Peppermint Crunch Junior Mints

We are really enjoying the themed Junior Mints this year. I mean, it isn’t really a world-changer but they are a nice snack and a good bit of variety from their usual. So far, we have had the Valentines Day Junior Mints (really liked these – thicker filling with a bit more sugar) and the Easter mints (did not like the coating, overall was a thumbs down). So, we approached the Peppermint Crunch with a 50% success rate.

The Peppermint Crunch differed from the others in that they didn’t really change the core formula – they had the normal filling and the normal chocolate coating. However, what they added was a crunchy sprinkling that vaguely related a candy cane in flavor. Not in the sense that they tasted artificial or cloying, but just that it was a slightly gentler taste than you would get from literally eating a Junior Mint sprinkled with candy cane bits.

Adding a bit of crunch to a Junior Mint added a lot to the experience (such as it is) of eating them, which didn’t shock me due to our habit of eating them in movie popcorn. They didn’t magically morph into gourmet candies or anything but they were definitely a step up from the normal Junior Mints, with no particular price premium or irritation (unlike the cloying aftertaste from the Easter mints), so I would recommend them heartily.

House of Blues San Diego – Review

House of Blues San Diego the restaurant is an attempt to attach a restaurant to an intimate concert venue. Though you might expect them to just phone in as far as food preparation due to the captive audience, they have obviously made a big effort to have some really good food, enlisting Food Network celebrity chef Aaron Sanchez.

The first thing I noticed as the portions.  I often complain about restaurant portions ; Burgandy and I were literally just discussing if the leftovers from a big Cheesecake Factory lunch would be enough  to feed our little three person family a dinner. It seems to me that most restaurants give you a double portion and charge you one and a half times what you should really pay, which bothers me. Turns out it is better than what HoB does, which is charge you one and a half times and then serve a normal portion.

I had the buttermilk-fried chicken. I noticed first that the meat was a mixture of white and dark, which disappointed me a bit – at close to $20 for the portion I had expected  chicken breast, as I would have gotten at Cheesecake Factory, Lucille’s, or CPK. The coating was quite good, though, nice and spicy. Almost too spicy, but I got through it and actually enjoyed it after all. The sides were less spectacular – the mashed potatoes were fine, but you only received about a coffee mug-full and they weren’t outstandingly tasteful (though they were a nice contrast to the super spicy chicken). The cole slaw seemed out of place and I didn’t eat it.

Burgandy had the jambalaya, which was similar to mine – maybe too spicy, somewhat small portions, could have used some bread or another side. We had meatball sliders as an appetizer – for almost $10 we received only two small sliders (literally small enough to fit a decent-sized meatball).  They were tasty and had good cheese, for all that they were tiny. I do not want to repeat the size complaint over and over again but I will have to give special mention to the molten chocolate cake. It was more warm than hot, though it did taste good, and the ice cream it came with literally was less than a teaspoon, such a small amount it almost seemed like a joke.

The sum total was $75, with no drinks and a shared dessert. Nothing shocking. The ambience was nice – I would sum it up as trying very hard to look different  but not necessarily failing  – it was a decent impersonation of some roadside restaurant somewhere, old and folksy. The food was a bit more than I would have liked to have paid but the main benefit of eating there is that you get to skip the line for your concert (HoB the venue does not have assigned seating). We showed up and hour and a half before the doors opened, with a line down the block, but with the line skipping we ended up front and center – the very front of the pit, close enough to almost touch the band.

Bottom line – if you’re on your way to a HoB concert, you can have a mildly overpriced meal with the ability to skip the line in a venue with no assigned seating. You are very likely to end up in a VERY good position to see the show. Given that $75 for two isn’t a horrific amount of money to pay in the first place and the food is tasty, I would strongly recommend this option.

Elder Scrolls – SKYRIM (XBOX 360)

Skyrim is a surpassing RPG experience, and one Burgandy and I have both been logging long hours on. It’s the latest in a long series of games, but in my mind it’s basically a sequel to Oblivion, with all of the good and bad things that entails. It is a sandbox game – a lot of time is just spent wandering around a large game world, looking for trouble to get into and for things to do. You have plenty of things to do on a good / evil / political axis, as well.

Bethesda also does the modern Fallout games, which are another great experience – I remember thinking, after playing Fallout 3 after a long absence from gaming, that I finally understood why ‘the kids’ were largely over table top gaming. Bethesda RPGs have such immersive environments and freedom of action that they start to seem like a full role playing experience.

Now, one thing about Fallout and (even more so, say, Dragon Age), is that they have fully-formed NPCs and exciting plots. The Elder Scrolls games are a lot more ambient – there is a lot of detail, but it’s more likely to be environmental – towns with realistic weather and beautiful scenery with plants you can harvest and bugs you can catch. The people you meet are pretty flat, which can be disappointing, though I understand why with the huge mass of people you can run into.

The main thing about this game is all of the stuff you can do – there are a half dozen different crafting systems which, unlike in most games I have played, have a lot of practical use in the game, not least of which the ability to gain experience and money from it. You can also fight with archery, magic, swords, two-handed swords, sword and shield, and even one hand with a spell and the other with a sword, which is great fun.

The combat is fun, but tough – you really have to use your brain and choose your spells, weapons, and companions carefully. You spend a lot of time fighting, but a lot of time just wandering, too. This could be a grind, but the game is so beautiful that I often would grab passerby and tell them to look at a bridge or waterfall I found, and there are strange things and mystical bits everywhere.

Basically, if any of the above sounds fun to you or if you just enjoy computer RPGs, I couldn’t recommend this one more. It is the most fun I have had with an RPG or really any video  game in general in years, and rivals some of the better tabletop gaming for sheer immersiveness.

Pink’s Hot Dogs – Knott’s Berry Farm Location

Pink’s Hot Dogs is a moderately famous place, especially in recent years, with the expansions out in Vegas and in Buena Park. I have not eaten at the original Pink’s, but I have eaten their catering once and their Buena Park location once. Fair disclaimers if they are necessary. Pink’s Buena Park has a pretty standard fast food vibe, albeit with a lot more celebrity pictures than you would expect to see in your average mom and pop fast food place. The line wasn’t too bad but, again, being fast food there was no particular service to talk about.

Pink’s is pretty simple – other than the fries, there are four basic ingredients: turkey dog, hot dog, chili, and cheese. The hot dogs are good but perhaps a bit odd, at least to my palate. This is due to their having a moderately thick casing, enough to pop when you bite through it. This combined with what at least had a mouth feel of better meat, led it verging on seeming more like a sausage dog than a hot dog. I found this good in small doses but the bacon burrito dog, which contains three dogs and thus three times the casing, started to wear me out after a while. Too much work, though the cheese, chili, and tortilla were all quite tasty.

I found myself preferring the turkey dogs – they were tasty and easier to eat, without so much effort in the biting. Now, it certainly isn’t an inherently bad thing to load up on casing and I think a fair number of people actually prefer it, and it’s not really physically difficult to eat – I just prefer a simpler, easier to eat hot dog than the beef dogs at Pink’s, especially when they were packed on top of each other in an appalling but delicious fast food concoction. As a side note, their chili cheese fries were very forgettable. I would definitely take Weinerschnitzel or Tommy’s chili fries instead of these, and I believe they are cheaper, as well.

One warning, though – I am not sure if this is exclusive to the Buena Park locale since that happens to be inside Knott’s Berry Farm’s little shopping area, but the prices were quite expensive for what I would really struggle to call anything other than high quality fast food. On the plus side, Knott’s actually has a handful of free historical exhibits like Independence Hall and a replica of George Washington’s fireplace, so you can make an afternoon out of it. I believe the original Hollywood location may be cheaper, but in the past when trying to go there the line was literally around the block and I can’t imagine waiting that long for hot dogs.

Slater’s 50/50

Before I explain anything about Slater’s to you, understand that this is a place where you’re going to pay $20-30ish a head to have a burger, a beer, and a side. Now, where I live, there is a lot  of competition. In-N-Out, the Habit, Grill Em All, Tommy Burgers and Red Robin all come immediately to mind as eateries that are at the very least very competitive with Slater’s on a price point basis. I think most people would  agree that Slater’s is better than In-N-Out, for instance, but is it 3-5x as good? This I am not sure of.  But, now that that is out of the way, consider this review to be pricing blind.

I had the Slater’s 50/50, which is a burger patty that is half bacon (really it seemed more like pork belly). Though I had the unfortunate experience of eating one of these patties that had the approximate consistency of a burger / cold cut hybrid, this (new and improved according to a few Slater’s regulars) 50/50 actually hit the spot – it tasted and had the texture of a burger but it also had a tasty, subtle, smoky flavor that I really enjoyed. The burgers came in 1/3 lb, 2/3 lb and full pound sizes, which was a small bit frustrating due to 2/3 being massive and 1/3 being a bit small (why not a half pounder?)

The toppings had good variety, though for comparison’s sake I will mention that gourmet burger rival the Counter seems to have a bit more variety, from glancing over their menu. Now, to step back, this isn’t a big deal for me personally since I like simple burgers anyway, but then again Burgandy wished for more varieties of jelly and I would have preferred some kind of chipotle BBQ. On the other hand, they do have a cheese sauce option, so I went for bacon, cheese sauce, and American cheese.

Slater’s doesn’t seem too big on fries outside of an $5 appetizer – we ate in a group and almost no one had anything but the burger itself. I thought this was a bit of a gyp considering that you already paid for the burger and extra for the bacon and the alcohol isn’t cheap, but I guess it worked considering that the burgers were massive. We did spring for a couple of appetizers – the most notable was a quesadilla with cheese, bacon, and mashed  potatoes that was almost as good as it sounded but a bit lacking in spice.

So, having in mind that the above is a little on the stream of consciousness side, the summary is as follows:

Apple beer. Delicious. I believe it was $9 for a GLASS, though.

Mashed potato quesadilla. I honestly really liked this one. But Burgandy did make a good point that it was very lacking in spice, or at least tasty dipping sauces. It also had to serve as a side since the burgers don’t come with them.

Burger. Expensive. Delicious patty. Toppings expensive yet lacking in two in a couple of things I would have expected. Bacon was good and so was American cheese and cheese sauce. Huge patty (though I tire of the trick of giving you a bigger portion than you wanted and then charging you proportionately but then trying to turn it into a net positive – ‘look at all the food I treated you with!’

That’s… basically it. And though I really liked my burger and it was as big as my daughter’s head, I still felt a bit gypped because given the price point and the wait. The whole thing took almost two hours, a long time for a burger without much else. Seems like you could at least get a soup or salad? Or at least some fries?

Three Musketeers: the (newest) movie review

Well, by luck and happenstance we ended up seeing a screening of the Three Musketeers today.

Now, I am going to disclaim my feelings about this movie a little.

I am a big fan of the Milla Jovovich / Paul W S Anderson Resident Evil movies, which this basically serves as the steampunk version of. If you’ve seen those movies, you know of what I speak – wild technology, slow motion fighting, action that every once in a while is actually really good but can also get really campy, etc. If you like that, you will like this.

Also, if you’ve ever hummed Abney Park’s “Airship Pirates”, you’ll find some goodness in here. I don’t want to get spoiler-ish but there is some really, really great fan service in here for those who like airships.

Paul W S Anderson has a habit of making movies that look like the exact movies my inner 13 year old would film if he could. This is definitely one of those movies.

I am a bit sad about the PG13 rating – other than a bit of language here and there the movie was almost kid-oriented, with a very high wacky factor, relatively nonviolent fights (especially compared to the R rated Resident Evil movies). There are some quite funny character / comic relief characters.

Another important note – the movie was shot in 3D and the 3D was quite good, unlike quite a bit of bad 3D I saw this summer. Pirates 4 comes to mind – the 3D was super disappointing in that one in particular (and they both had a lot of 3D swords, so I think it is a fair comparison).  I’m not thinking I’ll see any oscar noms for the effects, but they were really pretty good and not entirely dependent on CGI.

So, in summary – if you like Steampunk, slightly westernized martial arts movies, slow motion fight scenes, Milla Jovovich, airships, anachronistic technology, or any of the Resident Evil movies you should catch this one for sure! If not… maybe not? It did have a bit of a B movie vibe, just one that I happened to really like.

The new 52 – DC Comics Reboot

The background – Burgandy and I decided to get pulled in by a publicity stunt and pick up some of the DC reboot. See, we used to read comics back in the day, mostly stopping after the mid 2000s when DC finished one Infinite Crisis whilst raring up for another one. We did, actually, miss them and were not entirely happy with only seeing comics through the prism of movies and cartoons, so when we heard DC was cutting some of the crud and aiming for a more newbie friendly event we signed up!

Due to the huge number of comics released (52, plus some #2s by now, some of which we have read and some of which have not) I will probably be posting impressions over a few different posts. So, here are some quick takes.

Good–

Stormwatch. I mostly missed this title the first time through and so I enjoyed the reboot, especially with a meaner-than-before Martian Manhunter grounding things a bit. Fair disclaimer – I know almost nothing about this title, save a vague familiarity with the main characters left over from reading one of their trade paperbacks ages ago, so as far as I know this whole issue was a complete rehash. Still, liked the art and the story seemed super-epic without being too confusing.

Action Comics. This was great! Grant Morrison brings it – we have a Superman who is younger, a bit weaker, but still super fun to read. Unlike some of the other comics, I genuinely got the feeling that something new and exciting was being created – it didn’t seem at all like a rehash. The first meeting of Superman and Lex was especially fun. The character was contemporized a bit but nothing too jarring – plus a more populist / less law and order friendly Superman is both a new idea and a return to the character’s roots. Lois and Jimmy seemed fun, too.

Demon Knights – This was pretty much the comic book of the ultimate DND game – Conan mixed with Superheroes! I didn’t expect anything at all of this but ended up totally loving it. I am a bit of an Etrigan fan, but it was actually the little things that I liked – a part where a bunch of marauders invade the city thinking they’re going to overthrow it only to run into five very annoyed superhero / warriors who just wanted a drink was one of my favorite comic moments of the whole set.

Eh–

Green Lantern. For all that this issue has a #1 stamped on it, it seemed to just be another Green Lantern story, no hint of a reboot whatsoever. (Internet research shows that they did not, actually, reboot this comic… why the new #1, then?). I actually enjoyed it, given the premise – Hal losing the Ring, the Guardians deciding to reinstate Sinestro for some reason – but Burgandy, who is less familiar with the Green Lantern Mythos, was completely checked out.

JLA / Justice League – Uh. This seemed like the first third or maybe even fourth of what would actually be a pretty good comic. But as it is, two characters meeting, and debating a bit, then running into a third character, who is only in a splash and has one line of dialogue, isn’t too exciting. Especially with no particular overarching threat or villain – it’s literally one guy visiting another guy and then the two of them deciding to take a road trip and see a third guy. Not too epic so far – nothing was bad about it, but nothing really happened, either.

Bad –

Red Lantern Corps. I think this probably made sense to someone, but to me (who is not familiar with Red Lanterns beyond an understanding that they are the embodiment of rage) it carried basically no information whatsoever. Just a lot of weird looking creatures and critters foaming at the mouth and sometimes punching each other. Considering the implied promise of slapping a #1 on a cover to make a story a new person could actually read, I was super disappointed.

Batman – Detective Comics #1. Think it would be fun to see a new take on Batman? What about if it was his first fight with the Joker? Great, right? Well… unless Joker is basically a sideline to some weirdo family take on Texas Chainsaw Massacre who likes to cut people’s faces off (probably for some fiendish reason or another). Oh, and Joker gets his face cut off. Which of course is obviously some sort of weird stunt and also bizarrely out of place in one of the theoretically non-dark books.

Round Table Pizza Buffet

I had the Round Table Pizza Buffet last week. Now, Round Table is one of my favorite pizza places, but due to it being about twice as much as, say, Shakey’s, I do not eat there too often. I think they have some of the best crust around and they have great cheese and breadsticks, but Mojo Potatoes make a decent substitute and there’s no fried chicken available at Round Table. Now, I don’t eat Shakey’s chicken that much (except at their buffet), but it is good.

However, there is a great alternative to playing a bunch of money for Round Table, which is the pizza buffet! For about $7 you get a full pizza buffet and a drink. Compare this, mind, to the $40 plus it tends to cost to feed out little family of three with a limited quantity of pizza. Thus it is an infinitely more valuable deal, though I think you will probably realistically cap out at maybe ten pieces, which cuts down the amount of value some.

The positives – compared to Shakey’s buffet, Round Table is equivalently or slightly cheaper priced despite the fact that the pizza usually costs about twice as much. I am not a big salad eater but the salad bar looked very well stocked, had chilled plates, and even had some pretty fresh boiled eggs. Unlike at Shakey’s where you will possibly have to camp out to get a single piece of desert pizza (last time I went we ended up splitting 3 pieces among 2 of us thanks to the demand) Round Table has a whole station of ooey-gooey cinnamon sticks.

The negatives – the pizza does seem a bit less delicious than usual – I don’t notice any step down on the Shakey’s pizza, but it was not as good to start with. Probably pound for pound the Round Table Pizza is still better pizza overall, but I still noticed. There was less variety in the food available – Shakey’s has some pizza, mojo’s, chicken, salad, and some pasta but Round Table was just pizza and salad. And, though the dessert was easier to get, it was not nearly as delicious or decadent as Smore’s Pizza. It’s also not open on weekends, so I can only go there at work-lunch, when I tend to diet or at the very least not have ten pieces of pizza. Still definitely worth trying if you can time it right!

Steampunk Trifecta – Sherlock Holmes, LXG, and Van Helsing

These are three mainstream movies that say “Steampunk” to Burgandy and I. I am sure there are purists who (possibly angrily) disagree. But, for the sake of argument, I am going to say that we had a steampunk marathon this weekend and watched Sherlock Holmes, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen / LXG, and Van Helsing. It was a chance to introduce the little one to a few properties that we hope to get her actually reading soon.

I greatly enjoyed all three of these movies upon first viewing, and even saw Van Helsing and LXG in the theater twice (I let myself get scared away from Sherlock Holmes by bad word of mouth / the zany trailer, which is quite unfortunate). So, with that in mind, the immediate judgment – how did they hold up? Well, I thought Van Helsing and Sherlock Holmes both held up – this is somewhat unfair, almost, because Van Helsing is definitely a special effects blockbuster type and Sherlock Holmes is not as ambitious, but they both looked great. LXG, on the other hand, aged horribly – the Nautilus looked almost Roger Rabbit-esque, way too big for what it was supposed to be and not at all real. Likewise with the somewhat choppy action sequences.

I think Sherlock Holmes had the best acting – I loved the Holmes, Watson, and Adler here. They were a bit modernized (though, as Burgandy’s post pointed out, not as much as you may think) but still evocative of the characters. Van Helsing was a bit more questionable  Hugh Jackman wasn’t super-engaging at first (though he doesn’t have a lot to work with, as Van Helsing starts with basically no personality and gradually gets better). Kate Beckinsale’s Anna has a silly accent and some horrible lines (“I have never been to the sea”) but the character is a lot of fun and you get used to it (it doesn’t hurt that she looks great in this movie). David Wenham is actually quite hilarious as Carl, the friar. Both Dracula (VH) and Blackwood (SH) are great villains, too.

LXG is not so good – the first time I watched it I was just so amused by the ‘JLA of Victorian England’ schtick that I missed how much Sean Connery is phoning it in, or how silly Nemo’s beard looks. The smaller roles are better – I still really liked the foppish-but-deadly Dorian and generally enjoyed the more-vampiric-than-the-comic Mina. Dr. Jekyll / Hyde was a great performance, actually, really enjoyed it. As you watch this movie, you see the actors trying to progress things (Jekyll’s personalities integrate, Mina is less repressed, Nemo and Quartermain are nicer) but with the big cast and the movie’s lack of focus it all sort of ends up being out of nowhere. The bad guy, the Phantom, is a bit of a dud. Silly costume, sillier accent.

Plot-wise, I thought Sherlock Holmes had a great mystery and good interaction between the characters. Van Helsing had a sweeping, sometimes confusing story that added to a video-game-like feel the movie had at times (I love video games, so this isn’t necessarily something awful, but it did seem a bit strange). LXG was just plain weird – things happen that really don’t make sense if you think about them too much like outracing an earthquake in a car, then stopping with a missile or Mr. Hyde somehow knowing exactly how to drain the Nautilus when it is taking on water.

So, the verdict. The best movie has to be Sherlock Holmes, I think – everything just comes together, albeit in a way that sends rage through the minds of traditionalists. Second best – Van Helsing. I can forgive a lot of incoherency and video-game-ness when it’s helped along by Hugh Jackman in superhero mode, a scenery-chewing Dracula, a hilarious sidekick, and a badass Kate Beckinsale in a corset and leather pants. Third – LXG. My only thought on this one is that my brain was so blown by the premise the first time that I just forgave everything. Now it barely seemed to make sense, the effects looked awful, and the action sequences were choppy and nonsensical. It was still sort of fun, though, and I think it will prompt the little one to read Invisible Man and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (and me to read King Solomon’s Mines) so it can not be all bad!

The Great Food Truck Race 2

Last year, the Great Food Truck Race came out. At the time, trucks were pretty new and exciting. I at least have enough food truck hipster cred (if there is such a thing) to say that we heard of the show by seeing a sticker on the side of the Crepes Bonaparte truck, but even so it was new and exciting and pretty wild (a portable Slater’s 50/50 type burger truck? Wow!). These days, I am more cynical, aware of the fact that I can’t escape a food truck with a decent portion for less than $10 a head, I’ll usually have to stand in line half of forever,  and that they’re roughly as fast as a particularly tired snail when it comes to turning around orders.

Still, it’s fun stuff, and events are great places to have a really interesting and varied meal that just isn’t like anything else (as long as you get there within half an hour of opening). So, we had to tune into the next season of Great Food Truck Race, if for no other reason than two OC trucks were represented (the always-interesting Lime Truck and the Seabirds, aka the Charlie’s Angels of food trucks). We have been watching the show and generally enjoying it.

Charle's Seabirds?

I do think that the first series was better in a lot of ways – you had a lightning in a bottle feeling, and also the groups seemed much more genuine, like they were just looking to live the dream and had no real plan for anything. You could really feel the trials and tribulations and it always seemed to be an underdog thing. There was also a clear narrative with the always-victorious Nom Nom truck against the scrappy Grill `Em All kids – both were fresh out of college, but one seemed an unstoppable juggernaut while the others seemed like guys you’d see playing pool at the bar at 2 AM.

This time, the groups are distinctly professional – they network as much as they try to sell food, and they constantly try to work restaurant connections. They leverage friendships, associations, ethnicity, and whatever else they can to get their food and get moving. For instance, at one point they were denied seed money. I imagine if this had happened to last year’s group most of them would have just sat on the sidelines and pouted. This time, it seemed to barely be a speed bump as the teams schmoozed restaurants and stores into giving them credit with apparently no effort.

That brings me to a big issue with the show – with the better teams they have now Food Network seems to be trying to compensate with ever-crazier challenges and nonsense like the aforementioned lack of money. They have continued to have a mini cook off with winners getting an advantage, but they added a ‘speed bump’ where the host, Tyler Florence, thinks of some inane way or another to torture the contestants (banning all meat, making 2/3 of the team sit on the sidelines, selling everything for a buck, etc). I don’t really see what the point of this kind of thing is, since it seems like it has to skew the results something horribly, and I think Tyler is really starting to overdo the ‘sadistic host’ thing. Plus after a while I begin to wonder about the realism factor of the whole thing – trucks consistently park next to each other despite having whole cities to choose from, and they sure do resolve what would seem to be major issues such as having no money really easily.

Anyway, I am starting to sound negative, which is not really the case – I enjoyed the original show a lot more (except, if I may show my hetrosexuality a bit, for the eye candy quotient being much higher this time around) …but I still have enjoyed this show – it’s something me, Burgandy, and the little one can all watch and be reasonably engaged by, and none of the trucks are particularly irritating or unpleasant (though this show could really use a villain, a la Nom Nom, have I mentioned that yet?). It is in the Food Network sweet spot of reasonably entertaining / kinda-sorta educational / inoffensive and relaxing content that makes it my Network of choice for ‘peel me off the ceiling after being underwater all day at work’ viewing.