U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 33

A finger-lickin' controversy

By Christopher Burbach
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

It seems like a college freshman's dream — a sandwich made of two original recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken breast filets, two slices of cheese, two pieces of bacon and something called “Colonel's Sauce.” And no bun.

Well, it's real. And Omaha, which is trying to work its way off the lists of fattest cities and into the ranks of fittest cities, is one of only a few places where you can buy one.

KFC calls the novelty item the Double Down. It has been available for more than a month in Omaha and several other Nebraska cities, plus Providence, R.I., the second test market.

By Wednesday, the Double Down began really catching national attention — from critics of its goopy girth as well as from fans of its goopy goodness.

“KFC is used to creating buzz with new product introductions, although it's not as common for items that are just in test,” said Rick Maynard, a KFC spokesman. “Clearly, a ‘chicken sandwich that is so big, we didn't have room for a bun' is an item that is generating a lot of buzz.”

That “so big” line is used in a television commercial that has aired in Omaha. And although Colonel Sanders and his boys make the bunless sandwich finger-lickin' good, for tidiness' sake it's served in a paper wrapper.

People seem to be either mortified or enticed by the concept.

A husband and wife eating Double Downs at the KFC near 132nd Street and West Center Road declared them “awesome” and “mouth-watering.” The restaurant's general manager, Gene Bell, said they're a popular item.

“We're getting a lot of positive feedback,” he said. “They think it's a good-tasting product, and it's something different.”

I tried one for lunch Wednesday, with no fries or pop. It was as it looks: tasty and fatty.

Out of curiosity, I had my cholesterol and triglycerides checked at a Creighton Medical Associates Clinic before lunch and three hours afterward, without having anything else to eat or drink.

Blood fats called triglycerides shot up from 136 to 213. HDL cholesterol, the good kind, sank from 50 to 39. Non-HDL cholesterol, the bad kind, went up from 144 to 154.

Those were significant changes from a single sandwich, said Dr. Scott Shurmur, a cardiologist and the director of the Lipid Clinic at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

The effects of eating one such sandwich should wear off in about a day in a healthy person, he said. But regular high-calorie, high-fat consumption would take a toll.

“Every point your HDL drops, your heart disease risk goes up 10 percent,” Shurmur said.

Kerri Peterson, executive director of Our Healthy Community Partnership in Omaha, said the sandwich sounds tasty. But too much of such might not be just what the doctor ordered for a city trying to get fit.

“It's not about cutting everything decadent out of your diet,” she said, “but maybe eat half of it.”

KFC isn't saying why Omaha was chosen as a test market or what kind of feedback it is getting.

The company estimates that the Double Down has 590 calories, with 280 of them from fat. It has no trans-fats, Maynard said.

The sandwich may seem to run counter to a KFC campaign launched this spring for lighter grilled chicken menu items. Asked about that, Maynard said, “KFC is proud to offer our customers a lot of choices — from better-for-you grilled options to more indulgent products.”

They Don't Have a Name for It vol. 2

doing guest vocals for DISASSOCIATE a week from Sunday. should be fun. just one or two songs.

started writing a new song called "THE INVALIDIST". the lyrics are about a person who has been hollowed out by their significant other, their gutted husk then wrapped around the body of the person the S.O. always wanted instead of them. like HELLRAISER. not sure if i'm getting that right. trying to put this to words is a true challenge. i had an easier time writing about bug chasing a week ago.

feel like my skeleton has dowsed in the molten wrought iron of melted anvils, than cooled. too heavy to move, but if i could move i would level all the walls.

going to watch Nekromantik 2.

okay... watched it. wasn't that hot really. the ending was good, but it felt ultimately pointless; a retread of the first film without anything that made it so morosely charming. the ending was good. i do like that he didn't make it a totally transparent clone of the first film (although some of the beats mirror the predecessor). it's not bad (especially as far as sequels go), it just felt sort of uneventful. first movie had the better soundtrack, too.

listening to a bunch of BONE AWL stuff. so far my favorite is the By Ropes Through Dirt release. they have a song on it called "Pentagram Clitoris", which might be my favorite song title i wish i came up with. a lot of their song titles/lyrics are really cool and interesting... a nice break from the usual nonsense lo-fi black metal bands write about. "Noise of Bears Killing", "Circles of Hair", "White with Sepulchres", "Quiet Torture of Words in a Head", "Tollund Man", "Gunpowder Musk". always awesome to see bands pull out the stops in the song title/lyrics department. too few bands treat it as an after thought, or they try to hard to be shocking/clever/poetic/silly. Bums me out. i do my best.

speaking of BONE AWL, here's a link to their set at Disgraceland in Philly.

and why not some youtube?








my entire abdominal region has been aching for a couple of days. can't explain it. wouldn't care to any way. finally cooled down. sitting here with the window open. maybe i should eat something. Hurricane is supposed to hit this weekend.

Fuck summer.

Quotant Quotables vol. 31

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.

This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?”

“Nah I had to go relieve myself.”

After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.”

After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.

- William S. Burroughs

Trailer for the film William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, a feature-length independent documentary by Chicago Director Yony Leyser, in collaboration with BulletProof Film, Inc.

The film features never before seen footage of William S. Burroughs, as well as exclusive interviews with his closest friends and colleagues including John Waters, Genesis P-Orridge, Laurie Anderson, Peter Weller, David Cronenberg, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, Sonic Youth, Anne Waldman, George Condo, Hal Willner, James Grauerholz, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, V. Vale, David Ohle, Wayne Propst, Dr. William Ayers, Diane DiPrima, Donovan, Dean Ripa (the world's largest poisonous snake collector), and many others, with narration by actor Peter Weller, and soundtrack by Sonic Youth.



The film investigates the life of legendary beat author and American icon, William S. Burroughs. Born the heir of the Burroughs adding machine estate, he struggled throughout his life with addiction, control systems and self. He was forced to deal with the tragedy of killing his wife and the repercussions of neglecting his son. His novel, Naked Lunch, was one of the last books to be banned by the U.S. government. Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer testified on behalf of the book. The courts eventually overturned their decision in 1966, ruling that the book had important social value. It remains one of the most recognized literary works of the 20th century.

William Burroughs was one of the first to cross the dangerous boundaries of queer and drug culture in the 1950s, and write about his experiences. Eventually he was hailed the godfather of the beat generation and influenced artists for generations to come. However, his friends were left wondering, did William ever find happiness? This extremely personal documentary breaks the surface of the troubled and brilliant world of one of the greatest authors of all time.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is the first and only posthumous documentary about this legendary figure.

Fuck My Life vol. 15

seriously Myspace... knock it the fuck off with this bullshit. there is no conceivable way that Tits-With-Eyes up there is sitting at her computer waiting to hear from an unemployed wannabe cinephile/failed transgressive author/grindcore vocalist living with his parents in a bland Long Island suburb.

FxMxLx.

Awwwwwww Yeah vol. 5

NATALIE PORTMAN AND MILA KUNIS, DOIN’ IT

Posted using ShareThis

So in Darren Arronofsky's new film Black Swan, this girl:



is going to make love to this girl;



and to quote the article;

Yeah. You read that right. And not just nice sweet innocent sex either. We’re talking ecstasy-induced hungry aggressive angry sex. [...]


.....................

Fuck YOUR Life vol. 2

as i post this, Fox is airing OCTOMOM: THE INCREDIBLE UNSEEN FOOTAGE, documenting the life of an undisciplined pig and her Lovecraft novel of a uterus.

I had intended to do a play-by-play for this, but i found this article which sums up my thoughts on the matter more succinctly than i could ever hope to convey.

Octomom: robbing motherhood of its moral authority

Television viewers will get an intimate look inside Nadya Suleman’s life on Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage.

No job and 14 mouths to feed, but in our culture, still a star

John Doyle

Last updated on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009 04:02PM EDT

Today, I have no idea where to begin.

It's not that I'm speechless. Far from it. It's more a boggled-mind thing. For a start, I'm reminded that when I was a young fella in the Ireland of long ago – okay, the 1970s – and became a devoted newspaper reader, I was particularly fascinated by the letters to the editor page. There, I'd often find that a woman's letter of outrage about some development or other was followed by the writer's name, and then, “Mother of 12.”

It was a time and place when being a mother of 12 gave the writer and her opinion greater weight and authority. That was then. This is now.

That kind of identification no longer appears in Irish newspapers. The idea is considered primitive and absurd. However, it turns out that the mother-of-12 phenomenon has followed me here, with a vengeance.

So let's start with this: The so-called “Octomom” is ready for her close-up.

Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage (Fox, 8 p.m.) is the, ah, highly anticipated special that offers “never-before-seen footage” of Nadya Suleman, who made headlines in January of this year when she gave birth to octuplets, conceived through in vitro fertilization. Then it emerged that she was already a mother of six. For tonight's special, Fox makes the claim that “much about Suleman has been shrouded in secrecy and subject to speculation.” And, “Through this never-before-seen footage, viewers will be able to witness the emotional struggles, physical complications and financial burdens of this single mother of 14.”

Oh, give me a break. Suleman did not merely “make headlines,” she became a celebrity, and that was the point for her.

The advance word on tonight's special, which has been judiciously leaked by Fox, is that Octomom expresses regret. “I screwed myself, I screwed up my life, I screwed up my kids' lives … What was I thinking?” Suleman says in a clip from the program. We are also treated to footage of Suleman sitting on her bed with the eight complaining babies, as she seems dismayed about the chore of feeding them.

This will probably have little impact where it matters – in the minds of young women who blithely have children in the most dire economic circumstances. Back when Suleman emerged into the media, it was revealed that she was an unemployed single mother living on food stamps. There was some tut-tutting by columnists and pundits. I suspect that, too, had zero impact where it matters.

What mattered to many young women watching in the United States is that Suleman was a star, the focus of constant attention and, yes, she was going to get her very own TV special. No job, living on welfare, living with her parents, but a star!

Call me peculiar, and allow me to rant here, please, but I'm appalled by the adoring attention given to those celebrities who embark on increasing their ever-expanding broods. As I write this, I'm led to believe that Canada is swooning over the news that Celine Dion is knocked up again. At least she's only had one child already.

Simultaneously, there are photos everywhere of Madonna on holiday with her boyfriend, her daughter Lourdes and two adopted children. I've no idea how many children Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have accumulated by now, but my impression is that it's about a baker's dozen.

From the cringe-inducing freak show that is Jon & Kate Plus 8 to the movie Knocked Up and dozens of others with their own twists on celebrating the joys of parenting, the popular culture has gone too far in beating the drum for the mindless make-babies craze. The attention paid to celebrities having babies and the celebration – in film and on TV – of people having babies who are unequipped to do so, is disturbing and detrimental.

It's detrimental because the attention validates the decisions to have children made by young women who are not stable enough, economically or psychologically, to raise them. Suleman has denied the widespread belief that she had plastic surgery to better resemble Jolie. However, it has emerged that Suleman worked as a stripper and her stage name was “Angelina.” Go figure. This is one narcissistic woman with a deep need for attention. And she's got it.

Double You, Tea F. vol. 83

http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-quick-pic-when-did-marilyn-manson-turn-into-cookie-monster/