Fry Guys

Om Monday I went over to Willie's and w headed out for lunch because he owed me since last time I paid at the Redneck Cafe.  I wanted to try the fry truck that I've seen parked on the lawn beside the church near Safeway.

The sign on the truck says "The Chip Truck", not "Fry".  Maybe they're British or just trying to sound cool or something.  We got just just before 1pm still in the peak lunch rush hour which is to say there was nobody there.  They had a menu posted on the outside of the truck, but I didn't pay that close of attention to it because I knew I was getting.  They maybe had hot dogs and other stuff, but I was there for the fries.  Oops, I mean chips.

Willie got a large plain fry chips and then put malt vinegar and salt on it.

I got a medium chip with gravy and a can of Diet Pepsi(not pictured).

The chips were good and made from whole potatoes with the skin left on.  Because that's where all the nutrients are!  They were pretty hot when the backwards cap wearing guy(left hand side of picture at top) gave them to us.  Mine had a nice amount of gravy on it, not too much and not too little.  My fries were a bit soggy from the gravy, so after a bit I didn't need to chew them, just swallow them on down.  I would go eat again as it's better than McDonald's (but as not good as Arby's) and you get your food quickly.

A couple complaints would be that once you get your food there is really no place to sit and eat it.  You could walk over to the bus stop and sit down, but then a bus might come and think you want to get on, plus it seems like only weirdos ride the bus and you might run into one.  Willie and I just walked over and leaned against my car and loitered in the parking lot while we ate.  The other thing is that gravy is so expensive!  I think it was $1.25 or $1.50 just to add gravy to my fries.  WTH?!  Gravy should cost no more than 75 cents and that is it.

If you are in downtown Cranbrook and the two Japanese place are busy, the Redneck Cafe is busy, and the East Indian place Taj Mahal is busy then go to The Chip Truck for some fast chip goodness and be sure to get a large too.

The Great Outdoors

On Saturday, my dad wanted to take Logan and Avery on a hike.  We couldn't take them on one that was very long or one that was a long drive to get to.  I suggested we go up Perry Creek to Richmond or Goldrun Lake.  We ended up going to Richmond Lake which is a 1.6km hike one way AND the site of a geocache that Mike, Lynne and I put there.

The hike was a little harder than I remember with some steep spots.  Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but when you have a 3 year old with you it makes things a little more difficult.  Avery did pretty climbing up and down and there were only a few spots where we had to help him.  We even did a little bushwhacking on the way up to avoid a steep section.

As you can see there is still a bit of snow up there and even ice still on the lake on the one side.  There were small snow patches around the lake in the shade and unfortunately a large snow patch of a couple feet of snow right where the geocache.  I tried digging around, but without a shovel it's pretty useless.

I don't actually have a GPS, so I was just going by memory by where the geocache was located.  I almost sure we buried in the well of a blow over tree.  Right Mike?

Oh cool, a dilapidated canoe!  Somebody dragged that thing up there where it probably got destroyed the first winter it was even there.  A fiberglass canoe with 8 feet of snow on top of it don't really mix.  Nice waste of time guys!

The hike was nice and it good to get outside in the mountains again.  I thought I would die because I'm so out of shape, but it was pretty easy.  I even got some bad ass new scratches on my legs.  We should've taken the boys up to Goldrun Lake because it is a little shorter at 1.1km and I think it is supposed to be an easier hike, but next time we'll do Fischer Peak.  They can bury me where I drop.

Hey! Hey!

Yes, I am back in Cranbrook!  With my supervisor going on holidays and my mom going in for surgery, this seemed like the best time to come home for a few days.  The drive was the usual mind numbing bore, but I made it back.  My first stop (after my dad's shop) once in town was good old AABCO pawn.  I wanted to look for a Bruce Lee video game and hopefully find a Game Boy Micro, but unfortunately I didn't find either.    I find Top Dog starring Chuck Norris which is almost as good, but not better.  Sorry Chuck.  I also this anime set called Heat Guy J for $5.  It's 26 episodes on 4 discs for $10 which is a good deal already, but the lady sold it to me for $5.  Sweet. 

As you can see I also stopped by the Hospital Aux Thrift Store, but it was closed despite the sign saying it was open.  I will check it out before I head back, but won't even bother looking at the t-shirts since Mike says the selection is weak sauce. 

While I'm back I'll also be seeing Willie and collecting on my fries from last time.  That will probably be on Monday.  On Saturday I think me and my dad are taking Logan and Avery hiking, so we'll see how that goes.  If we do where I'm hoping to go, then there will be pictures.

I was digging through a box that has all my old hiking maps and stuff in it and Avery came over to have a look and was like "Goodies!" and immediately started pulling all kinds of toys and crap out of the box.  I had to give a few things just to keep him happy like a cap gun.  Don't worry there are no caps and the trigger is so stiff he can't even pull it.  I didn't find an OLD!! late slip from Parkland from when I had to go the the dentist.  It's funny.  I also found a fishing license that expired 15 years ago.  I got all kinds of crap!

Shame shame

Shame on you Mike!  You started your own blog and became a follower of mine, in fact my only follower!  You made a single post on April 29th and then nothing since then.  What up?  Don't be such a tease.

The wonderful smells of the zoo

My parent's just decided to bring Logan and Avery up to Calgary for the weekend and take them to the zoo.  Luckily(?) I had the day off, so I went with them.  Today was the first nice day of weather we've had since last weekend and since it was Saturday everybody was out enjoying the weather.  When I got to the zoo I made a note that I parked parked my car next to a mini van and then noticed the entire parking lot was a sea of mini vans and SUVs unloading strollers and wagons and the such. 

I read an article on Yahoo the other day about the Calgary Zoo and it wasn't a good one.  I was about all these animals that have died or been hurt by human negligence at the zoo, and it was a lot.  It sure helps the case of animal rights groups who are opposed to zoos.  Yeah, wild animals belong in the wild, not in some little pen with screaming kids staring at them all day.   Even though they are trapped in cages they can still kick human ass.

We didn't have time to see the entire zoo, but we saw some and saw the dinosaur part twice.  I only took a few pictures, so here you go.

A monkey!  Okay, he doesn't have a tail, so he's an ape, but whatever.  We didn't go inside the building that had the monkeys in it.

They should have him boxing guys like in the cartoons.  That would be awesome!

It's like "Where's Waldo" but with a lizard.  Find him to win a fabulous prize.

From the Dinosaurs Alive exhibit.  Unless it's a prehistoric Duckosaurus, that duck really breaks the illusion.

If you can't touch or ride the dinosaurs then what the hell is the point?!

After three hours at the zoo we left and this was probably the first time I had been outside in the sunlight since last summer.  My poor beautiful porcelain skin now has some colour to it.  Back to the couch!

Oh Yoo-hoo!

A couple weekends ago my sister went down the States to get some stuff and she asked if I wanted anything.  I sent her my list of cereals I wanted, some Jeff Foxworthy beef jerk and some Yoo-Hoo.  Sadly, I didn't get the cereals I wanted or the Jeff Foxworthy beef jerky, but I did get some Yoo-Hoo.  Luckily my dad came to town for a meeting, so I didn't have to wait long to get my mitts on my loot.

The Yoo-Hoo was pretty good and for some reason I always thought it was just chocolate milk, but it's actually "chocolate drink".  It doesn't need to be refrigerated until you open and like it says on the bottle, make sure you "shake it".  If don't shake it when you get to the bottom of the bottle you will be chewing it, not drinking it.  It is like sludge down there.  My sister only got me two bottles, so I drank one and Cody had the other one.  The empty bottles are sitting on top of our cupboards and one of the bottle caps is a magnet on the fridge.  I'm easily amused.

I sent my sister a big list of cereals with the hopes that maybe she could find one, but she didn't even go to a grocery store, so the pickings were slim.  She likes Target for some reason.  I did get that box of Berry Berry Kix which I like and is now gone.  She also got me two boxes of Cookie Crisp which I don't even like that much.  I still have two old of Cookie Crisp that she has gotten me before and one expired back in 2009.  But I'm sure it's still good.

I also got a couple cases of Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry.  It's not too bad and I don't know why it isn't available in Canada yet.  We can have Diet Pepsi Lime, but not Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry?  Someone is punishing us and it's not fair.

One of these days I should get around to getting my passport, so I can go across the border and get my own cereal, beef jerky and Yoo-Hoo.  I might have to rent a U-Haul.

I love it when a plan comes together??

As I said me and Cody went and watched the first showing of The A-Team on Friday.  Westhills is open for matinees on Friday, so we went there because it's right by our place.  Unfortunately, they still hadn't brought back the nacho combo, so I was forced to buy nachos, a regular drink and M&Ms all separately which came out to over $15!  Luckily I had my Scene card which gives me 10% off concession items.  Before they would dispense the cheese and salsa directly into the tray, but now it comes pre-packaged in these little containers with "little" being the key word here.  Just after halfway through the nachos I was out of condiments.

Once in the newly renovated theater we got watch the "pre-show" before the movie.  The "pre-show" is just a bunch of commercials followed by a couple trailers.  First up was Scott Pilgrim Vs The World #2 trailer which looked even better on the big screen.  Then they showed a teaser for The Expendables which sucked because it's only a teaser.  The full trailer is out, so why not show it so we can see some footage instead of a teaser which shows a lot of nothing.  Then we saw the trailer for Robert Rodriguez's Predators.  The original Predator had Arnold, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura and a boat of other muscle bound heroes, but Predators is full of skinny wimpy girly men.  Adrien Brody and Topher Grace don't really come across as the hard ass kicking types. 

Also, I watched the movie!  It wasn't bad and probably the best of the TV show to movie conversions to date.  It's not exactly the same, but Hannibal still smokes cigars, BA still has a mohawk, Murdock is still crazy and Face still loves the ladies.  It has all the action it should have, but also has the comedy which the TV show also had a lot of.  Some of the action is pretty much ruined by some horrible camera work and editing.  During BA's intro he fights some guys and I couldn't even tell what was happening due to the bad angles, fast editing and moving blurry camera. 

Dear Hollywood, this is not technique or even style, it's just plain lazy stupid film making.  When I pay for a movie ticket to an action movie (or any movie) I like to actually see the action on screen and not some blurry mess.  Try using some of those 80 million dollar budgets to buy some tripods and set the camera up and leave it there.
Thank you.

Other than that I liked it and it sets up a sequel, and if it does I will go see that too.

BRUCEPLOITATION Fights Back From the Grave!

Previously I had written about the sad state of my BRUCEPLOITATION fan site and that after nearly 9 years on the interwebs it was officially shut down.  I'd still like to get the website put back up, but in the mean time I've just started a BRUCEPLOITATION blog for anything I come across.  It's still pretty new, but I've already posted two movie reviews and a DVD review.  I've got a few movies to watch, DVD reviews to write and some other stuff like comic book reviews and a toy review.  I've got lots of stuff to write about, but the hardest part is actually writing it.

A little incentive is that recently, British good-guy, Carl Jones, has written a book about the Bruceploitation genre titled HERE COME THE "KUNG FU CLONES".  Carl was nice enough to send me a free copy which I will write about on my BRUCEPLOITATION blog once I get a chance to fully read it.  I've already looked at all the pictures.  The book looks great with a sweet cover by Jeffrey Bona of Cityonfire.com fame.  Soon as I got the book I flipped through it and went straight to the "ACKNOWLEDGMENTS" section and spotted my name, I was third on his list of acknowledgments.   My name made it into print therefore this is my most favoritest book EVER!  I will read it though.

Keith Dixon: a Canadian good-guy who hosted his own Bruceploitation website at the now sadly closed http://www.geocities.com/many_bruces) featuring some of the work in this book.  Thanks Keith.

I'm pretty sure writing a book is pretty hard and if Carl can do this by himself then if I really try I can probably get BRUCEPLOITATION back on the internet.  It's easier than writing a book, so I choose that instead.

It's Intense Dude!

I was at Dollar Giant last week and picked up this sour fruit punch drink called Sour Wave.  If you think it is some cheap crappy drink then you are wrong because it's from Too Tarts and Smart Choice and they would never put their names on an inferior product.  I just liked it because it has what appears to be a drop of juice wearing sunglasses and riding a surf board on a wave of juice.  Sunglasses?  Surfboard?  He is so cool!  Plus he has his own catch phrase, "It's Intense Dude!"

It was expecting it to be like all the other candy from the dollar store, cheap and full of chemicals.  Surprisingly, it was that bad as it has 25% fruit juice, no refined sugar, 100% daily requirement of vitamin C and only 45 calories.  I was expecting it to be loaded with sugar, but it actually has less than half the sugar of an equal serving of orange or apple juice.

It tastes exactly like you expect a sour drink from the dollar store to taste, not that great.  It is a bit sour, but not "intense" sour.   That cool looking dude on the surfboard was lying.  It is something you have to try just because it's different, but probably won't even try again.

IT'S INTENSE DUDE!

See you at the movies

This afternoon we went and saw MacGrubber because for some reason Cody wanted to. It wasn't bad, I thought it was "meh". Some parts were funny, but seems kinda weird to parody a TV show character about 20 years too late.

When we got to Chinook I went to the automated ticket machine and got one general ticket, but the machine spit out a ticket and a concession coupon. What the hell, I didn't want this? The coupon was for a regular popcorn and regular drink. At the concession stand I was going to get the nacho combo which comes with nachos, drink and a candy. I usually get something with candy in case of a low blood sugar or something. Before we went into the theater I took my insulin shot in anticipation of eating a nacho combo, but when it was my turn to order I was told they no longer offer the nacho combo. WTF!! I took my insulin shot, so I have to eat something and this regular popcorn coupon that I paid for and didn't even want isn't going to cut it. I ended up paying more money for a different combo with a large popcorn and M&Ms.

I got the Coke World Cup soccer combo, so the drink came in a collectible cup and I got a collector's pin. The guy behind the counter gave me my drink, popcorn and M&Ms and I was like "What happened to the pin?" He then proceeded to run all over the concession stand and then the theater trying to find me my pin. It's not like I actually even wanted the pin, but I was pissed for basically buying two concession tickets, not using one and not even getting nacho combo. He eventually found the pin and gave me two.

When we left theater they had some signs up about the Tuesday "deals" and how you can get a general ticket and regular popcorn + drink for $12 or just the movie ticket for $5.67. When I was using the machine I didn't even see the option to get just the ticket, I just saw the word "General admission" and selected it without knowing it came with popcorn. They must have had the ticket only option hidden way at the bottom of the list.

Me and Cody already booked June 11th off to go see The A-Team, so Cineplex Odeon better get their asses in gear and bring back the nacho combo by then. Going to the theater sucks.