Handling Tools

We're sure this article will get more attention than at our little damp, uninhabited corner of the internet, so we'll keep it brief. But we could not ignore this article from cnn.com, which includes more double entendres than a bad sitcom. They might as well as written an Onion article, and these researchers seem to be aiming straight for the illustrious Ig Nobel Prize. Princeton(!) researchers have proven, scientifically, that upon viewing pictures of women in bikinis, increased activity in the area's of men's brains that correspond to "handling tools" results. Something like that deserves to be quoted for emphasis:

New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

People have reactions of avoidance toward the homeless and drug addicts, and the opposite for scantily clad women.

We have some good proposals of our own, you know:

• Upon smoking marujuana, is there increased activity in the part of the brain that controls desire for Doritos?
• Why do people not mind the smell of their own farts? Oh, did we just make your mind explode, NIH?
• Scientifically speaking, how bad of pizza will drunk people in the L.E.S. still pay $3 for at 2AM?
• Is there any experimental correlation between female attractiveness and male desire to carry large objects?

If any large governmental funding agencies are willing to fund these groundbreaking research ideas, please deposit the grant money directly into DBB's UBS account.

Did We All Forget How Much Tom Daschle Sucks?

Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination to various Health-related cabinet posts, and some people seem downright wistful about him:

"It really sets us back a step," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "Because he was such a talent. I mean he understood Congress, serving in the House and Senate; he certainly had the confidence of the president."

"I was a little stunned. I thought he was going to get confirmed," said Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that would have voted on Daschle's nomination. "It's regrettable. He's a very good man."

"Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged," Obama said Tuesday. "He has not excused it, nor do I. But that mistake and this decision cannot diminish the many contributions Tom has made to this country."

We always remembered Daschle as the Senate majority leader that was so afraid of being seen as not sufficiently patriotic or tough on terrorism that he led his party to vote exactly like Republicans. Soon enough, with such spineless submissives like him representing the Democratic crème de la crème, people figured they might as well vote for actual Republicans. They lost the majority, and he lost his seat. Basically, Tom Daschle was Jay Bulworth before his crisis of concience in that inspired, shitty movie from the 90's. He was a bigger tool than Carson Daly and Matt Lauer combined.

And now, like that venereal disease you thought you took care of with an entire tube of Neosporin, he returns years later wearing the most douchey red glasses possible. Listen Tom, you are not Thom Daschle, respectable art curator. You're a scumbag lobbyist for the health care industry who would be one of the last people on Earth to effect real health care reform. You had to drop out of effecting fake-change because, rest assured, more shit than free limo rides would have floated to the surface. Tear down those glasses, get some comped Lasik, and keep popping klonopin every time someone says DeLay. A better takedown than ours was done by Matt Taibbi, an actual political reporter:

When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger.

It's February, and we are already pretty tired of fake change we have no better option than to accept. As Bulworth himself once opined, "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" The obvious first choice for health care reformist, Howard Dean, must have turned down the fake-change czar nomination before it was offered to Daschlebbychleb. Either that, or Daschlebbychleb was owed a favor by Obama in some sort of Wire-ish scheme.

Getting a Cellphone Abroad is Something You Should Do

As much as going to another country is a chance to experience another culture, it is often a chance to travel technologically back in time. This was a time, prior to this decade, when entire Seinfeld episodes could be written around the comical adventures that ensue when direct communication was not available. Cell phones did not exist, and any hypothetical meeting up between two separate entities involved meticulous planning and unparalleled trust. The exact place and time of meeting had to be specified hours in advance and several contingency plans had to be discussed. Now of course, when you get off the subway hoping to meet your friend in the village the convenience of technology allows you to get a comforting text message along the lines of "sup brah still in brooklyn c u n 30 sorry". If you are traveling abroad and hope to have the same stress-free, informal meet-ups that you are used to, you need to get your cellphone to work abroad.

Pintxos and Friends

Few things are as narcissistic as blogging about how many hits your blog has been getting lately; nothing we're able to do is more pretentious than hosting a dinner party highlighting the cuisine of a region whose existence most guests are not aware. The centerpiece was these flag-evoking anchovy pintxos we were informed about here. To differ, we added spicy pimenton ahumado to our mayo and unfortunately over-roasted the peppers, making them harder to cut. FYI, we were able to find boquerones in NYC at Westside.
Since the phrase "Vegetarian Spanish Food" may have as well been created for a George Carlin bit about oxymorons, we had to freestyle for these inclusivity-themed pintxos. We incorporated an ancient secret of Spanish cooking -- using a shitload of olive oil -- to sauté two packages of oyster mushrooms with half an onion, roasted red pepper scraps, and thyme leaves. This was topped with a slice of brie and freshly ground smoked peppercorns. The brie was ommitted on two of these per plate so that vegans would have two less reasons to passively whine -- these were consistently the last two eaten before a new plate was brought out.
For the people who were too squeamish to let their palette wander like a butterfly in an open meadow we made these self-explanatory Castilian pintxos. More notably, we were actually able to bring with us from Spain our favorite olive, Campo Real. They are perplexedly sold nowhere in the United States that we are aware of; please turn the lights on for us if you know where to find the switch. They have a fresh, herbed, non-salty flavor for which there is no substitute.
The reason for the existence of the party was the purchase of a frozen octopus from the corner fish market. At 24$ we needed help eating this, and at the precipice of offending the uninvited the only reasonable choice was to invite everyone that we could think of. We wanted to see if we could recreate the pulpo a la gallega of our dreams -- contrary to the assurances of Bittman we were not. While certainly tasty, it was rubberier than the restaurant prepared version that hooked us in the first place. However, the Area 51-esque scenarios we encountered in cooking such a creature more than validated the attempt.
Like the fabled lost episode of your favorite TV show, message board denizens of Pintxos and Friends fan sites often say that the tastiest pintxos were the ones never brought out. This would be the bacalao pintxos we prepared from this recipe. While that sauce is very lacking in the flavor category, placing a piece of bacalao on the baguette slice and topping it with a pickled hot pepper made an irresistible combination. So irresistible that the possibility of our tipsy Friends eating too fast and choking to death on fish bones caused our inner risk-assessor to keep them hidden. However, based on the reports of sober souls with lifelong experience in navigating cod skeletons -- the few trusted with the task of tasting -- they measured up.

Fun With Google Analytics, Vol. 1

Much like Rakim rapping about how good he is at rapping, we are going to get a little meta-indulgent here and blog about blogging. We got our Jan 14th post about La Penya a mention on the pre-eminent basketball blog, TrueHoop, by wining, dining, and bribing. Of course, that is super-secret internet speak for sending a polite email. As you can see, the bump in traffic made all of our other posts look insignificant by comparison. We're definitely swimming in advertising revenue now at the DBB headquarters. In the blogosphere, it is a good thing when your individual country details look like CDC disease outbreak scenarios.

Perusing our worldwide acclaim led us to pinpoint another one of Google's well known Chinese government-placating policies. Hovering your mouse over individual countries on the map overlay will show how many hits in the last month you have gotten from that country. Conveniently, the country over which your mouse hovers is highlighted in yellow to further visually distinguish it. For instance, when we hovered our mouse over Taiwan it showed that we had recieved 2 visits from there. However, as you can see, more than just Taiwan was highlighted when we did this, a subtle reminder from Google as to just how far they believe Taiwanese autonomy extends.

In the Hipster Hierarchy, there are Minions and Minionmasters

While we've got one hour now before the melatonin kicks in and we are too tired to even rail against the hipster hierarchy, we do have one hour to rail against the hipster hierarchy. However, instead of railing, let us instead make casual observations from afar, as hipsters themselves are wont to do. In the hipster hierarchy, there are minions and minionmasters.

Visca La Penya!

The basketball junkies we here at Das Bloggy Blog, few things hit us as hard as when TNT became no longer free on Time Warner. Gone were the carefree musings of EJ, drunk Charles, and the Jet -- our only outlet for non-exploitative professional basketball would be ABC. Yeah, that ABC ... the channel that seems to show samey Celtics, Lakers, or Cavs games every week. So when we had the opportunity to see über-prodigy Ricky Rubio in an ACB Spanish League game, we were more than willing to navigate Catalan websites and wander aimlessly in suburban malls in order to figure out how exactly to make it happen.

DKV Joventut (or simply La Penya) does not play in Barcelona but in nearby Badalona. They play at the old Olympic gym located near the Gorg Metro stop, on the L2(purple) line. It's hard to picture a top D-1 team, let alone the original Dream Team, playing at this grafittied, corragated steel canister. Getting tickets (25-30 € each) is as simple as showing up 1-2 hours before gametime and waiting in line at the ticket counter. The ticket counter, which accepts cash, is to the right of the main entrance. The windows to the left of the main entrance seem to be for will call tickets purchased online.

We saw the Dec. 28th game against Baloncesto Fuenlabrada, featuring Alaskan Brad Oleson and a still invisible Nicholas Tskitishvili. Entering the stadium, it becomes difficult not to keel over and writhe on the floor in pain at the greatest cultural difference between a game in Spain and the US: no alcohol is served. The club seems to be more than happy to make its money from the relatively hefty admission -- merch and food sales are really at a minimum. So after picking up a popcorn and a San Miguel 0,0 we took our seats and watched the game. And yes, there is a dance team.Bon Nadal, indeed. The game itself has a few notable differences than what we're used to:

• The dusty court leaves the players sliding around like they are in a rec-center in June. We think there are may be more people cleaning the sidewalks outside than a court in which millions of invested €'s compete.
• For all the talk of the 'Euro two-step', the crowd is quick to stand and call for a traveling violation when the ref neglects to. Meanwhile, in the NBA, LeBron can calmly explain why he should be allowed to take three steps.
• La Penya's answer to Thundersticks are nasal sounding plastic horns favored by fans young and old. If you are a sensitive soul bring earplugs and aspirin -- you are going to find out what it is like to spend 2 hours inside a bagpipe.
• Besides having the beverage menu written with the former(!) President in mind, hooliganophobia also manifests itself at the end of halves. A shielded tunnel wheels onto the court while the players are escorted off by police in riot gear.
  

La Penya fell way behind at the beginning of the second half, playing a trapping zone whose mystery was easily solved by passing to a wide open corner 3. The star of the team, Rubio, and its most dominating player, Jerome Moiso, didn't start; although its best player, Louisianian Demond Mallet did. In crunch time, all three took the court -- their best play being to simply loft a pass inside to Moiso. Their furious comeback was instigated by a press that created turnovers and contested shots. The play of the game was definitely a lackadaisical 1 on 1 break in which the DKV player dove to floor with minimal contact; scooping the ball towards the basket was merely an afterthought. That the 'shot' actually went in meant nothing -- he just wanted the foul call! La Penya, 86-84.

Unfortunately, Rubio was never even given the opportunity to create fast break magic -- he was intentionally fouled every time he received a quick outlet pass. In the half court he was able to get assists and layups often, and when ably defended showed a Ginobili-esque knack to jerk his head back quickly -- this delighted the referee's whistle like nothing else. When he and LeBron are playing for D'Antoni in 2010, the Knicks will be quite the unstoppable force. "Hi, I'm Mike Tirico, and this is the only team that ABC will ever be showing!"