question: is Condi Rice the only member of the Bush Administration who spoke at the RNC? We were traveling so I wasn’t that focused on it. I know W didn’t speak, pretty sure Cheney didn’t. Alberto Gonzalez was a no? Colin Powell? Anyone?
I find that pretty astonishing, if that is correct. At a time when GOP is desperate to not look like the old white man’s party, the last administration was such a miserable failure that there was hardly anyone they could call on to speak. Condi got to come cuz she’s a woman and brown-skinned.
Also, seems like GOP is more scared of looking intolerant to women than intolerant to any other group. The pandering to women seemed extremely obvious, from the snippets I caught. But I wasn’t really that honed in on the event, as I said.
Seems like DNC will be much more of a celebration of the party’s diversity than a display of desperate pandering.
kdaug
Fanny pack v. packed fanny.
Ah, but you forgot your pants.
BGinCHI
Go eat some BBQ, fool.
You are below Mason/Dixon. First order of business, eat BBQ. Second order of business, find a good southern (in this case local) food place and get eating.
Linda Featheringill
John:
It’s okay if you do look like an episode of Three’s Company, even a bad episode. You’re our cliche and we love you.
khead
The First Baptist Steppers? C’mon.
Southern Beale
I think my Mother In Law is in Charlotte this weekend for a wedding reception. Talk about bad timing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
political-nerd bloggy sitcoms, the next web phenom?
@Southern Beale: I’m still astounded and disgusted by the fact that that Condi PDB Mushroom Cloud Rice speaking at the RNC was considered a coup, and that she had fucking gall to critique Obama’s foreign policy. She has a 65% favorable rating with the American public. No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.
MikeJ
@BGinCHI:
He’s in North Carolina. they don’t know shit about BBQ. Have to go to Memphis to get real BBQ. People in NC think they know BBQ, but they’re wrong.
Or Seattle. I’ve got a pork butt on the grill. 200°F, apple wood chips smoking.
ding dong
@Southern Beale: technically Portman was part of dumbyas admin and he spoke
rikyrah
BWA HA HA H AH AH HA AH HA HA
jayboat
You certainly had the Steeler fan look down pat on the trip. How many pieces of actual souvenir matl did you haul with?
Pix or it dint happn.
BGinCHI
@MikeJ: NC weeps.
MikeJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Only in the abstract. She couldn’t come up with anything Obama’s done wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MikeJ: True, none of them can. They keep bleating about “leadership”. Could one fucking Villager ask Romney how “leadership” is gonna make trickle-down economics work this time, since it failed in ’81 and ’01?
Phylllis
@MikeJ: Quick ride up the road to Lexington bbq. I’m a mustard-sauce girl, but that’s some good stuff.
Also, avoid driving in Charlotte as much as possible. Cornwallis didn’t call it the hornet’s nest for nothing. Queen Street changes to King then back to Queen with no notice.
wobbybits
@Amir Khalid: Black people come in all shades/hues.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Relax and try to have a good time.
The suggestion that you get some BBQ is some serious wisdom.
Violet
@Southern Beale:
I see the DNC as a celebration of the party. That the party happens to be diverse is just a bonus. Don’t think the Dems have to hunt around to find diversity because it’s all right there in and amongst them. Dems are diverse.
John, thanks for the updates. Are you going to go stalk Tweety or Morning Ho or any of those folks?
wobblybits
@Amir Khalid: Black people come in all shades/hues.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Relax and try to have a good time.
The suggestion that you get some BBQ is some serious wisdom.
dmsilev
Important question: Have you succeeded in acquiring pants?
Violet
@Southern Beale:
I see the DNC as a celebration of the party. That the party happens to be diverse is just a bonus. Don’t think the Dems have to hunt around to find diversity because it’s all right there in and amongst them. Dems are diverse.
John, thanks for the updates. Are you going to go stalk Tweety or Morning Ho or any of those folks?
Brendan Montgomery
As a resident of Charlotte – Uptown Charlotte even – your observations are correct. The number of people walking around this week makes me want to stay indoors…
wobblybits
Well I tried to post but stupid WP is playing games…anyway my comment was
@Amir Khalid: Black people come in all shades/hues.
Ash Can
@Amir Khalid: I recall Heather identifying herself as white. Then again, I went years without realizing Valerie Jarrett was AA until she became part of the WH staff, so I’m not making any assumptions.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I couldn’t believe it when she brought up 9/11 right off the bat. The most spectacular, egregious national security failure since the Brits torched DC in 1814, and the national security adviser on whose watch that happened makes hay out of it. That alone should send her straight to the dustbin of history.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
do not want! Imagine the Ericksonoferickadinfinitum show. Ewww.
And this:
is the kind of trenchant political analysis I’ve come to expect from this blog.
Brendan Montgomery
@Phylllis: And let’s not even morntion the Queens/Providence intersection
slag
But is the city well-planned? Do you actually need to drive or does Charlotte have a walkable infrastructure and good transit system?
Maude
@Ash Can:
But Comdi was dead certain she was right. About what, I don’t know.
Violet
For BBQ, make a side trip to Reidsville on your drive home and go to Short Sugars: http://shortsugarsbar-b-q.com/. Worth it.
Egypt Steve
It’s a madhouse … a madhouse!
Get hour stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
You maniacs! You blew it all up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!
Sorry, but the word “madhouse” always sets me off on a “Planet of the Apes” quotathon.
Citizen_X
HOO-WEE. LOOKY MAMA, WE’S IN TH’ BIG CITY NOW!
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
That and how not to rent a car.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@MikeJ:
Here here! Closest I’ve come to real BBQ since I moved here is Red Hot and Blue, and even they want to put cabbage on the sandwiches. At least the restaurant smells like there’s a smoker nearby instead of the dirty dishwater smell that surrounds the local joints.
PurpleGirl
@Egypt Steve: Yeah, I understand; those are great classic quotes.
JPL
@wobblybits: My blond hair blue eyed son came home in first grade and asked what color he was.
Was he black or white? He didn’t understand the Amelia Bedelia books either but he is right in the sense that very few people are albino and very few people are jet black. He grew up knowing it was silly to classify people by shades of their skin color.
Citizen_X
@Southern Beale:
What is this “Bush Administration” of which you speak, and what does it have to do with the Republican Party?
scav
What amuses me is that every other convention description I’ve heard about Charlotte was that you could fire a cannon down the streets and run no danger of hitting anyone. Fairly big conferences too. So huzzah for the appearance of people — we’re going to need them (with or without pants).
J
For the full effect, I’d recommend a combination of garish Bermuda shorts and over the calf black socks leaving just a patch of pale bony knee visible!
Anoniminous
P-CWG (Pantless-CrankyWhiteGuy) needs one of:
These
to keep the sun off and sweating down.
PurpleGirl
@Anoniminous: Trying to see that on JG is causing much laughter here. Good idea, that.
Djur
@Amir Khalid: Dangerous territory, buddy.
Mary G
I thought that Heather herself said she was white?:
I do Imani’s image management/PR stuff, handle all her websites, and also serve the honorable role of white lady she can call and yell at so she doesn’t go ham sammich on certain people. Not naming names. Just saying. That look in my eye means: I WILL CUT CERTAIN PEOPLE.
Also, I’m drinking all of John Cole’s diet green tea.
Now you know everything you could possibly want to know.
Reply Reply
September 2nd, 2012 at 1:38 am
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/09/02/what-you-all-wanted/#comments Linkthat probably won’t work because of FYWP: (it’s comment 19)
ding dong
@Ash Can: when Obama announced his cabinet my friend thought he was going to be criticized because he had appointed too many black people. She thought Rahm Emanuel was black. To be honest if you did not know he was Jewish and somebody told you he was black you would accept him as being a light skinned black.
Litlebritdifrnt
For what its worth Rinse Repeatus thinks Romney can win “today” with 267 Electoral Votes. It would appear that someone passed Mark Penn’s math books to him.
SteveinSC
@Phylllis: It is clear that there are some real bbq naifs on this site. North Carolina Barbeque is excellent, hot pepper vinegar and all. It is clear none of you has ever been to a “pig-pickin.” Also there is mustard-based. exquisite on slow barbque’d chickens, Cajun style (sort of Kansas City.)
On serious matters let the following forever debunk the canard that Rommey is actually intelligent:
from Wikipedia. I.e. damned by faint praise. The Cranbrook Pep Club star never got any smarter and yet he amassed millions.
Hoodie
@slag: Where the convention is, it’s pretty good, light rail and circulator buses. Once you get out of downtown, it’s a jumbled mess. None of the Motel 6’s appears to be near downtown, so they probably drove in. Might be a good idea to use park and ride and take the bus in.
wobblybits
@Mary G: I read that too but Amir’s comment was what I was addressing.
max
we Black folk treat random white people wondering in our ‘hood way better than vice versa…
I can testify that this is absolutely true. Further to take, black people treat white people wandering in the hood much more nicely than white people treat white people wandering around white hoods.
the last report I got was she was eating catfish.
Fried catfish, yum! You missed out. (I too am dubious about this barbequed pork thing.)
Two well dressed hot young black women with a fat sweaty middle-aged guy whose attire is missing only a fanny pack and he’d be right at home in Disney World.
So the salute in the picture ABL posted was actually a ‘Heil Homer’?
max
[‘You need a can of Duff!’]
suzanne
@scav:
Preferably WITH. It’s always the people who wanna run around nekkid who need to wear clothes the most.
Though “Nalin’ Palin” leads me to think that the conventions would be great settings for some seriously great adult entertainment.
Tazj
OT, but some of you have been wondering if the media would be forced to call out Democratic “lies” now that they exposed Ryan as a liar after the Republican convention. Of course, answer is yes.
The Buffalo News featured a front page article today with the title “Truth Torn to Shred by Ads”. The title was right next to a picture of Obama. The article set out to debunk claims in pro-Obama ads and the Harry Reid claim that a Bain investor had told him Romney had paid no taxes in 10 years. The article uses Politifact and Glen Kessler as their main references.
The conclusion “Politicians of both parties are treating the truth like a stranger, and are ignoring the issues that really matter.’
I know this paper doesn’t have a large national following but I hope this isn’t the sign of things to come.
Maude
I want to read what John thinks about this convention.
Mary G
@Mary G: Messed up my comment #51 above and WP told me I didn’t have permission to edit.
The second paragraph was supposed to be a block quote and should have had quotation marks around.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
.
HEE HEE HEE
Larryb
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Hey, I kind of like the cabbage, but then I’m from California, so what do I know?
rikyrah
@ding dong:
OK, that’s funny
dance around in your bones
I’m sorry, but despite Clint’s recent debacle/serious trollery I am busy watching Clint, all day, on AMC.
Have watched A Fistful Of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and just now starting The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
I loved these movies back in the day, and still do.
fasteddie9318
Am I to take it from the comments that Cole has been in NC more than a day without having BBQ? Good grief, man, what are you waiting for?
raven
@wobblybits: How’s that research coming?
fasteddie9318
@SteveinSC: The mustard-based sauce is more South Carolina, no?
I’m about to brew up some KC-style sauce. Prefer NC vinegar myself, but the wife is partial to KC.
Mary G
Glad to see they are allowing people in the streets. The area around the RNC looked more like a concentration camp with all the barbed wire/fences/bored police around. Somebody who was there said they left to go to their hotel room, which was two blocks away. When they came back they had to walk eight blocks until they found an entrance where they were allowed back in.
dww44
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: MikeJ: I beg to differ. We in the Southeastern U.S. have our own preferred barbeque. The further east you go the more mustardy and vinegary the sauces for our pork become. See, mostly it’s pork that’s synonymous with barbeque here. We mostly grill beef;we don’t barbeque it. Indeed, most of my grilling and barbequeing relatives, all of them male, use virtually no sauce in the cooking process. Added as a side sauce with the cooked pork, and typically peppery, vinegary, and thin. None of that gunky thick stuff for us. Nothing fina than to eat it in Carolina.
scav
@suzanne: I don’t know, what are the rules on voting nekkid?, cause that’s the only turnout I’m really worried about (turn-ons are are different matter, there clothes can definitely be value added).
wobblybits
@raven: Still ongoing but I’m starting to write now. How are the doggie kids?
celticdragonchick
@Brendan Montgomery:
I’m trying to see if we can get a Balloon Juice meet up for this week in Charlotte. I live an hour away in Greensboro.
Possibilities?
Anoniminous
@PurpleGirl:
The hat, a kilt, black knee socks (h/t to J!,) wingtip shoes, and an Hawaiian shirt (assuming he can obtain one) would, I submit, definitely make a memorial and, possibly, historic fashion statement.
Concede it would be shouting, “I am dorkus maximus” but I gar-on-tee people would remember he was there.
ETA: and my compile is done so it’s “back to work I go” time
celticdragonchick
@fasteddie9318:
I have never gotten used to the vinegar based BBQ. I prefer the North Florida/South Georgia Sonny’s style.
burnspbesq
You think Charlotte’s crazy during a convention, you should see it when the ACC Tournament is in town. Goddamm Tarheel fans are like locusts, except with worse manners and a greater sense of entitlement.
Djur
Oh god, yet another regional barbecue piss-off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This, I think is good news
…and everyone knows the best barbecue in the country is in Minot, North Dakota.
Zekester
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Not everyone likes their Q smothered in tomato sauce. Dry rub, falling off the bone ribs and pulled pork with a thin vinegar-based sauce. And cole slaw on the pork sandwich.
scav
As a form of sublimation, I can think of worse.
PurpleGirl
Re BBQ: I had a supervisor who was raised and lived on Long Island. She was traveling on business in either NC or SC (I forget which) but a co-worker said something about going out for BBQ. She’s thinking KC-style beef with a tomatoey sauce. They get to the restaurant and it’s pork with a vinegar-based sauce. She was way unhappy. She didn’t know that there were different kinds of BBQ. (I heard this story years after it happened.)
mclaren
Fanny pack! We want a fanny pack!
Also, you MUST wear a T shirt showing a pic of a foam finger with WE’RE NUMBER 1 on it.
trollhattan
@Citizen_X:
Maher was unusually useful last Friday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTNXXzV0TsY&feature=player_embedded#!
Egypt Steve
@dance around in your bones: I’m there with you. I actually haven’t been able to watch the whole Clint vs. the Chair thing, because I just don’t want to remember him that way.
SteveinSC
@fasteddie9318: Well, mustard-based appears to be more western piedmont NC and SC. Of course the migrants took it with them west to AL, MS, TX, northern (Cracker country) Loo-si-ana. By the time you hit Texas pork is replaced by beef barbeque (not many hogs in TX.)
Tomato ketchup-Worcestershire-molasses based seems to be more eastern SC into GA and Florida (around Charleston it reaches an inedible, gooey, sweetness.)
Hot pepper vinegar plus a little Worcestershire sauce is used for pig and chicken in Eastern/Southeaster NC and SC.
As far as south Alabama, LA, and MS are concerned, they are rescued by Cajun influence (vide, Justin Wilson, Cookin Cajun, for his cooked barbeque sauce, it’s a fucking great.)
Virginia has no idea of how to cook barbeque, the best I can tell, but they have great hams and spoonbread.
Most of this from having lived in these places, so that is all it’s worth.
merrinc
@BGinCHI:
Chicken and waffles at the Midnight Diner. Or if you’re in the mood for breakfast, the sausage gravy and biscuits are good, as are the smothered hash browns.
gogol's wife
@Citizen_X:
LOL.
Mnemosyne
@lamh35:
G’s white/AA/Latino mixed cousin and his white wife ended up with a blond, blue-eyed little boy once all of the chromosomes finished lining up, so I know exactly what you mean.
The really fascinating situation I saw a few years ago was a story on “Dateline” or one of those shows about a couple in (I think) the Netherlands where she was white, he was black, and their fraternal twins ended up with one blonde, blue-eyed girl and one dark-haired, dark(er)-skinned girl.
Interestingly, other than hair, eye, and skin color, the two girls looked almost identical (same chin, same cheekbones, same nose, etc.) and there was no way seeing them together that you would view them as anything other than sisters unless your eye was deceived by the differences in their coloring. Really interesting.
@JPL:
I think we are slooooowly moving towards a system of identifying people by their most visible continent of origin, so African-American, Asian-American, Latino-American, etc.
The only problem is getting white folks to be willing to be called European-Americans, which makes it sound like we’re all smoking Gitanes and wearing berets like cheese-eating surrender monkeys or sumtin.
J.D. Rhoades
Charlotte always looks like that.
As for BBQ, you can’t get decent ‘cue west of Lexington (which you are). They use some sort of weird ketchup based sauce. Eastern NC BBQ sauce is made with vinegar, the way God intended it.
But if you can decent Calabash style seafood, go for it.
You obviously have us confused with the Dookies.
Nonie
This makes me mad. And sad. I took a week’s vacation to hang out in Tampa (I live nearby) to engage in what I had hoped would be a lot of activity, or at least some great people watching. Nope – nothing – crickets. I had the city practically all to myself, just me and 500 cops in riot gear. See for yourself:
https://picasaweb.google.com/110129575016589543264/RNCDay3
There’s more albums there, too if you’re curious. Day one is the protests, day 4 is Romneyville, Day 2 is Ron Paul plus more empty streets.
RSA
Now you’re getting somewhere… :-)
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
I remember seeing a review of a bakery on Yelp where the reviewer was PISSED because when they said they had “macaroons,” she was expecting coconut cookies and not French macaroons, which are completely different.
Some of the other reviewers tried to talk her down, but she refused to accept that, yes, there are two completely different kinds of cookies that are both called “macaroons” and insisted that the bakery was engaging in false advertising.
It was pretty hilarious, actually.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Martin Bashir did a great segment just now on the state of the country four years ago. Even to ask the question is stupid. I get that it works with lo-info swing voters, but to see Bob Schieffer so solemnly intone about whether the Democrats can “make that case” looks especially stupid preceded by clips of news anchors talking about the total collapse of the economy.
sagesource
@lamh35:We are an eclectic mix thanks to NOLA vast history of race mixing.
Was wondering why the Republicans hated the place so much…..
SteveinSC
@PurpleGirl: One more note on BBQ (i.e. one of its many spellings.) My take is KC-style (tomato-ketchup, etc) on ribs, any kind of ribs, although just slow cooking those badboys is great without any pants on. Chicken, mustard-based or hot pepper vinegar. Chopped or pulled pork barbeque: best with hot pepper vinegar over oak coals from a whole, small pig. Skin’s great. Plenty of corn sticks or hushpuppies maybe with onion but never with sugar. Cole slaw, easy on the sugar or collards or string beans with plenty of streak o’ lean fat meat for flavoring and banana pudding for desert. Sweet, strong tea or bourbon to drink, (this last, especially while you cook) and hottern forty Hells outside
raven
@J.D. Rhoades: My Jimmy’s BBQ shirt is my lucky fishin shirt. I also love that they have their sink outside of the restrooms! On the downside, if you don’t eat pork the Lexington area isn’t too great. They so disdain chicken that they just bake it, put sauce on it and serve it up!
sagesource
@Mnemosyne: There was another case in England where both the mother and the father were brown, but both had black fathers and white mothers. She gave birth to twins, one of whom is a real ice fairy, blonde and very pale, and one of whom is very, very black. The story gave the chances of such an outcome, where all the genes on one side go to one twin and all those on the other go to the other, as several billion to one.
Brachiator
Got a Twitter message that the president is on Reddit taking questions for about another 15 minutes
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No.
SATSQ.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mnemosyne: We should base it on how you got here: Atlantic-Americans, Pacific-Amercians, Chain-Americans, Grande-Americans, Bering-Americans (or maybe Straight-Americans).
raven
Here’s how we do it in Georgia! I don’t eat it but I damn sure can cook it! Sorry about the commercial, I guess they put it on because of the Robert Earl Keen tune.
HisBeardness
Hey, so I’m a long-time lurker, I’ve only posted maybe once or twice in the last four years, but I thought y’all would like to know that stupid shit like this is going on (warning, facebook event link).
I don’t remember why I added the woman who created the event, but I got the invitation today and it makes me just want to smack my head against my desk until I pass out. Could the radical left be more inept and clueless?
The Ancient Randonneur
So is Ellie Mae watching granny and Jethro while you’re in the big city? Do you have a cement pond at the motel?
suzanne
Last time I went to a BBQ joint, I ordered green beans, and was aghast when they came with bacon. Sent that shit right back.
I love being a vegetarian. Only thing I miss is Buffalo sauce. So I put it on tofu.
lamh35
@khead: @lamh35:
Sorry I meant “Gary Owen” he a white comedian and the first white host of BET’s ComicView. He was also recently in Steve Harvey’s “Think Like A Man” movie.
JWL
“Cole in Charlotte”
A Screenplay
Starring Andy Griffin
Act 1; Scene 2: “Why, they have these thar flashing lights on pine poles that everyone stares at aforin’ they all git a move on”.
SteveinSC
@suzanne: You went to a BBQ joint and you are a vegetarian? What did you expect to eat, the fucking napkins?
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Also, there’s the inherent problem of Euro trash being much higher grade than the domestic white trash types.
Tony J
@Mnemosyne:
Friend of ours is red-haired, blue-eyed and white as an egg, while her sister is coffee-coloured with a very well-maintained afro. Funny thing is, our friend looks exactly like her dad, who is black, while her sister looks exactly like her very Irish mother.
Genetics, it is to laugh.
Mnemosyne
@sagesource:
It’s one of those things that makes you realize how much misguided emphasis we put on things like hair and skin color as identifying markers when thinks like face shape and nose shape are so much more prominent.
I remember getting into a nasty argument with someone (here?) because I pointed out that the president looks a LOT like his maternal grandfather once you ignore the misleading skin and hair color cues and compare their chins and cheekbones. Still not sure what that person’s beef was, but s/he insisted that the two of them didn’t look anything alike so shut up shut up shut UP!
raven
@lamh35: Gerry Owen, the official song of the 7th Cav.
lamh35
@sagesource: it’s true though bout NOLA. Between the French & Spanish colonist and the African Slave Trade and also just being a port city anyway, NOLA is def a mized bad. You can see the differences by just looking at the Black mayors of NOLA, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, his son Marc Morial, Ray Nagin and Syndey Bartholomew
wobblybits
@Mnemosyne: Serious? Obama is the splitting image of his maternal grandfather.
lamh35
@wobblybits: he truly is. This pic of him with his grandfather on the beach, the resemblance is so there
http://www.barack-obama-photos.com/obama-with-grandfather.jpg
BTW, speaking of Obama with his grandparents, this is by far my fav pic. I love the hug his granny’s giving him:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QI_5Z7Zanjs/T-WdtHN542I/AAAAAAAAkYI/sJGNcI_IPbI/s1600/6a00e554e81be388340133f424ee14970b-800wi.jpeg
sharl
@Mnemosyne:
True dat, and I think this picture of PBO’s maternal grandparents shows the similarity to grandpa even better.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
This is just as arbitrary, and self defeating as anything else. I think, for example, of how the obvious and visible african ancestry of Latino ball players is denied or downplayed.
At my local In and Out the other day, I saw a black guy of obvious Asian ancestry with his Asian American friends and his Japanese American girl friend. I don’t know that calling this guy either African American or even mixed race would tell you anything useful about his origins.
gnomedad
@Citizen_X:
Excellent.
Anya
@Mnemosyne: Totally agree with you. You cannot miss that resemblance unless you’re blinded by color.
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Did you catch him calling Lyin’ Ryan a crap burger flipper? I lost it.
As for BBQ, Carolina sauce beats every other regional favorite. By miles. Vinegary, peppery deliciousness on yummy slow cooked pulled pork. Damn, I love that stuff. And I am a truly neutral observer (I like nothing about the South, with the exception of Carolina BBQ), so I have no dogs in this hunt.
LanceThruster
@dmsilev:
Yeah, since “forgetting” pants was clearly an “accident.”
;-)
raven
@geg6: The Allman Brothers?
Xecky Gilchrist
@Djur: Oh god, yet another regional barbecue piss-off.
Yeah, they’re right up there with the music threads.
trollhattan
@SteveinSC:
Once again in BJ comments, ah’m a-cleanin’ off mah peecee screen.
raven
@Xecky Gilchrist: Delta is ready when you are, hoss.
piratedan
@Djur: tyvm… tastes differ and vary, this happy regionalistic horseshit about who makes what dish the best are the kind of asinine arguments we could do without. For fucks sake, if you don’t like NC BBQ, then stay the fuck away from it and the same goes for those folks that disdain Memphis, St. Lou or KC styles. jaysus christ, the foxes (R) are in the henhouse and the kitchen itself and here you folks are arguing about food flavorings.
Lennox
@Carolina-style BBQ haters
I will destroy you all.
Violet
Why’s everyone so sure Cole’s talking about ABL and Heather? He could be talking about them. Or he could be talking about two other fine looking women. Playa’s gotta play.
LanceThruster
@raven:
Love this tune.
Another (possibly more familiar) version.
http://www.garryowen.com/
I should have had this running through my head on my recent 10 mile hike.
Steeplejack (phone)
@celticdragonchick:
There’s a Sonny’s in Charlotte! 440 Tyvola Road. Cole, take note.
Mnemosyne
@suzanne:
I have to echo SteveinSC’s question — what did you think you would be able to get at a BBQ joint that would be vegetarian in any way? They put meat in everything at the ones I’ve been to, including the vegetables and the macaroni and cheese, and I’m in So Cal, the land of fruits and nuts.
Though if you ever get to craving the taste of ribs, Morningstar Farms makes a very tasty veggie version.
trollhattan
I never know where the content-aware ads are pulling topics from but am getting a “The government is trying to take away our shopping bags!” poutrage ad. Are plastic bags the latest incandescent light bulb?
LanceThruster
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Can we all at least agree that Chicago Style Pizza sucks?
MikeJ
@SteveinSC: Sauce is fine to add when the meat is done, but with a proper dry rub none is needed or desired during the cooking.
raven
@LanceThruster: The horse they never road, the river they never crossed and yellow. . .well, I’ll leave it there in case their are any First Teamers around.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Oh, you mean today’s hot babes. Cole’s a mac-daddy, in a fanny pack and Bermudas just to give the other fellas a chance.
dance around in your bones
@Egypt Steve:
The young Clint was, and remains, seriously delicioso. Plus, all of those movies remain pretty fabuloso.
Brachiator
I am listening to a public radio program dealing with the attempt to swift boat President Obama over getting bin Laden. I had not paid attention to this crap before. But what truly pissed me off was this bit of narration, “Mr President, you did not kill bin Laden, America did.”
WTF? This is insane and disgusting.
Time to switch the dial. There is nothing here of value.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan:
I don’t know but I pretty much haven’t bought a plastic can liner in two decades because of them. For awhile you could buy really great waste baskets made to hold plastic grocery bags.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
Hey now, except when constructed by an Iowa farm girl named Zelda.
http://www.zeldasgourmetpizza.com/
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: Yes, the comparison is made much easier with a picture of his grandfather as a younger man. That chin and jaw-line is unmistakable in the younger and thinner face.
raven
@Mnemosyne: The White Tiger, my great neighborhood eatery makes killer Q and many vegetarian selections. Gotta do that in hipsterville.
HRA
@Tazj:
I sent that piece in the Buffalo News out this am. No one had anything to remark about it then. I hope you have better luck.
I do love coming to this blog first thing each morning and then waiting for the other FPs to arrive later on. It’s really a very good blog in that the comments are also informative and at times very funny. Still, there is the feeling of it being a private community.
geg6
@raven:
Meh. They’re okay (especially in the Duane days), but I’m not a huge fan or anything. They are, however, exponentially better than, say, LynyrdSkynyrd or any contemporary country artist you’d care to name.
I’m a punk and alternative fan. Was when I graduated high school back in ’77. Still am today.
feebog
@ Mnemosyne:
I had not seen that picture before. He would be about the same age as Obama is right now I would think. Amazing resemblance, especially the jawline and the eyebrows.
jeffreyw
Smoked chicken with some fresh sauce.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: I think that effort is like teleprompter jokes and apologize for America, it appeals to the haters and leaves other people scratching their heads.
Jeb Bush said something about Obama spiking the football, and how “we weren’t raised that way”. I guess he was napping when his brother dressed up in a flight suit and turned an air craft carrier around to film a campaign commercial
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Oh no, so wrong. Although I will say I much prefer western NC BBQ (hello, Lexington!) to eastern. But there is some gooooood Q in all parts of NC.
JPL
Did ABL dump cranky white guy?
LanceThruster
@raven:
That’s quite a bit of history tucked in there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Cavalry_Division_(United_States)
No disrespect to First Teamers in the least.
raven
@geg6: I saw them 3 times before he died. Oh, check out these great rock and roll pics.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I’m not talking about ancestry in the sense of figuring out someone’s DNA. I’m talking about ancestry in the sense of illuminating how someone’s relatives made their way across various oceans and other travel obstacles to get to this country.
I think Belafon (formerly anonevent) was mostly mocking me, but that’s more the direction I was thinking of — focusing more on where someone’s ancestors came from than on the color of their skin. And, yes, a whole lot of people in Latin America, South America, and the Carribbean have African ancestry, but I think that’s less useful to obsess about than knowing that their family came to the US from Brazil or the Dominican Republican or Mexico.
Being humans, we’re going to want some kind of sorting mechanism to identify the people that we see, and continent of origin seems a much less corrosive one than the skin color that lumps an immigrant from Brazil into the same box as the first African-American to represent Minnesota in the House.
Svensker
@Phylllis:
Yes. A tray of outside meat from Lex BBQ #1 may be the best food I’ve ever eaten in my life. Seriously.
geg6
@LanceThruster:
Oh my, yes! The only people who love that stuff are Chicagoans. That is some really nasty stuff.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Oh, that looks soooo good.
raven
@LanceThruster: It was me dissin them. I knew guys in the Cav that fucking hated all that bullshit, hard to find them now.
Mnemosyne
@LanceThruster:
No. GFY.
raven
@LanceThruster: Pleiku: The Dawn of Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam and Chickenhawk are two very good books about the early days of the Cav in the Nam.
LanceThruster
@geg6:
A-fvcking-men!
Well, maybe if I was starving…wait…no. I’d rather eat grubs under a rock.
Seriously, that stuff is pretty fvcked up. That “pizza” is like an uncooked bread-dough sponge slathered in grease. Maybe where the edges are crisped is partially edible.
LanceThruster
@raven:
Thanks for the recommends, raven. I’ll check them out for sure.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@burnspbesq:
NASCAR. It’s up in Concord but blankets the town with tourists. When I was commuting to Charlotte I arranged to be away on race weeks. Couldn’t get a damn room anyway.
raven
@LanceThruster: Got 25 minutes? Watch this documentary about the Cav in 70.
Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny
Mike in NC
We’ve lived here for going on five years and have yet to find a decent BBQ joint. Maybe we’re too close to the ocean? When friends visit we take them out for seafood. Nor is there a quality Chinese restaurant within an hour’s drive.
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
Well, of course your mileage may vary. Food tastes (much like music) are wholly personal. I also say I hate curry, until someone let me try some sort of sweet curry that “wasn’t too bad.” (my highest curry rating to date).
Svensker
@raven:
If it ain’t pork, it ain’t BBQ…at least in NC.
jeffreyw
@PurpleGirl: Thanks, that’s my first go at smoking a chicken, did some ribs yesterday.
Mnemosyne
@LanceThruster:
So have you ever actually had it at someplace like Gino’s East or Giordano’s or Lou Malnati’s, or did you wander into someplace in your East Coast hometown that said “Chicago pizza!” and assume that’s what it was supposed to be like?
“Bread-dough sponge” doesn’t make any sense when it comes to Chicago-style pizza because Chicago-style is thin crust pizza patted down into a deep pan. If what you ate had a thick crust, it wasn’t deep-dish.
ETA: I guess when I start arguing about the difference between thick-crust pizza and deep-dish pizza, it’s time to finally shower and change out of my bathrobe.
LanceThruster
@raven:
Too cool. Thx. I’ll let you know what I think (scheduled for this evening).
raven
@Svensker: If you watch my video you might see the chickens we threw on the pit, they came out great! I cooked that hog for 34 hrs and not a flame ever touched it. You could push your hand right through the shoulder to the bone. Them’s that ate is said it was goooooooooood.
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Been meaning to ask, did you know anyone in 133rd Arty? They had a shithole triangular fire base to the south of us and some of us would rotate in there for a week at a time so that they could come up to our base where we did (Thank the Seabees) have fresh water and hookers available most of the time.
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
Ummm…It was a chain in LA called Chicago Pizza Factory (or something like that). Got pizza and ribs (the ribs were sucky too). It was a work event we were being treated to.
The Wiki fountain of knowledge describes a deep-dish pizza too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_pizza
In looking up details on CSP I found this –
—
Chicago Style Pizza in LA?
I want to be fair in my Chicago Style pizza hatred, so I need to find the best chicago style I can find.
Suggestions? Willing to drive ANYWHERE in SoCal. It just has to be good and “authentic”
To clarify, I’m looking for the deep dish, with sauce on top. ala lou whatever it’s name is.
—
from: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/510418
I promise to look into the recommendations that were offered.
Ummm…can I go now?
LanceThruster
@Dennis SGMM:
Seabees provide hookers?! (umm…female companionship?)
If they can build that, they can build ANYTHING!
jl
Cole’s undies will not hold up under through convention and he’ll get tagged for indecent exposure before he’s out of there. Anybody got some pants to him yet?
raven
@Dennis SGMM: I wonder if it was The 3rd of the 34th Artillery? They were the 9th ID arty unit. I’m sure there we’re other independent outfits but I don’t see that listed here
Landscaper.
I didn’t know any cannon cockers in the Nam even though I was in a 105 unit in Korea.
Dennis SGMM
@LanceThruster:
They assisted us in stealing lumber from the bigger bases and building hoches with it. When I first got there, guys were living in CONEX boxes so hooches were a big step up. A sweaty fuck can only get so sweaty before it stops being fun.
Svensker
@Mike in NC:
Where in NC are you? Allen & Son on Millhouse Road just outside of Chapel Hill is good and REALLY good cobbler for after.
Mitchell’s in Wilson used to be fantastic but the good ol’ boys shut him down for tax evasion (Mitchell is black) — the white places (Bill Ellis and Parker’s) absolutely stink Although Bill Ellis sells a fabulous T-shirt.
Here’s a link to the NC Barbecue Society. They are some really good people and I’d trust their recommendations and observations.
It sounds like you’re in western NC but you HAVE to make the trek to Lexington to go to Lexington #1. I kid you not. That stuff is ambrosia. We once drove over 600 miles to have lunch there.
Svensker
@raven:
I’ll just come over and sit by you for a while.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
I think they are almost identical, in facial structure. Probably body structure too, but it’s hard to tell from the pictures.
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Unless my mind has gone (Always a possibility) it was the 133rd.
Ah, yes, an 05 gun loaded with a beehive round at point blank range. It was Biblical.
SiubhanDuinne
@celticdragonchick:
Depending on what y’all work out, and when and where, I would even consider driving up from Atlanta for a meet-up.
On second thought, um, no. My boss and his boss and HIS boss are all there for the convention. I’m more or less holding the fort at the office, and it’s a four-hour drive each way. Pity, would be fun. I hope you all get together and send reports and pictures.
LanceThruster
@raven:
Started in on this (I’m a big fan of John Pilger). This is going to be quite interesting (loved the soldier in the buzz cut earnestly dragging his comb through his hair – reminded of the kids in the Mr. Bungle video on the Pee Wee’s Playhouse special from the Roxy Theater).
raven
@Dennis SGMM: We dragged creosote timbers from Long Binh to Sa Dec (across both those damn ferries) to build bunkers over conexes that held the commo equipment. Pretty little town was Sa Dec.
raven
@LanceThruster: I had a buddy that was a USARV tracker that worked with the Cav units in III corps. Shit was fucked up, half of them were way the hell up North at Caroll and half were down south. Like he said, they were just unassin that motherfucker.
I told SGMM earlier this is my 43rd anniversary of coming home.
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Being a IV Corps person I never was in Sa Dec. As far as pretty goes, Vung Tau was hard to beat.
Mnemosyne
@LanceThruster:
Only if you promise to try Prizzi’s in Burbank. (They only opened about 6 months ago, so they won’t be listed in that link.) They skimp a bit more on the cheese than I would prefer, but it’s the closest you’ll get to actual deep-dish pizza in LA. If you still hate it, then I will accept that deep-dish=curry in your culinary books.
Why, no, I’m not homesick and nostalgic for Chicago even after two trips there this summer. Why do you ask?
grandpa john
@SteveinSC: Being a “Vulture Capitalist ” Doesn’t require a high IQ just being an amoral asshole.
SteveinSC
@Svensker: Wilson, Holy Shit. My wife’s from Wilson and I think Bill’s, Parker’s, Smithfield (not in Wilson) are great. Is Mitchell’s the cinder block place on 301? Pig pickin, chopped barbeque hot pepper vinegar, now we talkin, and I am a Sandlapper from way back. If you can’t find BarBQue in NC, you fuckin lost son, you in the wrong fuckin state and don’t know it.
raven
@Dennis SGMM: Sa Dec is 4 corps. Cross the Vihn Long ferry and head upriver on a shit dirt road and then take a one truck ferry back across the river to the fort.
raven
@Dennis SGMM: You know that Vung Tau was where coquille Saint-Jacques come from?
LanceThruster
@raven:
Welcome home, soldier.
Didn’t I read that you were in SoCal too?
Band of (geographically located) Brothers.
catclub
@BGinCHI: I suspect NC is watching Fried Green Tomatoes for ideas on what to do with people who disrespect NC BBQ.
Revenge is bets served cold. Not sure about BBQ
David Koch
The crowd in Charlotte is going nutz on the set of Hardball
4-MO’-YEARS!
4-MO’-YEARS!
4-MO’-YEARS!
4-MO’-YEARS!
Mike in NC
@Svensker: Sunset Beach, near the SC border.
raven
@LanceThruster: My family is, LA. I’ve been in Athens GA for 27 years and Champaign-Urbana before that. Moved to LA in 57 and left in 62.
SteveinSC
One more bourbon and I’m on I-77 and off to the Queen City of the South to find that crazy black gal, the other one and Cole. The drinks are on me and Nikki Haley. By the way did someone say Obama was a (scary) Negro? Holy Shit! Somebody should-a told me before I voted.
raven
@Mike in NC: That’s Topsail, no?
jl
@catclub: Yeah, no disrespecting NC BBQ.
Or any other BBQ.
I think regional BBQ wars should be banned from this blog for the duration of the Democratic national convention.
Milliegogo
@sharl: Yipes! I think I see a future teabagger sneaking up on Obama and his Grandpa in that beach photo.
Svensker
@SteveinSC:
Yeah, I’m pretty sure Mitchell’s was the cinder block place. He built a big beautiful place with massive pits of his own design and his customers were almost all black folks. He was doing real good, trying to source local organic produce and pigs, working with farmers in the area. And then, somehow, the local gummint decided he was doing something wrong on his taxes. They shut him down. He’s been on Bobby Flay’s show a couple of times and I hope he’s going to do something big soon — he’s a really talented man with Vision.
Mitchell’s BBQ was so much better than Parker’s or Ellis’s, it was night and day. I know Parker’s has a lot of fans. Maybe if I hadn’t eaten at Mitchell’s before we tried Parker’s it would have been different.
Still, pretty much any Q is better than no Q. Amirite?
JPL
@jl: The Atlanta burbs have some really good bbq..
I just wanted to add that before bbq is banned from the blog.
Dennis SGMM
@raven:
Among the many things I don’t know. I stayed at a French-built hotel there that was simply amazing. I had suffered what I was later told was a psychotic break (I was just going to kill every man, woman and child who didn’t have round eyes)and my Chief had the good sense to cut some phony orders that put me on Logistics Support in Vung Tau for a week.
I didn’t know where Sa Dec was until you told me. We operated mostly in the Rung Sat Special Zone with occasional stays up in Chau Duc where the Vinh The canal met the Mekong.
Edit: we also made appearances at Ca Mau and Rach Gia.
JPL
Is there anyone in Charlotte that can socialize with the blog boss since ABL has obviously dumped him?
SteveinSC
@Mike in NC: No wonder you can’t find barbeque there. There’s nothing at Ocean Isle or Holden Beach, Little River or Nixonville for that matter. Go to ILM and eat at Smithfield. It’s a chain, but pretty good. Too many Yankees around MYB who ran out the real barbeque. Why fuck around with bbq, you are a spit away from the Italian Fisherman or Calabash for that matter. Seafood around there this time of year can trump bbq. I just got back from Emerald Isle. Huge shrimp this time of year and cheap. You in Lumbee Indian country as well.
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
It’s a date! Thanks for the recommend. I’m someone who eschews trash talk about someone else’s home turf as there are good people and a-holes everywhere. I don’t do sports so pro-ball smack talk is not my thing either.
But with food? I let my ignorance freak flag fly! This usually results in someone making a case for their favorite, and I am nothing if not brutally honest. I mentioned to a gf that I never cared for lamb. I said maybe I never had it prepared well.
She ordered some at the restaurant at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas – in town to see the Stones. She said it was really excellent. I still didn’t care for it, but I tried.
I know people that can’t stand lobster (I love the stuff – more for me – hee hee). I marvel that it used to be considered “slave food” (bottom feeder like catfish).
Even the deep dish that was “thinner” crust that I tried was oily, the ingedients undercooked and sliding off the slice (liking a fvcking fajita) but I’ll still give it another go (if only to use the phrase I recently learned – “So good you’ll want to slap your mama!”).
I’ve never been to Chicago, though from everyone I know who has, they consider it a fun town with great food, spirits, and people (if occasionally on the cold and windy side).
I’m born and raised in the Los Angeles basin, so all we know from is smog, plastic surgery, and “borrowed” culture (but I call it home).
Bill E Pilgrim
@Citizen_X:
That was my thought exactly. The arrival in NYC scenes from Midnight Cowboy started going through my head. Look at them skyscrapers!
In our movie of course, Jon Voigt is a little less svelte, and isn’t wearing pants.
LanceThruster
@raven:
Home of the B-52’s!
Love shack, baby!
catclub
@jl: in regards to music, Duke Ellington said:
“If it sounds good, it is good.” Peter Schickele told me.
Likewise for BBQ and taste.
Mike in NC
@raven:Topsail is north of Wilmington on the way to Camp Lejeune, or about 75 miles up the coast.
SteveinSC
@Svensker: It took them forever to get that place built. Sorry to hear about it. I think we ate takeout from the place, but don’t really remember. My in-laws croaked and we quit going there about the time Mitchell’s should have been finished. Abrams in Pinetops still has the most complete, true southern, (Eastern NC) menu I have ever seen. Tom Thumbs, rutabagas, turnips, chicken pastry, collards, sweet potatoes, side meat, hog jowls, liver pudding, souse, and shit I don’t even know the names of, i.e., the works. A real treasure.
LanceThruster
@catclub:
Blessed are the cheesemakers…
rikyrah
@SteveinSC:
I thought it was just me
Bill E Pilgrim
@catclub: There’s a satirical corollary to that I always loved: “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds”. Mark Twain used to quote it a lot but it’s not original from him, it turns out.
jl
@JPL:
” @jl: The Atlanta burbs have some really good bbq..
I just wanted to add that before bbq is banned from the blog. ”
No, I think commenters should be allowed to mention all the good BBQ places they want, just don’t waste time with with silly regional BBQ wars.
I was in Atlanta recently, and I been in Memphis and Nashville, and I been in NC, all good BBQ with their own regional styles.
At risk of violating my own suggested rule, as one who lives in CA where real BBQ joints, (and real bagels for that matter), are not, shall we say, prominent parts of the landscape, I want all BBQ info that is available for my travels.
celticdragonchick
@Steeplejack (phone):
I always eat at that Sonny’s when coming home from Carowinds. Good BBQ and good service!
We need a Convention Balloon Juice meet up!!!
How about the Sonny’s on Tyvola?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Is this ancestry or just geographical anecdotes?
it’s all nuts, and you still end up tying yourself into knots.
A former coworker has a father from India and an African American mother. She is married to an African American man and identifies as African American. Her skin color is not that much different from many Indians, but I have no idea where you would put her based on your continent of origins scale.
And my best example of racial nuttiness involves another coworker. Walking back from lunch, a black man neither of us knew called her “a fine sister.” When she dismissed him with some choice Spanish expletives, he backed off and said, “Sorry, I didn’t realize that you were Puerto Rican.” She blasted him even more vehemently than before.
She is Cuban, black and Spanish. And her beloved grandfather is Chinese. She is married to a Spaniard. Neither she nor her children would ever easily fit a scale of ethnicity based on continent of origin.
By the way, if a person is Latino, where is the continent of Latinia?
celticdragonchick
@JPL:
I’m game…but we need a meeting place…like the Sonny’s mentioned above.
LanceThruster
@jl:
The denizens of South Central will say otherwise (though I don’t get the beans and white bread as a side infatuation).
jl
@JPL:
” Is there anyone in Charlotte that can socialize with the blog boss since ABL has obviously dumped him? ”
I just cannot imagine any sane person ‘dumping’ a cranky dude who travels in his underpants, who dictates forced bathroom breaks, fusses about taking only ‘authorized’ pics on a road trip, and snaps a Heil Hitler salute, every time you try to take his picture.
It’s just a mystery to me. And here I thought ABL was a nice person!
Gawd, I hope ABL and her friend hold up through this trip without too much mental trauma.
LanceThruster
@Brachiator:
To Goppers, the pigments of the human race run the gamut from eggshell white all the way to off-white.
Kind of a chalky Bennington’s rainbow.
celticdragonchick
@Dennis SGMM:
Yikes.
I volunteer at Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield and I sometimes tell groups of kids about the 3 pounder smoothbore gun in the main lobby of the museum. Nasty little piece of work especially when loaded with cannister. The kids love it, but the looks on their parents faces when I describe shooting a load of broken glass, nails, buckshot and bits of rock are always memorable.
jl
@LanceThruster: That is true. I miss the eating opportunities of So Central when I lived in LA. Same goes for the Mex and Central American eats down there.
Edit: and yeah, some places with good BBQ did not have good sides, especially those greens I love so much.
Oakland has a couple of OK places, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@Svensker:
Mitchell Parker Ellis would be an awesome name for a GOP presidential candidate, just sayin.
raven
@Dennis SGMM: Yup.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
thank you.
me and some co-workers had Giordano’s last week. it’s not the usual occurance, but sometimes, you just want a deep dish pizza.
and, damn, it was satisfying.
raven
@celticdragonchick: We have a double barrel cannon at city hall.
“According to reports one ball left the muzzle before the other and the two balls pursued an erratic circular course plowing up an acre of ground, destroying a corn field and mowing down some saplings before the chain broke.
The balls then adopted separate courses, one killing a cow and the other demolishing the chimney on a log cabin. The observers scattered in fear of their lives.”
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Geographical anecdotes. Why, what did you think we were talking about, social DNA tests?
She would go where she wants to go. If she identifies as African-American, that’s where she goes. If your friend from Cuba identifies as Cuban, she goes with the Latin America/Carribbean group. It’s really not nearly as complicated as you seem to think once people get to decide for themselves which ancestors they feel like highlighting rather than having other people look at their skin color and decide where they “belong.”
I didn’t realize that “Latin America” — as in, all of the parts of the Americas where Romance languages are primarily spoken — had ceased to exist.
gogol's wife
@jl:
I keep having to type “LOL” on here as if I were 12 years old.
On BBQ, I’m from Kansas City. The best BBQ there was at my Uncle Jim’s house, but he’s been dead for many years, alas.
gene108
@geg6: You do realize by acknowledging your love of vinegar based sauce (no ketchup, I assume), you have already picked a side in the East v. West NC BBQ “Wars”?
There is no neutral.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200866.html
Steeplejack
@HRA:
Couple of things:
Your comment this morning was pretty spare–no link to the newspaper piece and just this commentary from you:
That doesn’t offer much for people to react to. “Okay, business as usual. Noted. Carry on.” If you had included the link, people would have had the opportunity to read the whole piece for themselves and react to it one way or another, maybe even comment on it.
As to your “feeling of [this blog] being a private community,” there can be some of that: in-jokes and arcane lingo, people sharing strands of continuity that have gone on for some time. It’s not meant to exclude, although sometimes it can feel like that. But nobody’s checking papers at the door.
I lurked on this blog for a long time before I commented, and when I finally did I felt a terrible sense of exposure. The flip side of that is that when you finally do expose yourself and no one reacts at all, it feels like a slight. But it’s not.
Keep on commenting. Just up your game a bit and provide a little more meat for people to feed on. That an editor at a second-tier newspaper is an in-the-tank Republican is not going to come as a surprise to this crowd.
LanceThruster
@gene108:
That was a fun(ny) article. I love these sort of rivalries as everyone wins.
Mnemosyne
@LanceThruster:
Chicago is a lovely city to visit as long as you remember to only do it between, say, May and October. I grew up there, but the winter of 1983, which still holds the all-time local record, drove me to apply to college in Southern California and never look back.
(This blog post has a really vivid description of what a really cold winter day in Chicago is like. This is why, much as I love the area and wish I lived closer to all of my relatives, I do not live there anymore.)
suzanne
@SteveinSC: I went ’cause I got dragged along with a group, and thought I’d be able to eat SOMETHING.
SteveinSC
@suzanne: Point taken
celticdragonchick
@raven:
Not so effective with the whole chain thing, but I think it would be murderous as hell with grape or cannister. Ouch!
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
LOL. I know, right? I’m sure it was one of those “I was with a group and had to go there” things, and she tried to order soemthing safe, to no avail. But BBQ joints are BBQ joints.
I can see being disappointed, but not outraged.
Scuffletuffle
@dance around in your bones: Lee VanCleef…mmmmmmmmmm!
Steeplejack
@celticdragonchick:
I went to the Sonny’s Web site and couldn’t find any information, but did this chain start from the Sonny’s Real Pit in Atlanta? I used to eat there a lot back in the day.
LanceThruster
@Steeplejack:
We used to tease my vegetarian brother when picking a place to eat for family outings. I’d say, “Every restaurant has vegetarian…it’s called a ‘salad'”. But he still had to deal with bacon bits on the tater skins and stuff.
Steeplejack
@celticdragonchick:
Just looked at Google Maps, and I see that the Sonny’s on Tyvola Road is only a couple of miles down I-77 from the Charlotte Coliseum Motel 6. Don’t know that’s the one Team Juice is at, but there are three Motel 6’s on that stretch of I-77. The only other Motel 6 appears to be on the other side of town.
dance around in your bones
@raven:
This documentary has made me weepy. I (as a girl) had the Vietnam War as what we saw every night on the TV machine, but it also touched so many people that I knew.
I was with a boyfriend the morning that he got his draft notice. His face turned pale and his big brother about cried.
I have a brother-in-law who served but never talked about it – I think we once saw a few carefully chosen Polaroids – yellowed and full of skinny guys with no shirts on – but never ANY stories about the war.
I had a friend who came home a paraplegic who rolled around in a wheelchair and drove a truck with hand levers? and was one of the bravest and most optimistic guys I have known. He just kept on drivin’, as you would say.
I had a good friend who was a nurse in the Nam and was terribly scarred by it. She would never talk about it , either.
So, this documentary you linked to has just brought all those memories back. Sad, full of waste and spilling of blood, human lives ruined and ………….oh, shit.
I’m just a cryin’ here.
Svensker
@SteveinSC:
I heard they were really good. They’re a bit farther east than we were but next time we do a NC road trip, we’ll make it a point to take a little gustatory jog! Sounds fantabulous.
muddy
There’s a place in Asheville, NC called 12 Bones that I liked. It’s in the art district near the river. They have a choice of flesh (beef, pork, chicken, turkey) and then they have several sauces, so everyone can get what they like and not argue about it. I heard the Obama campaign got a ginormous order there campaigning the last time.
http://www.12bones.com/
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@dww44:
Since when is Tennessee not part of the Southeast?
@Zekester:
Actually, I loathe the tomato sauces. But I clearly need to find someone else to introduce me to local BBQ, because the most notable thing about all the “wonderful, perfect” pig I’ve had shoved at me over the last 2+ decades is the singular LACK of dry rub. Or any other flavor, really; the only smokiness it had came from a bottle.
No, no, no. Cabbage and mayo are OK on the side.
Seriously, though, you should have seen my face the first time my new coworkers took me to a downtown grill, and the counter gal gave me a burger dripping with chili and slaw. I learned to like the chili in small doses.
raven
@dance around in your bones: Oh, I’m sorry, not my intention.
dance around in your bones
@raven:
Darlin’, it’s not your fault. Just brought up some memories – I’m sure yours are a lot worse. My experiences were all second-hand.
raven
@dance around in your bones:
And the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
As I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: Good luck to the Swiftboaters with that one. If “America” killed Bin Laden, why did “America” wait for Obama to be President before doing so?
All such ads would do would be to highlight the fact that it took the Black Kenyan Socialist Communist to give the order to kill Bin Laden. Because the Shrub who got us into two wars did nothing to catch/kill Bin Laden. NOTHING.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
And the people who don’t know where all their people are from, what, they don’t exist?
It’s even simpler than that. My friend identifies as Cuban. Always has. She doesn’t need to have someone assign her to a phonied up Latin America/Carribbean group. But other members of her family define themselves as Spanish or white. Even the ones who don’t look white. It’s all silly and arbitrary. Your proposal does not resolve any of these issues and is just another arbitrary scheme.
RE: By the way, if a person is Latino, where is the continent of Latinia?
So, here you are not talking about continents, but even more arbitrary regions. Brazilians don’t typically see themselves as Latino, and many indigenous people reject all these outsider based attempts to define them.
I guess that Haitians would be Latinos and Jamaicans African Americans.
I understand, I think, where you are trying to go, but I don’t think you are really getting anywhere. But it is a fun ride.
Soldier Boy
I would so totally watch that show.
burnspbesq
@LanceThruster:
The best que west of the Rockies can be found deep in the trackless wasteland that is Santa Ana. Burrell’s is the real deal, run by a NC transplant.
Fred doesn’t do Brunswick stew, more’s the pity, but everything else is more than worth the drive from LA.
a around in your bones
@raven:
And the thousand mile stare to go along with it.
Gawd damn, I admire you guys. Everyone I knew was doing their damndest to avoid the draft….since by 1968 you just knew it was a shitfest.
I have always been hesitant to express this feeling/knowledge on this site, but it was pretty much the common feeling by ’68 or so.
The draft was fucked up. I get the heebie-jeebies when people promote it again.
dance around in your bones
@raven:
And the thousand mile stare to go along with it.
Gawd damn, I admire you guys. Everyone I knew was doing their damndest to avoid the draft….since by 1968 you just knew it was a shitfest.
ETA – last comment got stuck in moderation becuz FYWP or maybe me fat-fingered incompetence.
Who the hell knows. +4 or 5 or whatever
I have always been hesitant to express this feeling/knowledge on this site, but it was pretty much the common feeling by ‘68 or so.
The draft was fucked up. I get the heebie-jeebies when people promote it again.
celticdragonchick
@Steeplejack:
We will see what John says, but if Sonny’s will do, lets get together this week and have a Balloon Juice night at the convention.
LanceThruster
@burnspbesq:
Much appreciated. This is the type of thing that gets me out of my secret lair.
My contribution the the BBQ wars is this tip from the Onion.
Marinate your ribs in bourbon before barbecuing. The best way to do this is by pouring the whiskey down your throat.
Steeplejack
@celticdragonchick:
Just to be clear, I’m not in Charlotte, so I won’t be meeting up with anyone there this week. I’m in NoVa, outside of Washington, D.C.
LanceThruster
@dance around in your bones:
I feel that way when I watch a doc like the one on the Triangle fire. It hurts, but it also feels like caring is important. I can take opening myself up to other’s pain in measured doses…but it’s better than ignoring or dismissing it.
—
Goth Kid: I guess you can join up with us if you want.
Goth Kid 2: Yeah. We’re gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is.
Butters: Uh, uhm no thanks. I love life.
Stan: Huh? But you just got dumped.
Butters: Well yeah, and I’m sad, but at the same time I’m really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It’s like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin’ really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I’m feelin’ is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid.
Goth Kid 2: Yeah.
Stan: No. No, Butters, that doesn’t sound stupid at all.
Butters: Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clique, guys, but, to be honest, I’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid.
Bago
@suzanne: I can see Russia from my, uh, business.
In all seriousness she was talking about little and big diomede island, but the beauty of the Fey comedy routine is that every word except for the Russia line was literally transcripted. Word for word.
dance around in your bones
@LanceThruster:
Well, the thing is, I lived through Vietnam – not in the same way as actual vets lived through it, but the gawd-damned war affected practically everyone I knew – from boyfriends to girlfriends to moms and dads to brothers and sisters to uncles and …..oh, hell, to fucking everybody.
One of the joys of the draft.
(I DO love South Park, however :)
Origuy
I learned to love Chicago style pizza when I went to school in Chambana. I’m on vacation in Denver, and I had pizza tonight at an Old Chicago in LoDo. It’s a chain, throughout the midwest and elsewhere, but none in California. I thought it was pretty good, but I’m pretty easy to please with pizza.
Genos East in Chicago or Papa Dels in Champaign are still my favorites.