A Season of Sequels

I've put a lot of thought into this and I think the hubris of the evil Galactic Empire is best exemplified through the second Death Star, the one that was under construction in 1983's Return of the Jedi.

Yes, this is what I do in my spare time. Choke on it.

Think about it. The Battle of Yavin (where the first Death Star was destroyed - duh!) took place only a few short years before the debut (and subsequent destruction) of the second Death Star (Battle of Endor). With the Empire's defeat at Yavin, which, remember, was so very catastrophic and unexpected that Grand Moff Tarkin refused even considering evacuation AND where the only survivor of the roughly 1.5 million on-board escaped by accident, you would think that the Empire would have applied those "leassons-learned" to their super-weapon design in the future.

No sir. They just built a bigger mousetrap, because that was really the biggest problem with the first Death Star: it was about 7 times too small a target. And as everyone knows, a gigantic two meter exhaust vent was a little too excessive. I mean if an untrained farmboy could hit it with a proton torpedo well... So they decided to fix that by...wait a minute...they still had gigantic shafts that led through the superstructure of the space-station? Right to its volatile easily-explodable core? Big enough to fly freighters through?!? Aw for Pete's sake!

So the Empire just kept chugging along with nary a thought of changing course in spite of overwhelming evidence that it would be good to change everything about what went wrong before. Wait for it...

Hang on. It even kinda looks like the unfinished second Death Star. Weird.

I've been at it again. I should have known that once Meridth pointed out during the last debacle I had with the dreaded McZoo that I'd be better served if I had a McRib instead of mere bacon to represent pork, I'd have to try it again...this time at full magnitude! So there I was again, eyes resting upon those sundry cartons, each a small treasure chest of cardiac distress. Each taunting me, ever taunting!

NEVERMORE!

They really forced my hand with this one. November was McRib month. For the first time in many years the McRib would be available nationwide (and I mean WIDE) at your local neighborhood McDonalds. It wasn't going to last though. Just a narrow window to squeeze my engorged body through to become one of the elite: a Full-on McZoo veteran.

So I engaged the target.

Ugh! Unbelievable!

That photo says it all, the greasy discarded bread discs, still glistening with unholy nectar. I can't believe I'm finding myself here again. What is wrong with me?!? There has to be some support group for this...



So let's do the math: that's a 1/3 pound Angus burger at the bottom, then the McRib patty, a grilled chicken slab, and a Fillet-o-the-Fish on top. And a red onion. For flair. It may seem incongruous to the entire spirit of this ill-advised exercise to select the grilled chicken in lieu of its fried and breaded brethren. I admit, it's the road less traveled.

Fast-food and a Robert Frost reference. Who loves ya baby?

And brother, that made all the difference. Meridth asked me at half-time how it tasted and I was (and am) ashamed to say it's extraordinarily delicious. So much better than the McZoo I. I'm forced to conclude that it is because the Fillet-o-your-Fish and the southern-style fried chicken I had with the first McZoo simply overloaded the grease-center of the taste-bundle at the apex of my spinal column. (I looked it up on wikipedia.) This time around with the Fillet-o-Phish as the sole "breaded/fried" entrant, I got the blendation of greasy-beefy, sauced-an-mold-injected, faux-healthy and breaded/fried. It's all about balance, friend.

Yep, balance. It's the peak-level yoga position of meals, right there.

Am I going to hell for this? Maybe. Between all the factory-farm terror, the oppression of the hispanophonic McDonalds workers required to bring me the meal, the amount of exercise I will have to (and already have had to) do to purge my roller-coaster -ride of a body AND the remote possibility that some impressionable thing will read this blog-entry and foolishly try to emulate, or worse still, to top my absurd quest for gonzo-food creation...

Hey kids! Why not top your favorite pizza with MORE PIZZA?!?

...there's certainly a case to be made for my infernal eternal rest. That being said, I regret nothing.

And will never ever do this again.

Why I Need Meridth: A Gonzo Tale

When Meridth isn't around I have the tendency to go off the rails just a bit. When she was in NYC for the summer of 2006 I watched all three (at the time) Terminator movies back to back to back, had a severe case of food poisoning, worked 60 hours a week, ate 1500 Otter Pops and ran seven miles every morning. It was a gonzo summer. Suffice it to say that Meridth centers me in an important stabilizing way and when she's gone, things tend to become pear-shaped, like an ill-formed lump of clay on a potter's wheel...


...which leads us to this peculiar photograph. What is it? What does it mean? What does it have to do with my dignity? It's simple really...


BEHOLD THE McZOO!!

Yes, like the cast-off cigarette butts tossed aside by the wheezing emphysemic, these buns are the husks lesft over in the construction of this...this...monstrosity...this abomination. What is it you ask? What drives a man to so alter the natural constitution of the 'burger' phenotype? What was its unholy aim? It's an elegant theory actually...like the ancients in their construction of the Tower of Babel, I only sought to reach the heavens of deliciousness by melding all the varieties of animal flesh offered on the McDonalds menu into one Voltron-like mountain of meat. How could this be a sin?


So one Saturday last month I rolled up to the drive through and ordered one Third Pound Angus Bacon Cheeseburger, one Chicken Selects Chicken Sandwich, and one Fillet-o-Fish...

(Meridth: "It would have been cooler AND grosser if you had the McRib." Edward: "Don't I know it, but you have to work with what's available and Bacon = Pig. Good enough for me.")


Looking at them all just sitting there with their accusing stares was intimidating. Like the Tell-Tale Heart, I was consumed with madness. Working swiftly and with surgical precision I deconstructed the sandwiches, unveiling their meaty cores and combined them, knitting flesh-to-flesh like a culinary Doctor Frankenstein. And the result was no less monstrous and incapable of being loved.


In his epistle to the Romans, Paul called me out as one of the "inventors of evil things" chasing that stupendous and gonzo line between culinary genius and coronary disaster. I ask you: what was the result?


I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could combine so many different meats, I never stopped to think if I should!

Next month I'm going to try to stick two pieces of each type of meat on one sandwich and call it the McNoah's Ark.

Mini-burger MATCH UP!

Just cos March is through, must the MADNESS really stop. "No sir, it must not."

With that, I bring you a welterweight showdown of epic scale and truly vivid dramatic scope. These beefed up contenders may seem small, but in a mano-e-mano, no-hold-barred, duke 'em up (or out) who emerges victorious?

In this corner the crown prince of the franchise characterized by royal deliciousness and a laissez-faire "Have it Your Way" attitude, the Burger King Burger Shot.

And the challenger, the blue-collar man with a shady past, the Jack-in-the-Box Mini-Sirloins.

Even before I got my hot little hands on these twin treasure chests, the opening salvos of the coming war were released. You see, the BK Burger Shots were almost half as expensive (burger for burger) than the Mini-Sirloins. One to BK for price.

Still, that lack of cost shows. Lets go to the side-by-side comparison...

...would you look at that. That deflated sad-sack on the right is the contender from BK, while that robust fellow to his right is the Jack-in-the-Box entry.

And look at the wreck that is the alleged "tear-an'-share" concept BK has given us. Between you and me, it looks like an open lesion. Appearance has to go to Jack.

Lets talk taste! First up, the Burger Shot:

Okay this thing has a soft, golden, carb-riddled bun that has the texture of cotton-candy and the weight of a Buick. Because of the aforementioned 'tear and share' concept, it has the propensity to get pretty manhandled in transport from box to gob, but no harm, no foul, right?

The first-taste impression was a little disconcerting. Dominant taste? Ketchup. Hmm. There is however a tasty pickle and a bit of gooey yellow cheese-fooode which aren't so bad. Inside, the meat is nothing to write home about, (Har.) and even comes with what I MUST assume are artificially applied grill marks. Really, if you've eaten at Burger King in the last sixty years, the taste of the burger shot will not surprise you in the least. What was surprising was the little touch of rare-ness in the burgers I got. See exhibit No. 1-

I donno if you can see that sickly pinkness, but there you go. I imagine that it can't take too long to grill these little firecrackers, so maybe mine came right off the heat with a quickness. Still, as I said, the taste was mediocre at best and outside the novelty of eating a really small burger, you'd do just as well ordering a cheeseburger.


Look at this thick little beastie! And no, the bun doesn't have that "spun-from-a-unicon's-mane" lightness but they gave it a kiss of toasty, which was a nice touch. And the beef! Look at them side by side:

Ah! Don't be fooled by that pickle on the left. That BK patty is about as thick as a hobo's wallet and, compared to Jack's, about as tasty. The beef on these things was good quality, make no mistake. That was the dominant flavor of the Mini-Sirloin. Just beefy-beef. The onions too, were tasty and welcome. All around, good news for lovers of diminutive ground-meat sandwiches.

Seriously, clear winner here. Taste trumps value. Looks are just a bonus.



Just don't eat them all in one go.