Fad diets come and go, but when you’re in college, just out of, or broke, or well, let’s face - plain ass cheap, it’s impossible to eat a great meal on a shoe string budget. But recently there’s been a move to change all that. NPR first shed some light on going gourmet for only 99 cents about a week ago.

Unless, that is, you shop at the 99¢ Only Stores. There are more than 200 of them throughout the West — not to mention other bargain variations like the Dollar Store — true to their name, everything costs exactly 99 cents.

Christiane Jory thoroughly embraces this fact in her book, The 99¢ Only Stores Cookbook. The idea may sound silly, but the book is filled with recipes for gourmet items like gruyere beignets, salmon souffle and Pinot Noir poached pear tarts. Many of the recipes have been adapted from culinary classics like the Joy of Cooking and the Moosewood Cookbook.

Sure, we’ve all sustained on Ramen but can 99 cent food possibly taste any good? It’s hard to say, because I haven’t sunk that low. Yet. It’s not unfathomable that I would sink that low. The NPR article goes on to explain how Jory sunk that low (obvs. it involves wine!) and lived to tell about it.

Taking Jory’s notion one step forward, the NYT’s food critic Henry Alford decided to conduct a week long experiment culminating in a bargain basement dinner party. He used ingredients purchased only from 99 cent stores throughout Manhattan.

The four friends I served dinner to included two who had shopped for food at 99-cent stores and two who had not. Guests were met with an antipasto tray — pepperoncini, olives, artichoke hearts, crackers, very greasy salami and a hockey puck of Brie that I had softened by baking.

Disparate nibbling yielded several polite, neutral comments. My guests stared off into the mid-distance as if in the throes of Art Appreciation. But the compliments started flying when I served my chilled pear soup — nothing more than a mixture of Goya and Kern’s pear nectars that I served in beautiful Chinese bowls with star anise floating on top. (Mark: “I feel like I’m at a chic restaurant.” Heather: “I’ve cleaned my bowl.”)

Of particular note, is that Alford has to use some cooking ingenuity. Since the inventory at many of these 99 cent stores is constantly in flux there’s more improvisation cooking.

Forced into using whatever ingredients are on hand to prepare something delicious is in a word, stressful.

It’s a method perfected by our ancestors and sadly, lost in the modern world of microwave dinners and pop top soup bowls.

As for that experiment’s legacy?

I will continue to serve my “pear soup.” I will continue to worship at the altar of Goya’s dulce de leche wafers. I will continue to make my pea soup using frozen peas, particularly as the recipe I devised is so wonderfully easy. (Slice and sauté an onion. Add 3 cups chicken stock, a 1-pound bag of frozen peas, 1/3 cup oats, 1/8 teaspoon cardamom, some salt and pepper. Bring to boil. Purée in blender.)

But more important, I will continue to look for incredible value. As I’m sure the folks at Jack’s know, bargain-hunting can be addictive.

Consider the Web site for the national chain 99¢ Only Store, which proudly displays an Andreas Gursky photograph of endless rows of candy and canned goods called “99 Cents,” taken at a franchise in Hollywood. The Web site informs us, “This photograph recently sold for over $1,999,999!”

One man’s penny is another man’s dollar.

Truer words my friend, truer words.

Also: Chef Eric Ripert lays out some delicous recipes using this old school on the cheap method. Check out the slide show to see how it was all done here.

The Breeders celebrated the upcoming release of their album Mountain Battles at a VFW in Dayton, OH. The ablum release on April 8th is the first album for the band in almost five years and only their second since 1993. I love how ghetto the record release is, from doing it at a VFW to the test press vinyl. There’s a certain magic to that and an obvious love for music that you won’t find a lot of bands embracing.

Not sure how old these are.  It’s possible these have already surfaced over the weekend, etc.  But the McCain video is hillarious and the Obama video is okay.  But still.  I love that this is political discourse for some people.  Also, Sen. Clinton is in deep shit after constantly lying about a 1996 trip to Tuzla, Bosnia and worse she won’t cop to lying about it.  At least she learned something from Bill.

Though I do agree with John Marshall’s assessment on the matter:

“I think the real story here though is the big picture. People have faulty memories. Things get dramatized in people’s recollections. . . As I noted a few weeks back, I don’t think you need to be a veteran or someone who’s done foreign policy work in the executive branch. Bill Clinton didn’t have any. I think both Clinton and Obama are perfectly capable of being good presidents and able commanders-in-chief — certainly they’d pursue wiser polices than John McCain. But in trying to push this argument that she and John McCain stand on one side of the foreign policy divide (aka, Commander-in-Chief threshold) and Obama on the other she’s had to make a series of arguments that are just plain silly.”

It’s Raining McCain

Twisted Sister for Obama

And HRC expose by CBS

Rick Astley has come out of the dark to discuss his new found infamy that rickrolling has brought him.  Funny, but two days ago, the NYT did an article about this and couldn’t get in touch with the former pop star.

Rickrolling has also come to mean a disruptive blast of the Astley song in a variety of situations. Former Scientologists protesting against the church, for example, have been playing and singing the song this year outside Scientology offices in London, Washington, Seattle and other cities.

It is not clear what Mr. Astley himself thinks about rickrolling. He has not spoken publicly about the meme and efforts to reach him through his agent were unsuccessful. But it has surely renewed attention on his career at a beneficial time. He is planning a tour through England along with other ’80s pop stars.

But then, Astley addressed all of these things in an interview with the LA Times that was published the next day.

Over the last year or so, Astley has watched with puzzled amazement as “Never Gonna Give You Up” has been mocked, celebrated, remixed and reprised, its original music video viewed millions of times on YouTube, all by a generation that could barely swallow its Gerber carrots when the song first topped the pop charts.

“I think it’s just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it,” Astley said. “But that’s what brilliant about the Internet.”

For his part, Astley was nothing if not modest about his new cultural role. “If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something — a Bruce Springsteen, “God bless America” … or an anti-something kind of song, I could kind of understand that,” Astley said. “But for something as, and I don’t mean to belittle it, because I still think it’s a great pop song, but it’s a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn’t have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that’s the irony of it.”

Astley would never put the song down, mind you. It’s just that, as he says, “If I was a young kid now looking at that song, I’d have to say I’d think it was pretty naff, really.”

The best part is that the rickrolling thing has spread into the real world.   But probably when it showed up at an Eastern Washington basketball game that was the nail in the coffin.  May we suggest the unsettling reichroll?

Would you pay $35 for a movie ticket? It’s an interesting question because the answer is almost improbably no. But then you hestitate and ask, “well what do I get for $35?”

At a new deluxe movie theater set to open in Chicago next year you’ll get Gold Class auditoriums will feature a 40-seat-maximum patron capacity and an even higher-end atmosphere, officials say. The planned theaters will boast boosted amenities, including plush reserved seating, special parking privileges and upscale food and beverage offerings with seat-side waiter service.

Developed by Village Roadshow for the heady price of $200 million dollars, the Chicago venue is the first of a proposed 50 theaters stateside.

“It’s an absolutely different environment than anything else that exists,” Village Roadshow CEO Graham Burke said.

To that we say, come to Portland, where you can get all of that for like $3 and if you throw in a pitcher of PBR it might run you to $9.  Not to say that we don’t appreciate luxury, but we don’t like getting ripped off even more.

Had this Farside type of comic sent to me. Found it humorous, but only because there’s nothing worse than having a server down.

Geez, it seems like even just being out of commish for four days the entire internet exploded. There’s so much that has happened over the past couple of days. But one of the big things is Jack White’s other band The Raconteurs quickly announced and then released their sophomore effort Consolers of the Lonely. You can download the album from their official website.

On the first few listens: It’s a fairly solid effort, but it doesn’t really tread new territory for the band and Jack’s fingerprint is all over the album, almost too much. Still, though, it’s a good outting. Nothing to be ashamed about. On the same day they released the album, the band also released the first video for the song.

The video consists of 2500 still photographs from rock photographer Autumn de Wilde assembled into something that comes off like choppy animation. Though we love the video and album and the release strategy, the album did leak early causing web sheriff some consternation (or happiness?) and some websites grief in the process.

Hey everyone.  Sorry for the lack of activity here over the weekend and specifically yesterday.  I came down with the hiv or bubonic plague or something approximating that.  So I’m not sure how much I’ll be in action today.  I should be in full swing tonight or at the very least by tomorrow morning.

Found this of the HuffPo yesterday. It’s a collage of the 4,000 soldiers that have lost their lives since the start of Bush’s War in Iraq. Click the photo for a larger look.

British author Sebastian Horsley, whose book Dandy in the Underworld, was denied entry into the United States after arriving to promote the Harper Collins US publication of his hit British book.

Seems like this is straight outta the 1920’s when the US government banned James Joyce’s Ulysses. What is it they say, the more we change the more it stays the same? Anyway, in terms of PR, however, Horley hit it big time. I hadn’t ever heard of this book until I came across the article on CNN. Now, though, I’m intrigued enough to go out and pick up a copy of it.

The book recounts Horely’s life of “sex, drugs and finely tailored clothes.”

Horsley said he was questioned for eight hours Tuesday by border officials at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey before being denied entry on grounds of “moral turpitude.”

The 45-year-old author was traveling to New York for the U.S. launch of “Dandy in the Underworld,” his account of a life dedicated to sex, drugs and finely tailored clothes.

“I was dressed flamboyantly — top hat, long velvet coat, gloves,” Horsley said. “My one concession to American sensibilities was to remove my nail polish. I thought that would get me through.”

According to Lucille Cirillo, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Horsley was traveling under the CBP’s visa waiver program, which entitles citizens of some countries — mostly in the European Union — to enter the United States for business or leisure without applying for a visa. Travelers can be refused entry if they admit on a customs form to being convicted of a crime or to being addicted to narcotics, Cirillo said.

She declined to specify what responses Horsley listed on the form.

“They knew more about me than I did,” Horsley said Thursday in an interview from his London home. “They said, ‘We know you’re a heroin addict, we know you’re a crack addict, we know you’re involved in prostitution.’”

Horsley’s book — billed as an “unauthorized autobiography” — vividly recounts years of heavy drug use and frequent visits to prostitutes. He says he has been drug-free for three years.

Take a mildy unamusing animated sitcom about President Bush as a young child and add a little video spoof of the internet joke “I’m f*#cking (blank)” that was hip about two weeks ago (in internet time that’s like seven years in real life) and presto!

I will never be able to look at Sen. John McCain again.

One of the things I like about Bobby Flay, the Food Network Chef, is that more than any of the other celebrity chefs, is that he actually seems to like food. He wants to celebrate it and acknowledge the role that great food and a great meal can play in our lives. Whether it’s grilling out in the backyard or travelling the country to lightheartedly compete against unknown chefs (that he almost never seems to win on Throwdown is kinda irritating), it’s always an enthusiastic approach.

Now he’s gearing up for yet another show to debut this summer, circa July. Grill It! seems to be a combination of his previous two shows, Boy Meets Grill and Throwdown, however, this isn’t any sort of competition. Flay is hoping to find the best grillers the country has to offer to highlight all the unique recipes and techniques out there.

So whether you’re a primo tailgater or a professional smoker, Flay wants you to send in a two or three-minute clip of you doing your thing on your grill. He wants to see the story behind the recipe as you show the audience how to prepare it.

So shoot your video and upload it and maybe you’ll become the next BBQ pit master. The deadline is April 10 and there are only a few videos on their now.

Can’t say for sure if this site for EniTech Research Labs is related to the upcoming big screen Terminator movie, starring Christian Bale as John Connor and directed by McG, or if this is related to the FOX televison show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. 

But it does for sure have to do with the terminator universe.  Over the course of