The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

The premiere of season 5 of Mad Men takes place this Sunday! If you’re having a Mad Men viewing party and have been trying to think of period-appropriate food to serve, you might want to try this recipe for cranberry “candles” made with mayo, an idea straight from the era when people were doing weird things with processed food like suspending stuff in jello, making crowns of hot dogs and performing other gastronomical atrocities. I’ve posted the text in the ad above below:

Who’d dream a salad so impressive could be so easy to make! The delicate creaminess and fresh flavor of Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise make it possible.

Smooth, light Hellman’s mellows the tart cranberries to create a holiday salad with elegant new flavor — in an elegant new candle shape. Server it once…and you’ll be asked to serve it again and again.

• 1 1-lb. can Ocean Spray Whole Cranberry Sauce
• 1 3-oz. pkg. red, yellow or orange fruit-flavored gelatin
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 cup HELLMAN’S Real Mayonnaise
• 1 apple or orange, peeled and diced
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Heat cranberry sauce, strain, set berries aside. Dissolve gelatin in hot juice and water. Add salt and lemon juice.

Chill until thickened enough to mound slightly when dropped from a spoon.

Beat in real mayonnaise with rotary beater till light and fluffy. Fold in cranberries, fruit and nuts.

Divide mixture evenly into eight 6-oz. fruit juice cans. Chill 4 hours or longer. Unmold. Garnish with real mayonnaise to taste.

To flame: Cut thin birthday candles in half to shorten. Insert into tops of cranberry candles. Light.

This is no place for second best…this is the place for Hellman’s

If you give this recipe a try, let me know how it worked out…either drop me a line or leave a note in the comments!

Exactly what the title says. Not safe for work, obviously, but it made me laugh — especially the ending. It’s the perfect antidote to this disturbing topic that recently appeared on Reddit.

Here’s what I saw around 9:30 p.m. last night on my way home. I got bumped up to business class (a happy side-effect of flying around so much), where you can open up a 15″ laptop even when the person in front of you has reclined fully. Hot towel, turbot in white wine sauce on a bed of rice, chocolate cake, a couple of glasses of Penfolds shiraz, Midnight in Paris on the in-flight entertainment system and a little noodling with code on my newly-Nyanned computer. I can’t complain.

Titled as found. A wag I know said “That notice works either way you read it, you know?”

If you haven’t yet listened to episode 460 of This American Life, Retraction, you should. It’s the one in which they retract the content of episode 454, Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory, in which Mike Daisey relates his experiences of a visit to China to see the factory where iPhones and iPads are made. Daisey tells stories of meeting with underage and injured workers, armed guards at the factory and secret union meetings at Starbucks — stories which turned out to be fabrications when investigated further.

Daisey was invited back to NPR’s studios to explain himself, and in the episode, he’s a total weasel. He does apologise for presenting his piece as journalism, but he insists that it’s theatre, which gives him some artistic license in telling what is essentially a true story. He refuses to acknowledge that he lied or attempted to cover up the truth, even when confronted with evidence that he did so.

Instead of being a grown-up and owning up to his mistakes, when questioned, he hedges, he makes lame excuses, but most damningly, he just sits there and says nothing. There are long periods of silence after he’s asked questions that would clearly expose his fabrications, and they’re rather painful to listen to.

Michael Sippey’s done something clever: he’s taken those questions and the following silences and turned them into a single piece titled The Silence of Mike Daisey, which you can listen to using the audio player above. It’s all of Daisey’s weaselling, all in one go.

Found via Jason Kottke. Thanks, dude!

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

I’m a keyboard player, but as a frustrated guitarist, I often ran my synths through distortion pedals and the iconic Marshall amp a la Jon Lord from Deep Purple. That’s why even though Marshalls are for plank-spankers, I’d love to get one of these Marshall beer fridges…