Whipped Cream Difficulties

The more TMQ columns we observe, the more we think Gregg Easterbrook needs a good editor.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ:

“The more football your columnist observes, the more TMQ becomes convinced the tight end is the essence of the modern game.” And boom! go the first 602 words of this week’s column.

We will add that we consider tight ends to be important for cheerleaders as well. (Thank you. We’ll be here all week. Try the veal, and remember to tip your waitress.)

Sweet and sour: Martz!, Buffalo-Giants, Oakland-Cleveland.

Wacky disclaimer of the week: fake fireplace logs pose a risk of fire.

Roger Williams. Overuse of the word “extreme” (really, Gregg, Simpsons did it better).

We are coming to the conclusion that anytime a TMQ item contains the words “cosmic thought“, you can just go ahead and skip that. (“…all that time ago, they painted inside caves, seeming to hope their work would last long enough to be seen by distant descendants.” Or maybe they painted inside caves as part of some kind of primitive religious ritual, and we’re just lucky the caves and the paintings survived this long?)

Miami stinks, but Miguel has already made that point. Gratuitous SF movie bashing: “Real Steel”. “…now we’ve returned to the prosperity of the 1990s.”

Chicken-<salad> plays: Jacksonville, Rams. More creep.

Concussion watch this week is pretty awful: not the item, the facts. In particular, we’re saddened by the death of Ridge Barden. We feel bad for bringing this up, but we feel the need to point out something TMQ glosses over:  Mr. Barden was wearing one of the Revo concussion-reducing helmets that TMQ has been promoting for the past two years.

For some reason, TMQ feels compelled to explain, in great detail, his “On The Waterfront” reference in the “Reel Steel” item above.

The results of TMQ’s “crowdsource my dog’s food” experiment. The “High School Warm-Up Songs” item can be completely skipped. The Bengals defense: all unwanteds.

Wacky food of the week returns, with TMQ taking on Sam Sifton’s review of Per Se. We have a lot of problems with this item:

1. “But with 9.1 percent of the country unemployed, for the nation’s most important newspaper to have an orgasm over $1,000 for ‘torchon of moulard duck foie gras from É levages Périgord’ is more evidence that the nation’s media elite are out of touch.” We fail to see why those who can afford to eat at Per Se, even if it is just a once-in-a-lifetime splurge, should not do so because employment is at 9.1 percent.
2. Per Se is a thing. It exists in NYC. Should the NYT not have reviewed it because it is expensive? Is there a cutoff price point where TMQ believes the NYT should not review restaurants?
3. That $1,000 is the high-end, and includes wine. The actual menu price (without wine) is a set $295 per person, as the review notes. Also, as the review notes, this is less than the price of an aisle seat at the Metropolitan Opera; we believe that this is also less than the price of concert tickets to see the Rolling Stones on their most recent tour. Does TMQ believe people should stop attending the Met or the Stones with employment at 9.1 percent?
4. As the review also makes clear, this was Sam Sifton’s last piece as restaurant critic for the NYT. We find it hard to blame him for going out with a splurge.

There are some interesting responses to last week’s speculation about boys, football, and college performance. In particular, our video games theory is brought up, and a teacher in the Danish school system points out that same trend exists in Denmark (not an American football crazy country).

More sour: Houston, Dallas. More “Terra Nova” bashing. So apparently, the time portal only goes back to one fixed point in time, and to an alternative universe, and nothing (including information) comes back through the time portal, so nobody knows what’s on the other side (but still packs guns for dinosaurs), and since the time portal is into an alternative universe, it will have no effect on the current one, so what’s the point, anyway? Got it.

“Owner Chainsaw Dan Snyder has had 12 starting quarterbacks in his 12 seasons.”

Mount Union 56, Heidelberg 7, which leads to a discussion of Mount Union’s alleged “poor sportsmanship” in scheduling “cupcake opponents” and running up the score on them. We’re not going to take a side on this, but we do appreciate TMQ’s link to this nice story about Heidelberg in the NYT.

Avila 27, Culver-Stockton 13. Worst play of the season so far: Saints.

“Next Week: In Real Football, the sequel to “Real Steel,” NFL players are replaced by robots programmed never to question their coaches.” Well, that would be one of Asimov’s Laws. But does a robot have an obligation not to harm other robots? The Third Law only states “a robot must protect its own existence”, not that of other robots. On the other hand, what would a world be like if robots could destroy other robots at will? Should there be a Fourth Law, “A robot must not harm other robots, or allow other robots to come to harm, except where doing so would conflict with the First or Second Laws.” If so, where does that leave robot football? Tune in next week; we promise to completely ignore this question.

(That is, unless we get some good answers in the comments.)

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Food, Geek, Neuroscience, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.