Irish whiskey steak!

One of the benefits of living just north of the 33rd parallel is year-round grilling. Theoretically you can grill year-round just about anywhere in the lower 48; in practice further north than here, especially in the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states, Labor Day tends to see the end of the grilling season ... except for tailgate parties.

I love to grill. I'm actually a pretty good cook, though I don't think Bobby Flay is gonna challenge me to a throw-down anytime soon. (I'm still waiting on the Iron Chef battle between him and the Swedish Chef.) And I kinda-sorta follow Fr. Leo Patalinghug; I hope someday we can swap recipes for chicken adobo. So there's your Catholic connection — I do believe in the power of home cooking to bring families and friends together, to reinforce "the domestic church".

Um ... where was I? Oh yeah! Grilling! 

Because I grill pretty often, I use a lot of different marinades. In a couple of restaurants, I've come across variants of steaks marinated in a Jack Daniel's base. I've got no problems with bourbon or Tennessee sippin' whiskey, but it's not my first drink of choice. And Scotch is a horrible, blasphemous corruption. They tell me, "It's an acquired taste," which is shorthand for "It's nasty, but you get used to it." You can get used to hanging by your thumbs, too ... but why would you want to?

So, Irish whiskey it is.

RNS puts a new twist on the "liberal Pope" trope — UPDATED

From Religion News Service ... of course:

Pope Francis is unsettling – and dividing – the Catholic right

 David Gibson

(RNS) For more than three decades, the Vatican of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI operated on a version of the conservative maxim, “No enemies to the right.”
While left-wing theologians were silenced and liberal-to-moderate bishops were shunted aside in favor of hard-liners [Oh, what a give-away!], liturgical traditionalists and cultural conservatives were diligently courted and given direct access to the apostolic palace.
But in a few short months, Pope Francis has upended that dynamic, alienating many on the Catholic right by refusing to play favorites and ignoring their preferred agenda items even as he stressed the kind of social justice issues that are near and dear to progressives. [To be fair, commentariat liberals aren't the only ones who conflate political conservativism with doctrinal orthodoxy and liturgical traditionalism.]
“I’ve personally found many aspects of this papacy to be annoying, and struggled against that feeling from the beginning. I’m hardly alone in this,” Jeffrey Tucker, editor of the New Liturgical Movement blog, wrote as Francis basked in the glow of media coverage of his recent trip to Brazil. [The name of Tucker's post? "The Tedious Press Narrative of Pope Francis". That, my friends, is irony; it's as if Gibson were blindly determined to illustrate Tucker's point.]
“Every day and in every way we are being told how glorious it is that the bad old days are gone and the new good days are here,” he lamented.
Tucker and other traditionalists who are dedicated to high church rituals have been especially miffed at Francis’ simple — they might say simplistic [then again, they might not] — style since the moment the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was introduced to the world as the new pope back in March.
“How can I love a Pope who doesn’t even want to be Pope?” Katrina Fernandez, a popular conservative blogger, wrote in a column about her disillusionment. [Kat commented, "I'm a little flattered the author referred to me a popular blogger. Puzzled at the label 'conservative'. And annoyed that my one flipping post is being used to paint me as a pope hater."]

Katy Perry's chest can't stay out of trouble

What does a writer do when s/he doesn't have the talent to write for People but is too proud to work for the National Enquirer? The answer is obvious: S/He goes to work for the New York Post. The Post is a wanna-be British tabloid — lots of celebrities, lots of sex, lots of celebrity sex, lots of rumors denied in order to get them started.

I didn't know there was a rumor that Katy Perry was dating Robert Pattinson. I didn't know that the aforementioned Pattison had broken up with Kristen Stewart. I didn't know that Pattinson and Stewart were dating in the first place.

Yes, I do know who they are. At least, I know who Perry and Pattinson are. You get the feeling my mind's been elsewhere other than on the romantic entanglements of the young and over-publicized?

So Perry told Elle UK, "I sent [Stewart] a text message saying: 'I know you've seen all this stuff but you know I would never disrespect you. I'm not that person. I'm just trying to be a friend to him but it is unfortunate that I do have a set of tits.'" Of course. Even if Perry were a more modest person who didn't leverage her cleavage for the sake of her career, she knows that entertainers aren't allowed to have opposite-sex friendships — unless they're "friendships with benefits".

What's the Post's headline?

Katy Perry blames Robert Pattinson romance rumors on her breasts

(facepalm) Oy-oy-oy.

Anybody remember when boob meant "moron"? I don't know what's worse — that an editor would risk looking like an idiot to print an attention-grabbing headline, or that the headline does grab attention, or that it grabbed my attention enough to provoke me into writing about it.

Vanity of vanities ....