TOP 10!!!!!!!!!1

Bon Apetit magazine, a gourmet recipe-of-the-month collection for the well-traveled and sophisticated foodist* recently published an interview with gangster rap mogul Rick Ross. Although Ross has the girth and bankroll of the more typical Bon Apetit feature interviewee, his raw style contrasts starkly with the magazine’s more refined readership. One can imagine the magazine’s E.I.C. vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard some scalding week in late-June while her young intern racked his brain for interview subjects, only to have an epiphany during his morning commute while he was listening to the Gucci Mane station on Pandora Radio. What an oddly, even paradoxically appropriate interview. This gets Rounge thinking… what are other would-be examples of unexpected interviewer/interviewee pairs?


*Anyone who says “foodie” gky immediately.

À la recherche du rounge perdu

Roungers, today I’d like to tell you about a dream I had last night. I was late for my meeting to meet the President. And CEO. Of southeast Wisconsin's third largest distributor of Moustache and Earstache wax and styling products. But I didn’t want to leave the house until I found my lucky pen. I had spent the last 20 minutes looking in a plate of huevos rancheros and the July 1987 issue of Popular Mechanics, but to no avail. Then I realize it was in my travel sportcoat all along, which I was wearing- only in the right-hand pocket in lieu of the left-hand pocket. You see, I prefer to keep it in the left-hand pocket because I’m right-handed, and it’s easier to draw across the body when you need to quickly write something down. People don’t always appreciate the value of writing stuff down- nowadays, I mean, everybody assumes they can just make a note in their iPhone or something… but what happens when they accidentally walk into an electromagnet and wipe their memory? You know, I suppose a paper note could catch on fire too, but I’m pretty careful with those things. Normally.

Before long, I was driving southeast on W. North street in my 1979 Toyota Tercel. Thankfully the car has a roomy backseat because there were also two pandas in the car. Upon inquiry, I found out their names were Margo and Julie. I was a little unclear why they were in the car, but they seemed nice enough, so I didn’t ask them to leave. Actually, I was kind of surprised, because on the nature channel pandas always seem kind of snooty and aloof, but these two were pretty jovial- Margo was apparently a DJ on the weekends at this bar near my apartment and Julie was a college football fan. When we passed a park, they saw a couple of tall trees and convinced me to pull over so they could snag a few leaves. The sun was out, so it seemed like a good idea. I pull over, and we went over to the park to toss the frisbee around.

After an hour or so, I looked over, and noticed my car had been stolen. That was kind of a bummer. It could be expected though, considering I left it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. So I figured it was best if I grabbed a surfboard and surfed home. That, on the other hand, was way cooler than driving a car. On the way home, I stopped to pick up my dry-cleaning- 2 shirts and a pair of slacks. Cost me $13.50, and I think all I paid for was packaging- I walked out of there and there was enough plastic wrap and twist ties to build a sailboat. Or a catamaran out of a surfboard. Nice! So, with my clean slacks- why do they call them slacks, exactly- what are they slacking from? It seems to me these are some pretty hard-working pants, so anyway, I got on my surfboard-cum-catamaran, swung by Petsmart to check out Reptile month, and then headed home.

Eventually I got home, and was looking for something to do, so I poured myself a [drink of the week], and a bowl of Brazil nuts, and yes, I mean only Brazil nuts, because I buy them separate not as part of some alleged “mixed nuts” that actually contains very few Brazil nuts and mostly peanuts, and fired up the ol’ PC and spun over to this website- roungetable.blogspot.com

Oh, and then I woke up.

Hearty Variety

Yum!... Stuff

So I was eating an Oreo today and I thought, there's a Roundy behind this… maybe not a 'the Rounge shut down a year ago and this is gonna bring it back' Friday Roundy, but one nonetheless. But more on the cookie later.

Remember a few years back when KFC was still Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Colonel was still a caricature of a drunken, antebellum chicken farmer? Well, times changed. Yum! brands took over and decided to push the public's focus on the long popular nickname "KFC". Most likely the decision was made due to the growing health food trend- which the word 'fried' certainly did no justice to. But there was no shortage of speculation that the abbreviation was done for the C-word… 'Chicken', since KFC had found a cheaper alternative. Personally I think that's still chicken in the Double Down Sandwich, along with about 2 days worth of unhealthy fried fat/goodness. So maybe they just thought it was shorter to say?

Which brings us to Yum!'s more recent and less pronounced plan- rebranding Pizza Hut as "The Hut". I've heard less opinion that what they're serving is not actually pizza, but I think a case could be made. Certainly their expansion into other gourmet Italian cuisine- like the pasta you purchase by the kilo, may mean they didn't want to be seen as one-dimensional.

Anyway, Yum!'s branding decisions are really just meant as a prelude to the Oreo question. Today I looked at a container of Oreo Double Stuf cookies and noticed that, yes, that's right, they are "Double Stuf" with one f. This confuses me. What is Nabisco trying to pull over on us? Did they at some point switch from normal stuff to a cheaper, synthetic stuff, and feel they could be legally liable if if they left the full word in-tact? I'll admit I hadn't experienced an Oreo Double Stuf cookie in some time, so I don't know when exactly the change occurred, and to be honest, I wouldn't have noticed a difference based on taste alone. But that missing f does bother me.

Then I wondered if maybe they just were going for the succinct thing. But if that were the case, wouldn't they follow in KFC's footsteps and go all the way to ODS? It worked for ODB, right? I mean, ODB was considered a visionary artist whereas Ol' Dirty B*st*rd was more of an Ol' Dirty B*st*rd. I don't mean that Dirty. RIP.

Anyway, I'm starting to think there's something amiss in the food industry.

Return of the Roungetable/Ratio Referendum Roundy

It's been a while. Let's talk.

We've all got a good handle on the now standard km:live ratio (mine sits at 99:1) at the moment. However I think there's room to grow on this front - is one ratio really enough to encompass all of our feelings at any particular moment? The answer is yes, (100:0).

Changa and I were discussing the ratio of meat to egg in our breakfast sammies this morning (80:20). They were disgusting. Can we have a ratio that describes how much we want to pull the trigger:eat more food? In that case, the breakfast Changa (pictured above) and I consumed this AM was a solid -80:20, whereas my delicious quesadilla for runch was closer to -10:100. You see how flexible this system is in describing how you feel about a certain meal; clearly the totals don't need to add up to 100.

Any other suggestions? WELCOME BACK ROUNGETABLE :)

Top Ten: Go Flog Yourself!

In honor of Little Larry Sellers, whose dad wrote 156 episodes of Branded but is flunking Social Studies, the Top Ten+ Basic Cable edits of R-rated movie lines of all time. And yes, I've been saving/searching for a while and already have nine to start us off...

Top Ten!!! (Halloween episode)

Top Ten things to look forward to this Halloween...

10. TG - Finally has excuse to dress up as the Indian Chief from Village People and parade around the Meatpacking District. (Fabulous!)