Fried Frito Pie Wins At State Fair Of Texas

This is an inspired idea:

Some compared it to a rookie winning the Super Bowl MVP when three culinary novices swept the Best Taste award at the sixth annual Big Tex Choice Awards yesterday.

The creators of Texas Fried Frito Pie beat out the competition to take the prize at the Texas State Fair, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The team was made up of Michael Thomas, the originator, Richard Roznowski, the motivator and Jeffrey Lovel, the facilitator, all of whom had a hand in creating the Texas Fried Frito Pie -- balls of cheese and chili rolled in corn chips and then battered and deep friend -- and getting it to the fair.

"We're all big time fair-goers. I probably go six or seven times a year, which for a 3 week fair is a lot. We'd been looking for a classic fair food that hadn't been done fried, and Frito pie just made sense," Lovell told Slashfood.

The trio tried many brands of chili, chips and cheese before settling on Texas Chili Company's chili and a "basic" cheese and chip, Lovell said. "We combine and the chili and the cheese and then we surround it in chips and then we freeze it and then we batter it and fry it."

They spent about six months on the recipe, the Morning News reported. "We had to increase our exercise considerably," Roznowski told the paper.

Since moving to California nobody I've met has ever heard of Frito pie, a staple of Texas cuisine, except for one chick who grew up in Arkansas. The Creativity Award was won by deep fried beer, essentially beer inside ravioli shells. I can't say that I particularly relish the thought of hot beer exploding in my mouth but I'm definitely pining for that basket of deliciousness pictured above.

(via, hat tip: Doug"E")

Brain Rage Endorses Basil Marceaux.com

This post is to announce that Brain Rage officially endorses Republican Basil Marceaux.com for governor of the great state of Tennessee. This man should be given as many opportunities to speak in front of a microphone and/or camera as is humanly possible:

His website is a journey into another world. A bleak, rambling world. Here's his complete bid for governor (watch the reporters' faces because they know what's coming):


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Matrix Reloaded Chateau Fight Scene

Posted merely because it's 2:00 in the morning, I'm eating crab-stuffed salmon whilst drinking a second bottle of very nice Chardonnay and I wanted to watch one of the most gorgeous, bad-ass fight scenes ever digitized (it's not fully letter boxed but just try to deal):


At this point I can't imagine a time in my life when this scene will ever seem old or boring.

Picture Of The Day

Albert Einstein's desk at Princeton, taken only a few hours after he died in 1955 but never published before last week. My own filing system is very similar.

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A New Hope: Parody vs. Reality

I was watching the original Star Wars last night when I came to this disturbing conclusion: I can't watch the original Episode IV anymore without imagining and subsequently obsessively repeating every one of the lines from the Family Guy double parody episode Blue Harvest. One of my happiest memories of childhood has been subsequently replaced by one of the most entertaining videos of my adult lifefime and I barely batted an eyelash. I'm either becoming very old or else reality seems a bit too false for me at this point.

TDS: Progressivism Is Cancer

Jon Stewart uses his first two segments to brilliantly mock the conspiratorial rantings of an unlikely moron. The intro:

And part II, the remockening:

Genius. Obvious fish in a barrel, yet genius nonetheless.

(hat tip: halnwolf)

[Update: Stephen Colbert follows with one of the cleverest interviews of a Republican political strategist (Mary Matalin) I've ever witnessed. Watch her hopelessly flounder as she tries to avoid her carefully prepared bingo card, right-wing talking points:
]

Deal With The Devil

I've never had a problem with the Devil but that's just me. Certain Catholics can rejoice; others can wail:


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Incredible 9 Year Old Hockey Prodigy Goal

I was just watching SportsCenter and saw this highlight of a 9 year old scoring an incredibly skillful goal on some other poor kid during intermission at an NHL game. Amazing:

Deep Fried Texas Butter Balls

No, that isn't the name of a sexual position I invented in college but rather one of the latest offerings at this years Texas State Fair:

DALLAS — Last year, Chicken Fried Bacon and a Fried Banana Split took top honors at the annual Big Tex Choice Awards to pick the best new foods at the State Fair of Texas.

This year, the competition is equally innovative (and similarly deep-fried).

• Deep Fried Butter could push the grease-o-meter to a new high. "100 percent pure butter is whipped 'til light and fluffy, then specially sweetened with a choice of several flavors." It is then surrounded by a "special dough" and quick-fried.

You can check out some of the other entries at the link. The sweet jalapeno corn dog shrimp sound great but I'm afraid that the deep fried bananas foster cheesecake from last years Indiana State Fair still trumps both of them. Can deep frying get much more pornographic than this? Pray to whatever god you believe in that it can.

(hat tip: Doug"e")

Something Ignorant Someone Else Said

“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” -Investor's Business Daily

Stephen Hawking is a British citizen and has resided within the United Kingdom his entire life. He is 67 years old and has lived with Lou Gehrig's disease for almost fifty years under the care of the National Health Service. The meme of Palin's "death panels" is apparently alive and well across the pond.

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Cracking The Colonel's Secret Recipe

Forget the Lost Ark, the Holy Grail and even the Crystal Skulls. This is a discovery of historical significance:

The obsession started years ago after a challenge from his wife: Could finance manager Ron Douglas, an avid cook and Kentucky Fried Chicken fan, really crack the code to the best-kept culinary secret in the country? After several attempts, the Long Island, N.Y., man says he may know the 11 herbs and spices in KFC’s recipe — and now he's sharing the secret with the world.

Douglas, 34, began his quest by searching the Internet for clues to the recipe. He found that there were thousands of people looking for directions to help them duplicate their favorite restaurant meals at home. In answer to their prayers, he started the Web site recipesecrets.net...

...The decision has so far paid off: Douglas scored a deal with Simon & Schuster, which published his "America's Most Wanted Recipes" earlier this month. The book includes a recipe for KFC's 11 herbs and spices — which Douglas says he discovered after six attempts.

"The exact recipe has never been released," Douglas admitted, "but mine comes really, really close. I kept trying, and with the help of the online community, we figured out a recipe that's so good most people can't tell the difference".

I just fried up a whole mess of catfish a couple of nights ago so I may wait a bit before I try this out but trust me, it's gonna happen. Here's the list:

— 1 teaspoon ground oregano

— 1 teaspoon chili powder

— 1 teaspoon ground sage

— 1 teaspoon dried basil

— 1 teaspoon dried marjoram

— 1 teaspoon pepper

— 2 teaspoons salt

— 2 tablespoons paprika

— 1 teaspoon onion salt

— 1 teaspoon garlic powder

— 2 tablespoons Accent

As a KFC aficionado/addict I'm eminently qualified to judge the veracity of Douglas' claims. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Michael Jackson: Smooth Criminal, Inventor

I always knew that the guy was multi-talented but this is one multi I just learned about:

As we mourn the loss of spectacular dancer, frenetic and staccato singer, and professional weirdo Michael Jackson, the gadget world reminisces about a patent Jackson filed in 1993. Remember that supernatural, gravity-defying 45-degree lean Jackson performed with his troupe of dancers on "Smooth Criminal"? Jackson used wires and harnesses in the 1988 music video, but that wasn't possible when he performed the trick live in 1992.

He did it with special shoes that quickly slid into pegs that rise out of the floor at just the right moment. Also helping the effect were rigid anklets that worked like ski boots, supporting Jackson and his entourage of dancers as they leaned forward at that magic angle.

Since I haven't posted any of his stuff since his death here's the video of that performance. Notice the guy on the right having a bit of trouble extricating himself from the paraphernalia after they complete the lean:


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Picture Of The Day

This economy is obviously affecting everyone. The border around the license plate on the back of my car reads: "Mensa Member: Will Think For Food". So far, nobody has taken me up on the proposition. I also think online, if anyone reading this is interested. And has food to trade in exchange for my erudition, of course.

Finishing Timequake

No time for any more blogging today. I need to finish reading Timequake, written by one of my absolute favorite authors Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., before my book club meeting tonight. Also need to clean up my place and buy some wine before everyone arrives this evening so I'll talk to you again tomorrow. If I have time I'll try to write up a review of the book to post here soon.

Estimate The Value Of Your Blog

Stimator is a website that will estimate the value of your blog or other website using an algorithm involving web recognition, linking and other criteria. According to their site Brain Rage is worth $713 American; that works out to about two bucks a day since I started writing last year. I suppose that I could increase my value by linking to more sites and basically whoring myself out on other comment threads but I've not done so thus far because I just really haven't cared enough to bother. Besides, I find the notion of my own unique genius not being recognized until after my death kind of romantic, if not entirely economically savvy.

Flight Of The Bumblebee, On Piano

This video has not been sped up or altered in any way. Wow:

My Tombstone

Yes, I have finally settled on the final copy for my tombstone (I'll bet that none of you even knew that I was looking). And please disregard the fact that I want my body to be donated to science after I die; I also want the black market, stolen corpse of someone lesser off than myself buried in my place, just so that my tombstone can have a place in one of America's more prestigious graveyards (those plots are free of charge, right?).

Military Genius

OK, going a little Dish intensive today but it's only because their stuff is so good (and Sullivan's on vacation, no less); one of his readers writes:

Opiate painkilling drugs are in critically short supply across the developing world. So why doesn't the USA just buy the Afghan poppy harvest, process it into painkilling meds, and distribute them to poor countries?

1. This would cut off the Taliban's chief source of funding.

2. It would put the average Afghan farmer on the side of the US-supported government instead of the Taliban.

3. It would play to our strength -- money. The Taliban has more local knowledge, more time, more patience, more willingess to shed innocent blood. But we have more money. They might be able to outfight us, out-corrupt us, or out-terrorize us, but they can't outbid us.

4. It would put the US on record as alleviating suffering all over the world.

5. By fighting the Taliban with dollars instead of (as many) soldiers, we'd suffer a lot fewer killed and maimed Americans.

6. It might even be cheaper. Soldiers, tanks, planes, humvees, night vision goggles, bullets, Predator drones, etc. are really, really, expensive.

Not only is this one of the best anti-war on drugs proposals I've ever heard, it's actually one of the best ideas concerning the conflict in Afghanistan I've ever heard (and that includes anything Barack Obama or anyone else has ever said about that country).

Obama's Presidential Bid Just A Big Con

The picture above is of Barack Obama as he appeared to millions of Americans along with four of his former disguises; that sneaky motherfucker:

CHICAGO—In a devastating blow to millions of unsuspecting Americans, newly elected president and international con man Barack Obama fled the country Wednesday with nearly $85 million in campaign funds.

According to FBI investigators, Obama's sudden disappearance was discovered at 6:15 p.m. when the former Illinois senator failed to arrive at a gala event in Lincoln Square, prompting several aides to rush back to his campaign headquarters. At 6:23 p.m., flight logs at O'Hare International Airport confirmed that two passengers, a male carrying two silver briefcases and dressed in a perfectly tailored Brioni tuxedo, and an African-American female wearing a fur coat and speaking in a thick Russian accent, were seen boarding a private plane.

Obama's campaign office, sources said, was completely vacant aside from a discarded Abraham Lincoln portrait, behind which was an emptied safe that his aides claimed never to have seen before.

In addition, three unconscious Secret Service agents were discovered at the scene, along with two lit cigarettes still burning in an ashtray, and Obama's daughters, who authorities now believe were taken from an Alabama foster home six years ago.

Click the link and read the rest, it's hilarious. Actually what's really funny is how many right-wingers really do believe that we were all conned and are hopping mad about it, but to be fair most of them are pretty stupid anyway.

Change: That's Whassup

Brilliant: