The article also features a photo of me taking a giant bite out of my favorite sandwich in the DC area.  I actually love the photo, it turned out really cool.  But one disclaimer – ladies, I assure you, my hands don’t normally look like those of a 60 year-old man, and I’m not normally furling my brow with such tenacity.  Hey, you try and look cool while biting into a giant sandwich – very hard to do.  So check it out here: The Blogger Beat: So Good

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Deadspin has a new post up this afternoon titled March Madness Devolves Into All-Out Meat Blogging War.

The post reports on something I have already touched on here – the fact that ESPN Page 2 columnist Paul Lukas posted a column featuring a meat bracket a week after So Good had already launched our Meat Madness tournament.  The Deadspin post features a quote from Lukas in which he calls for a battle of the brackets:

What we need, clearly, is a bracket of meat brackets, so MY meat bracket can face off against (and, of course, defeat) HIS meat bracket, along with the several others floating around out there.

First of all, a bracket of brackets is the most asinine suggestion ever. I think that idea should be the #1 seed in a bracket for the  “Worst Idea Ever” tournament.  Look, I know he had 64 meats and I had 32. Plus he went all weird and had chicken tails in the final four.  But even if my bracket were to face off against his bracket, there is no debate which is better.

Even if my Meat Madness tournament had only 8 meats it would be superior.  Why? Lukas wrote a column in which he told you, on the spot, which meat he picked in each match up. In the three minutes it takes you to read the column, you knew the seeds, who had won and who had lost. Sure, if you like your debates wrapped up in a neat tidy bow after 3 minutes then it was great, but there was no suspense and no audience participation.

So Good’s Meat Madness is an ongoing contest determined by you, the people. Sure I could have run through a bracket and told you what I think, but it’s much more fun to see what consensus opinion emerges on each meat in question.

While it was amusing to see Deadspin pick up the story, the thing to remember is Lukas’s meat tournament ended the moment you finished his column, while So Good’s Meat Madness will continue for the next few weeks.

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The bacon craze sweeping the nation has been well documented on this blog.  I’m sure most of you saw the story in the NYT of the above “Bacon Explosion,” or as I like to say, the “Angioplasty, Please!”  As if it wasn’t enough for someone to make this “massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce,” someone else decided to eat it… by himself.  Enter competitive eater David Cagle, ranked #48, by someone with way too much time on their hands.

Not surprisingly, the bacon won – again.  You know the idea is bad when 4 out of 5 people in Houston think that something has too much fat in it.  Case closed.

H/t to NYT for the pic and @HoustonChron for the story.

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1. The Papa Johns/Lebron James “Crybaby” Story

Regular readers of So Good know that this story helped put So Good on the map.  After attending a Wizards-Cavs playoff game, I broke the story about a handful of t-shirts being passed around at the game calling Lebron James a “Crybaby” – that also happened to be emblazoned with the Papa Johns logo.

The story quickly spread from So Good to major sports blogs and the Cleveland media. Realizing I had created a firestorm and broken what was turning out to be a national news story, I stayed at my computer most of the weekend providing round the clock coverage.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer interviewed me, as well as WJW Fox 8.  At this point the story had hit CNN, ESPN, ABC and Papa Johns was forced to issue a formal apology to Lebron James and the city of Cleveland.

I stayed on the story, reporting a few days later on the chaos and controversy surrounding the $.23 pizza giveaway that Papa Johns offered to residents of Cleveland as part of their apology.  A week or two later I was asked to publish an op-ed for iMedia in which I dissected the controversy and explained why Papa Johns did an admirable job in tackling a tough situation. Check out the interview I did about the story:

2. Rants

I didn’t write rants very often in 2008, but when I did, the posts led to heated discussion both on So Good and by other writers across the blogosphere.  From my rants for 2008, three in particular got by far the most traffic and attention:

No I Do Not Want to Order Pepperoni Pizza – Do I Look Like I’m 12 Years Old?

Wherein I take on the once sacred cow of pepperoni pizza by informing everyone that no, it   isn’t that good, and no, it doesn’t deserve to be considered a default ordering option along with cheese.

It’s Time to Shut Up About Cupcakes

I alert the American public that this cupcake nonsense has gone too far.

New Rule: Until I Have Actually Been to One, Sonic Must Stop Advertising on National TV

Seriously Sonic, you’re killing me.

3. 12 Meals or Bust

In mid-February, Ryan Giesel was just a college kid. A college kid with a Facebook group titled “If 100,000 People Join My Facebook Group, I’ll Eat Every McDonalds Value Meal, #1 – #12.” The Facebook group was nowhere near 100,000 people. That’s when So Good decided to break the story in order to let the world know about this American hero.  What followed was a firestorm of interest, as radio and TV stations across the world reported on the story.

The story doesn’t end there my friends. Oh no, we needed to get the payoff. After the Facebook group hit 100,000 members, true to his word, Ryan headed to a nearby McDonald’s to attempt this great feat.  My post summarizing his attempt to eat all 12 value meals has been one of the most popular posts in So Good history – even Sports Illustrated couldn’t help but be intrigued enough to report on it.

4. Kraft Bagel-Fuls

When I heard that Kraft was planning on making a bagel pre-filled with cream cheese, I jumped on the story and bashed the seemingly insatiable desire of food companies to create products of convenience that no one seemed to be asking for.

But then the story got more intriguing. I quickly identified a pre-filled bagel product that was already on the market, that sounded suspiciously similar to what Kraft was proposing. This is when my inner Sherlock Holmes sprung into action.  My investigation uncovered the fact that someone already held a patent for a cream cheese filled bagel, along with the boiling, steaming and forming process needed to create it.

Shortly after, Kraft contacted me and explained they had bought out a smaller company already making the product. Kraft also sent me a sneak peak of the Bagel-fuls packaging.  Finally, several weeks before they hit the market, Kraft sent me two boxes of Bagel-fuls to review.

5. Orange Underground

In late January, I profiled the bizarre new Orange Underground commercials and website that had been launched by Cheetos.

A mere three weeks later I was ready to declare the campaign a total and complete failure due to the fact that basically no one at all was talking about it.  PC World agreed. In an article titled “Lame and Lamer: 10 Dumbest Viral Marketing Campaigns” they cited Orange Underground as the #8 dumbest viral marketing campaign, quoting my analysis as evidence of why it sucked.

It’s been a fun year, thanks everyone for reading.

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Love, Eick.

Update: Damn. Cake Wrecks is crushing it. I think I may have to pre-emptively concede the victory to them. It was an honor to be nominated though, maybe I can take third place!

And if you looooove seeing So Good in contention for Best Food Blog awards as much as I do, I would be honored if you were to consider nominating me for the 2009 Bloggies, which are taking nominations for the next 5 days.

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So what did the Sun-Sentinel have to say?

The blog, by humorist Jon Eick, provides “an absurd look at the world of food.” Our favorite features are definitely “Would you rather …?” and “Rant!,” both easily found in the top right corner.

We knew this was our new favorite blog when we read the rant titled, “New Rule: Until I Have Actually Been to One, Sonic Must Stop Advertising on National TV.”

Awwwww, Sun-Sentinel, you guys are too kind.  Plus, you have good taste. The Sonic rant is my personal favorite.

Also, since I’ve chosen to not really pursue stand-up comedy in the past year, I am LOVING that I have successfully re-branded myself as a “humorist.”  I’ve said to the world, “hey, I don’t do stand-up, sketch or improv comedy these days, but I sit around and THINK of funny stuff. Therefore, I am a humorist.”

Deal with it world. Jon Eick, Humorist.

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Our 4th time being picked up by the Washington Post Express blog log. Thanks for being a regular reader Mr./Mrs. Blog Log editor guy/gal! And thanks for deeming my posts, in particular my rants (about pepperoni pizza in this case), worthy of a Blog Log appearance!

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Here’s what appeared in the PC World article:

Online-brand consultant John Eick, purveyor of the So Good food blog, counted a grand total of 17 blogs talking about the campaign a month after it launched. He wrote:

“The creators probably assumed a campaign with this level of creativity would go viral right away. Clearly it didn’t…. Did they really expect people to start pulling crazy pranks with Cheetos? Who in their right mind is actually going to go out and buy 20 bags of Cheetos to pull pranks with?”

Yup. That’s what I said back then alright. Although I must say, despite the lack of blog postings about the Orange Underground campaign, it’s amazing to me that I still get anywhere from a few dozen to a hundred people a month coming to So Good after searching for Orange Underground.

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And back in Chicago, Sen. Obama’s idea of a fast meal is to order from a scruffy minimall pizza place near his South Side house called Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, according to the food site So Good Blog and other Internet chroniclers. (A spokesman for Sen. Obama’s campaign, Bill Burton, would neither confirm nor deny these accounts.) We found little to like at this cramped storefront place, just a window for placing orders and a thin-crust pizza that was gloppy and low on flavor.

Check out the full article HERE, interesting read.

As always, you can check out a full list of news sources that have cited So Good or reported on stories I’ve broken on my Media Coverage of So Good page. If you know of any media citations that I’m unaware of, let me know!

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