Why Dick's is better than In-N-Out

Ah, the heated debate: which is better Dick's or In-N-Out?

I've eaten at both places, multiple times, over a span of 10+ years. I've come to the conclusion that Dick's is better than In-N-Out.

Here's why (in no particular order):

• I can get Dick's whenever I want. I have to go 2 states away to get In-N-Out.
• In-N-Out fries have the taste and texture of cardboard. Dick's fries are greasy and delicious.
• Dick's is cheaper.
• I can get Dick's until 2AM (only 1AM at In-N-Out)
• I have to wait forever with a bunch of snobby, pretentious, "my shit doesn't stink", ass holes to get my food at In-N-Out. It's California. Go figure.
• The grand opening of the new Dick's had over 700 people waiting at 8AM
• Those same snobby, pretentious etc. guys argue that In-N-Out is better because they have "quality ingredients" and therefore a healthier product. Check THIS out.

Dick's Deluxe                  In-N-Out Double Double

Calories - 540                  670

Fat - 34g                          41g
Sodium - 700mg              1440mg

Hmm... interesting.

Shame on you for automatically assuming that I don't like In-N-Out. I do like it. A double double animal style is delicious. All I'm saying is give me a Dick's deluxe any day over that.

Disagree? I triple dog dare you put your argument here. I bet you won't have the double doubles to, In-N-Out lover. =P

Things I'll miss while on vacation

I'm on vacation for the next couple of weeks. Here are a few things I'll miss from work.

Is the Jap is in this salad organic?



I LOVE plums!

Oh, they're actually beets.

Students make me smile so much. I hope to get more pictures of this kind of stuff up in the future.

It's been awhile

Hey folks, it's been awhile, I know. I've been busy and to be honest there hasn't been stuff for me to rant about. I woke up Sunday morning talking to a dear friend, and this just happened to pop into my head. It made me smile and I hope it does the same for you.

Cruises

I went on a cruise last weekend. More on that later. You need some history first.
Let me say first that I'm not really a fan of cruises. There's not much to unless you're super rich and can afford to go on all the shore excursions. There's not much to do on the boat unless you're old or really young. I usually get bored after the first night on a boat. Then there's the chances of getting sick on the boat, not from sea sickness, but from the fact that you're on a contained vessel and if someone on board is sick, you're likely to eventually get sick as well. I also hate lots of people and especially hate lots of rude people. Old people are rude in general. They can't help it. I still don't have to like it.

The things I do like about cruises and what makes me go back to them:
You can find pretty good deals and they can be pretty cheap. The customer service is amazing. The food is pretty solid for the most part and it's included in your base fee. It's great for me to sample many things if I haven't tried whatever before.

With that said. There aren't many things I like about them, so when I go on a cruise. I expect those few things to be great.

I've been on quite a few cruises for my short cruising carrier. I've been to Mexico once or twice (I can't remember), the Virgin Islands, a short Pacific Northwest one, and two to Alaska. The lines I've been on have been Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Norwegian. All of these have been amazing. Until I went on the most recent line. Holland America.

This is my second cruise with Holland America. Last year Christi and I went to Alaska. I love Alaska so it made up for sub par food on board as well as the sub par service. Apparently I forgot about this when my parents asked if we wanted to go on a short Pacific Northwest cruise.

I have never seen so many rude staff members in my life. Fellow cruise members were requesting what I was consider to be "normal" things on a cruise. I saw so much eye rolling from staff members as well as staff members pointing and complaining about cruiser in front of them! At one point in the buffet line, I asked for "scrambled eggs and bacon, please". The young lady dished up some eggs for me and forgot my bacon. I said, "I'm sorry, but I could I get some bacon too please?" I've been there, I've worked in customer service for over a decade. This young lady sighed and rolled her eyes, threw some bacon on my plate and then proceeded to toss my plate at me. That's just what happened to me. I saw many other examples of similar actions directed to others. Along with that, calling the front desk was basically useless. We requested to have something sent to the room. They told us it would take up to an hour because they were busy. 2 hours later we called back inquiring about our request. It hadn't even been processed yet. I heard others on the boat complaining about the same thing. Also there was a huge line on the last day of the cruise with complaints about charges to peoples' accounts that they had no idea what they were.

The food was crap. I understand trying to put out 650 dinners at once (there were 1300 people on the boat with I believe 2 dinner seatings) is a big task and sometimes quality isn't top notch. It's no big deal if something is wrong with the food when it happens once. It happens. However, when I see on a consistent basis throughout an entire week, proteins that isn't properly cooked, vegetables that are so overcooked that they fibers are breaking down, sauces that are over reduced or broken, rotting and oxidized garnishes and inconsistencies in serving sizes of the same dishes on the same table.... I get mad. I'm mad because whoever is in charge in the kitchen, doesn't give a shit. That person doesn't give a shit with the food that's coming out, and doesn't give a shit who cares. A weeks worth of food in the dining room, consistently looked like shit and didn't taste much better.

With all of this said. I would still recommend people to go on a cruise. It can be a great experience if you're into that kind of thing (remember I'm not). However, I will never and will never recommend anyone go on a Holland America cruise again.

Holland America sucks.

I wish I took a crap in the pool.

Andrew Zimmern

For you that don't know, I have a pretty interesting job. I work for an organization called FareStart. It's a job training program for primarily homeless men and women. FareStart provides them a place to stay, social services, life skills classes, and job training in a working professional kitchen. All so they can potentially get a job and get back onto their feet. Think of the old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". That's what FareStart does in a nutshell.

I'm lucky enough to get to work with the students everyday our restaurant and hopefully pass on some of my experience and knowledge to them. It's has to be the best job in the world (most days).

We had a guest come into work last week. You might have heard of him.

Andrew Zimmern has a show on the Travel Channel called Bizarre Foods. Andrew travels around the world exploring cultures and learning about the "weird and often disgusting (to us) shit" they eat. A couple of months ago, he heard about our program at the James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony where FareStart won the humanitarian award. He contacted us shortly afterward and wanted to film part of an episode at FareStart.

Andrew did a lot that day. He was giving FareStart even more exposure. He came to work with the students. He showed them how to prep and cook many things the students hadn't seen or eaten before. He signed autographs and took picture with everyone. However, he did something much more than that.
Andrew told the students of his own story. He told the students how he was once homeless in New York city. How he "is" (his own words) a drug addict and alcoholic. He inspired the students on a level that I've never seen the students inspired before. That's what he really did that day. It was amazing.

I thank him for that.

It was a good day.

X-men First Class part 2

Professor Xavier and Magneto (Lehnsherr) have one of the most interesting relationships in all of fiction (in my opinion). You have two men on opposite views of an issue, fighting violently about it and are true trusted friends. You would think their origin story would be accurate in a movie. You would be wrong and I would be disappointed.

I knew going into the movie that characters would be messed up. I knew the original X-men weren't going to be in the movie. I figured that they would at least make the meeting, building of a relationship and strong friendship between Xavier and Magneto up to the standards that it deserves.

In the comics Xavier and Lehnsherr meet in a Holocaust survivor clinic in Israel where Lehnsherr is a volunteer and Xavier is visiting a friend. They become fast friends debating on what would happen to humanity if a "superior" race of human were to emerge. They have different views where Xavier has faith in humanity while Lehnsherr was a Holocaust survivor and thinks humanity would try and oppress this "hypothetical" minority group. They then end up revealing that they're both mutants in a fight and separating ways.
The movie shows Xavier saving Lehnsherr as Lehnsherr tries to catch Sebastian Shaw. They then start to locate mutants in the world to train and help them stop Shaw... in a montage. Did they really just develop the relationship between two of the most powerful mutants, the relationship that created the basis of 4 movies and countless comics in a fucking MONTAGE?!

The cherry to top this shit sundae is how they get Xavier to lose the use of his legs. The now "Magneto" wants to kill the humans with the missiles they have just fired upon them. Xavier disagrees. During the "struggle" Magneto deflects a bullet and it hits Xavier in the spine paralyzing him.

Horse shit.

In a much less dramatic fashion, Xavier in (comic book) fact had his legs crushed by a giant rock during a fight with an alien.

I get why the changes were made. I understand they have to make it accessable to a wider audience. I'm just not ok with it, because I know it so well.

Good things about this movie (this is much shorter):

The acting was great. Michael Fassbender's portrayal of  Magento was excellent. I also really liked Jennifer Lawrence. I'm waiting to see how she does in the upcoming Hunger Games movie(s). The best part was the history tie-in with the plot. Great setting for a movie.

The movie was good. If you're a comic book fan and pretend this is just a rip off of your beloved X-men then you'll like it a lot. If you just like summer action movies, you'll love it. I'll have to watch it again in a few months. I'm sure I'll like it then.

X-men First Class

I have a feeling this blog will be a two parter, because I'm about to go the fuck off.

I've been a big fan of the X-men since I was a kid. I watched the show, I read the comics, I've researched a lot of back story of things I couldn't get a hold of to read. I always wanted a live action movie growing up and I finally got it in 2000. I left the theater that day so angry. I've never felt so disappointed leaving a movie since Masters of the Universe in 1987. Everything was wrong. Characters were wrong. Timeline was wrong. Powers were wrong. My inner fan boy was crushed that day and then was crushed with two more sequels and a Wolverine Origins movie. However, after every movie came out. I waited awhile (6 months or more) to watch the movie again. Only then was I able to get over my fan boy-ness and see the movies as stand alone, non-cannon versions of the characters I loved. I like all of these movies now. In fact I think they're very good movies.

I heard a couple of years ago, they were going to do a X-men origin story movie and got excited. I thought, "Reboot! Awesome, I can get what I always wanted!" Then movie stills started and trailers started to emerge. Alright. I'm on board. This sounds awesome. This trailer is starting to look awesome... and wtf is Mystique doing there? Banshee? Is that supposed to be Havok?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

While the movie looked awesome, I knew this wasn't going to end well and I thought if I went into the movie knowing this was going to be another inaccurate X-men movie I'd be ok. I was wrong.

Premise: A young Charles Xavier meets a young Erik Lensherr they become friends. Xavier creates a school for mutants. They're involved with the Cuban missile crisis in the 60's.

Before I go off, let me say that the movie was good.

Here we go. The original X-men line up was made up of Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Iceman, Beast and Angel. Beast was the only one who made the cut apparently. The rest of the new line up doesn't make any sense. They were all X-men at some point but no way were they the first class.

First is Banshee. He's from Ireland. No accent wtf?

Havok is Cyclops' younger brother. Time traveler maybe?

Mystique was originally a villain in Ms. Marvel. She then turned into a prominant X-men villain later. Rogue's and Nightcrawler's mom? Wtf you ask? Yeah the other movies are screwed up. Xavier's adopted sister? Really?

Darwin made his comic debut in 2006 while Angel (bug chick) made her comic debut in 2001. How did they choose these characters?! Penny Arcade summed it up really well.

The bad guys. The Hellfire Club didn't make it's debut until 1980. Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost were the only two characters in the movie who were even apart of this group. Riptide and Azazel had nothing to do with the Hellfire Club.

While we're on the subject of fucking up characters, let's talk about Moira MacTaggert. In the movie she's portrayed as a CIA Agent. She's a very important character in the comics as a SCOTTISH GENETICIST and good friend/lover to Xavier. She's an important character and I'm so pissed they messed this up. This was one of the most unforgiving fuck ups for me.

I'm just getting started folks. Tomorrow I'll get into the reall messed up parts: Xavier and Magento. You would think the two main characters would be done some origin justice. Wrong.