Attorney's Delight

This recipe was originally passed down to me by my friend Kenneth, who happens to be a lawyer. Hence, "The Attorney's Delight"


INGREDIENTS
Jumbo, uncooked, peeled and deveined shrimp (As many as you wanna scarf down)
Thick sliced bacon (Half a slice of bacon per shrimp)
Olive oil or melted butter (Man B Que men prefer butter because....we do!)
Maple syrup

DIRECTIONS
1. Lightly brush olive oil or butter onto both sides of the shrimp
2. Wrap the shrimp in half a slice of bacon and place on a pre-soaked skewer. (Soak skewers in water for about half hour before using so they don't catch fire while on the grill)
3. Place shrimp on the outside of the the grill (charcoal grills work best, if using gas place them on the top rack, if you don't have a rack, just make sure they aren't directly over the flame.)
4. Lightly oil grill grate. Cook shrimp on preheated grill (high heat, low flame) for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until opaque.
5. Brush on a light layer of maple syrup to both sides and place on the grill for an extra 30 seconds

Man B Que: Swayze Crayze

This evening, the Man B Crew learned that esteemed actor Patrick Swayze died. While we've never seen Dirty Dancing, we have seen Road House and Black Dog and feel that those movies are manlier than any 18 movies put together (Stallone, Segal, and Norris films excluded).

I believe YouTube commenter SAGEBOT500 says it best: "He's throwing guys out of the Double Deuce in Heaven now."

- J.B. Mays

Nightmare Grills Bambi

OK, here is Andy "Nightmare from the North" Bruss's famous Grilled Bambi recipe:

Generously season venison tederloins rubbed in olive oil with blend of salt, garlic powder and fresh ground pepper. The ratios of seasoning and what seasoning you choose don't matter much at all...grilling these backstraps is the most important part.

The end goal is a nice browned crush with a cool red center. Place the backstraps on a very hot grill. You should hear them sizzle. In 2-3 minutes (or as soon as a brown crush has formed) flip the back straps. Cook another 2-3 minutes or until the center reads 110F (cool red center).

Manly Mixtape Monday: The Devil Made Me Do It

The Manly Mixtape is a weekly 6-pack of songs on a theme. It will rock your face every Monday. This week's sees the debut of Mr. Nobody.

Blitzen Trapper - Black River Killer

Ignore the friendly strum pattern and upbeat chord progressions and you'll discover a brutal murderer. The trail of dead following the singer numbers somewhere around 5 or 6 (I lose track); in other words, if you turn Black River Killer into a drinking game, you'd only need 2 listens to get good and drunk. That’s more kills per minute than Pulp Fiction had swears per minute. Fuck. That's a lot of killing, and a lot of shots. The cameo by Fred Willard as a talk show host is pretty key as well. Check out his Blago-inspired hair.

Dead Heart Bloom – Sodom

I'm not sure who made this video (or why), but that’s not the important part. With a wandering bass line, accented drum beat, and a soaring string arrangement, it’s obvious that this song has been expertly crafted. But the lyrics – harkening back to Sodom, complete with imagery of whores, writhing, and turning into a pillar of salt – add another layer of complexity. Pepper in some reversed vocals and you've got a song that's just asking for a Parental Advisory sticker.

Ben Folds Five - Satan is My Master

Most people are already familiar with “Brick,” the band’s awful abortion tale, but that’s not what we’re going with. “Satan is My Master” is a little-known live track released on their b-sides album "Naked Baby Photos." Short, but hardly sweet, it lets everyone know where this next-gen Elton John places his allegiances. Though, to be fair, if I got free Metallica records out of the deal, I doubt I'd complain much. It just better not be anything post-Load. Stupid Lars. Actually, never-mind – it’s looking like a pretty raw deal. At least “Satan is My Master” is a cool song.

Pine Box Boys - I Kept Her Heart

We've all done it, right? Married a 15 year old girl whom you traded for a horse? Then, after years of loveless marriage, took her into the woods out back and brutally murdered her? Finally, you dragged her lifeless body into the local flour mill and ground her bones into a fine powder, right? But, as a memento, you kept her heart. Right? We've all been there.

…

No?


Cold War Kids - We Used to Vacation

Yum, gin. Normally, a dry martini and a couple of blue cheese olives would be a great way to end the day. Add in a car and a helpless family along for the ride and suddenly you've got a recipe for disaster. Yet despite his promises to his wife and children, the lead singer just can't seem to shake the addiction. That lovely self justification of "Still things could be much worse/natural disasters on the evening news" provides just enough excuse for another drink and another broken promise.

Fiona Apple - Criminal

Click here to see the video. Ms. Apple apparently dislikes embeddable videos.

Fortunately for me, the inimitable J.B. Mays already crossed the gender line when he introduced Brody Dalle of The Distillers the other week. Fortunately for everyone else, that means we can use Fiona Apple's awesomely dirty “Criminal” in this week's Mixtape. After this video, I know I certainly wouldn't mind being Ms. Apple's rueful transgression. Although the fact that she might write a song comparing my manhood to a shriveled up roll of dimes makes me have second thoughts.

- Mr. Nobody

The Kanye West Incident. Or: How the Internet Collectively Resembles a Developmentally Disabled Tween

... and a million simultaneous "oh no, he didn't"s were heard throughout the nation.

Last evening, the Internet suddenly exploded. Apparently, Kanye West had behaved in a manner very much like Kanye West – jumping up on stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards. He thought Beyonce should have won, and bizarrely said that he didn’t mean to disrespect Ms. Swift, but that Beyonce’s video was one of the greatest of all time, and should have won instead. Nope, no offense meant at all. Take a look for yourself, and try not to think of all the useful things you could be doing instead.

Of course, it’s easy to imagine my first reaction:

People still watch the VMAs? I had no idea.

Then second: In a time when we’re debating as a country how best to spend billions fixing the healthcare system, my Facebook news feed was pretty much solidly “OMG … Kanye is such a jerk,” “Taylor Swift is so sweet, I can’t believe Kanye West did that,” and “How low have we sunk in this country?” The last one, I entirely agreed with, but for different reasons than that person intended.

Also, Kanye has a documented history of doing the EXACT. SAME. FUCKING. THING. Either the organizers are idiots or they have a level of trust in Kanye West that should disqualify them from owning anything more dangerous than a plastic spork. I smell a contrived publicity “scandal.” And man, people are eating it right up. Not me, though. I just sit at my desk writing articles criticizing everyone involved. I am so above it all.

Meaningful!

But just for a minute, let’s pretend to take this VMoutrAge (clever, no?) at face value. I would now like to give you a list of some of the past illustrious winners of the VMA Moon Man:

- Michael Penn, Best New Artist, 1990. Who? I had to look this one up. It's Sean and Chris Penn's brother. I have never heard his music, nor do I plan to. It must have been a slow year for new artists. I mean, who ever heard of the Black Crowes?

- Pretty Much Every Other Year of Best Rap Video. Arrested Development had a 2-year lock on the award. MC Hammer won, as did Coolio and Will Smith. Really, it's most likely the exact list of embarassing CDs (and possibly tapes) that you won't admit you once owned. I can see why they eventually killed the category.

- Aerosmith, "Pink." Best Rock Video, 1998. As a kid, I spent hours and hours listening to Aerosmith's "Big Ones" album. They heard about this, and spent the next decade and a half trying to spite me with awful music. This is possibly the worst piece of shit they recorded. And as MTV is wont to do with hilariously bad music, they gave it an award.

- Limp Bizkit, Best Rock Video, 2000-2001. Witness the horrifying power of marketing. I'd be mad at them for taking the award away from deserving artists, but the categories in these years were uniformly terrible. Two years, and I can really only point to Rage Against the Machine as a competent artist (nominated, 2000) in this category.

- Art of Noise, feat. Tom Jones, "Kiss." Breakthrough Video, 1988. Again, I repeat, "who?" I mean, I know Tom Jones, but I bet even he couldn't tell you who the hell Art of Noise was.

So maybe Kanye shouldn’t be so upset. And maybe Taylor Swift should figure out that you don’t refer to the statue as a “VMA Award,” because that would mean Video Music Award Award, and that’s just stupid.

- J.B. Mays

Manly Mixtape Monday: Rural Rock

The Manly Mixtape is a weekly 6-pack of songs on a theme. It will rock your face every Monday.

There are plenty of things to hate about the modern Nashville country music establishment. Hell, just seeing Tim McGraw wearing his fancy leather cowboy hat (I didn't know the Village People had a yard sale) makes me want to walk into a K-Mart and start throwing punches. But the biggest tragedy of the pansification of Nashville is that it's turned off so many people to anything recorded below the Mason-Dixon line. People just assume that since Nashville country mostly sucks, they're going to steer clear of any musician with a Southern accent. But that, friends, would be a mistake. Despite a bad reputation of late, the South still produces some of the finest shit-kicking rock ever to blow out a pair of cheap Ford Ranger speakers on a wild Friday night. Let's take a look at some.

Drive-By Truckers - "Never Gonna Change"

It's a guarantee that you'll hear more about Drive-By Truckers on this blog in the future. They're a band that sings about drinking, fighting, loving, and all the other things that regular folk do. If Man B Que was a late-night talk show, DBT would be the house band. Any one of their songs could go up on here, but since this one has a nice music video to go with it, we'll pick "Never Gonna Change."

Hank Williams III - "Long Hauls and Close Calls"

The original Hank Williams (III's grandfather) came to popularity in an era that may have been rowdy and two-fisted, but still didn't allow recording artists to use the word fuck. His grandson is making serious efforts to enjoy a degree of freedom of expression that his grandfather could not. He sings some of the white-trashiest, whiskey-swillingest, face-punchingest country dive bar rock available today. While "Put the O back in Country" wins for most creatively vulgar song title, I'm going with "Long Hauls and Close Calls" for sheer manic energy.

Steve Earle - Copperhead Road

In the late '80s and early '90s, when everyone else was committing to the neutering of Southern Music - so many fucking rhinestones! - Steve Earle did well for himself waving a broken-nailed middle finger at the establishment. "Copperhead Road" is the most accessible of his catalog, so go ahead and start there. But don't stop - his albums take a natural progression from a sort of biker-country ethos to some populist/progressive themes in his latest work. And look how young Letterman looks - I noticed that right before Earle called him a moron. Then I laughed.

Scott Miller and the Commonwealth - "Dear Sarah"

Every mixtape - EVERY SINGLE ONE - needs to have a Civil War song on it. That's something that John Cusack failed to cover in "High Fidelity," but I'm pretty sure it's true. Or at the very least, this particular mixtape needs it. When I was in college in Tennessee, this band used to play in a church that had been converted into a concert venue. The acoustics were excellent (it was a church, after all), but the venue didn't have a liquor license. So event management did the next best thing - they let you bring in a cooler and all the beer you could carry. I've you've never watched a Southern rock from a choir loft with a row of empties lined up on the ledge in front of you, then you've thus far missed out. SacROCKligious!

Johnny Cash - "Cocaine Blues"

I can't resist the temptation to end this inaugural mixtape with the man himself, Johnny Cash. When Nashville refused to return his calls in the '90s in favor of your fancy, well-groomed Kenny Chesney types, Cash signed with Def Jam founder Rick Rubin, recorded the best country album of the year, and took out this ad in Billboard:



Did I mention he was in his 60s at the time? Here's something from the early days - Johnny Cash singing about cocaine and murder at a time when most of the country was still afraid of dancing and rock music. If anyone tells you they like the Joaquin Phoenix Walk the Line version better, you punch them in the throat.

Now get out there, down a couple of tall boys, and grill some meat. Cash would approve.

- J-B Mays.

Friday Fright: This Lady Scares the Crap Out of Me

Rock music has been frightening people since the dawn of ... "Footloose." This feature will highlight the most traumatic people/places/things that rock has to offer.

Every suburban kid went through a punk phase at one point or another. But by the early '00s, punk had gone pretty quickly from anarchistic outsider culture to the Hot Topic t-shirt rack, stopping somewhere in the middle to crap out what we now know as "emo." So by then, sullen kids in their Winnetka bedrooms looking for that jab in the eye of their corporate attorney parents could turn to any number or radio and video-friendly acts. Yes indeed, a stable of MTV-friendly punk acts. Nancy Spungen started rolling in her grave, which frightened people passing by that particular gutter. Yet one band, despite being featured on what was by then ironically called Music Television, still managed to push the boundary somewhat. They were the Distillers, and their lead singer could beat you to death. And their lead singer was a woman named Brody. Watch this and try to keep your bowels intact.

Man B Que has a set of rules governing what is manly and what is not. Women are expressly forbidden from attending the Man B Que. But Brady Dalle there, from the Distillers? She blurs the line. She might merit a burger - if she promises not to show up and punch someone in the face. One could honestly picture her driving a broken bottle into a screaming townie at 4 in the morning in a smoky bowling alley bar while Warren Zevon plays in the background. The Distillers - proving once and for all that a lot of world's scariest motherfuckers come from Australia.