March 28, 2009 1:22 am

Friday Afternoon Internet Happy Hour: Foodie Links Worth a Click

It’s Friday again, and I know you’re just sitting there whiling away those last few hours of the workday. Here are a few tasty links to get you through the afternoon:

• YumSugar visits the San Francisco Chocolate Salon and discovers the Sizzling Bacon Bar, featuring milk chocolate with bacon, sea salt, and popping candy.
• Starbucks introduces new ice cream flavors.
• Ben & Jerry’s nine new flavors include Chocolate Macadamia and Mission to Marzipan.
• The New York Times reports on the sweet side of the recession.
• If the words “tomato tornado” mean anything to you, you will not want to miss the new trailer for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, coming soon in “mouthwatering 3-D.”
• “Jean-Georges Vongerichten” and “Applebee’s” appear in the same sentence.
• Serious Eats demonstrates “moffle”-making. I know this sounds like an SNL skit, but apparently it’s real.
• Eggs made from bacon?
• The “burger that feeds a family of four.” For how many days?
• More burger ogling: Padma Lakshmi’s Hardee’s commercial debuts. (Or did I mean, “more burger (comma) ogling”?)
• The rainbow baking trend continues! Conversations with a Cupcake creates a colorful cake sure to make you smile.

Photo courtesy of Conversations with a Cupcake

Did I miss a not-to-be-missed foodie link from this past week? Add a comment or tweet at me!

Have a great weekend!

–KitchenMaus

March 28, 2009 1:22 am

Omni Daily News

Books Bracketology:  In Tournament of Books action, reviewer Rosecrans Baldwin chose City of Refuge by Tom Piazza to advance to the finals over E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.  In lieu of nets, what will the champion cut down?

An Homage to Fromage: The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais has won the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.  Apologies for the sour grapes, but how does Baboon Metaphysics not take home the title?!  (See the long list here)

Sleuth Debut: The TV adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s bestselling series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, hits the Home Box Office screen on Sunday, and the New York Times preview is a bit lukewarm : “The series might seem too sweet for HBO, too NPR, too pledge-week PBS, but it doesn’t feel like a walk through Busch Gardens either.“

And Finally: The Guardian has an interesting follow-up piece on the recent revival of Ayn Rand.  I’d recommend reading the entire article, but think the headline says it all:  Atlas Shrugged is absurd but strangely compelling.

-Dave

March 28, 2009 1:22 am

Slinky, a "Cult" Favorite - Flash Back Friday

Why do so many toys seem to have some very crazy back stories?  Today we have the story of the Slinky, and its rise and fall (bah dum dump..ching! Thank you, I’ll be here all week- Try the roast beef!) at the hands of the family behind it, Richard and Betty James.  You see, Richard invented the Slinky after seeing a spring fall off a table, after the toy became a hit, he joined a cult and gave them a lot of his profits…But The Straight Dope tells it better:

 By the 1950s Richard was pretty flush. He and Betty lived with their growing family on a 12-acre estate near the suburb of Bryn Mawr on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line. But he wasn’t content and at some point got religion. Previous accounts have been vague on how this came about, and Betty herself doesn’t have a lot of specifics. She doesn’t know what religious organization Richard got hooked up with, only that it was an evangelical Christian sect that she termed a cult. Richard began consorting with what Betty considered dubious characters, made sizable financial contributions, and testified at revival meetings. She attended one and found it mortifying.

I asked Betty what had gotten into her husband. She said Slinky sales were slumping in the mid-50s and that Richard, a charismatic man who had gotten used to being a big shot, liked the attention he got while confessing his sins.

Wondering what kind of sins we were talking about, I asked: “Did Richard have, ah, personal issues that led to his religious conversion?” Yes, Betty said. He’d been a philanderer. She’d found out about it, they’d had discussions of the sort that usually ensue, but she’d stayed with him for the sake of their six children.

Finally, in February 1960, Richard announced to Betty and their two eldest children that he was moving to Bolivia to work for his religious group. They could either sell the business or run it themselves; he was cutting all ties. By July he was gone. What exactly he did in Bolivia, Betty doesn’t know, although there’s no reason to think it was anything along the lines of Jim Jones in Guyana–more like a mission, from the sound of it. At one point she heard he was printing religious tracts.

To provide for her family, Betty decided to keep the Slinky business going, but it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Richard had diverted the company’s resources to his religious interests and left millions of dollars in unpaid bills. Betty begged her creditors to be patient, and miraculously they all agreed. She wangled a TV advertising deal, moved the Slinky plant to her hometown of Hollidaysburg in central Pennsylvania, and slowly put the company back on its feet.

You have to love the persistence of Betty James!  Here are some of the classic Slinky commercials for you to enjoy this Friday.  Don’t forget to check out the changes in the stairs that the slinkys walk down- the 70’s version is particularly nice.

From the 60’s:



From the 70’s:



And the 80’s (ohhhh colors! and plastic!):




Have a great weekend- I hope its fun for a girl and a boy!

–Laura McMullan

March 28, 2009 1:22 am

"Slumdog Millionaire": Best DVDs of April 2009

What it is:
We all agreed that it may seem redundant to name Slumdog Millionaire
as the best film of the month, but it just really is that good of a
film. The golden child of this year’s award season (hands down), this
story is unlike any other films of 2008. For those of you who have been
living off the grid in a small hovel in the woods (because that’s
probably the only circumstance in which you might not know about Slumdog), it revolves around a teen growing up in the slums of Mumbai who becomes a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Arrested under suspicions of cheating, events from his life are shown
in a series of flashbacks that explain how he knew the answers to all
the questions on the show.

Why it’s significant: Needless to say, with all
the hype and buzz, I had high expectations going into this film and
therefore prepared myself for the inevitable disappointment. But Slumdog
prevailed over my pessimism. It was both humorous and tragic, creative
but honest. Boyle did a superb job of portraying an exquisite but
tormented modern-day Mumbai where the beauty of its citizens is offset
by stunning images of poverty and conflict. The film could have very
easily come across as almost cheesy in a sense, but maintained itself
as realistically hopeful. Director Danny Boyle (Sunshine, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) earned his first Oscar as Best Director for Slumdog and I must say, it is well-deserved. If you are like me and keep a list of movies (new and old) to see, bump Slumdog to the top. It is not to be missed. —Kelsey