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Is it “farewell” or just “later” for the Waffle House T-bone?

Goodbye T-bone.

One who knows me might think I was bidding final farewell to some ol’ high school buddy or one of any number of colorful characters I have come to know and/or befriend over the years. But no, I’m talking about steak. Or maybe not.

No, I am definitely talking about T-bone steak but my adieu might be a bit premature.

I speak of the madness of the Waffle House and its 2012 T-Bone Farewell Tour. The late-night choice of weary travelers and local drunks everywhere announced in January that their vaunted 10-ounce T-bone steak will be going away after a year-long farewell.

 “It has been a good run, this may be the final year for the Waffle House T-bone,” says Pat Warner, Waffle House vice president of marketing. “Say goodbye to an old friend and order one today, while you still can.”

But maybe you still can after you do your adioses.

 “We want to hear our customers’ reactions,” says Warner. “It may be that we will have multiple farewell tours; like a classic rock band.”

Ah, clever. Always leave yourself an out.

 “The T-bone steak debuted on the Waffle House menu in the early 1960s when a “Grill Man” at the first Waffle House restaurant in Avondale Estates, Ga., ran out of steak one night and replaced them with T-bone steaks he bought at a local grocery store. They have been on the menu ever since. It became a customer favorite, and now Waffle House is the world’s leading server of USDA Choice T-bone steaks,” according to a company news release.

The Wafflers are encouraging their customers to relive their favorite 10-ounce T-bone memories on Facebook, to which my first would be “Urrrrrrrrp!,” as in belch. I had a steak and egg last night at Waffle House. This was because it is right across the I-10 underpass from where I am staying. I stopped and looked at a young possum up close on the way back. It was playing possum then bared its teeth at me. Possum aside, I am trying to do some protein dieting but like everything else in my life, it seems to have jumped off the rails. I didn’t have a T-bone though.

I do have some T-bone memories at Waffle House though. Those times usually involved carousing or its aftermath.

Last night I watched the cook work his magic with the grill and the little pans. It takes no little amount of skill and coordination to turn out the meals when the place gets busy after the bars close. The waitress conveys the customer’s order to the cook in a language only the two of them know. “Two down, two up, medium well, grits on a stick.” No, I just made the grits on a stick up. But they ought to do that. Grits on a stick would be ten kinds of entertaining.

We all know that most chain restaurants and fast food places generally suck. Maybe it’s the good times I’ve had at Waffle Houses over the years — singing with Mexican sailors at 1 a.m. or pulling in for a cup of coffee at mid-afternoon to keep my friend, a waitress, Chris, company during slow periods. These are memories of 30 years or more of good times. But through it all most of the Waffle House folks have been and are salt of the earth that keep food consistently tasty over the years.

So if the ‘House is playing coy with its T-bone, so be it. They’ve been selling it for a dollar an ounce over the past few  years. That’s substantially less than what you pay in the supermarket and it’s cooked the way you want it. Goodbye T-bone? No, maybe just “Later.”

 

 

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Something stinks in here!

Below is the only known photo of the elusive EFD.

I plucked a previously inert Webcam program this afternoon to record my very first attempt at injecting myself intramuscularly with B-12. Don’t worry, it’s prescribed for anemia. I didn’t know I had anemia, but hey the VA just loads you up with medicine that you can’t really afford.

The shot didn’t hurt but I doubt it did much good because I couldn’t get enough medicine injected. I guess I will go by the VA clinic on my day off tomorrow and get more great tips. The video wasn’t riveting, it was 6 minutes long, it may be useful to me in learning from mistakes. My neurologist says I will be shooting myself in the arm each month for approximately, the rest of my life. I have to give myself a shot every day for a week. Then once a week for five weeks, then I can slack off to monthly. Meanwhile, enjoy the photo. The mask was a visual effect with the program, known as  Cyber Link You Cam.

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Satellites or noses: Plenty of poo-poohing when it comes to finding penguins

Yes, it is true North Korea couldn’t launch rockets if its people’s lives depended on it. For that, we should be thankful.

But an even greater reason for joy is that scientists have discovered that twice as many emperor penguins exist in Antarctica. These scientists used satellites to track penguin guano. The latter term is what BBC refers to as “penguin poo.” The scientists from the UK, U.S. and Australia say about 600,000 of the flightless birds, which are the tallest and heaviest of the species, exist way down South.

The emperor has no clothes? Well, they seem pretty well dressed for life in a guano factory. Wikimedia Commons photo

 

The satellite tracking of the penguin crap will help scientists determine the health of the emperor population, which modeling indicates, could decline if warming starts melting the sea ice on the edges of Antarctica, the BBC report said.

It is good to know that hunting emperor scat from outer space is paying off in keeping watch over our melting planet. Is it a coincidence that spurs this headline today on Google News?

Auroras Seen on Uranus For First Time

Which inevitably raises the question — yes it’s childish as hell — “Is it Your ANUS or YOUR an us?”

To which is quickly answered: “Is its whose anus?”

But I really question whether satellites are needed at all to track Scatman Penguin. You see, I know for a fact that penguin feces smells, well, like s**t. I mean, it smells really, really foul. That’s foul, not fowl. I viewed a bunch of pigeons once when my friend Ross and I visited the Dallas World Aquarium a few years ago. No, I’m not sure what penguins have to do with aquariums either, especially when they are part of an outdoor exhibit. But, I mean, thank heavens they are outdoors. I would hate to be cooped up in a room with a bunch of penguin poo.

Well, that is it. I am confused but I started with penguin guano and end with penguin guano. Call it by whatever name one likes, it still smells like penguin s**t and at least for such a discovery, one needs no satellite, just a halfway decent schnoz.

 

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Get the gator oil, all you fine young cannibals. The ‘skeeters’ have gone wild.

Early French and Spanish explorers who punched their clocks and set out to ramble through the upper Gulf Coast of Texas left stories of encountering fierce and, at times, foul-smelling natives.

These Indians, some of whom were named the Atakapa, were said to eat their enemies which is only understandable given the band’s name was a Choctaw derivative for the word “man-eater.” The foul-smelling part — something one might handle in exchange for not being dinner — was from alligator and other types of animal grease and oil to ward off mosquitoes.

The chemical mixture DEET would certainly work just as well as alligator oil, one would assume, yet I had no idea yesterday morning when I left home and crossed the Neches River for Orange that I would be swarmed by mosquitoes. I mean, it’s February, you know.

The salt marsh mosquito. Look for the white-banded legs. Yeah. Photo - Jefferson County Mosquito Control District

My part-time work requires casual business attire of which I am relatively certain one would find unattractive with a heavy smearing of alligator oil. Now I could have found alligators with a little scouting yesterday, as I was in Orange County, Texas. The county bordering southern Louisiana has plenty of marshes and an abundance of river bottom, the latter due to the county being bordered to the west by the Neches River and on the east by the Sabine. Although one might find an alligator with a bit of hunting it doesn’t mean that one should just walk up to one of the fearsome-looking and rather dangerous reptiles, stick in an oil spout and expect the gator’s bodily fluids to freely flow. Or at least that wouldn’t happen without a serious tussle with the animal.

Of course, stopping into a corner store and purchasing a can of Off for an inflated price would be a lot simpler solution and one much safer than trying to drill for alligator oil. Yet I didn’t plan to stay out of my car for a very long period of time so why bother with the time and money spent? Well, maybe to prevent having the mosquitoes bite the crap out me would be one consideration.

The upper Texas coast and that of Southern Louisiana is currently experiencing an outbreak of mosquitoes due to the drought-relieving rains and warm winter weather of late. Being bitten by swarming mosquitoes isn’t a pleasant experience. I know, because the damn things have bitten me all my life growing up in Southeast Texas. But their bite also isn’t like the sting of a wasp or yellow-jacket. I’ve had more than my share of those bites too.

Growing up, I used to sit enthralled seeing the city’s red Jeep come through my neighborhood with a fogger in the back of the vehicle puffing out great clouds of DDT. Sometimes kids would jump up and follow behind the Jeep and its magic skeeter-slaughtering clouds. Of course, we knew nothing of the harmful effects which we would learn later about the chemical. Then again, neither did we know much — or at least think much — about the diseases spread by the pesky little mosquitoes.

Stories of malaria were, to me, just another war story my Uncle Ted told about his time during World War II landings in the Pacific islands. Yellow fever was a disease that killed a bunch of folks building the Panama Canal. As I got a little older in childhood I started hearing stories about “sleeping sickness” which mostly killed horses but would take a little kid’s life every now and then. It would be much later that I heard of “West Nile Virus” and just how much havoc the mosquito once wreaked upon our area of the Texas Gulf Coast and the world at large. For instance:

For a little historic perspective, about 100 residents of Beaumont and Sabine Pass — in my county — died from an 1862 outbreak of Yellow Fever. The late Southeast Texas historian W.T. Block wrote that the epidemic emanated from a Civil War blockade runner that had made it into the estuary of Sabine Pass.

If there is good news about the influx of skeeters as of late it is that most are the pesky “salt marsh” mosquito which are not carriers of West Nile. The Jefferson County Mosquito Control District says the medium-sized brown mosquitoes are distinguished with white bands on their legs. The mosquitoes are

 ”  … very aggressive biters, both day and night. The eggs are deposited in rice fields, fallow fields, & pastures in any depression that will hold water, including hoof prints. These mosquitoes are attracted to Beaumont and other areas in the western half of the county by the glow of lights at night, which are easily seen from as far away as Fannett or China (Texas) We try to intercept these mosquitoes on the edge of town as they migrate in. Residents can do nothing to help us control this species.”

Personally, I try not to look at the mosquitoes any longer than it takes to swat or smash them. I therefore don’t search for bands on their legs. Also fortunate, they seem to be pretty slow and are pretty easy to slap away.

On the list of supplies to take along on my next trip for work will be the can of Off. I can it place the needed spray in the trunk right next to that cold-weather blanket that I don’t need. I guess if all else fails, perhaps then might be the time to search for a gator.

 

 

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Giants-Patriots SB XLVI game better than most commericals with a few sweaty exceptions

What a great Super Bowl weekend. He said facetiously.

My weekend was spent with my jaw feeling as if it had been clobbered by Justin Tuck. It seems as if I somehow developed a TMD, which stands for temporomandibular joint disorder — and not some social disease get your head out of the gutter. That is the initial diagnosis I get having visited my VA “medical team” today. I didn’t even get to see my physician assistant, who is not a doctor, but who plays one in the VA clinic. Take an ibuprofen and see a dentist if it doesn’t get better. Then tell me, if it’s a medical problem, why should I spend money that I don’t have to see a dentist — I am not eligible to see one at the VA because of my patient status — who would likely say something is wrong with my molar(s) one way or another? Okay, rant out of the way. The ibuprofen is really doing the trick. He said facetiously.

The Super Bowl turned out to be a really good game, which was fortunate because the commercials that I really watch the game for when teams I have no interest in play — which has been pretty much the case in all but one game in the last 25 years — fell quite short.

My favorite commercials of all during this Super Bowl and pre-Super Bowl (hype) games were those of GEICO’s. The spot that made me roar in laughter despite a torturous jaw was the GEICO Gecko-meets-Richard Simmons.

Now pretty much anytime you have Richard Simmons “sweatin'” to something or other you can get a pretty good laugh. The poor gecko, in this outing, seemed as freaked as one might expect to see their Las Vegas hotel suite trashed in the morning. Sure you were out saving people money, little dude. Now it is understandable the gecko would become downright alarmed to see a deer wearing a lei come wandering out of the hallway. What a mess, what the deer and … why is Richard Simmons on the big-screen TV? But, wait, Richard Simmons in all his “glory” is in the room, exercising to himself on the TV. He shrieks upon sighting the gecko: “Hi!!! Come sweat with me me.”

Capping the hilarity is how the gecko backs slowly out of the room, away from Richard Simmons and quickly turns tail, fleeing from the little sweaty gay man. That is pure gold.

Maxwell, the GEICO pig, is also back from the zip-line commercial which didn’t do a lot for me. I suppose it is hard to top a supreme performance such as “Weee weee weee all the way home” of the original spot. This SB episode features Maxwell with his traditional “Weee … ” while zipping downhill on a street luge. Pulling up beside a guy also in the downhill race, Max gives the dude a cool upward nod of the head and suddenly yet calmly tells the racer “ah … head’s up” as a sign appears warning: “Reduce Speed.” Ah … ends badly for the other guy.

I give second place to the oldie but goodie CareerBuilder.com chimp trip commercial. And third to the E-trade Baby.

The Chevy “2012 Apocalypse” ads get an honorable mention. Ditto for the Elton John Pepsi commercial. The Bud Light “Platinum” commercials were the most disappointing. You can look all of these up here.

It seems every year since 9/11 the Super Bowl afternoon ads have overall provided less and less entertainment. Maybe it has something to do with a change in the nation’s sense of humor. I give as my example “Saturday Night Live” for the past decade which presents a comedy that appears alien. Plus, all the commercials can’t be “laugh out loud” amusing. I just wish more were clever.

Oh well. Thank goodness there are commercials that can both deliver laughs and effectively but expensively market its products. Kudos to the firms like The Martin Agency! That is with the exception of the Cave Man. He just creeps me out for some reason.