This is the Charlie Sheen I want cooking my dinner.

​It had to happen eventually. Because no one in this country who is famous (or even infamous) for more than 10 minutes gets out of the spotlight without having their own cooking show these days, Charlie Sheen now has one of his own. And it is called, naturally, "Charlie Sheen's Winning Recipes."

Highlights include: How to eat like Charlie Sheen, the benefits of outdoor kitchens (the spirits of Charlie's Adonis ancestors can fly above him and spit fire onto the meal), teleportation, interstellar spaceship construction, chain smoking, cooking wands for warlocks, monkey-grub, Vatican assassins, how to cook a steak with your mind, tea made from dinosaur fossils, and threatening your chef's knife . . . with another knife.

Interesting fact: Charlie Sheen's fingers radiate sunshine and he cries jaguar tears. See what you learn by reading food blogs?

More >>

​It's always tough deciding how to pose for a photo. Do you want to look cute, endearing, bored, engaged, innocent (which is especially important for things like mug shots)?

For chefs--especially those of the celebrity variety--posing for the camera and looking good on film is a kind of survival skill. (What, you think Jamie Oliver got famous just because of the way he cooked an eel pie?) There are even classes given in just how not to look like a total douchebag once the cameras start clicking.

But fI think all you need to know was described in this week's episode of Portlandia. See, the Portland Dining Guide was coming out and there were a couple chefs who needed to have their pictures taken, and, well . . .

Check out the video after the jump. You'll see exactly how it all turned out.

More >>

​So this is what it comes to: In this modern day and age when a broadcast or cable network can make good money by throwing any old piece of crap up on TV so long as it has something to do with ambulatory humans cooking or eating something that at least vaguely resembles food, it takes a web show to actually start poking fun at the foodies that make up the core audience of every such piece-of-crap food show.

Well, you know what? That's just fine by me. So long as someone out there is doing something to deflate the egos and take a hammer to the pretensions of the foodie microcosm, I will support it. I will tell everyone that Foodies is set to premiere on March 9 at freefoodies.com. That it's a web comedy which "follows the adventures of a group of L.A. culinary enthusiasts whose passion for food spills off the table and into their personal lives" (which, I grant you, sounds like the blandest pitch ever). And that you can find the trailer (which comes off much better than that previous quote) right after the jump.

Enjoy . . .

More >>

Stefon is VERY excited about Valentine's Day.

​I know, I know . . . Valentine's Day just kind of snuck up on you again, right? I mean, being on the same exact day every year? What's up with that?

But have no fear. If you're still looking to make last-minute plans for the big day (and happen to be in NYC and have very, very weird tastes), Saturday Night Live's City Correspondent Stefon is there for you with a whole host of suggestions, ranging from Booooooooof (yes, with nine o's) where you can find Gizblo, the coked-up gremlin, to an unpronounceable Japanese nightclub built on a dare by "90-year-old club promoter Fuji Howser M.D.," complete with mole people and Jupids. (Jewish cupids, of course.)

To the video!

More >>

Made of mostly meat! Mostly . . .

​On The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart let Lewis Black loose on meat--specifically on Taco Bell and the recent battle over whether or not its taco filling contains enough actual meat to be called "beef."

"Like most people," Black said, "all I want is my meat and potatoes--minus the potatoes." And then he got kinda angry.

The Taco Bell lawsuit (filed by a woman in California, through an Alabama law firm, against a fake Mexican restaurant founded in San Bernardino) basically claims that Taco Bell's "meat" contains only 36% beef, and therefore can't legally be called beef. I'm trying really hard right now not to think about what the remaining 64% might be. You should, too.

Video after the jump.

More >>

Photo courtesy peta.org

Lucky pumpkin . . .

​I have some very strong opinions about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and have never been shy about voicing them whenever appropriate. I disagree with virtually everything the organization has ever done or said, think that they have raised factual distortion and radical bias to the level of Olympic sport, and just generally make fun of them and their supporters every chance I get, simply because nothing I could ever say would rise to the level of their campaign that compared factory farming to the Holocaust by putting up billboards with pictures of concentration-camp victims on the street. In Germany.

But while I loathe the PETA political machine, I have always had a soft spot for the evil geniuses in their marketing department. They are brilliant, and while the "banned" Veggie Love ad they pushed for last year's Super Bowl was good, what they're pimping right now is even better: The TOTALLY NSFW outtakes from the casting of Veggie Love, which basically consists of a whole bunch of hot girls in their underthings (and one completely bewildered-looking dude) simulating sex with a variety of wang-shaped vegetables. They're probably something you'll want to hold off watching until you get home, but if you insist on looking now, don't say I didn't warn you . . .

More >>

​

Following up on this morning's epic post about the history of Olympia Beer, we are pleased to offer this to all the veteran barley-pop enthusiasts out there: a collection of vintage beer commercials, all focusing on Seattle's most fondly remembered brews.

More >>

​There have been a lot of really stupid ideas out there about how to solve America's obesity epidemic. Fad diets, nanny-state government intervention, outlawing salt and fat and Happy Meal toys, DIY gastric-surgery bypass kits for sale on Amazon for the home medical enthusiast. There have been a lot of well-meaning attempts made by celebrities (looking at you, Jamie Oliver) and normal, everyday do-gooders as well, and First Lady Michelle Obama has more or less made the smallerization of American waistbands the cornerstone of her domestic policy agenda.

But leave it to the good folks over at The Onion News Network (debuting tomorrow, January 21, on IFC) to come up with the simplest, most elegant plan yet. Or actually, I guess we have to thank "Steve Hoyer," the "Deputy FDA Commissioner" giving a press conference in this clip and urging Americans to "just eat a goddamn vegetable once in a while."

The video after the jump.

More >>

​We've done several posts dealing with all the reasons "Why Your BLANK Hates You." There was Why The Hot Dog Cart Guy Hates You (because you're just not paying attention enough), Why Your Sommelier Hates You (you're a cheap braggart and everyone knows it), Why Your Farmers Market Hates You (you keep messing up their pretty displays, and also you're still cheap), Why Your Barista Hates You (because they really don't want to hear about the novel you're writing) and Why Your Barista REALLY Hates You (because, apparently, they're all very bitter about Starbucks, and the fact that nobody will buy their novels).

The one really obvious one we skipped was "Why Your Waiter Hates You." And why did we skip that one? Because there is not enough space on the entire internet to encompass all the rage, frustration, gall and petty indignation that lives in the heart of your average waitron at Flinger's. I spent the first half of my career working in close proximity to thousands of servers, so I know what I'm talking about here. I've seen them get pop-eyed furious at a pen. I've seen them get angry with plates and floor mats. And none of those things even have the power to ask for split checks.

Thankfully, there are plenty of other people out there to describe the myriad resentments of those working in the front of the house. And some of them, it seems, had time enough to make videos...

More >>

This thing could make you rich(ish)

​Things the British Like:

Queens

Colonial rule

Warm beer

Pudding

Things Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update club correspondent Stefon likes:

Furkels

Blingo

Sheepdogs that look like Bruce Vilanch

Cocaine

But the place where the interests of the British and everyone's favorite club casualty intersect? Christmas, of course. Here are two videos plumbing the depths of the strangeness that is the holiday season.

More >>