Work dinner at saltgrass

Good times but Saltgrass sucks!

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Ketchup

Last weekend we tried out the Tilted Kilt way up north of mopac. It's essentially the same as Lion and the Rose in San Antonio: a british pub-themed Hooters. They do have a better beer selection than the Hoots, I'll give em that. The food was so-so. I had a couple pints of Stella and a fish sandwich; c2 had a "irish dip," which was their version of a french dip roast beef sandwich. Both meals were decent, and I especially liked the fries. The service was a little dippy. It would probably be a fun place to watch a game if it wasn't so goddamn loud inside. Still, I might go back.

No Country For Old Men was awesome. Pretty fucking cold balls but awesome. Will had already seen it a couple weeks prior but went with me to see it again. I get now why he was so eager to watch the movie a second time. Very suspenseful with great black humor dialogue. Chigurh is one of my favorite bad guys now. Thankfully I had totally forgotten that Josh Brolin was Brent in Goonies or else I might not have taken him so seriously. Don't let anyone give away the ending for you!

Mr. Brooks was definitely head and shoulders below No Country, but I still think it had its merits. Pretty much every scene with Costner, Cook, and Hurt together is great - the alter ego gimmick worked for me - everything else is terrible. The entire sideline plot around Demi Moore's character tracking Brooks down is worthless.

Hmm what else? I threw +2 on the 9 hole at Wells Branch the other day, beating my personal best of +4. That was pretty sweet.

Oh yeah, I finally got The Orange Box, and it's as great a set of games as I was expecting. I already beat Portal, a neat little game centered around one of my all-time secret wish fantasy toys: the portable hole. It's essentially a first-person puzzler with great graphics and the same creepy, quiet atmosphere as games like Myst or the original Half Life. A great title. Teamfortress 2, however, is a fucking masterpiece. TF2 is probably one of the most perfect computer games I have ever played. The graphics are cool and the mechanics are very smooth. Obviously you need an internet connection and a worthwhile server, but there's always tons of them to choose from. All the classes are equally fun, some more challenging than others. I don't think I'll ever be a very good spy or sniper, but I'm decent with the heavy, engineer, pyro, and medic classes. It's so fun to set up those sentry guns that you just want to cry.

It's Gonna Be Pissing On Us All Night

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain!

Last week I took a trip down to hectic San Antonio to visit T. I left at 2pm, and thanks to the ridiculous downpour and about a billion other turds who apparently had the same fucking idea as me, it took 3 1/2 hours to get there.

On the way, stuck in thick stop-and-go traffic, I took in plenty of bizarre sights from the road: a submerged SUV, a couple fighting outside their car in the rain, and of course, Juanes and his deadly sinful eyebrows:

On Saturday we went to lunch at Chris Madrid's. Good little burger place. They got their own thing going there, piling melted cheddar cheese on anything and everything, and it was just the stuff my hungover queasy stomach needed for the drive back home (which, thankfully, only took the usual 1 hour). Fuck you, I-35!

Here's a shot of the little Walnut Creek trib behind work that I go check out from time to time. It was flooding quite a bit the other day and had risen around four feet:

I Heard Transformers Sucks Ass

Yeah. From a couple of different sources. And they didn't completely shit on it either, but the things they didn't like about made it sound like exactly the kind of movie I don't want to pay to see. So, I hereby pre-meh Transformers.

We watched Nightwatch over the last couple of evenings, and it was a real mess. Like a confused Russian Underworld. Nonetheless I will still try to rent the sequel, which the director says will be significantly different in speed and style. There were maybe a few interesting elements lost in the mix but overall the first of this apparent trilogy was disappointing.

I've tried a couple new restaurants in the past 2 weeks or so. Me and c2 went to North By Northwest (or NXNW to you, broham) in the middle of the week. It wasn't anything special. Tries really hard to be fancy. The crowd was lame, too: split down the middle between skinny, faceless Austin chickadees and the rotating cast of all the old Bill Brasky skits on SNL. If you like to eat at places that specialize in things like pan-laminated pork castles and basil-elucidated fish nard ambrosia, then you'd probably love this place. I had the cobb salad and it was ok, c2 tried the pasta fazool (or something, I don't remember the name), and it had an overly sweet tomato-onion cream sauce that got real old real fast. I had their "Northern Light" (beer!) and it was a light beer, nothing more, nothing less. I expect I'd try the rest of their line if someone else was paying, but I don't really feel like going back so it probably won't ever happen.

I also ate at Moe's Southwest Grill. Had a chicken club quesadilla and it was mighty fine. Queso was thick and tasty. All in all very satisfactory for a decent price; I'll go back.

Foxjerky

As I was picking up some Stella on the way home from work yesterday, I stumbled into this unfortunate mess: official Jeff Foxworthy beef jerky. I was honestly stunned for a couple of seconds. Could this possibly preclude my enjoying beef jerky for the rest of my entire life? When my mind was done wrapping itself around the concept of a comedian-endorsed meat product, I laughed heartily and drew my camera phone. I'm still not certain whether you get 10% more jerky or 10% more sleeping-ferret moustache. In other news, I still like Stella very much but after having them both in a short time frame I think Bitburger continues to be my No.1 preferred lager.

Schlotzsky's gives you a pickle spear now! I don't know when they started doing this because before yesterday I hadn't eaten there in quite a while. In any case, it's a damn good pickle! I can't find anything about it on their website but it was really fresh and had an interesting flavor. Their sandwiches are still very good, and I went ahead and doused mine in a bunch of their hot sauce, which I hadn't done before. It was excellent. It was a relatively new location out in a big strip mall development near work, all pimped out inside with lots of big wood beam framework and free-use computers and wifi. I remember hearing that they were having some kind of bankruptcy situation or something a while back; I guess nothing substantial ever came of that cause the place was about as big as the one down on Lamar. I remember that seemed like it was going to be their home base back in the day, as big as they could get. Now that I'm thinking about it, me, Aner, and Mutton all went there on the last day of high school.

Restaurant: Tropical Smoothie Café

A couple of weeks ago I got a coupon via email for free shit at a nearby Tropical Smoothie Café(www.tropicalsmoothie.com), so me and my lovely drove over to give it a try. It bills itself to be a healthy alternative to fast food, with sandwiches, wraps, salads, and obviously a bunch of different kinds of smoothies. Prices are about the same as other sandwich places, which for some reason seem to have shot up in the last few years. Schlotzky’s always had an excuse in my opinion, as the sandwiches are all warm, they come with tons of meat and veggies, and the bread is something special, but Quiznos, Subway... even for a smallish lunch you’re probably not going to pay less than $8. Kinda ridiculous. But I digress.

For food we decided to try their wraps. C2 had the Chicken Philly Grill, and I got the Jamaican Jerk Chicken wrap. They were both fair to middlin’, although the “Texas Petal Sauce” (basically a southwestern dressing) that comes with the Philly grill was a strange combination with all the other ingredients. The jerk chicken wrap was nice and spicy and all the ingredients tasted fresh, but next time I think we might give the regular sandwiches a try. The ones I saw others eating seemed a little small, but they’re served on some kind of focaccia that looked interesting.

I kind of blanked on the smoothies and just ordered the same thing that C2 asked for, a strawberry beach smoothie (strawberries and yogurt). They were ok, but I should have tried something different - next time maybe I’ll go with a Blimey Limey (strawberries, pineapples, orange, lime). I would also add that the smallest size of smoothie you can get (the regular) was maybe too much for one person (especially to go along with food). Getting one to split might be a better choice in the future.

All in all, there wasn’t anything particularly spectacular going on at Tropical Smoothie Café, but I think we would eat there again for variety. It was a nice switch from burgers and burritos. According to signs inside, they’re open for breakfast as well.

Tool 2006, er... 2007

Tool finally made good on their commitment to the AT&T Center in San Antonio last night, and I was in attendance. It was a damn good show. The highlights: frikkin laser beams, spotlit bass riffs, and the ridiculously amazing Danny Carey. Sick, sick, sick. Still, excepting the very impressive laser light/smoke effects, it was a little too much like their last local concert (Austin 2002). The stage arrangement was very similar (MJK in the back parallel to the Carey's massive drum set, with Justin Chancellor and Adam Jones in the front) and they had the same late-show dueling drummers bit, which is cool, but like 10,000 Days itself, I was honestly expecting more innovation. I guess if I was an artist that would be a dick thing for someone to say about something I worked hard on, but that's, uh... that's just a bummer, man.

Beforehand we ate at Pico de Gallo on Commerce & I-35. It was a pretty decent sit-down mexican restaurant. The carne guisada was ok but a little on the tough side. C.'s enchiladas rancheras were just ok too. The chips, salsa, and tortillas were very good. Then we met Macks and Stacks at the Lion and Rose Pub on Broadway. Nice brown pub. I had four different drafts, starting with a black and tan, then a Belhaven (Scottish - pretty decent ale). Next I ordered a Franziskaner, but I forgot their draught was a hefeweisse; I wasn't really in the mood for one but it turned out to be a nice detour. I finished up with my current all-time favorite beer, a Stella Artois. I definitely like ales, but downing all those various pils with meals in Germany really fixed my tastes on lagers. I used to think bud light was a clean taste, but now it tastes like fucking piss. Mexican beer is about as light as I can take; I like it best with spicy food and a little lime. My favorite ale right now is Rio Blanco Pale made by Real Ale out in Blanco. A really great taste and it's named after the goddamn Blanco River. Providence.