Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 85
The story behind the bread clip, NBA shot clock operators, March Madness contest, R.I.P. Sister Bobbie Nelson, New Yorker Cartoon of the Week, Recipe Corner, and more.
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Most of the World’s Bread Clips Are Made by a Single Company
A brief history of the Kwik Lok Closure.
Here’s a fascinating look at one of the most mundane tools we all have in our homes: the bread clip.
They’re those flat pieces of semi-hard plastic formed into a sort of barbed U-shape—you know the ones. They can be found keeping bread bags all over the world closed and safe from spoilage, smartly designed to be used and reused. They’re all around us, constantly providing an amazing service, and yet still, they’re taken for granted. And it turns out they’re almost exclusively all produced by a single, family-owned company.
Kwik Lok, based in Yakima, Washington, has been manufacturing these little tabs ever since their founder whittled the first one from a credit card. Without giving specific numbers, Kwik Lok says that they sell an almost unimaginable number each year. “It’s in the billions,” says Leigh Anne Whathen, a sales coordinator for the company, who says she personally prefers plastic clips to their natural enemy, the twist tie, because they last longer.
The idea for the bread clip came to Floyd Paxton, Kwik Lok’s founder, during a flight in 1952.
Paxton was eating a package of complimentary nuts, and he realized he didn’t have a way to close them if he wanted to save some for later. As a solution, he took out a pen knife and hand-carved the first bread clip out of a credit card.
Kwik Lok secured a patent on their little innovation in the early days of the company, and to this day, Kwik Lok remains one of the only manufacturers of bread clips in the world.
Who knew?
Kwik Lok secured a patent on their little innovation in the early days of the company, and to this day, Kwik Lok remains one of the only manufacturers of bread clips in the world. Kwik Lok operates two factories in the U.S., plus manufacturing plants in Canada, Australia, Japan, and Ireland. Far from the hand-crafted clip that Paxton made on that airplane, the company now offers just about every variation of the closure one might want.
Secrets of the Texas NBA Shot Clock Operators
The timekeepers for the Spurs, Rockets, and Mavs open up about one of the most overlooked and pressure-packed jobs in sports.
Here’s another interesting story about a seemingly mundane thing: the NBA shot clock operator.
They’re regular guys—except their side gigs make them among the most influential individuals in the NBA. On top of their day jobs, Stick, Fontillas, and Gouard work as 24-second shot clock operators for the Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, and San Antonio Spurs.
From the opening tip-off to the final buzzer of every game they work, all three are studies in concentration. They’re responsible for resetting the shot clock after a made basket, after the ball has touched the rim, or when there has been a change of possession. It sounds as easy as pressing a button, but any seemingly inconsequential mistake in judgment could wind up swinging the game in one team’s favor.
“It’s the hardest job at the scorer’s table,” said Stick, 75, who joined the Rockets organization in a lesser role during the 1983–84 season. “It’s the only one that the referees have no control over.”
It seems kinda wild that at least a small part of a billon dollar industry is in the hands of moonlighting civilians, right? Especially considering the league’s newfound embrace of gambling. At least these dudes are real pros who you should leave alone when sitting courtside:
“There was a guy sitting right next to me who asked, ‘Hey, I’m going to get a beer. You want one?’” Gouard recalled. He declined. “No, I don’t think I could have a beer and do this.”
“Don’t talk to the shot clock operator after a made basket when the game clock is running, because they have to focus on when the ball is getting inbounded,” Fontillas said. “Don’t talk to the shot clock operator late in the shot clock, because they’re focusing on the ball hitting the rim or not.”
Determining whether a missed shot has struck the rim can be tricky—misses that glance off the iron can be almost impossible to recognize from the timekeeper’s seat on the sideline.
“It’s all a matter of the sight line,” said Fontillas, who first joined the Mavericks in 1995 as a stats trainee. “I’m not the only guy responsible for watching the ball hit the rim. I tell the officials, ‘If I see a shot go up and I don’t see it hit the rim, I’m looking at all three of you to see if you’re giving me a signal or not to reset it.’
Determining changes of possession can be more of a judgment call.
“There’s a ball going out of bounds, and a player goes to grab it and they slap at it,” Fontillas said. “That’s really not a change of possession. What they say in the rule book is that [change of possession] is when a player grabs the ball with one hand and he cups it and then throws it back.
The league attempts to shelter its shot clock operators from the wrath of players and coaches, who are barred from interfering with their work, but that doesn’t stop aggrieved athletes from berating the scorer’s table from afar.
“I just ignore it,” Fontillas said. “They’ll look at me and they’ll start yelling. They’ll say, ‘That didn’t hit the rim!’ And I’ll just look at ’em, and I’ll stare at ’em. I won’t say anything. I can’t say anything. I don’t want to say anything. I’ll tell an official, and the official will go talk to them about it.”
Likewise, the shot clock operators aren’t allowed to mingle with coaches or players. Gouard said longtime Spurs coach Gregg Popovich typically says hello before the first preseason scrimmage—and that’s it for the year.
“On the scorer’s table, we are the only group that is part of the organization—because we are considered part-time employees—that cannot help the team win,” Fontillas said. “Everybody else in the organization is doing everything in their power to help the team win. But we cannot.”
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Sister Bobbie Grounded Willie Nelson in His Music—And His Life
Bobbie on, pianist and older sister to Texas music icon Willie Nelson, died Thursday morning at 91.
This obit from Texas Monthly tells the whole story.
No musician has sung, played, and written more different kinds of American music than Willie Nelson. And no musician was more important to Willie than his older sister Bobbie, who died March 10. She was 91. The two played together for an astonishing eighty-plus years, from the time they were children in tiny Abbott, Texas, to their last show at the Whitewater Amphitheater in New Braunfels on October 9. Through all those performances—in their humble living room growing up; at Austin’s scrappy, surreal Armadillo World Headquarters in the seventies; at the later, near-nightly triumphs in storied halls like London’s Royal Albert—Bobbie grounded Willie. She gave him security and direction. Sometimes she led him; other times he led her. They shared something sacred that everyone else could only admire. “When we get into music,” she once said, “something happens. There’s magic between me and Willie.”
Each night Willie would draw attention her way, moving to the piano and watching intently while she played her showpiece, the instrumental “Down Yonder.” Willie would tell you she was the most important person onstage. The myth of Willie Nelson—the Austin renaissance after years of frustration in Nashville, the ensuing five decades of continued creative rebirth and international stardom—is a true story and one of the world’s favorites. But none of it would have happened without Sister Bobbie.
They were born just north of Waco in the farming community of Abbott, Bobbie on New Year’s Day, 1931, and Willie two years later, on April 29, 1933. Their early life was impossibly hard. Their mother left six months after Willie was born and their father soon after. Fortunately, their paternal grandparents took over raising them. Willie has always said their granddad, a musically inclined blacksmith, was the most important influence in his early life, and at Christmas when Willie was six, he gave the boy his first guitar, a mail-order Stella from Sears. But just a few months later, Daddy Nelson—as Bobbie and Willie called him—died of pneumonia. The family struggled to get by on their grandmother’s earnings as a music teacher, and the young siblings went to work picking cotton. Their life was precarious, and the story could easily have ended there.
But what Bobbie and Willie did have was each other. And music. Their grandmother taught them chords and songs, and their musical education took root. But an unconscious lesson ran deeper: when they played music together, the harsh, wider world went away. Then, and only then, they felt safe.
In the spring of 1972, he relocated to Austin, where a nascent music scene was growing around young hippie kids turning on to old country music. The conventional wisdom has always been that Austin was the catalyst for letting Willie be Willie, and he no doubt saw potential in the crowds at the Armadillo. But that thought leaves out the real reason he moved there: Austin’s where Bobbie lived.
With Bobbie, back in Texas, Willie was finally, truly at home. Not long after the move, he pointed out to his sister that they hadn’t played together publicly since 1951. “Don’t you think twenty-one years is long enough?” She answered, “I do,” and that was that.
History would come to regard Shotgun Willie as the moment Willie’s music pivoted, and credit usually goes to the fact that he was finally out of Nashville and recording with his own band. Again, though, the real key is missed. Shotgun Willie was his first release recorded with Bobbie. Her playing is immaculate and was regarded at the time as an integral element of his new sound.
It was the start of the most fruitful sibling relationship in music history. Willie and Family, as he renamed his band now that Bobbie was in it, hit the road and the studio. He loved having his big sister onstage, but just as importantly, he loved having her on the bus, where they’d pass the hours talking about books they were reading and songs they wanted to play. Willie would go through dark phases, but Bobbie never did. She was always cheerful, sweet, and open, the presence that kept him going.
But his profile took a quantum leap forward in 1978 with Stardust, a collection of American Songbook standards. Credit for the idea to make Stardust gets spread around. Some stories attribute it to Willie alone. Some cite a jam session in Willie’s Malibu condo with a new neighbor, Memphis soul legend Booker T. Jones, who went on to produce the album. But again, look to Bobbie. In their memoir, Willie wrote that one night the two were up late on the bus, talking about old pop songs. Bobbie, of course, remembered the standards from when they were kids and had played many of them in her supper club act. She said “Stardust” was her favorite. Willie asked her about other songs that might work for an oldies album, and she mentioned “All of Me,” “Blue Skies, and “Moonlight in Vermont.” It all made sense to Willie. Stardust would be the biggest album of his career, selling over five million copies and staying on the Billboard country albums chart a remarkable ten years.
R.I.P. Sister Bobbie.
New Yorker Cartoon of the Week
Recipe Corner
Porcini Crusted Pork Chops With Creamed Kale
The wife is out of town this week for business, so I’m going to eat pork chops with mustard, two things she doesn’t eat. Pretty wild of me, I know.
1/3 cup (1/3 ounce) dried porcini mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
1/4 teaspoon plus 1/8 teaspoon fine salt, divided
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 (5-ounce) boneless pork loin chops, about 3/4-inch thick
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/4 cup finely diced shallot (1 medium)
2 cloves garlic, minced or finely grated
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole milk, plus more as needed
1 (16-ounce) package chopped frozen kale, defrosted and squeezed dry
2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
Fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, for garnish
In the small bowl of a food processor or a mini-chopper, process the porcini until finely ground. (It's okay if a few slightly larger pieces remain). Transfer to a small bowl, add 1/4 teaspoon of pepper and 1/8 teaspoon of salt, and stir to combine.
Spread mustard evenly on both sides of the pork, then sprinkle both sides with the porcini mixture, pressing down so the mixture adheres.
In a large, deep skillet over medium heat, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil until shimmering. Add the pork and cook until nicely browned and slightly pink in the center with an internal temperature of 145 degrees, 3 to 5 minutes per side. Transfer the pork to a plate and cover to keep warm while you prepare the kale.
Return the skillet to medium heat and add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the shallot and cook, stirring and scraping up the brown bits in the pan, until tender, about 1 minute. Add the garlic and cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds more. Sprinkle in the flour and cook, stirring, until combined, about 1 minute. Add the milk, increase the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to simmer. Stir in the kale, the remaining 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, until the kale is tender but still has some texture and a creamy sauce has formed, 2 to 4 minutes. Stir in the sherry vinegar. If the kale mixture seems dry, add more milk or water 1 tablespoon at a time, until the desired saucy consistency is achieved. Remove from the heat.
To serve, divide the kale among 4 plates, top each with a piece of pork and garnish with the parsley.
CHINESE SMASHED CUCUMBER SALAD (拍黃瓜)
Chili Oil
3 cloves garlic, minced (about 4 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons chili flakes, (see note 1)
2 tablespoons gochugaru (Korean pepper flakes), (see note 2)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup oil, can be vegetable, grapeseed, or any neutral oil
Cucumber Salad
1 to 1 1/4 pounds Japanese cucumbers, (see note 3)
small pinch of kosher salt, about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon
3 cloves garlic, grated or zested
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons chili oil with spices
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
toasted sesame seeds for garnish
Add the minced garlic, minced ginger, chili flakes, gochugaru, and salt in a heat-proof bowl. You’re going to pour hot oil into the bowl, so avoid using bowls that might crack (like glass and some porcelains). I usually use ceramic bowls but a stainless steel mixing bowl or a saucepan works.
Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the oil reaches 325ºF to 350ºF. You do not want the oil to be any hotter because the gochugaru will burn. If you don’t have a thermometer, heat the oil for 2 minutes just to be on the safe side.
Very carefully pour the hot oil over the spices. (See note 4) Let the oil infuse for at least 30 minutes.
Slice off the ends of the cucumbers. Then, slice the cucumbers in half, lengthwise.
Place the cucumber halves, cut side down. Then place the side of the knife over the cucumber. Using the fleshy part of your palm smack the knife to smash the cucumber until it splits. Make sure to smash along the entire length of the cucumber. Then, slice the cucumbers diagonally, about 1/2-inch thick slices. Transfer the cucumber pieces to a bowl.
Sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt over the cucumbers and mix. Let the cucumbers sit for 20 minutes. Then, drain out the excess water at the bottom of the bowl. (See note 5) You do not need to rinse the cucumbers. (See note 6)
Add the grated/zested garlic to a bowl and mix it with the rice vinegar. Let that sit for 10 to 15 minutes to mellow out the raw bite of the garlic.
Add the soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of chili oil (with bits of pepper and spices), sugar, and sesame oil.
Right before you are ready to serve the cucumber salad, toss the cucumber pieces with the sauce. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds over the cucumber salad for garnish.
Cake of the Week, Pt. 1
Check out this insane cookie cake Caitlin procured from the world-famous Haleycakes bakery.
Cake of the Week, Pt. 2
Chocolate-Matcha Butter Mochi Cake
This is a simple cake that belongs on the cover of a magazine. Maybe that’s why Bon Appetit put it on their February cover.
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted, slightly cooled, plus room-temperature butter for pan
1½ cups (227 g) mochiko (sweet rice flour; such as Koda Farms or Bob’s Red Mill Sweet White Rice Flour)
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or ¼ tsp. Morton kosher salt
2 Tbsp. matcha, sifted, plus more for serving
2 large eggs
1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1⅓ cups heavy cream, divided
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Place a rack in middle of oven; preheat to 350°. Generously butter an 8"- or 9"-diameter cake pan. Whisk mochiko, baking powder, salt, and 2 Tbsp. matcha in a large bowl just to combine. Vigorously whisk eggs and melted butter in a medium bowl until pale and emulsified, about 30 seconds. Add sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, and 1 cup cream and whisk until mixture is smooth. Scrape into dry ingredients and whisk vigorously until smooth and very thick. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth surface.
Bake cake until it starts to pull away from sides of pan, top and edges are golden, and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 35–45 minutes (cake in the smaller pan will take longer to bake than one in the larger pan). Transfer pan to a wire rack and let cake cool 5 minutes. Turn cake out onto rack; let cool completely.
Place chocolate in a small heatproof bowl. Bring remaining ⅓ cup cream to a boil in a small saucepan. Immediately pour over chocolate; let sit 15 seconds. Stir until ganache is smooth.
Evenly pour ganache over top of cake. Using a small offset spatula or spoon, spread ganache to edges of cake (drips down the sides are encouraged!). Let sit until ganache is set, about 2 hours. (If you are in a hurry, you can chill cake until glaze is set, about 30 minutes.)
Just before serving, dust top of cake with more matcha with a fine-mesh sieve.
Do ahead: Cake and glaze can be made 2 days ahead. Store cake tightly wrapped in several layers of plastic at room temperature. Let glaze cool, then chill in an airtight container. Gently reheat glaze in the microwave or a double boiler over a pan of simmering water (do not let bowl touch water) until just melted before using.
Did Micah practice yoga this week?
Yes. 60 minutes Saturday at the Black Swan Yoga with Kaylee. I needed it.
That’s 9 in-person weekend classes in 10 weeks this year. Namaste.
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