L'histoire de sa vie

On Friday, my mom and I took a trip to North Houston to check out a burger recommendation from the Chronicle at a place called the Petrol Station. Before I get into the full explanation, let me just say that if you’re in the mood for a burger and fries, this is it. Amazing.

The burger was delicious. My mom’s and mine got switched up, but nonetheless, we were both amazed with how delicious the half-pound juicy burger tasted. This was the kind of burger you dream of, the kind of burger that says “these people know what they’re doing.”

And the fries reinforced that case. They were fresh-cut (as is obvious by the taste and texture) and seasoned just right to be amazing. In combination, this burger and fries are a combination beyond belief and certainly delicious.

In addition, the Petrol Station has a bunch of taps filled with delicious craft brews. I had a Dogfish Head Theobroma and my mom had a Southern Star Buried Hatchet. Delicious. If you’re in Houston and you need a burger, fries, and a beer, the Petrol Station is worth the drive. You will not be disappointed.

On Monday, Saint Arnold released their latest brew, the first in their new “movable yeast” series. The beer uses the same recipe as Lawnmower, but with the added twist of using a Bavarian hefeweizen yeast. The idea is to show how different beers can be just by using a different strand of yeast and therefore creating different flavor profiles.

Lawnmower is not my favorite Saint Arnold brew, largely because I’m not a huge fan of Kölsch in general. However, I’m a huge fan of wheat beers (like Hefeweizen), so the idea of using the hefeweizen yeast appealed to me.

And the result is awesome: Weedwacker tastes like a wheat beer. In fact, it’s a little hard to believe it’s not. It’s a delicious concoction with all the familiar tastes of a hefeweizen: the citrus flavor, for example, is pronounced. It’s delicious, to say the least.

John and I were able to try the brew yesterday, after trying to find it to no avail on Monday. Because it is such a limited release, it’s been going fast all over town. Bars that have had it haven’t had it for long. Luckily, one bar, the Porch Swing in the Heights, had it on tap during the day, enabling us to have it around lunch time, when the demand was much lower.

I’m looking forward to future releases in the movable yeast series. If they can turn the Lawnmower into something this amazing, I can only imagine what they can do with truly amazing beers such as the Christmas Ale or Elissa IPA.

I wrote this letter to M&M/Mars in order to advocate for what will one day be the most popular M&M flavor ever. Enjoy! Find other letters I’ve written to companies here.

Dear M&Ms –

Yesterday, I was present while a coworker and friend was enjoying a personal-sized bag of Peanut M&Ms. She asked if I’d like a handful, but I declined, stating that of the M&M flavors, Peanut is my least favorite. In the conversation that ensued, we discussed my favorite (Peanut Butter, by far), and her favorite (Pretzel), as well as the other flavors we enjoy.

Dark, for example, is a beacon of M&M light shining onto the rest of the less-cultured candy world. Crispy was also always one of my favorites, but I haven’t seen it or its blue bag in stores in quite some time. Almond, we both agreed, is a fantastic flavor.

See, it’s obvious that your company is doing a lot right. You’ve created some amazing candies. However, we both noted that there’s one potential flavor missing from the M&M repertoire, something we’d like to see in the future: Cashew.

Imagine how delicious Cashew M&Ms would be! That would be the candy of the future, my friends, a future I’m willing and ready to embrace. Cashew M&Ms could change the world for the better, empowering candy eaters everywhere with newfound strength and internal magnificence with every bite. The possibilities for happiness are endless.

Thanks for your time, and I hope to see Cashew M&Ms on the shelves soon!

-Nathan Miller

The Northwoods Ramah Theatre Company is a professional theatre group that spends about two weeks at camp each summer, putting together a professional play, performing it, and then leaving. In the past, their work has had different results, usually with minimal camper interaction. Their play The Jewbird was performed off-Broadway a couple years ago.

This year, everything was completely different, as some major changes have been made to the program. First of all, the company organized an evening program with the youngest of the three age groups to see the final show. In addition, throughout the two weeks, campers from all three age groups were invited in to rehearsals and read-throughs, so that everyone had a chance to benefit from the creative process.

The show itself, entitled My Name is Sharon, was a very in-depth analysis of The Merchant of Venice from a Jewish standpoint. Unlike in some of the previous years, the play was unbelievably successful at getting the kids to connect. It’s very difficult to deal with Shakespeare, especially since many find the plays boring. However, the play was able to bring Merchant to a different level, engaging with the text on stage and radically presenting a lot of ideas.

I hope to see My Name is Sharon in New York as well, as it was really fantastic. It’s pretty awesome to see a new piece of theatre that’s as captivating as this was, and I’m really glad not only that the NRTC had a chance to reach out to the campers, but that the campers really (as evidenced by the Q&A session after the show) connected to the show and were able to take something away.

I found Groupon through a blog post and through Angela. Essentially, the concept is as follows: the company teams up with local establishments in a bunch of different cities and provides massive savings on some good or service, but only if a certain number of people purchase the “Groupon.”

It’s pretty neat simply for the reason that different businesses offer completely different things, so the day after pet therapy might be yoga lessons or savings on pizza. Yesterday, there was a deal from the @waffletruck, which readers of this blog are aware I love. For four bucks, I will score an eight dollar wafel and dinge combination the next time I’m in NYC.

Anyway, I recommend checking it out. Each day there’s at least one deal per city (they have fine-tuned areas as well, like specific boroughs of New York as well as pretty much every city in America). In addition, Angela invited me to a “rewards program” built in to the site. If you sign up, I’ll be happy to invite you. Just let me know.

On Wednesday, I got to take a tour of the Hillestad Pharmaceutical Company in Woodruff, WI, to learn how pills are made. The company offers walk-in tours to anyone who desires to enter the fascinating world of pharmaceuticals, and let me say that if you’re in the area, you should definitely walk in.

The process of making pills is pretty complex. It requires mixing various ingredients, liquefying the mixture to ensure that it’s equally distributed, then drying out the liquid so that it’s again in powder form. Then the powder is sent to different machines depending on the type of pill needed. Capsules are simply filled and pressed together. Tablets are formed using 10000 psi machinery that is capable of producing 30000 pills per day, or a bigger machine that is capable of producing one million pills per day.

The pills fly out of the machine and are then coated in a machine that is capable of coating pills with a number of different coatings for added minerals, strength, or ease of swallowing. Then they are labeled, if necessary, and put into various packaging to be shipped to wherever they need to go.

The tour guide continually emphasized that each production unit is tightly controlled and followed with a production number that follows the lot the whole way through, from the raw materials to the finished product. This number aids in research if there’s a problem with a product and if a recall were necessary, it would be used for this as well.

Overall, the tour was pretty great. In the end, we got some bottled water (the company also purifies bottled water) and some vitamins that they create (which I do not plan on consuming – I’m not really a vitamin guy).

When a game opens at Minute Maid Park, the starting lineup of the Astros is announced, much like occurs in every other stadium for the home team, with a video montage. However, when I went to a few Astros’ games while I was home, I noticed something disturbing about the video montage, something that I think directly led to the poor start to the season.

See, there are many problems with the opening video, such as the fact that it looks like something made in a video-capable version of Microsoft Paint. Seriously, there’s like radiant lines of different colors randomly drawn over videos of hitters and pitchers doing their things. If a five-year-old created the opening video, it would probably look just about the same.

But this isn’t the most disturbing part of the video. Rather, it’s the song that plays at the same time, a rock cover of “I’m a Survivor,” originally by Destiny’s Child. If you don’t know the words, they include such gems as “I’m not gonna give up / I’m gonna make it” and other lyrics fit only for the likes of daily affirmations.

Essentially, it’s the worst possibility for a sports team intro. It’s like the Astros are sending the message: “we know we’re bad, but we’ll triumph nonetheless by willing ourselves into success.” That’s simply not a realistic message. The Astros should be starting their games with songs like Rick Ross’s “This is the Life” or something similar. There should be celebration, pumping up of the energy, and an acknowledgment that this team is the team to beat.

Instead, the Astros come out looking like an overweight teenager standing in front of a mirror belting out Christina Aguilera’s “I am Beautiful.”