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March 13, 2007
I Got "300" Problems, But a Blog Ain't One...
A few thoughts as I keep shouting variations of “THIS! IS! SPARTA!”, although, because I’m from Boston, it comes out like “THIS! IS! SPAHTAH!”, which isn’t nearly as cool…
I have to see “300” again to really give an accurate review, as the experience was fairly overwhelming. I will say this: it’s the most percussive movie I’ve ever seen. By that, I mean I literally felt the movie: it shook me through it’s insane sound design. A spear is thrust into the ground? BOOM! Shield gets struck? BOOM! Leonides plows his wife in slow-mo? BOOOOOOOM. The poor subwoofers in the theatres that show this movie. My chest was sore for the rest of the night…
…which probably didn’t help the karaoke experience. Not my best night on the mic. I blame the BOOM after the 35’ Persian rhino bit the dust and the fact that the rest of the bar was comprised of Harvard undergrads not quite good enough to make one of the 67 a cappella groups on campus coupled with an unhealthy obsession with Kelly Clarkson’s oeuvre. Good. Gravy. After belting out “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, I went back to my table, where my friend Nick said, “Not a Dylan crowd.” No kidding. Not a Bob Dylan crowd. And given how young most of them were, they probably weren’t a Dylan McKay crowd, either. In related news, I feel old.
But not so old I can’t race the sun. That’s what I did tonight. Got home, enjoying this phenomenon known as “above 30 degree weather”. Haven’t seen that in many a year, it feels like. So I decided to run outdoors upon coming home. The fact that I stashed two shirts and no shorts into my bag before leaving for work also aided this decision. I’m sure it would have been fashion forward of me to double-load the top while rockin’ the white briefs below while on a 3.0 incline on the treadmill, but something in the back of my brain told me that today was not the day to make such a fashion breakthrough. So I ran my usual 5-mile loop, all the while chasing the sun as it set, making it home with just a sliver left on the horizon. I would have shouted, “THIS! IS! CARDIO!”, but I was fairly out of breath by that point. I’m sure my neighbors are happier this way.
Ryan’s not happier, however, about something he discussed briefly last night: the removal of $2.50, 20-ounce Killian’s beer at Pizzeria Uno. Party foul of the highest. Adding insult to injury, the powers that be decided to keep the $2.50 part, as well as the 20-ounce part, but replace the frosty beverage with Michelob Lager. As if they are saying to me, “Come on, there’s still beer in there, right?” Which is a lot like walking into Morton’s and having the waiter say, “OK, we no longer have the steak special anymore. What we do have, however, is a Steak-Umm special. Come on, there’s still steak in there, right?” Morons. The only good thing I can say about $2.50, 20-ounce Michelob Lager is that, after about four of them, you really can’t taste how bad they are. So, it has that going for it.
Also, as Bill Simmons would say…there’s comedy, there’s high comedy, and then there are the cooking instructions for Steak-Umms on their official website. Here they are, verbatim.
Ingredients: Beef.Cooking Instructions • COOK FROZEN
Preheat fry pan to 350°F (medium-high). Add Steak-umm and cook about 1 minute. Turn steaks and cook other side for 15-20 seconds until no pink is showing. Steak-umm should be brown on both sides.
Words to live by, verily.
Firstly, ain’t nobody buying that the only ingredient in Steak-Umm is beef. I’d sooner believe that our Attorney General is apolitical than Steak-Umms containing no additive, preservatives, or rat droppings. Secondly, I shudder to think what happened to the poor soul that once cooked a Steak-Umm that was at room temperature. I could be wrong, but I think that experiment caused the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. BAM, indeed. Thirdly, I don’t trust any meat-like product that takes that little time to cook. I barely trusted Hot Pockets back in the day, but at least that took 4 minutes in the microwave. Fourthly, I find their insistence on the singular “Steak-Umm” in the instructions profoundly disturbing for reasons I can’t adequately describe. Just gives me the jibblies. Just sounds commie, like the sum total collective of Steak-Umms just banded together as one entity. I'm all about democracy, Steak-Umms. Just back off.
Posted by Ryan McGee at March 13, 2007 08:57 PM