Satellite Room in Washington, DC has a new menu of burgers that have been named after notable local musical heros. They’ve got burgers named after Henry Rollins, Donald Byrd, Joan Jett, GoGo great Chuck Brown, Dave Grohl and Big Tony. There’s even a plain burger on a bun in honor of Kenny G.

That’s funny, but why did they have to go and name a six-ounce burger topped with chicken liver after noted vegan, Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye?

Via the Washington Post’s Going Out Guide blog:

“I’ve never been to [Satellite Room] (in fact, never really heard of it) and wasn’t aware that there was a sandwich bearing my name being offered until yesterday,” MacKaye wrote in an e-mail. “I would hope that regardless if it bears my name or someone else’s, that they have at least one vegan option!”

What a juvenile way to drum up publicity. Annoying enough that it would cause me to avoid this place (and I’m not a vegan).
 

 
McDonald’s should take note from artist Newt Clements on how to improve upon their Happy Meals presentation. Seriously, I’d go to McDonald’s every day (not really) if these were a real thing. I especially like Clements’ toy designs that accompany the “meal.”

They’re just mock-up prototypes, but with fast food sales dropping like a stone, perhaps McDonald’s will listen? A Twins Peaks Happy Meal? That’s marketing innovation!

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

 
The Fatberg!

Beneath the busy streets of London lurks a monstrous hideous man-made creation that is slowly engulfing the city’s sewers with its gross oily bulk.

The Fatberg!

Soon this monster will be oozing out of the sinks in kitchens and toilet closets, encasing everything it meets in lard!

The Fatberg!

When you see it—you’ll scream “No, no, no, no!”

You can run but there is nowhere to hide from the hideous Fatberg of Old London Town!

This may all sound like the trailer for some 1950’s sci-fi feature, but the “fatberg” is a very real threat to Londoners and their Victorian sewerage system.

The “fatberg” is created by stupid, inconsiderate and selfish people pouring cooking oil down kitchen sinks, and flushing wet wipes and sanitary products down the toilet.

The cooking oil mainly comes from the restaurants, and those innumerable fast food outlets that have spread like cancer thru-out England’s capital.

Last week, a giant “fatberg” the length of a Boeing 747 jet was removed from a sewer in west London after it threatened to send effluent and waste spurting back into homes. It took Thames Water workers four days to clear the foul-smelling blockage from over a 260 foot stretch of Shepherd’s Bush Road.

Dave Dennis, Thames Water sewer operations manager, told Sky News:

“The sewers serve an important purpose - they are not an abyss for household rubbish,” he said. “Fat goes down the drain easily enough, but when it hits the cold sewers, it hardens into disgusting fatbergs that block pipes. Wet wipes cling to the fat. Fat clings to the wipes. And pretty soon your fatberg is out of control and sewage is backing up into roads, gardens and in the worst cases flooding up through toilets and into homes.”

Yuk!

Last year, a 15-ton fatberg (the size of a bus) was removed from a sewer in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London. If people (that’s you restaurant and fast food fuckwits) don’t wise up London will one day fall under its own mass of waste.
 

 

 

 
You wanna see more? Well, here’s a report on last year’s massive fatberg….
 

 
H/T Arbroath

 
There is packaging that is corny and packaging that is ugly and packaging that is lame, but most of the time we can ignore bad design. But then there are cetain labels that look like shit—not “shitty,” mind you, but like actual, literal shit. For example, the original packaging for Waitrose brown sauce appeared to feature feces—apparently they’re dates (Where besides Palm Springs would they serve dates with breakfast? I say they’re cat poop.). Luckily, intrepid six-year-old (now seven) Harry Deverill sensed something amiss, and wrote to the company a helpful letter, politely skirting the obvious resemblance of the dates to something less nutritious…

Dear Mark Price,

I am writing as the other morning I had Waitrose essential Brown Sauce with my bacon sandwiches. I asked Daddy what the picture is of on the label. Daddy didn’t know and neither do I. Please could you let me know. Mummy says I am good at drawing so if you would like me to draw a new picture for the label I would be happy to.

Kind regards, Harry Deverill, aged 6

You can see Harry with his adorable (and identifiable) redesign in the picture below. The traditional English breakfast is unfairly maligned in my opinion, but its reputation isn’t helped by fecal graphics. So well done, Harry! May all your breakfasts be devoid of scatological imagery!
 

 
Via Fast Company

 
Apparently “moist” is the most hated word in the English language. Period.

University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman explained to Good why we hate “moist” and that:

“[W]ord aversion is different from word rage, which is “where people get angry at jargon or slang associated with a despised group, or upset because a word or phrase is felt to be incorrectly used, or annoyed at language that they perceive as redundant, or overly complicated, or pretentious, or a cliché, or trendy, or politically incorrect.” That kind of dislike is more common. Grudges against irregardless, synergy, like, don’t go there, or retard fit comfortably in the word rage department.

The word itself has an association making it unpleasant or even disgusting for some people. People don’t like hearing “moist.” They also don’t like the way their own mouth feels when they say it. It seems like a mysterious psychological process at play here, but is it really?

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and point my finger directly at Betty Crocker (I’m looking at YOU, Betty!) and its “Moist Cake Mix Commercial” for officially ruining the word “moist.” You want a smoking gun? Here it is!

See how long you can sit through this commercial without wanting to punch a hole in the wall!
 

 
h/t Todd Philips!

 
It’s voodoo. It’s disco. It’s so tacky I’m gonna keel over and die if I don’t get one of my own. They’re chicken bone necklaces—excuse me—actual gold chicken bone necklaces, rendered from greasy bird meat—the mutilated hoards blessed by the late Colonel himself, or at least a corporate trademark based on his actual face.

Kentucky for Kentucky is a Lexington-based haberdashery specializing in all things Buegrass state.There’s the more traditional fare—cute totes, hip onsies and t-shirts—there are even some great bowls featuring “The Greatest” Kentuckian, Muhammad Ali. However, it’s the currently criminally sold out gold chicken bone necklaces that tower above all other Kentucky swag. Here’s how they boast about their wares:

We got together with our favorite Kentucky jewelry designer Meg C to create a beautiful line of “Kentucky Fried Chicken Bone Gold Necklaces”. That’s right, your dreams have now come true.

Thanks to Meg C and Kentucky for Kentucky, you can now wear a 14kt gold plated Kentucky Fried Chicken bone around your sexy neck. No joke, beautiful handcrafted gold necklaces made with real bones from a Kentucky Fried Chicken 8-piece chicken dinner. Boomtown.

 
Alright, I can’t say I approve of the use of “boomtown” here, but they’re right about the “your dreams have now come true” part. When something is this outwardly chic yet covertly trashtastic, I must have it. It took Meg C a month to complete all the coatings and treatments required to gold-plate a chicken bone, so I suggest she get cracking, stat. At $130 for the small model and $160 for the large, it costs a lot to look this cheap, but I will find the cash.

Maybe I could sell my bone marrow…
 

 
Via Lost at E Minor

 
Visionary writer J.G. Ballard‘s list of simple but enjoyable foods would probably make most struggling “healthy living” bloggers’ heads explode. Especially the ones on restrictive diets whose mission is to bore everyone around them to death by talking of nothing else. Ballard, who spent two years of World War II in a Japanese internment camp with his family, also remembered the postwar food rationing that persisted into the ‘50s in the U.K. Even so, he wasn’t obsessive about food. In fact, he saw a happy correlation between food and sex.

He told The Guardian about his usual diet in 2003 (and, of course, a doctor was brought in to explain why all of his choices were unhealthy):

One should love outside one’s own head. I believe that the tongue is just as important as other organs. If you have an appetite for food, you’ll have an appetite for sex. I’m always suspicious of people who lack an appetite and I admire people with strong appetites. However, now I’m 72 I don’t eat a great deal and, let’s say, my tastes have simplified. It is a matter of metabolism, and I’m bored. I’ve eaten everything.

I live alone and eat rather modestly when I’m at home…

I wake at 8 a.m. and have a couple of cups of tea. Midmorning I make a coffee to get my brain in gear. I used to have a large scotch (and that worked even better). Alcohol used to provide a large proportion of my calorie intake and my life enhancement, but I’m too old for that now. I don’t drink spirits any more. Carte Noir is a good substitute. I’ve always drunk instant coffee at home—ever since I read Elizabeth David, who wrote about its virtues. For lunch I eat odd things—Parma ham with a few drops of truffle oil. Dinner is usually an omelette.

If I’m out I like some lobster, but you have to be lucky because it can be very disappointing, and I order a lot of crab dishes. I’m not as keen on beef as I used to be but I still enjoy a nice juicy steak. I’m also very fond of game. I love quails—Maquis do a wonderful quail dish—but I like grouse best of all. I eat a lot of game because the flavour is richer, it’s darker. I drink it with a good red wine. I prefer French wines, possibly because they were the only good wines when I was young. I used to drink a bottle of wine a day, now I have less: half a bottle a day.

Below, J.G Ballard profiled by Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show:

 
James Ostrer’s “Wotsit All About” makes use of junk food in the most revolting of ways (even worse than actually eating it!) Models are adorned in hamburgers, cheese puffs, whipped cream and all manner of processed goodies, creating a sort of anthropological fashion spread of the crap we consume. There are full-body photographs of his tribesman, but it’s the faces that stand out, reminiscent of religious or ceremonial masks belonging to some long lost sugar clan.

Ostrer avoids what could have very well been a preachy lesson in healthy eating and instead approaches the modern world’s victual vices with a bit of humor. Like many of us, he dreams of a day when junk food is deemed subversive, saying, “Eventually I could see refined sugar being viewed in the same way as smoking is. The only difference is no one in fashion or film ever regarded being fat as cool.”

Some images may be NSFW, if your work holds an objection to breasts, which may or may not be unadorned in meringue.
 

 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
I would like to apologize in advance for whatever trauma this video may cause you. Those of you with weak stomachs may want to forgo watching altogether.

This video is not suitable for children, or anyone who ever wants to eat a fig ever again. Not a lot more to say about this. You probably know if you want to hit “play” or not, don’t you? He’s got a technique, if you will. A gimmick.
 

 
To mark “Yorkshire Day” today, Yorkshire Tea created life-size cakes of Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker (who’s from Sheffield) and Judi Dench (who’s from North Yorkshire). There were other life-size cakes made of Spice Girl Mel B and Louis Tomlinson from One Direction. Sadly, there are no photos.

I was in Sheffield a few months ago and saw the premiere of Pulp’s documentary Pulp: A Film about Life, Death and Supermarkets during the Sheffield Doc/Fest. They’re proud of their local heroes there. Even the Pizza Express had paintings on the walls of Jarvis, Phil Oakey from the Human League (no mistaking that asymmetrical hairstyle for anyone else) and Richard Hawley so you could look at them while you ate.

This takes it to a whole other level, though…

 

 
via The Star and h/t Nicholas Abrahams