Category Archives: Lush Life

Hummerers call Hummerhaters “retarded”

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 SUV vs SUV

Yeah, that’s going to make the PR top ten list for sure. via Fark.

When Sonnie Martin recently broke down in Calgary in her Hummer H2, she said she was met with a string of horns, fingers, obscenities and rude comments.

“On that day, I was embarrassed to be a Calgarian,” she wrote to the Calgary Herald.

However, the letters in reply weren’t sympathetic.

“She drives one of the most potent, aggressive and ostentatious symbols of conspicuous consumption possible,” wrote one person…

Evidence of the seething hatred for the vehicle can be found at the Sierra Club’s hummerdinger.com or at FUH2.com, a Web site with 3,636 photos of people giving Hummers and their drivers the middle finger.

and, of course, at Ihumpedyourhummer.com, one of my personal faves. And what was the Hummercommunity’s response to this pervasive anti-Hummer sentiment?

“For people to point at the Hummer and say, ‘Bad, bad, bad,’ that’s retarded,” says Andy Drever, who sells between 18 and 25 Hummers a month at Shaw GMC, the only licensed Hummer dealer in southern Alberta.

Yep: don’t hate them because they drive Hummers. Hate them because they’re assholes.

the wild west lives on

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“A couple came up to me after it was all over and shook my hand and Saloon brawlsaid, ‘We’re from South Carolina, and we just want to thank you, that was the best bar fight and greatest entertainment we’ve ever had,’ ” said Scott Richard of Cody.

Forget Texas; don’t mess with Wyominginans either, apparently. Fark has the report of the best little saloon brawl in the West.

The fight broke out shortly after midnight in the Irma’s Silver Saddle bar.

“Somebody in the bar, as a joke, yelled, ‘Last call for alcohol,’ ” said Richard. A drink then got sloshed onto the ceiling, where it dripped onto an individual who took umbrage with the turn of events, he said.

“This skinny guy stands up and starts lipping off,” Richard said.

Amid an attempted apology, someone else threw a punch, and Richard said he stepped in to try to break things up but was also hit.

“And then all hell broke lose,” he said.

Casualties include a bartender, several participants, and one chair and table. No word on whether or not it was a wagon-wheel table, though.

jet-set rednecks: incest, inheritance, and independence

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I'll just bet he does!Now, are they not a lovely couple, in a May/December way? But not so lovely when you realize it’s also in a child/progenitor way.

Say hi to Bruce McMahan, McMahan’s Furniture heir, former PaineWebber and Bear Stearns honcho and current (clock ticking) chief of McMahan Securities. She’s Linda Marie Hodge McMahan Schutt, PhD (Psych, natch; draw your own inferences), and executive vice president of marketing for Argent Funds Group LLC and McMahan Securities.

You’d think the Westminster Abbey nuptuals of such a pair would rate a brief mention in the Times, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong.

See, she’s his daughter.

And that, my friends, is the difference between the Times and the Village Voice. (via Fark)

In court papers, McMahan denies that he ever had a sexual affair with his daughter. But he doesn’t explain how his and Linda‘s DNA turned up on a vibrator that Linda‘s husband uncovered in her luggage. McMahan also hints that Linda may not be his biological daughter, despite a DNA test he paid for showing with 99.7 percent probability that he is her father…

Then, on September 13, as this article was being lovely wedding rings you've got there. Pretty stupid of you to photograph them, though.prepared for print, all five lawsuits were settled on undisclosed terms. As part of the settlement, a federal judge in San Diego sealed the files of the California lawsuit and took the rare step of wiping out any record that the lawsuit had ever existed.

Through McMahan‘s L.A. public relations firm, the parties sent a statement to New Times, describing the matter as a mere “family dispute,” and alluded to taking legal action if this newspaper published this article, which is drawn from the information in the court cases that McMahan has gone to such lengths to hide from public view.

If you’ve ever thought about reading Kathryn Harrison‘s The Kiss, I’d advise you to skip it and just check out this bizarre and twisted tale. It trumps Harrison‘s subsequently-repudiated memoir on every measure that counts: more laws broken, dodgy Dubai dollars, a posh wedding (Westminster! Abbey!), private spas, everyone involved seems to have had more marriages than Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor combined (with the exception of the blushing bride. She really was Daddy’s girl), incriminating videotape, a vast fortune, lawsuits galore, Eastern European mail order brides, and, if I may remind you, DNA-encrusted sex toys!

What’s not to like?

Yeah, there but for the grace of Dr. Smith, go these two

provincial celebrity

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Was it Oscar Wilde or GBS who said, “There is nothing so provincial as a provincial celebrity”?

Well  le voilà:

Malcolm Gladwell, the Kate Moss of the Arctic Circle

and Gawker is all over it:

Gladwell did the ad for charity, so we’re going to let it go this time, but, uh, wow, they really have a different idea of celebrity up north, don’t they? Also, we want to know if they used a hairstylist for the shoot or if that’s just the way he showed up.

cooking salmon in your dishwasher

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Salmon, ready for duty!‘Round these parts I am the dishwasher, but I recall the glory days when I had one of these handy, if energy-spendthriftish, machines. It did indeed make a nice poached salmon, as the Surreal Gourmet claims and every BCer could tell you.

Actually, the best alternative use of a dishwasher was the one the techs at Starbucks came up with. When the dishwashers died (as they all must) they converted them into salmon smokers, and they worked beautifully, too. Wood chips in the engine compartment, salmon on the racks, the whole thing clad in airtight stainless steel; it was perfect.

In any case, here, via BoingBoing, is the immortal “How to Poach a Salmon in Your Dishwasher” recipe, from the Surreal Gourmet.

Poaching fish in the dishwasher is a virtually Now THAT is a salmon!foolproof way to shock your friends, prepare a succulent meal and do the dishes — all at the same time. I’ve poached salmon in more than 100 dishwashers on three continents. There’s never been a dull party.

It all started with the release of my last book, The Surreal Gourmet Entertains. To promote it, I traveled the globe throwing spontaneous dinner parties wherever I could rustle up a kitchen and a willing audience. The hazard of having a good publicist, however, is that guests tend to arrive with impossibly high expectations. Instead of trying to compete with their fantasies, I countered by turning an urban legend into a practical cooking method. My kitchen resembled a mad laboratory as I pushed my dishwasher well beyond the uses covered by its limited warranty. With a minimum of collateral damage, the process of testing and tweaking the following technique was good fun and yielded results that even surprised me.

As it happens, salmon’s very forgiving. Although temperature and cycle durations vary with each machine, a little more or less “washing” doesn’t greatly affect the results. To heighten the drama — and prove that you have nothing up your sleeve — let your dinner guests crowd around the dishwasher when you load the fish. Then, when the cycle’s complete, invite them back to witness the unloading.

Here’s all you need to know to set your doubts aside, put dinner in the dishwasher and watch your multitasking kitchen appliance steal the show.

Poached Salmon