"WHERE'S THE HOMINY?" Prince Fielder, the 270-pound slugging first baseman of the Milwaukee Brewers, has gone vegetarian this year:

Fielder, 23, decided to make the switch over the winter after reading how cattle and chickens were treated and “was totally grossed out,” he said. His wife, Chanel, preferred a no-meat diet as it was, so he embraced a new approach.

Fielder had been as carnivorous as your average puma — pushing 200 pounds since he was 12, he scarfed down a 48-ounce porterhouse as a teenager and had barely slowed down since.

The article's worth reading if only for its tale of Fielder's trip through a chic Milwaukee restaurant's vegan offerings (The server heartily recommended the beet pasta salad, as in pasta fashioned from beets. “Ew — I’m not good on beets,” Fielder said. She kept raving about the dish, so not wanting to hurt her feelings, Fielder conceded, “All right, I’ll try it.”)

SQUID PLATE PLEASE, EXTRA TENTACLES: Extra long tentacles, that is.

It would be unnatural in the extreme if I neglected to mention that the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa will, this weekend, first carefully thaw out the recently recovered Colossal Squid carcass they've been storing and, then, much to the excitement of cephalopod enthusiasts everywhere, dissect the big beastie live on the interwebs.

MORE THAN JUST HIS THUMBS: Still lacking vocal capacity after his recent cancer surgeries and laid up in bed with a broken hip, unable to attend this weekend's festival of overlooked films which he curates each year, Roger Ebert has decided to blog.

He is, fortunately, now cancer-free.

Why is this bite different... ? (Food and Drinq)

YES, BUT WHAT IF YOU'RE SHOMER SHABBAS? That free pretzel promotion in Philadelphia tomorrow? Those observing Passover can still show up at a store and obtain a voucher tomorrow, good for three free pretzels on Monday. And this time, I will quote Stanley Hudson:

I wake up every morning in a bed that’s too small, drive my daughter to a school that’s too expensive, and then I go to work to a job for which I get paid too little, but on Pretzel Day ... well, I like Pretzel Day.

ALL STEAK, NO SIZZLE: Had a very nice dinner at Craftsteak last night--exquisitely prepared roasted steak, roasted carrots, and a chocolate souffle. However, it reiterated my prior concerns that pan roasting steaks removes "sizzle" from a steak. That leads us, in a somewhat circuitous fashion, to Top Chef. As Alan expressed in a thread on this week's episode, this season has come off a bit bland. To draw an analogy to my meal, all the ingredients are there (solid chefs, good challenges--particularly this week's elimination challenge, which did a nice job of piling twist after twist on both the Cheftestants and the audience) and the ingredients are well-prepared, but it's just not crackling--maybe because there haven't been many (if any) spectacular failures or bizarre successes, and maybe because for all the bleeping and trash-talking, few of our Cheftestants have shown a distinctive personality thus far, or maybe just because of a lack of Bourdain.

BUSINESS DRUNK AND PARTY HIGH: I liked last night's 30 Rock even though the A-story was a little old-timey for me. Not as in "traditional 80s-90s sit-com," but as in a Hudsucker Proxy-ish riff on antiquated notions of business politics. I blow hot and cold on Idiot Liz, but I liked this version, especially the ease with which she slipped into the back-slapping and sexual innuendo, a joke that works particularly well because it allows us to laugh both at the ridiculous conduct and Tina Fey's own weird fantasy of executive living, which seems to parallel Liz's. But Rip Torn -- geez, it's both great and difficult to see him now.

As for our other favorite office, Sepinwall mentioned that Kaling's episodes are more straightforward comedy than the ones written by the other writer-actors, and the New York half of the show was no exception. What was unexpected was the way that Kaling revisited a theme that has popped up occasionally since Jim returned to Scranton: there is a reason that Jim is stuck somewhere below middle management -- he is neither the perfect boss he imagines he would be nor the beloved goof that we saw for the first two seasons (remember how annoyed Toby and Oscar were at his antics during the Angela's Ashes book group?).

Is Toby really moving to Costa Rica?

PERHAPS IT'S TIME TO START BETTING AGAINST HIM: Despite glowing testimonials submitted to the Court by former co-stars Denzel Washington and Woody Harrelson, actor Wesley Snipes has been sentenced to three years in federal prison on tax evasion charges. Snipes' final line in Jungle Fever (NSFW) comes to mind.