Friday Faves 4/10: Video Games, Sunderland 'Til I Die, Brady Opens Up, BBQ, and Heady Topper
Best Activity
Video Games - I’ve owned a Playstation4 for about two years. It typically sits quietly under the TV unused. It was an impulse buy, brought on by conversations with friends about video games (I think that’s how most people in their 30s buy new systems: Peer Pressure)
Last month, my friend Phil, who lives in San Francisco, asked if I wanted to play Madden online. The plan was to draft our own teams from scratch and play “Franchise” Mode. It was something Phil and I used to do in middle school, except we’d sit in the same room together, draft a team together, and play the season together basically all night. We’d plot out our weekend roster maneuvers during 8th grade lab, probably driving our teacher crazy. Now we’re on opposite sides of the country during a pandemic picking our own teams and playing against each other.
Like any great activity, we’ve slowly added other people to our league. Another middle school friend, Greg, hopped into the league, too, when he caught wind of it. As of last night, we were adding a fourth member. Madden has been a fantastic scratch for my live sport itch. The amount I can play is limited because I have to wait for Phil and Greg to play their games before moving onto the next week, which is a welcome governor on the amount that I can play in one sitting (or “standing.” I stand when I play… I’m a maniac.). A game takes about 45-60 minutes and then I’m done for a day or two.
Maybe this is proof that I’m regressing as a human, maybe it’s proof I’m misallocating my time. I just like to think of it as a way to a connect with some old friends that has nothing to do what’s going on out in the real world for a bit.
Best Watch
Sunderland ‘Til I Die - If you’re from Sunderland, then it’s “Sunnerlan.” The show follows Sunderland AFC, a huge football club up in the northeastern corner of England. Like many great documentaries, it does not unfold according to plan. Sunderland was relegated from the Premier League to the Championship in 2017. The first season of this series follows the club’s effort to earn promotion back to the Premier League in 2017-18. I watched the first episode a long time ago, and jumped back in this week. The first season is superb, riveting, and a fabulous live sports replacement in the time of Corona.
I’ve also realized that there is nothing scarier than a terrace of angry English soccer fans, at one point they get so mad they break the Netflix camera. They’re also the champions of inappropriate gestures.
The second season picks up where season 1 left off, in the summer of 2018. A new season is on the horizon and some new, very interesting, characters have come aboard. You can find it on Netflix.
Best Read
The Woman in the Window - A wonderful guilty pleasure, couch read (there are no beach reads anymore….). The story is about an agoraphobe, afraid of the outdoors who witnesses something fishy in the neighbor’s apartment. It’s fast paced, one of those books where you reach the final third and know you’re not putting it down until it’s finished.
The Quarantine Backyard Ultra Is Perfectly Insane - We all have different things that are keeping us busy: puzzles, books, music, baking, cooking. Some folks just have to torture themselves. Outside magazine writes about this insane idea created by Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, the founder of the Barkley Marathons. - Outside.com
Best Listen
Tom Brady on Howard Stern - Boy, Tommy is really living it up without Bill Belichick in his life. This week he wrote for the Players Tribune and then spent 2 hours with Howard Stern. Next thing you know he’ll be eating tomatoes and real ice cream. The interview has some interesting flash points and Stern is a master at loosening up his guests. Brady cusses, discusses his marriage, admits he had a hunch last August he’d be leaving the Pats, and more! Here’s the audio on YouTube…
Best Eat
Annie’s Pop Tarts - Okay, so they aren’t called Pop Tarts, that would be copyright infringement. Much like playing video games, these delicious treats have reentered my life as a comfort food. In a fit of anxiety I snatched up these puppies last week, and Tiff doubled down on her final adventure into the great outdoors last week when she braved Wegmans. The brown sugar and cinnamon version with frosting is my favorite (why would you ever choose no frosting? You’ve come this far!). My inner fat kid loves the warm gooey center and I’m convinced if there were four in a pack, I’d eat four in a sitting. Luckily there are only two.
Smoke Shop BBQ - We have a quarantine pack, two of our friends live a block away. We have spent the last four Saturdays with them. We’re all symptom free, we all promise to not hang out with anyone else. If the promise is broken, the pack disbands.
Anyway, we ordered a massive amount of BBQ from The Smoke Shop in Fort Point. They offer the deal every Saturday, along with contact free pick-up. The food was amazing. I’m going to rank the items…
1) Burnt Ends - I’m not usually a big fan of these, but Smoke Shop’s version was bite size and delightful. Little burnt pork nuggets, that’s the best description I can give them.
2) Cornbread - I’m a big fan of sweet cornbread. They provided what looked to be a half-sheet for the four of us. They slabbed butter on the top, not rubbed in, but more to the effect of cream cheese brownies. It was marbled on the top of the cornbread. Half a sheet was not enough in the end.
3) Dry Rubbed Chicken - They cooked us a mini-chicken. The dry rub was dynamite, just the right kind of spicy, which tasted better the next day as leftovers. The chicken was cooked perfectly.
4) Sausage - This list doesn’t make much sense, I know. Where’s the pulled pork? The sausage was better, I’m sorry. They were huge links, sliced into little chunks. These were also spicy and had a dark, almost burnt casing on them.
5) Pulled Pork - I think I’m out on pulled pork. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. I’ll make it this summer, but it never seems to really deliver the goods when I order it at a BBQ place. Toss a good sauce on it, maybe make it a sandwich and you’re gonna be happy. But pulled pork can’t be the thing that holds a BBQ meal together, or a BBQ experience together anymore for me.
Sides included collard greens (with porks bits…), coleslaw, and creamy corn. All very solid.
BBQ sauces were really good, too. Better than we remembered from previous visits to The Smoke Shop.
Best Drink
Heady Topper: In addition to the BBQ, Alchemist Brewery in Stowe, VT teamed up with The Smoke Shop and sold their Focal Banger and Heady Topper along with the BBQ dinner. We pounced on this offer because those two beers are not distributed down here. Even in Vermont they are really hard to track down. Heady Topper is rated as one of the best beers in the world. Not sure I can add much to that. It’s a double IPA, they encourage the buyer to drink it fresh and from the can.
Best Plug
The Imperfect Game: Leicester City: Hero and Villain - It’s been a lot of fun researching heroes and villains with Both these past few weeks. This week, I was in charge of finding the villain and Both picked a hero. We both selected small midfielders. Only one of those midfielders gave a teddy bear impaled with a sex toy to a teammate. The other guy won the World Cup…
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