Category: Uncategorized

Are You With Us or Are You With Cancer?

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Give till it hurts this much.
Once again, I –along with some of the other chucklemonkeys at Crain Communications — have decided to don the purple and run the Hamptons Half Marathon to raise money for Team in Training and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
DONATE NOW!

That’s right. I need your help in taking Leukemia and Lymphoma out behind the woodshed and beating them right out of existence. With your help last year, I crushed the fund-raising minimum. You not only helped me, you helped others on our team.

And, of course, you helped TNT. Which is the important thing. But this is more than just running around in purple shirts. LLS raises a ton of money and that money has actually helped make big, provable strides in the fight against blood cancer.

Consider this one stat: A kid diagnosed with blood cancer in the 1960s had a 4% chance of survival. A kid today has a 90% chance.

But before we go patting ourselves on the back, I’ll tell you what the coordinator told us. As amazing as that is, imagine putting 10 parents in a room and telling one set of them that their child is going to die.

DONATE NOW!

I Know What You Did: My Facebook Business Plan

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

I’ve stumbled upon a foolproof way to make money on Facebook.

You know how you’re cruising through your Facebook feed and there are a handful of folks going on about “kids these days,” and the “lack of respect,” and the laziness and the drugs. Or they’re spouting Bible quotes and friending Jesus as if they’re some sort of digital-realm street-corner preacher?

You know how more often than not, those people weren’t exactly angels back in the day? In fact, they were the exact opposite? Your high-school pot dealer is now a cop? The girl who had morals as loose as a meth addict’s teeth is now going on about the sanctity of marriage and the length of skirts?

Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And hey, people change. I get it. But times are tough. A guy’s gotta make money. So here’s my extortion business plan.

Step 1. Find all such friends on Facebook.
Step 2. Figure out which ones have teenage children.
Step 3. Friend those teenage children on Facebook.

Now you have two choices. You could offer to sell information to those teenagers — information about what their parents did in high school or college. Maybe even photos. Or video. This was my original plan. But then it occurred to me: That’s not where the big money is. Teenagers don’t have a lot of cash. And what cash they do have is usually from their parents in the first place.

No, the action is with the parents. You go to them and say, “Hey, friend! Long time no talk! Love your status updates! Did you know I was friends with your kids on Facebook? Did you know I have a photo of you from that time you thought you were on Girls Gone Wild but it turns out it was just some redneck with a video camera at Flora-Bama? Would be awful if that were to fall into your kids hands? P.S. Here’s a link to my Paypal account.”

And since I’m not friends with everyone on Facebook, you can start your own franchise. We’ll all be rich!

Granted, there are some flaws with this plan. The first is that there may be some evidence out there that can be used against you. Maybe you were the one who got a DWI for driving a tractor into the Walmart. Or you were the one who had an inappropriate relationship with the math teacher. Then again, if you’re like me, you’ve always been a moral reprobate and never bothered to hide it from your children.

The second is — and I’m no lawyer — this could possibly be illegal. So fair warning and all.

That’s Some Shit

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Literally, that’s what it was. Shit. Of the human kind. Lots of it just sitting there on the subway platform this morning. Bergen Street stop on the 2/3 line. Manhattan bound. I almost took a picture of it, you know, just to share with everyone, but I wondered if that would be crossing some line, a new low for civilization. It’s bad enough we photograph and post all of our damn meals these days. Now I’m gonna post a picture of the end result? And it wasn’t even mine?

Besides, my train was coming.

I have to wonder about the hobo that left that package, though. Because there was just so much of it. Were there vital parts of him in there? And where did he go? Onto a Manhattan bound train? That’ll ruin your commute!

I did take some small delight though in thinking of some douche boarding or getting off the train, playing with his damn phone instead of paying attention to where he is going, getting his just reward.

Time to Join Team in Training, Kids. No Excuses.

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

It’s that time of year! Once again, the purple-shirted cult members of Team in Training are fanning out across the country and across Facebook and Twitter to recruit new members. And this is the year you will join. You will go to an introductory meeting and be inspired (and maybe cry) by the mission of Team in Training and you will get a purple shirt and you will sign up for a race.

A bunch of us at work sign up every year, and every year we try to get more people to run. This year, the coordinator asked me to write an email to be sent out to all of our coworkers in order to cajole and/or guilt them into running. I thought I’d share a modified version with you all.

So. Here are 10 reasons to join Team in Training.
Continue reading “Time to Join Team in Training, Kids. No Excuses.” →

The 2012 Brooklyn Half Marathon

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

The corrals stand empty prior to the race
MILE ONE
I spent the first mile of the Brooklyn Half Marathon wanting to murder the organizers at New York Road Runners. (Do a social-media search of NYRR and you’ll see that’s been a common theme over the past year.) I’d had nightmares visualizing what it would be like to have 15,000 people trying to navigate the first couple of miles of the new and “improved” course. It would be a clusterfuck of GoogaMooga proportions. And in the first mile of the race, these visions were coming … well, actually it wasn’t as bad as I initially thought it was going to be. But I was trying to hit a PR and Mile One was going to make things difficult.

The fact of the matter is NYRR could only be faulted with two things in the execution.
Continue reading “The 2012 Brooklyn Half Marathon” →

Mais! Lemme Talk to You About Cajun Cliches

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Hanh? What you said?
Yall make a pass to da Housing Works Bookstore in New York City on June 5 if yall wanna listen at me talk about some Cajun Cliches and Louisiana Stereotypes.

It’s part of the Adult Education Series. The evening’s theme is “Unmasking Cliche.” I’m one of four people presenting mini lectures on various topics. And while I’m famous right here on this blog, the other three people are better known in the wider world.

We got Ruben Bolling, creator of Tom the Dancing Bug, talking about comic strips. And there’s Timothy Burke of Deadspin.com talking about motivational secrets. And also author Annia Ceizadlo, who will be talking about the secret history of Islamic wine (which sounds awesome)>

A brief description of what I’ll be hollering about.

Ken Wheaton: We Don’t All Ride Gators
New Orleans is not in Cajun country and not all Louisianans are Cajuns — despite what reality TV would have you believe. While all Louisianans talk and eat funny, they don’t all talk and eat funny the same. Wheaton explores the differences.

The event will be hosted by friend and New York native and New Orleans Saints fan (yeah, weird, I know), Charles Star.

If any of my Louisiana readers have suggestions for cliches and stereotypes to discuss, drop ’em in the comments.

Quote of the Week: Politics

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Shalom Auslander writes:

I don’t particularly care about politics; if there’s one thing we can thank the internet for, it’s revealing how utterly stupid and ridiculous the whole game is: take any left-wing website, change all the adjectives and nouns to their closest opposites (smart to stupid, hero to socialist, Rethuglican to Demo-Rat) and you have yourself a right-wing site.

Bourbon-Brined Pork Chops

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Last night decided to try grilling pork chops for the first time in my life. That sounds, wrong, doesn’t it? I’ve never grilled pork chops? Could that possibly be? Guess so.

Actual results may vary.

I turned to Steve Raichlen’s How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques. It’s the first grilling/barbecue book I ever bought, back in the day when I bought my first smoker. If you’re just starting out–even if you’ve been doing this awhile–I highly recommend it.

Basically, the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons salt, 3 tablespoons brown sugar dissolved in hot water. Then that mixed with 2 cups cold water and 3 tablespoons bourbon. After it cools down, chuck the chops into it (I put it all in a Ziploc bag) and let sit for a few hours. When ready to cook, take ’em out the fridge, let ’em hit room temperature and pat ’em dry.

Raichlen suggests indirect heat/smoke for the first 20 minutes, then grilling on high heat to get those pretty sear marks. I gave that a whirl. Put a box of wood chips in the gas grill, let it get hot, turned the burner off under the GrillGrates and put down a layer of foil, then the chops. Those GrillGrates hold a hell of a lot of heat and even without a direct flame under them radiate a lot of heat. The chops were done with the “smoking” portion of events in 15 minutes, so I yanked ’em, cranked the heat, then seared ’em four minutes aside directly on the GrillGrates (rotating 90 degrees at the 2 minute mark for the cross-hatching).

How’d they turn out? Excellent. Then again, I’m starting to suspect if you brined shoe leather it would come out good. If you’re dealing with dry meat like turkey, chicken breast or pork chops, USE A BRINE.

FYI, the onions? Slice an onion, skewer it, brush with olive oil and dust with your favorite seasoning (I use Tony’s) and just put on the grill until charred. That’s some good eating.

They’re All Going to Laugh at You

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

It’s happened to all of us. You’re out and about, minding your own business and you see or hear someone laughing. For a split second, you think, “That person is laughing at me.” Your mind whisks you back to high school, to a time when you were awkward and in need of validation and so overcome by insecurities that the only thing you were secure in was the knowledge that someone, somewhere was talking about you.

And then your adult self points out the foolishness of such thinking. And the ego. It would take a teenager –or a narcissist–to actually believe that someone was always talking about him, wouldn’t it?

But yesterday, I swear the woman on the bike, wearing sunglasses and standing on the corner of Union and Seventh Ave in Park Slope. I would have bet my life on it. I looked briefly. Then turned away. Then turned back. And yes, she was still laughing. In my general direction. From all the way across the street. “What the hell,” I thought. “She can’t actually be laughing at me.”

Then she said, “Oh my God. Look at Ken.”

Well, then.

Turns out it was my friend Maryann, who I hadn’t seen since last year. She WAS laughing. And pointing. And taking photos. This is what she was laughing at.
Continue reading “They’re All Going to Laugh at You” →