Check With a Chick- Eggs and Getting Laid

Check With a Chick is TCM’s advice column.  Our advice maven, theworldofdale, is a veritable encyclopedia of conventional and bizarre knowledges world-wide.  Need to know how to dress and not look like a douchenozzle?  Trying to find your way into the hot bartender’s shorts?  Send theworldofdale an email at advice@thecincinnatiman.com.  If you’d prefer to stay anonymous, ask your question anonymously in the comments.

Without any further adieu, let’s get to the questions.

Hi theworldofdale:

What would be an impressive yet easy lunch for me to make for my boyfriend’s family (6 guests)? They will like whatever we make, but I really want to seem like I know what I’m doing (I don’t, really). What are your suggestions? Oh, and, let’s not break the bank on this either.

While we’re on it, why do brown eggs take longer to hard-boil? What’s the perfect method for hard-boiling brown eggs?

Thanks,

Sugar n’ Spice

Impressing the boyfriend’s family with a meal that delicious, easy, and inexpensive.  A bucket of chicken isn’t go to do it.

My primary advice is to keep it simple.  A complicated dish will only put your lack of skills on display.

Something interactive where everyone can get involved is also good.  How about shish kebobs?  The men get to hover around the grill, the women get to make the prettiest kebobs they can (of course I’m stereotyping here.  I personally would be watching the playoffs while someone else made my kebob and fetched my beers).  Along the same lines, a taco bar is fun.  These allow for some flexibility with people’s diets and likes and dislikes.

As for eggs- I checked in with Dr. Roger Lederer, professor emeritus of Biological Sciences at California State University-Chico and an expert in ornithology (the study of birds for those of you without a word-of-the-day calendar).  Simply put, there is no difference between white and brown eggs besides their color.  Brown eggs don’t take longer to boil because they aren’t biologically different from white eggs.

What may be different is some other factors.  In the U.S., brown eggs aren’t as common as white eggs.  You might be buying them from farmer’s markets instead of the grocery.  They might be fresher.  Fresh eggs, while they do not take longer to boil, are usually more difficult to peel cleanly.  One might surmise that cooking them longer would help.  It won’t.

What may help (in creating those “perfect” hard-boiled eggs) is dunking the boiled eggs in cold water after the boiling.  Seems a boil, letting them sit in the hot water for 15 minutes post-boil and then a nice ice-cold bath results in the most perfect hard-boiled egg you’re going to get.

How can I get women to sleep with me without investing too much time in talking to them?

Less Talk, More Action

The key to this is which women you try to sleep with.  Some women are just plain not going to have sex without hours of conversation, foreplay, and post-coital cuddling.  Which is fine if you’re in love, but not so fine if you’re just looking to get laid.

Without resorting to scouring the interwebs for all the deaf-mutes in a 50-mile radius, the key to sleeping with women without investing time and effort is selecting women who also want to have sex without talking.  These women do exist.  They might have someone they want to talk to and cuddle with, but it doesn’t have to be you.  Women are sexual creatures, contrary to popular opinion (we just have more self-control and use better discretion).

How do you figure out who these women are?  Look for the cues.  They talk about sex.  They seem open to trying new things- whether it be a new Ethiopian restaurant or that new thing you saw in your sister’s Cosmopolitan.  Recent divorcees are a good choice.  They aren’t ready for a relationship and they are curious about what’s going on out there in the single world.  If you think this is a stereotype, you haven’t talk to as many divorcees as I have.

As in most searches, your success is all about where you look.

–send your questions to advice@thecincinnatiman.com.
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Like Everyone Else, We Think Conan’s Awesome (But We’re Still Not Watching His Show)

By this point, you’ve probably already read Conan O’Brien’s statement covering the whole NBC/Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien debacle.  Yes, it’s an official debacle at this point.  Conan, as was probably expected, seems to be the only party coming away completely clean from this whole thing, and he’s the person most likely to lose his job.

Whoops.

Since everyone’s linking to it, here’s that popular statement.

So, here’s the thing.  We’re all watching the shit go down.  NBC isn’t happy with the ratings it’s getting from Leno and O’Brien and wants to shake things up.  Both hosts have been working with NBC for, like, ever, and they don’t want to send them out on their asses.  Jay Leno, ever playing to the lowest common denominator, made some goofy-ass joke about moving to Fox.  Conan wrote the above-linked note that happened to show up in the New York Times.  This illustrates their difference in style.  It’s significant, this difference, and it highlights the fact that the two of them have different audiences–audiences they’re both having to find after the pre-11 p.m./Tonight Show move of mid-2009.

And that’s what’s interesting to me in this particular case.  We’re all watching the weirdness go down, but we’re not watching their shows.  Granted, Conan without the masturbating bear just ain’t Conan.  I guess there are just better reasons to go to sleep before the news is over than to wait for ol’ Big Hair to come on.

I like Conan O’Brien and just about everything he’s done, at least to my recollection.  I freaking REMEMBER Not Necessarily the News, okay?  That’s got to have some legs to it, right?  I wouldn’t say that I’m an O’Brien fanatic, but I can comfortably say that I genuinely like him. I can also say that I’ve never seen one episode of his Tonight Show.  While that’s a franchise that’s carried some major freaking weight over the past 60-ish years, I don’t know that it carries the same weight it once did.  60 years for a television show is crumbling dusty turd age.  Any crumbling dusty turd isn’t going to be as important as it once was–no matter how much we like the guy who’s shitting it.

Okay.  That’s a terrible metaphor on pretty much every level.  But the fact remains that ain’t nobody watching Conan.  History has shown that people will, if NBC is willing to sit pat for the time being.  The Tonight Show getting a new host is more or less the same as airing a whole new show, right?  Where would we be if CBS had cancelled CSI?  (Yeah, probably a better place, I know.)  Or if Fox had cancelled Arrested Development.

Wait.  What?  They what?  When?

Oh, shit.

The Great Red Hope

It happened after the disappointment of the final score set in, after hordes of people waited on hold for hours to get on the radio and offer their expertise on what went wrong with the Bengals.

It happened only about a week removed from watching a Bearcats team that so many of us hoped would outshine the much bigger school up I-71 end up getting destroyed on the national stage, with the coach who had led them there enjoying the company of his new neighbors in South Bend.

And then the Reds, the Reds of all teams, gave this town a lift.

Suddenly the phrase “only (blank) days until pitchers and catchers report” has new optimism behind it, instead of the half-mocking sense of resignation it usually carries this time of year in Cincinnati.

Monday the Reds formally introduced pitcher Aroldis Chapman as their newest member. Chapman turns 22 next month. He throws a ball about twice as fast as you’re allowed to drive on 75 through downtown. If he can nail down control problems, the scouts say he’ll be a stud. That could be a big “if”, but for a team that had to call on the services of Kip Wells to start games in the injury-plagued final months of the 2009 season, it seems like a gamble worth taking.

The gamble is not cheap. The Reds, who could not even afford to keep Jonny Gomes around for $1 million, will pay Chapman $30 million dollars over six years. The Reds, the Reds of all teams, are shelling out enough money to outbid teams like the Toronto Blue Jays, The Boston Red Sox, and the Los Angeles Angels.

Those are big cities. Just to give you some perspective, Chapman admitted during today’s news conference that he had never even heard of Cincinnati.

Before we get too excited, the Reds did not just sign Alex Rodriguez, Roy Halladay, or even Kip Wells. But when you consider the streak of bad news Cincinnati has endured to start the year, the Reds are sending a friendly reminder to the world that professional baseball started in a city that didn’t always expect or accept mediocrity from its teams.

The Reds. The Reds of all teams.

Yes.  The Reds.

Today in Manliness: January 11

Every now and again, TCM takes a look back at the day in manly stuff that went down.  Today is January 11.

–The first recorded lottery takes place in 1569.

–1878: Milk is first delivered in bottles, and hundreds of children cease looking like the rest of their family.

–In 1935, Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly from Hawaii to California, proving that she’s a better dude than you are.

–Alexander Hamilton is born.

–Francis Scott Key dies.  So does Wally Pipp.  Most importantly, Sir Edmund Hillary kicked it in 2008.

Comic: If Vengeance Be My Destiny #34

If Vengeance Be My Destiny is TCM’s Sunday comic. You can catch up on the story here.

click for larger image

The Saturday Rock Box: Budgie

Budgie’s been around forever, and I’ve just sort of rediscovered them.  They’re one of those bands who’s influenced everyone you’ve ever loved, but you didn’t know that they did that.  Point is, they’re awesome.  Check it.