By The Beachwood Cubs & Cormorants Affairs Desk
Apparently a slew of Cub fans are upset with the so-called bias of the TBS broadcast crew. I have one word for them: Waaaaaaaaaah! Stop crying. What you are experiencing is an actual objective call of the game, not the hometown boosterism that hides the ugly truth from your virgin ears. Isn’t that what we all used to love about Steve Stone? Not just his prescience, but his truth-telling? And you know what, even he didn’t tell you everything he knew because he was employed by the Cubs. Would you like your sportswriters to be employed by the team as well? This is an ethical farce.
I’ve come to like Len & Bob well enough, but they are doing you a disservice doing the team’s bidding. And while Pat Hughes is the consummate pro, let’s get over Ronnie Santo. He’s not a circus freak or comic prop. If you want to know what’s going on in the game, Ron is not your man. I don’t find his tangents charming in the least, and his childlike passion for Chicago Cubs Inc. is, well, childish.
So let’s keep our minds on the real outrages – pro sports teams hiring their own announcers and the absence of Cubs playoff games on free TV. And don’t get me started about late start times. Sports, like all games, should primarily be for the children, no? Way to ignore your future fan base.
But biased TBS announcers? Apparently Cubs fans can’t handle the truth.
– Steve Rhodes
No Reservations
Anthony Bourdain: I would follow him anywhere. Even to the scummiest place on earth, the asshole of the world, if you will. He’s just so darn charismatic, knowledgeable, funny and ugly-sexy. He looks like he just woke up, which is probably an after-effect of years of hard partying, wenching and heroin abuse. Plus, he loves to eat and is up for any type of gastronomy this world throws at him, which is not surprising seeing as he’s the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in NYC – as well as a prolific author.
Each week on the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, he features a country and its culinary fare and not much else. Bourdain isn’t into discussing the local political or economic situation; he’s just there to have great meals and see the sights.
This particular episode featured Shanghai, China. There are lots of restaurants in China, which isn’t surprising since there are 1.3 billion Chinese who need feeding. Bourdain’s first culinary adventure is to the most popular steamed dumpling restaurant in town. The line is out the door and down the block and many of the people come from miles around to chow down on “the best dumplings in China.” The stuff looks pretty good actually and from what I can tell, Western table manners are unheard of in China.
After the dumpling adventure, Bourdain hit the streets for some Chinese street food, an adventure in which it sounds like it might be a good idea to have a keg of Imodium in tow. Either that or adult diapers. I wonder if Bourdain has a tapeworm or an iron cast stomach because he eats a lot of weird crap. Even when he was in Tuscany, he ingested weird crap: pigeon. Yes, pigeon. It’s the land of pizza and pasta, for cryin’ out loud. In South Korea and Malaysia, you guessed it, more weird crap. However, on this street excursion, Bourdain eats noodle soup with some sort of leafy green vegetable and hot sauce – not exactly weird crap – but still not exactly the desired location for dining.
From there, Bourdain shows us the world of using cormorants instead of rods and reels to fish. These birds were born to fish and in order to prevent these birds from eating the fruits of their labor, a small ring is placed on their throat to prevent them from swallowing. Nice. But they enjoy it, according to their owners. Uh huh.
Bourdain had this very expensive tiny crab as a snack. Then, he ventured to Tibet where he dined on Tibetan yak, which tastes like lamb jerky. But then, doesn’t everything?
– Julia Gray
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Posted on October 5, 2007