Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

I have been told that spammers, in an attempt to get around filters, use passages from books that have passed into public domain that are now posted on the internet. Anyone have any idea where this one might come from?

The junkmen mine and sell the metal, but we could do it much better I could hear Del breathing in great dry pulls of air, lungs that would be charred bags less than four minutes from now laboring to keep up with his fear-driven heart. The subject, the hidden sub­ject, is not the apotheosis of sexuality but its transcendence into maternal instinct: babe into mother by way of baby. The gape-mouthed overseer lowered his whip while the slaves stumbled and halted and the wheel groaned to a stop.

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My brother seems to be obsessed with this woman now. I am sure it is because of her obvious musical talents and not because she's a hottie.

Julieta Venegas is part of the burgeoning "Latin Alternative" scene, and has even had folks from Café Tacuba guest on her albums. She has also been styled the Mexican PJ Harvey. I can't stand PJ Harvey.

Darnit, every time I get into the car with Tom, guess which darned CD is in?

Yeah...

Anyhow, here is one of her videos:


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Last week, Daniel Schorr declared that the word of the month is "Surge"...did anyone tell Danny Walker?


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James Brown died last night of all nights. Someone will have to come up with some theological and cosmological reasons for that one.

How do the boys in LA Style feel about this?



Feliz Navidad. Wesołych Świąt.

Okay, in my continuing attempt to be a good bi-ethnic little boy and keep in touch with my heritage, I made some kruschiki today and the lucky among you may get to sample them.

In case you don't get them, here is the recipe:

1 lb flour
8 oz sour cream
2 oz bourbon whiskey
12 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla
Confectioner's sugar

Beat the egg yolks until they are broken, then add the rest of the ingredients (except the confectioner's sugar). Remove the dough in a ball and roll it out very thin. Cut into strips about two inches wide and six inches long. Slit each one in the center and put one end through the hole to form a bowtie. Deep fry until they are about to turn a tan color. Drain on a paper towel. When they have all dried, sprinkle with the confectioner's sugar. Makes 8 dozen.


Now for reality: The ball of dough ends up very sticky and hard to work with. I end up flouring everything, which probably is against some rule. I also break up the ball into smaller pieces that are much easier to work with.

In the past, I had a great deal of trouble because the dough is just spongy enough that it is hard to roll very thin. When they are too thick, the outside ends up browning quickly while the inside sometimes remains uncooked. My dad let me use an old pasta roller that allowed me to get very thin kruschiki. This was also the one tool that the dough didn't stick to.

The things don't really look like bow ties. Maybe they make their bow ties differently in Poland.

I use bourbon, but I've seen recipies that recommend rum. Probably any liquor with a distinctive flavor will do, so stay away from Everclear. The alcohol burns away when the kruschiki are fried, at least that was a justification that a Mormon co-worker used one year when she wanted to eat them. I usually like to use stronger Mexican vanilla, but I didn't this year. I accidently used two tablespoons rather than two teaspoons however.

Makes 8 dozen my ass, by the way. Not that I counted, but that is never eight dozen. I may have made them too large, who knows?

By the way, singular kruschik, plural kruschiki.


Feliz Navidad. Wesołych Świąt.

Feliz Navidad. Wesołych Świąt.

Couldn't sleep last night, so I ended up catching the re-run of this week's installment of Identity on Bravo. The secret is, you never actually have to watch NBC because it all ends up on Bravo or USA within days. At least when they aren't showing Top Chef or some other nonsense.


Identity is one of a series of new prime time game shows that all seem to have the same set designer. I guess the idea of all of these games, like their antecedant, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, is that things are high pressure, dramatic and intense. Whatever. The silliest thing in this game was watching the contestant make a guess and the person whose identity was being guessed would pause stonefaced for, like, I dunno, three hours while the silly music heightened the tension, I guess. These pauses are the most irritating part of the new game shows. David Duchovny made fun of this when he was a guest on a celebrity edition of Millionaire.

How much you won for guessing identities goes up on a scale that is exactly like Millionaire, and they allow for little cheats just like that show does.


I haven't watched a whole episode, or even more than two consecutive minutes of Deal or No Deal, but near as I can tell, it is just a more pretentious version of Let's Make a Deal. Like the rest of these shows, it has those long "dramatic" pauses and an extra-glitzy set that I guess is supposed to impress me.

I think that the show is part of some government program to keep leggy models employed. I don't know.


One of the folks standing stone-faced on the pedestals in the episode of Identity that I saw stuck out like a sore thumb. It was none other than Stan Lee. His "identity"? "The man who invented Spider Man."

Well, it wasn't hard to guess since he was the only one up there old enough to have done such a thing. But, "invented" Spider Man? What about Steve Ditko? Geez.

When they gave more details about him, they gave him co-creation credit for the Hulk and the X-Men. Co-creation might be strong word for his involvement with the X-Men, but I'll go ahead and give him credit for the Hulk.


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While observing my fellow males, I've noticed a great deal of them seem to spit often. Am I missing something?


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The Saddletramps delivered a beating to the Duke City Derby travel squad, Muñecas Muertas last night. The Muñecas had a great deal of trouble even scoring in the first period, only scoring five points in the first third of the match. They didn't even have a lead jammer until the second jam in the second period.

They aren't a bad team, however. They defeated Pikes Peak and Rocky Mountain (Rocky Mountain is a "mid-table" team), and you could see flashes of maturity in their change of strategy from the first period to the second.

Two of their jammers, Muffin (Muffin?) and Katie Chingas, were quite impressive. Their trouble was the Saddletramp blockers were unimpressed and rarely let them by.

Kudos to Liberty Valenzela and Randi Canyon. Canyon started delivering major (but clean) hits to any Muñecas within reach early on, making it difficult for them to put anything together in the first period. As for Valenzuela...how does someone so small manage to take up so much space?

Bonus kudos to brand new jammer Tumbleweed.


Something I haven't done: AZ Night Buzz has the Rock n Roller blog, written by a guy named Kevin Smith who I have been assured does not know Matt Damon. The Rock n Roller blog gets regular updates from TRD's massive press operation, which I don't (I am so jealous). I base my "reporting" entirely on poorly sourced rumors and unfounded innuendo. Kind of like my political blog. I will add the Rock n Roller blog to my "Beautiful Games" links.


During the breaks between periods, the announcers interviewed wrestlers. God help us.


I don't know who the DJ was, but he played The Fall. Twice. We fans were treated to "Totally Wired" and "Telephone Thing."


I brought my melodica so I could play the charge that organ players at baseball games do when it got quiet. That darned thing isn't very loud after all.


The date for a match against AzRD's Tent City Terrors was announced for January 20th. Sheriff Shutyerpaio may need to, well, shut her pai-o after that one.


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One of the knocks I get as a soccer fan is "gosh, are they going to have a riot or something, haw haw haw..." Of course, soccer games are being played all over the world almost constantly, it is inevitable that somewhere on any given week there is some on-field outrage that Keith Olbermann or some other media soccer hater can show as a reason why soccer is a sport of thugs.

Today is one of those moments when I get to laugh at the fans of another sport. The pampered millionaires of the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks had an on-court brawl shortly before the end of their game last night. The fisticuffs started when Mardy Collins of the Knicks wrapped his arm around Nuggets player J. R. Smith. It degenerated from there, and resulted in ten players being ejected. A team only has, what, 13 people on the roster, right?

The Knicks are trying to justify their actions by saying that they were frustrated because the Nuggets were beating them on their home court, and they wouldn't let up. Wow. That has got to be the lamest thing I have ever heard. Way to be professional, guys.


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Tucson Rollerderby's Saddletramps face Duke City Derby's Muñecas Muertas tonight at Bladeworld.

Muñecas Muertas ended up near the bottom of the heap in last year's Dust Devil Tournament; they closed out with an 0-4 record and only managed to score in double digits in a single game (a close defeat at the hands of Atlanta, 24-22). But, they have been improving lately. They scored their very first win in September in a bout against the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls' 5280 Fight Club (108-91), and another win last month against Pikes Peak Derby Dames' Slamazons (118-54). Gentlemen, we have ourselves a streak.

Duke City Derby was founded last year with the help of many of the women from Tucson Roller Derby.


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In the news about the death of Lamar Hunt, you'll see an awful lot about his contributions to the game of football. He was, after all, the driving force behind the old AFL and he was willing to take on NFL owners and changed the way the sport was organized in this country. Heck, he even invented the Super Bowl.

One thing that is missed is his importance to the game of professional soccer in this country. A friend cajoled Hunt into watching the 1966 World Cup and Hunt was so hooked that he invested in the Dallas Tornado of the then brand new NASL. Hunt remained committed to that league for many years. Whatever poor business decisions were made by that league, it is hard to imagine that soccer would have even the second-rate status it has now without the dedication of businessmen like Hunt in those years.

(Oddly, one of the other big investors in the NASL was Ahmet Ertegün, who also died today.)

Hunt has, at one time or another, owned three MLS teams: Kansas City Wizards, FC Dallas and the Columbus Crew. The US Open Cup, a competition based on the English FA Cup and one of the oldest competitions of its kind in the world, was recently renamed the Lamar Hunt Cup in his honor. Even more of an honor for him, he got to raise that cup with both the Wizards and Crew.


Probably the best indication of his importance to the sport was something I heard from the MLS employee whose job it is to take care of the MLS Cup trophy. The trophy used to be heavier, but it was re-cast a bit lighter so that Hunt, then in his late 60's, could lift it over his head if any team he owned won the trophy. This happened once with the 2000 Kansas City WIzards.




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Martin Nodell, the man that created Green Lantern under the nom de plume Matt Dellon, has died at the age of 91.

Nodell's original Green Lantern shared the same basic abilities as the later hero you are probably familiar with, only he wore a multi-colored outfit and had a weakness for wood rather than the color yellow.




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I don't totally agree with the sentiments in this article, but he has one line in there that is classic:

[Jack] Black's films all have the same moral: that he shouldn't have made them.

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Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

Coming into work this morning, I heard on the traffic report that there was a tie up near Camino de Oeste and Speedway (Who even knew there was traffic out there?) due to a llama.

I'm assuming that they meant a camelid mammal common to South America, even though it was a radio report and I didn't see it spelled. Although, I guess it is possible that traffic was tied up by a random tibetan. Are we sure it wasn't a vicuña or an alpaca?


I always thought that if I owned a llama, or if I became an eastern religious teacher, the proper name would be "como se."


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The big news among MLS fans today is the trade of Nick Rimando and Freddy Adu for Real Salt Lake's Jay Nolly.

MLS über-fan Dan Loney has his comments here. Most of us fans were suprised by the move, since the Peter Novak - Freddy Adu conflict seemed to have been resolved.


I was a bit worried that without the diving and whining Adu wearing the black and red, I wasn't sure I would still be able to gin up hatred for DC United. TPMP Boston corresponent Prairie Rose Clayton reassured me by giving me three reasons to keep up my dislike:

• They're DCU


• Their fans think they're god's gift to the league, including that one f*cker who was in the front row of the US-CZ game wearing a Moreno jersey (bad enough it's a non-red club jersey, but jesus, could it at least be a US player? At least the Houston guys wore Ching)


• Esky

Good enough for me.


I don't know though...Real Salt Lake...doesn't a team have to win once in a while before I can really dislike them?


Adu may be leaving at the right time. Word I hear is that he ran out of bars to show his fake ID to. Silly, really. I mean, the guy is famous for being the teenage soccer player right? You think someone might know he's underage?


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It must be true. A fella named David Stewart (I wondered what he does during those periodic Eurythmics hiatuses) says so in great detail.

It is part of a site also has a page where Dave and his crew allege Satanism from the usual suspects: the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Ozzy Osbourne. They also allege satanism from otherwise committed Christians like Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash, apparently for covering songs by "Satanic" artists. Oh, also Christian singer Michael W. Smith is a Satanist too.

Go figure.

You should check the page out. The folks who put this together put an awful lot of work into it.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

I got no pictures of this event, of course. Sheesh.

Anyway, I attended the Parade of Lights downtown, sponsored by the Tucson Downtown Alliance. One of the more unusual entries was from a Star Wars fan club. Yep. Merry Christmas, Lord Vader.

I'm sure there was some reference there to the infamous-because-hardly-anyone-has-seen-it Star Wars Christmas Special.



I watched the parade while stationed in front of the old Charles O. Brown House, which is now a Hispanic cultural center. This meant they were serving food (I somehow missed that) and also had a mariachi trio (no guitar, but they had guitarron, vihuela and trumpet) led by an old co-worker that played throughout the evening. A woman that was there also sang a couple of songs with them as well.

When the Star Wars fan club came by, the trumpet player played the "Imperial" theme.

The mariachis were drowned out when the KXCI entry came by. Al Perry and Loren Dirks played on that one.

Mayor Bob Walkup, Karin Uhlich, Carol West and Nina Trasoff each had entries (riding convertibles) in the parade. Interestingly, of the people up for re-election this year, only Walkup was in the parade.

I saw El Charro's entry make the turn from Stone Ave, I said "Hey guys, you have competetition..." The mariachis laughed, then they said, "Hey, is that Ruben?"

El Charro's mariachis were led by trumpet player Ruben Moreno, who is a sort of godfather of the local mariachi community and probably taught a couple of the guys who were playing near me. They ended up accompaning Ruben's mariachis as they went by.

Tucson Roller Derby had an entry as well. Barb Trujillo handed me and Joe "Chepe" García (an old family friend who was standing near me) a flyer for this weeks bout with Duke City. Chepe wasn't sure what to do with it.

A moving company called Two Men and a Truck drove, suprisingly, a moving van in the parade. They were accompanied by two elves with dollies and boxes, as well as a polar bear. Not a real polar bear, but you knew that.

After the parade was done in my area, I hunted for my brother. Over at Broadway and Herbert (near Access Tucson), the polar bear seemed to get into a beef with one of the elves. Later, I went down sixth for a bit and saw the polar bear again. He appeared to have been tripped by one of the elves and his head came off. He put his head back on (the colar that was supposed to be tucked under the costume was left hanging out) and tried to ride for a bit on the truck. Then he walked behind the truck. Way behind the truck.

Maybe I've been spolied by the rodeo parade...but where were the horses? Not complaining, mind you...I liked this one...but...something was missing...


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Tom refused to believe that this song existed when I told him about it the other day. So, here is the video.


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