The best song ever written.

The year is 1969.

The band is Procol Harum.

The album is A Salty Dog.

The song is Crucifiction Lane.

This is, without question, as close musical perfection as humankind has ever attained.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween

It is time to discuss the elephant in the room.

Heavy metal music and horror movie maven Rob Zombie has remade one of the greatest horror films of all time, John Carpenter’s Halloween. Originally released in 1978, Halloween is the story of Michael Myers, a psychopath who was institutionalized at the age of 6 after he brutally stabbed his sister (she was shirtless at the time) on Halloween night in the sleepy town of Haddonfield, IL. Fifteen years later he escapes from his institution and returns to his hometown to kill more people on…you guessed it…Halloween night. The movie spawned an entire franchise of sequels (most of which are completely unwatchable) but the first one has stood the test of time and remains near the top of my personal list of favorite horror movies, so it filled me mostly with trepidation when I heard the news of a remake.

Halloween will be the third full length feature film directed by Rob Zombie, and given the combination of the original’s status as a classic of the genre and the mixed reviews of Zombie’s first two films, I think it was quite an ambitious project for him to set his sights on. While John Carpenter is not associated officially with the remake, he and Zombie are close friends and Carpenter has given his blessing to the project, telling Zombe to “…just make it your own.” (The following link is to the John Carpenter interview with the cited quote, but it is at SuicideGirls.com, so I would not click if you are at work, school or anywhere else that your internet traffic is monitored. NSFW.)

Stephon Marbury & Michael Vick - Skipping stones together in the ninth circle of hell.

Taking excuse making to new, extraordinary levels, here is what New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury had to say about the federal indictment and dogfighting charges that Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick recently pleaded guilty to.

“I think it’s tough. I think, you know, we don’t say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It’s just behind closed doors.

I think it’s tough that we build Michael Vick up and then we break him down. I think he is one of the superb athletes, and he’s a good human being. I think that he just fell into a bad situtation.”

So let’s examine this insane stupidity and breakdown how fundamentally flawed this sort of enabling logic is.

Chicago Bears season preview

With the Cubs World Series aspirations ostensibly dead as Bill Walsh, I think it is time for us (read: me) to look forward to the 07-08 NFL season, specifically to preview the Chicago football Bears. Bears training camp came to an end in Bourbonnais, IL and 31 other teams will be breaking camp in 31 other cities and the evening news around the country will be filled with scenes of one of my favorite off-field sporting spectacles:

Giant men loading giant televisions into giant SUVs and speeding away from whatever jerkwater berg their particular training camp is held in as fast as they possibly can.

With a Superbowl loss, a tumultuous off season, a strong draft, a preseason victory and the bulk of training camp now in their rear-view mirror, the Chicago Bears are heading into the 2007-2008 NFL season as overwhelming favorites in the NFC North and certainly considered one of the favorites to win the NFC, and that is not without good reason, methinks.

Recipe Collection: El Cid Chili

This recipe was given to me by someone else, so I want to say right off the bat that this is not my own and I am, in no way, trying to pass it off as my own. It is, however, the best chili I have ever eaten - ever - and was one of the highlights of Superbowl XLI for us.

El Cid Chili

You will need:

Olive oil for browning
2 lbs. sirloin steak, cut into 1″ cubes
1/2 lb. lean ground beef
12 oz. chorizo (casing removed) cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 large yellow onion (chopped)
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tbl. garlic salt
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. dried basil
2 cans (14.5 oz.) beef broth
2 cans (14.5 oz.) peeled whole tomatoes, undrained
2 cans (15.5 oz.) kidney beans (optional)
1 cup cilantro, chopped
1 cinnamon stick
3 bay leaves
2 green jalapenos, slit lengthwise 3 times each
1 tbl. yellow cornmeal
Dash of worstershire (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Sour cream/cheddar for garnish, if desired

***
1. Place oil in large pot over medium heat and brown sirloin in batches. Remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon.

2. Brown ground beef, chorizo, and onions. Return sirloin to pot.

3. Stir in remaining ingredients (except garnishes). Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 2 hours. Stir occasionally to break up the tomatoes.

4. Before serving, discard cinnamon stick, bay leaves, and jalapenos. Serve with garnishes.

Makes 8 servings.

Tell me wha-wha-wha-wha-what’s yo’ fantasy?

For the first time in 4 years, I am taking the plunge into fantasy sports. I signed up for a fantasy baseball league in 2003, and after about a month I was burnt out and didn’t check the roster again the rest of the season. My inactivity combined with names like Mark Bellhorn, Fernando Vina and Rob Nen lead to a last place finish in the league, unsurprisingly. Prior to 2003, I played in a fantasy football league, which was a little more fun, as it was lower maintenance, but I still found myself losing interest around week 12 or so. I actually tried to set up a league of my own the season after, but none of my friends signed up, and that was the last time I tried to play any fantasy football.

I was approached (via text message, of course) by my good friend Jims this week, though, and asked to join a fantasy football league he was in. I was reluctant. He said that it was all for fun and real laid back, but I still was kinda lukewarm on the idea. Then he informed me that his team was named the Jon-Benet Rams, and I decided that I definitely had to sign up. That is the kind of thing that tickles my fancy…silliness.

Cubs extend Carlos Zambrano

Well, big Jim Hendry finally managed to huff and puff his way through a contract extension for Cubs young ace Carlos Zambrano. Cubs.com says that it is a “five year contract with a sixth year vesting option,” and the first article I googled claims the new deal is rumored to be worth approximately $90 million.

Carlos is by and far the best starter the Cubs have and, unlike the porcelain golden boys Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, Zambrano has shown the ability to stay healthy over the course of several seasons, which means now that his arm is probably going to fall off during his next start on Sunday night.

Very little to complain about with this deal. This was the right move to make and kudos to everyone involved, although I would have preferred this were done before the season ever started.

Cubs season is over, btw.

WE LIVE BELOW TAPDANCING ELEPHANTS

About 3 days after my wife and I reluctantly signed our third one year lease here at the lovely apartment that we have enjoyed living in for a couple years now, a family of pachyderms moved in above us. In that time, the ignorant hayseeds have turned their two bedroom living quarters into an official training ground for Ringling Brothers or perhaps the World Wrestling Federation (it will always be the WWF to me). In addition to the running, jumping, pounding and banging that has been waking our 6 month old daughter up from her sleep and naps, Joe Dirt and his assorted band of misfit morons, apparently unaware of a little thing called “gravity,” have seen fit to drop all sorts of miscellaneous debris from their balcony to ours. Now, I am not talking about the occasional bit of loose change…more like cigarettes ashes, butts and tobacco. Goobery, phlegm-filled spit. Wrappers. Garbage. Batteries. A nasty hoop earring. Shredded newspaper. Worst of all is the food and poop from the pet bunny that they are not allowed to have. All littering our otherwise placid and peaceful balcony - EVERY DAY.

The leader of this clan, a lanky white trash hillbilly whom I have overheard yelling “I’m so fucking sick of you” at his young kids, has two times approached us with insincere apologies and promises to address the excessive noise and littering problems, and nothing has changed. “I’m going to put a mat down on the balcony so stuff stops falling down on to yours.” A week later and I guess that enormous task has escaped his busy schedule of Coors consumption.

Something surprising from the Beastie Boys

I have long been indifferent towards New York City’s Jewish hip-hop magnates The Beastie Boys. I don’t dislike them, I don’t like them. In my world, they are just there. A respectable and moderately enjoyable troika of nerds with acceptable rhymes and a penchant for fun music videos whose fanbase is obsessive and tend to overstate the band’s contributions to the world of popular music.

While the band has sprayed to many musical fields in their 30 year tenure, the bulk of their critical acclaim and popularity is a result of their distinctive brand of rap which can be classified as quirky, catchy, intelligent, gimmicky or annoying - all depending on who you’re talking to. I cannot claim to be an expert on the Beasties. I do not own a single one of their albums, and until this morning, I had never even downloaded one of them. My familiarity with the group comes from their litany of video and radio hits, as well as second hand consumption from friends, so when my wife turned a new Beastie Boys video for a song called Off The Grid, I fully expected the punk inspired beats, odd rhymes, repetitive jumping, strange dancing, loud colors, wild hand gestures and fish-eye lens abuse that have long been a staple of their music videos.

Instead, we watched a fairly humor-less black and white video of the group playing in the studio set to a slow, five minute jazz-y space jam. I kept waiting for a Beastie Boys song to break out, but it never did. It stayed slow and vocal free. It stayed chill. I liked it. It had me interested and I decided it was high time I download a Beastie Boys album.

The Internet

So this site has been hurting for content lately, as you may have noticed. I have been working on a three or four fairly large posts for a while now and I was hoping to complete and release at least one or two of them by the end of last week. A combination of many events prevented me from doing so. Most of them were the typical time constraints of being a husband, father and full-time employee who loves to golf. There was one tragic, unfortunate event that diverted my attention, though, and I figured I should devote some time to it.