The Internet Friendship Diet

Lately, I've packed on one or two pounds due to uncontrollable eating and a lazy factor that puts even the greatest couch enthusiast in the world to shame.

I've exercised lately – about 3 times last week – but I can't help but feel like I'm still not doing enough. So here's what's going down, kiddies.

A while ago, the great sportswriter and blogger Drew Magary made headlines with his fantastic new idea to lose weight: the Twitter Humiliation Diet. Every day, Drew would tweet his weight for all to see. By abandoning his privacy, Drew worked diligently and eventually reached his target weight. It was a rousing success that spawned multiple imitators and scored Drew a bit of fame in the process.

I want to do something like that. I've tweeted my weight before, but not nearly as consistently as Drew did. I wanted to try something a little different.

I know a lot of people. And a lot of these people are hilarious. And best of all, I'm 100% certain all of these people love to talk smack and laugh. So I'm going to harness as much of their creative energy as I can as a motivational tool to keep going.

Starting today, I am going to work out every day. Every. Day. Running, lifting, whatever – it won't matter, as long as I get 30 minutes of some sustained physical activity in every day. And when I'm done with that physical activity, I am going to report what I did in a Facebook post and a tweet.

Sometimes, though, I will not. And here's where you, my friends, readers and followers, come in.

If, by 4:00 pm Pacific, I have not yet posted about my workout, you, my most loving cavalcade of acquaintances, can rip me to shreds with the most vile, hateful, soul-crushing and hilarious insults you can possibly concoct. Post it on my wall, tweet it at me, post a comment here, whichever you prefer. I'm not asking you to be nice. Destroy my very being with your words.

As a bonus, I'm also going to post an update whenever I eat fast food or dine out. You can pretty much tell where I'm going with this – when I eat fast food, you can also slash away with your hurtful, hurtful words. This will probably happen a lot at first, so be ready.

I was going to go with only fat jokes at first, but really, I don't want to limit anybody. I think you guys would work the best if you could branch out into any of my plentiful flaws.

I figure we'll get a couple of good laughs out of it, and it'll be an excellent way for me to shed pounds before beach season. I'm sick of people gathering in crowds so they can push me back into the water to rejoin my pod. See? There's the inaugural joke to get thinks kicked off!

I've decided with a highly appropriate name for all of this: the Internet Friendship Diet. Because I'm certain you'll all be doing this purely out of your concern for my health and overall well-being. Well aren't you guys nice!

So get ready, guys and gals – your chance to verbally assault me can come at any moment.

To be sporting, I'll let you guys take a few practice swings in the Comments section below. Bring the vitriol, you peasants!

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Super smokin': BBQ brisket and spare ribs

I love football, and I love barbecue. Naturally, you'd think I'd combine the two at some point. Well guess what? I did today!

I'm not exactly a pit master, but I can say I'm pretty handy with outdoor cooking. It's a fun, productive hobby capable of producing some great-tasting results.

In my short BBQ career, I've tried brisket twice, and each attempt yielded horrendous results. The first came out burnt to a crisp, and the second came out too rare and as tough as a rubber tire. Both attempts were on a propane grill. It's certainly possible to properly cook a brisket on a propane grill, but it is also incredibly difficult. I was in over my head.

I wasn't quite ready to quit, though, and over the years I've made it a personal mission to make a brisket that didn't taste like hobo feet.

I got my chance today. It took days of mental preparation, making sure I knew exactly which ingredients to use and even buying myself a Weber kettle grill to make sure I could follow most of the recipes perfectly. I ordered a combination meat/oven thermometer in order to make sure I had the right temperature on the grill, as well. Let's make it simple: I went all-out to make sure I didn't screw this up. I even started cooking at 4am so it would finish cooking in time for the game.

In case you didn't notice, brisket is a very difficult meat to cook right. You need to cook it over low heat for a long time (“low and slow” as the Good Old Boys tend to call it), spritzing or basting the meat with apple juice or a beer mop every half hour or so to keep it moist. All the while, you've got to make sure the temperature stays within a fairly specific range. When you buy a brisket, you're entering a very high-maintenance relationship for a few brutal hours.

The most difficult part is keeping the temperature regulated, which can be absolutely maddening. The best way to go about keeping the temperature stable varies depending on how much of which type of charcoal you use. You need to experiment a LOT to get it exactly right.

The key to slow-cooking on a grill is the indirect heating method. This technique involves placing your coals on only one side of the grill and a water pan on the other. The water pan shields the meat from direct heat while the evaporated water keeps the roast moist.

For the rub, I simply used one of those McCormick pre-made rubs available at the grocery store. A neat (and kind of surprising) trick I found was that many pit masters cover their brisket with mustard before actually applying the rub. It helps the rub stick to the meat while cooking. I tried it out, and it really did help the rub stick pretty well.

The rub combined with regular application of the mop create a delicious, dark crust around the brisket.

While the meat cooked, I used a special dark beer mop recipe I found here. The BBQ Pit Boys are a pretty awesome resource for recipes and BBQ how-tos, especially for beginners.

Here's the mop recipe, if you're interested:

12 oz. Beer of your choice

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp crushed red pepper

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 tbsp pepper

The recipe yields a sweet, tangy sauce that really livens up the brisket. I'm tempted to put it on everything I eat from now on.

Long story short, the brisket took a lot of work and a whole lot of time, but I think I did pretty well this time around.

It's edible! Yay!

I also smoked some ribs, which turned out to be much more complicated than I anticipated. I put them on the old standby, the propane grill, and used aluminum foil to wrap the wood chips for smoking. You're supposed to put your grill on the lowest heat setting possible to let the ribs cook slowly. Unfortunately, that heat setting was TOO low, so they were still nearly raw when I took them out of the propane grill after 3 hours of cooking. I stuck them on the charcoal grill instead, and everything turned out fine.

I wish I had stuck these on the Weber from the beginning.

Oh, and the Giants won.

For more fantastic barbecue tips, check out Meathead's amazingribs.com. He's got plenty of information for novices and pit masters alike.