Tony Neely Gets Short Shrift...

on this morning's The Today Show, at least.

He was part of a lightening fast barbecue competition that had him cooking against some Arkansas guy. Tony, looking a little slimmed down, was friendly and informative as he explained that chicken and ribs are the nuts and bolts of barbecue. His ribs did look finger lickin' good.

The other guy, a real Bozo - nothing against clowns, I love them - cooked some chicken and then dunked it in a bucket of what looked like ceiling primer, but was apparently mayonnaise masquerading as white sauce(!??) Waddup with that?

This pathetic jury of judges - 2 gonzos and Natalie, whom I usually like, gave the win to the guy from Alabama. I felt bad for Tony. He was gracious, but the other guy was so high on life that he wouldn't have noticed if he had won or not.

I had the feeling that this actually meant something to Tony. Of course, I do have the ability to read just about anything INTO just about anything. And such are the vagaries of 4 minute cooking segments. I think the Neelys are probably doing just fine without another pig trophy...The recipes are here.

PS Regarding the first comment below: I almost ended a friendship over this very issue. I KNOW that "I feel bad" is correct, but MANY grammarians will tell you that "I feel badly" is ALSO correct and just sounds better. My grammar frenemy and I traded references for weeks that backed up each of our points of view, until we declared a detente. I never used that phrase in front of her again.

I almost never prefer colloquial usage over absolutely completely correct grammar, but in this case I do. I hate the sound of "I feel bad", except if I have a stomachache. For emotions, I use badly. But I can't stand the idea that, instead of feeling sorry for Tony, everyone will concentrate on the bad/badly issue. SO I DID change it, even though it sounds horrible to me. In the future, I WILL NOT be using that phrase ever again (ARE YOU HAPPY, Anon?), except in front of like-minded syntacticians.