PicoBlog

A while back, I had a craving for a meatball sandwich. Depending on where you grew up, they might be called meatball subs or meatball hoagies, but where I grew up, they were meatball grinders. There’s a regional dialect quiz you can take online (NYT, quiz may be behind paywall) that tags your speech patterns and can tell where you grew up. When Question 24 comes up, you’re asked what call a long sandwich, “grinder,” vs.

Hello! I’ve been busy baking in my kitchen and enjoying every minute of it. We’re in the midst of June gloom in LA when the weather is dull and chilly but also a little wet this year. Baking brightens my day and makes me happy, and the heat from the oven is a nice bonus. Although, I’ve been known to bake even in the hottest of weather. That wasn’t very smart.

For Justin and Griffin: do you expect BG3 to influence how you play TAZ? New-to-you mechanics you’ve discovered to change how you play a PC, new classes you’d like to try, new tricks/story beats/encounter types to incorporate into how you DM, etc? Does the vibe of how Larian have “DMed” this game translate at all to the TAZ setup or is it just hopelessly too much preproduction work? Expand full comment

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 16, 2021. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C. You might enjoy listening to our audio version on Spotify 🎧. Need to subscribe — or upgrade your Ledger e-newsletter subscription? Details here. Today’s Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by Fox Rothschild, whose Charlotte-based attorneys provide litigation, real estate, labor and employment, corporate and a wide range of other services to clients in a variety of industries.

One person reported 20+ of the Tik Toks I posted on Instagram as copyright infringement. One person RUINED IT FOR EVERYONE. Who would spend any time caring about my posts? Who would sit there and report funny videos I post for the sole purpose of me losing my Instagram account? Well, we know who, and I have officially been banned from Instagram. So if you’re wondering where my account went, and if someone out there really has it out for me, the answers are here.

Bar Cecil, 1555 S Palm Canyon Dr, Palm Springs (Plaza del Sol Shopping Center) Reservations | Website | Phone: 760-537-1122 (Reservations are online only) Our star rating: None (too new- opened April 2021- we only assign stars to restaurants open for more than four months) Throughout the pandemic, the creators of Palm Springs’ brand new Bar Cecil teased the dining public via social media with snips and clips of what they were doing inside an unusual, diminutive space next to a dry cleaners in a South Palm Springs shopping plaza (formerly Kiyosaku Japanese restaurant).

First, calling all basketball fans.  Does anybody remember who used to declare cryptically “Barbeque. Chicken. Alert!” before virtually every game?  I’ll give you a hint.  He was one of professional basketball’s greatest players during his 19 years in the NBA.  While now retired, he is still hard to miss at 216 cm.  You guessed it!  Shaquille Rashaun "Shaq" O'Neal, of course.  Shaq literally used to look down on and refer to the centers of his opponents by declaring “That’s barbeque chicken down there,” meaning that the game is going to be an easy meal.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time this week thinking about the Barbie movie trying to figure out what was wrong with it since it was such a hit, and the only critiques I found said it was “muddled” which I agreed with, I needed to know what the hell was the problem.  Why did the medium clash with the message? Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed the hell out of it.

If the Ben Shapiros of the world are positively apoplectic over the Barbie in theaters I can only imagine how enraged they would be over an earlier incarnation that would have been written by Diablo Cody and starred Amy  Schumer.  I suspect incels and other misogynists would have been so enraged that their heads would have exploded, Scanners-style. Honestly, it wouldn’t be that much of a loss.  Schumer, incidentally, makes half of the woman-haters of the world angry because she’s extremely successful even though they personally do not find her sexually desirable.