In the past year, Will Ferrell has made a series of low-budget (to be generous) ads for Old Milwaukee, which aired in very, very few, very small markets. Last night, Deadspin reports, during the Super Bowl, North Platte, Nebraska, was treated to the following:

If nothing else, it's more succinct than those interminable Budweiser-celebrates-the-end-of-Prohibition ads.

via Twitter

Food Talk STL host David Craig

​Local radio personality and public-relations professional David Craig will debut Food Talk STL this Saturday, February 4, at 11 a.m. on KFNS, 590-The Fan. The program will air each Saturday from 11 a.m. till noon.

Craig, whose previous on-air gigs have included WIL, KLOU and KEZK, tells Gut Check he was "looking to do something different."

Food, drink and restaurants were an obvious fit. In St. Louis, he says, "There's so much new stuff happening all the time. And then there's all this national foodie media."

Craig foresees a wide range of guests and topics, from local chefs and restaurant staff to merchants and vendors to, yes, other members of the city's ever-burgeoning food media. (Gut Check is already preparing the rider for our visit. Hint: clean towels and freshly made guacamole are a must.)

You can stream the show live through the KFNS website, while the Food Talk STL website includes a blog with previews of the upcoming episode.

Melissa Hamilton

​What makes Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter stand out so supremely from the pack of shoulda-coulda-wanna been-there-done-that food memoirs? The simple answer is that she's a badass. And a really good writer.

Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune, an intimately idiosyncratic restaurant in New York City. She and her book have been mentioned in the same garlic-scented breath as Anthony Bourdain, and it's understandable why. Her story of love, family and other miscellaneous crimes is as raw, honest and gutsy as any Kitchen Confidential, but the telling in Blood, Bones & Butter isn't laced with testosterone-driven kitchen horror shows. It's more about the hunger that drives a person's coming of age, one that just happens to be fueled by a life in the arduous arena of restaurant work.

She will read from and sign copies of Blood, Bones & Butter on Monday, January 30, at 7 p.m. at Left Bank Books' downtown St. Louis store (321 North Tenth Street; 314-436-3049).

In the frontispiece of Blood, Bones & Butter, there's an illustration of a bloody asparagus on a paper towel. What's the story with that?

Oh, I have a cutting on my arm -- you know, it's one of the "body modification" arts if you want to call it that--

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The Egg McMuffin of father-daughter moments

​Surely by now you've seen the McDonald's commercial in which a young woman having breakfast at McDonald's with her boyfriend is put on the spot by his impromptu declaration of love, so she tells him he is "the Egg McMuffin of boyfriends." From there we are treated to a litany of McMuffin metaphors for greatness -- cars, apartments, beach days, etc.

Gut Check's first instinct was to list all the food objects that would make better metaphors for greatness than an Egg McMuffin. But then we had an epiphany:

Within the category of fast-food breakfast sandwiches, the Egg McMuffin is by far the best. It's the freakin' Egg McMuffin of Egg McMuffins!

Relationships, on the other hand, are nuanced as all get-out, especially when you're talking quality.

Ipso facto, it'd be far more fitting, not to mention useful, to assemble a compendium of go-to breakfast-sandwich metaphors to deploy when the situation demands something less than absolute perfection -- be it car, beach day or boyfriend.

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Kholood Eid

Like an Oscar, only infinitely more bitchin'

​Last night, in a star-studded ceremony that the Academy Awards can only dream of matching, the RFT handed out its 2012 Web Awards. Read the complete list of winners here (or pick up the issue on newsstands today), and join us after the jump for the list of food-related champs and the worthy runners-up.

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​Today the RFT revealed the finalists for our 2012 Web Awards, a.k.a. Point + Clique. The winners, as selected by a panel of esteemed judges, will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Old Rock House next Tuesday, January 24, and will be published in next week's issue.

Several of the categories involve food, and there are also food- and drink-related finalists in a few of the more general categories. You can see those finalists after the jump.

Click here to view the complete list of RFT Web Awards finalists and to meet the panel of judges.

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​Hostess Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, the second time in eight years that the maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and a score of other sweet cakes and enriched breads has sought such protection.

Gut Check greeted the news with the expected smirk -- aren't Twinkies supposed to last forever? -- but then experienced a rare moment of self-reflection. Sure, we can (and do) mock Twinkies as an example of everything that is wrong with American eating habits, a Frankenstein of high fructose corn syrup and 36 other ingredients, but we also ate the hell out of some Twinkies back when we were in our food-critic training pants.

Won't the culture lose something if Hostess can't rescue itself again and Twinkies disappear? Aren't Twinkies, for all their culinary sins, a vital artifact of 20th-century America?

We thought this. And then we watched some vintage commercials for Twinkies and other Hostess products. Now we're just terrified.

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Thanks to social media, corporations and public figures can now embarrass themselves (often by sticking their stinky, figurative feet right into their metaphorical mouths) more easily and more often.

While this is usually entertaining (hello, intentional nip slips!) and often illuminating (à la Alec Baldwin's airplane iPhone entitlement), the frequency of big-shot blunders means that some of them fall below radar.

Such as this post Daiya Vegan Cheese shared on its Facebook page yesterday:

A winky face? Oh no, you didn't, Youtube.

​

Of course, it didn't go entirely unnoticed. With nearly 200 heated comments on the post itself (not to mention the dozens of comments all over Daiya's page) and even more "likes," it's clear that many interpreted "Should this be adopted in North America?" as "Wouldn't it be nice if this was adopted in North America?" After all, why is now the time to post a video that's been sitting on Youtube since 2008?

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Chrissy Wilmes

​Last night on "Freakonomics Radio," host Kai Ryssdal interviewed Stephen Dubner about how prohibition, immigration restrictions and your children have all played a part in the dumbing down of good 'ol American grub.

The conversation was inspired by Tyler Cowen's book, An Economist Gets Lunch. Cowen explains:

Compared to a lot of Asian cultures, or European cultures, when it comes to the food scene, very often in America the child is in charge, and that again means soft, and sweet and gooey.

So, we've become a nation of children. Of course, when Gut Check interviewed a slew of youngsters about healthy kids' meal options, they were quick to make nutritious, delicious decisions -- at least in the matter of their favorite fruit vs. French fries.

What do you think, breeders? Are the kids in charge? Gut Check does love the occasional buffalo chicken strip. Let us know in the comments and listen to the full segment after the jump.

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Krampus, as imagined by Anthony Bourdain

​Tonight the Travel Channel will air the annual holiday special episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. No doubt it will contain all manner of holiday-themed debauchery. However, it won't contain "A Krampus Carol," Bourdain's twisted animated telling of the Alpine folk tale of a creature who punishes naughty children at Christmastime, the sour to Santa's sweet. Thankfully, the short is online, and you can watch it after the jump.

The video is SFW, though it contains some, um, odd imagery. Basically, if your coworkers don't already think you're a freak, this might seal the deal.

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