Steve Can Cook: Pork Tenderloin

Yuengling pairs with everything.

As opposed to some of my past cooking exploits, this meal actually came out perfect, despite the lack of a good oven. The picture can be a bit deceiving, just because I’m using a semi-low resolution camera phone, but that’s not burn marks on the top – it’s herbs and spices. Oh, la and LA, as a wise man would say.

My “recipe” is actually pretty simple, if you want to steal it. In a small bowl, add about a teaspoon each of ground black pepper, garlic, rosemary and maybe parsley and paprika, if you want some color. I usually add about two teaspoons of salt to the mixture, whether it’s regular kosher salt, garlic salt or some other variation.

From there, add just enough olive oil to make all of the dry ingredients wet, for lack of a better definition. Mix in the bowl, so that you essentially have a paste, and split the bowl’s contents into two equally-sized portions. Use one portion on the top of the roast, one on the bottom. (If you have an especially fatty roast, then you might not want to coat the fat-side as much, since that’ll have a delicious flavor on its own.)

Since I’m just a single dude, normally I also do my best to portion the roast beforehand. Obviously, I’m not going to eat a three-pound roast on my own, so I’ll usually split it into three or four parts to eat over the week or so that the meat is fresh. I don’t really like to freeze it though – I feel like the flavor gets affected when you freeze and then thaw X weeks later, so that’s only a last resort for me.

Final tips – An internal thermometer is a must, especially since they’re only like $15. I got one three years ago, and no other cooking device has helped me as much as that. You want one of the probe kinds, so that you can leave it in while the meat cooks. Also, remember that the USDA changed its temperature guidelines! Unless you have a desire for dry pork to tip into apple sauce, it’s done when hits 145 degrees.

And final finally, you absolutely want to let it rest for 10 minutes! I never used to do this when I was in my early 20s, being an impatient man, but those few additional minutes of heat collection and rest really do help out the flavor.

So ends the random cooking tips from the guy who mostly just writes about video games and his cat.

My Triumphant Podcast Debut

Fact: Robots and rabbits are both cool.

Folks, if you’re so inclined, I recently did a 62-minute guest spot on my friend Sarah’s podcast, Robot Rabbit. You can listen to my gorgeous tones here.

I actually don’t know how interesting it’ll be to you random folks out there, so I make no apologies if it’s not your cup of tea! I mean, some of our conversation concerns the comings and goings on The Dave Dameshek Message Board, a swell fellow I’ve written about in the past.

The main portion of the podcast is a Q&A session with her, but I try to spice it up as I can by insulting Indiana, land of Larry Bird, Detlef Schrempf and no other celebrities, at least in my mind. We also get into the greatest hypothetical celebrity dumping of all-time – If Brad Pitt dumped Angelina Jolie, where does he go from there? Could he land Jennifer Aniston and really make everyone’s head explode?

If you’re a podcast person and want me as a guest, please contact my agent for booking information and rates. And by “agent” I mean “me” and by “rates” I mean “as long as it’s after 12 p.m. on any given day I’ll probably do it.”

Let’s Talk About Glee: Jesus Christ This Show Has Two Years Left!

I have no idea how they’re going to manage it, but yes, Glee has two more guaranteed years thanks to FOX. Maybe after another year of this shit, FOX and/or Ryan Murphy will be open to the idea of a mercy killing, or maybe the actors will realize they probably can’t help themselves with another 22 episodes. But like the final couple of seasons of Heroes, I just can’t imagine how the writers can dig themselves out of their current hole.

In case you’re like most of the world, and not hatewatching Glee like I am at this point, some notes for you to catch-up on:

x Brittany is now a god damn genius. For some reason, she is an idiot savant at math and will be going to MIT. (I wonder if the school consented to the show using its name; I can’t imagine that they’re happy that the scientists from their school are intently studying the crayon mathematical scribblings of Britt.) This didn’t really add anything to existing storylines, except to take away from and make light of the semi-serious issue of Brittany’s 0.0 grade average and complete lack of scholastic aptitude. They might as well have just made Lord Tubbington into the heir of a billionaire’s fortune, because that’s as believable and as much of a storyline crutch as the idea of Brittany as a math savant.

x There was a school shooting, but don’t worry, no one was hurt. Sue took the rap for Becky, who was playing with Sue’s gun, causing it to fire and making everyone panic for about half an episode. This episode pissed everyone off, since it was basically song, song, holyshitwe’reallgoingtodie, song, song.

x Tina, for lack of a more politically correct term, was a fag hag to Blaine for about six episodes. The less said about this, the better.

x Shockingly, there was more drama in the relationships with Will and Emma, and Rachel and Finn. Will got ditched by Emma at the altar, but don’t worry, they got hitched a couple episodes later – the writers just knew that you REALLY wanted to see an extra six episodes of drama, that’s all. Meanwhile, Rachel was dating a male prostitute for a bit, but then she found out and dumped him, but not before Finn beat the crap out of him.

This is a high school sophomore.

x All of the new people are basically replacements of the departing / college-aged New Directions members. The most egregious offenders would be Kitty, a blonde cheerleader that’s basically a non-pregnant stand-in for Quinn, and Puck’s half-brother, who’s so non-descript that you can only remember him as being Puck’s half-brother. Rachel’s replacement is Marley, and while it’s understandable that she doesn’t have the pipes of Broadway actress Lea Michele, she also in no way looks like a high school sophomore. Melissa Benoist is only two years younger than Lea Michele; it’s hard to believe they couldn’t find some 18-year-old who could sing well and to look like an actual high schooler.

x Singling out two of the new people for a tab, because it was so god damn stupid. There was a multi-episode arc where New Finn was getting catfished by someone in the glee club, with feints that it was New Rachel or New Quinn doing it. It turns out the culprit was actually Unique, the show’s teenage version of RuPaul. It was an awkward reveal that made New Finn pissed off, and didn’t really serve a purpose from a narrative standpoint except to… question mark. Make the audience feel awkward for all the parties involved?

x Santana is still wonderful, and delightfully evil at times. As a result, the show has no idea what to do with her. She was finally added to the apartment in New York, to add some depth and testosterone to the Rachel and Kurt living arrangement. That pair was so lame and sad by themselves that even Elliot Smith thought they were overdoing it.

The biggest overall problem with Glee at this point though is the lack of any consequences. Quinn didn’t stay crippled after her texting while driving accident, and her life hasn’t really been adversely affected by her basically flipping between nice gal and supreme bitch mode for two years. Kurt’s harasser didn’t manage to actually kill himself. No one was hurt in the gun incident with Sue and Becky. Will has put up with all of Emma’s various shit, which is nice of him, but also severely strains credibility at a certain point. Rachel was sleeping with a male prostitute and nothing really came of it. Brittany looked like she was headed for a difficult post-high school life, but don’t worry, she’s actually a genius. New Finn found out he was being catfished and got upset, but meh. New Directions lost an opening round competition, but the team that beat them got disqualified for performance enhancing drugs, in yet another ludicrous twist even by Glee standards.

Individually, how the writers tackled each of this issues is OK. Collectively though, it shows a complete lack of will to do anything new from a story perspective, or to make a decision that would have permanent consequences. For a show like Glee, which is basically a dramedy, you need to actually have consequences at some point. To make a blunt comparison – Nobody dies on Glee, but people died in 90210, and even in Joss Whedon shows from time-to-time.

Let’s close things out on a positive note though – Naya Rivera has taken the crown from Heather Elizabeth Morris when it comes to gorgeousness. Here is a picture of her. You’re welcome.

I didn’t link to either picture site for the actresses because they were basically just link spam and what not. The cast photo is a promotional one put out by FOX before the 2012-13 season, and it’s on a bunch of different websites.

Inexplicable TV Review: Who The Heck Wrote Murder She Wrote?

To confuse you, here is a hot picture of Angela Lansbury.

To answer the question posed in my entry’s title, I imagine that Angela Lansbury had quite a big hand in it. After all, she was listed as the executive producer for most of the episodes, and outside of her small group of friends on the show, Lansbury was the only person in each episode. (Side note: I don’t consider it a proper Murder, She Wrote episode if it was one of those fake ones where she just narrates at the beginning, and then you follow her friend, the reformed jewel thief, for the rest of the episode.)

I would like to say that my avid interest in the comings and goings of JB Fletcher correlates directly with my recent unemployment. However, that is a convenient excuse that is not available to me. I simply finished up on the whole run of Matlock and Columbo episodes – more on him in a future entry – and still wanted to poke at my “mystery” genre itch. I couldn’t find a good source for Perry Mason or Remington Steele or something else, so I settle on Angie.

If, for some reason, you managed to never see any of the 12(!) seasons of the show, most of them followed a rather simple formula. The first two-thirds of the episode may or may not feature the “murder” hinted at in the title, but you are introduced an array of disposable characters that served as suspects. Typically, MSW didn’t settle on the most obvious suspect (like a jilted ex-wife) as the killer. If it did, then usually the struggle would not be in the Whodunit, but in the Howdtheydoit.

A simple but effective framework, and it mostly served as a vehicle for Lansbury anyway. The woman does have some acting chops, you know, between the five Tony awards, six Golden Globes and a slew of Emmys, thanks to MSW. When I was a kid, I inexplicably liked Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a second-tier Disney movie from 1971 that starred her, so maybe I’m just pre-disposed to likin’ Angela Lansbury.

Anyway – Even with the pat structure of a typical MSW episode, there was still some initial tinkering. Like I finally doubled back and watched the pilot episode, which had JB Fletcher as not yet famous. Later in the series, it doesn’t matter where she goes; even backwater counties in Canada apparently get her books, and she’s recognized constantly. Oh, and also, in the first episode Lansbury almost gets mugged, stabbed and raped while walking down an alley in New York. You know, stuff happens.

As the series goes on, most of the episodes are set in Cabot Cove, a tiny fishing hamlet in Maine that has the highest murder rate of all-time, to make a hacky joke that everyone else already has. According to TV Tropes, the town’s murder rate is about 86 times that of the murder rate of the worst city in the world, and Wiki says that about 2 percent of the town’s population was murdered during the show’s run. (Also, as usual, pretty much everything on the TV Tropes page for the show is awesome.)

Finally, murder is just a game to JB Fletcher. The end of pretty much every episode was a still-frame of her laughing at something. “Oh, remember how your cousin was brutally murdered a few days ago? Well, stiff upper lip, Toby – Just think, his body is feeding the worms right now. Ha ha ha!” Thankfully, someone has already done the great service of making a montage of all of the bizarre still-shot endings on the show:

Inexplicable Video Game Review: If Michael Bay Made A Fighting Game…

This is a completely normal aspect of gameplay - A circus performer flipping a DJ that's kind of dressed like a clown.

... It would pretty much be Dead or Alive 5. It’s the latest game in my PS3 via Gamefly, and my goodness, is it odd and sexual without being sexy.

This is a critical distinction to make, that between sexual and sexy, and it’s why I said it was the game of Michael Bay, as opposed to Hugh Heffner or Larry Flynt. To me, most of Bay’s work kind of has a teenage boy feel to it, which is why he mostly casts people like Megan Fox that are super hot on paper, but they usually have far less sex appeal when you see them in action.

Likewise, as you can probably judge from the screenshots of Dead or Alive 5 that I’ve sprinkled in here, the “credentials” of the female fighters are not in doubt. Pretty much all of them are both scantily clad AND have ridiculous proportions, with the possible exception of the two transplant characters from the Virtual Fighter series.

If you’d like an example of the game in action, here is a trailer:

… So yeah, that’s something that’s available on your video game system right this second. (Well, kind of. The trailer is actually from the Ultimate version of the game, which isn't released yet, but it's pretty much the same thing.)

The thing is though, to get back to the Michael Bay comparison, the “sex appeal” is so ridiculous that it’s actually non-existent. When everyone has a jiggling bosom, well, it all just tends to blur together. And while you would think the subject of sex and/or relationships might come up frequently during the game, it’s only ever hinted at once in a 5 to 10-hour story mode, and it happens entirely in slapstick fashion.

Speaking of that story mode – It’s bat shit insane, even by odd Japanese story standards. There is a fighting tournament going on called Dead or Alive, even though it’s not to the death, and it’s seemingly unconnected to these ninjas who are going around in search of ninja clones. But in true Keyser Soze fashion, it really is all connected, except that you probably have to go to Wikipedia to really understand everything, because the story mode leaves out a lot of exposition.

By the way, the game itself is solid, as far as fighters go. But all of the previously mentioned elements make you feel silly playing it, at least if you’re older than 15 or so. (However, if you are a 15-year-old and reading this, then you will probably love this game, and also, Transformers.)

The picture is from Game Fanatics, and viewable on this page.