A survey of area fast food, ad nauseam

Okay, I'm back with the fast food reviews. I had put this one off, because the last time I went there I left feeling sick. I didn't want to write a review based on that past experience - I wanted to be in the moment. I've taken a few (well deserved, I think) swipes at Taco Bell, but I went back, ate their food, and here's my review:

First of all, I won't do the Taco Bell extravaganzas - that is, the stuff with sour cream, guacamole, Crisco, saturated pig fat, battery acid, and two other items that make it into the seven layer something or other. I'll scout these places out, but I won't drink the Kool-Aid. Taco Bell has some evil products, dietetically, which I simply refuse to sample, based on personal taste and a generally non-suicidal outlook on life.

There was a time in my life when I frequented "The Bell" on a regular basis - happy times in my life, when I was unbelievably poor, my best friend was a stoner, and I was young and happy and maybe a couple of pounds overweight. Taco Bell complemented my lifestyle, because, as I said, I was young and poor and hanging out with potheads. We could buy a half dozen tacos for about what we could dig out of the seat cushions of our car. Several trips to Southern California and living for years in a town with a large Hispanic population have upped the ante somewhat, and Taco Bell has failed to call my bluff.

So, I ordered a couple of soft tacos. While not terrible I would certainly call them lacking. Lacking flavor, first of all - the flour tortilla is an over-powering mess, sapping any taste from it's interior. There is absolutely nothing gastronomic to be gained from this shell. It sucks any flavor from it's mediocre interior, leaving one with an equivalent mouthful of Wonder Bread. Corn tortillas (which I know you can get with the hard tacos - give them to us on the soft ones) aren't available.

The "meat": please don't call it that. The reality is some kind of paste or sauce, and referring to it as "meat" only emboldens the vegans (and I think we can all agree that doing so would be unfortunate). This is Chef Boyardee-style meat, a suitable substitute only if your mother didn't give a damn. It's cousins are Spam, and army rations, and tripe, and anything that sacrifices substance for style (big time - like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly).

Taco Bell is currently marketing their product as "fourth meal", an additional meal on top of a diet of fat and soda. Their goal, apparently, is to push those of you with eating addictions to the upper stratosphere of loser-dom. Shrewd and immoral marketing, in my opinion.

My soft tacos weren't so bad, although there was a consistency issue. Some had a good amount of the meat paste, some were significantly lettuce, and the amount of cheese varied. I would think, given the mechanical nature of the finished product there would be some across the board uniformity. I think, instead, that these are products assembled by men with little regard to their individual mass, given that those masses are nearly valueless.

The cheese is really horrible, with a thin white veil - it is apparent that it isn't fresh. I'm thinking either several days old or frozen. I think my second guess is more likely, although I wouldn't rule out a combination of the two. The lettuce is similarly "not of this earth", but that is par for the course. It's seen some bad times, but it's not talking...

You do, of course, always have the option of spicing up your meal with the hot sauce Taco Bell so graciously provides. I chose the "Fire" sauce, the hottest of the bunch, which I found to be the equivalent of ketchup on the "wussy to spicy" scale. Maybe my tolerance is too high, but this stuff is basically taco sauce for Queen Elizabeth...

I don't recommend Taco Bell, given that there are so many other similar places that offer something other than a "paste-based" dining experience. I do recommend that if you are an individual living on Mars or the Moon in the near future, once we have colonized, that you stop in for a simulated taste of what we once enjoyed on Earth...

Alice In Chains

Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There's more to the picture
Than meets the eye
Hey hey, my my

I picked up The Essential Alice In Chains the other day. It's a two disc collection spanning their entire career, with songs from all three studio albums, the EPs, the unplugged album, and a couple of others that I think might have been on soundtracks or compilation discs (I first heard "Right Turn" on a compilation called Genrecide, and I think "Got Me Wrong" was from a movie). Most of Dirt is here. It's a pretty nice set, and if you don't have any Alice this would be a great place to start. I was waiting for the Arctic Monkeys killer - the album that would take back the car CD player from Favourite Worst Nightmare. We have a winner - I only wish I could load both discs in at the same time.

I happen to believe that Dirt is one of the greatest albums of all time. Every song is excellent and when listened to in it's entirety each individual song contributes to an experience that is overwhelmingly greater than the sum of its parts. I never get tired of this album and I've listened to it a lot. I think I was more upset to hear of Layne Staley's death than I was of Cobain's. With Cobain it just seemed inevitable and in a sense righteous - it gave us the time to assess his legend while we were still young enough to martyr him. It just felt hopeless, watching a movie after you've picked up the plot. While Staley was obviously going in the same direction I just kept hoping something would pull him back.

I never felt comfortable lumping AIC in with the whole grunge thing. I always thought they were sufficiently innovative to distinguish themselves. While grunge seemed an alternative to the bloated metal garbage dominating the airwaves Alice In Chains gave metal a way out, a new direction. Certainly they were the best thing to happen to the genre since Metallica and I haven't heard anything nearly as good since. Aside from Staley's sublime vocals, Jerry Cantrell's guitar playing substantially expanded metals vocabulary and was essential to Alice In Chain's sound - it just would have been a totally different band without him. Big, fat, thick, heavy distorted chords, tasteful wah lines, lush, chorused clean tones, melodic, gentle acoustic progressions. He controls dynamics like no one since Hendrix and thoroughly tames dissonance. I've always found his playing interesting and inspiring. If you haven't heard his solo album, Boggy Depot, it's worth a listen.

Ultimately for me it really came down to the vocals. Staley did some beautiful things with his voice. He could express such an amazing range of emotion, sometimes hopeful, sometimes angry, sometimes forlorn, sometimes simply and perfectly ambiguous, sometimes all in the same song. His voice informed the music, brought it to life - the perfect compliment to Cantrell's guitar work.

On a final note: Alice In Chains provided the music for Doom 2, my personal choice for greatest computer game of all time, and just one more reason why Alice is cool as hell...

Beck who?

Favourite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys

I've been a fan of Arctic Monkeys since their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. When I bought that album it owned the CD player in my car for a good two weeks straight. With their followup effort they continue what they started and take it to the next level. The production and musicianship has stepped up a notch, but if you were a fan of the first album you will find a lot to like.

Arctic Monkeys are a rarity among modern punk bands, being one of the few with a truly solid and inventive rhythm section. They never seem content with simply chugging along with a handful of palm-muted power chords like many of their alternative brethren. They liberally use musical spaces to great creative effect, a lost art in popular music in general. The bass player and drummer work very well together, keeping the performances tight despite the fact that they're often quite frenetic.

The band manages to start with relatively simple progressions and massively expand them in a very short time. The longest song on the album clocks in at 4:34 but most of them are less than three minutes. There is very little filler. The album opens with "Brainstorm" and it's absolutely frantic single-note riff, a sign of things to come. Melodically the album is very sophisticated, often eschewing standard rock minor and major scale ideas. Innovative use of elements of surf jump out. They frequently chose notes evoking a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern feel. I haven't picked up a guitar yet to try and figure any of this out but I'm thinking, off the top of my head, that it might be some harmonic minor or maybe the phrygian mode (if I had to take a guess).

The lyrics are clever and gritty. I like the fact that the singer tries to squeeze them into the music rather than abridge them for an easier fit. It lends an energy to the vocals that perfectly compliments the musicianship.

My favorite two songs thus far are "Teddy Picker", a muscular little rocker, and "Balaclava", a frenzied example of Arctic Monkeys at their finest.

Go out right now and buy this album. While you're at it, buy their first one as well. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Spiderman 3

I went to see Spiderman 3 with a friend last night and thought I would share my impressions. All in all I can't say I was totally satisfied but it worked well as a mindless popcorn flick. (**Warning: there may be some spoilers here but I'll try not to give too much away**)

I'd read some reviews before seeing the film and find myself a little puzzled. Most of my complaints with the film weren't addressed, and the complaints I read seem insignificant in retrospect. For example, a lot of reviewers had a problem with the Venom symbiote crash-landing on earth in such close proximity to Peter Parker. I suspect none of those reviewers read any comic books when they were younger, because that kind of stuff happens all the time. Improbable? Yes. But so is getting super-powers from an irradiated spider. Comic book plots are largely based on the probability of the impossible and require a total suspension of disbelief.

I had a bigger problem with the relationship between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, who spend the entire movie treating each other so horribly that by the end I really didn't care if they got back together. In fact, I think it would have been better if they hadn't as they are clearly lacking any mutual respect or trust for each other. Mary Jane spends the first half of the movie whining because she doesn't have any acting/singing talent. Peter tries to be sympathetic and she throws it back in his face. Later, Mary Jane tries to reach out and comfort Peter when he discovers a previously unknown and disturbing detail regarding the death of his uncle. Peter blows off Mary Jane, and in a later scene punches her in the face (accidentally, but as the grand finale of a "Peter behaves like an asshole" scene). Gwen Stacey, although central to much of this, seems less a character and more a plot contrivance.

There are a lot of subplots, and in the end they do manage to tie everything together. Unfortunately it all seems rushed. I would have rather they had skipped the whole relationship subplot and focused instead on fleshing out some of the other material. Additionally, the two musical numbers could have been cut.

There were some undeniably bizarre attempts at humor which seemed extremely out of place until I considered Sam Raimi's film history. Raimi directed The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness and his sense of humor is apparent. The "Peter Parker, emo sex symbol" scenes were pretty cringe-worthy, but I loved the bit with Bruce Campbell as the pseudo-French maitre d'. I also laughed when Peter refered to Harry as "goblin junior", although I probably wasn't supposed to - it was just relief that he finally showed a little much-needed backbone in that particular relationship.

The special effects were absolutely amazing although sometimes a little too busy. At times during the opening fight scene between Spiderman and Harry Osborne it was difficult to follow the action. The effects for the Sandman, on the other hand, were simply incredible. Venom looked a little too computer generated. Topher Grace wasn't the best choice for the role, as he's basically just Tobey Maguire lite, and I kept waiting for someone to pop up and tell him he was being a dumbass.

The movie ends well, with all the myriad details of the plot finally resolved. It nicely caps the movie's theme of acceptance and forgiveness, although it is somewhat dark.

I've been a fan of Spiderman since I was a little kid, and for me this movie was a must-see. I recommend it - it's not bad but I think it could have been better.