Punches are a party pleaser and I’ve been seeing more and more home “punch parties” with the host(ess) serving a variety of different spirit-based libations. Whiskey Punch can be right there with the more traditional rum and vodka punch options. This full-flavored recipe combines bourbon, fresh citrus, black tea, fresh mint and peach nectar and is fun to serve over large format ice cubes made in silicone molds (easy to find online). If you’re a bitters fan, try mixing 2 tablespoons of Angostura bitters with 8-10 cups of water to make Bitters Ice Cubes! They are delicious as they melt into the punch and have a lovely color, too.
If you or your mom/grandma/relative/friend have a bunch of fancy old tea cups or a collection of canning jars, then dust them off and serve up your punch in up-cycled style.
Southern Style Whiskey Punch (This recipe can be made up to 3 days ahead and stored refrigerated and can be easily doubled or tripled)
Makes about 7 1/2 cups, serves 12 – 14
INGREDIENTS
1 orange
20 whole cloves
8 large sprigs fresh mint
4 English breakfast tea bags
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 cups boiling water
1 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup peach nectar (or substitute pineapple juice)
2 cups Maker’s Mark
Garnish: fresh mint sprigs
CREATE
Poke the cloves into the orange, then cut it into 3 slices. Put the orange slices, mint, tea bags, and brown sugar in a large heat-proof pitcher (or container that will hold at least 10 cups). Add the boiling water and let steep for 1 hour, then remove and discard the tea bags and mint.
Add in the orange and lemon juice, peach nectar, and bourbon. Stir, then chill until ready to serve. Present for service in a large drink dispenser or punch bowl. Serve over ice with fresh mint.
###
Kathy Casey is a chef, mixologist, and is known as the Original Bar Chef. Her newest book is D’Llish Deviled Eggs, which is a great accompaniment to any cocktail. Follow Kathy Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For more great cocktail recipes, visit www.LiquidKitchen.com.
The world of wine falls victim to many stereotypes, and the corresponding tasting rooms often undergo the same affliction: opulent quarters adorned with high tasting fees, low pours in the glass and silver-spoon-sucking Baby Boomers in attendance. Fortunately, a wave of winemakers are offering new and exciting tasting experiences to touring tipplers, from blindfolded sipping and underwater swigging to colonial castles and gastronomic affairs. With production going down in each of the 50 states, here’s a selection of tasting rooms that will make your wine drinking experience what it should be: a memorable one, even after you blackout.
1) Sottamarino Winery – San Francisco
Get below deck at this Treasure Island winery and tasting room in the San Francisco Bay. Italian for “submarine,” Sottamarino is housed in a WWII-submarine-esque Navy training vessel repurposed into a tasting room ripe for savoring Italian varietals from Northern California. Learn how to pronounce and enjoy their fresh and seductive Lagrein while embracing the island’s storied history.
2) Francis Ford Coppola Winery: Tasting in the Dark – Geyserville, CA
This Anderson Valley wine icon isn’t satisfied with just offering its guests pools, cabins, four regulation-sized bocce ball courts, a movie gallery and an outdoor entertainment pavilion inspired by “The Godfather: Part II,” so the winery titan also extends “wine experiences” to the touring options. One of six experiences, Tasting in the Dark seizes the olfactory senses, blindfolding tasters and guiding them through wines solely by smell and taste. Reservations are required for the two-hour tasting affair.
Photo courtesy of Francis Ford Coppola Winery
3) Boudreaux Cellars Winery – Leavenworth, WA
Cell service and paved roads fall to the wayside en route to this working winery outside of Leavenworth, Washington’s Bavarian-themed vacation town. Production, cellar equipment and a small-scale tasting bar are held in the intimate and rustic stone house, while Adirondack chairs circle a bonfire under high-altitude coniferous trees. The single varietal Bordeaux-style wine taste better here, and lauded winemaker and musician Rob Newsom is quick to whip out his guitar and strum a couple tunes to pair with Merlot.
Photo courtesy of PatrickBennett.com
4) Siren Song – Chelan, WA
Named in honor of the “irresistible call” of Greek mythology’s lethally sultry Sirens, the folks behind Siren Song heard that summons from their love of wine and answered with a striking Mediterranean-inspired shrine of wine and food. Towering over the eponymous Lake Chelan, this tasting is about the experience, taking guests away from the tasting bar and over to the expansive terrace overlooking the lake for a seated flight of flatbread-friendly wines.
Photo courtesy of Siren Song
5) Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyard – North Garden, VA
Historic and indisputably handsome, this enchanting estate winery and tasting room holds down the fort for quality and unrivaled tastings in ol’ Tom Jefferson’s commonwealth. Beauty comes from within the colonial-style barn tasting room — a culinary-centric marriage of food and wine is the focus — and out on the expansive grounds, including a lush courtyard, European-influenced terrace and veranda, chef’s garden and six-acre vineyard at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Photo courtesy of Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyard/Tec Petaja
6) Buena Vista Winery – Sonoma, CA
Before California was the powerhouse producer of wine that it is today, there was Buena Vista Winery. The storied winery was established in 1857, making it the state’s “first premium winery” and old guard for all things enological in the region. Tasting opportunities are abundant in the wine monument, like the “Wine and Music experience” where you sip while bobbing your head to a private performance of classical musical arrangements in the state’s oldest wine caves.
Photo courtesy of Buena Vista Winery
7) Opus One Winery – Oakville, CA
When quizzed to name a cult status winery in California, Opus One will likely be on the tip of your tongue. The O.G. of baller status red wine in the United States, Opus One is the Cabernet Sauvignon-based lovechild of Château Mouton Rothschild’s Baron Philippe de Rothschild and California wine king Robert Mondavi. And this precious progeny requires its own top-shelf estate tasting room, a lavishly appointed, palatial wine sipping experience amid Italian renaissance design, marble, slate and daily tours to the tune of $75.
Photo courtesy of Opus One Winery
8) MauiWine – Kula, HI
Visitors need only know two things: wine tasting and Hawaii. Bonus is that a lot more comes with just these basics, from an estate pineapple wine to a variety of tasting levels, including the King’s Visit hosted in the historic “Old Jail” stone building that once served as a 19th century naval captain’s private office. The Vineyard Experience features a trek to the 23-acre vineyard planted into volcanic soils at the southern slopes of the Haleakalā volcano and specializes in panoramas of the Maui sunset.
Photo courtesy of Randy Jay Braun
9) San Sebastian Winery: The Cellar Upstairs – St. Augustine, FL
Nestled into a historic building dating back to the city’s rich railway heritage, the 18,000-square-foot facility for San Sebastian has the mandatory requirements of a tasting room but tops tasting experience lists for its rooftop wine bar, patio and jazz lounge. The Cellar Upstairs is a wine, jazz and blues bar that features live music in a spirited, wine-soaked setting. While the doors are open, the bar is always pouring wine and never charging cover.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Annay Photography
10) Equus Run Vineyards – Midway, KY
Former farm tool shed turned country chic; this stone-faced tasting room and gift shop hybrid is in the center of the ranch-based vineyard and winery in Kentucky’s horse country. Below birch trees and beside polished flowerbeds, tasters can bring wine out to the deck that gazes down at the vineyard and golf-putting green. Selfies are welcome in the photo-friendly garden that is home to a horse sculpture named Vegetariat.
Photo courtesy of Equus Run Vineyards
11) Black Star Farms – Suttons Bay, MI
Agritourism to a T, this unique destination winery has two wine production facilities, three tasting rooms, a luxury inn, café, horse stables and numerous event venues. Tucked into Michigan’s lush Leelanau Peninsula, the Suttons Bay location showcases the hillside vineyard and houses the inn, as well as the winery-distillery tasting room and the premier-access Barrel Room. Exclusive to club members and guests of the inn, the private tasting space is upholstered in the staves of 10 wine barrels and provides pours of limited production wines.
Photo courtesy of Black Star Farms
12) Belhurst Castle – Geneva, NY
Wine, m’lady? Sip award-winning Finger Lakes wines while skimming the horizon over Seneca Lake in this historic castle, a landmark building erected in the 1880s. In addition to the winery, the castle also provides guests (and heavy drinkers) with lodging accommodations, two restaurants, a salon, spa and gift shop. Formerly a private residence, the castle has a vast collection of peculiars, oddities and collectibles worth scouring the grounds for, including a functioning wine spigot built into the wall of the original structure.
Photo courtesy of Belhurst Castle
13) Hauser Estate – Biglerville, PA
Emerge in American history while getting tipsy at this 360-degree enclosed glass tasting room. Views stretch as far as the eye can see over farmland, vineyards, orchards and forests, all guiding visitors’ line of sight toward the Civil War Battlefield. An underground production facility slumbers below your toes as you rubberneck at the scenic sights spreading out before you.
Photo courtesy of Hauser Estate
Erin James is the editor-in-chief of Sip Publishing, publishers of Sip Northwest and CIDERCRAFT magazines, and a longtime freelance writer and editor with a focus on food, beverage and travel writing.
Don’t tell J.K. Rowling, but someone just wrote a rap about Harry Potter. I’m not kidding: Don’t tell, J.K. Rowling. It might inspire her to write some other adjacent Harry Potter universe book, like Harry Potter and the Mythical Muggles of Grime. And we don’t need any more Harry Potter books.
Anyways, this Harry Potter rap. (Trigger warning: I’m about to say it’s spellbinding.) It’s spellbinding. Something like this you expect to describe as gimmicky, but in a pleasant surprise, it’s not. YouTuber Alex Day includes almost every single spell from the books into his rap, which is pretty impressive. Day admits that he “accidentally missed Levicorpus and used Mobilicorpus twice. I was devastated when I realised.”
To which we say, all good, dude! Some of our favorite lyrics include “STUPEFYd, I was out like a light, ACCIO’d over like I was IMMOBILICORPUS” and “‘I am IMPERVIOUS to your IMPENDIMENTA,’ said Jo, ‘and you’re being RIDDIKULUS too!'”
It may not be on the sublime level of Potter Puppet Pals, and Day kind of resembles Voldemort, but the rap is nonetheless a thrilling tribute to the Boy That Lived.
Apple’s iOS 10 has had a glitch-filleddebut. Of course, many, if not most, software updates have problems in their first few days, but iOS 10 has really set a new standard: First, the sports site Deadspin discoveredMy Little Pony porn showed up when you searched for “butt” in the system’s GIF library. That’s bad, sure. But it’s not nearly as bad as having a graphic GIF of a woman giving a man a blowjob appear when you search for “huge” in the same system, which is exactly what happened until Apple fixed the problem this afternoon following another bombshell Deadspin report.
As Deadspin’s Ashley Feinberg notes, it makes sense that a relatively harmless cartoon porn might slip through Apple’s filters, which block searches for explicitly sexual words like “penis” or “vagina.” No such filter was created for the seemingly innocuous word “huge,” resulting in the appearance of the fellatio GIF (the very NSFW version of which you can watch here if you really want to; we don’t really recommend it).
It wasn’t just the porn-whisperers at Deadspin who took notice. A concerned mother emailed tech site The Verge with a tale of horror after her eight-year-old daughter discovered the same GIF while searching for “huge.”
“I see the image come up like, holy shit, whoa whoa whoa, that’s a hardcore porn image,” Tassie Bethany, told The Verge. “I grabbed the phone from her immediately. She typed in the word ‘huge,’ which isn’t sexual in any nature. It’s just a word, not like butt or anything else.”
Within minutes of Deadspin and The Verge’s posts going up, Apple blocked “huge” from it’s search, which shows it’s learning; it took the tech giant 10 hours to remove “butt”–the term that triggered the My Little Pony porn–from the system after the glitch was revealed late last night.
It’s not exactly clear how the porn ended up in the library in the first place, though Verge reports it’s powered by the Bing search engine. If you know anything more, or if you find other porn, or know someone who found other porn, let us know at share@thefreshtoast.com.
Fall approaches. The leaves are changing, the weather cooling, the summer vacation in the rearview. One thing is for certain: You’ll be spending a lot more time inside. That means more sitting in front of the tube (or the laptop screen for you cordcutters). As it seems we’re in #PeakTV, you’ll have plenty of programming to watch. These are the shows you should be sure to check out this fall.
Atlanta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yVQNCP9jWI
Series Premiere: Sept. 6 on FX
It started with the “Twin Peaks for rappers” comment show creator and star Donald Glover made at the TCAs, and a tagline that’s stuck to Atlanta ever since. Ethereal promos demanding your curiosity and a Twitter feed full of equal parts witty aphorisms and thinking-face emoji have only increased the hype of this show. It looks to be the new show your friends say, “You just gotta see this, fam,” and they’re right.
Better Things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MRLMAsSHyE
Series Premiere: Sept. 10 on FX
“Don’t you want me to have clean, organic pot?” Pamela Adlon’s daughter asks her mother in the above promo for Better Things, a sentiment we both support and find ourselves chuckling at the Fresh Toast. If that quote weren’t enough, Adlon co-created the show with Louis C.K. (she played the ongoing love interest in C.K.’s Louie) and promises to examine the ossified lives of L.A.’s entertainment scene, but (finally) from a female perspective. Also, playing Tribe’s “Can I Kick It?” during a promo will 100% guarantee my watching almost anything.
South Park
Season 20 Premiere: Sept. 14 on Comedy Central
What more is left to dissect about South Park? It only recently became debatable whether it’s comedy’s best satire in existence (BoJack Horseman creates the argument), and 20 seasons in, Matt Stone and Trey Parker still throw 100 MPH fastballs. As our world turned more and more absurd this year, fans await South Park’s return to make sense and make fun of that absurdity. They always have.
High Maintenance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeFSrodZo0s
Series Premiere: Sept. 16 on HBO
We’ve written previously about this show but for those unaware: It’s an original webseries by husband-and-wife team Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld that follows a New York dealer known simply as “The Guy” as he interacts with his customers. His adventures, typically in Brooklyn but sometimes Manhattan, lead him into tales that can be hilarious or heartwarming depending on the episode. Though the web episodes ran about 5-12 minutes in length, we’ll see how the cult series adapts in its six-episode HBO run.
Empire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYMeQ9Lbjd4
Season 3 Premiere: Sept. 21 on FOX
There’s no denying it: Empire had a bit of a slump in its second season. But could the showrunners really be blamed? The attention paid to the show in its first season was fifth-season-of-Breaking-Bad level high. In some ways, they could only go down. The show has a lot to prove in its third season, but it isn’t in a terrible place to do so.
Black-ish
Season 3 Premiere: Sept. 21 on ABC
When it was announced, the show Black-ish seemed like it had “bad idea” written all over it. Two seasons in, it has asserted itself as both an ABC premiere sitcom and important forum for race relations in the country. Last season’s polemic episode “Hope” on police shootings was one of the best half-hours of any current sitcom and with that issue ongoing plus this farcical election cycle, the series is sure to have a lot on its mind.
Transparent
Season 3 Premiere: Sept. 23 on Amazon Video
Two types of people know about this show: A) those who adore it and convince friends to watch, calling it television’s best written half-hour and claiming it’s a family drama, not “the trans show” some reduce it to and B) those on the listening end of such commentary but still haven’t taken the plunge. If you’re person B, you should change that because all those As are correct. Just binge it, already.
Luke Cage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytkjQvSk2VA
Series Premiere: Sept. 30 on Netflix
While fan-beloved, Netflix’s first two Marvel TV series have left me largely unimpressed and cold. The characters and worlds feel underdeveloped, the narrative arcs too loose and fast. It all felt too much like fan service-y content instead of a story. But yet I’m eagerly anticipating Luke Cage, a show that judging from trailers appears fully realized with fleshed-out characters and a larger tapestry at play than good vs. evil (and setting up the Defenders TV series). And dude used a car door as a battering ram while ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” played in the background–yeah, you have my attention, Luke Cage.
Crisis in Six Scenes
Series Premiere: Sept. 30 on Amazon Video
Nervous energy surrounds this show, which isn’t saying much since it’s a Woody Allen project. He agreed to the six-episode series with Amazon and then in a later interview with Deadline, Allen said, “I have regretted every second since I said OK.” Not exactly words to hype you up. But the teaser looks like a classic Allen scene and Miley Cyrus’ inclusion should at least make things interesting.
Saturday Night Live
Season 42 premiere: Oct. 1 on NBC
When veteran heavy-hitters Jay Pharoah and Taran Killam were surprisingly cut from the show (as well as new guy Jon Rudnitsky), it seemed like some major shake-up was happening with SNL. But the rest of the cast will return in their previous roles and no new hires have been announced. The only other major change includes Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider taking over as head writers (they were behind the fantastic sketch “The Beygency). Otherwise, the show will continue as the pop culture stalwart it’s always been.
Ash vs. Evil Dead
Season 2 Premiere: Oct. 2 on Starz
In our Walking Dead, #peakTV, prestige-Prestige-PRESTIGE drama era, Ash vs. Evil Dead provides a breath of fresh air: It’s deliciously over-the-top B-level horror that never takes itself seriously. Demon heads explode like piñatas of gooey blood and the camera shots exaggerate the gore every chance it gets. It’s plain fun, and doesn’t want to be anything else.
Westworld
Series Premiere: Oct. 2 on HBO
Not-so-quietly, HBO and the TV critic community have posited Westworld as the potential next Game of Thrones. That is, a tentpole show in a TV economy where tentpole shows barely, if at all, exist, due to the fractured, niche evolution TV has undergone with premiere cable and streaming services. But Westworld appears to have a chance: A hybrid sci-fi-western thriller that drives at the deeper mystery of our current existential fears stemming from Silicon Valley’s alternate realities. Plus: J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan (yes, the brother of famous Christopher Nolan) are behind this project, which includes a murder’s row of acting talent like Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Wood, James Marsden, Tessa Thompson, et al., the possibility is huge. This show should be high on everyone’s lists.
DC’s The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow
Respectively: Season 3 on Oct. 4, Season 5 on Oct. 5, Season 2 on Oct. 10, Season 2 on Oct. 13; all on CW
Holy DC TV Series, Batman (except sans Batman). While DC’s movie universe (unfairly, I think) receives massive vitriol, its TV universe has earned a small, but dedicated following. DC’s shows are campier, more like a comic book, than the Marvel properties, as to be expected.
Insecure
Series Premiere: Oct. 9 on HBO
Issa Rae came of prominence through her YouTube show “Awkward Black Girl.” That show made her an Internet hero of sorts, or at least the type of creator people enjoy rooting for. Watching any of her videos, it’s easy to see why. Insecure marks her evolution into longer-form narrative storytelling and is being executive-produced by gone-too-soon Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore.
Black Mirror
Season 3 premiere: Oct. 21 on Netflix
Black Mirror long occupied a space as a cult favorite, particularly for TV watchers of the techno-paranoia population (a.k.a. me). Watching the British anthology series felt like watching The Matrix but made against the backdrop of our current reality. Now, Netflix has picked up the show for a third season, though the previous two seasons and Christmas special total only seven episodes. This six-episode season will include an episode directed by Joe Wright, and written by Parks & Recreation creator Mike Schur and actress Rashida Jones.
Walking Dead
Season 7 premiere Oct. 23 on AMC
Look: Seven seasons in, not withstanding spinoff series, you’re either in or out on The Walking Dead by now. You’re either about the tribal paranoia, the how-can-we-kill-zombies-now mechanics, or you’re not. Nothing said will sway you either way, so we won’t waste the ink. That said: Killing zombies is generally a good time.
Like many chefs who spend late nights at the restaurant, chef Nick Testa of Bua in New York City’s East Village can’t start his morning without coffee.
Meal #1: Cold brew
I like cold brew because it’s so bold and strong, and it’s a bit sweeter on the tongue than regular coffee. And it’s easier on my stomach than more acidic hot brewed coffee. If I’m out and about in the city, I go to La Colombe; their pure black cold brew on draft is the business. But it’s also really expensive: I can easily spend upwards of $60 a week on coffee, so I’ve started to make my own cold brew at home. I grind up a melange of whatever beans I have in the house, which I get from a bar patron who runs a coffee distributorship. No blend is ever the same. Then later in the day, I throw my cold brew into the Soda Stream and carbonate it to make coffee soda. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to drink Manhattan Special, which is a really strong, tasty, sweetened espresso soda that you can buy in bodegas or little Italian delis. I worked in a deli as a kid and I used to stock the sodas. Once in a while, I’d pocket a Manhattan Special and chug it in the walk in.
Meal #2: Shitty bodega sandwich
I’ll always enjoy a shitty bodega bacon, egg and cheese sandwich: soft poppy seed kaiser roll, American cheese, crispy bargain brand bacon, scrambled egg and “SPK” – salt, pepper, ketchup. I started working in delis when I was in high school, and when we were kids, rolling back from the bars at 4 in the morning, I’d open up the kitchen and make egg sandwiches for all my friends.
Meal #3: Breakfast two ways
My other favorite breakfast food is French toast sticks (which he put on the menu at Bua). What I enjoy most are the frozen ones from the box, so I started experimenting with my own, trying to come up with a recipe that is the closest to any boxed french toast stick you’ll ever get. That flavor is so nostalgic. I make a heavy, sweetened batter with lots of cinnamon and vanilla, let it soak into the bread, and then give it a dunk in a rice flour mixture to give it a crunchiness when it goes into the frier. I always use nice challah bread with a decent crust. Our challah pullman does the best job: it’s got crust on each end and is soft in the middle.
But on most days, Nick channels the 80s and digs into a box of his favorite childhood cereal.
My parents were divorced when I was growing up and my mother was always at work, so it would be up to me to cook. I always wanted cereal or frozen French toast sticks. If it was cereal, it was Cinnamon Toast Crunch. A little CTC in your life – you can’t go wrong with that. It’s still stocked in my cabinet to this day. I’m a half-a-box kind of guy, maybe more. When I get up, I bring the box, a half gallon of milk, my bowl and my spoon, and I park in front of the TV with my schnauzer Norman and watch The Price is Right. That’s my morning ritual.
This job hunter makes endless LinkedIn invitations look appealing.
After being turned down for a fourth grade teaching position, he went full revenge mode, mailing dead animals — four skunks and a raccoon — to everyone responsible for his fall from glory, including the school and the man who did get the job.
One of the packages contained the message “RESIGN! IT WILL NOT STOP.” The post office intercepted the packages, because, of course, they smelled like skunk and were leaking blood, authorities told Huffington Post.
He killed time waiting for the boxes to be delivered by spraypainting the other man’s vehicle with “u will die.” Then Forty-year-old Indiana resident Travis Tarrants, who appears to have Shining-level anger issues, took it way beyond too far when he called Child Protective Services to accuse the other man of having sex with students and abusing his daughter, attempting to frame him by sending a 15-year-old student photos of a man’s genitals (it’s not disclosed whose) and the job-winner’s telephone number.
“Search warrants located white spray paint, clothing with white spray paint, a note with the male victim’s name and home address and receipts for envelopes that matched the ones that were sent,” the local NBC affiliate reports.
Tarrants’ girlfriend told investigators that he had “trapped five to seven live skunks in late spring” and thought it was odd that he kept them alive for days after. Some free advice for the GF: find a man who isn’t trapping and killing skunks to send to schools, maybe.
Kanye West loves fashion. We hold that truth as irrefutable. Kanye West is also a man who loves to speak his mind. This, too, we hold as irrefutable truth. Sometimes those two facts combine and results in classic quotes only possible from the mouth of Kanye West.
Recently, Kid Cudi aired some grievances on a little website called Twitter.com. It involved fakery within the music industry and Cudi’s haters and rappers “Talkin top 5 and be having 30 people write songs for them.” One comment was particularly notable, though, and that’s when Cudi named rappers he thought were fakers: Mr. Kanye West and Drake.
Drake responded in typical Drake fashion, which is to say, semi-corny but victorious. Still on his Summer Sixteen tour, Drake responded during a concert by alluding to O.T. Genasis song “Cut It,” Drake rapped, “Boy, you getting way too high, you need to Cud-it.”
Kanye, in Tampa for his Saint Pablo tour, also responded: “I am so hurt. I feel so disrespected. Kid Cudi, we are two black men in a racist world.” Kanye’s a disappointed father, or brother, which is reasonable. He signed Cudi to his G.O.O.D. Music label and helped foster Cudi’s career. Ye continued: “I’m out here fighting for y’all creators, artists, independent thinkers. Don’t never mention my name in a bad manner, none of y’all.”
But what we truly care about is another comment Kanye made during his response to Cudi and that’s this: “I wore skinny jeans first. I got called names before you, bruh. Why y’all got to come at me?”
Why do we care? Because this isn’t the first time Kanye mentioned—okay, bragged—about wearing skinny jeans. Two thoughts diverge: a) it was certainly a statement to wear skinny jeans in hip hop’s braggadocio, pimp-centric era from which Kanye emerged but b) what an oddly specific boast, right? With all that Kanye has accomplished, why does he seem proudest of wearing skinny jeans?
And it’s not the first time Kanye has made it clear that he is super passionate about the cut of his denim. Earlier this year Kanye unleashed a salvo of vicious tweets aimed at Wiz Khalifa. The beef was over a misunderstanding that Wiz was dissing Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian, when in reality his KK acronym referred to Kalifornia Kush. Kanye has since deleted these tweets after realizing the confusion.
Anyways, amidst the tweet flurry, Kanye wrote the following:
I made it so we could wear tight jeans
Also, related: Kanye complimented Wiz’s pants.
I went to look at your twitter and you were wearing cool pants.
I screen grabbed those pants and sent it to my style team #Wizwearscoolpants
In 2013, Zane Lowe interviewed Kanye West on BBC One in a now-iconic back-and-forth. The pair touched on numerous topics, including Kanye’s designing leather jogging pants, Wreck-It Ralph, and Kanye’s frustration with the fashion industry.
He also (slightly) compared his wearing tight jeans as a Civil Rights Movement. This is one of those situations when Kanye’s stream-of-consciousness-quality of speaking sometimes requires some deciphering. But still:
“Kanye: …now we’re seriously in a Civil Rights movement. Like people used to joke about – remember our South Park photo –
Zane Lowe: Yeah, I do.
Kanye: Remember how funny that was? Do you think there would be a Givenchy in the hood if it wasn’t for that South Park photo. But no one thinks about that – no one thinks about the names I got called for wearing tight jeans
As The Fresh Toasthas previously noted, Oliver Stone’s Edward Snowden biopic, cleverly titled Snowden, is one of the most-anticipated films of this year’s Oscar season. There is much to be psyched about in the flick—secrets! lies! data!—and now you can add to the list: Peter Gabriel. Yes, the “Sledgehammer“-weilder, himself, has contributed a new track to the movie, and it’s … pretty epic. Well, as epic as any song clocking in at a brisk three-and-a-half minutes can be. There’s a lot to unpack here. Indeed, deconstructing this song, and the reaction to it, is like fishing for data at the bottom of the ocean. Confused? Let us help.
1. The opening line to the song is, “Underneath the sky, where the cold winds cross/ there is an ocean, where data flows.” As far as opening lyrical bids go, this is no, “Hello.” This is roll-up-your-sleeves songwriting and then using your newly unencumbered by sleeves hands to drop some major-league science on the eardrums of listeners the world over. And if that previous sentence doesn’t bring the poetic metaphors in a way you feel comfortable with, well, that’s just because we aren’t Peter Gabriel. Not many are. To be clear: only one person is Peter Gabriel. And that’s Peter Gabriel. He lives underneath cold winds!
2. Consider the length of other epic pop songs. G ‘n R’s “November Rain” chimes in at a few clicks past nine minutes. And Lupe Fiasco’s “Mural” is just south of nine. Peter Gabriel? His 1986 hit “Sledgehammer” ran past five minutes. But now he’s clearly into the whole brevity thing, and manages to pack an epic’s worth of stuff—oath taking samples, breathy buildups, dichotomies—into a mere two hundred and ten seconds. It’s like dude has other epic shit to get done and doesn’t have time for your over-bloated epic pop songs.
3. Some people believe “we need to have a national conversation” about Peter Gabriel’s new song. Those people aren’t wrong.
4. The video will save you about two hours and ten minutes. How’s that? The run time of Stone’s movie is two hours and fourteen minutes. The video shows—a lot. The video may be like watching a different movie, but it’s essentially a short movie about Snowden. So, like, math!
5. Peter Gabriel is 66. Whatever you think of his ‘Snowden’ song, the fact that he tried something so ambitious and creatively risky at the age most of us are just going for a prostate exam between bits of muesli is impressive. That said, Kim Gordon turned 63 in April, and her new track absolutely kills.
But who am I to judge? If you take a look at the YouTube comments on Gabriel’s clip, his *dedicated* fans are overwhelmingly into the new effort. And in this era of shortening attention spans and too much irony and not enough heart, perhaps the speedy, emo epic is just what we need.
One happy thing I’ve learned during my 20-plus years as a firefighter and E.M.T. is that usually the most entertaining ambulance calls are ones that are the least serious. I honestly can’t remember how many people’s lives I’ve seen slip through my fingers while I tried everything I knew to save them. And I can’t recall every gunshot victim or everyone that I ever found irreparably smashed inside a wrecked car. But I thank god that I can remember a few calls that just made me laugh like hell.
Early in my career, I was working an ambulance in a small, rural town with my partner and good buddy Jimmy. So my backwoods-bred, handlebar-mustached partner Jimmy and I were chilling out in headquarters, debating whether we should be watching whatever was on The Hunting Channel or trying to identify the scrambled edge of a boob or the twisted form of what I could maybe imagine to be a vagina on the blocked porn channel. Pickings were slim on Skinamax, so I was only marginally annoyed when our pagers went off and the lights came on, summoning us to a Routine Response- Psychological.
About ten minutes later, Jimmy and I arrived at a small church off a country road. It was about half-past noon and mid-week, so it was pretty quiet. As Jimmy and I walked toward the church, E.M.S. bags in hand, we were met outside by a man who identified himself as Pastor Paul. Pastor Paul explained to us that he and a couple of his parishioners had recently brought a “troubled young woman” into the fold of their church with hopes of helping her through The Word of God. When the woman repeatedly tried to touch Pastor Paul’s wife’s breasts during a prayer while quickly whispering something about her cat and who-needs-Lithium-anyway, the church decided that they needed the kind of help that doesn’t have to wait for an Amen.
I met this woman, now our patient, in the kitchen of the church: She was a 40ish, slim brunette in a turquoise dress, in no apparent distress, eating cold taco meat as fast as she could out of a skillet with her bare hands. She barely paused to talk to me through a full mouth, but with a few targeted questions and a set of vital signs, it didn’t take Dr. Gregory House to deduce that our patient was experiencing bipolar mania, probably the result of not taking her prescribed medication. Recognizing that we were Pastor Paul’s only way out of a touchy situation, and that without treatment this person could become a danger to herself or others, we casually offered a free ride to the hospital. I was relieved when she jumped up from the table, dropped a whole handful of ground beef, and walked straight out to the ambulance without protest.
I had done the patient care on our last call, a woman with unstable angina, so it was Jimmy’s turn in back with our patient while I drove the 20 miles or so to our local hospital. We were about five minutes into the drive when I heard Jimmy’s gravelly voice from the back:
“Uh…Ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you not to do that.”
Then, fifteen seconds later, slightly more assertive:
“Ma’am. That’s not okay. You can’t do that in here.”
A few more seconds passed. Then, his voice filled with mix of disbelief and, the the six-foot tall, 200 pound, high school football star-turned-E.M.T. said: “Oh, Ma’am, you can’t…….”
A brief silence followed. I looked into the rear view mirror, then tried to turn my head to see. Before I could get a glimpse, I heard a whispered voice right next to my head in the companionway.
“Dude. She’s back there bangin’ herself.”
I couldn’t understand what poor Jimmy was saying.
“What? What’d you say?”
Just as excited, just as quiet, but with each syllable drawn out, Jimmy repeated himself:
“Dude…… She’s…….back……there…….banging…herself.”
I didn’t need to ask a second time. I reached up and adjusted that rear view mirror for the best possible view of the unfolding situation. I really couldn’t see much with the back of the gurney seated upright, but I could identify the head and back of the woman head lolling back and forth in an ecstatic rhythm. Then Jimmy, still right in my ear:
“Dude. What should I do?”
I paused, thought for a moment, and asked: “Is she hurting herself?”
Jimmy peaked back over the gurney to verify, then the same freaked out gravelly whisper right back in my ear:
“I…I don’t think so.”
I shrugged, thrilled that I might have this situation under control, and from the driver’s seat, nonetheless.
“Ah, just let her finish. Make sure she doesn’t jump out of the rig or anything.”
Jimmy rode the entire way to the hospital crouched right next to me in the companionway while our patient masturbated to her heart’s contentment, just out of our sight. He explained to me that the patient had begun looking at him, then rubbing his leg, moving up toward his crotch until she eventually pulled her dress right up over her hips and “took the F-train to Tunatown”, as he later put it.
When we pulled up the driveway to the hospital, Jimmy told our patient that we were arriving. She immediately stopped touching herself, pulled her dress back down, and gave her hair a quick tousle, all without saying a single word. It was like the masturbating never happened.
We wheeled her in to the “Quiet Room” of the Emergency Department, then gave our report to a grizzled old emergency room nurse. We waited to report the part about the masturbation until we were well out of earshot of the patient. After recounting the tale to as best we could, probably like two prepubescent kids who’d just seen their first Playboy, the nurse merely shook her head and replied with mild annoyance.
