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Food train advice for Food Trucks

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been providing a mobile feast on a train since 1872, when the P.T. Barnum first put his circus entertainment on the rails. According to the Nation's Restaurant News, Ringling Brothers has two railroad routed shows, each running a mile-long train with about forty passenger cars and twenty freight cars. The train's mobile food car is responsible for feeding at any given time between 270 and 350 performers, from areas as far-flung and disparate as Morocco and China.

Michael Vaughn, the head chef, has to feed them 24/7 when the show is on the road. His train based operation has recently split-off its own food truck, Pie Car Jr., that moves to the tent for staff food service before, during and after circuses. They serve in excess of 2,500 meals a week.

He has some advice from his years of mobile operations experience for food truck operators, check it out here at the Nation's Restaurant News.

Twitter wisdom

Little shouts out of Twitter wisdom.

Firstly, from a music blogger we like, Lydia Simmons, "You must master your rage, or rage will become your master."

Ms. Simmons runs Sunset in the Rearview.

The other is from a Twitter feed called Eastern Health citing Carl Jung, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

The Early Morning

Does anything bad ever happen in the early morning?

Birds crowd on droopy telephone wires and sing towards your window replacing the radio from your alarm clock. Go ahead, yell. The birds are too happy to stop squawking. That black cable is their water cooler.

Drug dealers enter the paint-peeled squares as the worms burrow into the mud.

Bed monsters rub that weird shit out of their eyes, and sleeping beauties snore until their wives kiss them on the cheek.

Some wake up on the right side of the bed. Others, lie there and will continue to do so, until found days later.

Some wake up with wings, because last night after the party, they flipped from their backs, crawled over the tile floor, inched up to their blanket cocoons, and waited to become better. Much like it makes what was cold into warm, morning makes disgrace into opportunity.

The magical elves hide in the bushes, only leaving their morning dew as evidence of their presence. The stars take five to refuel their tanks, and end their opening act. Sunrise is soon. Turn off all cellphones so as not to disturb the audience.

It’s time for the eagers to feel the wooden floor with their toes and catch the cold water from the shower head. A shaving razor clinks against the side of a sink to lose the whiskers and cream. Cast off high heel shoes, cover the shag carpet, as a woman hops on one leg to slip on another likely rejection.

House doors are closed by night-shift workers and opened by diploma recipients. Joggers break their mothers’ backs and mommies reach into microwaves for the warm bottles. Two hands carry a bike out of a backyard and a car cranks from slumber.

Tires massage the highway’s back and vehicles honk good morning to one another. Middle fingers are shoved out of windows while peace signs are shown right back.

No, nothing bad happens in the morning.

Because too much is already going on.

Durham freestylers

A freestyle session filmed on Clarendon Street, Durham, 27705.

Funny ha-ha

Saw this funny photo on the Twitter feed of one Courtney Roskop.

Bittersweet

We saw this one on the Bill Simmons vehicle, Grantland, and had to repost it here on the Clarion Content. As Grantland contributor Katie Baker put it, "When life gives you lemons, feed them to an unsuspecting baby.

Adults will do that, and proceed to laugh about it.

A text from last night

The Clarion Content is an avid follower of the bemusing and outlandish smut that is published over at Texts from Last Night...

The best one we have seen in a while appeared yesterday, from the 678 area code.

I'm sorry. But when a stripper driving a Bentley tells me I have potential..... I gotta at least listen to her proposal. God did not mean for me to waste these tits on law school.

Whoa.

Sweet Tweets

Here are a couple of the funny tweets we saw yesterday on Twitter.


From Nikon is Love...the internal query, "Into me or into getting into me? #singlegirlproblems"

From Canadian Andrew Classon a youthful political perspective, “California aint a state its a army” [sic]


For those who don't speak the Twitter jargon a # is a hashtag, which indicates a subject or topic of the tweet.

It is a tough job...

but somebody has got to do it.


First of all, you have to spend all day around Hooters girls...

Terrance Marks was named the CEO of Hooters last week. Mr. Marks had previously served as the chief executive of The Pantry Inc., a convenience store chain which has more than 1,650 units in thirteen states. Before The Pantry, he had done twenty-one years at Coca-Cola.

Marks was quoted in the Nation's Restaurant News, "I am thrilled to be returning to Atlanta and am very excited to be joining the Hooters team. The opportunity to contribute to the growth of a great brand like Hooters is extremely energizing to me. In just a little over two decades Hooters has become known around the world for great American food, a fun environment, and, of course, the iconic Hooters Girls."

Yeah, it is a tough job...

Read more here.

Durham is dank…

Any fair-minded Durhamanian has to say that is, in part, because Duke is dank. The thought can’t help but pop into mind driving across the dirty D at 7.30am this second to last day of August. The Dukies are out and about, moving and shaking, getting more done before 9am and so on. Durham is charged with their energy. These peeps, many of them still young, shiny and new, were smart and driven enough to get into an institution that is billed in some corners as the Harvard of the South. Elsewhere the Dukies t-shirts proclaim Harvard to be the Duke of the North. The bottom-line for the denizens of Durham is that Duke brings swarms of talented, ambitious people to our town. Some of them end up loving it as much as we do and stay. After all, Durham is dank.

Tweet of the weekend

The tweet of the weekend^* comes to us from the Twitter account of one Abbey Robinson.

Everything tempting in my life comes wrapped in either a bow tie or a bojangles box. #southerngirlswagger

^*Caution this tweet may only be funny south of the Mason-Dixon line.

What they are watching... Episode XXII

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. We peer into their world through the lens of Youtube or in this case Vimeo. You may have caught some of our earlier episodes, if not, follow this link [and scroll down past this post].

Here DJ sensation Girl Talk has inspired some of his fans to make their own video. Personally, we love Girl Talk's mixology at the Clarion Content. He rocks.

Girl Walk // All Day from jacob krupnick.

Girl Talk played Wolfstock at the Raleigh Amphitheater last week with Clarion Content fave, LiLa

Office Music

What has been jamming in the Clarion Content offices all day?

This...





Special thanks to the Cota Flota channel for publishing this live video. Word is that LiLa's latest video is dropping Thursday, as in tomorrow. They are playing NC State's Wolfstock, opening for Girl Talk.

Desire and conquest

You met her with stone eyes, even though your insecurities tried to melt them into wax. She looked down, smiled, and the rest went to rest. Now, with her legs, she envelopes you like a pearl in an oyster. Her soft cheek hugging your hard shoulder and it's woman and man. In the dark, her eyes are holes that you've learned to recognize. You know her by the sound of her breathing, by the weight of her hand on your happy trail, and by how her hair tickles your nose, but doesn't make you want to sneeze. You try to imprint on your brain how the pressure from her feels on your stomach, chest, and knees so you can call her to mind, physically, when you're alone. But you're disappointing yourself, because now you'll never be alone. Comfortable loneliness is not having any Body around and no thought of one either, and with her, that will never be actual . But right now, you're brazen. You're selfish. And don't know how and don't want to be satisfied. So, you explore her back with knuckles and callous fingers, nearly crying to God to turn the dead tips of them pink so you could feel her winding road. You realize how much of her thigh fits in your palm and how far up your hand can go until her breathing halts. Which inch makes her sigh, which centimeter makes her stretch out, and which itch she dies for you to get. As you skate on her skin up her neck, she reels back and her hair hits your face making a splash. Almost arrogantly, you move up further into her field of a black mane, and make a fist to pull it back. She looks at you and spaces out completely gone. Completely gone. Because she's found the man to pull her reins.

...by That Solid Old Man

9th Street loses its comic book store

Durham's 9th Street, the heart of Duke's East Campus drag, has lost its comic book store. While we are accustom to the high turnover of the storefronts along 9th Street, Dogstar Tattoo for example recently decamped for Golden Belt, it was still sad to see Ultimate Comics go. The word is that Ultimate Comics moving to the Falconbridge Shopping Center on NC 54 near Mardi Gras Bowling. The 9th Street store has already shuttered its doors.

Disney characters breaking it down

Thanks to Courtney Roskop for tweeting about this bemusing video. We like, we like. It shows just because one wears a furry Disney character get up, it doesn't mean one has to jettison one's hipness.

Something new every day

Doesn't it feel like something new and potentially cool is opening in Durham every day? Now! In the middle of the Great Recession! Durham is vibrantly alive, bursting with energy and creative enthusiasm.

Three new(-ish) things opening in Durham that we heard about today.

First: Runaway Clothing, their website says they are a Southern lifestyle brand, created to answer the call for Southern style with urban appeal. They literally recommend that you run from convention and confinement. It is thus a little ironic that their shirts are available at the tony Morgan Imports on Gregson Street. But hey, the shirts are tight. Check them out here.

Second: The Bar, at #711 Rigsbee Street, whose soft opening is already underway. The grand opening is this Saturday, August 6th. Part of a Durham Central Park neighborhood renaissance that is already well underway, the bar is advertising weekly dance parties on its site and billing itself as the Triangle's neighborhood LGBTQ bar. Their self-declared goal, a place that melds a "corner bar" feel during the week, with a popular club attitude on Friday and Saturday nights. We say: Rock on! Check them out here.


Third: The Chirba Chirba Dumpling truck, apparently a canary yellow color and hitting the road next month according to the Durham-Herald Sun. The truck is a co-venture between four UNC-Chapel Hill alumni, note they are coming to Durham to make it happen. DHS says that chirba chirba" means "eat eat" in Mandarin, and is a common phrase that a host might say to a guest before a meal. Read the whole story here.

Durhamania!

Cute, Creative Airline Safety

Talk about four words not often seen together: cute, creative, airline and safety are an atypical set.

Here is where they meet up, in a video from Thomson Airways of the United Kingdom.

A dose of Poetry

Sometimes the internet kicks up a beauty. Scouring YouTube for something else entirely, we found this gem.