Chicken From Last Night

On "Animal Style" and the Perils of Group Think

2011-03-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

It took me a while to warm up to In-N-Out, the famed fast-food burger joint of the west coast. There is plenty to like in abstract terms. They make a considerable effort to produce the freshest of food -- hand-trimming and grinding their own beef and delivering the patties fresh, not frozen, to the stores; potatoes are peeled in-store and hand cut into fries; there is nary a freezer nor heat lamp in sight.

They are also a beacon of hope for fast food workers, paying nearly double the going rate for cashiers, cooks, and managers with a well-blazed path to promotion into the upper reaches of the company.

But all that goodwill won't make me eat there unless the burgers live up to the hype. And sadly for the first seven years I lived in California, the burgers were not cutting it.

But it's not In-N-Out's fault necessarily, but rather my own for listening to my peers. "Get the burger 'Animal-Style'." they'd insist.

And considering how over half of those walking into the restaurant order "animal-style" who am I to push back against the flow.

So for those not in the know, here's a break down of what "animal-style" is:

A normal, off-the-menu In-N-Out burger is:

1 skinny beef patty (approx 2 oz)
1 slice tomato
1 slice lettuce
1 whole slice of onion (upon request)
1 smear of "spread" (similar to Thousand Island dressing)

If you order the same burger "animal style":

1 skinny beef patty smeared with mustard before it is grilled.
1 slice tomato
1 slice lettuce
1 spoonful of caramelized, chopped onions
Double the amount of "spread"
Add pickles

The first major problem with "animal style" is revealed in the first line. Smearing a raw hamburger patty with mustard before grilling it is a TERRIBLE idea.

Photo from A Hamburger Today

One of the hallmarks of a great burger is a nice sear on the patty. It should have a salty, peppery crust that seals in and enhances the flavors of the beef and gives the burger a nice texture and mouthfeel.

If you want mustard flavor, a small squirt after the cooked burger is assembled onto bun will suffice. Grilling the burger with mustard already on it does nothing but return a soft, squishy burger. STRIKE ONE!

I also take issue with the caramelized onions. Mixing savory and sweet is rarely a good idea, and the chopped onion "jam" that comes on an animal style burger is simply off-putting, and creates conflicting flavors. That said, if I was ordering a grilled cheese (which In-N-Out will cook on request) I would certainly order the grilled onions. But on a burger? STRIKE TWO!

Then there's the spread. As mentioned earlier, this is In-N-Out's version of Thousand Island -- an ungodly combination of mayonnaise, ketchup, and pickle relish. Let me be absolutely clear: salad dressing has no business on a burger. And certainly not in double amounts as you get with animal style. STRIKE THREE!

While I don't want to begrudge people's personal tastes, the popularity of animal style is a bit surprising given its burger rule-breaking. I suppose people just like to say "animal-style", or perhaps they subscribe to the notion that slathering any foodstuff with enough mayonnaise-based sauce elevates it to some otherwise unattainable level.

So after seven years of disappointment, I have found my ideal In-N-Out burger configuration:

Double-Double - Two beef patties, two slices of cheese
Easy on the lettuce
1 slice of tomato
Mustard and ketchup instead of spread
Whole grilled onions (one whole onion slice crisped on the grill rather than carmelized).
Add chopped chiles (neon yellow pickled sport peppers)

Now I like In-N-Out. If only they could improve their fries.

The Foley Grail

2011-02-15T14:26:00.000-08:00

One of the first jobs I had out of college was working as a sound editor and engineer for motion pictures. One of my favorite duties was to mix Foleys.

Much of the sound recorded on film sets must be either replaced or augmented because the mics are pointed at the actor's mouth and don't pick up the nuances of other action in the scene. Often the incidental sounds of footsteps, clothing rustle, and props must be inserted after the fact. If the recorded audio is unusable (this happens in noisy locations like busy streets, airport exteriors, and factories) then every bit of sound and dialogue must be recreated. That's where the Foley mixer and artists come in.

During a Foley session, I would have a set of cue sheets in front of me listing which effects were needed by the sound supervisor. So I would pick a cue, relay the intention to the walker, shuttle the videotape to the scene where the sound effect was needed -- someone setting down a glass let's say, then adjust the recording levels as the walker performed the sound in sync with the picture.

I arranged my mixing board so that my back was to the Foley artist. This was so I could better judge the sound. If you catch the Foley artist molesting a box of cornflakes to simulate a character walking across broken glass, well you'll have a difficult time buying off on that sound as a replacement because to you it will only sound like cornflakes being smushed. Usually it's best not to know what random objects the walker is using to substitute for the actual sound.

My least favorite part of Foley recording was working on the sex scenes. You'd think it'd be fun, but the problem was that we got paid by the day, not the hour. So our goal was to get through the reel of footage as quickly as possible so we could go home. We'd move through most of the clips at the good pace. And then we'd get to the sex scene and everything would drag to a halt.

My co-workers, who seemed to have a sixth sense about when we were working on a sex scene, would amble into the recording studio to ask a question, only to chuckle immaturely at the screen. Then I'd have to stop down while they made crude remarks about the actress or the verisimilitude of the sex act.

Of course as soon as the walker and I began recording the sounds for the scene (usually the creaking of bed springs coupled with sloppy smacking sounds, or worse) everyone would suddenly become an audio expert. "That's not how it sounds!" my 60-year-old boss would tease us with a creepy grin.

For years afterward, I would have dreams about being in flagrante only to have my boss pop out from under my bed, "That's not how it sounds!"

Chicken Tacos

2011-02-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

Chicken tacos ($1.35 ea). Add side of pico de gallo ($1)

Frank's Restaurant
363 S Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036

I've always felt that tacos were a game changer. In fact when I invite someone to hang out with me and they begin to waffle, the promise that tacos will be involved somehow changes the dynamic and pushes them over the fence.

Congress could probably pass some real reforms through the House and Senate if there was the possibility of tacos.

Back to the food, these are from the little known Frank's Restaurant just south of The Grove. They're not the best tacos you can get in L.A., but easily the best in the neighborhood and one of the few places within a 1-mile radius where you can eat for less than $5. Yes, I added the pico de gallo. I'm from the east coast, and I like something in addition to onions and cilantro on my taco. Deal with it.

If you're really hungry, I'd recommend the chicken nachos ($5.85).

Those are actual slices of avocado. They give you four total. And while what you see in the picture looks like plenty of food, take note that I did not snap this photo until after I had already polished off 1/4th of the nachos.

I will warn you to restrict your orders to the chicken dishes. I'm not saying this as the biased proprietor of a chicken-themed blog, but rather because the carne asada, carnitas, adobada, and lengua do not measure up.

Ruminations on the Dr. Phil Episode about Pageant Dads

2011-02-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

Dr. Phil aired an episode today about fathers who have an unhealthy interest in entering their 4-year-old daughters into beauty pageants.

This is what ran through my mind as the episode played. Let the healing begin!

It's not like these Pageant Dads are flamboyant or anything. In fact, they look like typical suburban Tea Party organizers. Tea Party of the political type, not like the tea parties they probably throw with their stuffed animals.

Hey, that one Dad's tiara is bigger than the other Dad's.

One of the pageant Dads is wielding a glue gun. FIERCE!

Um, one of the Dads painted "Here Comes the Queens" on the side of his SUV

This episode of Dr. Phil is making me sad,

I once got offered an interview for a job on Dr. Phil. When I told my mom I turned it down, she was furious with me for months.

They keep cutting to these photos of the little girl's pageant headshot. If you stare into her icy-cold blue eyes long enough, it turns into a 3D picture.

This show could be a casting session for the Pet Semetary remake.

Now Dr. Phil is making the Dads compete to who can best dress a mannequin for a pageant. I bet you one of them tries to smuggle a mannquin back to their car

The clown music that is playing during this contest is a good choice.

Dr. Phil is timing this on his watch. So is this a contest to see which Dad is creepier? Or which Dad is more efficiently creepy?

Yup, they're definitely going to try to smuggle the mannequins back home.

Pageanting is stressful. You can put away two or three of those Costco-sized tubs of Red Vines if you're not careful.

You know if these guys weren't Pageant Dads, they'd probably be Civil War re-enactors.

Commercial Break: Do people actually eat at Sizzler on purpose? I was under the impression Sizzler is the place you're forced to eat when your tour bus pulls over for a rest stop.

At least this little girl knows the Stranger Danger scream.

This show should be subtitled "When Sparkly Lip Gloss Attacks".

Chicken Posole

2011-02-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

Chicken posole is one of my favorite Mexican dishes, surpassed only by perfectly executed huevos rancheros.

This particular bowl is from Hometown Buffet. I know I ranted about them once but that was before I discovered their weekend breakfast buffet. Most children are sleeping in on Saturdays and Sundays, so the restaurant is reasonably quiet. And they have excellent chicken posole!

Yes, those are strips of bacon that I added to the broth - one of the perks of eating at a breakfast buffet. Just a word to the wise, Hometown places their posole and menudo soups in adjacent servers and does not label them. And they look exactly the same. And if you don't know what menudo is, you don't want to find out at 10am on a Saturday.

No, I STILL won't attend your Super Bowl Party

2011-02-03T13:45:00.001-08:00

This is a repost, but my feelings have not changed.

I’ve attended many Super Bowl parties in my lifetime. And I never will again.

Listen folks, if your television is less than 27”, you should not be throwing a party. If you only own four chairs, you should not be throwing a party. If you realize at kick-off time that you’re out of napkins and paper towels, then you should not be throwing a party. And while you’re at it, clean the hair and dried toothpaste out of your bathroom sink – you have guests over.

Why the sourpuss? The year was 2008. The venue: a small loft in North Hollywood, no chairs. We stood for most of the game. I knew I was in for trouble when some douche wearing a spiked collar and gelled hair arrived toting a guitar and electric amp. “Where do I plug in?” he asked.

The hosts didn’t want to bother with snacks, so they asked everyone to bring something potluck style. Most millennials interpret “potluck” to mean “bring the $1.99 plastic clamshell of chocolate chip cookies from Ralph’s”. So that’s what there was to eat – twelve dozen generic brand chocolate chip cookies, room-temperature lite beer, and the casserole of macaroni and cheese I brought (“Oh! We don’t have any plates or forks! I’ll run the dishwasher!”)

Then came the defining play of the game: faced with third down and five yards to go from his own 44-yard line with 1:15 remaining, Giants quarterback Eli Manning avoided what looked like a sack, completed a 32-yard pass to wide receiver David Tyree, who made a leaping catch by pinning the ball on his helmet, which put them at New England's 24-yard-line. Four plays later, New York wide receiver Plaxico Burress caught the winning touchdown with 0:35 left.

Yeah, I never saw that play because two minutes before the game ended, some whiner got her way and commandeered the TV so she could play Guitar Hero.

I’m DONE with Super Bowl parties.

I will be at home on Sunday, watching the big game on my 46” flat panel with 5.1 surround sound, TiVo remote in hand, my own personal pizza with the toppings I choose, a six-pack of Guinness with a liter of Belgian ale on stand-by, and my stuffed animals Polly Precious Pants and Miss Precious Perfect cuddling next to me on the sofa. And I will enjoy the hell out of it.

Don't Talk to Strangers

2011-01-24T16:34:00.000-08:00

In college my friends nicknamed me "The Walking Triumph of Ill Will" because I seemed to be a magnet for hostility from strangers.

Case in point, I live in a neighborhood populated by transsexual prostitutes. It's not something I particularly mind, except when I'm walking to Trader Joe's and one follows me in lockstep, obnoxiously nipping at my heels. There's that split-second moment of tension when I step off to the side to let them pass, and I get that "what's-your-problem-asshole" stare.

One day a tranny propositioned me from the bus stop, "Hey, honey, how YOU doin'? You wanna date?" I didn't dignify it with a response, so then I get this catty, "Oh whassup? You stuck up or something?"

Yes, that's right Ms. Thing, I'm the impolite one here. Forgive my lack of manners.

The tranny followed me for the next 3 blocks hurling epithets and threats of bodily harm. It was hard to take him too seriously, after all he wasn't going to catch me wearing 6-inch heels.

I must be the only one in my peer group who isn't wildly entertained by drag performers. Cross-dressing in itself doesn't irritate me, but conspicuous vanity and narcissism does. I know if I strutted up and down Santa Monica Boulevard bellowing, "Hey, look at me! Look at these arms! Look at this ripped stomach! You know you want this! You're all jealous of this!" I would be considered a douche. But when the trannies do it, it's FIERCE.

Clearly I'm not up to date with my etiquette.

I also seem to attract belligerent vagrants. Today I was seated at a table enjoying a chocolate croissant in the 3rd/Fairfax Farmers Market. "Is this taken?" asked the sketchy guy hovering over me.

I looked around, and there were probably plenty of other places for the guy to sit, but whatever, I was finishing up anyway. "Go ahead."

So Sketchy Guy sits and scoots his chair uncomfortably close to me, reaches into his bag for a Budweiser tall-boy, cracks it open and pours it into a glass. "Cheers!" he says, as he gulps it down. Then Sketchy Guy leans in and asks me, "How old is your mother?"

Maybe I owed him a response, but I was already halfway towards the exit. "What's the matter with you, you yuppie asshole!" he screamed after me.

If your opening line is to ask me about my mother, you're the one with the impairment, fella.

I managed to upset another vagrant with my insensitivity just a few weeks ago. I was seated at the Tommy Burger in Burbank when an unkempt guy sat down at my table without asking. "You live in L.A.?" he queried.

"Yes," I said.

"Can I get a lift there?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that."

He got incensed. "Well then give me a few dollars so I can take the bus."

That's the thing about Los Angeles, the exaggerated sense of self-entitlement extends all the way to the Valley.

I turned him down. So he sat there at the table burning holes through me with his eyes while I ate.

I bike around town for most small errands, and one day after shopping at the Beverly Center, I approached my parked bicycle to find its basket filled with a bag of popcorn and a cup of soda. So I emptied those things out and was halfway to the trashcan when this crazy guy starts shrieking and running towards me from across the sidewalk.

"Are these yours?" I asked him.

"Yeah, they're mine, asshole! Were you just gonna throw them away?"

"Well, yeah," I said, "I'm trying to leave and they're in my bike basket."

"You need to respect other people's property," the crazy jackass lectured me.

Right. Again everyone else is the victim here, and I'm the bad guy. My college friends had it wrong. I'm not a Walking Triumph of Ill Will -- it's the world that's saddled with the burden of me.

Chicken Salad Sandwich - Part 2

2010-12-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

Salt's Cure
7494 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90046
www.saltscure.com

There are many dishes invented to reuse leftovers. Pasta sauces are great for using up leftover scraps of veggies and meat. Soups and stews help make the final few slices of ham, turkey, and roast beef disappear. Aging ground beef is transformed into chili. French toast was born as a means to use up old, stale bread.

And Chicken From Last Night becomes chicken salad.

But I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. Homemade chicken, homemade mayonnaise, homemade bread.

I think what elevates the sandwich immeasurably is the addition of crispy chicken skin which rounds out the right amount of crunch and saltiness.

You have to admire a restaurant that only serves 3 entrees at lunch, all of which are sandwiches, yet manages to stay at full capacity for over an hour. The other two sandwiches available were a grilled cheese and a ham & cheese. Keep it simple.

Smooth Criminal

2010-12-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning, 9am, I came upon my car with the rear passenger window smashed, ruining my plans to visit family down in Carlsbad.

Is this what happens when you don't leave out milk and cookies for Santa? I will get that fat red bastard.

If it was Santa, perhaps he was short on presents because my GPS unit and bowling ball were stolen from the car. I'm sure some 5 year old will be thrilled with my 2004 model GPS with outdated maps that is so bulky and heavy it falls off the windshield if you turn the car too hard.

As for the bowling ball, the thief must have had a good time lugging its heavy bag while fleeing from the scene only to be disappointed when he opened it.

There were some gift cards in there as well, but luckily I copied down the numbers on most of them prior to the theft and was able to transfer the balances to new cards.

So the thief caused $250 in damages to acquire items that are expensive to replace, but have little value on the black market. If he'd spent a few more seconds in the car, he might have found the money I had stashed for an emergency or the spare valet key. Although anyone who expects a treasure trove of goods in a 7-year-old Civic is setting themselves up for disappointment.

Getting the window replaced was an interesting experience. Surprisingly, the amount of effort required to install a fresh window is roughly on par with changing your oil. On most common model cars, it's as simple as removing the interior door panel, unscrewing the bolts holding the remaining shattered glass, re-attaching the bolts to the new glass (which glides right in), and mounting the door panel back on. A competent shop can usually complete this in less than 20 minutes including the clean-up of the broken glass.

The only real challenge is locating a replacement window. I discovered most of these glass repair shops are more of a concierge if anything. The 2 hours you spend in the waiting room is because the owner is on the phone with his competitors or a supplier trying to track down a window that will fit your car.

So lessons learned:

-My building manager doesn't care about break-ins or vandalism, even though he lives in the building.
-The police wanted me to value my property that was stolen. Not the replacement cost. Not what I paid for it. But what I could sell them for in their condition. Interesting, as I have no qualifications to appraise the value of a used bowling ball or 6-year-old GPS.
-Xeroxing the front and back of all your gift cards (as well as credit and ATM cards) comes in handy if you ever lose them.
-There is some sort of shadiness in the car window replacement industry. Many of these repair facilities are part of a network and share the same call center. They don't seem to carry inventory, and charge quite a bit for a $50 part and 15 minutes of install time.
-Don't leave anything visible in your car. The cleaner it is, the less likely it will be broken into.

Not A Creature Was Stirring

2010-12-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays, everybody.

Stalk Us on The Facebook

2010-12-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

Chicken From Last Night is now on The Facebook.

Assuming you haven't canceled your account over some privacy outrage, go ahead and click "Like" here.

Get Chicken updates on your Facebook News Feed right alongside your co-worker's passive-aggressive status updates.

Chicken From Last Night

So This Is Christmas...

2010-12-20T14:57:00.000-08:00

...and this is my obligatory holiday post.

There's the oft-spoken complaint that Christmas has become too commercialized, but for me the true villain is the in-store gift card.

Retailers love them. They sell to the tune of $58 billion worth a year -- of which ten percent are never redeemed. That's $6 billion in pure, unadulterated profit. Furthermore, it drives additional sales as customers often redeem the cards for more merchandise than they're worth.

In 2008, gift cards accounted for 12% of all Christmas shopping (with a huge drop-off in 2009 attributed to customer worries the store might go out of business). I'm sure they'll rebound this year.

Gift cards have actually ruined post-Christmas markdowns. Once upon a time, stores slashed the prices of video games, electronics, tools, and clothes post-Christmas. Now that consumers are armed with billions in gift cards, many retailers actually mark-up merchandise, diluting the value of the card and gouging everyone else.

Gift cards also ruin the office Secret Santa party, or as I like to call it "The Annual Exchange of iTunes Gift Cards".

I once worked in an office that conducted a "White Elephant Gift Exchange" -- the sort where you draw a number. The lowest number unwraps a gift from the pile. The next number can either select a wrapped gift or opt for the one just opened. The person who goes last, obviously, has their pick of the litter. The poor schmuck who goes first ends up with an over-sized novelty scented candle or a Chia Pet. [Ed. Note: perhaps this is scientific evidence that scented candles and Chia Pets make shitty presents even if you're trying to be ironic. For those wondering, the most sought after gift during the exchange was a laser-guided room measure.]

So maybe ditch the gift card this year for something more personal. If you're that worried, attach a gift receipt. You're making them return to the store either way, so you might as well take a chance of getting something they might actual like and consider thoughtful.

If you're wondering what I want, it's this. Or maybe this. Or definitely this.

McMansions and SUVs

2010-12-06T16:57:00.000-08:00

Photo taken near Indian Land, SC. Thanksgiving weekend, 2010.

I Could Be Your Hero, Baby

2010-12-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

In the fall of 2006, NBC premiered "Heroes" -- a show that I heavily fantasized about starring on. During its second season, I almost had the opportunity.

A girl had just moved into my apartment complex. She was a budding actress and was soon cast in a recurring role in the series. Now I had an "in" for the show. So I cornered her at her housewarming party:

"Can you get me a meeting with Tim Kring [the creator of "Heroes"]?"

"Um. Why?"

"I have a great idea, for a hero that I could play," I told her.

She smiled, "Oh, that's nice."

"What if... I was a hero on the show, and my special ability was that without even looking I could immediately tell if a dairy product had expired."

She was silent -- probably speechless over my brilliant idea.

"So let's say the Guy-Who-Can-Fly is making a sandwich," I continued, "and I could be all 'Hey, Guy-Who-Can-Fly, don't eat that chicken salad sandwich. The mayonnaise has gone bad.' And the Guy-Who-Can-Fly could be all, 'Oh, thanks.'"

"And that would make you a superhero how?"

"Because he would go off and save the world, but the credit would really be mine for preventing him from getting food poisoning."

Duh.

"And it could be like a three-episode arc," I continued, "because the Guy-Who-Can-Fly could get all the credit for saving the world, but I'd be all mad for getting looked over. So then I could cross over to the villains and start telling people that the milk is fine when clearly it's gone sour."

She didn't have an answer for that, but she nodded.

"The three-episode arc is important," I assured her, "That way I can get residuals."

I went to bed that night giddy at the thought of being cast as a hero and being able to hang out with the Guy-Who-Can-Fly, and the Girl-Who-Heals-Quickly, and that Guy-Who-Broods-A-Lot.

I caught up with my neighbor in the hallway days later. "So? What did they say?"

"Oh, I forgot to bring it up."

"That's okay," I said, "because I have an even better idea for a hero that I could play."

She started darting her eyes around the hallway, I assume to ensure that nobody was eavesdropping who might rip off my idea.

"What if I was a hero, and my special ability was that I could make really good mix tapes."

She looked at me skeptically.

"It's really hard to make a good mix tape," I reminded her, "First, you have to plan it out so that all the songs fit on one side of the cassette. Then for it to be really awesome you need to cross-fade the songs together -- not everyone does that. And song selection is really important -- I mean you can't just hit them with three awesome songs in a row. You got to build up to it. Wet the appetite. Lubricate the eardrums."

"I don't know about that one. A mix tape? That's not much of a superpower."

"No, no, we're talking a mix tape so good that it could bring peace to the Middle East."

She mumbled something about being late and ran off, but I could tell she was just as stoked as me. I spent most of the next week hovering by the phone, waiting for my big break.

But that phone never rang. Because Hollywood is a soulless town that feeds off broken dreams. Besides, a better idea for a superhero would be one with the ability to make really good hummus. The trick is to peel the garbanzos before pureeing them.

Dungeons & Dragons

2010-12-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

There was a small circle of people when I was in junior high school who played Dungeons & Dragons on the weekend. One Saturday they invited me to play. I didn't know how to play D&D, but they told me it wasn't a big deal to learn and they'd help me create a character.

"So do you want to be a hobbit or dwarf?" they asked me.

"Neither of them. They're both lame."

"We need at least one small character in our group."

"I don't want to be a midget."

"What would you want to be then?"

"A vampire."

This aggravated everyone at the table. "You can't be a vampire. We need a dwarf!"

"Ok," I replied, "I'll be a vampire dwarf."

This irritated everyone even more. "But our adventure takes place during the day. Vampires die in the sunlight."

"I thought we were going to be in a dungeon."

"Eventually, but first we have to journey through the land until we make it to the fortress."

"I'll wear a hooded cloak."

"That won't work!"

"I'll stay in a coffin during the day. And the other characters can carry the coffin. It'll be lightweight too because I'm a dwarf. Then at night, I'll come out and protect everyone while they sleep."

We argued for a while longer before I wore everyone out and they acquiesced to a vampire dwarf character. A "chaotic-good" vampire dwarf. I named him Kula (short for Dracula). That irritated the other players even more.

The Dungeon Master seemed the most aggravated of all. Within 10 minutes of game play, he declared that an evil orc had cast a stun spell on me. Then he encouraged my teammates to use their turn to drive a wooden stake into my heart, and that there would be treasure involved if they did. For the first time in my life I felt that I was a victim of group-think.

I spent the rest of the game drinking Shasta and mumbling that Kula's death would be avenged.

As soon as I got home, I printed a few dozen character sheets and began creating an army of players. I named them "Kula-Too" and "Kula Jr." and "Son of Kula" and "Kula the Barbarian" and "Kula Avenger" and "Kula the Kool" and "Coca-Kula". There was a female one named "Kulette".

I showed up at the next D&D game with all these characters in hand and a better understanding of the rules. Yes, the Dungeon Master managed to kill every last one of the Kula Dynasty, but it took him a few hundred dice rolls and the better part of the afternoon -- mainly because he couldn't differentiate between all the Kula spin-off characters and kept losing turns as a result.

I miss Dungeons & Dragons. I also miss Shasta.

Panic Attack

2010-12-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

One time, I had to take my car in for service which required renting a car for a week. I got stuck with a Dodge Stratus. Not that I'm trying to be snobbish and mock the car or those who own it, but seriously, what exactly is the inciting factor to drop $25k on a Stratus?

Have you ever even seen an advertisment for a Stratus?

In any case, I digress.

So I had to run an errand in downtown Burbank, and parked in one of the municipal garages on the fifth level. When I returned with my purchases, I fished the key fob out of my pocket to open the door.

You can see they managed to place the panic button in a location where you'd find the unlock button on many other vehicles.

So now my Stratus is honking and flashing its lights alerting everyone within a 2-mile radius.

I try to disable the alarm by holding the panic button for a few seconds. Nothing. I click unlock. Nothing. I manually turn the key in the door. Nothing. I ignite the engine. Nothing.

Now people are staring to stare.

So I pop open the glove box and thumb through the manual for the answer. Of course it says to do everything I just did.

It also says that the alarm will disable once the vehicle speed reaches 15 mph.

Ok fine. Except I'm on the FIFTH FREAKING FLOOR OF A PARKING GARAGE.

Now everyone is looking at me as I navigate this Stratus down five levels of the parking garage while the headlights flash and the horn wails.

Long story short, I finally exited the garage, and floored the accelerator to get the Stratus up to 15 miles per hour so I could power the flux capacitor and shut off the blaring alarm.

So from that day onward I've had an innate fear of parking garages. And keyless entry remotes.

Local News Broadcasts - Keeping Fear Alive Since 1928

2010-11-29T19:23:00.000-08:00

I've flown cross-country on the day before Thanksgiving every year for the past fifteen years. Yes, the vaunted "Most Heavily Traveled Day of the Entire Year". The day that brings dire warnings of lengthy security checkpoints and clogged roads.

"You're flying out on WEDNESDAY?!?!" my co-worker asks me absolutely astonished by my unbridled chutzpah, "Oh, you better get there like... four, maybe five hours early. It's going to be a crazy house at the airport!!! Haven't you been listening to the news?!?!? How are you getting there?"

"I'm going to park off-site and take a shuttle over."

"Whaaaa???? Are you CRAZY? They'll be out of spaces by 6am!!! Don't you watch the news?!?!"

Yes, I must be crazy. Crazy for falling for this fear-induced lunacy every freaking year.

Let's get something straight. I fly out of LAX. One of the world's busiest airports. And while on any other given day the employees of LAX are a bureaucratic, incompetent mass of fuckery, for some reason they pull their shit together on the day before Thanksgiving.

It's unreal.

It's like they take their A-Team of talented security screeners, airport police, air-traffic controllers and gate attendents and schedule them all on that Wednesday.

I breezed through the off-site parking lot. On any other day there would be a 10-15 minute wait for a shuttle and then 10 minutes to get to the terminal. On the day before Thanksgiving, there were tons of shuttles ready to leave and then 2 minutes to the terminal. Why? Because the airport police was out in the full force directing traffic and ticketing idling cars/buses at the passenger unloading area.

So now I'm out of the long-term parking at record speed and now standing in the terminal. Where's the large security line? Where are the massive protests over the full-body scanners? There are none (unless you want to count the student activist handing out leaflets at the entrance).

You might assume that the day before Thanksgiving brings out all the rubes who have never flown in a plane, and families with diaper bags, breast milk and strollers -- the sort of folks who might choke the security lines. And you'd be right. Except that because there is so much fear over the long security lines these amateur flyers actually take some effort to research the rules in advance. They usually know the carry-on rules, and the 4-ounces of liquid in a Ziplock baggie requirement, and are generally cooperative with TSA instructions.

And if they don't, the TSA has prepared their staff accordingly to deal with these hordes professionally and promptly.

So now I'm at the security checkpoint where I have my choice of four agents ready to check my ID against my boarding pass. 30 seconds later I'm approaching the x-ray machines. TSA has all checkpoints open and none of them is more than 3 passengers deep. I make my way to the last checkpoint where there is no wait.

Despite my Semitic features -- dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and youthful appearance -- there is no pat down. No body scan.

3 minutes later I am through security. 3 minutes after that, I am at my gate. 3 hours early. 3 hours early because I listened to the fucking local news. FOOLED AGAIN. 15 years of flying home for Thanksgiving and you'd think I would've learned that it's the easiest day to fly.

But wait, I didn't listen to the local news. I listened to my co-worker who listened to the local news.

And the local news seems to exists solely to pander fear and shill their parent company's content and products.

Take my own mother who religiously watches the local news. I'm not sure if she'll ever eat bagged spinach, ride an escalator, or arrive less than three hours to the airport again. But at least she knows that there will be a new episode of Law and Order: SVU that evening. The day I fear the most is the day I make her a grandmother, because then I'm going to be overwhelmed with her endless worrying about faulty car seats, poisonous tap water, flammable blankets, and whatever else the local news thinks is going to kill my baby.

Sorry for the rant. I had three hours of downtime at my gate to think all this up.

Oh, and my flight landed on time. And it took less then seven minutes for the luggage to appear at baggage claim. And they didn't lose my luggage. And there was no line to pay at the short-term garage where my mother picked me up. And no traffic on the way home.

There was, however, a woman on my flight who had a nervous breakdown before we took off, and we had to taxi back to the gate to drop her off. Probably because she watches the local news.

Turkey From Last Night

2010-11-28T20:16:00.000-08:00

I should probably take a moment to wish the two people who read this blog a Happy Thanksgiving. I know it's coming a few days late, but haven't I given you guys enough already?

Collected Wisdom - Part 2

2010-11-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

More collected wisdom:

Technical employees are often assigned to windowless offices. Which makes them hostile and lacking in social skills. Which is why they're assigned to windowless offices. It's a vicious circle, really.

There are only 4 non-douchey Halloween costumes for men: Robot. Pirate. Zombie. Cowboy. That's it. However, combining all four into a Robotic Zombie Pirate Cowboy costume could be construed as douchey within certain social circles.

On the subject of Halloween: Don't feel it's the one day of the year where you can get away with dressing provocatively. You can tart it up any time you'd like.

Any substance becomes palatable when slathered with enough BBQ sauce.

Movies on average would be a lot better if people didn't buy tickets to shitty movies.

The problem with self-help books is that they are worthless to anybody who has a phobia of self-help books.

The best way to get rid of a pushy salesman is to repeatedly ask whether the product in question is Y2K compliant.

My Hatred of Costco Explained

2010-11-15T12:04:00.000-08:00

I hate Costco.

Maybe the Costco's where you live are clean, well-stocked, and not overrun with bickering couples, screaming children, and pushy blowhards who monopolize the free sample tables, but that certainly isn't the case in the greater Los Angeles area.

I think Costco has utter contempt for their customers. It takes a bit of chutzpah to require a $50 membership fee, offer a very limited selection of products, allow checkout lines ten people deep, limit your choice to American Express if paying by credit card, and then demand the final indignity of having one's purchases scrutinized by a receipt checker at the exit.

But what really irks me is this rabid, overly loyal Costco fan-base. We're talking Apple Computer and Star Wars levels of fanboy-ism. I was in the Costco meat section, and without soliciting or requesting his opinion, this random guy started chatting me up. "That's a great price for USDA prime steaks! But you should really try the lamb."

"Do you work here?" I asked.

"No, but did you know that Costco is the number one importer of Australian lamb in the world?"

No, I didn't. And neither should you, creepy middle-aged white guy who decided to start a conversation with me in the meat section. Go load your 40lb case of Gatorade Ice in your Forerunner and begone from my life.

I used to work with a knucklehead who brought his Costco evangelicalism to the office. He bragged to me about the Sony Blu-Ray player he bought for $150. I showed him my email confirmation for the same exact player from Dell.com, bought with a coupon and free shipping for $99. "Oh, but Costco has a better return policy," he snapped back defensively. Sure, buddy. Whatever props up your fragile little fantasy world.

Here's another conversation I had with that co-worker:

Me: So I'm thinking about getting a home theater system, but I can't decide if it's worth paying more for a 7.1 surround setup.

Co-Worker: Go to Costco! They sell home theater systems at Costco!

Me: Sure, I know. But I'm not sure what I want yet. I was thinking about maybe getting wireless rear speakers, but I'm concerned about the audio quality.

Co-Worker: They have wireless speakers at Costco! Go to Costco!

Me: I don't know what I want yet.

Co-Worker: They have TVs too, at the Costco. And after you're done checking out, you can get a hotdog and soda for $1.50.

Me: Okay, but at this point, I am trying to figure out what brand and model system I want to buy.

Co-Worker: They're big hotdogs too, a quarter pound! And they have pizza at the Costco.

Me: Nevermind. I'll look it up on Cnet.

Co-Worker: Blah blah blah, costco costco costco, blah blah blah, I'm moving to Orange County, lotsa Costco's there. Blah blah blah. Costco.

Me: I don't want to have to pay $50 for a membership so I can buy a stinking home theater system.

Co-Worker: Oh they have lots of stuff at the Costco! I buy all my golf shirts at the Costco. $15 for a shirt! And they have these frozen bagel dogs that my kids love at the Costco. And I fill up my car with gas from the Costco, and... hey, where are you going? Are you walking away in the middle of our conversation? Are you going to Costco? He must be going to Costco.

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Shakey's Pizza

2010-11-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Shakey's Pizza
7001 Santa Monica Blvd
W Hollywood, CA 90038

I have a weird thing about buffets. Buffet food is hardly ever good, and I rarely enjoy my meal, but I like going to them anyway.

I also have a weird thing about Shakey's. It's pizza. And fried chicken. And normally you would not associate the two with each other, but somehow Shakey's pulls it off. It also helps that they hide small containers of Frank's Red Hot Sauce behind the counter, and if you can talk a server into handing one over it will make your visit infinitely more enjoyable.

Also of note is that while Shakey's is along the lines of other family-oriented pizza chains like Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz, it stands apart as the only one that offers a fully stocked bar where you can order a mixed cocktail. And believe me that when there are unruly children terrorizing the salad bar, the booze is the only thing that will make your visit tolerable.

I ate during their daily "Bunch o' Lunch" buffet because I have a difficult time separating the concepts of quality and quantity.

I was fairly impressed by the restaurant's efficiency and overall strategies to maximize their buffet profits. They seem to have picked up on the quirk that most humans won't take the last 1 or 2 slices from a pizza. So a server would constantly police the pizza station and combine the straggling slices from various pies onto one pan.

Another clever tactic was rather than leaving plates in a conspicuous location for diners to help themselves, you are required to request a new plate from a server. I assume Shakey's saves some money on food as most diners will be to ashamed to ask for a 3rd, or even a 2nd plate. I am not one of those people.

I should point out that Shakey's is somehow able to separate the price of its beverage bar from the price of the buffet without any unreasonably emotional backlash.

Ruminations on "Back to the Future"

2010-11-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

"Back to the Future" (1985)
Starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson
Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Universal's marketing department must have dropped the ball with the 7-year-old-male demographic, because I had no idea that this movie existed until my babysitter dragged me out to see it months after its release. "What's it about?" I asked her.

"Well, there's a car. And a dog. And smoke."

"Oh, ok. Sounds good. Let's go see it."

So there you go marketing wizards. No need to cut a trailer or arrange Happy Meal tie-ins for the young-uns. Just make sure the movie's story includes an awesome car, a dog, and plenty of smoke.

The film opens with a long, tracking shot over a series of ticking clocks. Considering the technically-savvy Doc Brown has just invented a sophisticated time machine, it's a bit of a surprise that not one single clock is digital.

The camera briefly lingers on a newspaper whose headline reads, "Brown Mansion Destroyed!" with an accompanying photo of a burnt out shell of a residence. Co-writer Bob Gale admitted in recent interviews that 'ol Doc Brown torched the place for insurance money to pay for his time traveling research.

I'm going to take a detour from my essay here and discuss "The Sexual Politics of 1980s Cinema" -- namely this bizarre acceptance of minor children hanging out with creepy bachelor "mentors". Since the 80's we have never seen such a concentrated cluster of films exploring complex man-boy relationships.

Within the span of a few short years Hollywood presented a teen martial arts disciple/bachelor handyman coupling ("The Karate Kid"), a pre-Bar Mitzvah bratty loudmouth/deformed man-child pairing ("The Goonies"), a group of prep-school students and their overly dedicated teacher who insists they call him Captain ("Dead Poets Society"), a graverobber and his prepubescent Asian servant who insists everyone call him Doctor ("Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"), and this odd match-up of a shiftless teenager and a wild-eyed, arsonist mad scientist who engages in secretive nuclear arms deals with Libyan jihadists. Only in Hollywood could the hero in a family movie have terrorist ties. I'm not sure if these films could be released today without some sort of Fox News-induced outcry.

Marty McFly must be the only seventeen-year-old I know who drinks Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi. He sips from a can at dinner. A few empties are strewn about his bedroom. He's visibly disappointed when his request for a Pepsi-Free is rebuffed by the surly counterman in the 1955-era coffee shop. They could have made a whole movie about Marty McFly's diet soda addiction.

I find it incredibly amusing that the Libyan terrorists' vehicle of choice is a hippie van.

After Marty's first encounter with his 1955-era mother, we learn fairly quickly that whole side of the family is sociopathic. It's telegraphed towards the beginning of the film when present-day Lorraine McFly sips copiously from a bottle of Popov and references an incarcerated brother. But our suspicions are soon confirmed after Marty's grandfather runs him over. "Another one of these damn kids jumped in front of my car!" he shouts to his wife, hinting that this is not his first brush with attempted vehicular manslaughter.

And then there's Lorraine's aside to Marty when he wakes up in her bed, "You were out for nine hours." What kind of psychotic family holes up an unconscious head trauma victim in their house for NINE FREAKING HOURS without seeking medical attention?

So his uncle Joey is a jailbird, his grandfather is a sociopathic reckless driver and hothead, his grandmother an enabler, his mom a borderline alcoholic sexual deviant who molests invalid head trauma victims and freely admits she knows what it's like to kiss her brother. No wonder Marty hangs out with an admitted arsonist with terrorist ties.

"Back to the Future" contains the most prescient and lucid commentary on American politics ever uttered. After learning that Ronald Reagan is the nation's president in 1985, and soon after discovering the "portable television studio" (actually a VHS camcorder) that Marty brought from the future, Doc opines soberly, "No wonder your President is an actor. He has to look good on television."
Later Marty coaches his father George to properly woo Lorraine. "Tell her that destiny brought you together. Tell her she's the most beautiful girl you've ever seen in the world. Girls like that stuff." I suppose courting women was easier back in 1955 when restraining orders weren't commonplace. Although considering Lorraine's sociopathic and oedipal tendencies, a guy as creepy as Crispin Glover could have said just about anything to get her to the dance.

While prepping Marty's return to 1985 via lightning bolt, Doc Brown bribes the police officer who requests the permit for his "weather experiment". In some ways this scene paints Marty as the villain because if he'd never traveled back to 1955, Doc wouldn't have to illegally wire the clock tower for the necessary 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor, and therefore wouldn't have to bribe the police officer which is obviously the gateway crime that triggers Doc's downward spiral to become an arsonist insurance fraudster with links to Islamic terrorists.

In fact, I believe an argument could be made that "Back to the Future" is an indictment of Generation X's hidden agenda to destroy the idyllic 1950s culture that is so dear to Baby Boomers. Marty terrorizes the humble, Rockwell-esque Peabody farm and later his own father with his radiation suit. He rabble-rouses and implants ideas of racial and gender inequalities to anybody who will listen (beginning with future mayor Goldie Wilson in the coffee shop). He single-handedly introduces reckless skateboard culture to a whole generation of impressionable youth. And then at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance he indoctrinates wholesome doo-wop and big band music-loving teens with heavy metal during his rendition of Johnny B. Goode. What an asshole.

After Marty successfully pimps out his mother to his father at the dance, Lorraine remarks to George, "Marty, such a nice name." But clearly not nice enough because she waits until their third-born child to use it. But what if in a clever quirk, Marty returned to 1985 to find his first-born brother is named Marty and his parents wound up naming him Calvin Klein. And then he's mercilessly teased by his 1985 classmates because his name is Calvin Klein. So he becomes alienated and ostracized, burns down Doc Brown's mansion and becomes embroiled in a Libyan terrorist plot. I'm onto something here. It would have made a hell of a lot more interesting plot for the sequel instead of that ridiculous Biff-induced alternate 1985 timeline.

After Doc rebuffs his repeated attempts to warn him of his impending death in 1985, Marty realizes that he can adjust the time machine to arrive before the shooting in 1985. "Ten minutes ought to do it," he says flippantly. 10 minutes? Are you shitting me? You don't deserve that 4x4 truck your parents give you at the end of the movie, Marty McFly.

When Marty and Doc Brown re-unite in the parking lot, and Doc reveals his bulletproof vest and the two embrace, do they not realize the Libyan terrorists are still there?

Then Doc has to walk his crippled, shot-up ass all the way back to downtown Hill Valley to pick up the DeLorean where Marty abandoned it. And on top of that Marty makes Doc drive him back to his house. Generally when someone has just been leveled with a fully-automatic military-grade assault weapon, it's proper etiquette to at least offer to do the driving. I guess Marty gets his manners from his mother who held him hostage for several hours after a massive head trauma. Doc Brown is so in shock from his multiple gunshot wounds that he doesn't seem to be the least bit peeved that Marty ditched a fully functional time machine, door ajar, in the middle of crime-ridden downtown Hill Valley.

So back in 1955, the younger Doc Brown is fully aware that at some point in the early 1980s he will meet and befriend a younger Marty McFly. But the uncomfortable subtext is that the younger Marty will have no prior knowledge of Doc. Yet Doc will be anticipating him. Just like one of those guys on "To Catch a Predator". Maybe Doc should rig up a bunch of amplifiers an speakers in his lab, perfect for luring teenage boys who want to practice the guitar. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Bagel Friday

2010-11-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

I once worked for a company where each Friday the management would fill the break room with baskets of fresh bagels -- and I mean bagels so fresh they were steaming hot, with containers of homemade whipped cream cheese, capers, beefsteak tomatoes, thinly sliced red onion and the occasional package of smoked nova salmon.

Honestly, Bagel Friday was one of the only things that made working for this particular company tolerable.

And man were these bagels insanely good. Real New York-style bagels too, meaning the bakers pushed their thumbs through the center of a fresh dough ball and formed the bagel into shape before submerging it into a boiling water bath. After simmering just enough to cook the inside, the bagels were finished in an oven leaving them slightly crisp on the outside with a soft, doughy interior.

Heaven. Just heaven.

One day without explanation, management switched from our beloved supplier to Noah's Bagels. Now not to come off elitist here, but Noah's Bagels are not bagels at all but rather round pieces of bread with holes in them. Seriously, these assholes mix Asiago cheese into their bagel dough.

The delicious freshly whipped cream cheese disappeared, and was replaced with that plasticky-tasting, generic cream cheese that Noah's mass-produces for their stores.

The cries of outrage were deafening, and worker morale was shattered over the switch. I asked the operations department why they swapped bagels. Their answer: "Oh, we've always gotten bagels from Noah's. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Lies!" I shouted at them.

Meanwhile all of my co-workers were flipping their shit. Emails went out lambasting the decision.

Then the CEO of the company sent out a company-wide memo.

"It's come to my attention," he wrote, "that a few of you are unhappy with the new bagels. We feel this change to Noah's has been a positive one and that the majority of you overwhelmingly prefer the new bagels. However, in the interest of democracy we will leave this up to a vote."

We were then instructed to vote our preferred bagel supplier by emailing the head of operations.

I know everyone I spoke with voted for the original bagel supplier.

A follow-up email was sent out by the CEO. "Due to an overwhelming response with over 70% of the company in favor, we have decided to continue ordering from Noah's Bagels."

"Lies!" we all shouted in the hallways.

Within 6 months I left this company for another job. The bagels may or may not have had something to do with that.

I ran into an employee of the operations department at a mutual friend's party. After she was lubricated slightly from several tequila shots, I quizzed her about the bagel controversy. "Oh, it saved the company three thousand dollars a year to switch to Noah's."

"That's it?" I asked.

"Yep. That was the the only reason."

Lies.

National Sandwich Day

2010-11-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

By the way, November 3rd is National Sandwich Day.

I did not write a special post about leftover chicken sandwiches for National Sandwich Day.

Because I didn't know it was National Sandwich Day until it was too late.

Also, I think National Sandwich Day is an attack on my personal values. I am boycotting National Sandwich Day.

Furthermore, I am boycotting all sandwiches effective immediately. Especially paninis because they are tiny half-assed sandwiches for twice the price.

That is all.

Hometown Buffet

2010-11-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

HomeTown Buffet
1850 W Empire Ave
Burbank, CA 91504

I have a lot of strong feelings against HomeTown Buffet despite its popularity (even at 4pm it's packed with a line out the door). It's irritating that they have massive discounts for children, thus giving financial incentive for hordes of unruly rugrats to terrorize the restaurant and abuse the soft-serve machines. Or that most customers have no qualms about pushing in front of you to help themselves to the food you were waiting for, have below-par hygiene, or take 5 minutes to pick through a chafing dish.

Despite that, somehow I end up at Hometown at least once a month for their fried chicken. It's the only dish that I like. I only added the mashed potatoes and peas in the photo to give other diners the impression that I'm not some sort of psychopath that would show up to a buffet to eat only one dish. Of course I am that type of psychopath because I ate 6 pieces of fried chicken with a glass of Diet Coke. Then I cried myself to sleep.

HomeTown Buffet used to charge an all-inclusive price, meaning everything including beverages came with your meal. Now, they have split off the beverage as a separate charge, but lowered the price of the buffet by a proportional amount. Here is Hometown's official stance as posted on their Facebook page:

"We're listening! We split drink prices from meals to offer more choice to our guests. Guests who didn't want the beverage bar felt like they were paying for something they weren't using, so now they can choose to pay for that part of the meal or not!"

Let me make this absolutely clear in case both I and Hometown lost you. HomeTown Buffet did NOT raise their prices. They merely gave customers the OPTION to forgo the beverage and pay less.

I cannot capture in words the shit storm that erupted when HomeTown offered what is actually a reasonably straight-forward tiered pricing tilted in the customer's favor. The line to pay dragged to a halt while the cashier had to politely explain the new policy to each customer while answering an avalanche of angry, accusatory questions.

Maybe you think this stupidity is limited to the city of Burbank, but you'd be wrong.

Here are actual complaints from customers nationwide on HomeTown Buffet's Facebook page in response to this "controversy":

"I'd like to know how you police or enforce that? you gonna watch every guest who orders water to see that they don't get a cup? I think this is really a dumb idea...who drinks only water with a meal?"

"I liked it the old way. A buffet should be one price for everything. Soon you'll probably be charging extra for desert too."

"It's like a shell game."

"One of the things my family always liked about Hometown Buffet was that the unlimited beverage bar was included in the price of the meal. We do no [sic] like that you have changed that policy & now beverages are an extra cost item.

"My wife hates the new beverage situation. All she drinks is water and now they give her this bright red class [sic], which she considers [sic] makes her a third class citizen."

"The beverage being extra was not a good decision. The beverage being included in the meal is what really separated HTB from other Buffet [sic]."

"The beverage bar is a back door price increase. We resent it and we resent the hard-sell."

Um, it is still the same price if you order the buffet and a beverage. But now you have the option (if you don't know what option means, please look it up), but you have the option, OPTION, OPTION of not ordering the beverage. And if you so choose to forgo a soda for tap water, the price drops nearly $2.

I'm not sure if it's sadder that people become so outraged over a non-issue or that they seek out the company's Facebook page to complain about it in such an uniformed manner. Or that yesterday was Election Day. I think we're all doomed.

The McDonalds "Secret" Menu

2010-11-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

McDonalds doesn't really have a secret menu - an idea popularized by In-N-Out.

There is the rumored McGangBang, a hybridization of a Double Cheeseburger and McChicken sandwich described by DasKosmischeVonUT on the VWVortex forums as such:

"It's kind of like having a threesome with two ugly chicks. While it's happening you're stoked, because hey threesome!!! But once you're finished it kinda sinks in about what you've done."

And there's the McWhitey, another hybrid consisting of a McChicken sandwich between two Filet 'o Fish patties.

I think it would do wonders for McDonalds business if they endorsed some sort of off-menu slate of sandwiches and entrees made from existing ingredients. Preferably for late night dining. My suggestions follow:

The McSurf & Turf - Quarter pound burger patty, slice of cheese, and filet 'o fish patty inside a seeded bun.

The McBaja - Filet 'o fish patty, shredded cabbage, tomato, onion, tartar sauce wrapped in a flour tortilla. Lemon wedge on the side.

McPoutine - Large fries topped with country gravy and cheese. I understand this is available in Canada.

The McBELT - Bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato on an English muffin.

The McMunchy Box - Box of fries, topped with McNuggets, topped with Buffalo sauce.

The McChipwich - Two of their chocolate chip cookies with vanilla soft serve in between.

The McLexington - Essentially the standard McRib sandwich but with cole slaw substituted for the pickles/onions.

Chick-Fil-A

2010-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

Chick-Fil-A
Various Locations Nationwide

As I indicated in an earlier post, I love visiting back East as it offers a chance to indulge in some of the better chain restaurants around. One of these days I'll extol the virtues of Bojangles.

Chick-Fil-A is one of those great Southern idiosyncrasies where a sandwich can consist entirely of a fried chicken fillet and three pickles. Some have bemoaned the religious bent to the company which compels them to shutter all franchises on Sundays. But to me it's a plus because much like its religious cousin In-N-Out Burger, Chick-Fil-A employees are paid and treated considerably better than competing chains, resulting in stellar customer service.

$10+ an hour for an entry-level job, with a shot at advancement to manager buys a lot of goodwill -- both from employees and customers.

Collected Wisdom - Part 1

2010-10-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Some things I've learned in my short life:

You can be grossly incompetent at your job, or you can be an asshole. But you cannot be both.

Your life will be immeasurably less complex if you don't own an automobile.

The quality of sandwich bread and cheese is almost always mathematically proportional to the price.

You can never own enough v-neck sweaters.

The best time to see a movie is at 10:00am. Because the only people in a movie theater at 10:00am are the people who really want to see the movie.

The cost of renting a U-Haul truck with a furniture dolly, fueling it, adding in the $.20 per mile surcharge, paying the fines when you park it overnight, and then buying pizza and beer for all your friends inevitably adds up to the same cost of hiring professional movers.

If you apologize to someone and their exact reply is "No worries," then you better watch your back, buddy, because they're planning to screw you over somehow in return.

If you invite a co-worker or colleague to lunch, pick up the check. If a co-worker or colleague invites you to lunch, pick up the check. The trick is to insist on a restaurant of your choice so that you always have an excuse to pay.

If you hate tomatoes, odds are it's because you've never had a good tomato.

Fast Food Nation

2010-10-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

I was visiting back East which gave me an opportunity to eat at my favorite regional fast food chains (Chick-Fil-A and Bojangles deserve chicken-centric posts of their own). Anyway, the Atlanta airport has its own Krystal Burger franchise, and as soon as I ordered a sack of eight the memories started flooding back in.

My first job ever was working at Krystal Burger, which could be described as a Southern genteel version of White Castle -- small, slider-sized burgers and mini hot dogs. I lasted four weeks.

This Krystal franchise was owned by a family friend, whose constant belly-aching about being understaffed inspired my father to volunteer me to work there. I started the next morning -- $5.50 an hour.

My first memory is that I was issued exactly one uniform, which I had to wash nightly because it reeked of steamed onions and fry oil by the time my shift was over.

Then there was working the cash register. They never asked if I had any experience, or if I knew what I was doing. They just sort of threw me in front of register and said something to the effect of, “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

There was the matter of breaks. We didn’t get any. If you asked for a break, the manager would say, “Clean the restroom first.” So you’d clean the restroom. Then they’d say, “Stock the kitchen.” You’d do that too. Then, “Mop up the dining room.” So you’d mop. Then, “Sorry, we’re too busy now. Wait till the dinner rush is over.” And so on so you would never actually get a meal break. Of course they’d pencil in the meal breaks on our time cards anyway, so I’d always end up working an hour off the clock.

They hated paying overtime. One night as I was clocking out at 8pm, the manager insisted I stay until eleven. “I can’t pay you overtime,” he said, “but you can have all the food you want.” I told him I wasn’t interested, but he kept insisting and insisting, and acted like I would be doing him a huge personal favor. So I agreed. It wound up being three-and-a-half hours. I started to ring up a food order to take home, but the manager stopped me, “I have to do that,” he said. I ordered a chicken sandwich, fries, and large soda, and an apple pie when he cut me off. “Sorry, you can only have $5 worth.”

“But I worked over three hours of overtime for no pay. That’s over $25. And you said I could have as much as I wanted”

“Sorry, you can have $5 worth.”

I changed my order. The manager set my food on a tray. “I wanted that to go,” I told him. He insisted I had to eat it there.

“Why?” I asked.

“We don’t want you to take it home and give it to someone else.”

“I earned this food. And whether I eat it myself or give it to a homeless person, that’s my business.”

The manager dumped the whole tray of food into the trashcan, and I went home empty handed.

My father phoned our family friend who owned the restaurant. “I had no idea you could work a minor so many hours without a break, and then not pay them overtime. How does that work exactly?” he asked.

My next shift the manager didn’t even look me in the face. He gave me shit detail. Cleaning the bathroom. Unloading heavy boxes of food from the delivery truck. De-greasing the kitchen. But I got my lunch break that day, and every day from then on out.

There was a lockbox under each register. Each time a customer paid with a twenty or higher you would cram it into your lockbox. The managers would push you aside, unlock the box, and grab a fistful of twenties. It never occurred to me that I should insist they count it out in my presence until I was written up for a $60 short on my register. They threatened to take it out of my salary. I reminded them I was there as a favor to the owner and they could send me home any time they wanted. I never heard anything about it again.

We had some interesting customers.

There was a belligerent old man who ordered a sack of eight burgers to go each day. The medium-sized paper bags hold exactly 8 boxed burgers, and we’d fill them to the max. But the old man would always come back to the register screaming that we left a burger out. Most of the time, he’d forget to wipe the blob of mustard or stray onion slice on his chin from the “missing” burger. It got to the point that we’d give him his sack of eight burgers, and hand over an extra burger on top of that just to preemptively get rid of him.

There was a guy who showed up every day and ordered 10 burgers, a large chili, and an apple pie. Even on weekends. He always had exact change. I liked him.

There was the creepy middle-aged guy who showed up once or twice a week and worked the girls at the counter insisting he was a talent scout and that he could get them modeling jobs.

There was this incredibly obese guy who showed up every day and ordered a chocolate shake, except our shake machine was broken. Each day he became increasingly agitated and he'd demand to speak with the manager. Finally one day I was working the drive-through when I heard his familiar voice ordering a chocolate shake. “What do you mean you’re still out?” he shouted when I told him the machine was still broken.

I apologized and offered him a free dessert of his choice. He turned it down. Then he drove off to the side and waited for two more cars to place their order before he floored the accelerator and blocked the pick-up window with his truck. He refused to move it unless we made him a chocolate shake. The police arrested him.

Our bathroom toilet stopped up one morning. Within two minutes of this happening a man demanded to see the manager and began threatening a lawsuit over the out-of-order bathroom. We offered to let him use the toilet in the manager’s office. He said he would, but would still sue us anyway because he couldn’t use the customer bathroom.

We made sweet tea in batches. You’d brew enough hot tea to fill a 20-gallon bucket. Then you’d consult the periodic table of the elements to determine the saturation point of sugar into water. Then you’d slowly stir in a ten bag pound of sugar until the molecules seemingly became unstable and there was a remote possibility that a chemical reaction would cause the tea to supernova. Then you'd add a few scoops more of sugar. Customers would order liter-sized cups of sweet tea and still demand packets of sugar. And then help themselves to three or more refills.

I was never once asked to wash my hands the entire four weeks I was there. In fact when I insisted on washing my hands at the start of every shift it seemed to irritate the manager.

The burgers came with onions cooked on them. If you asked the kitchen to hold the onions they would scrape them off with a spatula. One of the cooks would use his extra long pinky nail to scrape them off.

One day we ran out of lettuce, tomato, onions, and cheese. The manager sent me to Food Lion to pick some up. In uniform. I actually enjoyed that.

There was a strict "no-eating-surplus-food" rule, and despite it being wasteful, the management would sooner toss out burgers, chili, and fries that had been sitting out rather than let an employee take it home.

Because we couldn't eat leftovers and there was no employee discount, very few of the us would eat the food. Instead the staff would eat at the Wendy’s across the street, in uniform, where the $.99 value menu meant they could eat cheaper.

Police officers, however, got a discount. 50% off food and free coffee. We had a lot of cops frequent the restaurant. Some nights cops outnumbered customers.

Ketchup packets were on lockdown. There were strict instructions to give customers 1 packet per order, even if they ordered three large fries. "Tell them to come back if they need more," the manager told us. Then we could give them one additional packet. I guess ketchup packets are expensive, but then again, so is alienating your customers.

Contrary to popular belief, the chili was scratch made, and we never threw old burgers into the chili. We’d eat the old burgers ourselves, hiding in the walk-in fridge so the manager wouldn't see us.

One of the biggest sins you could commit was screwing up a chicken sandwich order. The chicken sandwiches were incredibly expensive and apparently a loss-leader.

The owner showed up one afternoon and ordered a chicken sandwich without mayo. The kitchen messed it up. I sent it back, whispering to the cook, “This is for the owner. Please make a fresh one. No mayo.”

The cook sent me a new one, also with mayo. I physically walked back to the kitchen with the sandwich and confronted the cook. “This is for the owner. Please, no mayo.” I told her.

“That’s how they come!” she screamed.

Unpredictably, she was not fired. “That’s some balls you got,” I told her later.

“Balls my ass,” the cook shot back, “If they fire me who they gonna replace me with? Ain’t nobody wanna work here! Unpaid overtime. No breaks. They ain't gettin' rid of me!”

She was right. They weren't going to fire her. It's a nice asset in life to have the ability to walk away.

I left after my fourth week. The manager didn't even look me in the eye. He only told me to drop off my uniform at the same time that I picked up my last check.

I came back to see my co-workers from time-to-time. Working conditions didn't improve, and slowly they all left. Within a few years, McDonalds offered to buy out the location for many times more than what the owner had paid. The deal was so lucrative that the owner sold the restaurant immediately.

Capital gains tax is fairly low in this country, so when all was said and done the owners had a nice return on their investment. They have not, to my knowledge, used that windfall to start another business or create new jobs -- but given the way they do business that's probably all for the best.

BBQ Chicken, Mac & Cheese, Grilled Vegetables

2010-10-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Food Fair by Diego
7825 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 933-9314
www.foodfairbydiego.com

Solid lunch special for $6 flat. I'm an advocate of serving mac & cheese as a side dish rather than a main, but welcome any debate on the issue. Actually don't debate that here.

Growing up in North Carolina there was a BBQ restaurant I would frequent with my family. I loved how there was a list of a dozen or so vegetables to choose from to build your plate, and not one of them was actually a vegetable. Like hushpuppies, and mac & cheese. And Jello. And peach cobbler. God I miss the South.

The Seven Circles of Group Dining Hell

2010-10-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

I'm adding one more thing to my Murtaugh List and that is eating out in a restaurant with a large group of people. I don't get the herd mentality and why it's so important to get a group of 12-18 people to enjoy an experience. And don't get me started about the time I had to save ten seats for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. In Times Square. On opening night. For forty-five minutes. That's forty-five minutes, mind you, of fending off angry sweathogs from Queens.

So occasionally someone in my circle of friends decides it would be fun to go out for dinner as a group. That in itself shouldn't be a problem, but then there's all this anxiety about who should be included in the invite.

Some friends want to bring co-workers, or old college roommates visiting from out of town. Someone posts the event on Facebook. 30 people respond that they're attending.

Then everything spirals out of control as I enter--

The Seven Circles of Group Dining Hell...

First Circle - Getting the Herd Moving

Fact: The Cheesecake Factory is a terrible place to bring a group (actually, The Cheesecake Factory is pretty much a terrible choice under any circumstance). Not only is it packed on weekends, but they don't accept reservations. That does not stop it from being the restaurant where we ultimately end up because it's the least common denominator. Everyone is so damn picky about what they eat that ultimately we choose a bland, generic restaurant (like Cheesecake) that nobody really likes, but everyone can deal with.

Fine, but what's with the whole last minute email of "Let's move dinner back from 8pm because Sally's co-worker wants to bring her roommate who's working late. So let's reschedule for 10:30pm." Can't Sally's co-worker who we've never met just meet us for drinks afterward instead of forcing 20 people to change their plans?

Inevitably there's half-a-dozen crises and mini-crises, and tons of drama about the date and time, and this and that person's feelings are hurt. Sometimes your schedule is not going to align the way you want, so why take the evite so damn personally?

Second Circle - The Ground Squirrel

The Ground Squirrel is the one who will by any means possible try to sabotage the enjoyment of dinner. The Ground Squirrel will be the one who sniffs that you the dish you ordered is bourgeois, or that the owner of the restaurant gave a $100 donation to a political cause that offends his/her sensibilities, or whine about their migraine headache.

They'll sit there and mope, and sigh, and text, and twitter, and demand attention, and ultimately leave early so they can "go home and write in their blog."

Third Circle - The Bar Transfer Freeloaders

These guys show up an hour ahead of time ("Hey, I got off work early and came straight here!"). They hang out in the bar and order cocktails (and not the ones on the happy hour menu but the $15 fancy-schmancy house specialties and 18-year-old single malts).

That's all fine with me, until they transfer their bar tab to the main check. That's not only a dick move to your friends who will have to subsidize your tab when the bill is split, but it screws over the bar staff who loses their tip to the waitstaff.

Fourth Circle - The Appetizer Guy/Wine Girl

"Hey, let's get some appetizers for the table!" says the random co-worker of a friend who somehow got invited to the group dinner. A few people will shrug, one will non-committally say, "Maybe." And immediately Appetizer Guy flags down the waiter and requests 8 orders of calamari, 8 orders of seared scallops, and a few cheese plates on top. "Let's get a bottle of wine to go with that!" declares Wine Girl. The waiter suggests the $80 bottle. "Let's get six of those!" Wine Girl demands without checking with the rest of the table. Hey Wine Girl, they sell by the glass too. And Appetizer Guy, stop being generous with my money.

Fifth Circle - Mr. Special

"It's a double cut beef filet with lobster mashed potatoes topped with prawns and truffles," says the waiter in regards to that evening's specials. "Oooooh, I'll have that," say Mr. Special. And once that seal is broken, several others at the table order it. Nobody bothers to ask the cost. I mean, whatever, we're all splitting the check, amiright?

Sixth Circle - The Gratuity Nazi

If your group is larger than 8, you can count on the management adding the gratuity automatically to the bill. Makes things real easy. Take the total, divide it by the number of diners, VOILA! But then the Gratuity Nazi chimes in. "Wait! We need to tip!"

Yeah, try to explain to her how the automatic gratuity works in front of your friends without sounding like a cheap asshole. I'm not above adding extra money for exemplary service, but I think it's in bad taste for one person to bully or shame others into shelling out extra over what's already been established as a societal norm. Especially, when the extra tip will most likely not make it to the waitstaff because of Frequent Flyer Guy. See below:

Seventh Circle - Frequent Flyer Guy

You and I are the responsible ones who stop at the ATM and get cash for what will likely be an expensive dinner. And when the bill is tallied up, everyone throws their twenties into the pile. Then Frequent Flyer Guy swoops in with his MasterCard. "I need the miles," he says, sweeping up the cash and jamming it into his pocket while handing his credit card to the waiter.

All right, this guy is an asshole. Let's say my share is $85 and I put in five twenties. If I ask Mr. Frequent Flyer Guy for $15 change, I get the bewildered stare like I'm some sort of dick. "Really? You NEED change?" he asks incredulously. Yeah, you douche! Otherwise not only do I have to subsidize your airfare, I also have to pay you an extra $15 for the privilege.

Frequent Flyer Guy has it figured out though, and he almost always eats for free thanks to the Gratuity Nazi. That extra $5-$10 you threw in for the tip on top of the mandatory gratuity? It's going straight up Frequent Flyer Guy's nose.

---------------------------------------

I hope dining out with large groups peak in your post-college years, and wanes once you get married or sick of your friends.

There's nothing wrong with a few bottles of wine and four large pizzas in someone's living room. Just saying.

So yeah, I'm a cheap, peerless bastard. Maybe this is why I stay at home throwing imaginary tea parties for my stuffed animals Polly Precious-Pants and Ms. Precious Perfect (but not Pear Bear -- she got too bossy).

Dino's Chicken

2010-09-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

Dino's Chicken & Burgers
2575 W Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90006-4011
(213) 380-3554
website

1/2 grilled chicken drenched in translucent orange hot sauce atop a bed of french fries - corn tortillas and cole slaw on the side, with a large soda. $7 with tax included. I so approve.

So I grab my order from the window and turn to the seating area but it's crammed full. Except nobody has food -- meaning that 1 or 2 people from a group are holding the table while the others in their party stand in line to order. Meanwhile I don't have anywhere to sit and enjoy my meal which is now getting cold. I like to hover over those people saving seats and eat noisily while smacking my lips. I'm pretty sure that's the most mature way to handle it.

The KFC Double Down Sandwich

2010-04-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

Go ahead and take any judgment you have and save it. Just save it. This is a blog that purports to be about chicken, so this post was inevitable.

Here is the KFC Double Down sandwich in its beautiful glory:

And at a wider angle:

And if the marketing wasn't clear enough, what we're up against here are two Original Recipe fried chicken breasts with one slice each of Monterey Jack and Pepper Jack cheeses, two strips of bacon, and what is cheekily referred to as "Colonel's Sauce".

Somehow the promotion of this sandwich has been attacked as some sort of cultural affront. There is nothing more controversial about this sandwich than a Chicken Cordon Bleu frozen dinner. At 540 calories, it hardly qualifies as the widowmaker it's made out to be in the press.

Furthermore, here are a list of items that contain many more calories than the Double Down:

Subway 6" Grilled Chicken and Bacon Ranch (no cheese) - 570 calories
Burger King Whopper - 760 calories
Burger King Tendercrisp Garden Salad - 670 calories
McDonalds 5 piece chicken strips with 1 packets of Buffalo sauce - 720 calories
Wendy's Chicken BLT Salad With Honey Dijon Dressing - 720 calories

Anyway, onto the sandwich itself.

The initial bite was surprisingly tasty. The breast meat was moist, juicy, and felt like a whole piece of chicken and not process pulp that's been molded into a patty. The two cheese slices inside were softened, but not melty, which is something I prefer because I like my cheese to have a little bit of firmness to it. The only true disappointment to me was the lack of bacon flavor. At first I thought they had omitted the bacon, until I peeled open the sandwich to look.

Yep, there's bacon in there. Tiny little man-made strips. I probably could have done without the Colonel's Sauce. I might ask them to hold it the next time and add a squeeze of Sriracha at home. But does it even need the extra spice? The sandwich itself is rather tangy and spicy in its own right, much more so than you would expect from a sandwich produced for the masses.

Ultimately, I finished the Double Down and my appetite was fully satisfied. It's a substantially larger sandwich than I had anticipated, and the $6.99 price point for the combo (comes with a side of potato wedges and a fountain soda) was neither a bargain nor an insultingly high price compared to other fast food outlets.

The Double Down was a surprisingly pleasant experience, and while I won't rush out to get another, I won't cry myself to sleep tonight for having eaten it either.

Atomic Fireball

2010-04-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is an Atomic Fireball hard candy. It's pungent and spicy, with a cinnamon kick. I hadn't seen one of these in over twenty years, until I found a huge jar of them on a co-worker's desk.

These bring back memories of this fascist summer camp I went to growing up. The staff exerted absolute control over what we ate, and would confiscate any care packages from home containing candy or cookies. But they would let us have these Atomic Fireball candies. They would pass around huge containers of them, knowing full well most campers would refuse it or take one at the most. It was all we could handle.

The summer camp would issue you a "rank" book on your first day and encourage you to take classes. Pass a class, and they'd mark your book and you'd advance to the next rank (Ensign to Skipper to Yeoman to First Mate to Captain, etc.) I thought it was a waste of time because advancing to a higher rank didn't grant you any special privileges or reward. Also the ranks wouldn't carry over to the next summer, you'd have to start all over again. I spent most of the summer fishing.

Another thing this quasi-fascist organization would do is encourage parents to label their child's clothing to prevent loss or theft. Let me preface by saying I have a hang-up about stripes, insignias, logos, and patches on socks. My socks have to be plain, solid color, crew socks.

Well due to their suggestion, my father bought a monogramming kit and printed my name inside all my clothes. He also monogrammed my name on each of my plain, white crew socks. I've never forgiven him for that. To his credit though, nobody stole my socks.

Chicken Enchiladas

2010-04-16T11:37:00.001-07:00

My old standby for leftover rotisserie chicken is to make chicken salad sandwiches. But enchiladas are a fairly quick alternative. Tomatoes, whole cloves of garlic, almonds, onion get charred in a skillet. Spoon into a blender with some chicken stock, roasted peppers, maybe some chocolate. Reduce sauce. Assemble the enchiladas with the leftover shredded chicken adding a spoonful of sauce, queso fresco, and chopped red onion inside the rolled tortilla. Top with the remaining sauce and cheese and bake until heated through and cheese is melty. Garnish with avocado and cilantro.

Or you can eat the cold leftover chicken right out of the takeout container while you watch The Bachelor and cry yourself to sleep later that night. No judgment here.

Pastry of the Year

2010-04-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

I regret that I haven't posted any chicken dishes lately. Fact is, I had BBQ chicken with a salad for lunch, but wasn't able to snap a photo because my memory card was full. It was this photo that put me over the storage limit.

This cinnamon roll is the "Automatic Merchandiser Pastry of the Year" for FIVE years running. I think we all know the "Automatic Merchandiser" is the Golden Globes of the vending machine industry. Just sayin', if you want a "Pastry of the Year" award, I can get you a "Pastry of the Year" award. I know people.

Thread-crapping

2010-03-16T14:14:00.001-07:00

I once came into possession of a stack of vouchers for a free soft-serve at Pinkberry (a local frozen yogurt chain).

I’m the type of guy to share the wealth, so I brought them back to the office to pass out to co-workers.

“Pinkberry? YUCK!!!” blurted the first person I offered them to, “You know they NEVER clean those machines!”

She flashed me this angry look like I shot her puppy. I hurried away while she screamed after me, “It’s not even real yogurt! It’s all chemicals!”

I tried giving them to others.

“Ew! That stuff is SOOO high in calories.”

“Pinkberry is SO far away. I’m NOT driving 30 minutes to get free ice cream.” (ed. note: There happened to be a Pinkberry within 500 yards of where this idiot was standing when I offered the voucher.)

“They’re really skimpy with the toppings. I bet they won’t even give you the normal size with the coupon.” (ed. note: Pinkberry did give me the normal size. And while I won’t debate the skimpiness of the toppings, I will point out that the whole thing was FUCKING FREE.)

Apparently, when someone is being nice and offers you free ice cream or something, the appropriate response is to make them feel like an asshole.

The vouchers were going to expire, so I wound up walking over to Pinkberry and accosting someone in line. “HERE!” I shouted, pressing the vouchers into his hand. I ran off before he could say anything.

A colleague was interested in buying an expensive, professional grade digital SLR camera that was so new it had yet to hit the stores. It’s the kind of camera that costs two or three thousand dollars. Around that same time, I received an email from a local vendor that was going to be demo-ing the same camera at an invite-only event. Free food, free booze, and an ability to play with the camera and ask engineers from Sony questions. I forwarded the email to the colleague.

Big mistake.

He called me at work. “Yeah, I got your email, but I am WAY too busy to go to this event of yours. And I live really far away from it, so…”

“It’s not my event,” I interrupted, “and honestly, it doesn’t matter to me if you go or not. I only forwarded it on to you because you were researching that camera.”

“Well that vendor is really overpriced.“

“You don’t have to buy from that vendor. The camera isn’t even for sale yet. But if you want to get your hands on the camera and test it out, that’s what the event is for.”

“Well I’m really swamped,” he continued, “My kids and—“

I cut him off “Just delete the email. It doesn’t matter to me whether you go or not. The email was strictly for your own informaton.”

He was still talking about it as I hung up.

In the online forum and bulletin board community, this is often referred to as thread-crapping.

So now before I forward a deal or event to a friend, I preface my email with, “WHAT YOU DO WITH THIS INFORMATION IS ENTIRELY UP TO YOU!”

So what’s the deal anyway? It’s not like I offered you ice cream that I pissed in. It’s not like I tried to recruit you into some pyramid scheme. I’m not referring you to some shady weekend getaway that doubles as a timeshare sales pitch. I’m not getting kickbacks of any sort.

Are you worried I’m going to lord it over you or something? “Hey Fred, remember when I told you about that camera demo? Well now I need something from you.”

Did you think I was going to follow up to see if you went to the camera demo? Ask you questions? Give you a pop quiz?

Try something different next time I offer you something. How about this: Smile. It’s nice to smile at your friends and colleagues to show that you enjoy having them around. It’s disarming, as well as just plain good manners in modern society.

Then while continuing to be upbeat, say something like “Oh, thanks for thinking of me!” If I’m offering something useful to you, accept it graciously. If you’re not interested, gracefully bow out.

So in fewer words, don’t be a dick. And don’t thread crap. It’s played out.

Chicken Salad Sandwich

2010-03-15T16:56:00.001-07:00

Diced, leftover rotisserie chicken, celery, shallot, capers, mayonaisse, dried thyme, kosher salt, pepper, squeeze of lemon.

No, I did not hold it between my knees.

How The Food Network Has Ruined My Life

2010-02-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

I work in the television industry, which means I get a TV in my office. With cable. You might think this is a nice perk, but it isn’t. It creates a whole layer of stress because what if someone walks into my office and there’s something risqué on the screen? A lingerie ad? A cable news personality spouting off on a controversial topic? I mean -- I can’t just leave the TV off -- that would insult my employer who purchased the TV for my use.

So to pre-empt any possibility of a co-worker’s inner-child being wounded, I tune to the one channel that will never offend anyone – The Food Network. There are never gunshots, or profanity. No bare mid-riffs or partisan bickering. No Jersey stereotypes with fake tans. Just calm, smiling hosts whipping up all sorts of culinary goodness, and in-depth documentaries on how Twinkies are made. Even the commercials are milquetoast.

The problem now is that after two years of 8-hour days of The Food Network, my brain has been completely re-wired. All I ever think about is food. I compulsively collect restaurant menus, and stalk food trucks on Twitter. I play “Iron Chef” at the Souplantation, conjuring up bizarre entrees with ingredients from their salad bar. I compile lists of superlatives about local restaurants and submit them to Citysearch on impulse.

It’s invading my sleep. Now I have these recurring dreams about Giada de Laurentiis. You’re probably Googling her photo right now and thinking, “Sure! I would too.” Except these aren’t sensual dreams involving the two of us in varying degrees of undress, but rather she’s in my kitchen cooking stuff for me. This is so wrong.

Maybe I should switch to The Weather Channel? But I suspect somehow that will have its own set of problems.

French-Style Chicken-in-a-Pot

2010-02-19T10:21:00.001-08:00

Despite its elitist pretension (they spend the entire half-hour insulting your Grandmother's cherished recipes) and their clear agenda to reshape the American culinary landscape to their own twisted, narrow point of view, I attempted America's Test Kitchen's take on French style chicken-in-a-pot. It was delicious. Recipe here.

An Open Post to Landlords

2010-02-18T11:05:00.001-08:00

Particularly in Los Angeles, the rental market is extremely soft. Unemployment here is above 10%, so most folks don’t qualify for an apartment, and others who are working take on roommates or move in with family to save money on rent.

You would think the unprecedented amount of vacancies and “For Rent” signs would temper the expectations of landlords and management companies. But they act like it’s 2005.

You may have guessed by now that I’m looking for a new place, and I’m losing my patience. Landlords, here’s the deal:

-Stop installing vertical blinds. It’s mind-boggling that most rental listings boast about “Newly installed vertical blinds!!!” Vertical blinds are not a perk.

-Do not price your unit based on other ads. Just because someone else listed a 1 bedroom for $1600 does not mean that your crappy 550 sq ft rear unit facing the dumpster with stained carpets and moldy ceiling is also worth $1600.

-Stop advertising new paint. ALL available rental units should be freshly painted. While you’re at it, stop taking money out of my security deposit to repaint – you’d do that anyway.

-Don’t buy a gallon of aquamarine paint at Home Depot, and then claim that the apartment has “designer colors”.

-Don’t assume that putting in $300 worth of fixtures from Ikea entitles you to $150 bucks a month over the previous tenant’s rent.

-Don’t try to turn the heat up on me by claiming you “already have a stack of ten applications”. If you had ten applications the place would be rented. Now your credibility is gone, and I don’t want a weasel for a landlord.

-Don’t ask me for my bank account numbers on my application. I’ll show you my paystubs, give you my previous landlord’s contact info, and allow you to run a credit check on me. If you can’t approve me based on those three items for your unit that’s been sitting on the market for 3 months then there are bigger issues at play here and I don’t trust you as a landlord.

-Don’t make a face when I ask to see the parking space that comes with the unit. I am not going to sign a 1-year lease without seeing the parking space.

-On the subject of parking: advertising that the unit comes with parking means that the tenant will have an assigned, unshared parking spot. If you meant permit parking on the street, then disclose that in the listing.

-Stop requiring a photocopy of my driver’s license or filling out a pre-application form before I can see the unit. I’m not going to expose myself to possible identity theft. You’ll get that information if and when I decide to apply.

-Don’t require a “holding deposit” to apply. I’m not giving you a cashier’s check for an entire month’s rent until I’ve read and signed the lease. What if you decide that I’m approved, but now the rent is $1400 instead of $1200? Or that I’m approved for a smaller or otherwise less desirable unit than the one I viewed? I’m not going to give you leverage to screw me by handing over a thousand dollars or more in cash. So don’t get offended when I flat out refuse.

-Modern apartments should have a fridge.

-Modern apartments should have a curtain rod or door already on the shower.

-Modern apartments have working A/C and heat.

-Don’t advertise anything other than true rent. Don’t advertise $1200 and then in the fine print say “$1200 effective rent after factoring in ‘1st month free special’”. Don’t say $1200, but there’s an extra $100-$200 for parking, amenities, maintenance, etc. Because then you would be a weasel, and I don’t want a weasel for a landlord.

-Don’t trick me by listing a unit for $1200, but that’s really the weekly price. Tenants searching for a $1200/mo apartment are not going to be upsold to a $4800/mo condo, even if it is already furnished with your 80s-era lacquer furniture and 37” tube television.

-And finally, just don’t be a dick. I don’t want some angry, grumpy, blowhard for a landlord. I’m a reasonable, quiet and courteous tenant who keep his unit in good condition and pays rent on time. Don’t flip out when I ask you to fix the heater. I am entitled to heat whether you feel like shelling the money out or not.

Duck Curry

2010-02-12T09:54:00.001-08:00

I had intended to eat at Carousel Restaurant - a Middle-Eastern joint in East Hollywood - and take snaps of some chicken kebabs. Regrettably, the manager/server was in a bad mood about something, and so surly that I left before I even ordered.

So I had to go next door and get Thai food instead, and I was feeling the duck curry. Now I don't want to read comments that duck is not chicken. They are VERY close. And anyway, this is really Carousel's fault. So if you are disappointed that this is not a photo of chicken, as you should be, I would suggest you take it up with them.

Ruminations on "The Karate Kid"

2010-02-11T10:50:00.000-08:00

"The Karate Kid" (1984)
Starring Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita
Directed by John G. Avildsen

I saw "The Karate Kid" for the first time when I was six years old. It was my favorite movie growing up. However, I find the older I get, the less sense the movie makes.

I never realized until recently that Johnny was rolling a joint in the bathroom during the Halloween party when Daniel LaRousso drenches him with that water hose. I wonder if Daniel-San would’ve been beat up less if he hadn’t ruined Johnny’s stash. All bullies are easier to deal with when they’re on a mellow high. Maybe Daniel was really his own problem for being such a narc.

It was polite of those six burly teenagers in skeleton outfits to patiently wait their turn and fight Mr. Miyagi one at a time.

I’d really like one of those shower costumes for Halloween.

Daniel’s mom doesn’t seem like a good role model for parents. She’s hardly around, and shuttles him about in a station wagon death trap (which the clearly underage Elizabeth Shue is ordered to operate while Mom and Daniel get out and push). And she could care less that Daniel spends hours at a time with a bachelor handyman who gives him a car.

The evil karate instructor, John Kreese, is a Vietnam vet. The honorable karate instructor, Mr. Miyagi, is a WWII vet.

Ralph Macchio makes an odd leading man with his skinny frame, marble-mouthed Jersey drawl, and penchant for talking to himself. The camera lingers uncomfortably for a good thirty seconds after a scene should have ended while he carries on a conversation with himself in a Chinese restaurant.

And why is Elizabeth Shue so smitten with Daniel? Is getting his ass kicked every time she sees him that big of a turn-on? I’m guessing yes because in the sequel she dumps him for a UCLA football player immediately after he wins the tournament.

The filmmakers seem to have a hidden agenda against Baby Boomers as they are portrayed without exception as cruel, self-centered, or oblivious.

In the sequel, we are treated to a beat-for-beat re-enactment of the first film. Daniel is still the New Jersey fish-out-of-water with Okinawa substituting for Reseda. A ruffian named Chozen fills in for Johnny (you can tell he’s the bad guy because when he shakes Daniel’s hand for the first time, he squeezes EXTRA hard). Mrs. LaRousso is perfectly fine with Daniel moving into Mr. Miyagi’s house, and lodges no protest when Daniel cashes out his college fund and blows the money on a trip to Okinawa. And once again Mr. Miyagi fights off a gang of teenagers who each patiently wait their turn for an ass-kicking. Quite notably however, it is during this fight that he is struck in the back with a spear, which marks the first and only time in the entire movie series that someone lands a successful blow on Mr. Miyagi.

There’s a scene in Part II where Daniel picks up one of Chozen’s weights from a produce scale and snaps it in half like a pencil. This causes Chozen to be accosted by the farmers who have seemingly been ripped off. Logically though, if Chozen was using fake weights to buy the crops, this would actually cause him to spend MORE money than he ought to. Technically, Daniel was doing Chozen a favor. Irrespective of this, Chozen is so offended that Daniel broke the weight that he declares a blood vendetta and challenges him to a fight to the death. Even more bizarrely, Daniel eventually agrees.

Part of the blood vendetta mentioned above involves Chozen showing up at Mr. Miyagi’s garden in the middle of the night and uprooting his plants.

“The Karate Kid, Part III” will likely be remembered for having the most bizarre plot in the history of movie sequels. After Cobra Kai dojo falls out of favor with the martial arts community in the greater San Fernando Valley area for no clear reason other than their apparently humiliating second place finish in the All Valley Karate Tournament, Cobra Kai sensei John Kreese decides he wants revenge on Daniel for making him look bad. No, seriously. That’s what the movie is about. I know you’re wondering at this point what exactly Daniel LaRousso is doing to make all these people want to kill or maim him in all three movies. Well… he is from Jersey. So.

John Kreese finds solace with another Vietnam vet, Terry Silver, who has become the wealthy owner of a toxic waste disposal company (he conducts an illegal plutonium dumping deal while chatting with Kreese in his Hollywood Hills home). Kreese saved Terry’s life in Vietnam, so when asked to help seek revenge on a skinny teenager he’s never met who did nothing more than win a karate tournament, Terry agrees without hesitation as evident in this script excerpt:

Terry Silver: I owe you, man.
John Kreese: You don't owe me anything.
Terry Silver: Oh bullshit. I don't owe you anything? What about Vietnam, huh? How many times did you save my ass?
John Kreese: I don't know. I lost count.

Terry’s revenge plan consists solely of flipping through a magazine and randomly choosing a self-promoting full-page ad for a fighter named Mike Barnes, then hiring him to challenge Daniel in the next All Valley Karate Tournament. Barnes must have had revenge-for-hire in mind when he placed that ad, because when contacted by this crazy stranger, he agrees to help without hesitation.

Ok, I exaggerated a bit. There is some hesitation. Actual dialogue below:

Mike Barnes: Sir, you said if I come down here and beat this LaRusso kid, I can have 25 percent ownership in you new dojos? Well, to perform my best, which I fully intend to do, I'm gonna need 50 percent.
Terry Silver: Whoa... I'm afraid I can't give you any more than 35!
Mike Barnes: I guess I'll be on my way, then... nice meeting everybody.
[turns to leave]
Terry Silver: Hey...
[Mike turns around]
Terry Silver: ... you fight as hard as you negotiate?
Mike Barnes: Harder.
Terry Silver: All right, you got it. 50 percent.

Much like Chozen carrying out his blood vendetta in Part II, so too the villains in this film show up to destroy Mr. Miyagi’s plants. Man, that’s just mean.

Mr. Miyagi and Daniel engage in some sort of quarrel over a bonsai tree, resulting in Mr. Miyagi refusing to train Daniel for the tournament.

Terry, Kreese, and Barnes materialize to deliver a sound beating to Daniel. Luckily, Mr. Miyagi is there to save the day, aided to some degree that, once again, all the bad guys wait patiently for their turn to have their asses kicked.

Mr. Miyagi agrees to train Daniel once more. Most of this training consists of practicing strange, effeminate dance moves.

In the climatic fight, Daniel and the villain go to sudden death with one point left to determine the winner. Daniel distracts his opponent by dancing the way Mr. Miyagi taught him. The ruse works, and Daniel successfully lands a winning blow on the bewildered Mike Barnes.

As Daniel hoists his trophy into the air, we’re left to assume that Kreese and Silver will descend into bankruptcy, because in the eyes of liberal Hollywood, the real villains are small business owners who served their country in Vietnam.

All snarkiness aside, I would really like to rent “The Next Karate Kid”, starring pre-Oscar Hillary Swank.

I’ll wrap this up with a script excerpt from “How I Met Your Mother”:

Barney: “Hey, The Karate Kid’s a great movie. It’s the story of a hopeful, young karate enthusiast whose dreams and moxie take him all the way to the All Valley Karate Championship. Of course, sadly he loses in the final round to that nerd kid. But, he learns an important lesson about gracefully accepting defeat.”

Lily: “Wait, when you watch The Karate Kid you actually root for that mean blonde boy?”

Barney: “No, I root for the scrawny loser from New Jersey who barely even knows karate. When I watch The Karate Kid I root for THE karate kid, Johnny Lawrence from the Cobra Kai dojo. Get your head out of your ass, Lily.”

Coq a Vin

2010-02-10T10:16:00.001-08:00

It was chilly in Los Angeles so I decided to make Coq a Vin. I forgot to buy chicken stock, so I had to use the surplus beef broth in my fridge. I really don't need your judgment on that. Thank you.

Ruminations on the movie "Innerspace"

2010-02-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

Innerspace - (1987)
Starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan
Directed by Joe Dante

I remember seeing the trailer for “Innerspace” in the theater, and enthusiastically wanting to see it because the preview borrowed the score from “The Goonies”, my favorite movie back then. When I finally saw it, I was furious because they never played “The Goonies” theme music at all. I was 9 years old, and for the first time I felt cheated by Hollywood.

I was refused several requests to see this movie in the theater because my Mom thought the coming attraction was “gross”.

The movie opens with an extreme close-up of a glass of ice – so close it appears to be an alien landscape. My mom entered the living room as I was watching this, took a brief glance and shrieked, “GROSS!” My mom is easily grossed out.

The hero of the movie is Lt. Tuck Pendleton -- a test pilot who plays by his own rules. We know this because his former superior in the Air Force warns another character that Tuck “is a man who makes up his own rules.” Despite the fact that Tuck plays by his own rules, he does in fact get results.

Despite the fact that John Hora had never acted in a movie before (Hora is actually a successful Hollywood cinematographer and has shot many of director Joe Dante’s films, including “Gremlins”), he is completely credible as the lead engineer of the miniaturization project. The filmmakers reluctantly cast Hora as Ozzie after executive producer Steven Spielberg casually suggested it then pushed hard to make it happen, even ordering a screen test to prove his point.

Hora perfectly depicts Ozzie as a persnickety engineer who’s more concerned about his staff turning in their paperwork and minding the cleanliness of their workstations than the fact they are embarking on a game-changing miniaturization experiment. He’s probably the most realistic character in the movie and effortlessly grounds the science portion of the plot.

However Ozzie blows his credibility during a chase scene. He somehow flees on foot from Silicon Valley all the way to the L.A. River. Then he steals a bicycle from a kid, and out-pedals a souped up BMW all the way to a shopping mall in Santa Clara.

Ozzie is ultimately shot and dies in the most horrible way possible, surrounded by furry costumed cartoon characters.

Before he is miniaturized, the lab team makes this big ceremony of handing Tuck a stainless-steel briefcase. Later in the movie, we discover the contents are: a pistol, an empty flask, a walkman, various audio cassettes including Sam Cooke’s Greatest Hits, a half-eaten carton of Oreos, one pudding snack cup (vanilla), and a Styrofoam container of Chicken McNuggets. Tuck and I pack alike.

While much of the movie’s technology and futuristic ideas are dated, they get one thing right. Innerspace is the earliest film I can think of that depicts GPS, albeit inside the human body. The submersible's computer plots a course via interconnecting blood vessels.

Red blood cells seen from a miniaturized point-of-view look just like sliced carrots.

The chief muscle for the villain is a Ray Ban-wearing heavy named Mr. Igoe. We know he’s the bad guy because he pops someone’s balloon (the camera lingers uncomfortably as the balloon’s owner pouts). His right arm, for reasons never explained, has been replaced with a bionic prosthetic that has all sorts of built-in James Bond-style gadgetry. You’d think with his status as a super-criminal and his prosthetic arm being an excellent way for law enforcement to identify him that Igoe would keep a low profile. Instead he speeds about town in a lavish BMW sports coupe with a vanity plate that reads “SNAPON”.

During the film Igoe uses his prosthetic arm as a gun, a blowtorch, and - hilariously enough - a sex toy. There are two extra ports on his stub that we never see him use. One is a DB-9 connector, commonly employed in the broadcasting industry to remotely control VTR machines. The other is an RF port, the connector of choice to wire cable television to your home. I guess Mr. Igoe freelances as a television maintenance engineer. Which means he’s union. And union guys are bad guys.

You might say that I’m over thinking the film’s anti-labor stance, but consider the main villain, Victor Scrimshaw. He’s described by another character as being a shadowy crime figure who “administers four teamster pension funds and… keeps Jimmy Hoffa’s watch in his desk drawer as a souvenir.” Clearly the filmmakers have some sort of agenda here.

Scrimshaw also seems to have a fetish with the color white. He wears solid white linen suits, drives a white Rolls Royce, owns two white malamutes that wear white kerchiefs (whom he feeds eggs in white bowls), and lives in a white house where he hosts a brunch of eggs and white toast points served on white china on a white table-clothed dinette surrounded by white chairs. Even his bodyguard has a shock of white hair.

I should mention at this point that his bodyguard is probably the worst henchman on the planet. He faints from fright. He electrocutes himself with a taser gun. Then when asked to push the green button on a control panel, he appears confused and overwhelmed. Then he faints again.

There is a brief moment of sexual tension between Martin Short’s Jack Putter and the miniaturized Tuck Pendleton. First, Tuck convinces Jack to chug a bottle of Southern Comfort. Then he puts on a little Sammy Cooke (Tuck knows Cooke can get the job done as he successfully seduces Meg Ryan’s character earlier by playing “Cupid” on the stereo). After dancing a bit and allowing the liquor to kick in, Jack gushes that Tuck is able to “see parts of my body I will never see.” However, the burgeoning romance is killed when Tuck suggests Jack goes to the mirror so he can see what he looks like. The disappointment is evident on Tuck’s face as he mutters under his breath, “We’re gonna need a lot more help.”

A tangential bad guy, if you can call him that, is The Cowboy – a flashy villain of unknown ethnicity. We never quite get an idea of why he’s so bad, but he’s described by another character as a fence of stolen technology who ”introduced Velcro to the Persian Gulf.” Shudder.

We first meet The Cowboy in the first class cabin of an airliner (because big-time black-market technology dealers fly commercial). He lights a cigar, making the three-piece-suited gentleman seated next to him uncomfortable. When asked by the flight attendant to put it out, he does so. On his palm. Because he’s a bad guy.

It’s hard to take The Cowboy with any degree of seriousness because he is The Least Threatening Bad Guy Of All Time. He dresses in satiny rodeo threads with shiny buttons and magenta flourishes, straps a bedazzled belt around his waist, wears gaudy white alligator cowboy boots, sings show-tunes, and totes his own hand-held motorized shoe shiner.

The Cowboy likes to spend his free time dancing with himself at The Inferno, the roughest, toughest nightclub in, ahem, Silicon Valley.

Later Jack incapacitates The Cowboy in a hotel room, and with Tuck’s high-tech software he is able to mimic his face. The transformation is accomplished by staring into the mirror and making silly faces while an unseen crewmember puffs out his cheeks with an air blower.

When Jack emerges from the bathroom, face transformed into that of The Cowboy, it frightens Lydia (Meg Ryan). In one long camera-take, she backs into the bathroom to find the actual Cowboy unconscious in the tub. Because this film was made before the advent of digital effects, that shot required quite a bit of acrobatics from actor Robert Picardo. Once the camera pans to Lydia, Picardo (momentarily playing the Jack character) had to tear off his break-away suit, run around the set and enter the bathtub from behind a false wall, a hair-stylist awaiting with a wig in hand to complete illusion. If you look closely, you can see the seams between the tub and tile wall.

During a car chase to rush Tuck to the lab for re-enlargement, Jack and Lydia are attacked by angry midgets.

In the final scene, Tuck and Lydia get married at a lavish sea-side ceremony. Inexplicably, Jack (who is the best man) invites his doctor, his ex-girlfriend, and the manager of the supermarket where he bags groceries.

If you think I’m a jerk for writing this, I’ll leave you with this anonymous entry from the IMDb:

“The movie depicts miniaturization as, effectively, blowing up a full-sized submersible pod and then reassembling it at a smaller scale. There are several problems with this idea: 1) the pod would weigh just as much as before, and would therefore punch a hole right through the subject it is injected into because all that weight would be concentrated in a spot the size of a blood cell, 2) the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle basically states that an object taken apart at the subatomic level would be impossible to reassemble, 3) Tuck would have died from being "molecularly isolated and displaced", 4) fluids would be impossible for a submersible to maneuver through because, at that scale, ordinary water would be like a gel to a thruster (not to mention bodily fluids which are thicker), and 5) whiskey would be impossible to drink.”

1/2 Roasted Chicken from El Pollo Braso

2010-02-08T15:15:00.001-08:00

1/2 Chicken Plate with papas fritas, salad, tortillas, and aji verde sauce from El Pollo Brasa in Koreatown. I ate it for lunch, so I can't really claim that this was "chicken from last night". But cut me some slack. The neighborhood is like a DMZ. I'd only go during daylight.

No. I will NOT attend your Super Bowl party.

2010-02-06T13:07:00.001-08:00

I’ve attended many Super Bowl parties in my lifetime. And I never will again.

Listen folks, if your television is less than 27”, you should not be throwing a party. If you only own four chairs, you should not be throwing a party. If you realize at kick-off time that you’re out of napkins and paper towels, then you should not be throwing a party. And while you’re at it, clean the hair and dried toothpaste out of your bathroom sink – you have guests over.

Why the sourpuss? The year was 2008. The venue: a small loft in North Hollywood, no chairs. We stood for most of the game. I knew I was in for trouble when some douche wearing a spiked collar and gelled hair arrived toting a guitar and electric amp. “Where do I plug in?” he asked.

The hosts didn’t want to bother with snacks, so they asked everyone to bring something potluck style. Most millennials interpret “potluck” to mean “bring the $1.99 plastic clamshell of chocolate chip cookies from Ralph’s”. So that’s what there was to eat – twelve dozen generic brand chocolate chip cookies, room-temperature lite beer, and the casserole of macaroni and cheese I brought (“Oh! We don’t have any plates or forks! I’ll run the dishwasher!”)

Then came the defining play of the game: faced with third down and five yards to go from his own 44-yard line with 1:15 remaining, Giants quarterback Eli Manning avoided what looked like a sack, completed a 32-yard pass to wide receiver David Tyree, who made a leaping catch by pinning the ball on his helmet, which put them at New England's 24-yard-line. Four plays later, New York wide receiver Plaxico Burress caught the winning touchdown with 0:35 left.

Yeah, I never saw that play because two minutes before the game ended, some whiner got her way and commandeered the TV so she could play Guitar Hero.

I’m DONE with Super Bowl parties.

I will be at home on Sunday, watching the big game on my 46” flat panel with 5.1 surround sound, TiVo remote in hand, my own personal pizza with the toppings I choose, a six-pack of Guinness with a liter of Belgian ale on stand-by, and my stuffed animals Polly Precious Pants and Miss Precious Perfect cuddling next to me on the sofa. And I will enjoy the hell out of it.

Leftover, "Soyaki" marinated chicken breast in foil

2009-10-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

The chicken was marinated in some Soy Sauce/Teriyaki hybrid that Costco sells in a five gallon jug. It was very good, but clearly not good enough as now there are leftovers.