Whilst I was in DC, I had to stop by the original Five Guys location. Actually, it is the second one, but the original is gone, so whatever. It has been there since 1988, so that is good enough. The thing is, I grew up about 2 miles from this location and I feel I have been going there all my life. Five Guys has now spread all over the east coast and it is beloved everywhere, but since they are from my hometown of Alexandria, VA, I hold a special place in my heart for them. So, if you have not been to Five Guys, you are missing out. Five Guys is a fast food place, but the food does not taste like it. No, it is not like In and Out Burger. I have been there, it does not compare. The burger I had today at Five Guys was easily better than any burger I have ever had at any place that is not Five Guys. Think of the best burger you have ever had in your life. Now imagine that it tastes better, costs less than 5 dollars and is ready in 10 minutes. That is Five Guys. This is their entire menu:

Bacon Cheeseburger, Cheesburger, Hamburger

Little Bacon Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Hamburger

Large Fries, Large Cajun Fries, Small Fries, Small Cajun Fries

Hot Dog, Grilled Cheese, Fountain Drink (one size)

The regular burgers come with 2 patties, the little ones come with one. The most expensive is $5.49 and you can get a grilled cheese for 2 dollars.  The small fries are more than you can possibly eat. I dare you to get a large, 4 people wouldn’t finish them. Seriously, get on it. Five guys is the best place in the world and they give you free peanuts when you wait in line.

Here is the other post I wanted to share with you from my short lived 2.0 version.  That is pretty much all that the site was good for.  As you can see this article was written when I was living in Richmond and going to NYC all the time… now it is the other way around.  In fact, I am going to Richmond tomorrow for a Gaskets show.  If you live there, you should come to the Canal Club tomorrow night.  Right Right, on to the pennies.

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A few months ago on a trip to NYC from Richmond, VA I stopped off at one of the two rest stops in Maryland along 95. The northern most rest stop is called the Chesapeake House. This wonderful place is full of not only wonder but also over priced food, key chains and penny crushing machines. For those of you not familiar with said machines, they are these boxes that if you put in two quarters and a penny, they will take the penny and squish it for you. They give you four options for the image they stamp on the flattened penny. Usually these range from tourist locations (Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument), local flavor (State bird, local sports team), to the completely unrelated (bible quotes, dinosaurs). Anyway, I was looking for interesting pennies for a friend of mine who collects these things, when I came upon a machine that just blew my mind. The options were 1. Maryland State Flower, 2. Maryland Crab, 3. Baltimore Orioles Baseball, 4. Frank Zappa. Yeah, that’s right. Frank Zappa. Evidently, Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, MD. (I always thought he was from CA.) Someone, I can’t imagine who, but someone thought it would be a great idea to put him on a penny. Now, I have to mention that I have never been much of a Frank Zappa fan. In fact, I can not name a single Zappa song. That being said, I was so amazed at the god damned hi-larity of this penny that I had to get one.

A few weeks later I was over at my friend Dylan’s house. His girlfriend (who is also a friend and also lives in this aforementioned house) had just received a box of records from her uncle. We were going through these records when I came across the T-Rex album, Electric Warrior (8 out of 10). For some reason they did not want to part with it, despite not being T-Rex fans. I offered to buy it but they refused. Anyway, we kept looking through the records when Dylan said “I wish there were some Zappa records in here.” I knew that was my chance… I quickly pulled out my trusty Zappa penny and traded it to him for the record. Everyone was happy but I was once again Zappaless.

So, last weekend I was driving to NYC again and I happened to stop in the same rest stop to eat some Roy Rogers fried chicken (Roy’s gets a 7 out of 10, but fried chicken gets a 17 out of 10 because fried chicken is the greatest food ever conceived.) So when I realized I was at the Zappa penny stop I quickly emptied my pockets of change and left that stop with not one, not three, but 5 Zappa pennies. I am now, as they say on the street, Zappa rich. Next time I go to NYC I am going to bring a quarter roll and a bunch of nice shiny pennies. I want to have 50 of these things or something so that when ever I want something I can try to barter for it with Zappa pennies. It is pretty clear to me that these pennies are worth far more than 51 cents and I am going to corner the market.

Final Score: I give the Zappa penny a 5 Zappa Penny score out of a Zappa Nickel.

There was a short lived DBB 2.0 in between my old site and this new one here.  There were really only 3 good posts on the whole site.  I am going to post two of them, because one was just a food review.  Okay, here is part 1, my review of Life Like Animals.  Tomorrow I will post part two, my review of Frank Zappa pennies!?  You will have to be here tomorrow to find out what the hell that means.

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I do not even know where to begin. I was in the Kroger supermarket (4 out of 5 for being open till midnight) with a friend of mine (4 out of 5 for looking really good naked). She was buying food; I was bored and trying not to spend any money on frozen skrimps (aka shrimp). As she shopped I looked around the store and complained loudly about my friend’s decision to go vegetarian. I made sure to complain extra loud when passing the vegan hippy punk rockers complaining about meat broth in soup. Anyway, my hatred for vegetarians and love for bacon is not the issue here. The issue is Life-Like Animals. These animals were sitting on the shelf for a paltry $2.99 (for the record I got the girl I was with to pay for them anyway). These things really freaked me out. They came in 6 flavors: Chicken, Alley Rat, Dragon, Alligator, Fly and Tarantula. I of course could not live with out a miniature rubber chicken keychain and I put it in the shopping cart.

I think the packaging could be the best part of these toys. First of all, the price tag clearly notes that these key chains should be stocked in the juice isle. I can not figure out what they had to do with juice, but there they were. Secondly the package mentions that they are stretchable. This is not a lie. They are in fact so stretchy that the second I got them home they immediately stretched out of the key chain. To some this might be defective, but for me I was much happier to have them out of their oppressive keychain shackles. The most important part of the packaging is what one might call the “sell”. You want to buy this product because it: a) Looks Alive! b) Feels Alive! and c) are as I proved earlier Stretchable! While I did not really think they felt that alive, the woman who rang them up felt very differently. When she was handed the key chains she screamed and nearly threw it at the woman bagging up the items. She truly believed that they were alive. In actuality they feel less alive that they do miniature stress balls, if they made stress balls out of disgusting, sticky poor quality rubber. The other thing that confused me was the part about them looking alive. While I must admit they have some similarities to smaller versions of things that once lived, the chicken most certainly looked not alive. I would go as far as saying he looked dead. I mean, I have never seen a living chicken that was fully plucked and hanging to a key chain by his neck. But hey, I haven’t spent a ton of time on chicken farms, so you never know.

Over all, I was very excited to get these creatures today; however, unfortunately I am going to have to give them a rating of 0-3 out of a possible 5 frowning babies.

You might want to skip this post.  It is not funny or entertaining.  I am just very thirsty.

Vitamin Water is my new addiction.  See the thing is, I love root beer.  It is the only thing I used to ever drink.  I just drank tons of it. In 2000 I got a root beer tattoo! The problem with root beer is that it is not that thirst quenching.  One day I tried the Arizona 24oz watermelon drink and I was pretty much hooked.  It was only $.99.  It was quite thirst quenching.  Then I tried the orange, and while not as delicious was more thirst quenching.  I was drinking about three of these a day.  The thing is, they are nothing but sugar, and have 300 calories.  That means that I am drinking 900 calories a day.  That cannot be healthy.  Recently I got sick, so I tried a Vitamin water instead of my orange drink.  It was both delicious and thirst quenching.  It cost $.50 more than the orange drink, but has only 150 calories and may actually be good for me and not bad for me.  So, now, I am addicted to the Power – C Vitamin Water.  And I think I am going to get some now… but I am keeping my root beer tattoo.

So I was watching Grindhouse as I mentioned in an earlier post and they reference a movie called Vanishing Point several times. I IMDBed and it seemed like a classic film that I had some how completely missed. Well I watched it last night and I was pretty much blown away. The film was shot by the same guy who shot Chinatown, John Alanzo and it showed. I thought the film was absolutely stunning. The story is basically about a guy (Kowalski) driving as fast as he can across America, mostly just to piss off the man. It was clearly made on the coat tails of Easy Rider but I found it more accessible and much more watchable than Monty Hellman’s Two Lane Black Top, which I loved. There are a lot of great 70’s car films, but with the exception of Death Race 2000 (top 25 movies of all time in my mind) it is probably my favorite. Cleavon Little is so good as a blind DJ, leading Kowalski through his adventure by playing amazing music and damning the man. Anyway, it’s great, put it on your Netflix list today. Yeah. Existential car chases to the max.

Also, the trailer is mind blowing. Check it:

Colon Movie Film For Theaters… was not as good as I had hoped.  I used to be a die hard Aqua Teen fan.  I have all the DVDs and I watched the show religiously.  Then I moved and didn’t buy cable and I just sort of stopped watching it.  I don’t think I had seen an episode in two years before watching the movie.  I don’t know if I am just tired of the show, or if the movie was just not that great.  I expected to laugh through the whole thing.  I didn’t.  In fact I sort of got pissed off that all the people in the theater were laughing at some of the dumbest jokes I have ever seen on the silver screen.  That being said, it was still pretty damn funny at parts.  Everything with Carl was great, and the MC Pee Pants appearance got an ovation.  (speaking of which, DJ John of mc chris (who voices Pee Pants) showed up in my party pictures from High Voltage Wednesday night)  So yeah, if you are at all a fan of the show, go see it, otherwise I wouldn’t bother, it is no Reno 911, although it has a better poster.

So last week I finished this book “The Game” by Neil Strauss. He is the guy who wrote the Motley Crue and Jenna Jameson books. “The Game” has to be the funniest book I have read since… well… the Motley Crue book. This book came out a while ago, so I am a little beyond on this pick up game phenomena, but it is pretty fantastic. The book is the true story of Neil Strauss journey from a near virginal nerdy writer to one of the most infamous pick up artists in the world. Basically, if you don’t know about this there are literally thousands of men around the world using the same “technology” to pick up women. The same lines, the same routines, even the same clothes. Like a journalist, Strauss (aka Style in the pick up world) studied every so-called master pick up artists teachings and over a two year period developed his own methods. He now has his own teaching school and probably makes more money teaching people how to pick up women then he ever did writing for Rolling Stone. The book is absolutely unbelievable, although thanks to youtube you can actually watch these guys in action. A lot of the stuff is basic stuff that I have used many times when talking to women, but they go much further with specific routines and lines that work nearly every time. The youtube clip I have included below is Strauss on The View because I find it hilarious to watch him run game on Star Jones, but if you want to learn more about this stuff and you can’t read look up PUA (pick up artist) and sarging (lingo for picking up women) on youtube. Anyway, this stuff blows my mind and I am kind of obsessed with it. I don’t really have the balls to use any of these methods, but they are pretty funny to watch and read about.

On Thursday I went to a preview of Grindhouse. It was clearly amazing. I mean I am pretty much obsessed with exploitation film so I knew I would love it. I did. In case you live underground Grindhouse is two feature length films, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez and Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino. The film also features several fake “Coming Attractions” directed by film makers such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. The movies are digital scratched and the sound is distorted in order to give the films a 70’s exploitation feel. In both films reels are “missing”, which caused some of the biggest laughs of the film.

Although I am a much bigger fan of Tarantino than I am Rodriguez, I thought Planet Terror was the best of the two. It was pretty much a zombie genre picture with tons of action and over the top violence. Freddy Rodriguez was great as Wray, a tow truck driver with a secret past. The movie has every thing you need in a movie, zombies, dismemberment, half naked women with guns, Tom Savini… Also it answers the question “What happened to Bin Ladin?” evidently Bruce Willis killed him.

Death Proof had a lot more sound distortion and a lot less grain and scratches than Planet Terror did, and it was a lot more distracting. Tarantino’s sound track was pretty superb again, but the sound distortion made it nearly unlistenable. On top of that I felt the film was a bit masturbatory, even for QT. It was mostly hot girls and car chases. Contrary to what I just said I think it was too dialogue heavy to feel like an authentic grindhouse film. And my final complaint was that Kurt Russell shouldn’t cry. Ever. Snake doesn’t cry. Captain Ron doesn’t cry. The girl I saw the film with liked that part the most because it was so unexpected, but fuck that, Big Trouble should have killed all the girls one handed. That being said, I still loved the movie. The car chases were great, Kurt Russell has been brought back from the dead like QT did for Travolta and Carradine. The soundtrack is amazing and casting a real stunt woman to do real stunts in the film was a great choice.

Anyway, see Grindhouse ASAP. It was way dope.