Hit by a Pitch

First, let me warn you that I’m useless on Friday evenings. I leave work on Fridays; go to the gym; run for an hour (which is super awesome, let me tell you) (also Fridays are prime treadmill-hogging time because all the resolvers are at happy hour and it’s not crowded); go home; eat dinner with Ben and Soren; hang out with Ben and Soren; check on my goddamn Pet Hotel, which is really pissing me off because I’m to the point where it takes 70 bazillion coins and 870 hours to accomplish anything; shower (I’d prefer to shower immediately after arriving home but this is generally not possible without being a general pain in the ass to everyone else); hang out; and then after Soren goes to bed, sit my ass on the couch, watch tv, eat vanilla ice cream with Heath chips or something awesome like a bowl of organic blue corn tortilla chips and chili cheese Fritos, and completely and unabashedly revel in do-nothingness.

As you may know, this is why I usually do “Photo Fridays” — because I’m too tired and lazy to inflict what I’d write on innocent people such as yourselves.

None of that explains why in the hell I’m writing a post tonight, by the way.

The other day while watching The First 48, which might be my favorite tv show of all time, I got kind of bummed out that I don’t have a street name. I assume you only have a street name if you’re heavily involved in criminal activity. That way, when homicide detectives call in a potential witness who will be faced with the terrible snitch-or-no-snitch decision, at the very least, if the witness does snitch, she’ll be all, oh, I heard it was Lil Jackrabbit (or whatever) but no, I don’t know his real name. You’ll at least get an extra few minutes to get out of town while some detective puts “Lil Jackrabbit” in the database and finds your real name, although in reality you’ll probably just go to your mom’s house, where they’ll find you later. Eventually, you’ll be convicted of murder even though you were just there to rob the guy, because nobody tells kids these days about felony murder.

Anyway, on this particular episode, we found out there was a witness known as Fat Mama. That’s freaking awesome. First of all, that’s one of the nicknames for our cat, Xochitl. And then you picture, well, someone who would be called Fat Mama, right? And then when they finally find Fat Mama, she’s totally not fat at all — she’s a skinny little thing. And that makes being called Fat Mama even better. (I’m operating on the assumption that people are not still using the term “Phat,” by the way.) And then you’re all, yeah, I want people to call me Fat Mama. Okay, maybe you’re not, but I kind of thought that for a minute.

Then today I found out something about Ice Cube and something about Ice-T. For the record, I know that Ice Cube > Ice-T. Ice Cube’s Good Day was January 20, 1992. Ice-T’s real name is Tracy, and he has a son named Ice Tracy, who, not that this has anything to do with anything, was born in 1992. How did it take me this long in life to know that Ice-T and I have the same name? And why have I never developed any sort of nickname involving ice?

So then today I’m watching the Winter X Games, because that’s what I do, and first of all, Torstein Horgmo (he’s like the best snowboarder of all time). I would not have minded naming my child Torstein Horgmo, because that’s one of the most awesome names of all time. But then there’s also Halldór Helgason (I had to copy and paste to get that “o” with the thing over it). He’s from Iceland. Also, turn on ESPN right now! You can still catch Torstein Horgmo in the snowboard big air finals!

The point to telling you this? There is no point. This is just the kind of stuff I think about when I don’t have anything else to think about.

I just . . . um . . . I . . . um . . . it appears I have been rendered speechless by what I’m about to share with you.

If you don’t know, Danilo Gallinari is from Italy and plays for the Denver Nuggets. As we speak, the ink is drying on the 4-year, $42 million extension he just signed with the team. He’s also on my fantasy basketball team, which appropriately and lamely is named the Galloping Gallinaris (in my defense, it’s only named this because I was totally messing with the guy who kept trying to trade some dude I’ve never heard of, a melted Snickers bar, and a bag of Fritos crumbs for Gallo, but goddamn if I didn’t know better than to take that deal).

Danilo Gallinari also apparently has some killer dance moves, if by “has some killer dance moves” I actually mean something else entirely. I hate when people post videos and tell you to watch them, really, they’re hilarious, but that’s exactly what I’m doing here even though it fills me with the existential angst that results from doing what you hate people doing. I’m not only speechless, I’m also incapable of conducting myself in accordance with the standards to which I hold others. I hope you’ll forgive me, though, because I make the party start.

Much love to @nuggetsnews for bringing this to the world’s attention.

Next time I go to a Nuggets game, I’m going to bust out the Gallinari.

Because I can’t listen to local sports radio these days (you turn it on and it’s all blah blah Tebow blah blah, still, nine years after they were eliminated from the playoffs), I’ve been listening to music in the car. Also, Soren likes music in the car. Usually, before we even get down the block, he’s asking for “Dew song?” (dew = more in Sorenspeak). He likes music in the car as much as he hates when you pull down the sun visor and look at yourself in the mirror, thereby besmirching his view with your hideous visage.

The best musical entertainment my car has to offer is a CD player and a random selection of CDs from many years ago when I still bothered putting anything on CDs, plus one I got from the face-tattooed artist himself outside the liquor store by the Unsafeway  (which, for the record, is no longer unsafe). I’ve discovered that it is in fact possible, after many years, to get tired of Wale remixes, as well as pretty much everything else.

The one CD I haven’t been tired of lately is labeled, in Ben’s handwriting, “TRACY THINKS SHE’S THE SHIT.” If I recall correctly, it features songs I picked out from his music library in the early 2000s. It’s a lot of deep, housey stuff — Mark Grant, Maxwell, Naked Music NYC — I seriously can’t get enough of It’s Love (Joshua’s Mo Luv Vocal).

Because this is what I’ve been digging, this is what I wanted to put on my January 2012 playlist. But I can’t make a whole playlist of old stuff. So I took a little disco and mixed it with some Crisco and brought it back — no wait, that’s not what I did. I took a little early 2000s housey stuff, mixed it with some space disco, and threw in a few new things I just discovered today. Playlists (the exception being very meaningful playlists) are always better when you include new stuff you just found and think will fit but aren’t totally sure. I also advocate including at least one song that really doesn’t belong at all. (I was thinking about this today while pondering the anatomy of a good running playlist, which I’ll share with you as soon as I get it all figured out.)

Sidenote: How do you discover new music these days? My two favorite sources are Ben and Hype Machine. Hype Machine can be a little like looking for the perfect dress in a thrift store full of dubstep, but I always end up finding some good stuff.

Anyway, for a limited time, get the whole thing here. Here’s the tracklist. Enjoy!

Update: I forgot a song! Duh! Here is the updated playlist with the song (Stuck by Peven Everett). The tracklist should be amended to add that song at #25, then change Polish Girl to 26 and Contact High to 27. Sorry about that! Attention to detail = not my strong suit.

For some mysterious reason, I’m kind of obsessed with red velvet cake. I’ve only had it a few times and was never all that impressed with it because it doesn’t really taste like anything. I decided that making red velvet cupcakes that actually taste like something would be my baking project for January.

I hit up google and found this Smitten Kitchen recipe, which seemed good because she shared my issues with red velvet cake. Then I clicked the “adapted from” link to check out The New York Times red velvet cake recipe, which is exactly the same, word for word. (I noticed the same thing with her pineapple upside-down cake recipe, which, aside from omitting the cardamom, is an exact copy of the Gourmet recipe.) I thought it wasn’t cool to copy a recipe word for word, even if you link the original. What’s up with that?

Anyway, I followed the Times recipe exactly but for switching cake for cupcakes and using cupcake liners instead of butter and made the following high-altitude adjustments: decrease sugar to 1 1/2 cups plus 3 tablespoons and decrease baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons. I used this creamy vanilla frosting, which was kind of a lot of work but really good. Don’t cut this recipe in half — it didn’t result in the tragedy some commenters indicated but it wasn’t enough frosting. Also I recommend beating everything for longer than the recipe says — just a minute or two for the butter and butter and sugar and a good 5 minutes more at the end. The sugar granules went away after the 15-minute (exactly!) refrigeration.

So, if you’re in the market for good red velvet cake and coordinating frosting recipes, there you go!