Taco Thursday
Profiles in Knowledge, Mexicantown Crawl, Cher, Jake Bates, Dumpster Divan
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This week’s issue includes the fifth and final in a series of five favorite kinds of sandwiches, my sixth book, a taco crawl on a Thursday, the Goddess of Pop, a former seller of bricks who now is making big kicks, and the second divan pictured in this newsletter. I hope you like the picks and pics.
Last Thursday I went on a mini taco crawl with two friends with whom I worked at Digital Equipment Corporation back in the 80s. Details are included in this week’s Recommended Restaurants.
Last week we celebrated two family birthdays: Barb’s on November 6 (at Brentwood Grille with the custom menu shown above) and Kieran’s on November 8 (with the home-cooked meal shown below). Barb had the Perch Sauté, I had the Chef’s Steak & Truffle Fries, and Kieran had spaghetti and meatballs. Here are Barb and Kieran in our home in July:
Being a true Garfield, Kieran enjoys fine dining. Here he is at home in Maryland with the special dinner he requested on his third birthday:
Barb and I will be visiting Kieran and his family next week. We look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving in Maryland this year.
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Fave Five 110: Taco Thursday
Tenth Tome (Profiles in Knowledge), Mexicantown Meals (Taqueria El Rey, Taqueria La Palapa del Parian, Taqueria Mi Pueblo) Songstress Sarkisian (Cher), Perfect Placekicker (Jake Bates), and a Dumpster Divan.
Fave Five List: My Favorite Seafood Sandwiches
Po’ Boy (shrimp, oyster, or half and half) — Louisiana
Lobster Roll — Maine
Crab Cake — Maryland
Grouper — Florida
Whitefish —Michigan
Honorable Mention: Perch — Michigan
Book Best Bet
Profiles in Knowledge: 120 Thought Leaders in Knowledge Management
My latest book was published last week by Lucidea Press. It is my sixth as sole author and tenth including books for which I contributed a chapter. My other books were listed in a previous issue. The new book highlights the work of ten dozen thought leaders in the field in which I have worked for the past 28 years.
Restaurant Recommendations
Mexicantown Meals
Mexicantown in Southwest Detroit is home to a large Hispanic population and many wonderful restaurants. Mark Mitra, Chuck Bradford, and I visited three taquerias — one that had just reopened in a new location, one that had previously only operated taco trucks, and one that has been a favorite destination for years.
Taqueria El Rey 3400 Bagley St, Detroit, MI 48216
Taqueria El Rey restaurant reopens in Mexicantown neighborhood
Grilled chicken dinner — This is what they are known for, and it was even better than before the original location burned down.
Tacos Al Pastor — These were excellent, as before.
Taqueria La Palapa del Parian 1633 Lawndale St, Detroit, MI 48209
Mark and I had once stopped at their truck (El Parian) right after finishing dinner at the restaurant next door (El Asador Steakhouse). Their Taco Al Pastor was the best I had ever had. Ever since they opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant, I have wanted to try it, and I finally was able to do so on this crawl.
Tacos Al Pastor/Marinated Pork — These were the best of the crawl, highlighted by the accompanying delicious pieces of grilled pineapple.
Tacos: Lengua/Beef Tongue and Tripa/Beef Tripe (for Mark) and Birria/Marinated Beef
Torta Al Pastor: marinated pork, lettuce, tomato, jalapeño, avocado, cheese
Taqueria Mi Pueblo 7278 Dix St, Detroit, MI 48209
I have been coming here for years, but this was the first time in quite a while. The ceviche tostada was as great as usual.
Cheese Quesadilla, Tacos Al Pastor, Tostada de Ceviche
Marvelous Musician
This is the second in a series of recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees. I loved "Believe" in 1998. I love the 1993 movie Groundhog Day which features "I Got You Babe" — over and over.
From Wikipedia: Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian on May 20, 1946 in El Centro, California) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Often referred to by the media as the "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. Cher is known for her distinctive contralto singing voice and for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment, as well as adopting a variety of styles and appearances throughout her six-decade-long career.
The 1998 song "Believe" has an electronic vocal effect proposed by Cher and was the first commercial recording to feature Auto-Tune—an audio processor originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies in vocal music recordings—as a deliberate creative effect. According to Rolling Stone's Christopher R. Weingarten, the "producers ... used the pitch correction software not as a way to fix mistakes in Cher's iconic voice, but as an aesthetic tool." After the success of the song, the technique became known as the "Cher effect" and has since been widely used in popular music.
Having sold 100 million records, Cher is one of the world's best-selling music artists. Her accolades include a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, the Billboard Icon Award, and awards from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She is the only solo artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in seven consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2020s. Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour by a female artist ever at the time, earning $250 million (equivalent to $390 million in 2023). Aside from music and acting, she is noted for her trendsetting, elaborate outfits, political views, social media presence, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention.
Sonny & Cher were an American pop and entertainment duo in the 1960s and 1970s, made up of husband and wife Sonny Bono and Cher. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector. The pair first achieved fame with two hit songs in 1965, "Baby Don't Go" and "I Got You Babe".
Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono (born February 16, 1935 in Detroit, Michigan; died January 5, 1998 in Stateline, Nevada) was an American singer, actor, and politician who came to fame in partnership with his second wife Cher as the popular singing duo Sonny & Cher.
Believe
I Got You Babe
My Playlist
Sports Star
I first became aware of Jake Bates when he kicked a 64-yard game-winning field goal for the Michigan Panthers of the UFL — not once, but twice (due to a timeout. Most Detroit Lions fans immediately had the same thought as I did — the Lions should sign this guy to take over their kicking duties.
The Lions had two consecutive long-time kicking stalwarts — Eddie Murray and Jason Hanson. After Hanson retired, they struggled until they signed Matt Prater. Then they foolishly let Prater go rather than pay him what he was clearly worth, leading to a seemingly endless parade of mediocre, distance-challenged kickers.
Jake Bates has not yet missed a field goal in his NFL career, and he has won two games so far this season. On Sunday, in his hometown of Houston, he made a game-tying 58-yarder and a game-winning 52-yarder, narrowly fitting each one through the uprights. And thus was a new Lions legend born.
Jake Bates' improbable rise from brick salesman to star kicker by Peter Schrager
Bates's story is unique. He played college soccer at Arkansas State but transferred to Texas State, where he only did kickoffs. In that 2020 Texas State season, someone else — a guy named Seth Keller — handled field goals. In two stops at college, Bates didn't attempt a single field goal. He then got a shot with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and didn't stick. He got a sniff from the Texans last year but was cut early in training camp.
Bates took the long road. In December, while the rest of the NFL was watching the Chiefs play the Raiders in Arrowhead, Bates signed a professional football contract ... with the Michigan Panthers of the United Football League. He, then, went on to dominate in that league. With multiple 60-plus yard field goals, NFL scouts were watching. In June, he signed a contract with the Lions. And when Badgley went down, Bates won the competition. It was a long shot, without the crazy college factoids. In fact, Bates was one of only two UFL players to make an NFL 53-man roster, out of 77 who participated in the NFL's 2024 preseason.
After his game-winner against the Minnesota Vikings in Week 6, Bates said the following: "I was working as a brick salesman in Houston. I thought the dream was dead. ... I thought football was done, so I had to move on and do something else with my life. Luckily, the Lord had something else in store."
Bates belongs on the Lions. Scrappy, headstrong, and able to persevere. After Sunday's ridiculous win, Goff told reporters: "Every team gets punched in the mouth, and the good ones respond."
From Wikipedia: Jake Bates (born March 3, 1999 in Tomball, Texas) is an American professional football placekicker for the Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL). He played college soccer for the Central Arkansas Bears and college football for the Texas State Bobcats and Arkansas Razorbacks. Bates holds the record for the longest field goal in United Football League history, 64 yards.
Bates played two seasons of college soccer at Central Arkansas in 2017 and 2018, before transferring to play college football at Texas State in 2020 where he only handled kickoffs. He transferred to Arkansas in 2022, once again only handling kickoff duties. He was named first-team All-SEC as a kickoff specialist in 2022, tying the selection with Jack Podlesny.
After going undrafted in the 2023 NFL draft, Bates signed with the Houston Texans on July 31, 2023. He was released on August 12, 2023. On December 25, 2023, Bates signed with the Michigan Panthers of the UFL. Bates's signing was one of several personnel decisions the league made based upon kickoff abilities as the UFL adopted a kickoff rule requiring the ball go 80 yards for a touchback, 15 yards longer than other levels of organized football.
On March 30, 2024, during Week 1 of the 2024 UFL season, Bates made a game-winning 64-yard field goal against the St. Louis Battlehawks, the longest field goal in the history of both the UFL and its predecessor leagues, five yards longer than the previous record set by Donny Hageman the previous year. The first in-game field goal of Bates's life, it is tied as the second-longest recorded field goal in professional football history. Coincidentally, the lone longer kick—Justin Tucker's 66-yard kick for the Baltimore Ravens against the Detroit Lions in 2021—occurred under nearly identical circumstances and on the same field (Ford Field). Bates, who had only attempted – and missed – one field goal before in his life (in high school), had made the kick twice, the first being discarded due to the Battlehawks icing the kicker. Bates would go on to, to date, kick two more field goals of 60 or more yards in 2024: an April 7 kick against Birmingham Stallions from 62 yards out, and a 60-yard kick against Arlington Renegades on May 5. The ball Bates kicked on the 64-yard field goal is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of its "Pro Football Today" exhibit. He was named to the 2024 All-UFL team on June 5, 2024. His contract with the team was terminated on June 17, 2024 to sign with an NFL team.
On June 18, 2024, Bates signed a two-year contract with the Detroit Lions. Bates was one of only two UFL players to make a National Football League 53-man roster, out of 77 who participated in the NFL's 2024 preseason (the other being Jalen Redmond).
In Week 7 of the 2024 season, Bates kicked a 44-yard game-winning field goal as the Lions defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 31–29, also being awarded NFC special teams Player of the Week for this feat. In Week 10, Bates kicked a 58-yard field goal against the Houston Texans to tie the game before hitting a 52-yard game-winning field goal in a 26-23 victory. Both field goals only narrowly passed through the uprights, on opposite sides from each other.
Calls of the Game: Jake Bates's game-winner completes Detroit's 16-point comeback
Picture Pun
This is the second sofa selected in this Substack. Previously I featured a Divine Divan.
I don’t normally engage in Dumpster divan, but this tempted me to do so.
