- Eaaaasy now, Urban Meyer. You might be a two-time national championship-winning coach, but you need to not be quite so sensitive. Meyer is a guy who runs hot and has a bit of a short fuse, so it’s not a huge surprise that he took issue with critical comments made by former University of Florida quarterback Shane Matthews. Matthews played quarterback at Florida in the early 1990s and says he supports the Gators and coach Urban Meyer, but Meyer isn’t buying it. The reason he’s not buying it is because Matthews had the audacity to criticize Meyer's game strategy during Florida's upset loss to Mississippi on his radio show last fall. As the head football coach at Florida, Meyer should expect to be under a microscope, but he seems to be under the impression that anyone who ever played football at the school should never, ever criticize anything that goes on in the program for the rest of their life. The rift started when Matthews criticized the offense following the 31-30 loss to an inferior Mississippi team. “When I watched the Ole Miss game and Ole Miss played our wide receivers about 90 percent man-to-man, it was a slap in the face to our wide receivers and passing game. I can't understand why we didn't take advantage of that,” Matthews said at the time. Woah, look at that scathing, off-base diatribe by Matthews. He reeeeally tore into the Gators on that one. Either that or he was just a radio host doing his job by breaking down the sports that he is supposed to be talking about, one or the other. Unfortunately, Meyer didn’t see it that way and he tore into Matthews - even if he didn’t name names when he levied his verbal salvo. “If you want to be critical of a player on our team or a coach on our team you can buy a ticket for seat 37F, you're not welcome back in the football office," Meyer said, according to the report. “You're either a Gator or you're not a Gator.” Bzzzzzzz! Wrong answer, coach. Matthews is a member of the media first and if you have a problem with that, that’s on you and not him. It’s one thing if Matthews is just some UF alum who is barreling his way onto TV and radio programs and lighting you up with unjustified criticisms, but he’s not. Dude has a job talking about sports and from what I can see, he did so in a fair, balanced fashion. He had a take and he shared it, period. Matthews, the Gators' quarterback from 1990 to 1992, said he was "shocked [this] has been blown out of proportion." He also stated that he has talked to Meyer and expressed his continued support for the Florida football program, but Meyer doesn’t seem to care. Ultimately, Matthews comes out of this looking a-OK and Meyer is the one who looks like a total ass, so perhaps the coach who shows an incredible amount of intellect and cool on the field needs to start showing more of those qualities off of it……
- Chester French is a band that has been heavily pimped by MTV, so factor that in to what I’m about to say. I mention the MTV angle because let’s face it, any time they promote an artist from any genre, the reality is that at their core, that artist is usually a homogenized, pop-sounding take on that given genre. In other words, MTV picks poppy bands that appeal to the widest possible range of teenagers, who by and large have garbage taste in music (Britney Spears and Maroon 5, anyone?). That being said, MTV has been pushing Chester French as an up-and-coming artist and while I’m not sold on their music, I do think the group is taking an interesting approach to releasing its music. Notice I said interesting, not unique. See, C. French is offering fans an entirely free "athletic-themed" album called “Jacques Jams” on its Web site. This isn’t a novel concept, as Radiohead offered its fans the chance to download “In Rainbows” for free, er, determine how much they wanted to pay for the album. So giving away new music for free isn’t a new idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Obviously, Chester French (Harvard-educated duo D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey, named for sculptor Daniel Chester French) is hoping that hearing their free tunes will entice you to buy the band's official debut album, "Love The Future,” which came out last month. Of course, someone needs to tell Wallach that he isn’t breaking new musical ground by giving away free music, because he’s under the false impression that he and Drummey are the pioneers of this notion. “We're doing something that's never been done by a band before," says Wallach. "It's great because when you put out free music, people can spread it around as much as they want. And right now as we're just trying to expose ourselves to more people. Every new supporter helps.” The band has dubbed its fans the "VIP Concierge Service,” which should help sell a few t-shirts. Wallach and Drummey actually met at Harvard but neither graduated because pursuing their music seemed more interesting. I also have doubts about them because they are signed to uber-producer Pharrell Williams’ label and Williams is typically involved with music that is way too slick, far too heavily produced and heavily augmented. So if you want to bump on over to the band’s Web site and listen for yourself, go right ahead. And no, I don’t care that they won a place on Rolling Stone's "Artists to Watch" list in 2008. The day I allow Rolling Stone to be the arbiter of my musical tastes is the day I strap a block of C4 to my iPod and blow it into a million tiny pieces…….
- We all know that real estate in Manhattan is just about the most ridiculously inflated real estate in the world, so there are bound to be more than a few horror stories of people paying ginormous sums of money for absurdly tiny dwellings. The man standing at the peak of that absurdity right now is Kevin Patterson, who lives in what ApartmentTherapy.com calls the smallest -- and coolest -- in Manhattan. Patterson abides in a midget-small lives the terms "studio apartment" on the West End Avenue, a 210-square foot apartment for which he pays $1,550 a month.. “About 4 steps in either direction you change rooms,” Patterson says of his tiny pad. “My tips for living in a small space is to maximize every piece of furniture that you buy. This sofa converts into a sleeper, it also has storage for linens underneath and ... the bed has cabinetry all below.” To make the room appear bigger, he also has a large mirror on the wall that he claims gives the room a greater feeling of depth he says. Other tactics Patterson uses to create the illusion of having more space are using white paint to make the room seem larger and brighter, while a paper divider to give the apartment more of a two room feel. Mix in a few high shelves and bam, you’ve got yourself New York's smallest, coolest apartment and a $2,000 gift certificate from ApartmentTherapy.com for that distinction. Unfortunately, the gift certificate is to a furniture store and given his rather limited space, Patterson doesn’t exactly have anywhere to put more furniture. So what’s next for him? "I've been here for about 20 months, I'll probably move out now that real estate prices are so great all over the city," Patterson says. "To a bigger place? Probably a little bit bigger. But I do like small spaces.” No kidding, amigo. After all, it would be virtually impossible to move anywhere with less space……
- Attention residents of Reading, Ohio: Lighten up. I’m speaking to the residents who have thrown a temper tantrum about a, um, curvaceous female mannequin that a local eatery has been using as a billboard outside its establishment. The busty mannequin, named "Bar Be Q," was posed on the sidewalk outside K.T.'s Barbecue in Reading wearing a biking top and a short skirt. If you haven’t seen the pictures…..let’s just say this model has had some work done to boost her upper half, if you know what I mean. “She” is rocking a bikini top and an uber-short miniskirt, so clearly the prudes in Reading had to try and do whatever they could to rid their streets of this mannequin menace. These squares lodged a complaint with the zoning board and the restaurant's owner was cited for a zoning violation. Now, it’s up to the town’s zoning panel to sit down and decide whether to issue Bar Be Q a certificate of appropriateness and allow the restaurant to use Bar Be Q as its billboard. Boy, what a riveting town meeting that would be. There is absolutely nothing ridiculous about a bunch of small-town folks sitting around and discussing whether a mannequin is dressed in too racy a fashion to be seen on the sidewalk outside of a local business. Nothing screams provincial, small town, backwater folks quite like that sort of debate. Can’t you just picture middle-aged women and old dudes screaming at the zoning panel about how “she” is setting a bad example for their children? Right, because kids always take their cues on how to dress from inanimate plastic objects. Way to stay with the times and not appear at all old-fashioned and out of date, Reading residents…….
- The summer is festival season, and I don’t just mean music festivals. No, people gather for all sorts of reasons as the warm weather rolls in. They even gather to eat roadkill, if you can believe it. Okay, so considering the fact that the RoadKill Cook-Off festival takes place in West Virginia, probably none of us should be surprised in the least. Yes, thousands of people will soon converge on the small town of Marlinton, West Virginia, to sample dishes like Pothole Possum Stew, Fricasseed Wabbit Gumbo and Smeared Hog with Groundhog Gravy. What’s worse is that the RoadKill Cook-Off is so popular that it fills all the motels and hotels in the county. Granted, all of the hotels in a county in West Virginia isn’t exactly like filling all the hotels in Manahttan or South Beach, but it’s still depressing if you’re not a sick freak who likes grubbing on food scraped from the southbound lane of your local township highway. The festival takes place on the last Saturday in September and is run by some kook named David Cain. He who runs the event and samples all the dishes, which is probably every bit as revolting as it sounds. “There are some that are better than others, but I've never really had anything that I really didn't like,” Cain said. "But there was one year they cooked a rattlesnake in some kind of stew, and ... there was no way I could taste that one.” Wait, you down possum, groundhog and raccoon, but you draw the line at rattlesnake? Drawing a pretty fine line there, aren’t we? You might be asking yourself what inspires someone to create an even quite as disgusting as the RoadKill Cook-Off. The event began in 1991, when organizers thought it might boost attendance at the Pocahontas County Autumn Harvest Festival. Over the past 18 years, the event has grown exponentially and in 2008, nearly 10,000 people from all over the country came to last year's gathering. The rules for participants state that all dishes featured in the festival must have animals commonly found dead on the side of the road as their main ingredient, but the meat doesn't have to be actual roadkill. The RoadKill Cook-Off isn’t the only bizarre food festival, but it’s clearly the most disgusting. It’s definitely more stomach-churning than the annual Waikiki Spam Jam, described by organizers as "a street festival that celebrates the people of Hawaii's love for Spam.” Wow, you must be proud of that one, Hawaiians. Your love of Spam is so legendary that someone felt the need to create a festival to celebrate it. I realize that food and other consumer goods are much more expensive in Hawaii because of the transportation costs to get them there, but that doesn’t mean you all need to resort to Spam as dietary staple. Yet every April, thousands of people descend on Honolulu to honor the world’s most famous canned meat-like product. Hawaii does in fact have the highest per-capita consumption rate of Spam products in the United States, with almost 7 million cans worth of the quasi-meat product eaten every year in the state. I suppose one virtue of Spam is its versatility - food, spackle, putty to plug leaky pipes, a bonding agent when no glue is handy - and as such, it’s appropriate that this year’s menu for the Spam Jam will include diverse items such as Spam Fried Rice, Spam Burgers and Guava Mango BBQ Spam Sliders. “I think people are amused by the whole idea because it is pretty different. Like, why would you celebrate Spam?" said Barbara Campbell, one of the founders of the festival. "It's just about having fun, and they love the different Spam items.” One local eatery even offers Spam Chili Nachos at the festival and has since added the dish to its regular menu. Yes, it’s going to be another interesting culinary summer in these here United States……….
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