Go Bold! Or Don't!

So, I'm not particularly proud of my past with Taco Bell. I mean, it was back in college and everyone gets into things they think the better of later. I was simply poor and generally unwilling to cook for myself. So Taco Bell seemed like a good fit. By my junior year, I knew which particular locations had the best burritos, fastest drive-throughs, and least-sticky floors. I was living off the stuff. These days I make my own burritos out of stuff I purchase at the grocery store, but I admit it- I buy the Taco Bell sauce. I like it because it's way less spicy than most of the others on the shelf. Which makes the label design that much more amusing. I buy this stuff because I don't want to "go bold." I want to go mild. Then I want some warm milk while I watch Matlock.

Mr. Opportunity

A decade ago I bought a new Honda Civic. The nice folks at the dealership still seem to labor under the misapprehension that I'll be able to buy a new car again at some point in my life. That's looking increasingly improbable. Hope springs eternal and whatnot, so they send me postcards and letters asking for my business. Indeed, I once received a mailer with an enticing scratch-off pad. You know, like on Lottery tickets? It was from their service department and under the metallic blot was my personal service discount! I pulled a coin out of the nearest child's hand and began scratching furiously. Would I get a free tune-up? Maybe half off a timing belt replacement!

But my enthusiasm was naive and misplaced. Much like Ralphie decoding Little Orphan Annie's secret message, I was playing the chump. My personal discount was for $2 off any service. That's two dollars off. At a freaking car dealership! Somewhere, in the quietest, most remote part of my brain, the last non-cynical cell in my body cried out: "Son of a bitch!"

Which leads us to Mr. Opportunity up there. Last summer I got another solicitation from the sales department. They managed to insult my intelligence by mistaking the plural for the possessive. There was no shock or hurt this time. I'm a lot tougher now. After a disdainful snort, I made a solemn vow to myself. If I had the money for a new car, I'd take my business elsewhere.

Please Give Generously

Dear friends, It's my sincere hope that you haven't personally suffered from the Lymes. Even if you haven't, you surely know a friend, family member, or acquaintance who has endured the heartbreak of Lymes. That's why I'm asking you to look into your tick-bitten heart and reach into your wallet. Please help the neediest among us. Every $2,500 (plus tax) you donate buys an hour of hyperbaric therapy for some poor Lymer. And, if you donate today, we'll send you a free "I got pressured into hyperbaric therapy" t-shirt as our gift. So please, before my next boat payment comes due, won't you give to the Lymer fund?

This Time, it's Personally

It's something they take personal, huh? Well that's heartening. I just wish adverbs were something they took serious.

Sun Hats Gone Wild

Well, I'm back on the sun hat kick. As my similarly melanin-challenged friend John put it " All of my hats make me think I look somewhere between a homeless guy and an asshole who beats up homeless guys." Let's look at more of the contenders.

Here's the venerable Bucket Hat. I admit having something like this, but I've already successfully reproduced and can get away with wearing it. Fellas, if you want the ladies to know that you're genes aren't suitable for passing along to a new generation. Think of it as a public service. No suitable mate here, Miss, move along.

Remember Dumb Donald? This guy doesn't.

This one is a little unsettling. When someone comes up to you in this gear it's either "give me your wallet" or "I'm going to die of a gruesome skin ailment any minute now. If I crumple right now, please look inside my hat flap for my next-of-kin's phone number."

Our final contender is the ultra-brim. And don't let the goateed model fool you. The only guys that wear these are over 40 types who came back from the doctor with precancerous lesions on their heads. Put off buying the sun hat long enough and somebody might pick up this beauty for you.

Sun Hat Connundrum

Last year I lost my cancer virginity. I was diagnosed with a Basal Cell Carcinoma, also know as "The Good Cancer." And, for sure, if you have to get the big C, I'll take my tiny skin cancer over a Butterfly Glioma any day. But sreiously, the good cancer? How about the Least Bad Cancer?

I've been a hat wearer all my life, but now my hats require substantial brims and therein lies the problem. If you're a man looking for a sun hat, choices are limited to a few main styles, none of which are particularly attractive. If anybody knows of a less-lame hat style, I'd love to know about it.

Exhibit A: The Uncle Douche

Few articles of clothing impart douchebaggery as resolutely as the Panama hat. This hat says "I'm going to show up to your wedding drunk." It's the hat of the miscreant uncle or maybe Mom's boyfriend who makes the kids wait in the car for a couple hours while he "visits some friends" at the strip club.

Exhbit B: The Neo-Cowboy

About every 15 years there's a cowboy fad. First it was the late 70's with Urban Cowboy and then came the early 90's Garth Brooks stadium extravaganzas. So I guess we're about due. I can't wait to see droves of doughy sedentary work force types squeeze into jeans with huge belt buckles and doff pseudo cow-puncher headgear like this.

Exhibit C: The Chief Executive Asshole

The stony expression. The squared jaw. The narrow slits for eyes. And up top- the laser sharp lines of absolute domination. The CEA will destroy you utterly.

Exhibit D: The Jimmy Cracked Corn

Some folk'll never eat a skunk
But then again some folk'll
Like Cletus the slack jawed yokel.

Even more hat bashing...

Cognative Dissonance

Apparently the swine flu has just earned its college degree. You're probably thinking it studied microbiology with an emphasis on virology. You'd be wrong. A super star like this baby is all about the marcom. You know this bad boy is going to reinvent itself more times than Madonna.

Naughty Bits

I was in my beloved San Francisco last weekend, taking the boy on a Muni ride. He doesn't really care where we go, just as long as we're on some form of light rail. I don't really care either, just as long as I have hand sanitizer.

So we're on the N-Judah rolling through the Castro when we pass Out of the Closet. For the uninitiated, OotC is a thrift store operated by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. They describe themselves as "the world's most fabulous thrift store." There in the OotC display window was a fabulous display of racy and risqué apparal for the sexed-up set. You know, assless chaps, leather bindings, and, the most eye-catching male mannequin leaning back, hips thrust out and wearing only a sutdded leather thong (and me without my camera).

Now, I'm all for consenting adults to get into any sort of kinky mischief they want to. It beats the hell out of violence and hatred. And I don't even care that my 5 year old boy rolled past this window display. He didn't even see it and if he had it would have been meaningless to him. No, the thing that really gave me creepy heebie jeebies is the idea that somebody out there may be willing to purchase used thongs and chaps from a thrift store.

Career Counseling

Umm. He's already got one...

Japanese Food Fiasco

The following is a letter I sent home to my family while on a business trip to Japan.

Maybe I should have ramped up by eating a Japanese restaurants in the weeks before my departure. See, I just can't get into the food here. I'm pretty convinced it's a matter of biology and not taste. My body is actually telling me that I'm incompatible Japanese food. Yes, I am sincerely trying, but it's not working out as well as I'd hoped.

For lunch on Friday, Jason, Kojima-san, Kawazoe-san and I went to Coco's. That's right. Coco's. Same architecture, same green sign, same font for the lettering. They pronounce it "co-CO-su" but the sign reads "Coco's." Sadly for me, that sign is where the ties to home end. Even though the menu says "Coco's California Restaurant," the food is ALL Japanese. No club sandwiches, no hamburgers, no pie. Coco's without pie!! They had soup. Miso soup. Swell. So I did the only thing I could do in my position, I ordered deep fried pork.

I know what you're thinking. At least, I know what my dear mother and beloved bride must be thinking. "Surely, Stuart, in all of the Coco's menu, there must be SOMETHING more appealing and wholesome than deep fried pork." Surely there must, but you see, preceding the finalization of my menu choice was a protracted process whereby I would point to pictures in the menu and Kojima-san would tell me what it was. It went something like this:
"What is this?"
"Fish."
"How about this?"
"Fish."
"Is this chicken?"
"Fish."
"What is in--"
"Fish. How about shrimp, you eat shrimp?"
"No, but this looks good."
"Fish."
"This is fish too?"
"That is pork."

Pork! He said pork! I had to go with it. After all, he needed a chance to pick his meal too. So pork it was, a lot of pork. But I wanted to be a polite and respectful guest in Japan, so I ate it all. I even poured on the sauce Kawazoe-san suggested. It was pretty good at the time.

I've never eaten a pound of bread pudding, but the deep fried pork sat like a lump in my stomach much like I guess a pound of bread pudding would. Sheer conjecture on my part, though. When it came time to have dinner, Jason, the pork, and I were walking around a pedestrian-only shopping street. The three of us would stop at each eatery and look over the menu for something appealing. Jason, I think, could have happily found a dish at any of the restaurants. I found a few items that seemed workable, too. The pork was a lot more choosy. It wasn't about to share its space with just any meal.

Eventually, I was tired of the pork and it's onerous demands so we entered a noodle shop. At this shop, you can't talk to the guy behind the counter. I mean, you can talk to him, but he'll grunt and point to a machine behind you. We'll call it the "Waitress-o-Matic." The Waitress-o-Matic is a vending machine. As you drop coins into the slot, buttons begin to light up. If you put in 300 yen, buttons with pictures of menu items up to that price light up. I put in 500 yen and pushed number 20, a little udon and vegetable number that looked innocuous enough. The Waitress-o-Matic spit out a ticket which I handed to the grunter behind the counter. The grunter prepared my selection, placed on a tray and let out a grunt that I think meant "your udon bowl is ready, sir. Enjoy your meal." I said "arrygawtow gozymaws," and he delivered a final grunt which I took to mean "you're most welcome, sir, and if there's anything I can do to make your meal more enjoyable here at Noodle World, please don't hesitate to ask."

Well, old number 20 let me down. Fist of all, it had no cheese. I knew this going in, but a lack of cheese in any meal somehow violates my sense of propriety. But the real problem with the meal was me. I'm not used to the flavors in Japan and apparently the pork wasn't either. None of us got along. Worse, the unidentifiable vegetables and other fungi-like things atop the noodles were exotic to a fault. They looked like broccoli and green beans in the Waitress-o-Matic photo. In real life, they were freaks of nature, so repellant to the pork and I, we had to push them aside and concentrate on the noodles.

The noodles were delicious. They would have been better were they not tarred with the stigma of the repellant vegetables and broth, but I had to eat, so I decided to go after the noodles and ignore the broth and whatever that other stuff was. Instantly, my Ameri-centric mindset and life experience proved problematic.

I can't use chopsticks.

I'm not so pathetic that I didn't KNOW chopsticks are the primary utensil of Japan. I just didn't have time to think about it or practice. So now, there I was with a bowl of noodles in front of me and two wooden sticks in my right hand. I'm a messy eater when I use utensils that I've mastered (I can hear you asking me to name one utensil that I've mastered, but I won't dignify that with an answer). By the time I'd eaten all the noodles, my place at the counter looked like the scene of a food fight. Jason was sporting and tried to help me with my technique. Making an honest effort to incorporate his suggestions only embarrassed both of us, and he suggested I go back to my improvised approach.

I've never eaten two pounds of bread pudding, but the deep fried pork and the newly arrived noodles sat like a lump in my stomach much like I guess two pounds of bread pudding would. I began to wonder if there was a way to make the breakfast meal last all day.

On Saturday, Jason and I met Kawazoe-san in Tokyo. Kawazoe-san is the consummate bachelor waking late in the morning and working deep into the night. We woke him around 11 and he met us at a subway station. Around 1 pm is was time for his breakfast. Being afraid to eat, I feigned indifference to food and let the others select a place to eat. Kawazoe-san chose a small restaurant with traditional low tables and pillows on the floor for seating. It was neat to experience this.

We ordered beer and discussed the menu. Even if I could have read it, I would have been afraid to order. The pork and the noodles were no longer lumps in my gut, but I didn't want another pound-of-bread-pudding experience. So I asked that they order plain rice for me. Just a bowl of plain white rice. They ordered other food for themselves, but it turns out, they didn't really think I would only eat rice and nothing else, so they ordered enough for me too.

Sitting there, eating my plain white rice for lunch, I couldn't help but wonder if I was turning into my sister Abbie. Abbie as a child, anyway. I never really thought about it before, but maybe the food available to her as a kid left her feeling like my Japanese meals were leaving me. Maybe she wanted to eat, but nothing seemed to work out except plain white rice. Abbie, I'm sorry if I ever gave you any grief about not eating as a kid. I don't think I did, but just in case.

My big breakfast and small rice bowl got me through a 14 hour Tokyo adventure. By the time we got back to Kawagoe, we had probably walked 10 miles and it was nearly eleven at night. Our only choice for dinner was AM/PM Mini Mart. You may be shuddering, but it turns out this AM/PM was not the filthy gas station market you might expect. It was clean, well stocked, and had many food options that looked pretty decent. I selected a ham and cheese sandwich, prefabricated Belgian fries, and a Kit Kat for dessert.

It was no bean burrito, but it was the best meal I'd had yet. Even if Japanese mayonnaise is a little, um, different, the sandwich was pretty good. The fries were awesome, and the Kit Kat even better. I had found my bread basket and AM/PM was its name. But how to describe that mayonnaise? It looks just like regular mayo and tastes so close, that you might miss the difference. In fact, while I know it's not the same (independently verified and all) I can't explain the difference. You'll have to come here if you want to taste it for yourself cause I'm not packing a jar in my suitcase.

Sunday was another massive breakfast as I loaded up in anticipation of no food for the rest of the day. I walked and walked and walked on Sunday and never saw anything appealing. I'm not at a stage where I can eat at MekuDonaldo. You won't get me to eat that crap, I'm an AM/PM man! By the time I was too hungry to continue, I decided to load up on snacks and water from the grocery.

Snacking got me through the evening and in a nod to those days of bachelorhood, I walked down to the Mallard for dinner in the form of a pint of Guinness. Except the Mallard was the Windsor bar in the hotel lobby. I went in and was seated by the bartender. Guinness was the only beer they have on tap. I ordered one and set down a 1,000 Yen bill. The bartender walked over the cash register then returned to me and said "excuse me sir, it is one thousand, one hundred, sixty." In my mind I kept my cool, but in reality I may have fallen out of another chair. He has already pulled it and I really wanted it, so I fished out another 160 yen. I was determined to slowly enjoy my $10.68 beer. I took solice in two facts: the glass was an imperial pint and tipping is considered an insult in Japan. I also toasted my friend Brian in India who paid over $20 for his last Guinness. We're going out for beer when we're both stateside.

Jason joined me in the bar but it was too smoky to hang out once I'd finished my beer. He wanted a salad for dinner and that sounded pretty good to me. You can probably guess who has the best salads in Kawagoe. So we walked over to AM/PM. I picked up a green salad with lots of corn and a small amount of someone's idea of cheese. Having learned caution, I took a whiff of the dressing before pouring it over the salad. It was the nast. I opted to eat my salad dry and it wasn't that bad. Better still, the AM/PM guy put a plastic fork in my bag. How on earth people learn the dexterity to eat corn with chopsticks is a mystery to me.

The fork and I are pals now. I haven't named him, but I think I should. How can you build a relationship when one of you doesn't have a name? For now, he's Forky, but I'll come up with something more appropriate later. Forky, I realized, is my ticket to eating more food. The Bento boxes are sure to come with chopsticks, hindering my ability to eat. But having washed Forky in my bathroom sink, and retained his little plastic wrapper, the Bento scenario won't slow me down. Most restaurants will present you with a warm, moist towel when you arrive. Perfect for giving old Forky a little wipe-down at the end of the meal. So we're inseparable from now on. I'm going to keep him in my shirt pocket so he can see where we're headed. I think we should do some things that he would enjoy too, but I don't know what forks like to do. Suggestions would be appreciated.

Oh Mr. ZIP!

I gotta say, the US Post Office has been good to me. I send stuff Priority Mail all the time and never have a problem with it getting there on time. Contrast that with the dreaded UPS Ground- for more money, UPS will strap your package to the abdomen of a tree sloth and route it through Lapland, regardless of final destination.

But this isn't one of those paid posts where the blogger pretends to like something in exchange for a few bucks. I do have a little bone of contention here. Look at the form above. It's the form you use to find a ZIP code for a given address. You got your address 1, address 2, city, state, and ZIP?

"Lemmie see here. I need to find the ZIP code for this address which I have a ZIP code for. If only there was some kind of Internet thingie to help."

I can hear the critics now. " Suppose you have the 5 digit zip but want to find the ZIP+4 code." Well, genius, the form is going to spit out the ZIP+4 whether or not you enter a known ZIP code. So our generally competent postal service manages to retain its bad reputation by slapping a ZIP code field on the ZIP code search page. Great Job.

PorkWHAT?

Hey kids! What looks like a dirt clod, smells like poo, and is (possibly) loaded with deadly chemicals? It's Pork Sweet, The Dandy Candy Porcine Treat.™

My friend Sarah picked this up for me at a Chinese restaurant years ago. Tuned in to my love of bacon and just about anything sugary, she knew it had my name on it. Honestly, I've been afraid to taste, or even open this weird little meat nugget. It's amusing, sure, but I can't get behind the concept. Candied pig meat (that doesn't require refrigeration!) is one of those really bad food ideas like raw horseflesh ice cream or the meat gelatin abomination knows as the aspic.

Today I finally got around to opening the thing up so I could get a scan of the package. To get a feel for the sensory experience, imagine you're at the county fair. Feeling a twinge of hunger, you stride over to the livestock section and engage a pig in hand-to-hoof combat. The pig fends off your attack, but not before you manage to get a raisin-size chunk of it's flesh.

You're not going to just pop that in your mouth, though. You head over to the food carts looking for something to enhance your morsel. A quick detour to the porta-potty is a near disaster. Your pig meat slips from your grasp and into the toilet. Lucky for you, flesh floats and it's easily retrieved. Crisis averted.

Having reached the food-on-a-stick asile, your good fortune persists. The funnel cake guy just knocked over the powdered sugar shaker and there's a small pile on the ground. Rolling your piece of pork around in the sugar and dirt, it picks up a little hair and a dusty brownish hue, but who cares? You've done it. You taken simple pork and sugar, and made a culinary masterpiece.

Bon appetit.