Supplemental Jurisdiction

No Go

Don't.  Just don't.

Crawfish

Yesterday, one of my good friends from high school had a crawfish boil.  110 lbs. of live crawfish, brought from Arkansas, all for the purpose of spicing them up, throwing them in a vat of boiling water, and consuming their tasty little tails.

If you never been, boils (regardless of their subject) are a good time, consisting mostly of eating something that was previously buried in mud and drinking lots of beer.   Last night was no exception.  It is also where I had this conversation:

ME:  Well, we have to leave.
DUDE:  Why?
ME:  We got work in the morning.
DUDE:  Hell, everyone here has to work in the morning.  (Ed. note:  except this guy, who is unemployed.)  What kind of work do you do?
ME:  I'm a lawyer.
DUDE:  No you're not, you're [messing] with me.  (Ed. note:  to be fair, this guy had just seen me drink a pitcher of Bud Light and suck the tails out of about 50 crawfish, all while wearing a pair of ratty shorts and a grubby t-shirt.) 

[The Dude turns to the other people standing around him, looking for confirmation as to whether I really am a lawyer.  They all shake their heads yes, mostly in disgust.]

DUDE:  Hey, you got a card or something?  I may need you by the end of the night.

For an instructional video on how to eat a crawfish, click here.

Cheesecake

My old college roommate was in town last night, and as we were walking to the bar for reverse happy hour, we passed the Cheesecake Factory. 

I got to thinking about it, and I wondered, "Who really wants cheesecake from a factory?"   So that's when I came up with a new competitor:

Handmade Cheesecake Palace.

Really, who wouldn't prefer a handmade cheesecake to an assembly line, mass produced cheese cake?  Also, I know I certainly would like to enjoy my cheesecake in a palace instead of some factory shopfloor.  My roommate was right; this business model only really works if I build Handmade Cheesecake Palaces next to Cheesecake Factories.  Otherwise, I think the point is lost on most people.

On a semi-related note:  During a conversation over my dislike for Thomas Kinkade, I coined the term "fuckcake."  This is used as in: "That douche is a fucking piece of fuckcake."  Remember, when using this term in your own conversations, please observe my creative commons license.

The Midwest: Where ethnic food goes to die.

I'm not really being fair. Around here there are actually a fair number of great ethnic restaurants. But the town where I'm originally from, there ethnic is defined as Taco Bell.

So, it isn't really surprising that sometimes, the Midwest sees the ethnic/fast food smash-up equivalent of Jay-Z and Linkin Park's version of Encore. And that's where Thai 2000 comes in. Check it out:

Yeah, that's right. Thai 2000 is in a freakin' McDonalds. They also have karaoke, which we thought was really cool at first, until we learned that they were all Thai songs. We asked if they had anything in English, and the guy said, "The machine can translate the words into English." However, this just means that we now have English words to Thai songs that we still don't know. In the end, we got our pad thai, and looked toward the front of the dining room where they had obviously replaced the overhead menu with pictures of various entrees. Very romantic.