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America’s best chili? Sez who?

Lists are, as I have mentioned here before, the big ticket item of the Internet age. I have read a little about why lists such as “The Best 100 Places Not To Live” and “The 50 Places Where You Wouldn’t Want To Be Caught Dead” are such popular Web fare. One reason is that lists are quick reads that capture your attention. As for other reasons, I hesitate to reveal them lest someday I might want to use them for a list.

Writers do not necessarily have to go out and hunt down material for their lists. That is both good and bad. It’s good in it saves time and money for the magazine. It’s bad because it saves time and money for the magazine. I mean the best way to write about a subject, if at all possible, is to get out and literally see it and touch it. It’s like one of my favorite Jimmy Buffett lines: “Don’t try to describe a KISS concert if you’ve never seen one … ”

This subject comes to mind thanks to a list with very misguided information published by Bon Appetit magazine denoting “America’s Best 10 Chili Places.”

Now I have never visited any of the 10 listed  places the writer suggests are America’s best because, as the writer rightly acknowledges, I like others feel my own chili is the best. The No. 1 chili spot might well deserve a place on the list. At least I have heard of it. Perhaps that is because I have heard colleagues of mine in Washington, D.C., mention Ben’s Chili Bowl before. I’ve never eaten there. The reason is that I have a rule semi-written in semi-stone that says not to seek out cuisine when visiting a good distance from home which you can find that is much better in your own back yard or on your own table.

I did eat some nachos at the restaurant-bar in my Kansas City hotel the night I arrived but only because I was hungry and nothing else on the menu looked good at the time. Why not nachos? Texas. That is where I’m from and where I live, son. Or as that Lone Star poet Ray Wylie Hubbard half-sings: “Screw you, we’re from Texas.”

My own home state is also why I am displeased with the “best chili” list. Only one Texas selection is listed, that being Tolbert’s Restaurant in Grapevine, Texas. I can’t say for certain whether Tolbert’s would be a good pick since I have never eaten there. The late journalist and chili aficionado Frank Tolbert was known for his contributions which made chili the “national food of Texas.” At least the magazine writer shows his appreciation for a bit of the Texas history of a “bowl of red.”

The fact is, chili is a Texas dish through and through although with its name en español, chili con carne or chili peppers with meat, it sounds exotically Latino much like Chop Suey sound Chinese. There is some dispute over the origin of chili. Some say it was the product of Canary Islanders who settled in San Antonio in the early 18th century. And despite the lore of the Mexican “chili queens” who hawked their bowls of the aromatic dish while dressed in brightly, colored dresses on the San Antonio streets of the 1880s, the cowboy connection to chili remains a popular theory or myth depending on who tells you the tale.

Legend has it that cowpokes from Texas on the great cattle drives of the late 19th century would eat chili served by their Mexican cooks who brought along some of their native spices and hot peppers. This meat for this chili allegedly came from leather-tough longhorn cattle, which after being spiced and peppered up while cooking for long periods of time, turned out to be pretty good.

Whatever the origins one might want to believe the starting point for chili pretty much always begins somewhere in the Lone Star State. That is why only one chili place in Texas — rated No. 9 out of 10 at that — is sort of a disgrace to the memory of the Texans who contributed to that spicy, gut-filling dish which can be eaten any day of the year but is really great on cold days such as we have experienced over the past winter in much of the U.S. Speaking of which, I had some chili, albeit on a hot dog, today at James Coney Island. JCI is a Houston chain of hotdog restaurants started in the mid-1920 when Tom and James Papadakis, Greek immigrants, made their way to Houston and began a dynasty from the $75 in their pockets. The brothers flipped a coin, according to company history, to decide which one’s name would grace the sign of the eatery. If you can’t guess which one called the right side then no chili for you!  The hotdog chili was good at the I-10 restaurant, just as I remembered it from a previous dine-in, and I saw quite a few folks who seemed to be very happy with just a bowl of the JCI red on the rainy, cold February day.

Was the chili as good as mine? No way, Jose.

Probably my favorite chili joint is the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin. I have eaten there, mostly for their chili burgers but also for their bowl of what I liken to Goldilocks sampling the famed bowls of porridge. The parlor, only a block or two from the State Capitol, features bowls of chili distinguished by their heat factor. There is from least hot to hot, hot, hot:  X, XX and XXX (X is too mild, XXX is too hot, but XX is just right!) I’ve always liked their burgers and their chili, but since most of my business over the years were in the vicinity of the Capitol it was a handy place with a cozy atmosphere. The place is festooned with all manners of crapola and judging by the pols or reporters you see who come in for a meal or cold one you see Texas isn’t as large as one would think the second largest state should be.

I would also recommend the chili at Jason’s Deli. The homegrown Beaumont chain has a heck of a deal offering half of one of their sandwiches and a bowl of soup. This includes gumbo and chili. My favorite is a “Half Muff Special,” which is a half muffaletta with a bowl of soup, chili or gumbo. Their seafood gumbo is very good but the chili is tasty as well.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer suggestions for Texas chili made at Texas restaurants other than the two I have offered. It is just too hard to improve on perfection and that is my own bowl of red. I just believe as a hardcore Texas chili-head that only one of the best 10 bowls of chili can be found in my home state has got to be hogwash. If you think I am being pig-headed, ethnocentric, melodramatic or any of those other multi-syllabic words then you are correct. No. 5 best in New York City. New York City?

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Southeast Texas refinery fire was quite the spectacle

It is not too unusual seeing tall columns of smoke while driving on Interstate 10 between Houston and Beaumont. The marshes mostly toward the Gulf of Mexico quite often catch fire and spread, excuse the pun, like wildfire especially on days like today when the cool winds sweep o’er the prairies.

But driving to Houston this afternoon I noticed a big riser of smoke that came from the direction where the marsh land has generally been turned into metropolitan sprawl from the eastern edges of  the nation’s fourth-largest city. Once I crossed the 75-foot Trinity River bridge between Anahuac and Baytown I could clearly see the source of the big smoke plume. It was a big, freaking fire which appeared to be coming from some kind of petrochemical plant.

I finally found out the fire was from the explosion at the Enterprise Products plant at Mont Belvieu, 35 miles east of Houston, after having to put up with about a minute of Rush Limberger before hearing the radio news on KTRH-AM 740. Enterprise Products said in a news release that one worker is unaccounted for after the explosion at a storage facility at the complex.

A news release from the company noted its main facilities were not damaged. Those facilities include:

” … the natural gas liquids fractionators, the propylene fractionators, the butane isomerization units, the octane enhancement facility, north and east facilities and the import/export terminals located on the Houston Ship Channel.”

I have no idea what fractionators are, especially when used in such a context. I suppose they make fractions out of the chemicals. I always liked 3/4. My favorite was 4/17 of a Haiku, from the Richard Brautigan piece “Red Lip.”

Hopefully, the person unaccounted for was just off somewhere away from the explosion and was not harmed. Just seeing the huge flame, and that is what it looked like — one gigantic flame shooting way the hell up into the sky, I can’t imagine anyone getting close to it much less surviving while in close proximity to the fireball.

Update: I am watching KPRC News 2 in Houston and their crews on the scene show the fire is still burning (5 p.m. CST)

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XLV: Not so super

Super Bowl XLV, why not call it 45 for the lack of an expletive as a modifier, was not  the worst Super Bowl. But it was bad enough.

The game turned out to be pretty good. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t a blow-out. It wasn’t sudden death playoff. I guess the game was good enough.

It absolutely serves no purpose for me to bad-mouth Christine Aguilera for butchering that part of our National Anthem that she couldn’t remember. It’s a difficult song to sing. If you search this blog you will see numerous references where I say we should replace “Star-Spangled Banner” with “America the Beautiful” as our national song. Still, the SSB is a difficult song so unless you are a young Aretha Franklin, you shouldn’t really attempt to give the anthem a “soul shake.”

The much anticipated television commercials were not, in my estimation, very good. Neither were they good enough. The best was an old joke, the Budweiser “Tiny Dancer” commercials where the rough-as-a-cob Western characters break out in in a not-so-macho old-time Elton John tune. It was funny in a way that I appreciated but that doesn’t make it hit. Several others were okay. Some ads just stunk.

Even the ever-present Super Bowl “hype” leading up to the game on Fox was disappointing. The interviews of celebrities on the red carpet was a malicious waste of air time. I like the Fox Football gang. I think they are very amusing as well as knowledgeable as any about the game. But anyone who tries to interview Harrison Ford needs to spend a week penned up with a baboon that’s hammered on Red Bull and Seconal. I’m sure the level of understanding would be similar.

Speaking of interviews, the chat between Bill O’Reilly and the other “O” who lives in the White House shows up close and personal just how much an idiot O’Reilly really is. As with his show, “It’s All About Bill,” such was the interview. What Bill O said was all that is important is in the mind of the interviewer. I don’t care whether you are talking to Obama or Clinton or the two Bushes, if you have an exclusive interview watched by probably the biggest audience in the world you don’t squander it with cheap shots  or spending all your time on “me, me, me …. ” What an ass can that O’Reilly.

An old friend came down and visited. We hung out on Saturday night talking old times and watching the hype and game on Sunday. That and that alone saved this from being the worst Super Bowl ever. Oh and the game too, I suppose.

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The media chill out in the vast desert that is Super Bowl XLV

It appears snow and assorted other winter goodies over the past three days in Dallas has thrown the national media — especially the sports media — into a tizzy.

The New York Times trumpeted “Rare storm hits Texas, causing chaos for drivers.” Yes, it never snows here in the desert, which is what all of Texas is. You didn’t know that? Plus we all ride horses here in Texas, in the desert, on a horse with no name. That’s mainly because it’s good to be out of the rain, pardon my references to a 1970s song by the band “America.”

A three-day winter storm happens about every 10 years, a weather guy goes on to say in the story. So how rare is it really? True, this has been an exceptionally cool winter. We had some icing and a little light snow here in Beaumont, some 252 miles southeast of Cowboys Stadium, this morning but nothing off the charts. Nonetheless, we do have winter too in these parts and even more so in Dallas because it is farther north. It happens! It’s not Buffalo, but it happens.

And so many of the sports media in Dallas for the Super Bowl work themselves into a whirling dervish over whether weather like this week in North Texas — that’s how the NFL is billing it because technically the game is being played in Arlington — will prevent cities subject to snowy winters from ever capturing future Super Bowls. Perhaps they should save that question for a couple of years from now after the big game is played in New Jersey’s New Meadowlands Stadium.

Anyone with sophistication enough to know that the Super Bowl is just as much about television commercials as it is football, perhaps more so, also understand the week leading up to the big game is about hype. Hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe zillions of media members are in the Dallas “Metroplex” area this week. Some of the media include those who are really celebrities or football players or both, like Cincinatti Bengals’ receiver Chad Ochocinco, who was questioning NFL head Roger Goodell today during a news conference about the league-management labor situation. Indeed, perhaps the looming lockout by the rich team owners is the biggest question the media will ask about during this whole Super Bowl with maybe the exception of “Who won?” the game. You won’t get an unbiased answer from me about who is right and who is wrong here, management or labor. (Hint: I look for the Union label.)

Still you will hear the bitching about snow in Dallas and see stories about Steelers safety Troy Polamalu’s hair. That is because newspapers, radio, TV, Internet and whatever other kind of media are paying a lot for their personnel  to be in Dallas to cover the Super Bowl. Having been a reporter who was sent on a few trips — nothing like one of my former cohorts who was sent to Central America to study Spanish and not like one who worked for larger and richer outlets — I am fully cognizant that those who send you expect something back other than your jet-lagged, hungover self. That is send something back, like a story. Earn your keep, in other words. It’s almost 48 hours before game time and some of ESPN’s people were sitting a short while ago and broadcasting out in the cold of Sundance Square, the popular entertainment and shopping area of downtown Fort Worth. Hey, you got to do something! Rain, sleet, snow or hail, post office or no post office.

I hope the game between, who? Oh yeah, the Steelers and the Green Bay Packers is a good one and even more important, the broadcast is full of great commercials. See you all then. And, don’t some of you guys have deadlines?

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SE Texas ice expected. Watchout for a healthy stork crop this fall.

In the words of someone or another: “It’s a cold mammajamma.”

Actually, the last reading at the airport 15 miles south is 32 degrees F. Not so cold but the rain is coming down and expected to turn to freezing rain and sleet tonight. The National Weather Service calls for an coverage  tonight. Once again, for those who think otherwise, that means there is not an 80 percent chance that we will see freezing rain or sleet. I know the graphic shows ice and snow. That’s from the NWS. So sue me. Here is the formula for Probability of Precipitation (PoP):

“PoP = C x A where “C” = the confidence that precipitation will occur somewhere in the forecast area, and where “A” = the percent of the area that will receive measureable precipitation, if it occurs at all.”

As with all else dealing with math and science, it’s clear as mud.

The forecast in my immediate area calls for about 1/10 of an inch of ice accumulation. That doesn’t sound so bad until you figure there has to be a “fudge factor” somewhere in there meaning the amount of ice might be more or it might be less.

I don’t know how many significant ice storms I have seen. I remember two or three but I am sure I have been through more than that. The last significant one I remember was in January 1997 in Beaumont, Texas, where I now live although I should point out for some reason or other I moved for a seven-year period to Waco the next year before moving back to Beaumont. Why is that important? I don’t know. It isn’t. Or, it is.

A good account of that storm written by Mark David Roth is on the NWS Lake Charles, La., Web site. I have no idea if he is related to David Lee Roth. Maybe they have sisters who are both mothers. Roth, Mark David and not David Lee, talks about the genesis of the storm and how it took shape into the uncomfortable icer that it was. He even goes onto note one of the side effects of the 1997 storm, a baby boom:

“Admissions at local hospitals have been 150% normal during August, September, and October of 1997. One expectant mother was quoted by “The Lake Charles American Press” newspaper on October 11th as saying “everywhere I looked, there was a pregnant woman.”

Watch out down the road during the fall if this storm turns tonight turns out to be much. We could have us one of those “Stork Storms!” Or should I say, watch out in general and maybe we won’t.