Big K.R.I.T., "Boobie Miles"

Remember the part in You Can Count On Me, when Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney are out on the deck, talking and smoking a joint, and a moth flutters by and lands on Ruffalo’s hand, and just sits there for a moment while the scene continues, before fluttering away? It is one of my favorite things to have ever happened in any movie, that. (I am easily astonished, maybe.) Well, there’s a part in this new Big K.R.I.T. video, directed by Vashtie, around the 1:15 point, when a pigeon flies between the camera and the basketball player who is practicing his foul shot (I think at the courts in Sara D. Roosevelt Park at Chrystie St. and Houston St. in Manhattan) that’s a little bit like that. (Both instances being happy filmic accidents involving the unscripted appearance of winged creatures.) I mean, it’s not as magical as the moth. (WHAT COULD BE?!) But something about it, watching the bird’s wings flap in crisp, black-and-white slow motion, just perfectly captures the slow, graceful beauty of K.R.I.T.’s flow — and even somehow speaks to the message of the song, which is named for the tragic star running back from Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights. Keep trying hard, athletes, humans, pigeons! Take to the sky!

The NYC Restaurant Grade App

Here is the iPhone app that lets you see (iTunes link) the Department of Health sanitation ratings around you, or in your neighborhood, or by name. The City, in announcing their app, very carefully suggests some data in praise of the grades — salmonella is down! Eating out is up! — but doesn’t go so far as to suggest causation. As you can’t. But yay! Total information awareness nannystate! FEAR THE B GRADES, ALL THOSE EGGS ARE SLIGHTLY WARM.

"You don't have to move to Silicon Valley to date the next Mark Zuckerberg."

Which one of these dudes with venture capital would you do? All/none? Yes/no? It’s not a trick question, take your time.

Bruce Springsteen Albums, In Order

17. Working On a Dream

16. Magic

15. Human Touch

14. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

13. Wrecking Ball

12. The Rising

11. Lucky Town

10. Devils & Dust

9. Born in the U.S.A.

8. The River

7. The Ghost of Tom Joad

6. Tunnel of Love

5. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

4. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

3. Nebraska

2. Born to Run

1. Darkness on the Edge of Town

Iced Tea-Flavored Beer

I no longer fear death, because now that they are making iced tea-flavored beer there doesn’t seem like much point in sticking around anyway.

The Less-Gross, Super-Tasty Tater Tot Casserole

As we settle into the long, cold, dark days that come with the final slog through winter, we — your pals from The Awl and The Hairpin — will be bringing you some of our favorite casserole recipes (and crockery recommendations).

I’m not really sure why I woke up one day and decided that I absolutely had to have tater tot casserole, especially because I’d actually never had tater tot casserole before? But such was the state in which I found myself one random Sunday last year. And, as one does in this, our modern age, I hit Google in search of a recipe to try out. Except that oh dear Lord, have you ever seen the recipes out there for tater tot casseroles? The ingredient lists alone would make you barf, much less the finished products. So I decided to tinker and came up with what I’d say is a less-gross-(though-still-kinda-gross-and-definitely-not-fancy)-but-seriously-super-tasty tater tot casserole.

Most of the recipes I saw online used pretty much the same ingredients: tater tots, cream of something soup, chicken, assorted other dairy-esque slop. If I was going to hack something up, I figured it was best to go full monty and pull apart a Paula Deen recipe. This was pre-diabetes announcement, and now it occurs to me that I should let her know how to make her own dish in a way that doesn’t cause a life-threatening disease.

The two main change-ups here were to cut waaaaaay down on the amount of fat that Paula used to pre-cook the veg and meat, and then to replace most of the full-fat dairy with reduced fat products used in smaller quantities. The finished product still ends up being creamy and tater-y and gloppy (in the good way!) without making you feel like you’ve got a lead pillow in your stomach, which is the effect I imagine Mizz Paula’s version would have on a person.

The only thing I’m not totally wild about with this recipe is that it requires pre-cooking, which annoys me in a casserole, even though I know that more often than not when talking about casseroles pre-cooking is part of the deal. I just feel like that shouldn’t be the case! But to be honest, this dish is so guiltily-but-not-really good that I can forgive the pre-cooking.

With that soliloquy on the nature of tater tot casseroles out of the way, let’s get down to business.

Dice a small yellow onion and fry it in 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium high heat. Add about a half-pound of diced chicken breast (if you’ve got chicken that’s already cooked you can skip this step and stir it in with all the rest of the ingredients) and let that all brown. Add one large or two regular sized garlic cloves that you’ve crushed up real good and ½ teaspoon black pepper; let that cook for a minute or two and remove from the heat.

Then in a large mixing bowl, stir together:

  • 1 8-oz container sour cream (you can use low- or non-fat ingredients throughout, I did and it tastes just fine)
  • 1 can cream of celery soup
  • About half of an 8-oz bag of shredded colby jack cheese
  • About ½ to ⅔ of a bag of frozen tater tots
  • The chicken mixture

Pour that all into a greased casserole dish, top with remaining cheese (I didn’t end up even using the whole bag) and bake at 350 for 40–45 minutes.

This is one of those recipes I love to make when I go away for what I call Cabin Weekends — you know, those big group trips that involve lots of sitting around without a bra on, drinking wine at 8 a.m.? Serve with a big giant green salad to make you feel better about the fact that you’re eating a dish with the words “tater tot” in the name, a simple steamed vegetable and homemade cookies for dessert and suddenly you’re a hero among your friends.

Previously: Chicken Mushroom Casserole for the Lazy Snob and Breakfast Hotdish, Minnesota Style, Veggie Moussaka With Puy Lentils and Two Easy Cassoulets

Jolie Kerr never met a tater tot she didn’t love

Terrible Fishloaf At Least Artisanal

“The plan is to peddle sustainably sourced, artisanal Jewish foods like gefilte fish made with pike, whitefish, and salmon; kvass, a fermented drink; borscht; horseradish; sauerkraut; black-and-white cookies; and matzo.”

Two Poems By Noelle Kocot

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Present

Love swept away the crumbs
And made its exit. Over the
Great fields of Horace, over the
Time-ridden monkey bars of yore,

There is a taking up of things.
The rambunctious night flutters
Like a towel, the past that makes us
Go around and around, it’s how we

Have latched onto things. Beautiful
Stained glass surrounds me now.
I want nothing, and I want to give you
Nothing. This is why I say, hold

Me, as the many limbed hunk of
Earth spins and spins, knocks us around.

Things Are Beautiful

This hand held aggression, this strife
Abhorrent (strike me down), this wet
Kiss on the throat of nowhere: our
Peregrination has succeeded under an

Umbrella of steam shovels. The fiddle-
Faddle of The Great Mind, oh flank steak
Is $4.79 per pound at Shop Rite this week.
Would you believe I see things in sharp

Angles and lines? A naked soul blows
About. It is blotted out by the bridging
Trees. What is this about? Imagine,
The world sunsetting on its very own

Machine, and the weather is fine, full of
Priests and the chuck chuck chuck of the adze.

Noelle Kocot is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011), and a book of translations from the French of the poet Tristan Corbiere, Poet by Default (Wave, 2011).

I like poems, yes I do. I like poems, how ‘bout you? Oh, good, because we’ve got plenty of them right here in The Poetry Section’s vast archive. Dive in!

You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

People Unspeakably Sad

“Forget standing in line for hours, hoping for a scribbled, barely legible autograph on a wrinkled piece of paper. Or jockeying for spots behind the dugout on the off chance a signed ball or batting glove gets tossed your way. When it comes to souvenirs from your favorite athlete, the retweet is where it’s at these days.”

"Kitty Glitter will hit you like a steampunk catapult!"

I don’t have to read “Wesley Crusher, Teenage Fuck Machine”, Dottie. I lived it…. well, except for the fuck machine part.

— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) March 6, 2012

In case you’re not on the Nerd Internet, you may not know that this piece of smut — yes, that quote above really does cite its title — that was unleashed last month is rocking the Amazon charts. (From the Amazon reviews: “You know, if it’s one thing that’s lacking in the Star Trek universe, it’s fan fiction.”) When will the elitist publications such as the L.A. Review of Books and Slate Book Review begin covering the popular literature of our time? If only Kathy Acker were alive to see how wonderful things are.