A few years ago, someone was drumming up trade for a New-Age-y guy whose schtick included firewalking. He approached me and I told him I wasn’t interested. He tried to counter with, “If you do this, you’ll have nothing to be afraid of every again.” I stared at him for a moment and replied, “I already have nothing to…

The family used to order a pizza with everything at a restaurant back home, but anchovies were on the side. Cook them with the pizza, and the whole thing gets too salty. But, put one on a piece and it joins in the joy that was an, “Izzy Special.” (The cook, Izzy, was a part-timer who worked for my father at their…

“Back in the day,” a guy in my high school bought an Army surplus jeep like this one. It came in a crate, in pieces, packed in grease. Took him a couple of months, but he cleaned it all up, put it together, painted it purple (it was the 70s, after all), and had a one-of-a-kind vehicle.

Brilliant.

I love how owners of, “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” think it turns them into The Ultimate Driver.

The depths of American popular culture are bad enough without the cultural references being beyond even the scope of the purveyors of American cultural pablum.

In the early 80s, a Chicago radio personality used to do an impression of Tony LaRussa (who was then-manager of the White Sox) chatting up a young woman: “Hey, baby, you like my gold chains? Wanna to go cruise LSD (Lake Shore Drive) in my ‘Vette?” It was claimed La Russa actually said this to someone at a party. Who…

Aeropress. Airtight container of coffee you ground just before leaving home. Metal travel coffee mug. You might get charged for the cup (some places really hate people using their hot water for free to make tea or decent coffee and charge the same price for a cup of hot water as their crappy coffee), but usually, you…

Arizona.

Yes. Proof that over-reliance on technology can lead to potentially deadly results. The Rand-McNally Road Atlas is a far more reliable source of routes and roads than Google, etc., as this brush with death points out. For those who want even more detail, the trucker version of the Road Atlas points out overpass…

I was a kid of 22 when I owned my first Harley. Age has nothing to do with it.

It was also a great science project to electroplate quarters with copper or pennies with silver.

It used to be more fun when coins were made of real metals like copper and silver. Set a penny, a dime, or a quarter on on a train track, wait the for 4:12 to roll on by, and go collect your squished money. Mom hated it, but what could she do?

Practically everything about coffee is subjective. There is science to prove this or that, but what matters is taste and every tongue is its own universe.

Nope, not gonna happen. The only real metric that matters is how the coffee tastes. In the three years I’ve been running my roasting business, and the 7 years before that as a home roaster, I tried everything I described. My only ultimate concern was how the coffee tasted. So, when customers ask me how to store their…

To his credit, Whedon went ahead and made, “Much Ado About Nothing,” to help balance out the gazillion-dollar-making, “The Avengers.”

So ... can you grind coffee beans in it? That might make it somewhat useful.

Paper does absorb oils.

I’ve tested it. Fresh-roasted beans placed in a freezer no sooner than 3 days after roasting remain fresh-tasting up to six months later. The key is airtight storage, low moisture, and low temperature. I’ve also just kept beans in the bag in the freezer and they remain fresh-tasting about 3-4 months later, provided…

Not the refrigerator. Too much moisture. Freezer. Cold. Dry. Better.