As hardcore as they seem, we know thatNinja and Yo-Landi from the South African techno-rap have a soft spot for animals. And there are plenty of animals in the video for their new song, “I Fink U Freeky.” Unfortunately, since one of those animals is giant python, all the other ones will soon be dead.

Never paint your idols’ copyrighted lyrics for your gallery show, they’ll always disappoint you (with a cease and desist letter). That’s the sad story of Erik den Breejen, whose show just closed in NYC on a sour note, as Van Dyke Parks, lyricist for the Beach Boys’ “Smile,” took quite unhappily to reproduction of his words in paint. The biggest fault here is perhaps having so-so taste in music. Here we have reproduced a small version of one of den Breejen’s paintings. HOW DOES IT FEEL. (Probably okay actually! Does it devalue the work? Unlikely.) Maybe it’s the universe trying to teach him a harsh lesson: his wordless paintings are stronger anyway.

Score another one for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, those experts in womens’ health and nonprofit budgets, whose “investigation” into Planned Parenthood is serving as a useful tool to get foundations (in this case, the Susan G. Komen foundation, executive-staffed by right-wingers) to stop funding breast exams at Planned Parenthood. (Now they’ll go back to fighting Obamacare for a while.) Neato, everyone loses.

Over the next 24 hours, our totally horrific and terrible load time exhibited over the last week should markedly improve! We done bought ourselves a new ad server, so the old ad server is being phased out and will stop dragging our sites down with it. Technology is really annoying. Our apologies to people who’ve wanted to visit and have been frustrated in the act.

by Ben Worcester

Over the weekend, as Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic’s titanic battle at the Australian Open effectively put an end to the sport of tennis, I played an hour of the game inside Grand Central Terminal. Up until recently, I had no idea there was an actual, full-size tennis court inside one of the most famous train stations in the world. I would wager that many of the 70,000-plus commuters who pass through every day don’t know about it either (perhaps they missed these photographs, as I did). But there I was, tennis bag in hand, with a voucher to play for one hour at the Vanderbilt Tennis Club — so it had to be there.

After asking around a bit for directions, it was clear that many people who work in Grand Central don’t know it’s there either. So I had to phone the club and ask. My friend and I were directed to the Campbell Apartment, a bar with an entrance just off Vanderbilt street, right across from a Tequilaville. The lobby outside the bar had a stagy old-time feel, like a movie set that was shut down for the day. We called down one of the fake-looking elevators and punched the button for the fourth floor. On the third floor, the doors opened and an MTA worker walked inside, gave me a once-over, and asked in a surly voice where I was going. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be helpful or busting my chops for the big red tennis bag I was carrying.

If you’re used to thinking of Grand Central as consisting of just that iconic, wide-open main concourse, it may be surprising that the building has much more hidden away, including a little-known annex that’s been home to all kinds of things: a CBS recording studio, a series of art galleries and, for a time, a 65-foot-long indoor ski slope. Apparently tennis in Grand Central has been around since the ’60s, when two clay courts were installed by Geza A. Gazdag, who founded the Vanderbilt Athletic Club there after CBS departed. (Gazdag is described in most histories of the place simply as “a Hungarian immigrant,” as if that explained the ski slope.)

Donald Trump took over the clay courts in the ’80s, creating his own private club that attracted many celebrities and other wealthy racquet-sport enthusiasts. Trump’s courts were located on the third floor of the terminal. In 2009, the courts were shuttered to make way for a long-overdue lounge for MTA employees, and for a couple years, there was no tennis in Grand Central. But as of this fall, thanks to these high bidders, tennis returned with a brand-new court on the fourth floor.

Technically, the Vanderbilt Club is open to the public. But the prices of renting the courts (between $100-$250 an hour) makes the club seem aimed at a, well, Vanderbiltian clientele (or, as the Wall Street Journal article put it, “hedge fund executives [and] real estate professionals”). On the upside, the court only books one week in advance, so you can plan to play there on relatively short notice. Strangely enough, it’s easier to book a time on weekends than weekdays, presumably because the Westchester and Connecticut set are upstate for the weekend. If you hunt around for a Groupon-like deal (they’re out there), you’ll get a decent discount.

Exiting the elevator, we followed a sign to a single room at the end of a blank hallway. Open it — and there was the court. Even though I knew it was there, walking through a nondescript door deep inside a train station to find a tennis court was strange. I might as well have opened the door to find a chocolate factory or a rampaging robot. We suited up in the small locker room next to the court and then headed out. We didn’t have locks for the lockers, but it didn’t matter — we were the only ones there.

Instead of warming up, we spent our first few minutes on the court exploring and poking around. The main window of the court looks out over Park Ave South. I could see all the way down to the steaming Metronome in Union Square. Staring out the window, I realized where exactly the court was located — directly under the statue of Mercury that sits atop the building. It literally is center court. It also felt strange to be in an environment still fresh from renovation, right in the middle of really old surroundings. The court felt like a nucleus of bright tennis colors and plaster, encased in Grand Central’s shell of wrought iron and limestone.

We started playing and immediately began to notice the acoustics of the place. It echoes like nobody’s business. Our casual rallies sounded like an epic exchange of thunderbolts. Hitting a medium-paced winner up the line and having it sound like a cannon shot definitely added to your feeling of grandeur on the court. I’m sure to anyone watching, we were two moderately athletic guys having some fun, occasionally managing to look like we knew what we were doing. But with that amazing setting and the booming sound of every hit, we felt like titans.

And then, all too soon, our hour was up. As we walked off the court, a half-dozen young kids streamed onto the court for a lesson/daycare session, flailing about with their child-size racquets, with that little-kid thing of seeming to have no clue where they were. It helped return some perspective. We were no longer pro tennis players, or swashbuckling ad men of the ’50s popping in to Grand Central for a quick set before grabbing the 2:30 up to Ossining. We were just two guys doing something fun to celebrate their birthdays.

Related: Three Of New York’s Odder Patriotic Relics

Ben Worcester is a writer who does not have anything close to a bankroll that would allow this curious luxury to be a regular thing.

Saul Alinsky’s Lesser Known Rules for Radicals

by Abe Sauer

Rule 23: Always separate your cause buttons for easier reading.

Rule 24: Layer for warmth.

Rule 25: “Birth of a Nation” is a great pre-action psych-up film no matter the political faction.

Rule 26: Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear. Also, vomit is an acceptable protest projectile.

Rule 27: Ridicule is the most potent weapon you can use as a commenter on Brooklyn Vegan.

Rule 28: By substituting a Panera Bread’s® Half Smoked Turkey Breast Sandwich on Country Miche with Steak Chili for full Frontega Chicken® Panini on Focaccia, you’ll save 370 calories.

Rule 29: Picking a widely held nugget of conventional wisdom and then constructing an essay all about why it is completely wrong is good for pageviews.

Rule 30: If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, it goes down.

Rule 31: Never tip less than 15%.

Rule 32: In Chicago, Tavern on Rush is where you go to be seen eating a steak. The Chop House on West Ontario is where to go to eat a godamn steak.

Rule 33: If you have a big penis, always find a way to work it into the conversation. You will increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty amongst your enemies. Plus, if anyone challenges you on the claim, you have a golden opportunity to prove it. Nobody has ever disliked a guy with a huge penis.

Rule 34: Never wear black with brown.

Rule 35: You can never go wrong blaming the media. Don’t worry about alienating them. They are deranged cannibals and will always come back for more.

Rule 36: Combining a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut is a perfect tactic to reach two consumer groups without doubling your fixed expenses.

Rule 37: If it’s your first demonstration, you must toss back the tear gas.

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

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by Ben Choi

This is a most auspicious time. The Year of the Dragon is upon us, and as we venture boldly into 2012, towards the edge of the Mayan calendar, let’s turn up the heat with Yucatecan habanero salsa. The dragon is the symbol of transformational power, denoting endless possibility. Habanero salsa is, for my money, the most transformative and versatile condiment you can have on your table. It imparts heat and depth into any savory dish, along with a slightly floral and fruity, yet dry and earthy, flavor profile, and just the right acid balance.

First, a little background on the habanero chili pepper. It’s a thin-skinned, heart-shaped pepper about the size of a ping-pong ball. The ripe ones you’ll usually see in produce aisles are a kumquat-yellow hue, but they can also be harvested earlier, in a pleasing lime-green state (my favorite for salsa). While it probably originated in South America over 8,000 years ago, the habanero, today, is most prolifically cultivated in the Yucatan region of Mexico. It’s rated for heat at 100,000–350,000 units on the Scoville scale, making it, along with its Caribbean relative, the Scotch Bonnet, about the hottest pepper you’re likely to find in a supermarket. But in the grand scheme of hotness, it’s really just over-average. The hottest pepper, according to the Guinness Book, is the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper, which has been measured at 1,463,700 Scovilles. Police-grade pepper spray is at about 5 million Scoville heat units (SHU), I’m told. The jalapeño clocks in at a very reasonable 3,500–8,000 SHU.

Having been known to show off occasionally by biting into a habanero (and having once pepper-sprayed myself in college in a fit of youthful curiosity), I don’t recommend ingesting at any of the above levels of heat. My mother (who was born in the Year of the Dragon) used to wake me in the morning after she’d had a dragon dream and tell me “anything can happen today, be bold, use your imagination… but don’t go surfing.” Habanero salsa is challenging, but not crazy — only about 4,000 to 13,000 on the Scoville scale. You certainly can handle a few drops in your bowl of soup, on your fish taco, over your corned beef hash.

It tastes great on almost anything. To give you an idea of how versatile this condiment is, I’ve been using it on every savory thing I’ve eaten in the past 48 hours. Here’s a list: frozen chicken pot pie, steel-cut oats cooked in chicken stock with chopped green onions, ramen and sardines, baby lima beans with smoked turkey wing, a breakfast burrito and takeout General Tso’s Chicken. Now that’s a flexible condiment; can you use ketchup in ramen or oatmeal? It’s especially good on blandish comfort foods and dishes that are smoky or slightly sweet, such as barbecued ribs or pulled pork. It would be a natural in potato dishes and curries, even on pizza. Use it on anything that needs a bit of herbaceous kick and roughly neutral acidity. It’s not terrifically vinegary for a hot sauce, so it won’t over-irrigate your palate like Crystal Louisiana hot sauce, Sriracha or Tabasco sometimes can.

El Yucateco is the most dominant brand of habanero salsa, and it sets a fine standard for consistency and quality. Made in Merida, Mexico, it’s the Heinz of the Yucatan. I’m especially fond of the green sauce, which I find the most flavorful and multi-use. Look for it in Latino groceries or online. It should run you about 2 bucks for a 4-ounce bottle, maybe a bit more if you buy it online. Be careful, though: unlike many hot-sauce bottles, El Yucateco’s does not feature any kind of regulating spout, so no shaking out the bottle. I usually pour a little onto a spoon and dribble strategically.

And once again, if you do not consider yourself a heat afficionado, please don’t let that get in the way of judicious enjoyment of this fantastic condiment. In the words of the super-group ASIA, when you are in the “heat of the moment,” “catch the pearl and ride the dragon’s wings.”

Gung hay fat Choi.

Previously: Gochujang: Korean Go-to, All-In-One Magic Chile Sauce

Ben Choi will soon go on a diet.

What do Dancing at Lughnasa, Pearl Harbor and It’s Complicated have in common? The answer may etc. you!