My long search is over...

Government transparency of the day...thank you TheDailyWh.at and the White House...

I've been looking for a breakdown of what the government spends for a while now, and finally, it's available...

Tornados of fire

I performed a demonstration in class this past Friday of a fire tornado using apparatus built by Vincent Mazzone.

Mine was about like this...



It wasn't like this (thankfully)...



Or these...

The things that I have put into my head lately

I'm not reading a whole lot of novels as most of that reading is focused on Kurt Vonnegut. So it's mostly just movies (two of them) and comic books for me of late.

Hunger Games - The Girl has read the full Hunger Games trilogy - the first novel with her book club. When she offered that her book club was heading to see the movie adaptation, I was in.

Of course, I'm in for seeing just about anything (not this) on the big screen.

I promise I'll get around to reading the books (The Girl's kinda been pushing them for a while), but I went into the movie knowing just about nothing at all.

The plot was surprisingly science fictionish, set in a future world in which a revolution (little detail is provided about that in the movie) exists in a past, and the republic is held together on the backs of a rich capital city and surrounding districts in abject poverty. Each year the various districts are required to sacrifice two of their young people to compete in a reality television death match (a la Running Man). Twenty four enter, one leaves alive. The rest die of exposure, starvation, infection, or combat.

Our POV comes in the form of Katniss Everdeen as played by Jennifer Lawrence (outstanding in Winter's Bone), a strong heroine who steps forward when her younger sister's name is drawn as their district's tribute/contestant for the Games. Throughout the course of the Games, we come to see that Katniss's strength lies not just in her skill with a bow but also with her compassion for her fellow contestants. This combination makes for an eminently likeable character - strong, compassionate, striking. She is one of the few contestants who doesn't seem to play more for the ever-present cameras than for herself, being visibly repulsed when other contestants play to the crowds - before and during the Games.

The movie's sets - particularly the opulence of the capital as contrasted with the poverty of Katniss's home district - are well done and present a drastically divided society that I was initially skeptical could survive until I started thinking about our society which isn't that different in many ways. The openly opiative nature of the broadcast Hunger Games makes for a rather dramatic commentary on reality television as an opiate for the masses in our world. The movie is affecting and dramatic, striking all the right notes and even leaving us with a overly-dramatic 'it's not over yet' moment at the very end. Good flick...great first flick in a trilogy.

WARNING: spoliers coming...

The weirdness of the people controlling the Hunger Games arena was a little freaky. The 'creation' of the dogs, in particular, made me wonder about what the heck they were doing. I don't mean what they were doing in terms of producing a more dramatic television product. I get that. I just don't understand whether they were creating some sort of hologram that could interact with people, genetically engineering creatures on a moment's notice, holding the dogs in pens underneath and just releasing them at the right moment, or casting spells. The Girl mentioned that in the book the dogs have the eyes of the dead contestants, so they must have been somehow 'created' on the fly, but I just don't get how that could have happened.

Along the same lines I clearly misunderstood the direction that the Games were going to go. When the forest fires first appeared, I thought we were going to find out that they were an illusion - as the fire on Katniss's dress had been, some sort of foreshadowing,  I though. Nope...instead we find that the Game's producers can conjure fire out of nothing and that the efforts of turning a forest fire on and suddenly off inside some sort of contained dome of incredible size isn't a big deal in terms of energy output. Really?


--


I also didn't get why the effort to get sponsors/patrons was such a big deal. The Girl says that it makes more sense in the book, but in the movie it seemed like the Woody Harrelson character just got a few people to throw a few bucks his way so he could buy salve and chicken soup. We didn't see the any of the other characters were getting help from their sponsors, even though many of them were clearly far better at playing to the camera. If the sponsors were such a big deal, why didn't they turn out to be such a big deal?


---


The use of hand-held cameras was frickin' annoying in the first twenty or so minutes of the movie. I wanted to just slap the filmmaker. I don't care whether that was intentional by the filmmaker or not. I hated it...and I hated the quick cut fight scenes. I can't tell what's happening or who has the advantage in those stupid scenes.


---


I kinda dug the Taylor Swift song in the credits.

---

Attack the Block - Fairly low-budget horror flick starring a bunch of great teenage actors defending their public housing unit (the titular Block) from alien invaders.

The Girl thought the film was awful with poor pacing and poor effects and chase scenes. I'm a bit more charitable as I actually enjoyed the film. Yes, the pacing drags in a number of cases - particularly when the protagonists have to repeatedly convince other residents of The Block that aliens really are invading. For an all-out alien invasion, it seemed like it took a lot of people a long, long time to recognize what was happening.

I was impressed with the teenage leads' performances as the adult characters are barely in the film. The various teen actors did a brilliant job making for a believable band of friends forced to defend their turf against invaders. They each did a great job creating a rich, interesting character.

The low-budget special effects were also interesting, particularly the blacker than black, gorilla-esque invaders with their glowing teeth and eyeless heads. The first alien (the female, as we find out) is far less impressive, looking like a Halloween-story reject thrown on a stick once captured, but the massive (male) aliens are appropriately scary and aggressive. Good stuff there.

This isn't a classic on the level of Aliens, but it's a fun way to pass a couple of hours.

The ending, however, is poor and left a bad taste in my mouth.

---

Comic books...

• The Walking Dead vol 15 - Finally we get a collection without a whole lot of zombies or some sort of desperate run to safety. Instead, Rick and his  band of merry men (and women) try to build a small-scale society in the DC neighborhood where they've found themselves. They are safe enough and are beginning to have a little bit of leisure time, leading to notes of paranoia and unrest among the residents - especially those who were there before Rick came along. After the building terror of the past few volumes, this was a welcome slow down.
• Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Prelude - See, right there in the title it says that Spider-Man's about to die. That's sad because this volume is an enjoyable acknowledgement of Spider-Man's success as a hero. Admittedly, I have no clue what the heck happened leading up to this edition and the first few issues do make a lot of references to what happened before (stupidly PLCH has only volume three of this series, so I may not be able to find out what happened for free), but as long as I ignored all that stuff, I had a blast, especially as Peter Parker saw Iron Man show up at his house, nearly blowing his secret identity. This is fun stuff and a great difference from the Earth-616 Spider-Man. Wish they weren't killing this guy off, especially with the entertaining stuff about Black Cat and Mysterio.
• Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird (vol 2) - I hate the whole New Krypton storyline. It made the threat that something would change, but it didn't...and, more importantly, the stories sucked.
• Superman: Codename: Patriot - ...just like this one which sucked, too.
• Spider-Man: The Fantastic Spider-Man - Apparently Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) is dead or gone or something (for now, anyway, unless he goes the way of Jason Todd Bucky Uncle Ben) and Peter is taking Johnny's place because they were so close to each other. We also get more of Peter's relationship with Carlie Cooper - I'm a fan. And the teaming up with the former Fantastic Four works well, too. In fact, the entire volume works well without any unifying story arc. It's a nice change to get a number of stand-alone issues that are well told. Refreshing...
• GI Joe: Cobra: Civil War - The next step after Cobra Commander was killed (nuked, really) is to choose the next Commander, and that's just what Cobra is doing. Of course, every possible candidate is all busy stabbing each other in the back and killing GI Joe's in the process. This is just the first step, but I'm willing to come back for the next steps.
• X-Men: Age of X - Good lord...no one...NO ONE needs another apocalyptic future X-Men storyline. It's been done to death and doesn't ever, ever need to be done again. EVER. Oddly, though, this was actually pretty enjoyable. It's entirely superfluous, but it was a fun read. The fact that it was entirely a dream was a little cliche, but it kinda worked.
• Hulk: World War Hulks vol 3 - The whole World War Hulks storyline is wrapping up here with Hulk finally taking on his son Skaar in an all-out battle. Good times, and I enjoy the whole play of Banner saying that he knew this was the next step and had known it all along...the second half of the volume, however, follows Hulk's other son, Hiro-Kala, in some sort of space adventure. I hate the space adventures and wish they would entirely drop the storyline forever. Earth stuff? Good. Non-Earth stuff? Boring, bad.

LonnieBurger Baskets: FlipDaddy's

First Friday of my Spring Break, and what else would I do but go searching for a cheeseburger? As most of the burgers left on the Cincinnati Magazine list are a fair drive down I-75 into the Bluegrass State, The Girl and I went searching for other sources of recommendations (what we found is tomorrow's post).

The most promising for the evening was found on BaseballAndBurgers's review of FlipDaddy's in Mason/Symmes Township. The guys over at the BaseballAndBurgers blog has FliDaddy's as the third best burger in Cincinnati (though they've only been reviewing officially for three months now, so there are a lot of places left for them to try.) That's enough of a recommendation for us to make a visit to FlipDaddy's.

Thanks to Thadd and Milan

The Girl went with a burger with beer cheese (available as an appetizer but not officially on the toppings choices) and a pretzel bun with pickles and  lettuce. I went with the standard cheddar and bacon, onions, lettuce, tomato, pickles on my burger. We both got fries. I got a Diet Coke, and The Girl went for a beer. I'll ask her which beer it was as I can't remember.

 The Girl's burger - pretzel bun and beer cheese

My burger - cheddar, bacon, tomato, onion, lettuce,  pickles

FlipDaddy's website burger image

Burger

• My first bite of the burger suggested a very nice, tasty, spiced patty. None of my other bites had that same flavor, so I'm guessing something dripped onto my burger on the griddle. The patty were fairly standard and regular. If they were hand formed, those hands certainly had some serious training or equipment assistance. Patties of such regularity is more of a negative than a positive.
  
  The meat was moderately flavorful with minimal but certainly present spicing.They were a bit thin meaning that any sort of medium cooking is largely lost, and it was reasonable for the waiter not to ask for our cooking preference. Both burgers were cooked to a medium-well and without crust on the meat. The burgers themselves are fine but nothing to write home about. Burger - 6 

Toppings

• That's some serious bacon. The menu claims that it's Applewood smoked bacon, and I fully believe. Of course,at $1.25, it'd better be. The chipotle mayo wasn't anything to write home about, though it did have a nice, little kick to it. The pickled were long cut, always a nice novelty. So far, good stuff. The onions and tomato were passable but not spectacular. The lettuce was chopped and limp, big negative.
  
  The Girl's beer cheese was flavorful but without the horseradish kick that the best beer cheeses offer. The waiter forgot her lettuce and pickles until she asked for them a second time.
  
  Topping is a little tough this time. Bacon - big plus...pickles - little plus...onions/tomato - neutral...lettuce - negative. I'll go slightly above medium and give them a little more because the menu offers a huge variety of toppings including a dozen different cheeses and just about every sauce possible (green chili/jalapeno compote, chimichurri, Guiness reduction, teriayaki). This isn't Terry's assortment of toppings, but it's pretty darn good. I can't give them full credit because I didn't try any of those, but it's certainly enough to get me to go back and give some of them a try. Toppings - 7

Fries

• These are some seriously outstanding fries. They were serves piping hot and crisp. The Girl thought them a little over salted, but I appreciated the strong flavor including a little extra garlic spice on them. There was the lightest of breadings - possibly just a quick dip into cornstarch that coated a few of the fries visibly. Great stuff. Fries - 9 

First three photos by me... 

Last two pics from Thadd and Milan

Ambiance

• I dig the place. The restaurant had a sort of vacation home vibe with darker wood flooring, bead board half walls dividing the space, rich colors on the walls, and big, bright windows. They also offer outdoor seating that we didn't take advantage of because of threatening skies. There are televisions tunedto sports around the place - particularly around the bar, but I was okay with that on this day as Djokovic was playing, and the waitstaff was kind enough to switch that on behind The Girl. The central bar area looked friendly enough, and there was a lot of room between the tables in our seating area - enough that I wondered why they didn't nudge some closer together to fit in another table or two. They don't offer any two-person tables, something that surprised me a little bit as I saw five tables with two people occupying them while we ate, but they were happy enough to give us a four-top instead.
  Admittedly, the feeling was closer to very nice, mid-price, suburban chain restaurant than to neighborhood dive bar, but at this point in my life, I'm okay with that. Ambiance - 8

Cost

• Ah, there's the rub, eh? The basic FlipDaddy burger in $7.99. Lots of the sauces and toppings are free, but cheese was 75 cents, and bacon another $1.49. Fries were included (for an extra buck you can swap to sweet potato fries, asparagus, or onion rings). The Girl's pretzel bun was an extra buck, as was the beer cheese on top of her $6.99 Build Your Own burger. My drink was $2.25. For my total, that was $12.49 - kind of expensive. Cost - 2.5 

Other stuff

• FlipDaddy's has a very extensive assortment of beers, and pints are $3.50 during happy hour (until 6). +1 
• Our waiter, Eric H according to the receipt, was entertaining, thoroughly conversational when The Girl wanted to customize her burger with something not officially on the menu. +1 
• The option of outside dining was excellent and something we would likely have taken advantage of if the skies hadn't been ready to open up upon us. +1 

Gimme a second while break out the abacus...1+1+1+2.5+8+6+7+9 = 35.5 That's a pretty good score for FlipDaddy's...great fries, very good assortment of toppings, decent burger patty, nicely decorated and inviting place. I like it enough to feel good about FlipDaddy's being the 8th best (of 26 we've reviewed) burger place in town.

• Terry's Turf Club - 45
• Cafe de Wheels - 44
• Senate - 43 
• City View Tavern - 40 (scaled from 32/40)
• Stuffed on Vine - 38
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries - 36 
• Roxy's - 36 
• FlipDaddy's - 35.5
• VanZandt - 34
• Gabby's - 34 
• Oakley Pub & Grill - 34 
• Quatman's - 32 / 34.5
• Troy's - 32 
• By Golly's - 32
• Wildflower Cafe - 31.25 (scaled from 26/40) 
• Sidetracks - 31
• Virgil's Cafe - 28 
• Tank's Bar & Grill - 28
• The Pub at Rookwood Mews - 28
• Smashburger - 28
• Habits Cafe - 28
• Graffiti Burger - 27
• Arthur's - 26
• Sammy's - 25 
• Skinny Legs - 25
• Gordo's (Fairfield) - 20 

Tomorrow I'll be back with a few other recommendations that we'll be trying in the next while.

Royal Jelly

Occasionally a product comes out that absolutely blows my mind.

Noisy Jelly is one of those products.

I don't even know where to begin because any description just sounds stupid and silly, but the actual game looks so frickin' cool, educational, and surprising that I don't know what sort of brilliant mind came up with the idea.

The kit lets you make jello figures with conductive material and pigment dissolved in it which are then placed on a conductive game board and used to make music.

When I read the description, the whole thing sounds stupid, but I so totally want to own it and play the game.

Even more, I want to be the kind of geek burger who knows enough about electronics and has a curious enough disposition to enjoy playing that game.

Things I learned this week...

Nearly every day at school I check in to find some historical event whose anniversary we can celebrate.

My former source was the History Channel's This Day in History page, but it's begun to crash my school computer. Instead, I've been heading to Wikipedia and looking up each day of the year.

This past week I learned that in spite of the accident at the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, one of the reactors there is still operational. I always assumed that they'd shut down the entire plant. Also pretty stunning was the fact the Jimmy Carter was a nuclear (or maybe just submarine) engineer

I also learned that Cincinnati has a frighteningly impressive history of riots - eleven separate riot incidents recorded on Wikipedia's page. The 1884 Courthouse riots - whose anniversary was this week - were by far the most deadly with fifty-six people dying and the riots only being quelled when 300 national guardsmen came in with a Gatling gun to clear the streets.

And, finally, I've always heard that the purchase of Alaska from Russia was nicknamed Seward's Folly. That appears not to be true. The phrase Seward's Folly instead seems to have meant that the folly was in William Seward and Andrew Johnson trying to force the Senate to approve the treaty for the purchase of Alaska before their adjournment. I always assumed that people thought the actual purchase of Alaska was folly. Apparently that's not the case...

I love learning things...love it so much.

Alone

I didn't want to swamp this in yesterday's links, so this gets its own posting.

I can't swear what is said here by Rick Santorum, but I can say what some people are thinking was said. From TheDailyWh.at:

Lots of discussion this morning about whether or not Santorum caught himself starting to say the N-word while describing Barack Obama during a recent speech in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Footage from the event shows Santorum characterizing candidate Obama as “the anti-war government nig-” before stopping himself with a filled pause and abruptly heading in a different direction.

There are several alternate theories out there which suggest Santorum was trying to say something (relatively) innocuous, and merely stumbled in an unfortunate place. One such theory claims Santorum was actually calling Obama a “governmentnik.” While plausible, “governmentnik” isn’t really something someone’s ever called anyone.

This wouldn’t be Santorum’s first brush with racial remarks. He previously came under fire for allegedly singling out black people as welfare recipients. He later claimed he stumbled on a word, which he couldn’t recall, but definitely wasn’t “black.”

Happy Spring Break!

• Perpetual motion bulldog can't be stopped - He's just so cute.
• 21 Counter-Intuitive Break Ideas to Boost Productivity at Work - First, don't sit around reading articles like this. There are some good ideas, though. 
• Friendly neighborhood - I don't remotely know what happened in Sanford, FL other than that a young man lost his life.That's sad no matter the circumstances.

• Tough fruit - I appreciate a themed intramural team.
• Kentucky's Death March - Kentucky should win this week, but I hope not. Go OSU. This article's a little over the top about what UK's victory would mean, though. 

• ESPN Can't Let Knight Play By Own Rules - I respect the man to a ridiculous level, but this article is right. Knight's petulance about Indiana and Kentucky are appropriate when he's giving a fundraising speech to the faithful, but it's not appropriate on the air.
• Scott Pilgrim levels up to full-color, hardcover reprints - Full color? The black and white original was pretty spectacular. I'll at least check out the color versions, but I don't know that I need a second, colorful copy of each of the books.
• The Voice - I don't get a lot of cable channels, but E! is one of them, and they keep rerunning The Voice which includes a woman with perhaps the most annoying singing voice I've ever heard. What the heck does anyone hear that is attractive?
• DC Nations latest 'New Teen Titans' short gets cookie crazy - So cute...I miss the anime Teen Titans

• DC Co-Published Dan DiDio lists his 10 favorite projects of the last 10 years - 5,6,7 - all messes...2 - absolute disaster, horrible...3,8 - okay...9 - interesting but not enjoyable...4,1 - major successes, not perfect, but very good...10 - I haven't read any yet, so I can't say
• "Set Me Free" - brilliant Mad Men supercut of the women on the show.
• You could go to WAR with Chipper - Solid, steady, pretty darn good performance for years 
• Trailer time - Superman vs the Elite - Second trailer now available...wanna see it 

• Jamie Moyer makes Rockies rotation - The man is a miracle. He's gonna be soft tossing long after I let slip this mortal coil.
• Should You Line Dry Your Clothes - I do, but I cheat by running a fan in the winter and tumbling them briefly on air dry to soften them a little because The Girl was complaining otherwise.
• Calvin x The Watchmen - Very well done image
• Movie Trailer of the Day - Safety Not Guaranteed looks kind of entertaining.

$2 free at amazon

You can get $2 in free mp3 downloads at Amazon, but it expires April 1...check the details...

The best cartoon band ever

I present The Gorillaz...

I chose division II

Actually, I chose Division III, but it wasn't because of my athletics.

This past Thursday night, however, I chose to go see the NCAA Men's Division II basketball national semifinals because they were being played over at the Bank of Kentucky Arena on Northern Kentucky University's campus.

The NCAA brought in all eight of their Elite Eight teams into Northern Kentucky to play the Elite Eight on Wednesday, the Final Four on Thursday, and the championship on Saturday. I have two connections to Bellarmine athletics - Coach Sullivan is an assistant for the women's basketball team, and the men's team has a NAHS graduate in their National Player of the Year, Braydon Hobbs. The men's team spent much of the year ranked #1, so I knew they had a good chance to make it that far. With that spirit I hit up Ticketmaster to get myself and The Girl a pair of tickets for the Final Four round. At only $12 for full price - and The Girl being able to get the three buck student discount, the tickets were a bargain. Sure, the $4 convenience charge didn't thrill me, but that's what I get for wanting to be assured of a ticket.

We got there mid-way through the first half of the first game, in time to see the Western Washington Vikings take on the Stonehill Skyhawks (with their awful mascot costume). Clearly, there was no need for me to worry about getting a ticket...

Seriously, I know that WWU is 2450 miles and that Stonehill is 930 miles from NKU as the Google flies, but I would've thought they might be able to get a bus of students rolling across somewhere. Instead, WWU had about twenty parents cheering for them. Stonehill did have a few students at the game.

Once the Bellarmine crowd started to show up for their 9:30 game,the place at least started to fill in a bit. Bellarmine is only 100 miles away from the Bank of Kentucky Center...

It's not like all the seats in the place were taken up, just that Bellarmine outdrew all the rest of the teams combined.

Sadly, Braydon and the Bellarmine Knights came up short, falling 79-72 to Montevallo.

Of course it saved me from having to pick up tickets for the championship game on Saturday - where Western Washington took down Montevallo 72-65.

Lonnieburger Baskets: Skinny Legs in Bellevue

On our way to NKU for the DII Final Four, The Girl and I stopped off in Bellevue to knock off another burger on the Cincinnati Magazine list. We're something like two years out since the burger article came out, and we're approaching a point on the list when we have to search pretty far afield or accept that some of the places have gone out of business at this point.

Skinny Legs Pub & Grill, however, was certainly still in business as we stopped in on a Thursday evening around 5:45 to check out what the have to offer. Here's what Cincinnati Mag had to say about the place...

32 Black & Bleu Burger
SKINNY LEGS PUB & GRILL
$6.95
►The Cajun spices added to the Angus beef give this burger a spicy crust, cut by a generous dollop of bleu cheese dressing. Unfortunately, our bun was overtoasted, rendering it
almost stale, but our sassy waitress more than made up for it. / 519 Fairfield Ave., Bellevue, (859) 261-5111

I'm not much of a bleu cheese kind of guy, and I've pledged to hit only cheddar and bacon on my quest, so I didn't sample the Black & Bleu Burger. Nonetheless, here's what I found about Skinny Legs.

Burger

• I went for my burger medium with bacon and cheddar, lettuce, pickle, onion, tomato, but no mayo. The burger was freshly formed and of good, quality beef. The burger lacked the rich crust that the best burgers have. Maybe because of the recent run-in with Tanks, I felt that the burger could have been more well spiced - a little more salt and pepper, even, would have been appreciated. The real issue that I had with the burger was the desperate pinkness and the blood dripping onto my bun. I'm okay with a little medium rare, especially on a steak, but I ordered my burger medium (mine was the top two and the last above) and got a barely cooked pink burger. That's not right, man. The Girl's medium-well burger is cut in half up and second from the bottom. She ordered hers medium well (barely any pink in the middle), and there's a lot more pink there than a medium well burger should have. Burger - 6 

 Toppings

• Pretty standard fare here. The bacon was better than average but wasn't exactly thick-cut. The cheddar was nicely melted. The lettuce and tomato were serviceable. The garlic dill pickles were nicely thick and crisp. The onion was sharp as the dickens. The Girl went with barbeque sauce on the side of her burger and didn't end up using it. She wasn't impressed with the sauce. Toppings - 6

 Fries

• These are fries from a frozen bag, but they were served nice and hot. They were very lightly salted and had very little browning on them. Solid effort but nothing to write home about. Fries - 6 

Ambiance

• The main room of Skinny Legs is a two-story bar with the upper level reserved mostly for live music and empty on our Thursday at 6:00. The bar itself was populated by one regular when we got there and three when we left. We chose to sit off to the side in a room with a half dozen booths and a couple of two tops. The place seems like a decent neighborhood bar, though we were there a little early to say what the nightlife would be like. Skinny Legs is in Kentucky meaning it's a smoking establishment, and the regular and bartender were both smoking at the bar. Sadly for our gorgeous day there wasn't any outside seating as Skinny Legs is right on the corner of the streets. It's a friendly bar. Ambiance - 6

image from turnerbudds-burgerblog

Cost

• Thursdays are burger mania - we didn't know until we saw the chalkboard outside the front door, so every specialty burger was $6, cheaper than their usual $7.95 price. Fries are an extra dollar, and a Diet Coke was two more bucks. The menu does say that all the specialty burgers are $6. I foolishly asked for a burger with cheese and bacon and got charged fifty cents each for those. The Girl went for the Memphis burger with the barbeque sauce on the side. So she got a $6 burger with bacon and cheese on it and bbq on the side for $6. I got a burger ($6) and was charged an extra dollar for bacon and cheddar. We'll deal with that lower in the 'other stuff' section. My burger was $7 + fries $1 + drink $2 = $10. Right there in the middle range. Cost - 5 

Other stuff

• It's a simple enough thing for the waitress to ring my burger as a Memphis without barbeque. She didn't do that, and it was fully within her control. I took the buck out of my tip. -1 
• The onions were sharp enough that I - who likes a good, sharp onion - ended up not eating them all. That's not the fault of the bar. They just cut fresh onions and don't taste them all.
• Both of our burgers were undercooked...by a lot. -2
• Skinny Legs is a smoking establishment. When we were there, The Girl mentioned that the smoke was giving her a headache. I didn't notice it while were there, but I did notice that even two smokers in the bar made my shirt smell of smoke half an hour after we'd left the bar. -1 
• There's not much else to say about Skinny Legs. It's a fine place but one that exists in a hundred different places around the country. 

 Let's add it all up...6+6+6+6+5-1-2-1 = 25 pts

That's not so good...realistically that's selling Skinny Legs short. It doesn't feel as bad as Sammy's or Arthur's. It's more in line with a Habits or Tank's, they just lost out with their Other Stuff score, but the numbers don't lie.

• Terry's Turf Club - 45
• Cafe de Wheels - 44
• Senate - 43 
• City View Tavern - 40 (scaled from 32/40)
• Stuffed on Vine - 38
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries - 36 
• Roxy's - 36
• VanZandt - 34
• Gabby's - 34 
• Oakley Pub & Grill - 34 
• Quatman's - 32 / 34.5
• Troy's - 32 
• By Golly's - 32
• Wildflower Cafe - 31.25 (scaled from 26/40) 
• Sidetracks - 31
• Virgil's Cafe - 28 
• Tank's Bar & Grill - 28
• The Pub at Rookwood Mews - 28
• Smashburger - 28
• Habits Cafe - 28
• Graffiti Burger - 27
• Arthur's - 26
• Sammy's - 25 
• Skinny Legs - 25
• Gordo's - 20

Next up...um...man, I have no clue. I wanna catch at least one burger over break, though.

For a few other opinions on Skinny Legs, check out...

• Cincy Metromix
• TurnerBudds Burgerblog
• The Food Hussy

Tags...I'm it

What tags do I use most frequently, and what do they each say about me?

• 8Tracks (117) - I've been making mixtapes and playing DJ for a very long time. 8Tracks is the newest incarnation of this urge to share music with people. Seeqpod went away, and I miss its lack of restrictions (playlists of all one artists aren't allowed on 8Tracks), but I've apparently moved on just fine.
• blogs (87) - I loves me some internet, and there's so much content out there to find. Most of these blogs are ones I don't follow religiously, but they're ones I've enjoyed for at least a moment somewhere along the way.
• Cincinnati (69) - It's my adopted hometown (not The Hometown), and there's a lot of stuff to enjoy out there from the best steaks and burgers to tennis tourneys and awesome parks.
• comics (169) - I like comic books in case you hadn't noticed.
• education (72) - The Pater Familias is a teacher. My sister is a teacher. The Girl started as a teacher, and her mom still is a teacher. I teach. Most of my friends teach. It's not a surprise that I'm kind of interested in education.
• food (118) - I like to eat, and I don't mind sharing that fact with you folks - especially if it saves you from eating some of the crap I've eaten along the way.
• games (105) - From Vectrex onward, I've always loved video games. The shift from console-based games to flash games in browsers is an interesting movement to me, as is the use of our bodies as controllers.
• links (233) - I browse a whole lot of internet time, and each week I present you folks with a few highlights. The links posts are those posts.
• movies (274) - There are very few things that I enjoy more than seeing a good movie on the big screen. Yeah, I'm cheap enough to wait for most of them to come to the library so I can see them for free, but some just need to be seen in the huge format.
• music (446) - Interestingly, The Pater Familias couldn't possibly care less about music. He vaguely enjoys cowboy music, but mostly he doesn't care about any tunes, singers, or songs. He doesn't turn his truck's radio on unless he's listening to sports. Mom, on the other hand, would have music playing most anytime when we grew up. She played the guitar and sang us lullabies. She's seen probably a hundred concerts - Bob Dylan makes up half of them, I'm sure. I inherited her love of music.
• narcissism (146) - If this isn't the essence of blogging, I don't know what is.
• oddities (107) - A lot of the blog's content doesn't fit into any particular category, but it's just weird stuff.
• politics (121) - The music comes from mom, but the interest in politics comes more from The Pater Familias, a high school government teacher. I tend to vacillate between feeling hopeful and hopeless about our current political situation, but I still find it interesting.
• Princeton (101) - I've been at Princeton longer than I've been anywhere but in the New Albany Floyd County School system. It's been my home for nearly a dozen years, and it's the place where I've most truly found myself. I'll probably end my career there.
• science (149) - I can't honestly say where the science gene came from. Neither of my parents seem particularly scientifically curious, but it's my chosen interest and what I teach.
• television (177) - I watch too much television. Actually, of late, I haven't been watching very much television at all.
• update (70) - You guys should know that anything I find and that I learn more about will be updated. I'm committed to giving you folks the best of what I have to offer - even if that means updating you when I learn more. I try not to use updates as full daily posts unless there's a big update.
• YouTube (287) - I think I've mentioned enjoying the internet?

Grab it by the memes

The newest Vitamin Water commercial seems to have a thing for internet memes. After the jump you'll see my list of the ones I've spotted. Which ones did I miss?

Update: A gag that never gets old

It's pathetic how frequently I search for this post. I'm going to make my life a little easier by including the phrase "batman's dead parents".

Social Media, take a bizzilion

So another social-media conundrum showed up on my doorstep this past week.

As one of the managers of the PHS facebook page, I've taken it upon myself to occasionally check to see what people are posting to the page. The page was - and is - set-up to display only posts by the official PHS folks when you land there, but clicking can let you see posts by everyone - including this one...

...which directs you to this thread on which some of our students have taken to creating their own meme images. It's a simple enough site, one that's in the same vein as I Can Haz Cheezebuger on which people can type in their own messages to display over top of standard - and somewhat cliched - meme images (success kid, most interesting man in the world, socially awkward penguin).

The thread was started by one of our students. He's clearly named himself; his call. Most of the images have been posted anonymously, though one or two were perhaps foolishly signed. All are tied to Princeton High School by the thread title. Some are less than polite. Some are downright vulgar or offensive. Most are moderately funny and specific to PHS.

I'll include a few examples so you know the kind of stuff I'm talking about...

Here's the question now that I've seen these. As an officially designated person in charge of monitoring the PHS Facebook page, do I...

1. ...inform the principal? He's made issue of OnlyAtPrinceton, a hashtag that students (and possibly teachers?) were using to 'discuss' Princeton on Titter. This isn't as popular (only about twenty-five meme posts so far and already fading by the time I'm writing this up on Saturday morning), nor is it nearly as negative.
2. ...delete the post? I've deleted posts that were openly offensive or purely advertising. 
3. ...leave the post and ignore it? After all, people have free speech, and if the school goes about the Facebook page allowing only pro-Princeton comments, that's sort of defeating the purpose of the interactive nature of the FB page.
4. ...chuckle at some of the images, flag some as inappropriate, and post about the whole situation on my blog?  

I've chosen option #4.