In the prognosticative piece we delved into Warren Cromartie's Manifesto ("Montreal is a Five Tool City") on the return of the Expos...or I guess it's more of a Cro-Mafesto. Within the Cro-Mafesto we focused on the 4th point of the pentagon-pointed five-tools which make up this wonderful baseball city in my heavily speculative article.
Today we shall look into another piece of the pentagonal "5 Tools" (as such). We shall be looking into the "Passionate Fan Base" tool.
The other sports fan bases in this city we already know about. Not one person hasn't heard of the Montreal Canadiens hockey club. The Montreal Canadiens fans look at their city's hockey team as the life and essence of the city itself almost.
We wish to focus on the rabid fan base of baseball fans only.
A contingent of 1,000 Expos fans comprised of hardcore fans, who never stopped believing in their team, dawned Expos gear and showed their colors at a Toronto Blue Jays game. Now granted 1,000 is not a huge number but it's only the tip of the ice berg of the rabid base that lies underneath the surface.
Last week, the New York Mets and Toronto Bluejays announced two exhibition games will be hosted at Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Within a week they have sold over 80,000 tickets for these games. Montreal wants baseball back. That's 80K tickets purchased by Montreal's fan base for exhibition (not even regular season) games. It seems they are serious about getting a team back.
That's how it starts...
A guy like Cromartie convinces everyone it's possible...The "baby steps" have been set in motion. The ball gets rollin' and 1,000 people are convinced it's possible and crash a game in full Expos regalia...The Kool-Aid starts gettin' stirred up quick.
Then 80,000 people catch the Baseball Fever...Something's brewin' that's what it's doin'.
The wheels are now in motion...will 4 million people in the greater Montreal area catch the Fever? My guess is...Yes, it is most likely.
Vlad was "The Last Mohican" of the Expos...or maybe Vlad was the "Last Samurai"...No, Vlad was the "Last Dragon..."
You aaaaaaare the Last Draaaaaaagon!
Out of all the Heroes, Legends, and Diamond Kings...Vladimir was Montreal's last Diamond King, our Last Dragon.
When many of the Montreal's Diamond Kings careers came to a close they ventured back here to receive their curtain call. Take the dearly departed, but still awesome in all our hearts, Gary Carter...
Yet, with the Expos no longer around...there will be no curtain call for our Last Dragon. Vladimir Guerrero won't get to double over Andre Dawson's head in right, or draw a walk while 55,000 fans stand and cheer during his entire at-bat like they did for Raines. If the Expos were still here Vlad would have been on the 2013 roster and he would have had an unforgettable curtain call at Olympic Stadium.
I will say this...Vlad was the most electrifying athlete who EVER played in this city. His talent was unfathomable.
The rumored story of how Vlad ended up here was that Tommy Lasorda kicked him off the Dodgers because Vladdy showed up with two different pairs of moldy old shoes and Tommy judged the book by the cover and assumed he was a bum. Felipe Alou recognized the diamond in the rough and invited the skinny awkard lanky kid to spring training.
He was the strong silent type. Never ever speaking. The only time anyone heard him speak was at the last game he played in an Expos uniform when he took a microphone onto the field and simply stated...
"Merci Beaucoups"
Everything had to epic like that with this guy.
Happy trails Vladdy, it is too bad that you didn't get a send off. If anyone deserved one it was you.
Like the seasons, love will come and go If it's right, you'll automatically know The world of mystery exists only in your head When you become one with yourself The wall will fall
There's a power deep inside you, an inner strength You'll find in time of need.
Recently, it appears that a few tabloid articles from tabloid news agencies (Daily Mail (UK) was the first I believe to run it), have claimed to prove that climate change is a hoax.
I do not personally 100% agree with the articles of late that claim to have proven climate change to be a scam..but...there's some factors of it that I do agree with. I hate the climate change apocalyptic prognosticators as much as anyone, I think Al Gore is a sheister/buffoon, and I do not believe we will see immediate disastrous effects out of our backyard windows in the next few years.
Yet, that is not to say that because the apocalyptic prognostication faction has been slow to show us any awesome apocalypses, we can officially demote climate science to junk science.
The following are the reasons I believe climate change is occurring and why it can be very dangerous.
1. Humans evolved with their environments in a similar fashion throughout the entire planet. Humans are far and foremost a coastal sea-faring species. The percentage of humans still living in coastal regions vary from source to source yet a general estimate of 40-50% seems like the mean figure.
2. A 2006 study carried out by Church and White found that global sea levels are rising. They have concluded that sea levels have risen at a steady rate and will keep rising. Any proceeding study into sea levels supported the results of this study.
So...if half of the humans on earth live on the coast and global sea levels are rising, could all these cities eventually be submerged? The answer is yes but it will not be tomorrow or next month. This is a gradual process. The cities can be submerged in 2100, 2300, 2500, 3100...we don't know. The possibility of this coastal submerging occurring is definite yet due to the time frame, me and you won't have to worry about it. Your great great grandchildren? Yes, probably.
3. Global sea/ocean temperatures are going up at an incredible rate. As water heats it expands (through convection) causing the density of the liquid to drop but the mass to increase. This only explains a portion of why water levels are rising. The other factor is that glaciers, ice shelves, and other blocks of solid liquid are also losing density and increasing in overall mass (melting).
The ant-arctic ice is staying stagnant and even growing (to the glee of climate change opponents) yet we have lost millions of square kilometers of ice in the opposite pole. Millions of square kilometers of ice in the north pole is becoming liquid.
4. Why are global waters getting hotter? Why are they melting ice? What is causing this? Some speculate that it is only natural. Others speculate that a dense covering of gas is trapping heat within the planet, the oceans then absorb this heat and convect. The proof they cite is that they have measured the acidity of the water and it is increasing at a gradual rate as well.
This is the theory which gets everyone excited and worried because it is the one that links human-made pollution to the rising temperature of global waters.
2 Things to Remember...
Firstly, Tabloids are not very educational. Sadly, all news outlets are of the tabloid variety because it is the only profitable method to sell news. The definition of "tabloid" is as follows (as per wikipedia):
"Tabloid journalism tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, gossip columns about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk food news. Such journalism is commonly associated with tabloid sized newspapers like the National Enquirer, Globe, [Fox], or the The Sun and the former News of the World."
This is not the place to get your understanding of the world and how it operates. This style of journalism is designed to run stories that make readers mad/happy/sad (i.e. generate some sort of immediate emotional response) it is not designed to be educational. The Daily Mail (UK) column this story initially surfaced from is a tabloid...nothing more and nothing less.
If you would like to verse yourself in scientific journals and have a broader opinion on the matters at hand then by all means do so. Getting your info from scientific journals is going to give you far more credible information than a tabloid source.
Secondly, scientists understand the sands of human time in the scope of the god damned universe. Here to try and explain it is my home-slice, the deceased but still awesome Carl Sagan, and he's rappin' 'bout how short human history has been:
He's trying to explain it with calendar-esque day/hour/minute/second metrics that most of us are used to judging time in. We've only been here but for a moment, we really have. To the cosmos billions of years is nothing. Things take a long time, forces such as the erosion of rocks, the forming of continents, or the evolution of species are forces that alter the planet very GRADUALLY. You have to understand that it's not a bang-bang one-two punch. It takes a long time.
Yes, the average human only lives for about 75 years but your life is just one moment in the grand scheme of human existence. Theoretically, we can carry on the human game we're playing for billions of years right to the end (when the sun peters out), we can carry on the human game for a coupla hundred more years (by killing ourselves)...or we could even possibly harness technology, save ourselves, and fly out to settle other space rocks heated by other damned suns and play the human game infinitely.
The sensational tabloids will report the matter on either polarized perspective of climate change as if it will or will not kill us right now. People who are interested in science don't tend to think of the right now all the time, they know gradual processes take immense amounts of time.
Nuclear war will kill us all right-here-right-now and it is the only immediate apocalyptic event...but the destruction of our life-support system on earth through natural forces and/or man made pollution is a gradual process that may take thousands or hundreds of years.
Conclusion
Yes, climate change is occurring. No, it is not a hoax (my opinion anyway). Should we worry about it? Not in the immediate future.
In the case that you are a future-thinking dude/chick and wonder what the lives your great great great ancestors will be like....then yeah, you should worry.
Note (added Sept. 25/2013): I mentioned nuclear war as being the only event that will instantaneously assure our mutual destruction but I was not correct with that statement. There are many ways we can go extinct from natural causes. A good read on the subject of how we may all die is the 5th section of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's excellent book..."Death by Black Hole and other cosmic quandaries."
Food review blogs get good hits, I'm gonna try to lure some of those hits here with some big-time tags like "MacDonald's" or "Burger King."
I am going to review the fast food chains which operate in my living area. Obviously, since these are franchises and one store might be a lot different from another one, they will differ but in general it should be mostly one and the same (that's the point of a franchise). So just two things to establish first:
A) Chains with market share and popularity in my area may not be the same in your area. For instance, there's no White Castles or In & Outs where I am...and I have chains in this area like Dagwood's and various poutine/hotdog ones that are not apparent elsewhere.
B) Franchises in terms of speed of service vary GREATLY. In big cities it's usually bang-bang, but in smaller cities the speed of service is reduced amazingly in some locations. I was in the tiny villa of Cornwall, Ontario this one time and waited almost 1 hour for fast food. When rating speed of service in fast food take into account that some far-off locales can be very understaffed and/or staffed by the Cornwall bumpkins.
Alright so here's the metrics I will be using to formulate and tally overall ratings. The following four metrics will variate from A (best) to F (worst).
1. Taste 2. Health (nutrition of the food, not the condition of the restaurant) 3. Speed 4. Price
(Weight: Taste 4, Health 2, Speed 2, Price 2...to form a total of 10 points)
The following metrics will variate only between Y and N (yes or no).
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? 2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? 3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers?
(any Y variables in these fields will give a penalty of 4 points to the overall score)
We shall break down the review into the following sections...
Also before hearing my opinions take note of my credentials...
1. I love eating, it is my passion in life. 2. In the vein of Sy Sperling...I not only eat at these locations but have worked at many of them. 3. I have a degree in Culinary Arts and am a licensed Sommelier. I know how to taste things right.
Okay, Let's Go
Okie Dokie, let's get started now.
I pledge allegiance to Macdonald's...
--Burger Joints--
The fast food realm of MacDicks, Burger Slut, Burger Chef's, Burger King, Burger Man, 5 Guys. It is the iconic fast food outlet. The icon of "model efficiency" using cheap produce, cheap "meat", cheap labor and trying to maximize dollars by selling burgers. These vary in terms of all the variables but a common thread looks like this...
Taste: B+
Burgers, shakes, and fries do taste good. No doubt. Positive ratings throughout the burger realm. A lot of additives are used to give it the "savory" flavor as the food industry refers to it.
Health: F
Burgers, shakes, and fries are not good for you. Even the alternative items on the menu are not good for you. Don't fool yourself because you got a salad instead of fries that you're eating right.
Speed: A
Very fast...but when long lines form and only some cashes are open you will see massive slow-down very quickly.
Price: B+
Cheap meals. Though they are raising quite a bit...I remember when a trio would be like 6 bucks now I think it's close to 11.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? Y Most if not all of these burger joints use bi-product like ears, tails, and eyes smashed together into a pink slime and then re-constituted into a oblong shaped burger disk.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? Maybe
It is designed to be chewed easily and make you not feeling filled...but there is a possibility MacDonald's will come out of your ass weird. (only -2 not -4 for the penalty)
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? Y
"Tips are not accepted as McDonald's restaurants have a team environment which is not about rewarding individuals."
Working at McShits or Burger Dump is a pretty crappy job and tips left by customers to the workers would work out on average to about 10-20 bucks extra income for employees per day at busy locations. It's so cheap and dumb to disallow what every other fucking restaurant allows. A big -4 penalty for this.
Burger Joint's Overall Score:-7/10 McDonkey's and the rest of the ilk didn't even manage to crack a ZERO. Not off to a good start.
--Sandwich Joints--
Led in market share by Subway, we see others occasionally. I mentioned Dagwood's which is a very local franchise where I live but has a good dose of locations.
Subway is headed by their face-man, Jarred, who has lots of aides.
Taste: B
Less tasty then grease-pit food but it's still very good.
Health: B
Don't let Jarred fool you...eating at Subway's regularly is by no means a healthy diet. Unless your getting some gimmicky "Healthy Veggie Mini-Cal Low-Blah-Blah-Blah" then yeah, but that will seriously handicap the taste score which is being taken from eating the good subs not the lame ones.
Speed: B
Making the food right in front of the customer doesn't let the worker cut corners to get it done faster (not that this is a bad thing mind you). Them not being able to do the things employees do behind the scenes to makes things faster reduces overall speed output.
Price: B
Not bad. It is just sandwich meat though...so it's not getting an A for making people pay like 12 bucks for a trio when it's just sandwich meat. I can make a sandwich myself at home (or in a sack lunch) pretty damn fast and well, dropping 12 bucks for these trios for something you can make yourself isn't a wise budget move. Not deserving of an A.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? Y
They use the crappy cold cuts like you buy at the grocery store. It's all pink slime. Does that chunk of whatever it is they cut in front of you (ham, turkey, etc.) look like an animal? No. It's reconstituted into a chunk of bi-product.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? N
Barring a bad strain of something this food shouldn't give you weird shits. Maybe people with virgin palettes could have difficulty digesting the hot peppers but it's not a big deal.
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? N
Yes, it is legal for an employee to have a "tip jar", "tip cup", "tip container" or just flash some extra change near the cash to show that the customer can leave a tip. There's times I do see it at Subway and there's times I don't. It hasn't caught on too hard at this chain.
If customers even leave the really small change behind (any money piece less than a quarter), you're talking about minimum of an extra dollar or two dollars per hour worked.
Sandwich Joint's Overall Score:1/10 They cracked zero which is a plus. It looks good compared to Burger Joints anyway.
Get the trio, guy. All Dressed.
--Hotdog/Poutine Joints--
This is very regional to my region and many aren't familiar with this variation of fast food restaurant. It is basically a grease pit which serves hot dogs and a Quebec regional culture item known as poutine. "Belle Province" leads in the market share and many competitors even use a similar name and logo (La Belle, Belle P, etc.). Another big name is Lafleur's which is a good prototypical example as well.
Taste: A
Not the hot dogs...but poutines are good. It's fries with gravy and cheese curds. The cheese curds melt with the gravy and make these cool squeaky sounds when you eat them. It's fucking good.
Sometimescheaper places will use regular mozzerrealla and the wrong gravy. It's okay, it lowers the taste score by a grade but still acceptable. What is not acceptable is that one time at the Buffalo Bill's fast food chain...where motherfuckers put kraft processed singles in my poutine. That's retarded, yo.
For the record most of these have smoke meat available too, which is tasty, but most of the best smoke meat restaurants are sit down restaurants.
Health: F
Yo, fried and salted potato strips smothered in gravy and sprinkled with a healthy dose of big fat curd cheese is not good for you. No one needs that spelled out as to why.
Speed: *S* ( Super caliber. bonus points for above A)
Fuck, son. I remember a time at many Lafleur's where they had a timer next to the cash and you'd never see it go over like 20 seconds. Getting into 30 and you'd be like..."what the fuck that's slow." Seriously, you get your hot dogs and poutine almost instantaneouslyat Lafleur's and variants.
Price: A
Hot dogs are like under a buck sometimes. Poutines vary greatly in price though...but for the most part eating at hd/p places is cheaper than burger joints.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? Y Hot dog meat is like the furthest thing from being legit meat.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? Maybe
I've been eatin' poutines since I was a little kid so my gut is used to dealing with the digestion of them. If you are new to it then maybe it will fuck your stomach up. (half penalty)
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? N
It's common if not universal in this fast food realm to see tip receptacles of all manners. There's a good receptacle at the one up nears wheres I lives. They cut a hole into the counter so the tips fall and cascade into a secret untouchable receptacle...where punks and bandits cannot swipe them whilst the cashier has momentarily diverted attention. Good idea to minimize tip theft.
Hotdog/Poutine Joint's Overall Score:3/10 A somewhat low final tally. Though keep in mind it is still 300% better than Sandwich Joints.
Oh Tim Hortons, my home and...
--Donut/Coffee Joints--
Americans know this realm of fast food as Dunkin Dern Dern's but in my region the market share is not even a close race. Tim Whoreton's has the god damned monopoly in this domain.
It's weird too. It's like a Canadian thing. They had this corny commercial once where like this wussy dude is traveling across Europe and they see his Canadian flag on his backpack and then everyone loves him. If you want to see the definition of sappy then search for Tim Horton's commercials and try and watch them without poking your eyes out.
The campaigns work too. You can't say bad things about this company in Canada, it's like treason. Even though it is incorporated in Delaware and had it's most growth whilst being owned by the Wendy's chain, it is still a taboo in Canada to say bad things about Tim Horton's. Why? I dunno, because it's named after a hockey player or maybe because Canadians grasp at any straw imaginable to pretend they have an identity.
Political photo ops for politicians in Tim Horton's are too common. They make Canadian voters all wet too. There's nothing more appealing to Canadian voters for a politician than getting a photo of yourself drinking Tim Horton's coffee.
MacDonald's is trying to muscle into their retail coffee market share by getting nice brown paper coffee cups and lowering it's price of coffee to as cheap as free...but you cannot wrestle away market share from Tim Horton's in Canada. It is literally ingrained into customers minds that eating at Tim Whoreton's makes you a Canadian citizen (as retarded as that sounds).
So the main thread for the ratings are taken from Tim Horton's for the following review, though most readers would probably relate better to Dunkin' Donuts (both are very similar though). It shouldn't change much in the data.
Taste: C
Very bland. There was a time when Dough Knots at Tim Whoreton's were made in a big fryer and the baker flipped them with this cool stick...now they come to the franchise frozen and it is heated by a kid in a conventional oven. They are cheap as fuck. The donuts are literally bread rolls with icing on them. You can buy better donuts at the grocery store by the the dozen for much less.
Health: C
Donuts are not a well balanced diet.
Speed: B
It's average speed.
Price: F
Look, the big morning seller while I worked at Tim Sluttons was the toast and coffee special. You can almost buy a whole loaf of bread and a whole fucking tin of coffee for the same price as this "special." In the morning before I go to work I can make coffee and toast in literally like a minute (make the coffee first, then make the toast while it brews, they should both be complete at the same time). How can anybody wait in line with their vehicle at the fucking drive-thru...as cars line up all the way into the fucking street..BLOCKING FUCKING TRAFFIC FROM USING THE ROAD...just to get their morning toast and coffee? You people are fucking retarded. Lazy lazy lazy fucking people.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? Y They use like Maple Leaf "chicken" and grocery store sandwich meat for the sandwiches...but it should also be noted like above that they cut so many corners to save money that they should get a Y just for those cheap-ass frozen bread rolls they pour chocolate on and call donuts.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? N
Coffee speeds up your shits. But not necessarily in a bad way...usually in a good way. I'll give it a N variable here.
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? N
It is universally not only accepted but encouraged to tip Tim Horton's employees. You can get decent tips too if you work overnight shift because you are alone and don't need to split them up with others...and because drunk guys come in with chicks and are so used to impressing them at the bar they were just at by flashing good tips that they continue the process of impressing her while getting food after. They buy like a bagel and look at the chick...and then tip the cashier like a twenty...and the chick's all like..."wow, you're so rich and shit." Working overnight at a Whoreton's near a popular bar is decent for tips.
Donut/Coffee Joint's Overall Score:-2/10 Uh oh. Back into the negatives. That's no good. I was going to give it bonus points for making people feel Canadian...but then I thought maybe they should actually lose points for making people think a Deleware owned fast food donut shop is a reason to have civic pride in their nation.
Shish Tah Ook
--Arabic Joints--
I was surprised to see that this is also pretty regional to my area. Amir's and Basha (especially Amir's) is found almost everywhere in Montreal. I thought they were other places too but I guess not.
They make Shish-Taouk and Shwarmas. (pronounced: Shish Ta Ook and Sha-War-Mah) It's similar to gyros, souflaki, or donairs (I've seen these pita sandwiches refferred to as "donairs" in both Pittsburgh and Calgary).
Taste: A
Tastes good. They use cool vegetables too like pickled pink turnips and nice tasty sauces like garlic sauce and hummus. Hummus is like a meal in itself and it's freakin' good for you too.
They got bak-lava for desert which is a sugar delight.
Health: A
Meat, vegetables, and pita in the main unit. The sides are garlic potatoes, salad, or rice. It's not really super healthy but for fast food it's a really good choice. Vegetarians can eat falafel instead of meat here which is like bean bread balls...they are fried though.
Speed: B+
Bang-Bang...but not like a Lafleur's, they prepare the food in front of you not in the back (but again that's NOT a bad thing just it does reduce speed by a fraction)
Price: C+
If you get a sandwich, one side, and drink trio it's the same as MacDick's or anywhere else.Gettin' plates gets expensive for fast food though...but those plates are stacked man. You will be very full after getting a full Shish Taouk or Shwharma plate.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? N Yo this meat is on a spit surrounded by fire and they cut it off and you smell it...yo. It's so real guy, you can't fake that smell. So good.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? N
They got rice as a side and rice binds you. You won't have to worry about pooping your pants while stuck in traffic if you had rice instead of fries.
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? N
You can tip at Amir's or Basha's...no problem. No manager is going to come and tell you it's illegal like at burger joints.
Arabic Joint's Overall Score:9/10 The Arab fast food gets the first green positive rating of 9. It's good, fast, and pretty healthy.
Even in the ads it looks gross...
--Mexican Joints--
I really shouldn't even label this as Mexican. Real Mexican food is goood. Like some Mexican sit-downs in my region are amazing. This is only concerning fast food and you know the one big name in this realm is...Taco Bell.
...and Taco Bell is fucking gross.
Taste: F
Maybe it's just the franchises I've been to but I always get sloppy dirty "meat" in a stale corn thing. It's fucking no-joke disgusting.
Health: F
Insert-Mexican-Sounding-Word-SUPREME. YA! Burrito-SUPREME. Taco-SUPREME! Chalupa-SUPREME! Yeah, tie a feeding bag around your face like a horse and eat this slop until you die-SUPREME!
Speed: B+
It's fast food. It's fast. Obviously.
Price: A
You can get a taco for like a buck at Taco Bell. Cheap.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? Y People think ground beef is hard to fake or something. It's ground...it means it can be from anything. Color additives can give ground beef that nice brown texture though.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? Y(x2)
Okay, this isn't even a joke. It's getting a stacked double infraction on this variable. That's a -8 on it's total final tally. This shit will fuck up your shits.
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? Y
I'm not sure if it's officially in the Taco Bell business doctrine but I've never seen a jar of any sort there.
"Mexican" Joint's Overall Score:-14/10 According to my formulaes...Taco Bell is two times worse than Macdonald's. That's terrible.
--Asian Joints--
Asian fast food is growing. Though it's still mainly a master of the sit-down and buffet restaurant genres, Chinese and other Asian cuisines is making it's way into the fast food market and some of these joints are good.
I've seen Chinese, Thai, Indian (tandoori chicken) fast food outlets in malls and other locations and many of them are good. One that is making a good killing is Thai Express which is fast, good, and let's you put FREE crushed peanuts on top of anything you order at your discretion by placing a big bowl of crushed peanuts next to the cash. I know 5 Guys Burgers has shelled peanuts for you to eat while you wait for your burger but that's not comparable to this. Thai Express let's you put crushed peanuts (as much as you want) on top of any dish you order. It's bad ass.
It's hard to lump them all into one category but the main driving force behind these scores are Chinese style (noodles, rice, meats, etc.) ones.
Taste: A
Chinese can cook, man. Fuck.
Health: B+
Everything is fried. General Tao's chicken is like 1 part chicken to like 9 parts batter. Even if you get vegetables that stuff will be fried somehow. It's not like a grease-pit menu but it's not at all healthy.
With all the rice and steamed foods options, you can make a good nutritional meal at Chinese fast food. Go for steamed rice instead of fried too if you're like a health nut.
The use of meat in Asian cooking is interesting. You never see big slabs of meat on a plate. Meat is used in most dishes but not in the same quantity as western diets use.
Speed: B
They have a little more work to do to prepare meals but they are fast. And it's cool because like at Teriyaki Express they chop all that stuff up and throw it on a scalding metal counter right in front of you and you can smell it burning and all the juices coming together.
Price: B
Getting plates of stuff is going to add a bit more like at the Arabic places, but it's not expensive by any means really.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? N Maybe some do...but I think theAsians care more about food than we do and don't cut corners. Though, you read fucking horror stories sometimes of like cats and dogs and shit being used but they are usually not true. Man, I read a story like that about KFC one time too so it's not only Chinese places accused of using alternative meats.
I read this cool chinese book once where like some guy named Zhang "The Gardener" Qing and his wife Sun "The Demon" Erniang ran an out-of-the-way inn, and when people came to eat and drink wine there, they would poison the meal and knock the customer out. Then, they would chop the customer up into pieces and serve him/her in dumplings to the next customer that came. They were heroes in the book too not even villains. Fuck, Chinese culture can be pretty cool sometimes.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? N
They work with rice a lot too...so it should bind your shits up.
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? N
Only retarded restaurants pull stuff like that. You can always drop some coins here and there if you feel like it.
Asian Joints Overall Score:7.5/10 A nice round 7.5 outta 10. That's pretty good.
Roy Roger's Bones n' Bread.
--Fried Chicken Joints--
KFC. Haha, where I live they either want to market to french folks better or the retarded government of Quebec made them change the abbreviation to PFK (Poulet Frit Kentucky).
I never got that. Like the word KFC isn't french enough? It's not even a fucking word. Changing it to PFK makes it sounds more french? I don't see how that works. A lot of retarded shit happens where I live. Making things backwards is really common...like a store can't be Home Hardware it has to by law be called Hardware Home, or Wal Mart cannot be called that they have to legally change it to Mart Wal to operate in Quebec. One funny one was Price Club...it was changed to (can you guess?) Club Price. It's silly, but, whatever. I think sometimes the companies do the name change tongue-in-cheek style just to make fun of the Quebec law makers. They be all like..."Oh we can't be called Radio Shack? Well, then what about Shack Radio...does that come off more french sounding"?
Taste: A
Like General Tao, the Colonel knows the recipe to make chicken taste good. You take 1 part chicken to 9 parts batter. Ohhhh...that batter taste good. It's a moist fatty coating of breaded brown goodness.
Health: F
It's just fat...bones...and a bit of chicken. Fuck, one time I ate at a Roy Rogers in the States and it was literally bones covered in batter they didn't even put the fucking chicken in.
Speed: B+
Regular fast food.
Price: D
Two pieces of bones and batter is not worth what they charge.
The worst I ever got expensive bones wasn't even a KFC or a Roy Rogers it was a fast food chain called Bofinger. They charged me like 12 bucks for ribs thanks to that deceptive "choose your sides" thing. You think you're getting a trio discount % applied but it's not like that with that sides maze.I felt like that movie "I'm Gunna Git You Sucka" where like Chris Rock orders 1 rib off of Isaac Hayes and Jim Brown...but obviously that was comedy because it's a ludicrous situation. For real though (in real life), I ordered the "small" rack at Bofinger and they gave me 2 ribs! Fuck that shit. Bones 'aint a trio.
1. Do they use pink slime / re-constituted meat bi-products? Y These are real chickens. (Not the chicken burgers or nugget things though)
I should have phrased this question better, maybe..."do they cut all corners to get you the cheapest shit imaginable" because that's what I mean with this question basically. Yeah, KFC has the all time leading amount of horror stories surrounding it, I don't know if any of them are true but they, for sure, have the whackiest ones. You get headlines on the web like "Dude Finds Deep Fried Brain in his KFC" and loads of silliness. They might be all urban myths but there's something about the image of KFC that lets people have no trouble accepting these as true.
KFC stinks and smells too. If you live near one you'll know what I'm saying.
2. Will this food give you fucking diarrhea? Maybe
Maybe. You could get diarrhetic off this. It's possible.
3. Do they ban their minimum wage employees from receiving tips from costumers? N
I dunno. I don't think it's popular if it is. I gave the Y to Taco Bell but I don't know. I think I'll give the N to KFC. It's in the grey area where you can tip but I doubt anyone ever does.
Fried Chicken Joints Overall Score:-1/10 Negative 1. Not bad, considering.
Conclusion
Looks like Arabic fast food wins. It's as fast as regular fast food but healthier, realer, and more better. Specifically I think it's Lebanese cuisine but it is similar to other Arabic and close to Greek cuisine too (baklava). These are in every strip mall in Montreal too. Lebanese fast food is good.
General tips to leave you with...
1. Don't supersize...there's no way you need that many calories. It's all empty garbage calories.
2. Save a lot of monies by avoiding the trio. They give you the sandwich for like 3 bucks but with the fries and coke it becomes like 10 bucks. If you want to save money to buy beer at night then just skip the trio, guy.
3. Diarrhea means your body is purging EVERYTHING you put in it. It's in a hyper alert mode of expulsion of the garbage you just put in your body. It's perfectly natural and you shouldn't be ashamed if you get diahrreactic. To avoid, don't eat garbage food.
....that it's exactly two months until Oil Can's Day?
October 6th is designated to celebrate the birth of the Can. It's a global pseudo-holiday celebrated by anyone who's tough and cool and not a stupid idiot.
Shit. I only honestly celebrate two actual calendar holidays...and by "honestly" I mean that I have fun celebrating them....and by "fun" I mean I get really really hammered and fucked up. I don't even celebrate my own fucking birthday (mostly due to the fact that I was born from a stone egg on a mountain top a really long time ago and I don't even really know exactly what "day" it was).
The only calendar feast days I work with are Saint Patrick's Day (March 17) and Oil Can's Day (October 6th). I like these holidays because you celebrate them by getting fucked up. On SPD you go downtown and drink in the street (legally!) until you go crazy and even puke. On OCD you get a pack of oil cans, get yourselfs well-oiled, and get buck wild.
Yo, on Oil Can's Day you are supposed to drink until you get the gout.
Bad as Can
Okay,
The first time I ever celebrated Oil Can's Day was in Calgary, Alberta after I had discovered a rare book on the shelves of a GoodWill near Marlborough Mall (circa 2007). I was looking at the used books selection and came upon...
"Gettin' Oiled: The Life of the Can"
I never knew that Oil Can even wrote a book so I was pretty taken by this here tome whence I first laid eyes on it. I assume due to the reason the Can was only super popular from about 1985 until 1992, that this book might have sold a few tens of thousands of copies in that span, and by 1993 it was out of print...meaning this book was not only bad-ass but it was extremely rare too.
The price tag was a yellow sticker which had "$1" written on it in blue pen ink. This really was a case of "one dude's garbage is another dude's treasure" because I couldn't wait to get home and the read the absolute shit out of this book.
I don't want to spoil it for anyone who has never read it because that would be really rotten of me. For that reason I do not think it is a good idea to break into an impromptu book review. Then again, this being out of print and all, maybe many baseball enthusiasts (and any other enthusiast for that matter) might be interested in a brief glimpse as to what is contained in the pages of "Gettin' Oiled: The Life of the Can" and what mysterious-misadventures and/or zany yarns the Can spins within it.
Alright, here's a brief (not full) impromptu Oil Can book review...
Impromptu Book Review
It mainly details Can's journey from the Mississippi streets to Diamond King Glory. I have a feeling Can was fairly Oiled while writing this. There's a good chance Can was dictating yarns into a tape recorder and these yarns were later unraveled into text format by the immaculate (yet refreshingly refined) Donald Metzner.
Some of the shit Can says he did in this book is FUCKING MENTAL. If you're sitting here reading this and are confident that you are a primo party animal...you better think twice dude. Plus, I have a feeling the yarns printed in this book are the ones the compiler was allowed to print and the crazier completely buck wild ones were left out for legal reasons. These yarns could possibly be just the tip of the yarn iceberg which is Can's life.
Can invented a martial-arts style known as "Can-Fu" and opened a dojo in Union Station, Meridian where he taught bad-ass moves to local dojo-goers.
Satchel Paige
Apparently, this one time he met Satchel Paige who graciously took Can for top secret pitching training in the arctic where he was instructed to launch baseballs blindfolded unto snow-capped mountains until avalanches erupted. That's fucked up and awesome. Even if this yarn is not entirely true, the mental image of Satchel Paige and Oil Can Boyd in a snowy landscape whipping baseballs at mountain ranges and creating waves and waves of wicked unstoppable avalanches is really cool.
For the record, last year (2012), Can released a second book which is good too...it's in print and can be bought on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/They-Call-Me-Oil-Can/dp/B00AZ9FIYE, so if you're looking for in-print Can material that's a good way to go.
As for "Gettin' Oiled: The Life of the Can," I'm probably the only person on earth who has a copy of this...which makes me the Lord of the Can...I guess.
Not sellin' it either.
Celebratin'
In order to properly celebrate the upcoming Oil Can's Day weekend you should note the following...
On Saturday October 5th, or Oil Can's Day Eve, you should leave your bed room door slightly ajar in hopes that Oil Can sneaks in your bedroom late at night and hides cold bottles of beer under your pillow.
How does the Oil Can get beer to all the good little guys and gals of the planet? His van is fast, fool.
On the 6th, it is customary to call all your friends over and get fucked up. You have to remember to get oiled in moderation though...a lot of people (especially chicks) cannot handle it. If you can't handle it then don't drink...it's literally that simple.
Once you're good and oiled you hafta get a pack of six dozen baseballs and whip them at snowy snow-capped mountains to commemorate that one time I made up that Oil Can Boyd did that.
Conclusion
October 6th is only 2 months away now and it is going to be great fun for all like it always is.
(if your birthday happens to be this day...then you shouldn't double-celebrate but instead move your dumb birthday to a less cool day).
My good computer is broken. It was so awesome....it was really useful for entertainment. Like, it was fast enough to do more than one thing at once, you know? I used to get so many windows going on that thing, I'd play like 3 different SNES games at the same time, while watching some Hey Vern! It's Ernest!on another window, chat on Skype on another window, and read an online book in the bottom right part of the screen...all simultaneously. Now that's an entertainment device. Wow, a good computer is the king of entertainment devices. A good computer is like the Henny Youngman of entertainment devices...versatile.
My computer has been broken for almost a week, and I've been watching T.V. Shows in the meantime.
Having to watch T.V. Shows this last week, I've come to realize that T.V. sucks, man. How can I look at one thing for a half of one full hour? It's hard. I should be watching one of these shows on a small window on the bottom left of my screen while I do 25 other things. Watching T.V. Shows full-screen and without side dishes is soooooo hard.
I noticed there's a lot of kook shows on the air right now. What you'd used to only find on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio show is now pretty mainstream. I like crazy folks, it's not that I ever believe what they say, but it's usually very entertaining and (very rarely) edifying to listen to the opinions they wish to present.
Alright, so here's my take on two kooky shows that I saw.
First though, I want to present some kook 101 terminology beforehand so it's not always in parenthesis after the statement (which is out of place and dumb looking). The following are terms I use to refer to certain kooks:
Class A: Person who says the most insane nonsense for the sole reason of drawing attention to themselves and gaining money from the strange things they say/write. This person DOES NOT believe anything they say, they do it simply for the exposure, fame, and profit.
Class AA: Person who claims to be an investigative journalist who is exposing strange things. They, like single-A, DO NOT believe what they say and the "investigations" are a farce. Good examples of these are big foot trackers, ghost hunters, conspiracy investigators (exposers of the "truth" so to speak).
Class B: Person who says the most insane nonsense...but truly and honestly believes what they are saying.
Class BB: Person who is legitimately and certifiably delusional and/or totally fucking kooked-out crazy. These people are hopefully in institutions and not allowed in public due to them being a violent danger to themselves or others.
Alright, so with that terminology out of the way...let's begin the pending review.
Jesse Ventura - Conspiracy Theory
I didn't know what to make of "The Body" after I found out he went full-blown into the conspiracy investigation field. He's from a pretty legit background...he's an ex-marine, ex-governor, and of course ex-pro wrestler. He's been in the political field and actually knows a thing or two about it, so it's interesting to hear his views on certain matters.
Jesse is a witty and interesting guy. I always listen to the Stern show when Jesse comes on it but only recently saw his Conspiracy show. Jesse seems to want to come across as an investigative journalist, but does he pull it off or does he devolve into a total Class AA kook?
First of all, the word "Conspiracy" itself is a bad way to go. Real investigative journalists avoid this word and don't use it. When they investigate something they will refer to it as a "fraud", a "scam", or a really big organized scam as "collusion." The word "Conspiracy" is a really loaded word...as soon as you say it to someone they start to think about martians, voo doos, and bigfoots.
The music, camera effects, and overall direction of the show tends to try and milk that word for all its worth. You almost half expect a bigfoot to be hiding behind some corridor or tree when he walks by it. He was in that movie "Predator" and that's what I think the director is going for with this show. The music and camera angles make you think a predator monster is gonna jump out and maul Jesse at any given time.
Despite the obvious sensationalism of the show, he retains his wit and still comes off as being intelligent and interesting. He even flashes signs of skepticism in some cases, reminding the viewer that he hasn't gone off the deep end (right at moments where you think he might have). When faced with asinine and extremely silly conspiracies he's not afraid to go full skeptic on someone. My favorite instance being when he calls out that dope David Icke for being a total Class A kook, he even straight out asks him how many books he's sold due to the crap he says.
It's odd in this genre of programming to flash skepticism on the audience because you might lose viewers. His target audience is not the type to want to hear him tell them that there's no aliens in area 51 or lizard men running society like David Icke tells them. Don't worry though, Jesse does enough to placate to his target audience to make up for the occasional bursts of rationality. The most annoying thing he does to placate to his target demographic is invite that Alex Jones on the show all the time.
Jones is a hybrid of Class A and Class AA (with a splash of Class B). I think he displays some interesting critiques of government and society at times but it is lost between tirade after tirade of inane yelling and invective. The thing that I dislike most about him is his fans, they think that listening to him or reading prison planet/info wars makes them know-it-alls. He's kind of like the Insane Clown Posse, that band is kind of interesting but when you see the legions of fans behind them (juggaloes) you are instantly turned off to ICP due to the immense retardation of their fans. Same for Jones, his legions of retarded fans make him unbearable.
.
Oh man. You thought the comparison of Alex Jones to Insane Clown Posse was a bit of a stretch? Well, what do you think of that above video then? Honestly, his shtick is so un-entertaining, I mean he's either yelling like a fool or acting like a clown (sometimes even literally), there's times where you think he's actually a genuine Class-B kook.
All in all, I think Jesse is above the morass when it comes to Class-AA "investigators" and I think he's a really smart and interesting fellow but ultimately his sensationalized presentation and usage of Alex Jones makes this show a lot less palatable. Obviously to make money he needs to placate to a certain target market, I understand that, but just for me personally this show is pretty bad.
Weird or What?
Another show I happened upon this week whilst my good computer was broken was William Shatner's "Weird or What?" program.
Shatner presents some phenomena that invokes wonder and then proceeds to try and figure out what the heck caused this. Where have I seen this premise before? Hmmm....It seems similar in nature to Charles Fort's excellent 1919 text...The Book of the Damned.
Charles Fort's book written in 1919 is a very good read because it has a very strange formula to it. Fort basically states a strange phenomena that he collected from a newspaper/other source and then proceeds to basically try and rationalize what happened to cause the phenomena. It's strange in the sense that he at some point (not always off the bat and not always right at the end) will always present the most rational, logical, and simple explanation. Yet he wraps the logical explanation around paragraphs and paragraphs of imaginative theories, utter nonsense, philosophy, views on life, and a myriad of questions.
I have a bunch of quotes of his to show his writing style but I'm gonna try and emulate his style instead (just for fun). The following is me trying to write in the style of one Charles Hoy Fort....
In American Science Journal v.1 pp26-29, a man in Hartford, Ct. was struck in the head by a golden cicada roach which he states fell from alarming heights onto his head whilst he was cleaning his rag wheel.
Golden cicadas are not a known native species of Connecticut, making this particular datum highly intriguing. Was the man a collector of foreign insect specimena? Surely not, do not jest. He stated to the inquirer that he loathes bugs of all sorts.
Could a dimensional portal to lands unknown be the culprit to this conundrum? How could a foreign bug have landed on his head had it not been from at not least countries unknown if not from worlds unknown? How do we know that when roaches die they do not pass through some temporary vortex into the atmosphere to disintegrate their worldly tissues? Would it be commendable to recommend to the esteemed investigator of this phenomena that the cicada may have been an insect who existed millions of years in the past?
Seemingly some may think the species came upon ships trading goods from the orient yet how would that explain the bug's inter-dimensional time traveling?
Perhaps the investigator failed to figure that a wind tunnel formed above the farmer's property whilst he was cleaning his rag wheel and that wind tunnel just happened to have caught a cicada who was blown away in a terrible hurricane who's origin may or may not have been the Mei Goren Sino kingdom of modern China?
Here today gone the next. Wind is a funny thing is it not? Blowing around all sorts of dusts of life and golden bugs. Wind is a very transient affair I must say. Whipping up vicious storms in all corners of the world over. Blowing everything around from humans and trees just like dust and bugs or even golden cicadas.
Ok, that was my best Charles Fort impression. Now back to my original point, if you'll notice...the most logical explanation is mentioned, that the bug likely came to Connecticut via a cargo vessel from the orient, yet that simple (and BORING) explanation is buried under a myriad of highly imaginative suppositions and some fun philosophy is thrown in at the end.
Fort says in the Book of the Damned that the simplest and right answer is quite boring, and all the imaginative things that collective human minds have come up with, even though wrong, should be recorded into history for what I'd assume is for entertainment purposes. Fort calls these imaginative yet erroneous thoughts, the "Ghosts of the Mind," and refers to Ghost of The Mind datum as something worth collecting. Hey, some people collect stamps, some people collect shoes, some people collect baseball cards....and then there's guys like Fort who collect erroneous datum (or Ghosts of the Mind).
Fort once stated,
"I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written." -Charles Fort
That's where the real entertainment value is. Art Bell (the host of Coast to Coast) understood this too, Art let his guests express the most asinine and ludicrous explanations and theories on his radio program...yet he never ever actually said he believed what they were saying. Art would have the kookiest dudes on to talk about aliens, lizards, and 5th dimensions...but he never ever said implicitly that he agreed with any of the guests opinions. He just liked having some Ghosts of the Mind statements travel over the airwaves to people's ears, I guess.
Anyway, that was a long Fortean interlude was it not? Back to Shatner's show...
The Weird or What? program always gives you the most logical and sound answer to the phenomena but they wrap it around a myriad of questions (asked in Shatner's iconic voice) and slap on some highly imaginative anecdotal theories.
For instance I saw an episode where the phenomena was sunspot activity and they interviewed a NASA scientist who explained the most rational reason as to why sunspot activity has decreased in recent years...but they also let some whacko express his opinion that (if I remember correctly) alien spacecrafts were crashing at right-angles into the sun and through some kooked-out silliness these marooned vessels were disrupting sunspot activity...
...Yeah. All the while Shatner is asking questions like "could it be aliens?" in perfect feigned Fortean foolishness.
I like this show because the producers/writers/director/host seem to have the Fort Formula down to a tee and really get it. It is the most intelligent, entertaining, and least sensational way to present high weirdness by teevee.
Conclusion
In honor of the late Roger Ebert, I'm gonna give the shows thumbs.
A regrettable thumbs down to Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory. Mostly due to his association with Alex Jones (who has minimal to zero entertainment value).
A thumbs up to Weird or What? for presenting the Fort Formula so well, and big ups and props to the Shat for asking the Fortean questions in the proper ham style (great casting).
End Note: That Henny Youngman joke in the opener paragraph is not really current or topical by any means. He was a stand-up who also played violin so when I was thinking of what to compare a multi-tasking entertainment device to...I naturally thought of Henny Youngman but I'm not sure if it was the right way to go in retrospect. Maybe a more current multi-talented fellow that should have been used as the comparison may have been someone along the lines of a Dolph Lundgren maybe. Maybe I should go back and change the Henny Youngman joke to Dolf Lungren. Naw, eff it...you people have internet so you can look up Henny Youngman....no big deal.
These are just opinions and not scientific at all. I do still believe most of what I wrote (especially the stuff about lobotomies and testing on monkeys)...but...one thing I said in those articles is wrong. I have to make a sweeping retraction.
In the article "Thinkin' 'bout my Brain" I said that the general mapping of the brain could be different for everyone. I have to retract this claim.
The reason I thought that certain things were assigned to a certain part of my brain (that seemed different than the maps presented by neuro-science) was due to my suspicion that a case of post-concussion syndrome was causing the problems I was suffering.
I felt like the bottom right section of my brain was "off" and the troubled hearing in my right ear and headaches were due to that section being damaged. This was not the case.
Whoever drew this is a good person..
The other day I was eating a big big hamburger at some restaurant in Laval. The burger was real big and I started to notice that I haven't been able to open my jaw properly in many years. I forced my jaw open and it must have hit the breaking point of the damaged area because I was in a lot of pain for the next week or so. I read something on the net about re-positioning a dislocated jaw and tried it out. I feel so good right now. The problems I thought were due to brain shit were actually just from some dumb jaw shit. For real.
What I thought was a brain problem was actually just a jaw problem. I was very wrong about some of my opinions on my brain.
I still believe most of what I wrote in those two articles but the fact that I thought the general mapping of the brain could be vastly different from person to person is not correct. It was regular old jaw trouble that was causing my symptoms, that's all.
I never really did a movie review in this blog but I want to write about Stephen Chow because I think he's a really good film maker.
Yeah, I like Stephen Chow's movies. Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle, God of Cookery, amongst others. I think he's a talented guy. Other people seem to agree with me. In fact, Comedy Legend Bill Murray once called Kung Fu Hustle the greatest comedy ever created by stating that:
"...Kung Fu Hustle, which is the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy." -Bill Murray (source)
Getting an endorsement from William "Bill" Murray for creating the "supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy" is a decent bench mark.
I haven't heard of anything new from Chow in a while, I think he made an alien CG movie but it looked like it was aimed at a young audience. The latest thing from him was a trailer for an adaptation he did for Journey to the West, which is a classical Chinese literature piece from history.
From the trailer it looks like it doesn't have much at all to do with the story I'm familiar with, in fact it looks pretty odd.
History of Journey to the West
Journey to the West is credited to Wu Cheng'en in the year 1592. He composed the basic text we read today but there's a little more to it than that.
The story was based on supposed actual events of a Chinese scholar traveling to India and returning with Buddhist Scriptures to teach the people back home (around the year 600) . Over the years from 600 to 1592 the story changed dramatically. At some point along the way someone found it was too boring and added in a Monkey King (based heavily off the Hindu Deity known as Hanuman), a Pig, and a Swamp Monster to spice the story up a bit. By the time Wu Cheng'en "wrote it" in 1592 it had already taken on mythical proportions.
Like many other historical Chinese classics, I believe the ruling government of the era got their hands on it and edited it heavily. If you've read Outlaws of the Marsh (another old classic), for example, the alterations to the text almost come right off the page to you, they are so obvious. You can tell where the ruling government of the era edited in-or-out parts to promote the Emperor and other authority figures. In Journey to the West there is a totally unnecessary and out of place chapter where the Tang Emperor becomes a central figure for a brief time. It is truly out of place and really sticks out like a sore thumb when you read it.
It would be accurate to say that the story was written by many people (over the course of almost 1000 years beginning in 600), including government officials who threw in pro-authority parts. Wu Cheng'en should be called the compiler of the text, I'd say. I think what he actually did was extend the text by a few dozen chapters (it gets very repetitive at times). I have the suspicion the Wu Cheng'en may have been selling this book in the 16th century as a peridiocal/serial magazine of sorts...where in order to make more money off of it he had to keep adding repetitive demon-catching chapters to it (plus each chapter ends with a "stay tuned next time" sort of "same bat time! same bat channel!" type of hook).
The text basically goes in this format:
Chapters 1-30: Setting up the characters.
Chapters 30-99: Them journeying west as you'd expect. Yeah, 70 chapters of that.
Chapters 99-100: They finally make it and it ends.
Anyway, from the time after 1592, we've invented different forms of media. A Chinese opera of Journey to the West would come next (still being performed today), and eventually TV shows, movies, and video games would come about in the modern era.
Some of the adaptations of this text in the modern era have been awful. There's been dozens of movies from China, and not many of them, if any, are good. Japan made a TV show which was pretty bad in the 1970s ..except for the theme song which was really really funk-tastic and catchy (as shown here by Godiego). The video game adaptions are the worst because they always make the Monkey King into a pretty boy (like this example from a game called "Soul Calibur V). All the games seem to present him as a pretty boy, this is the stupidest thing they do, because the Monkey King was a filthy demon-monkey not an androgynous faggo.
Sun "Monkey King" Wukong WAS NOT PRETTY. He was a fucking demon ape who got drunk all day on earth, then got bored of that shit, went up to heaven and robbed and broke all their stuff. He didn't take shit from nobody. He even urinated on Buddha himself, that takes balls. He by no means of any stretch was an emo pretty-boy like in most adaptions of him we see lately.
As for the adaptions of the monk character (Xuan Zang) who is sent to get the scriptures, they are always as equally horrible. The only thing they have to go on is that he's "pure of heart" and that seems to translate to people interpreting the text as him being really boring and depthless as a character. Some adaptions even casted a female to be the monk because he's such a wimp.
The only good modern take on this text so far is the one which strays the most from the old formula. Many might know that Dragon Ball from Akira Toriyama is an adaption of this text as well and is probably the only good one. Chow's Version
Chow's version is really good. Even though from the trailer it looks awful, it 100% is not awful at all. Why?
First of all, Chow focuses on the best part of the book, Chapters 1-30. He takes out all stupid references to the Tang Empire and pointless authority figures (which were never supposed to be in the text anyway). He doesn't even bother getting into the journeying part. He adds in godzilla-like monsters, computer graphics, interesting new original characters, a deep love story, some musical scenes, loads of comedy, borrows some Dragon Ball Z elements, gets some hot asian chicks in there, and best of all....HE MAKES THE DEMONS AS UGLY AS FUCK.
Sha Wujing (as intended)
Yes, Sha Wujing is a giant fish monster like he should be, Zhu Bajie is a filthy disgusting pig demon, and our favorite Monkey King is a fucking asshole like he's supposed to be....and he's as ugly as a mother fucker to boot.
And his Monk? Xuan Zang? He's pure but modernized. He's not a pointless wimp, he's just a nice shy guy but he's at least human. He's the only interesting Xuan Zang ever.
Conclusion
After watching the trailer it looked like Chow's adaption of Journey to the West would be one of the worst takes on the book. It's not the case at all. His Xuan Zang is the BEST Xuan Zang, his Sha Wujin is the BEST Sha Wujin, his Zhu Bajie is the BEST Zhu Bajie, and his Sun Wukong...is the BEST.
Finally someone did it right. He took a lot of creative liberties but you have to with material that is over 1,400 years old.
END NOTE: What actually got me thinking about this book of late was a picture I saw on the North Korean government's hacked twitter account.
Whoever did it put Dennis Rodman's best pal's head on Zhu Bajie (the hideous pig demon). Pretty cute. It got me thinking about Journey to the West.
Wait...I don't want to end on that stupid picture. So here's one of Sun Wukong in a boxing ring (I can't find the source for this though).
If anyone is ever gonna make a good video game adaption of Journey to the West they should call whoever drew this picture and let him/her design the character models for it. This is what a modernized "cooler" Wukong should look like if that's what they want....NOT AN EMO PRETTY BOY.
The Wukongs models they come up with for the games they make these days do not look like they can fly up to heaven and beat the living fuck out all the assholes up there. This Wukong? He looks like he could.
(EDIT: it states "East Monkey" on the bottom of the picture. I thought that was a title but it seems to be from this art site account: http://eastmonkey.deviantart.com/, seems the picture is from that source. His name appears to be Liu Dongzi...his Wukong pics are retarded-ass good.)
