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PVN - An Easy Roast Chicken Dinner--on the Grill

2015-03-27T06:38:00.009-07:00

"The French say the hardest thing to cook is a perfect roast chicken," the Hermit observed. By the way he said it, Claire sensed she had measured up.

I wrote these words in my 2012 novel, Island Apart . While that book is a love story, not a cookbook, it does suggest the primal importance of a well-roasted chicken in human gustatory happiness.

It also reveals a myth perpetuated by the French chefs I trained with in Paris--that a great roast chicken is a difficult dish to make. That myth has something to do with the contradictory attributes of a perfect roast chicken: skin so crisp it crackles when you bite it, yet meat so moist it squirts when you cut into it. Then, there's the confounding nature of a chicken's anatomy--white breast meat that's perfect at 165 degrees F and dark leg meat that tastes best when cooked to 175 degrees. In other words: how do you cook the latter without drying out the former?

Well, call me a myth buster: the truth is it's easy to roast a chicken--especially if you do it on the grill. How easy? Put it this way: smoke-roasted chicken is a dish my wife and I make once a week on average--when we're short on imagination and can't think of anything else.

It starts with the chicken--a local farm-raised bird when we can get it. (Easy in Martha's Vineyard; more challenging in Miami.) The best widely available supermarket bird we've found is Bell & Evans brand organic chicken.

The next step is to season the bird inside and out with salt and pepper or a simple herb rub like my Best of Barbecue Mediterranean Rub. Sometimes we'll stuff fresh sage, basil, tarragon, or other fresh herbs under the skin.

When I make the chicken, I truss the bird, that is, tie it or skewer it into a compact cylinder. I do this for aesthetics--a trussed bird looks smart and professional. My wife doesn't bother with trussing, and once again she has a point. When you roast the chicken untrussed, the heat penetrates the cavity and browns the inside of the legs more evenly. If you want to truss your bird, you'll find a cool bamboo skewer trussing technique in Planet Barbecue! on page 355, and step-by-step photos of traditional butcher string trussing in How to Grill on page 204.

Because we're talking about a simple weeknight dinner here, we usually cook the vegetables right with the chicken (or in this case, under it). These usually include a sweet potato or a couple of Yukon Golds, some organic carrots or beets, a shallot or two--any root vegetable loaded with flavor. I cut the veggies into finger-size pieces, so they'll roast quickly and evenly. I arrange them in a single layer in the foil drip pan I place under the chicken. (It's important not to overcrowd the pan, otherwise the vegetables will stew, not roast.) The tubers sizzle in the melting chicken fat and juices (stir them once or twice), which makes these veggies you'll definitely want to eat.

Now, here comes the secret my French chef mentors would never have dreamt of. You don't cook the bird in the oven; you smoke-roast it on the grill.

For instructions on how to set up your grill for smoke-roasted chicken and to see step-by-step photos, visit BarbecueBible.com.

SIGN UP for Steven Raichlen's UP IN SMOKE newsletter to learn more about barbecue!

READ MORE ABOUT GRILLING AT BARBECUEBIBLE.COM

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Steven Raichlen is the author of the Barbecue! Bible cookbook series and the host of Primal Grill on PBS. His web site is BarbecueBible.com.

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PVN - Bericht: US-Agenten feierten Sex-Partys mit Drogengeld

2015-03-27T06:38:00.007-07:00

Wenn Agenten der US-Antidrogenbehörde (DEA) Sex-Partys mit von Drogenkartellen finanzierten Prostituierten feiern ist irgendetwas nicht ganz richtig. Laut einem Bericht des Justizministeriums Washington ist in der kolumbianischen Niederlassung der DEA genau das allerdings passiert. Und zwar jahrelang.

Die Partys sollen in einem Zeitraum von mehreren Jahren stattgefunden haben. Die Agenten hätten vermutlich gewusst, dass die Prostituierten mit Drogenkartellgeldern bezahlt wurden, heißt es in dem Bericht.

Dabei soll jeweils ein kolumbianischer Polizist Wache gestanden sowie Wertsachen und Waffen der Amerikaner bewacht haben, berichtete die Zeitung "USA Today".

Polizisten korrumpieren sich selbst

Damit hätten sich die Agenten der Gefahr ausgesetzt, erpresst zu werden. Drei Agenten sollen Geld, teure Geschenke und Waffen von Kartellmitgliedern angenommen haben.

Wie die "Washington Post" berichtet, haben sieben Beamte bereits gestanden, bei den Sex-Partys mitgemacht zu haben. Die seien laut Medienberichten mit Disziplinarstrafen belegt worden.

Beteiligt gewesen war nach dem Bericht des Generalinspekteurs auch ein stellvertretender Regionaldirektor. Die Ermittlungen wurden angestoßen, nachdem Agenten des Präsidenten-Personenschutzes Secret Service 2012 vor einem Gipfel im kolumbianischen Cartagena Trinkgelage mit Prostituierten veranstaltet hatten. Die Sex-Partys der DEA sollen in den Jahren zuvor stattgefunden haben.

Antidrogenbehörde: 621 mutmaßliche Fälle

Der Bericht befasst sich mit 621 mutmaßlichen Fällen sexuellen Fehlverhaltens und sexueller Belästigung über vier Jahre bei der DEA, der Bundespolizei FBI, dem Amt für Waffenkontrolle ATF sowie der Justizbehörde USMS.

Rund ein Fünftel betrifft Beziehungen zwischen Mitarbeitern dieser Behörden. Teils seien die Ermittlungen auch behindert worden.

Video: Wow: Diese Ü40 Stars sehen wahnsinnig sexy aus

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PVN - Nicholas Figueroa Missing After East Village Explosion

2015-03-27T06:38:00.005-07:00

PVN - 8 Complimentary Words That Sound Like Insults

2015-03-27T06:38:00.003-07:00

Recently, during a conversation with a coworker, I described a mutual friend as “charming.” I’d meant it as a compliment, describing how adept this person was at getting along with people, making them feel valued and at ease, but my coworker reacted as if I’d fired shots. “Wow, you really think that?” she said, aghast. I was surprised at first, but quickly realized that I’d made a mistake: I’d used a word frequently deployed as a backhanded compliment as a, well, compliment.

Negging may be the province of pick-up artists and MRAs, but we all trade in not-so-complimentary compliments from time to time. While there’s nothing quite like the whiplash effect of a negging pick-up artist in action, negs can crop up in perfectly normal conversation, and sometimes it’s as simple as choosing the right, cutting word.

Want to subtly imply that someone’s reputation far exceeds their actual qualities, without directly insulting them? Try calling them “charismatic,” “pleasant,” or “clever.” Notice they don’t have the same ring as “great leader,” “fascinating,” or “intelligent” -- without denying that they’re any of those highly admirable things, you’ve suggested that what they actually are is something more trivial.

These words have positive meanings, at least on the surface. Probably you’ve used at least some of them with nothing in your heart but affection and sincerity. And yet… there’s an undertone of snide disdain just underneath. Perhaps it’s because they praise traits or behaviors that are perceived as more shallow or easily faked; if you call a prospective suitor “charming,” you’re stating that he’s capable of easily winning people over, but by using that word instead of calling him “a wonderful guy,” you’re implying that he doesn’t necessarily deserve such approval. Charm is something to treat with suspicion, like PR campaigns or Bill Clinton.

If you’ve ever been graced with one of these adjectives, only to find you feel unsure whether you’ve just been complimented or coolly insulted, you’re not alone.

charming: See above -- though sometimes sincerely complimentary, it can make a person’s likability sound calculated and even a bit unsavory.

charismatic: Charisma is an intangible quality that draws people in, so it’s often applied to people who seem to attract people despite clear flaws. When someone says “He’s so charismatic!” it seems like they may as well be saying “Everyone seems to love him, but I don’t know why!”

clever: The word suggests smarts, but not wisdom or depth of understanding. It can be deployed to minimize intelligence by suggesting it’s no more than a surface-level quickness. An ironic “Well, how clever of you” is a great way to deflate someone who’s overly impressed with their own insight or ingenuity.

creative: Sure, we all want to be “creative.” But if your new necklace, hairstyle, use of punctuation, or reading of the instruction manual is in question, creative starts to sound more like “bizarre.” For example: “Are those new earrings from the folk art museum? They’re so ... creative.”

well-meaning: It’s good to mean well! But if someone has to point out that you’re well-meaning, it’s probably because your good intentions paved a road to hell.

intense: If people frequently call you “intense,” consider that they may simply be afraid to call you “terrifying” or “high-strung.”

capable: It’s wonderful to be perceived as capable at your job, but it’s no “talented” or “brilliant.” “She’s capable” can sound a bit like a dismissive pat on the head at times, implying that higher accolades simply aren’t merited.

pleasant: Is there any more tepid compliment than “pleasant”? It’s not “fun.” It’s not “fantastic.” It’s just ... pleasant. Enjoyable enough, but not exciting or noteworthy. Saying someone is pleasant carries a whiff of lukewarm approval, if not slight disdain.

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PVN - What Chefs Don't Understand About Technology

2015-03-27T06:38:00.001-07:00

Chefs are Luddites. They hate technology. Can't stand it.

Or at least that was the impression I got after attending several panels at the Interactive portion of this year's SXSW Festival in Austin under the rubric of "Food and Experiential Dining." Every chef I saw speak had harsh words for technological progress -- which was honestly a little awkward, given that most of their audience consisted of tech geeks.

The chefs' reasons for disliking technology were legion. Brisket savant Aaron Franklin, at a panel called "How Tech Lit The Flame For Celebrity Chef Culture," expressed a variant of the navel-gazing critique of social media, saying that he doesn't often use Twitter or Instagram because he doesn't believe random people would be interested in reading about his thoughts or seeing whatever foods he happens to be eating.

"Whenever I see chefs who are on Twitter all the time, I can't help but wonder, 'Aren't you busy working? What are you doing? Are you just on your phone all the time? Why do you think people care what you have to say?'" Franklin said.

And David Chang, at a talk about "The Future Role Of Tech In Food and Dining," said the Internet has made dining out boring, because chefs everywhere in the world can instantly learn about, and copy, things that are happening in the restaurant capitals of the world.

"Once upon a time, if you wanted to see what Alain Ducasse was doing at Louis XV, you had to actually go to Monte Carlo and experience it yourself. If you couldn't, you had to just dream about it," Chang explained.

"Today, you can just log on to Instagram and see what they served at Louis XV tonight. That's fantastic, on some level, but it means there's no more dreaming, no more struggle to come up with new ideas," he continued. "So now, I can go to any place in the world, and if I close my eyes, I feel like I could be eating in New York City."

Chang also offered up some measured praise for food apps such as Seamless, OpenTable and the Taco Bell app. And he revealed plans for a forthcoming fried chicken restaurant, Fuku, that incorporated a new proprietary iPhone app for placing food orders. But his ultimate convictions seemed to lie firmly against technology. He predicted, for example, that the next great restaurant -- the next Noma or El Bulli -- would be a place with no technology, an idyll that forges a new path untainted by the hurly-burly of mainstream, social-media-savvy restaurant culture.

I understand where this vitriol comes from. Cooking -- with the possible exception of the modernist strain, which has, in any case, fallen out of fashion -- is a deeply analog craft. Its power derives from fire and blood, not coding and gadgets; soil and sweat, not silicon and Siri. And the same goes for the rest of the dining experience. As convenient as it is to order a pizza on the Domino's iPad app, no program or robot can ever compare with a skilled waiter or maitre d' when it comes to making customers feel happy and at home in a restaurant. So it makes total sense that chefs would speak out against technology.

But here's the thing: In the age of digital reproduction, that which cannot be digitally reproduced only becomes more alluring. And good food cannot be digitally produced, at least not until the Replicator from "Star Trek" becomes a reality. Yes, the Internet has made it easier than ever before to look at pictures of dishes and written accounts of meals from restaurants on the other side of the world. But it has not made it much easier to actually taste that food. This sets food apart from almost any other cultural artifact. You can access just about any book, song or photograph in the world using a computer or phone, but in order to eat the food from a specific restaurant, you have to go there yourself.

To use a real-world example, I had read about Franklin's restaurant, Franklin Barbecue, dozens of times on my laptop, my iPhone and my iPad before I went to Austin. I had seen countless pictures of the meat served at the restaurant, and I understood, from everything I'd read, that it tasted superb. That convinced me to get in line at the restaurant at 8:20 one morning a few days after attending the panel at which Franklin was so dismissive of technology. But not even the most skillful of the descriptions and photos I'd seen prepared me for the splendor of the brisket I was served when I finally got to the front of the line five hours later. It's one thing to read a blog post that says Franklin's meat is as smoky and moist as meat can be -- but another entirely to experience that with your own senses.

So not only does technology not pose the existential threat to food that is poses to so many other fields -- including journalism -- it actually offers the culinary world, especially the top tier of which Franklin and Chang are members, a uniquely potent kind of advertising. Some chefs -- Twitter-loving Mario Batali, contentious blogger Marc Vetri -- already understand this. It's time for the rest to get on board.

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PVN - Zayn Malik Speaks For The First Time Since Leaving One Direction

2015-03-27T06:26:00.013-07:00

Zayn Malik has stayed silent on social media since One Direction announced he would leave the band on Wednesday, but British paper The Sun reports that Malik has given his first interview. "I feel like I've let the fans down but I can't do this anymore," Malik reportedly told The Sun. "It is crazy and wild and a bit mad but, at the same time, I've never felt more in control in my life ... And I feel like I'm doing what's right - right by myself and right by the boys, so I feel good."

In the Facebook post that formally announced his departure, Malik wrote, "I am leaving because I want to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax and have some private time out of the spotlight." The band's statement said they were sad to see him go, but that One Direction would continue their world tour and record a fifth album. In his interview with The Sun, Malik hinted that One Direction might not stay together for too much longer, though. "They still want to do it for a while, so they're going to carry on doing what they want to do and I think they're going to do okay for a while."

Last week, One Direction announced that Malik would resign from the tour amid rumors that he was cheating on his fiancée, Perrie Edwards. But now he's concerned about breaking his fans' hearts. "You know, I did try to do something that I wasn't happy doing for a while, for the sake of maybe other people's happiness," Malik said to The Sun. "And that was mainly the fans. And I only ever tried to do it for the fans, and it was only ever for them."

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PVN - The Obamas Are Seriously Considering Moving To New York City

2015-03-27T06:26:00.011-07:00

Barack and Michelle Obama are seriously considering moving to New York after his presidency, and building the Obama Library at the city’s Columbia University, sources told BuzzFeed News.

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PVN - How Much Can you Make Streaming as a Professional Video Gamer?

2015-03-27T06:26:00.009-07:00

A miniature, depressed, wobbling mummy hides in a patch of high grass. His targets, bliss with ignorance, continue pushing their troops forward. The mummy knows patience well and as his targets group together, he sees an opportunity. The mummy rallies his teammates, issuing a barrage of 'pings' on the enemy units and in the blink of an eye flashes into the center of his enemies. Casting out his bandages the mummy entangles and roots his enemies in place -- a perfect opener that wins his team an important fight and secures a sweet victory.

Lauri "Cyanide" Happonen, a founding member and former jungler for the professional eSports organization Fnatic, is at the steering wheel of this little mummy. To those who are unfamiliar with the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) League of Legends, this may seem confusing. You may be thinking, "Why would anyone want to watch someone else play a video game?" However, for about 2,500 live spectators, Cyanide's gameplay equates to their idea of entertainment.

Image via SK Gaming - Cyanide in the middle

Cyanide, a Season 1 World Champion and now retired player from the professional League of Legends scene, still streams himself playing the game on Twitch.tv, a live-streaming video platform that was purchased by Amazon in September 2014 for $970 million. To date, Cyanide has had over 9.5 million collective views on his Twitch channel and currently over 150,000 people follow him, meaning they each receive an email notification the second he starts broadcasting. On Twitter there are around 5,700 tweets per second and important information can easily be drowned in a sea of tweets from all the people we follow. On Twitch, those email notifications create a direct link to the streamer's live broadcast.

As one of the most well-known European players, Cyanide has been able to leverage his clout and focus on streaming and making YouTube videos as income generators. In the past three months, Cyanide has created eight tutorial-style videos on YouTube, totaling over 900,000 views and has amassed over 40,000 subscribers.

But how do these social figures translate monetarily? Can video gamers actually make money from broadcasting themselves playing?

While most streamers and professional eSports players shroud their earnings, a handful of streamers are fairly transparent about their streaming income. For instance, 23-year-old Michael Santana -- better known as "Imaqtpie" -- has reported over $8,000 from streaming in just one month. As one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, his broadcasts often net anywhere from 18,000-40,000 live viewers and his channel has seen over 83 million collective views.

Image captured from Imaqtpie's stream - nearly 37,000 live viewers at the time of screen capture

On Twitch, streamers have multiple avenues to increase their profits. Let's start with the basics. Twitch streamers need to apply to become a verified Twitch Partner which earns them a share of the revenue they generate from broadcasting and allows viewers to pay a monthly $4.99 subscription fee to the streamer. Subscription fees grant viewers additional perks such as emoticons in chat, their username broadcast on the live stream, and access to subscriber-only chat mode.

Becoming a Twitch Partner is no easy task. As a pre-requisite the streamer must have an average concurrent viewership of 500+ people and broadcast at least three times per week. That's a massive hurdle. A random sample showed that only 34 out of the 900+ League of Legends broadcasts pulled over 500 concurrent viewers. Out of those 34, only half were seeing over 1,000 concurrent viewers which has a direct impact on the amount streamers can make from showing advertisements.

Twitch takes into account an estimate for the number of viewers using ad-blocking extensions and produces an "effective cost per 1000 impressions" (eCPM). Streamers earn better eCPM the longer they stick with the partner program and the larger their viewership grows. Starting off, partnered streamers can expect an eCPM in the range of $0.70-$1.40. The more popular streamers pull in from a $1.00 - $2.50 range. The standard subscriber rate of $4.99/month starts off on a 50/50 split between Twitch and the streamer, but is open to scaling with their viewership and streamers can earn up to 60/40 -- about $3.00 per subscriber.

The streamer decides when they run advertisements, giving them more control over their revenue and brand. If a streamer with 2,000 concurrent viewers and $1.00 eCPM runs three commercials per hour and streams for eight hours a day, five days a week, they can earn about $240 a week or $960 a month from advertising revenue. However, a popular streamer with 20,000 concurrent viewers and $2.00 eCPM on the same schedule would make $40/hour or $1600/week or $6400/month.

And advertisements are only one revenue path. 100 subscribers would equate to $250 extra per month for new Twtich Partners, while those on the 60/40 plan could net $3000 extra per month from 1000 dedicated subscribers. Subscribing to a channel is a way for viewers to help support the streamers they enjoy and almost every streamer has a donate button via PayPal. Many streamers will have a leaderboard showcasing their highest monthly donations, with some receiving thousands in donations per month.

Aside from advertisements and subscribers, streamers have three more options to pull in money. Sponsorships are one of the primary contributing factors to streaming revenue. They either partner up with the eSports organization as a whole -- such as the eSports team -- or the individual streamer. These sponsorships fluctuate greatly and as a result are more of an unknown variable that adds on to streamer incomes. As an example, the League of Legends team "Team Dignitas" stated their first sponsorship was for $18,000 but have grown to accumulate over $1.6 million in 2014.

Streamers also have a digital space below their broadcast to include information, links, and other media. For example, Imaqtpie has a donation button, sponsorship links and images, and affiliate links to Amazon:

Image captured from Imaqtpie's Twitch stream

Amazon's affiliate program offers 4 percent on anything purchased within 24 hours and scales up to 8.5 percent depending on how much monthly traffic you can send them. If 100 people per month purchase $500 worth of gaming gear listed on his channel page, Imaqtpie would earn $3,250 per month just from Amazon's affiliate program. Similarly, the gaming marketplace G2A offers their own referral program that specifically favors the gaming industry and offers three ways for streamers to make money of their links.

The fifth and final way streamers turn their time into dollars is by compiling some of their footage from streaming into videos to host on their YouTube channel, where they earn money based on YouTube's advertisement model. Under this model, streamers can make an average of $0.90 CPM for video banner ads and an average of $6.50 for pre-roll video ads.

Image via Trump's Twitch channel

Jeffery Shih, aka "Trump," is one of the most popular streamers in the gaming niche, notorious for his Hearthstone videos. In an interview with Forbes, Trump explains that top streamers easily make $100,000 and more annually, also confirming that sponsorships make up a big part of this income. Some players also offer coaching lessons for a premium, with reports of $1,500 per month for private StarCraft II lessons. But reaching this level is no easy task and requires years of building a following, developing an on-camera personality, and above all else, being consistent.

Just as Lebron James fans love watching highlight reels, the same goes for fans of professional eSports players. The entertainment factor is there; drama is devoured, rivalries sprout left and right, play-makers are revered as gods, and ultimately it's the fans who will decide the longevity of eSports and the viability of streaming video games as a career path.

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PVN - What Authors Can Learn From TV Writers

2015-03-27T06:26:00.007-07:00

I started writing for TV thirteen years ago, and in that time I've worked on five different shows and been a part of nearly three hundred scripts. I started writing my first novel, Pretty Ugly (available March 31st), seven and a half years ago, and in that time I've written one novel. Half of my professional writing career has been spent alone in a bunker-like room in my house writing and rewriting three hundred pages, roughly one half of a single season of TV. Granted, novels and TV shows are very different animals, but having now done both, I would like to pass along a few TV writing tricks that I believe would make writing books much easier.

First off, write with ten to twenty other really smart, funny people. This is a great way to get your work done faster. When I was writing animation there were times when we would need to work on five different scripts in a day. Because of our numbers, we were able to break off into smaller rooms and pitch jokes, or story fixes, or surf the Internet for movie trailers. When the small groups came back into the main room, there were usually five to ten good options to fix our problems. Can you imagine it? Options! Given to you by professional writers! I had none of that when I was writing my novel, Pretty Ugly, but it would have been so much easier if I had. Another benefit is that if there's a character in your book that is smarter than you are, you can always just ask the Harvard grads in the room to write that part. (There's always at least two, and they're easy to spot because they talk about going to Harvard a lot). While they work, you can go to the kitchen and get a handful of Goldfish crackers and a cheese stick (most TV writers eat like a toddler without parental supervision).

Speaking of food, even though writers spend most of their time sitting in a chair, hunched over a computer, they still work up a pretty healthy appetite. Nothing is more creatively stimulating to a writer than a delicious lunch, and nothing is more karmically satisfying than someone else paying for that lunch. I'm sure you've heard the saying, "there's no such thing as a free lunch," but if you're a TV writer, that's not true. Lunch is free every day! A young, eager, underpaid PA will go wherever you tell him or her to go and bring you back whatever you want, and the studio will pay for it! The PAs will also go to Starbucks for you, but you have to pony up for that yourself. But don't worry; you can usually convince the highest paid person in the room (usually one of the Harvard guys) to pay for everyone's coffee. When I was home writing my novel, Pretty Ugly (available March 31st), I had to physically get up from my desk and make or purchase my own lunch (and Starbucks). It was one of the hardest parts of writing the book as it cost me valuable time that could have been spent procrastinating or watching porn (which is not procrastinating, but an essential part of both TV and novel writing).

Something else you can do while writing your novel is ask network executives to give you notes to create problems that didn't exist before. This will be a nice writing exercise that won't help you become a better writer or write a better book, but it will give the ten to twenty other writers you're working with something to complain about. The executives will also offer helpful writing tips like, "start the story earlier," or "make sure your main character is good at their job." Characters being good at their jobs is very important to network executives. I once worked on a comedy where an executive told me, "the audience doesn't have to understand what the character does for a living, they just have to know she's good at it." Because as we all know, nothing is funnier than competence and a strong work ethic. (NOTE: To any network executives who might be reading this, I'm not talking about you. You're awesome! I'm talking about those other execs. The bad ones. You know who I'm talking about.)

By this point you're probably saying to yourself, "this is all incredibly helpful advice, thank you, but how do I know what my novel should be about?" Again, TV is a great model. You have to choose something easily marketable that can be explained in a single sentence. Something like: good-looking high school doctors in Brooklyn; or fat, stupid, blue collar guy and his good-looking wife raise kids in Chicago; or good-looking white cop and good-looking black cop fight crime in New Orleans (and one good-looking cop is gay, testing will determine which one). Also, it's very important to write something that has been successful before. Remember, it's not derivative if it makes money. The networks have been trying to recreate the success of Friends since it went off the air in 2004, so might I suggest a novel about six attractive twentysomethings living in New York City. At the very least you can sell the TV rights to the book. Just remember to make sure everyone is really good at their jobs.

Kirker Butler grew up in Hartford, Kentucky ("Home of 2000 Happy People and a Few Soreheads"), and now lives in Los Angeles where he is an Emmy nominated writer and producer. His credits include Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, and Galavant. He's the author of the novel, Pretty Ugly.

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PVN - 5 Things You Should Probably Be Buying At Costco

2015-03-27T06:26:00.005-07:00

This post was originally published on Consumerist:

Costco members know they can often get a decent price on name-brand kitchen staples by shopping in bulk at the warehouse store. But if you’ve been ignoring the company’s store-brand Kirkland Signature line of products, you might be passing up on a chance to save even more without sacrificing quality.

Our colleagues at Consumer Reports have put together this longer list of ways to get the most out of a Costco membership, but we’ve pulled out the items that relate to Kirkland Signature products that can trim your shopping expenses without making you wish you’d spent more:

1. Laundry Detergent

Consumer Reports’ testing on Kirkland Signature Free & Clear liquid detergent found that it was tough on grass, blood, and ring-around-the-collar. It was as effective as the top-rated Tide Plus Ultra Stain Release, but at $.11/load, it’s less than half the cost of the Tide ($.25/load).

If detergent pods are more your thing, the Kirkland Signature Ultra Clean Pacs ($.15/load) also proved effective as vanquishing these stains.

2. Bacon

Store-brand bacon is rarely worth the savings, but Consumer Reports says that the Kirkland Signature Regular Sliced Bacon has a good crispiness and balance of fat and meat flavors. The price varies by location, but you can save around $1.50/lb over famous name brands.

3. Mayonnaise

This one may be sacrilege to devotees of Hellmann’s, but CR’s blind taste tests found that Kirkland Signature Real Mayonnaise is just as good as the more popular mayo brand. At only 60% of the cost of Hellmann’s, it might be worth trying that taste test out for yourself.

4. Batteries

Sure, you can save big on name-brand batteries when you buy in bulk at Costco, but the bulk pack of Kirkland Signature AA Alkaline batteries, which were rated excellent overall by CR, brings the per-batter price down to around $.27.

5. Organic Chicken Stock

When you hear “organic,” your instinct might be to also see dollar signs. But Consumer Reports says the Kirkland Signature organic chicken stock “served up impressive flavors, and at $12 for a case of six 32-ounce containers, it was about half the price of other top-scoring products from Knorr and Swanson.”

Check out the Consumer Reports story for more info on how to save at Costco.

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PVN - Syria's Bashar Assad Says 'Open' To Dialogue With U.S.

2015-03-27T06:26:00.003-07:00

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad says he would be "open" to a dialogue with the United States, but that it must be "based on mutual respect."

Assad made the remarks in an interview with Charlie Rose for CBS News' 60 Minutes. A short excerpt of the interview was posted online late Thursday. In the clip, Assad said that, in principle, "every dialogue is a positive thing, and we are going to be open to any dialogue with anyone, including the United States." He said there is no direct communication so far with Washington.

Assad's comments come after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said earlier this month that the U.S. must eventually talk with the Syrian government to help broker an end to the country's civil war. The Obama administration later reiterated its position that Assad has no future role in Syria.

"I would say what we have in Syria so far is only a statement, nothing concrete yet, no facts, no new reality regarding the political approach of the United States toward our situation, our problem, our conflict in Syria," Assad said in the interview.

Washington has long pushed for a negotiated political settlement to Syria's conflict, which has killed more than 220,000 people and wounded 1 million more. The U.S. helped coax Assad's government and its opponents to the negotiating table early last year, although those talks then collapsed after two rounds without making progress.

Since Syria's uprising began in March 2011, Assad's government has publicly supported international diplomatic efforts to ease or resolve the conflict, while simultaneously ignoring commitments it has made under brokered agreements.

In a separate interview with a group of Russian journalists, Assad lauded a Russian initiative to nurture talks between Syrian government representatives and the opposition in Moscow. Russia is a close ally of Assad.

A first round of talks in Moscow in January made no headway.

The main-Western backed opposition Syrian Nation Coalition shunned the meeting because it did not aim to remove Assad from power. The Coalition has said it will skip a second round of talks scheduled for next month.

"In order for this dialogue to succeed, it should be purely Syrian," Assad said, according to a transcript of the round table published by the SANA state news agency. "In other words, there shouldn't be any outside influence on the participants in this dialogue."

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PVN - Seth Cohen Would Still Completely Love Death Cab For Cutie

2015-03-27T06:26:00.001-07:00

On a snowy night in January, Death Cab for Cutie packed Music Hall of Williamsburg, a much smaller venue than the band usually plays. In a few months, they’ll come back to New York and take on a bigger space, the holy grail of arena stops -- Madison Square Garden -- but in a small room in Brooklyn, 550 fans bundled together to stay warm and sing loud.

Ben Gibbard, the band’s forever frontman, known for his unapologetic love songs, bounced from one foot to the other, shielding himself with his guitar. His legs seemed unattached from his body as he sang lyrics that ended up on “The O.C.” in 2003. He got through “You Are a Tourist” and “Doors Unlocked and Open,” the two songs from the band’s 2011 album “Codes and Keys” that people still want to hear. Who cares that they’re about his ex-wife, Zooey Deschanel, or that the entire album now sounds like it was written by a man unaware of his own demise (and impending divorce)? To the people in the room, the fans who trekked through the snow, they’re about the person standing by their side, who they’re maybe still in love with.

And when the band bounded into “Black Sun,” the first single off Death Cab's new album, “Kintsugi,” the crowd dug it. “I feel like this batch of songs fits fairly seamlessly in with the old material that maybe some stuff on the last record didn’t,” Gibbard had said a few days before. “Every time we played a set that has new material in it, it always feels like we’re flying down the highway and we have to throw the brakes on for the new songs. Like you see a cop with a radar gun, like slow down.”

Gibbard began the show’s encore with an acoustic version of “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” sweat dripping onto his gray pleated trousers. The familiar words ached and stretched as he sang. He sounded good. The new songs sounded good, and the crowd realized: Death Cab’s only speeding up.

Earlier that week, Gibbard, drummer Jason McGerr and bassist Nick Harmer sat in a cushy room at Atlantic Records’ offices. They had just barely made it into New York before winter storm Juno picked up speed, and were downing drugstore remedies to fight off colds. Handlers brought in soup and Saltine crackers. They pressed their faces up to the window of the midtown skyscraper to watch snow fall on Manhattan.

It’s just the three of them now, though they’re accompanied by two new touring members (Dave Depper and Zac Rae). Last August, Chris Walla, the band’s founding guitarist and producer, announced that he would leave Death Cab after 17 years, via a column in Seattle alt-weekly paper, The Stranger. “Moving forward, my plans are simply to continue making music, producing records, and erring on the side of benevolence and beauty whenever possible,” he wrote. “Darkness may find me, but I shall never choose it.”

The band knew it was coming. About a month after they started recording the new record, Walla told them he was planning to leave. ”He didn’t realize he was in a rock band until five years into the band,” Gibbard said. “I think he kind of came to the conclusion it was time for him to follow what he felt was his true calling. It’s bittersweet. There’s the relief that it’s finally happened and ...”

“There’s the sadness that it’s happening,” Harmer said, finishing Gibbard's sentence.

“I think in the long run, we’ll all be better for it,” Gibbard said; Harmer agreed, “100 percent.”

“It'll be better for everybody if we’re all doing what we want to be doing,” Gibbard reasoned. “If Chris decided he wanted to focus on production and other projects and move on to other phases in his life. I’d much rather him do that than stay and not be happy. “

Walla’s departure signaled a turning point that has only invigorated the band while they tour and promote “Kintsugi,” their eighth studio album. Walla stayed on to record the album from start to finish, but it was the first Death Cab album produced by an outsider, Rich Costey.

It's a reflective record, with obvious lyrics like, "You've haunted me all my life / You are the mistress I can't make a wife." With a comfortable sense of authority, it's a reminder of why you fell in love with “Transatlanticism,” “Plans” and Seth Cohen. On the surface, “Kintsugi” is a break-up record, a bounce back from “Codes and Keys,” which was met with a resounding “meh” from critics and fans. Listening to it now seems like a horrible “I told you so,” and if you know Gibbard’s love life, it’s almost easier not to listen to it at all.

“Divorce is an ugly and painful thing,” Gibbard said. From the man who wrote lyrics like, "You're the only song I want to hear," this sentiment stings. “As I was writing tracks for this record, I made the conscious decision to not edit that for fear of people either correctly or erroneously putting a face on some of these songs. They’re bound to do that no matter what I was writing about.”

Gibbard added, “Obviously, divorce is naturally going to hang over this record because it’s the thing people probably know the most about in the last two years.”

He explains, though, that songs such as “No Room In Frame” and “Binary Sea” are about other things, stuff like social media and fame and curiosity, things he observed and witnessed in the past few years. These tracks, the ones that seem to bite at no one in particular, are still riddled with the kind of anger and frustration reserved for an indie-emo band. What am I doing with my life? Fuck these feelings.

“Little Wanderer” is one of Gibbard’s favorite songs on the record. “There’s this trope in rock and roll music like, ‘I’m leaving baby and I gotta go on the road.’ It’s always written from the perspective of the person who’s leaving. I just thought it’d be interesting to write a song from the other side, the person who’s sitting at home waiting for the person," he said. "You’re gone a lot and you create a lighthouse of a person at home. But the lighthouse never gets to write its own song.”

And “Good Help” focuses on Gibbard’s time in Los Angeles -- living with Deschanel -- and the people who’d been addled by fame.

“I’ve never been in so many contact with people who had created a world around them that was basically there to tell them what they wanted to hear. I think that fame freezes people at the age at which you got famous. If you watch a documentary about a rock band and they’re super super famous and they’re acting like 19 year olds, it’s like oh yeah because they got famous when they were 19," he said. "There was never anybody around to tell them what they were doing was not fucking cool. I think the entertainment industry is wrought with people who have had their development arrested at a certain point because of that. I have empathy for that.”

Coming from a Grammy-nominated band a raised eyebrow seems appropriate. “You’d have to ask someone else,” Gibbard said when asked if they saw some of that in the mirror.

“We were never on that kind of rocketship,” Harmer said. “At no point did I wake up and find myself in a room or surrounded by people that I had no idea how I got here or now they got here or anything. Where we’re from, valet parking is something that just isn’t ... what is that? Our environment doesn’t support that culture.”

That environment is Seattle. Death Cab for Cutie is as much a part of the Pacific Northwest as bands like Pearl Jam or Sleater-Kinney. “The city of Seattle and the Northwest in general doesn’t tolerate rock star bullshit,” Gibbard said. “It’s the reason you still see the Pearl Jam guys around town in the community. If you heard about one of us going to a restaurant in Seattle and demanding a table because we were in Death Cab for Cutie, we would get laughed out of the city.”

"I need you so much closer” -- it’s perhaps the most famous Death Cab lyric, the “Transatlanticism” refrain that’s held out eight times in a row, four times in a row, until it’s just a thirsty whisper. It’s the title track on the band’s most well-known and beloved album, and in Williamsburg, 12 years after it was released, Gibbard sung it over and over again. He leaned forward as his hair drooped over his face, stopping just above his nose.

“The kid who fell in love with ‘Transatlantcism,’ we can’t recreate that moment for them,” Gibbard had said in Atlantic’s studio. “But I want to make something that reminds people who have been fans for a long time what they love about the band. If we were trying to be relevant we would be making music that sounds like Animal Collective. It doesn’t matter if it’s relevant to what Pitchfork is writing about. It matters about what’s relevant in their lives. To me that’s the goal.”

Death Cab for Cutie's "Kintsugi" is due out March 31 via Atlantic Records, and is available to stream via NPR.

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PVN - PBA: Purefoods destroys Alaska by 34 points

2015-03-27T06:13:00.001-07:00

The Purefoods Star Hotshots showed no mercy en route to a demolition of the Alaska Aces in the opening game of their best-of-three Commissioner's Cup quarterfinals series on Friday at SMART Araneta Coliseum.

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PVN - Rand Paul's Spectacular Crash: How A Man Of Principle Turned Into A Generic Politician

2015-03-27T06:07:00.011-07:00

With 2016 approaching, Rand Paul compromises another core principle and proposes billions more in military spending

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PVN - 7 Germ Havens You Probably Forgot To Clean

2015-03-27T06:07:00.009-07:00

PVN - Six Science-Based Ways That Money Actually Can Buy Happiness

2015-03-27T06:07:00.007-07:00

How much is happiness worth to you? Placing a price tag on emotional well-being may seem like a slippery slope, but scientists have a lot to say about the intersection between happiness and the money we spend.

Will the emotional value of a $300 blouse by a Parisian designer really outweigh the satisfaction of a similar one plucked from the clearance rack? Does forgoing affordable indulgences make you frugal — or does it mean you don’t think you deserve what you want? There is growing research that denial of pleasures (when you have the budget for them) isn’t necessarily good for you.

In fact, it looks like happiness can be bought. One caveat: As you might have suspected, not all splurges are alike. So, what kinds of purchases offer the greatest happiness?

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PVN - Who Is Closing PA Schools?

2015-03-27T06:07:00.005-07:00

Over the past few months I have attended two public hearings in two separate school districts about the closing of two separate rural elementary schools, and they show pretty clearly the giant disconnect that allows the assault on public education to continue unchecked.

People pay a lot of attention to the marquee school financial crises in PA like York and Philadelphia, but the same plague of budget-driven school closings is spreading across Pennsylvania's small districts as well.

It is not simply a matter of declining student population, and it is not a matter of district tax bases falling on tough times. School districts across PA did not mysteriously simultaneously elect budgetary nincompoops. It's a widespread financial crisis, and it's manufactured.

How to manufacture a statewide financial crisis.

Like every other state in the U.S., we face certain financial challenges. But it takes some extra steps to turn a challenge into a crisis.

Cut state funding. This puts the making-up-the-difference pressure on local taxpayers. Pennsylvania is in the bottom ten for the state's contribution to local school revenue. That helps PA maintain one of the largest spending gaps between rich and poor schools in the country.

Take a ton of money away from public schools and give it to charters. When a public school student takes $10 K of local tax money away to a charter or cyber-charter, the local school district's costs do not decrease by $10 K.

Create a huge pension funding crisis. This is its own kind of challenge, but the quick explanation is this -- pre-2008, invest in really awesome stuff, and when that all tanks and districts suddenly have huge payments to make up, tell the districts they can just wait till later and hope for magic financial fairies to fix it. It is now later, there are no fairies, and a small district with an $18 million budget is looking at pension payments that go up $500K every year.

Oh, and pass a law that says districts can't raise taxes more than a smidge in any given year.

Add political gamesmanship.

Governor Tom Wolf announced his budget proposal, including increased funding for schools and an end to the charter leeching. The GOP legislators at the state capitol sent out a letter saying, "Don't start counting on that. We'll make sure it never happens." The new secretary of education sent superintendents a letter saying, "By mid-May, I want a list of all the things you're going to spend your new money on." The legislators sent the secretary a letter and cc'd superintendents saying, "What are you talking about! How dare you make them account for imaginary money we'll never let them have."

The end result

Even small school districts are looking down the barrel of seven-figure deficits. The two deficits for which I have now been a power point audience can both be entirely explained by the formula:

Charter Payments + Pension Payment Increases + Other Tiny Obscure Cuts = District Deficit

In other words, a district that had a fiscally responsible year last year, that didn't do anything crazy or odd or unusual and just left everything alone when planning for this year -- that district is still facing huge deficits in their current budgeting cycle, unrelated to any choices that they made in managing their own local district.

But here comes the twist ending

In PA, districts have to have public hearings before they can close a school. The board is not really supposed to respond -- just listen. So the superintendent starts with a power point presentation, and then taxpayers line up to speak their minds, offer suggestion, and comment on what they think is wrong with the proposal.

Can you guess how many people step up to blame the lobbyists and legislators in Harrisburg?

They tell the board it's a bad board for putting finances ahead of education. They complain about the tax increases they imagine the board is going to vote for next. They suggest that teacher wages should be frozen and the superintendent should work for $1.98. They make emotional, tearful, sometimes child-delivered pleas for the board not to hurt their beloved community school. They hint that the school board has some dark, secret motive.

But nobody steps up to the mic and says, "People! We all need to go home and make phone calls and send emails to our representatives and senators and demand that they stop ripping the financial guts out of our school district. We need to hit them with all the emotional heavy artillery that we brought to this meeting and make them really feel our pain, because they are the ones who caused this crisis. They are the ones that create the policies that take our tax dollars away from our district. They are the ones who put our school board in the position of either cutting services or trying to plant a magical money tree in the back yard. They are the ones who are closing our schools."

It is some sort of amazing Jedi mind trick -- citizens and taxpayers are looking right past the causes of schools' financial problems and deciding to blame it all on local school boards. This is like when your Dad gets a pay cut and has to sell one of the cars, so you yell at him. This is like complaining to a shooting victim for getting blood all over your coat. This is like having someone pick your pocket and demanding that the police arrest your pants.

I feel their pain. I really feel their pain. But I also know that school boards can't spend money they don't have just because they want to spend it on really important things. And I also know that closing a community school is a terrible thing that is bad for education, the community, and the students. And I also know that some districts have are led by creative problem solvers and some are led by hapless problem creators. Many districts socked money away for a rainy day, and they guard it jealously, but now it's monsoon season and we're looking at a legislator-made deluge of well more than forty days. Pennsylvania's leaders have created an environment that requires local school districts to have either A) a miracle worker or B) a bunch of wealthy taxpayers.

As educators, we have a big educating task in front of us. People have got to apply political leverage where it matters -- on the legislators and policymakers who create these ugly messes. Public education is being starved, and somehow we've got people blaming the bowl, the spoon, the table, the starving person herself -- everyone except the real people in the kitchen who are withholding food. If we can't change that, the forces arrayed against public education will win.

Originally posted in Curmudgucation.

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PVN - Getting the Word Out in a Post-Critic World

2015-03-27T06:07:00.003-07:00

We are living in the great age of opinion-writing, of critiques and commentaries, so why have so many of the art critics disappeared from major metropolitan newspapers? (Hint: It's not just fine arts but book and performing arts critics as well.) Perhaps more importantly, what does this mean for artists looking to advance their careers?

For most of the postwar era, and even before that, critics have acted as the conduit between artists and the general public, and artists have relied on reviews to generate discussion of, and interest in, their work. Sometimes, that has led to contentious relationships between artists and critics, but even an unfavorable review produces awareness. As the songwriter George M. Cohan reportedly said, "I don't care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right."

These days, a lot less is being said. Newspapers that used to have full-time art critics no longer do, and the jobs of writers who were hired originally as critics have morphed into general assignment feature writers who may get to do an occasional review.

The declining number of newspaper art critics alarms Eleanor Heartney, a past president of the United States section of the International Association of Art Critics, who described "a trend in publications away from substance. Artists are treated as entertainment." However, the job-downgrading does not reflect an antipathy to the arts but a sense that "full-time critics are viewed as a luxury," according to one major newspaper editor.

However, the lack of art reviews hasn't had an adverse effect on museum and gallery attendance, nor on sales. As one gallery claimed, "younger customers aren't newspaper readers anyway."

Certainly, the disappearing newspaper critic has made the job of promoting artists and their exhibitions much more difficult, leading to different strategies. Shannon Wilkinson, president of Cultural Communications, a New York City-based public relations company specializing in the arts, noted that newspaper executives have found "the level of art advertising is too low to merit paying critics' salaries." She recommended advertising in newspapers and magazines, because advertisers "are more likely to get reviewed, although that's not a guarantee." She also stated that arranging an exhibition overseas, particularly Europe where the major newspapers still have salaried critics, is a way of obtaining critical attention, and "writers in the U.S. pay more attention to artists who have been written up in Europe."

The experience in one city after another demonstrates that galleries don't necessarily require reviews to promote their exhibits to the public and have strong sales. Perhaps, it also reveals that individual artists may not need critics to validate their careers either. Artists often stockpile reviews, which are placed in media kits that are mailed to editors and writers at newspapers and magazines in advance of an exhibition. The kits usually contain a brief biography (in narrative or resume form), images of their work (slides, photographs or a CD-ROM), occasionally an Artist Statement (noting sources of inspiration, the technical process involved in the artmaking, artistic influences or past projects), as well as past reviews and feature articles about the artist. These reviews and articles are important both to editors, want to know that the artist has been deemed worthy to be written about in the past, and to writers, want to know what others have said. Media kits still have their place, but in the new world of declining newspaper readership and growing use of the Internet as a primary source of information, artists, galleries and museums are also finding different, increasingly online, ways to promote themselves to journalists, collectors and the general public.

Marketing to the Internet has proven successful in various realms of the arts, adding that correlations have been found between popular music albums that are mentioned in numerous blogs and increased sales of these recordings, as well as the fact that heavily blogged news stories are more likely to air on the evening news.

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PVN - How Kimanzi Constable Left a Job He Hated and is Now Living His Dream

2015-03-27T06:07:00.001-07:00

Being an entrepreneur is a tough business. Almost immediately, the odds are stacked against you:

The hours are long

The pay is sporadic

You have to fight your demons

The gatekeepers happily tell you -- "You not good enough!"

So while Hollywood makes being an entrepreneur sexy -- the truth is, it's the furthest thing from sexy.

"The journey to create true freedom in every area of your life is hard."

-- Kimanzi Constable

Entrepreneurship is less about building a business and more about creating the freedom you want for your life.

Kimanzi Constable was trapped in a job that he hated, working 60+ hours a week and 170 pounds overweight. Until one day, Constable decided to stop living a life that sucked.

Kimanzi made the choice to take massive action, so he:

lost 170lbs

saved his marriage

left a job he hated

paid off180, 000 of debt

started an online business

moved to Hawaii

Constable gave himself and his family a better life. Let me show you how Kimanzi achieved these big goals.

The Interview

So who was Kimanzi Constable before he became a published author and coach?

He was and still is a regular guy. The difference is now I'm living my dream as a regular guy.

For 12 years, my life could best be described as "existing." I was 170 pounds overweight, working a job I hated, and living in a place I wanted to escape. Life sucked! The only thing that got me through some rough days was my amazing wife, beautiful children, and supportive friends.

For over a decade, you explained that you just "existed." What was the catalyst that made you want to live a life of purpose?

In 2011, we were $180,000 in debt; I was dealing with the weight issues and the terrible job. That year my wife and I separated. I wanted to win her back, but I knew words weren't good enough; I had to show her action.

That started me on a journey to radically change my life.

You have mentioned the phrase "negative people" a number of times. Why is it important that you identify and remove negative people from your life?

The journey to create true freedom in every area of your life is hard. You battle doubt and fear. Negative people feed into the struggle you already have going on inside of you. They make your self-limiting beliefs seem logical. They try to bring you down to their level.

To make real change, you need to cut anything negative out of your life.

Why is creating a passive income strategy important to any online business especially if you want the maximum amount of "freedom" in your life?

It's simple: time.

Time is the one thing none of us will ever get back, which makes time our most valuable resource. We can spend that time doing what we value the most in this world, or spend it trading time for dollars.

The passive side of things gives you time back. As you grow, so will the sales of your passive products.

When did you know it was time to leave your day job for your dream job? Was there a strategy?

At the end of 2012, my online business was generating $5,000 a month consistently. We had a large emergency fund just in case and had a healthy amount of events booked for 2013.

The plan was to pay off the debt, get some consistent income, and build that emergency fund. We took an entire year to make sure this was the right move for our family.

What advice can you give the aspiring entrepreneur that wants to be the next Kimanzi Constable?

Figure out what value you want to add to the world.

Figure out what you're passionate about and have interest in.

Research. Don't blindly follow popular advice just because someone else has had success doing it.

Keep it simple and don't wait until you have everything in place.

Focus on producing great content. Create things that people buy, and sell those things.

Build a loyal following around what you do.

So what can a former bread delivery guy teach you about entrepreneurship?

Everything!

The Remarkable Few

Kimanzi Constable hated his work, and it negatively affected all parts of his life. Constable could have continued "existing" and remained a member of the unremarkably average.

But Kimanzi had another plan, he decided to join the ranks of the remarkable few. How -- Constable dedicated himself to grow intentionally.

Kimanzi studied entrepreneurs like Pat Flynn, who gave him the knowledge to launch a writing career and an online business. Constable's success has allowed him a great deal of freedom one of the most impressive has been his recent move to Hawaii.

Question: If you want a life of more freedom, it starts with you. You must get up and do it because it's necessary -- don't wait for motivation. What is something that you will do today to move closer to your dreams? Share your answers on Twitter.

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PVN - The Winter of Our Disconnect: A Love Story

2015-03-27T05:43:00.025-07:00

A yoga instructor recently encouraged our class to practice our most difficult poses with the understanding that all things come to an end. It's a bittersweet truth, and one easily lost under 108 inches of snow.

But she's right. All things -- even this terrible, now officially historic winter -- do come to an end.

And so did we.

After weeks of snow emergencies and parking bans and walking eight miles a day to and from work (thanks, MBTA), I needed to take my mind off things, and downward facing dog wasn't working, so I left the apartment taking with me only a Zipcar reservation: unsure where it would lead me.

I drove by the old house. I had hoped they would have knocked it down by now. I would have felt relieved knowing the place we shared no longer existed. I would have one less thing that reminds me of you.

But the house still stands and it is more beautiful than I remember. Was it always yellow?

I saw the window of the second floor bathroom, which we left open by the way. We left in such a rush the last time we were there, and I don't think either of us really considered that we wouldn't be coming back. We sang and danced and fought for sink space in that bathroom. We weighed the cats and saved Turtle the Turtle. We tag-teamed a long night of food poisoning and battled regular anxiety attacks and promised each other we'd be ok. People can't see the life of that bathroom from the outside though. Just a weathered window into a dark room of an abandoned house.

The driveway is easy to miss under all that snow. We fought and slammed car doors and dreamed and drank in that driveway. We raced each other to the door and lingered under the stars for one more kiss. We forgot keys and wallets and hats. We debated moving in together and away together. We planned our next adventures and packed and moved from that driveway. Now you'd hardly know it was there.

I saw the backyard we talked about filling with our kids. I saw the trees you said you'd miss the most. I saw the blackberry bushes you ate from in the summer, and the Genesee Beer sign hanging in the front porch, a relic of house parties past. Your mailbox is missing. Did you take that with you? Seems like an odd thing for someone to steal.

Your new house is great, but we don't live there. You do. We will always live in that dumpy house next to your best friends and close to your parents. The house you sold one day on a whim. The house we left in a loaded truck last September. The house they'll knock down soon.

The sun shines a little longer these days, and the snow continues to melt, and soon this winter will exist only in exaggerated anecdotes swapped at summer BBQs. We may even reach a point when we will hardly believe it happened at all.

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PVN - NCAA Schools Can Absolutely Afford To Pay College Athletes, Economists Say

2015-03-27T05:43:00.023-07:00

A growing chorus of critics are calling for the National Collegiate Athletic Association to pay student-athletes. Just this month, a coalition of professors banded together in support of labor rights for men’s football and basketball players. And just this week, former NCAA basketball stars Ed O’Bannon and Shane Battier said student-athletes should be compensated for their hard work.

But ask the NCAA and its member institutions whether they can afford to pay student-athletes, and their bottom line is clear: no.

That’s what the NCAA implied when The Huffington Post posed that exact question earlier this week. Spokeswoman Meghan Durham said that only 20 of the roughly 1,100 schools that constitute the NCAA make more from sports than they spend on sports, according to the association’s most recent estimates. Earlier this month, ESPN reported that over two-fifths of the teams in the March Madness tournament either broke even or lost money last year.

John Oliver wants the NCAA to pay its players, but can they afford it? (Video from YouTube)

That so many athletic programs are struggling just to break even would seem to make nonstarters out of all the ethical and legal arguments surrounding the issue. Why waste breath on such questions when the schools couldn’t afford to pay the players if they wanted to?

But when The Huffington Post asked five sports economists whether the NCAA and its member institutions could afford to pay student-athletes, the response was quite different: a resounding yes. Some of the economists were almost surprised by the question; the answer seemed so obvious to them.

“It’s pretty clear that they would be able to,” said David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University. “I don’t see any reason that they wouldn’t be able to, in fact.”

As Rodney Fort, a sports economist and professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, succinctly put it, “The money is already there.” The NCAA alone brought in nearly a billion dollars in revenue in its most recent financial year, and top-tier athletic programs regularly bring in tens of millions of dollars as well.

Sure, you might say, there’s a lot of money coming in. But if the schools are still losing money or only breaking even on their sports programs, won’t additional labor costs hurt those programs and the schools?

“That’s a silly argument,” Berri said. “They’re nonprofits, and their incentive is to spend every cent that comes in.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t making money,” he added. “That just means they spent all of it.”

The money at a nonprofit needs to go somewhere, which may explain the building of many state-of-the-art facilities. (Photo: RollTide.com)

Duke’s athletic program, for example, pulled in revenue of nearly $80 million during a recent fiscal year. But it ended up with just $146,000 in excess revenue. That’s also why the NCAA had a surplus of only $80 million on $989 million in revenue for its last fiscal year.

The system is set up so that almost all the money that comes in from college athletics is soon spent.

“Schools quite often move around or spend money to basically get rid of excess revenue -- what would be called profit in a profit-making corporation,” said Michael Leeds, a professor of economics at Temple University. “‘[That’s why] you have several coaches [in the NCAA] getting paid NFL money, despite working for an enterprise that really does not match what the New England Patriots and the New York Giants take in.”

That would explain why some universities end up with state-of-the-art sports facilities. Or why Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski makes nearly $10 million per year, much more than the typical NBA coach. Or why in so many states, the best-paid public employee is a basketball or football coach.

That's a lot of coaches. (Source: Deadspin)

To pay the players would simply require a reallocation of resources, the economists said. Assuming the university declined to increase the football or basketball team's funding, that program would just have to move the money from some other part of its budget.

Most of the economists agreed that it would likely be the highly paid coaches and athletic directors who would take the hardest hit if players were paid. Andrew Zimbalist, the Robert A. Woods professor of economics at Smith College, said that it might take a few years for head coaches’ salaries to adjust to the new economic reality, but in time there would probably be less pay for people like Coach K.

That would explain in part why some coaches so vehemently oppose the idea of a system in which players get paid.

“The coaches very likely are very upset over [the prospect of] players being paid because, for one thing, that means a pay cut for them,” Leeds said.

“A for-profit business would not give Mike Krzyzewski $10 million,” said Southern Utah professor David Berri. (Photo: AP)

But Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist working in the sport management department at the University of Michigan, argued that head coaches should not fear a world in which student-athletes get paid.

“I don’t see the process by which coaches suddenly become less valuable,” he said. “I think they’ll [just] demand a bigger allocation from the university.”

The coaching change that Szymanski expects if players start making money is not one of pay levels, but one of skills valued. In a world in which student-athletes are paid, he said, coaches would likely be compensated less for their recruiting abilities -- the money will talk, after all -- and more for their coaching abilities.

David Carter, executive director of the USC Marshall Sports Business Institute, agreed with the economists’ conclusion that many top athletic programs could afford to pay players without any “devastating effects.” But he worried that such a change would lead to “further polarization” between the haves and have-nots of college sports.

That concern is the same one voiced by President Barack Obama in a sit-down interview with HuffPost last week. Obama expressed some frustration with the way universities treat student-athletes -- suggesting that universities guarantee four-year athletic scholarships for students in good standing -- but said paying athletes would lead to “bidding wars” that would “ruin the sense of college sports."

To a degree, that’s likely true. Sports programs at smaller colleges often have tighter budgets than the big names, and they might not choose to shift resources to pay student-athletes even if it were legal. That could hurt them in recruiting efforts.

But as the economists noted, the bidding wars Obama fears are already being waged. Duke basketball is already a powerhouse; Kentucky basketball is already a recruiting machine. Allowing colleges to pay players may give the top-tier programs with their greater revenue streams an additional recruiting advantage, but they already offer famous coaches, first-class facilities, greater visibility and a better shot at the big time, on top of the permitted scholarships. Jahlil Okafor already chose Duke, and Karl-Anthony Towns already goes to Kentucky.

HuffPost asked the five schools in the March Madness tournament that lost money on their athletic programs last year and the five schools that earned the most profit about paying their student-athletes. None of them directly addressed the issue.

So, yes, there are still moral and legal concerns about paying student-athletes. But when it comes to whether the NCAA and its member institutions can afford it, the answer appears to be absolutely yes -- and that shouldn’t be surprising.

“This is not arcane theory,” Leeds said. “This is something that ‘Intro to Econ 101’ students would be able to tell you.”

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