My Lost Examiner Article

As a follow-up to yesterday's rant about examiner.com, here's the infamous (in my own mind), never-posted second piece I wrote for the site. Was it unpublishable? You be the judge. Or the jury. Maybe I should call in some surprise witnesses to influence your decision, each more surprising than the last. Bring 'em in, boys!

Chocolate ice cream, peanut butter, and bourbon: a novel milkshake

In London, there's a chain of American-style diners called, appropriately, The Diner. The food is decent when you've got a craving for fare like hamburgers and mac and cheese or even a bottle of Sam Adams Boston Lager. Most importantly, though, The Diner serves "hard shakes," or alcoholic milkshakes, a market woefully untapped in America.

The best of the bunch is one made with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, and Four Roses bourbon and called "The Colonel Parker," named after Elvis Presley's manager. (Was the Colonel fond of Four Roses? Was this a signature drink of his? I don't quite understand the reference, so please, enlighten me if possible.) Here’s a chocolaty homage to The Diner’s delightful drink, which should easily serve two.
Ingredients:

1-3 cups of chocolate ice cream
½-1 cup of peanut butter
¼-½ cup of milk
3-6 ounces (or 2-4 shot glasses) of bourbon
Optional: hot fudge (homemade or store-bought)

This is a simple and decadent treat to blend up at home. Combine the ingredients in any order in the blender (the superb Euro-Pro Ninja Master was used here) and pulse in 5 second intervals until there are no lumps. The amounts listed are a very rough guideline, so sample the shake as you’re making it and adjust proportions based on desired strength. For example, if you taste your shake and find the peanut butter is being drowned out, simply add another spoonful of peanut butter and blend again.

For this recipe I grabbed what was in the kitchen, but substitutions are easy and encouraged. I used a mix of the local Smiling Hill Farm’s Dark Chocolate ice cream, acquired at the ever-enticing Rosemont Munjoy Hill in Portland, and Stone Ridge Creamery’s Chocolate Fudge ice cream. The peanut butter was standard Jif. Organic might work, though the consistency and taste are different enough that there's no guarantee.

The hot fudge was homemade but any, or none, will do. The milk was fat free, but a drink like this practically begs for a higher fat content. As for choosing a bourbon, don't worry about getting fancy here. Unless you refuse to touch cheap bourbon, use something low-end for this recipe and save your top shelf liquor for a glass with a couple of ice cubes.

This is an excellent dessert with two caveats. First, the consistency was a little thin even with all the peanut butter, so suggestions for thickening homemade milk shakes without sacrificing flavor are very welcome. Second, generally speaking chocolate is superior to vanilla. In this case, however, an exception could certainly be made. Vanilla ice cream is milder, allowing the other ingredients in this shake to really shine, while chocolate was nearly overpowering. If, unlike me, you have vanilla ice cream, try the recipe with that (leave out the hot fudge if you do, naturally). Bottoms up!

My Brief Stint as an Examiner

For those of you who show up expecting a Big Bird fix, I apologize for the interruption, but this isn't strictly a Big Bird blog (yet), so settle down. When I get another picture in my email or when I figure out how my parents' scanner works so I can scan the latest (hand-drawn) picture, regular muppet service will resume. In the meantime, either read this regrettably long, semi-serious rant or get to work drawing me pictures. Can you do any less?

Begin rant.

Recently I started writing for examiner.com, an employer that is constantly bombarding job sites like monster.com. They're always looking for both national and local writers covering topics as broad as "Young Adult Pop Culture" and as specific as "The Beatles" -- though my dad might argue that "The Beatles" is just as broad a topic, so let's say there are topics as specific as..."Handbags." (Seriously. Who are these people?)

I didn't know if I was enough of an expert in any subject to qualify, but I finally bit when I saw a call for a local "Food and Drink" examiner. I figured, Hey, I eat food and drink drinks. I also figured, Hey, I'm already cooking and blogging about cooking pretty regularly. I went on to figure, Hey, the Portland area's not a bad one for covering local food and drink. Finally, I figured, Hey, if I could continue doing what I was doing but get some slight professional cred along with some slight monetary compensation, so much the better.

I'm good with figures.

I was kind of excited, and for my first official article I fleshed out my application's sample piece about LeRoux Kitchen's Baker's Thursday event. I saved it for the editorial team to review it, which is allegedly what they do with each article before it goes live. My article passed muster, it went live, and I was officially a published Examiner. I posted a link to my piece on LeRoux's Facebook page so they could see the positive review. Slight professional cred attained! Cool.

Examiner.com wants you to write at least two or three pieces a week, so a few days later I put together a little recipe for a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bourbon Milkshake. Stasia and I had recently made it, it was good and simple, and I even had a couple pictures I could run with the article. I saved it for the editorial team to review it. I waited.

And I never heard back.

If that were the only problem, I would have made an effort. It would probably be simple enough to contact someone at examiner.com, figure out what went wrong, sort it out, maybe alter or scrap the article if for some reason it didn't follow their rules or they didn't like it. But I had already been feeling uneasy about examiner.com. Here are the other major problems I have with that make me prefer to let the matter drop rather than pursue a working relationship with the site:

Examiner.com purports to pay based on factors such as page views, session length, and so on. That's not uncommon these days; in fact, it's very similar to Google Adsense's model, as far as I know. Here's the rub: nowhere will they tell you the formula for payment. Not even when you're "hired" and get your whole introductory spiel, which is mostly a few editorial rules and tips on how to navigate the site. So I'm just supposed to trust that I'll get my fair share of whatever advertising dollars they collect?

The only concrete figure given is $50: the amount of money you'll receive for each additional person you refer to examiner.com who gets accepted as a writer for the site. I know there are employers, such as summer camps, that thrive on word of mouth. But this feels less like a summer camp and more like a pyramid scheme. Keep drawing writers to the site, pound the Search Engine Optimization pavement, keep hitting the top of search engine lists, fill the site with obtrusive and aggravating advertising, toss a few cents around here and there, and profit at others' expense (okay, profit has to come at others' expense, but usually "others" are the consumers, not the workers).

These are the glaring issues, and there seems to be a lot more seething just beneath the surface, enough that my gut tells me to get out sooner rather than later. Google "examiner.com scam?" for yourself if you'd really like to know more, including the frighteningly conservative politics of the billionaire owner of Examiner.com, Philip Anschutz. When I didn't hear anything about my second article, it was the final push needed to convince me to sever my ties to examiner.com and stick to personal blogging for now. (Technically I didn't "sever" ties yet, so this is kind of like when I hated my coaches in college and "quit" track by never showing up again my senior year, or when I hated the Pope and "quit" the Catholic Church by never showing up again after being confirmed, Christmas mass notwithstanding. Actually quitting is harder than it sounds.)

My sister's working on her homepage and very generously offered me a sub-site, so maybe I'll take her up on that. I might not know her secret formula for paying me either, but I prefer her frighteningly liberal politics any day.

Battle Bird

Happy belated Easter. I spent mine with Stasia and lots of her mom's side of the family in NYC. In addition to involving delicious food and good company, it was a productive trip: I recruited at least one Big Bird artist, and perhaps more still to come.

Stasia's cousin Rachel Denny, awesome person and artist du jour, has this to say about her effort, which was done on her iPad: "I just spent about a half an hour trying to draw big bird. It looks like an oversized chick drawn by a first grader...." As mentioned recently, this is as good a season as any for chicks, so check it out:


That rocks.

Rachel sent this follow-up comment: "Looking at it again I realize that I only gave cookie monster one eye... strange...." Except it's not strange once you realize the 'roid rage driving this scene. How else do you explain Big Bird's high-pitched voice, compulsive work-outs, and sudden bulk?

Here's how it went down: Cookie Monster spilled one too many crumbs on Big Bird's well-preened coat and got his eye pecked out. Elmo tried to intervene, which led Big Bird to punch a hole directly through his fuzzy red stomach. Now that tickles.

Is this really Easter-appropriate? Big Bird's legs are practically melting with anger. I suppose if he loses an eye for an eye, Old Testament God will be satisfied.

And if I get more drawings, I'll be satisfied. At least temporarily.

Bulk Bird

Kyle Doran's twin, Brian Doran, feeling both the ancient spirit of sibling rivalry and the hereditary fondness for the spray paint feature overtaking him, emailed me a drawing from Japan yesterday, truly making my day:

Working both Big Bird and Cookie Monster into the image was pure class. Brian included a description which deserves to be seen as much as his drawing, which is why I'm posting it verbatim:

Alright, I'll bite. No way I'm going to be shown up by my brother.

This little ditty attempts to answer the age-old question of 'why did Cookie Monster' cross the road. It also features a rarely seen profile view of Cookie Monster, showing off his enviable cookie belly. While Cookie Monster does his thing, Big Bird is all business. Gotta bulk up for the show and make up for his high pitch voice.

Yeah, basically I have too much time at work. As a bonus, you can look closely and see when someone was walking behind me, as I tried to alt-tab while leaving the paint can in the same place.

There you have it: no additional commentary needed.

Additional drawings needed.

Tiny Bird

And now, a Big Bird selection from the inimitable Cyber Twan Dambrie with the following disclaimer: "I know it's terrible....but in my defense, I did it on my phone. Enjoy!"


Stasia exclaimed, "It doesn't really look like Big Bird, but it looks like a chick for Easter!" Anthony had no need to be modest: this is adorable and timely, what with Easter Sunday coming up. This creature belongs in a microwave next to an Easter Peep. We'll call this Big Bird's baby picture. At least it's not embarrassing. He could have been splashing around naked in the birdbath.

That's an impressive drawing for the iPhone. Simple and stylish. I'm not sure what app he used. On my iPod Touch I have the app Brushes, which I bought ages ago thinking it'd be sweet to draw on the go. But I hated trying to use such a small screen, scroll around, zoom in and out constantly, etc, so I almost never use it. I can't control the scale of my drawings, so I need a lot of space in case things sprawl wildly.

Also, on my original Big Bird post Stasia had commented about the accuracy of my drawing's "'guitar holding' pose" based on this diagram:


The link she posted to the diagram didn't work, so I wanted to make sure you all saw it. Stasia clarified, "That's not to say that the second arm never moves, but it requires a second puppeteer." Either way, go me. Please note: the Big Bird operator appears to be wearing solid 6 inch platform shoes. Maybe they should just hire a tall guy instead. Hint hint. Although I don't think I could pull off the high-pitched Big Bird voice, which would mean everyone's nightmare: more wrong sounding muppets. Can you imagine how frightened children would be if my voice came out of Big Bird?

I hope I get more Big Bird pictures. Even though Cookie Monster is my favorite. Feel free to draw him, too, if you're looking to truly make my day.

Little Bird

All the way from Armenia, a little birdie flew into my inbox a few days ago:

Kyle Doran, currently spreading peace in the European east and tipping the balance of this feature in favor of guys named Kyle, explains his drawing: "I took your challenge because I felt like the spray paint feature hadn't been featured enough, especially for someone with Big Bird's texture. Not sure why he looks ornery, but enjoy!"

And enjoy I do. This looks like a baby owl dressed up as Big Bird for Halloween. He's just now realizing how awful the paint fumes are, not to mention how long it will take to wash the yellow out of his feathers. (Plus his mom probably warned him of these downsides and he ignored her.) That would explain the orneriness. That and the coal-black eyes pecked out of Frosty the Snowman's melted-puddle corpse at the beginning of spring. Circle of life!

More Big Birds, I say.

Huge Bird

Yesterday, there was Big Bird. Today, there are Big Birds.

Since I sent out a challenge to Facebook daring all comers to try drawing Big Bird in MS Paint, a couple of brave souls have taken up their digital drawing tools and shown me what B.B. looks like in their heads.

Kyle Courcy, who does a comic called Cereal With a Fork for Boston's Weekly Dig and blogs over at this other place, showed me his "oddly morose" version, explaining his technique thusly: "Basically I drew a body around a yellow drumstick."

I don't think there's anything odd about his moroseness. This is the "before" picture: Bird before he stopped caring about the haters, threw on a pair of pink legwarmers and a splash of blue and pink mascara, and truly embraced his fabulous side.

Now here's another "after" image in the style of mine. Stasia took the touchscreen for a test run, insisting she could draw Big Bird from memory. Turns out she was more than half right, but being more talented than I am wasn't quite enough to fill in every blank. Her version is certainly fabulous, so see if you can spot her mistakes:

Anyone else care to contribute? Go ahead and look at pictures while you draw, I don't mind.

Large Bird

My parents have a touchscreen computer. No one uses the touchscreen but me, for when I occasionally draw these pictures. WORTH THE COST (that said, I don't know the cost).