Author: Jim Cofer

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Green Tabasco

From the “Holy Crap… I meant to post this four months ago!” Department:

Life is full of little mysteries, like where lost socks go, or what happened to those car keys I lost back in 1993. Some times the mysteries remain unsolved. But some times you actually get answers!

Back in the early 90s, the McIlhenny Company, makers of Tabasco sauce, released their first new sauce in what was then the 122 year history of the company. It was a green sauce, made from jalapeno peppers, and it was delicious! I bought a couple bottles, but the sauce then disappeared from store shelves. I kind of forgot about it for a time, then saw it again at my local Publix:

tabasco_green

But it seemed different somehow. To me, it lacked some of the “kick” I remembered. And for the life of me, I could swear that the bottle originally said “jalapeno sauce” instead of “green pepper sauce”.

Alas, no one else seemed to remember (or care) if the sauce had changed. Every so often I’d think of it, and do a Google search for “Tabasco Jalapeno sauce”. But Tabasco Jalapeno sauce came out a few years before the Internet, so I never really found anything about it. That is, until this past September. I once again did a Google search, only this time I found a picture of one of the original bottles:

tabasco_jalapeno

But why the name change? And did the company just change the name? Did they change the recipe, too? I sent the company a comment via their website, and then almost immediately forgot about it. I mean, how often do you leave a company a comment and never hear anything in return?

So I was surprised when Shane K. Bernard, the “Historian & Curator” of the McIlhenny Company (cool job!), emailed me a few days later. According to Bernard, former president and CEO Paul McIlhenny told him that the company did focus group testing on the new sauce and found that the public believed that “Tabasco jalapeno sauce” must be very hot, even hotter than original Tabasco sauce. Which was actually the exact opposite of what the company intended: a sauce milder than original Tabasco. So the company changed the name to make it seem less hot to the public.

But what about the recipe? According to Bernard:

“As for the taste, it should not have changed, since I believe it was still the same sauce, just re-branded.”

So… there ya go. Mystery solved!

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Quote of the Day

“He had no teeth, and he was slobbering all over himself. I’m thinking, ‘You can have your money back, just get me out of here. Let me go be an accountant.’ I can’t tell you how badly I wanted out of there.”

– John Elway, on Jack Lambert, after Lambert
knocked Elway out of his first game in 1983.

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Website Update

Dear Visitors:

It has come to my attention that my site has been displaying the mobile interface for all users for the past couple of days, and feeds might not be updating on your RSS clients. I have tracked down the issue to the Quick Cache plug-in, and have temporarily disabled it until a working version of the plug-in is released.

I’d like to apologize if you had a sub-par experience with the site, and hope you’ll come back now that it’s up and running again.

Thanks!

Jim

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(More) Music of 2013

If you’re a frequent visitor to this site, you’re probably sick of me exalting the virtues of Last.fm. And I wouldn’t blame you for that. But these “best of” lists generate a lot of traffic from new visitors, so forgive me if I offer a brief explanation of the service.

Last.fm is a website that keeps track of the music you listen to. You sign up for an account and download their software for your computer, smartphone or tablet. The software then uploads the names of the tracks you listen to; the site calls this “scrobbling”. You can then find artists similar to the bands you like, or find other users with similar tastes and see what they listen to. The site offers streaming radio based on several categories, including a particular artist you like, a genre you like, or your overall music preferences. And, if you’re a statistics junkie like me, you can just play around with the numbers. Go ahead and check out my profile if you wish.

Below is a bunch of information about my music listening habits of the past year, collected from December 15, 2012 until December 2013.

Artists

Here are my top artists of 2013. The number in parenthesis is the total number of times I’ve listened to the artist this year:

1) Marsheaux (741)
2) Saint Etienne (379)
3) The Raveonettes (317)
4) Washed Out (183)
5) CHVRCHES (130)
6) Owl Eyes (110)
7) Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (96)
8) Roxy Music (95)
9) Emilíana Torrini (66)
10) Le Blonde (55)

A couple of interesting points here: Owl Eyes and Le Blonde, two artists absent from my Best Albums of 2013 list, make this list, largely because of one song each. I listened to Owl Eyes’ song “Nightswim” over and over again, but the rest of the Nightswim album wasn’t nearly as good. And Le Blonde hasn’t released a full-length album yet; their only official release is a kickass cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Sisters of the Moon”, which I played over and over again the latter part of the year (this season’s American Horror Story: Coven helped).

Although Saint Etienne and The Raveonettes didn’t release new albums this year, it’s nice to see them hanging on to the #2 and #3 spots on the artists list. And Roxy Music is still hanging on after all these years, coming in at #8 with 95 plays during the year.

Songs

These are my most popular songs of the year, with the number of times played in parenthesis. This list is not limited to songs from 2013.

1) Marsheaux – “Secret Place” (102)
2) Marsheaux – “So Far” (96)
3) Owl Eyes – “Nightswim” (91)
4) The Raveonettes – “She Owns The Streets” (57)
5) Le Blonde – “Sisters of the Moon” (56)
6) Marsheaux – “To the End” (55)
7) Washed Out – “All Over Now” (49)
8) The Raveonettes – “The Beat Dies” (48)
9) CHVRCHES – “Recover” (44)
10) The Raveonettes – “You Hit Me (I’m Down)” (41)

As mentioned in my Best Albums of 2013 list, Marsheaux’s “Secret Place” really is my favorite song of the year! “So Far”, off the band’s 2009 album, Lumineux Noir, comes in a close second. Owl Eyes makes her sassy self known at #3, while The Raveonettes’ hit from last year’s Observator comes in at #4. The previously-mentioned Le Blonde cover comes in at #5. Two 2013 tracks from Marsheaux and Washed Out come in at numbers 6 and 7 respectively, while “The Beat Dies” (from The Raveonettes’ 2007 album Lust Lust Lust) is the oldest track on the list. I drove my girlfriend crazy with CHVRCHES’ “Recover”, which comes in at #9, while one more track from Observator, “You Hit Me (I’m Down)”, closes out the top 10.

Albums (Overall)

These are my top overall albums in 2013. They are not limited to 2013 releases. The first number in parenthesis is the number of plays, the second is the year of release.

1) Marsheaux – Inhale (383, 2013)
2) Marsheaux – Lumineux Noir (203, 2009)
3) Washed Out – Paracosm (145, 2013)
4) The Raveonettes – Observator (137, 2012)
5) CHVRCHES – The Bones of What You Believe (116, 2013)
6) The Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust (108, 2007)
7) Owl Eyes – Nightswim (108, 2013)
8) Saint Etienne – Words and Music by Saint Etienne (82, 2012)
9) Marsheaux – E-Bay Queen Is Dead (69, 2012)
10) Emilíana Torrini – Tookah (53, 2013)

Albums (2013)

These are my top overall albums of the year limited to 2013 releases only. The number in parenthesis is the number of plays,

1) Marsheaux – Inhale (383)
2) Washed Out – Paracosm (145)
3) CHVRCHES – The Bones of What You Believe (116)
4) Owl Eyes – Nightswim (108)
5) Emilíana Torrini – Tookah (53)
6) Nightlife – Days in Other Days (49)
7) Soft Metals – Lenses (43)
8) Postiljonen – Skyer (43)
9) Julianna Barwick – Nepenthe (43)
10) Clubfeet – Heirs and Graces (32)

More single-track shenanigans are at work here. In addition to Owl Eyes and “Nightswim”, Nightlife makes this list on the strength of the track “Worried Bird”, and Clubfeet make it for the song “Everything You Wanted”.