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spaceorphan18 · 5 years

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SO Watches Friends 1x01-1x03

Apparently, it’s been 25 years since Friends aired - and I’m seeing all these articles on it, how it was the greatest ever, how it sucked, how apparently the youngins are discovering it on Netflix.

So - I felt like, what they hey, I haven’t seen it in years, and I need to watch something while I have meals, so let’s see how well this show holds up.

Pilot - The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate (because how else is she going to pay for that apartment.)

It’s funny to me that this was the hot new show of the time. Because these people are... incredibly boring. The beginning montage is them sitting in a cafe talking about random boring things for what appears to be hours, then they go home and watch TV. This seems to be what they do on the weekend. I mean, I realize in the early 90s there wasn’t /that/ much to do - but still, they live in NYC, and most of the stuff they do on this show will be sitting around doing nothing.

So, let’s break down these characters, shall we?

Rachel - It’s her wedding day, but she skips out on her wedding because she didn’t love her fiance. I think this is supposed to be funny? While I do think, in general, all of the characters are more relatable (and nicer) than in later in the series, she’s such a weird amalgamation of what the writers (or network?) thought would be relatable? I mean - she’s kind of dumb, and rich enough that money isn’t a problem, and her family values are set back in the 50s - hence her getting married so her husband can support her instead of her father.

I get where the character is coming from - but while it might have been more of a progressive stance at the time -- it seems like a relic now.

Monica - Who is the most together one of them at the moment. I like early Monica, tbh, who appears intelligent (for the most part). They’ll later take her quirks and make her a neurotic nutjob - but I can appreciate her mature nature right now.

She goes on a date with Paul the Wine Guy - and again, it shows just how boring these guys’ lives are that they’re standing around her apartment with nothing better to do than to cheer her on about her date. Is this what people in ther 20s did in the early 90s? I was much too young to know. Anyway - Paul the Wine Guy is an asshate who uses lines to get Monica into bed. The network thought this would make Monica sleezy. I’m so glad times have changed enough that we can look back and be glad we can see that it’s really Paul the Wine Guy who’s sleezy, and that there are faster ways to figure out if a guy is a creep or not.

Phoebe - Phoebe has absolutely nothing to do in the pilot other than be there and be weird. I much appreciate it - because this show would be utterly boring and devoid of any quirky elements if she wasn’t there. Also - Lisa Kudrow sells the comedy while most of the rest of them (minus Matthew Perry) seem to be just reading the script.

Joey - I have no idea what Matt LeBlanc is trying to do here. Is he doing a NYC Italian accent? Is he trying out for a part? He’s kind of the most cringy during the Pilot but at least that’ll go away quickly.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about Joey, he and Chandler are like two halves of the same character at the beginning, both with little development. But - funny enough, maybe it’s age, I found myself agreeing with Joey during the whole dishing out life advice thing to Ross -- there’s no such thing as soul mates or destiny, get out there and live life :P

Chandler - Like Phoebe he doesn’t have much to do other than make quips. Granted - he did have some of the best, genuinely funny lines of the episode. Matthew Perry’s comedic chops as well - and it’s a shame there is much Phoebe and Chandler stuff on the show.

Anyway, the writers originally toyed with making Chandler gay, which I find a shame, I think that would have worked so well. And added some diversity to this really, really non-diverse cast. I completely understand why this makes lists of ‘Things Straight, White, and Loosely Christian People Like’. 25 years later, it’s incredibly glaring. Even Saved by the Bell, which was ending its run at the time, managed to be more diverse.

Ross - I’m curious as to when Ross becomes that one Friend whom everyone hates. He’s recently divorced (from a woman who figured out she was a lesbian) and being really mopey about it (which, you know, is understandable). I don’t particularly like or dislike Ross at the moment.

I will say the whole Ross and Rachel thing is telegraphed from a mile here, and it’s weird that they’re going to drag this romance out for an entire season and a half when he literally asks her out at the end of the episode, and she says yes. Why, why, why is this going to be dragged out so much. (I know the reason - sweeps week - but still.)

Is the episode entertaining? Eh. It still has a lot of the trappings of an 80s sitcom - the annoying laugh track, the forced jokes, the surface level stories - only it’s new and hip because 20-somethings had never had a show to themselves without an older mentor around. At the same time, there isn’t anything that remarkable about any of these 20-somethings, which may or may not have been the point. I suppose we’ll see.

The One With the Sonogram (of Ross’s baby that he’s having with this lesbian ex-wife) at the End

This episode is merely a continuation of all the threads set up in the pilot. You can tell Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe aren’t developed yet, as they really don’t do anything other than crack one-liners at opportune times. I shouldn’t complain that these characters just don’t feel like they’re getting enough time together as a group (because obviously, there are a ton more episodes to go where they are) but I feel like they’re spending too much time in individual plot lines that aren’t that interesting.

Plot A) Ross finds out that his ex-wife (who’s a lesbian) is having his baby (because apparently they did it one more time after she left him? Idk), and he’s not doing so well with that. Idk - I don’t hate this plot line. For being the early 90s, the show is treating being gay with much more respect than pretty much everything before that (even if the idea of lesbians is treated as a joke rather than a serious thing people are). At least the gay stuff isn’t villainized.

Plot B) Rachel gives back the ring to her ex-fiance, whom she finds out was fooling around with her maid of honor. This is the first time we meet Barry, and everything about him screams douchebag. There’s nothing remotely interesting here, and it almost feels obligatory for Rachel’s story. Also - I find it ridiculous that he and Rachel would be having private conversations with a (child) patient there.

Plot C) We meet Monica and Ross’s controlling and judgmental parents who prefer Ross to Monica. While Elliot Gould and Christina Pickles are both fantastic actors - I cannot with the amount of judgy-ness that spews forth, and really can’t wait for them to be the quirkier people they eventually become.

Oh- and I forgot, this show decided for the beginning of season 1 to have these philosophical discussions about the differences between men and women, and I feel like this episode is supposed to loosely tie into that and I kind of roll my eyes and am like -- just be the situational comedy that you’re meant to be.

Is this episode any good? Eh, not really. There are some funnier moments in an otherwise bland and obligatory story.

The One With the Thumb (in a can that Phoebe almost drinks)

This episode is so boring that it’s almost tedious to get through all 22 minutes of it. Here we go!

Plot A) Monica dates a guy named Alan that everyone likes but she doesn’t and she finds it hard to break up with him.

I get what the writers were going with here - that she’d have to tell her friends that they need to ‘break up’ with Alan, despite them all really liking him. Idk - I don’t think the whole schtick is that funny, and feels pointless when we barely get to meet Alan himself.

I do have to note that Monica talks with one of her coworkers - who is the first PoC on the show, a black woman. But we’re never going to see her again, so...?

Plot B) Chandler starts smoking again - and we get a PSA plot line about the dangers of smoking. Friends is rarely going to be a preachy show, and it’s super weird when it is. It’s especially weird that it’s centered around smoking because -- who cares?

Plot C) Phoebe accidentally has good things happen to her. It’s almost like a running joke more than a plot line that ends with her ending up with a thumb in a can that nets her $7000. It’s... just a really dumb sitcom plot line. But, hey, we learn that Phoebe hangs out with homeless people. And, the episode gets a point for tying all three plot lines together at the end.

So... I’ll probably do these three or four at a time. And the first three? Eh, not great. It’s fascinating that this show became such a hit right off the bat - because there’s not anything uniquely interesting about any of these characters yet. And the plot lines are all so generic and/or dumb that there’s little to latch on to.

We’ll see how this goes.

#friends #so watches friends

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relenafanel · 6 years

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Fic: The Day-Drinking, Sugar-Baby Detective Agency

This unrepentant piece of crack is for @ellebeesknees for her birthday. Based on a convo about these assholes:

And how they’d fuck their way to the top and then get bored without mental stimulation.

[note: I changed Will Franklyn to Bucky just because. Contains Stucky, and Thorki, and murder]

x.x.x.x.

"Can I be offended if I think she's cheating on me?" Bucky asked, balancing his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he poured a splash more rum into his mojito.

"Rum makes you maudlin," Loki reminded him, his voice tinny over speakerphone. There was the sound of water sloshing in the background, so either he was taking a bath, already by the pool, or his drink was larger than Bucky's was.

"And vodka makes me paranoid."

"So drink a beer."

"I haven't had vodka today," Bucky pointed out. "What I've had is no sex in 13 days and one obligatory phone call. If she's not cheating on me -- and her husband -- then she's rapidly losing interest."

There was a shhhhlct sound over the phone.

"Are you shaving?" Bucky asked in disbelief.

"Maybe some of us have let ourselves go," Loki pointed out in a dispassionately catty tone. "But not all of us have the luxury of not putting in the effort daily."

"Ok, whatever," Bucky rolled his eyes. "You know half of it you do for your own exacting preferences." It was an odd friendship between them borne from a game of 'younger relative or paid entertainment' played during a tediously monotonous party.

"Not all of us can get away with just trimming our pubes so our dicks look bigger and more uniform."

"Yeah, but not all of us get to just lie there and take it."

Loki was silent for a moment and then changed the subject, more of a sign that he was acknowledging the accuracy of that statement than verbally agreeing would be. "Do you have a back up plan if this goes south?"

"I have three. Lady Platten thinks I'm sweet."

Loki snorted. "All her wealth is tied into her late husband's estate."

Well. Not everyone could have a back up plan that included moving back into their childhood bedroom and still maintain their lifestyle. If Bucky was on his own he'd have to rely on his one published book to support him. He'd be living in a studio apartment and eating ramen in no time.

"Maybe I'll see if your mom wants company,” he told Loki.

"It'd be good for her," Loki agreed. "I will pay you to seduce my mother from my own trust fund."

Bucky made a face. That backfired.

x.x.x.

Loki called Bucky often, but he rarely called Bucky and demanded that he come over immediately for an emergency. Loki might be dramatic but he also liked his space, and he definitely wasn’t the type who needed suggestions on what to wear, so Bucky found himself responding by driving over to the large house in the richer part of town. Where they lived, parts of town were rich.

"What is it?" Bucky hissed after Loki gestured for him to be quiet the moment he opened the ornate door.

"Shut up," Loki said in a normal voice and then pulled Bucky through the door. He hadn't been to Loki's lover's house often. It was a huge monstrosity that made Bucky think of dick comparisons. His girlfriend's dick was smaller than Loki's boyfriend's. Loki's family had the biggest dick of all. It wasn’t really a secret that most of society figured Loki was slumming. "He's dead," Loki said, slamming the door behind him.

"Who?" Bucky asked in concern, his tone softening. Loki didn't get along with his family, but Bucky thought it was because he cared too much in an odd way. If someone was dead then Loki would be distraught, and it definitely explained why he’d call Bucky over. “Your father.”

"No," Loki corrected him impatiently. "He's dead."

Then he gestured across the open marble entryway into the living room, where there was a dead body very visible even from this distance. It took Bucky eighteen steps to cross over and look into the room. Then he stared at the body lying face down on the ground, completely naked. Blood had soaked through into the lush carpet, and it was dark as though it had time to dry. "Oh." Bucky said, and thought about how he could use this for his next book. "Gross."

“Gross?” Loki echoed, incredulously. “You’re the one who wrote about someone being impaled. I figured you’d be better with blood.”

“I didn’t realize you read my book,” he responded, walking around the body, careful not to touch the blood. “Did you check for a pulse?”

“Be more helpful,” Loki snapped.

“I didn’t even realize he could die,” Bucky pointed out, skirting the blood splatter. “He always seemed like the kind of asshole who could live forever.”

“I was here,” Loki said, his wringing his hands in that subconscious way he did when he actually was upset. “We fucked this morning, and when I finished showering he was gone, so I took a nap.”

“For 8 hours?”

“I know what it looks like,” Loki answered. “I didn’t do it.” He grabbed Bucky’s arm. “I’m not lying. You need to help me hide the body.”

Bucky considered that, rationally. He looked down at the body. He looked at the stained white carpet. He thought of the amount of staff wandering around the building. “We need to call the police.”

“No,” Loki said.

x.x.x.

Lieutenant Steve Rogers had a soft, sympathetic face. He didn’t blink when Loki bluntly said that the dead man was his sugar daddy, a term neither of them particularly used often because they weren’t into the kink of the term. He also didn’t treat either of them differently afterwards as he took their statements. His partner was a lot less respectful.

“I’ll be honest,” he told Loki after closing his notebook. The body had been removed from the room by the ME’s office. Bucky had heard someone mention that it looked like a poker from the ornate fireplace was missing. “It doesn’t look good for you. It would be wise if you started looking for a lawyer. A good one.”

Loki started laughing. He stood and paced over to the wetbar and poured himself a healthy sized drink, downing it in a few smooth gulps. “A good lawyer,” he repeated, and poured himself another glass.

Officer Rogers raised an eyebrow towards Bucky.

“His brother is Thor Odinson,” Bucky inserted.

It was the first time Lieutenant Rogers reacted to anything outwardly. “I know Thor,” he said.

“I imagine all of you know Thor,” Loki answered, saluting both of them with his half-full tumbler before drinking that glass down as well.

x.x.x.

Loki showed up at Bucky’s condo holding four shopping bags and wearing a scowl. “I just came from Odinson’s office,” he said, pushing his way through the door. He continued walking across the living room and down the hallway, dumping his bags in the spare room he sometimes slept in while drunk.

“It looks like you just came from Macy’s,” Bucky said.

Loki sneered like Bucky had said ‘Walmart’. “Yes, well, half my credit cards are currently frozen, and I’m not allowed back in the house. I’ll need clothes, and excuse me but I’m not wearing your spare pyjamas.”

Bucky had thought Loki would go home, not squat in his spare bedroom. “What did your lawyer say?” he ventured, sure Loki’s black mood couldn’t get any worse.

“After he finished laughing?” Loki snapped. “He told me I was screwed in a cheerful tone and then told me he’d save me in trial.”

Thor Odinson was one of the best defense lawyers in the country. Every time they were in the same room as each other, Loki verbally decimated him.

“Which means,” Loki continued in his sly, but stubborn tone. It was the same voice he used when he was plotting out which rich person he was going to seduce next. Bucky had a bad feeling about this. “I’ll have to make sure this never goes to trial. The police are useless, so I’ll have to solve it myself.”

Yep. There it was.

x.x.x.

Being Loki’s roommate in a one-bathroom condo was an arduous experience. He had a nightly routine and a morning routine, and in between both Bucky had been sleeping. Bucky felt like he was going to spend his life in a perpetual state of needing to piss and getting beat to the bathroom. He may as well be living with Becca.

“Ok,” Bucky said, uncapping the top of a whiteboard marker. He wrote “poker?” on the glass door leading out to his balcony. He’d been using the surface to plot out his second book, but it had been 6 months since he’d looked at it. “Did you notice it was missing?” he asked. Loki was just finishing making a batch of mimosas for their breakfast.

“Of course I did,” Loki said. “Someone gets stabbed and the first thing people do is look around for a weapon. There weren’t many other things in the room that could break skin.”

Bucky wrote the word Weapon on top of poker. He then stepped a foot over and wrote Motive? on the glass. Then below that he put Money? and then Enemies?

“Rich people always have enemies. I didn’t pay that much attention.”

“Ok,” Bucky said, and circled the word poker. “How are we going to find this, then?”

“I have some ideas.”

x.x.x.

Bucky had to call Lieutenant Rogers after the two of them found the missing poker in a dumpster two miles away from the house. Bucky couldn’t smell anything but garbage, his pants were covered in something noxious, and his white sneakers were stained with muddy water and grosser things. He’d probably need to take 8 showers and bathe in tomato juice just to smell normal again.

Loki looked just as awful as he did, but he also looked unbearably pleased with himself. Bucky had no idea how Loki lived the kind of charmed life that meant stubborn perseverance and a half-witted idea actually payed off.

“I’d ask how you knew,” Rogers said, observing the two of them as someone wrapped the poker in plastic behind him and started processing the scene. “But the two of you look like you’ve spent the day poking your heads in dumpsters.”

“Fascinating,” Loki replied in a deadpan. “You have basic observational skills.” Then his eyes narrowed at the alley entrance where an attractive man in an expensive suit was loitering. “Excuse me.”

“Don’t mind Loki,” Bucky told Lieutenant Rogers. “That’s just his personality. It grows on you.”

“I’m glad you called me,” Lieutenant Rogers said, and his handsome face looked so earnest that Bucky couldn’t take the words as anything other than genuine. “I didn’t expect you to keep the card.”

That had been one fight Loki lost, and Bucky figured the only reason he’d capitulated to calling the cops was how bad it would look if he took the poker himself. The cops had access to fingerprint databases and the like. “A handsome man like you?” Bucky asked and grinned.

Lieutenant Rogers blushed. “If I warned the two of you off of investigating this on your own, would you listen?”

Bucky didn’t bother denying it. He looked at Loki, who was leaning close to his brother and had his ‘mean and baiting’ expression on his face. Bucky had seen Loki in action when he’d been trying to secure himself a boyfriend higher in society the year before. He’d seen a lot of expressions. “No, sorry.”

x.x.x.

Bucky returned from visiting his girlfriend to find Loki sitting on the couch looking at printouts from something that was clearly pictures he’d taken from his phone. Mentally, Bucky sighed, and wondered if he wanted to ask.

“What are those?” he asked.

“The Grandmaster’s ledger,” Loki said, sipping at his drink and crossing his legs casually. “He wasn’t very good at keeping records. I’ve already picked out four discrepancies, and I’m only on page 13. I think his accountant was stealing 0.5% a month. Not enough to really raise red flags, but enough to afford a nicer apartment. Good for him.”

Sometimes Bucky forgot that the reason they got along was that they were both more intelligent than the people around them, but then Loki never really let anyone forget that he was singular. “Did you break into the house?”

“I have a key,” Loki pointed out in a clear ‘these incompetent idiots didn’t change the locks’ tone. “It’s hardly breaking in.”

God, they were both going to go to jail. Bucky sighed out loud. “We should tell the police.”

“You can tell Lieutenant Sexy if you want.” Loki gave him a knowing look and took another sip from his drink. “I haven’t found anything that points to a reason for murder. If anything, I’ve just found a lot of reasons to keep the man alive for as long as possible.”

Bucky pulled out his phone so he could give Lieutenant Sexy a call. That name was definitely going to stick. “It hardly points to murder,” Rogers said once he heard Bucky out. Loki’s face did his insufferably smug expression that made Bucky grit his teeth. “But there might be something there. Can Loki provide me with the combination for the safe?”

Bucky looked at Loki. “Numerical representations on a keypad of the words Purple Rain,” Loki said in a bored tone.

“I’m on speaker?” Rogers inquired, and Bucky could almost hear the raised eyebrow. “Stay out of the house, Loki.”

“Absolutely, Lieutenant Sexy,” Loki said. “Best behaviour, cross my heart.”

“Goodbye, Bucky,” Rogers said, and it sounded like he was trying not to laugh. Bucky liked him a bit more for that.

“So that’s your type,” Loki mused once Bucky hung up the phone. “Rich women and men who know how to use their guns.”

x.x.x.

Bucky made the unfortunate discovery the next day that Loki’s type was Thor Odinson. The sight of them making out on Bucky’s couch would forever be seared into his eyelids.

x.x.x.

Bucky didn’t think it was a good idea to go to the funeral, but Loki lived for drama, and Bucky secretly enjoyed drama, and so the two of them put on their nicest suits and went to the party.

The night was kind of a blur of the two of them being side-eyed, alcohol, and Loki elbowing someone so hard in the solar plexus it sounded like a rib cracked. After that, he had no idea how he ended up pressed against his best friend’s side in the back of Lieutenant Sexy’s police car. Bucky feared he might have called the man. His crush was becoming detrimental to his lifestyle.

“It’s natural to be upset,” Lieutenant Rogers said to Loki. “Just stop maiming people who call you a murderer, and everything might be ok.”

“I’m not upset,” Loki corrected. “I’m inconvenienced. The old bastard had to go get murdered before I could move on.”

“We’re considering money as a motive.”

Loki visibly rolled his eyes. Bucky could feel it.

“Which means,” Lieutenant Rogers continued with a sharper tone. “You’ve moved down the suspect list. Your personal net worth is only about ten million less than your boyfriend’s had been.”

Only? Christ. How rich was Loki?

Lieutenant Rogers and Bucky’s eyes met in the rear-view mirror and they shared a ‘can you believe that ridiculous sentence?’ moment.

x.x.x.

On day seven of staring at the whiteboard, Bucky had an epiphany. Loki had just emerged from the bathroom, and the living room smelled of steam, his shampoo, and enough body lotion to drown a small child.

Bucky had ended up pissing in the kitchen sink, and he was pretty furious about it. Not that he ever washed dishes, but that wasn’t the point.

“Maybe we’re thinking about this wrong?” Bucky suggested as he stared the murder board with a scowl. The word Weapon and Motive were blurring together. “What if Jeff Goldblum wasn’t the target?”

“Who do you suggest, then?” Loki asked, pursing his lips. The drink in his hand went mostly untouched. “Me?”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “To ruin you and get you sent to jail? Yeah, that could be a motive.”

“Ah.” Loki considered it. It looked like he was doing complex math in his head, like the meme. “Call Lieutenant Sexy. I know who did it, then.”

x.x.x.

“I’m single,” Bucky blurted out over the phone when Lieutenant Rogers personally called him to let him know Loki’s suggestions had panned out. “I mean, I have a girlfriend who bought me my condo and who expects me to service her once a week, but for the rest of the time I’m single.”

“Oh,” Rogers answered, sounding surprised. “I didn’t realize you were interested in men.”

“I’m more nuanced than that,” Bucky said. Mostly he just liked people who could protect him. It wasn’t that nuanced at all. “Do you want to go out sometime?”

“Sure,” Rogers answered, which also surprised Bucky, because he’d basically outright outlined the fact that he wouldn’t be giving up his lifestyle in order to date and Lieutenant Sexy was ok with that. “Do you like mini golf?”

“I’m crap at it,” Bucky said.

“Me too, but the place here has the best ice cream and a nice view of the ocean.”

“I love ice cream,” Bucky replied with a grin he could feel in his cheeks.

“I’m off on Tuesday,” Rogers replied.

“Tuesday it is, then.”

x.x.x.

“I’m moving in with my brother,” Loki told him, throwing all his new clothing into a plastic bag. “Give these to charity,” he said, then looked Bucky up and down. “Or keep them.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and wondered: Was Thor the love of Loki’s life or another sugar daddy to piss his family off?

He also wondered if Loki even knew.

“Don’t think about it too hard,” Loki replied. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 4pm—” which was practically mid-morning for them. “We’ll go see who else your girlfriend is up to.”

“I’ve never been on a stakeout before,” Bucky mused. “And we are good at this.”

“If we can solve a murder, an adulteress should be simple.” Then Loki grinned, sly and like he was enjoying himself. “Bring drinks.”

#the day drinking sugar baby detective agency #stucky #thorki #bucky barnes #loki laufeyson #fanfiction: drabble

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marymosley · 4 years

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RestauRant: Why Dining Out Is No Longer Worth It To Me.

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

It’s taken over fifty years, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the punishment/reward scales have tipped and I am losing my appetite for dining in restaurants. Mostly this is due to what the industry has needed to stay competitive, so I am not here to bash business owners for trying to make a living, it is simply that it is no longer in the interest of my health, budget, and growing intolerance of settling for less.

I wish the industry could do better, but I do not see this ending well.

Having had recently to travel out of town on extended business and family related maters over the past few months put me into restaurants daily. Surely much of it was convenience but then again it isn’t exactly easy to prepare something of any quality without the means to do so. The problem being is that I do not like processed foods that one can buy at a grocery store and simply heat up in a microwave oven. So if I make something, it is always from scratch. At home I only eat organic food, most of which is grown at a CSA I buy shares in. The food is better tasting, it is of healthier quality, and it COSTS LESS! The problem though is I have, for lack of better words, detoxified myself over the past five years from the sterile soil grown commercial farm GMO food that is bathed in chemicals several times a year. Maybe I am a snob when it comes to the food I prefer to eat but it’s my body so I can choose what I put into it.

Yet when being out and dining out, it is a setup for at least one disappointment. I will say that it is not always the case. There are a few family owned restaurants that actually try to be better but the industry suffers some serious flaws:

Price

One spillover cost of politicians giving the highest minimum wage benefit in the United States in the vicinity of where I reside is that the cost of eating out is ridiculously high at nearly all markets, save maybe the dollar menu at chain fastfood joints (A cardiologist’s dream). If two of us dine at any run-of-the-mill restaurant it costs forty bucks for one dinner.

A few restaurants around here are becoming insidious in crafting novel methods to extract money out of their customers. The most underhanded I saw was one place where in the smallest font presented on the menu, in a corner of the menu that most customers did not bother to read, they indicated that on top of the price of the food, there was a mandatory 20% surcharge proffered to cover employee health and 401k benefits. Of course there was no offer to reduce the socially obligatory tip of 18% to offset this surprise. And, thesurcharge is subject to a 9% sales tax. A relative of mine actually confronted one of the employees at this establishment and asked them about the 401k. The waitress stated they do have a 401k, but the company pays no matching contributions of those made by the employee. In other words, the restaurant extracts money from customers to pay for this 401k but is so cheap it grants nothing on behalf of the employees.

My average home meal expense calculated and averaged over the past twelve months is $3.86 per person. Yes, that is a low cost, but when you do not eat Hot Pockets and microwavable frozen lasagna you can eat frugally. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. Humanity made its own food for tens of thousands of years before the creation of a radio frequency, molecule exciting means of heating food. And it was all organic.

Salt

It is nearly impossible to find a menu item having more than three ingredients that is not laden with unnecessary amounts of salt. It is a cheap, bang for the buck ingredient that not only covers adequately for otherwise flavor lacking food but it makes the customer order drinks just to address the ensuing dry mouth. But then again most consumers like salted foods. I unfortunately am not one of them. For me it ruins my sleep and I rapidly gain weight just from one over-salted meal and after a week of this during travels I come home physically exhausted. Excessive salt is more consequently unhealthy.

It does require some creativity and care to craft menu items that have no added salt. I think with most people who formerly consumed high amounts of sodium in their diets, if they abstained completely from it in time their ability to taste food would return and they would discover a preference for salt free dining and have a better ability to taste what is there.

Mediocrity

While there are certainly outliers abound, overall the quality of restaurant food has declined over the years. There is a significant trend toward precooked and processed food that gives restaurants the advantage of lower labor costs and quicker order turnaround. And for the most part it works well for a customer that wants to be served in two minutes as cheaply as possible. The trade off for that is quality and healthiness.

A few years ago a major “Italian” chain restaurant finally admitted that most of its menu items were made outside of the local restaurant. In other words it was made in a factory, delivered to the restaurant, and then boiled or otherwise heated. The pasta was boiled and mixed in with the sauce that was basically out of a bag. They attempted to minimize this embarrassing yet true fact by showing an employee in the kitchen dumping a large bag of pasta into a boiling cauldron of water, claiming it was still inspired by great chefs of Tuscany, or was it Tucson–who knows these days.

A good way to measure the quality of a particular restaurant is to try the underlying meat or fish without the smathering of sauces and cheeses. If it is bland you are being cheated. In all probability you are getting either low quality or you are being fed a T.V. dinner on a plate with a garnish, and charged accordingly. I also saw a Canadian news expose where investigators took DNA samples of what was proffered to be chicken in the chicken breast sandwich of a major chain sandwich shop. A significant portion of this was not chicken but instead soy. Fowl deceivers!

Back in 1997 or thereabouts a friend of mine and I traveled to Turkey. We ate in restaurants where everything they made was from scratch–it was during the spice harvest–and it was astoundingly cheap. Nearly every dinner we had was delicious, bountiful in flavors of which you could often discern nearly each spice individually. Upon our return, he called me about a week later and asked me “Have you noticed the food (in the US) seemed bland after we came home?” I noticed the same disappointment. The food here DID seem bland after three weeks in Turkey and Greece. And then I realized why this happened.

Over the course of our lifetimes the quality of food here declined. While we had different spices and nuances than they Turks did with their cuisine it was apparent that slowly the taste of food diminished. He and I went from our parents having our own gardens to moving toward more industrial farms where the soil became depleted through monocrops and over-reliance of fertilizer and pesticides. It wasn’t until I started eating better quality food that the flavor of my youth began to resurrect itself in my memory of taste. I was lucky to extricate myself from the bland, but it seems, unfortunately, that restaurants did not.

Cheesiness

No, I’m not talking about the cheddar. It’s the over-the-top cross promotion and advertising manifest in chains.

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Does it come with green eggs and ham?

I do not plan to dine with buffoonery such as The Grinch who IHOP managed to finagle into a menu item, or the Addams Family with purple milkshakes or a Registered Trade Mark after a third of the item names at others. I just want a say steamed salmon and mixed vegetables, not a Deadliest Catch(R) King-Kong(R) Krab Salad with Jack Daniels(TM) inspired BBQ Shrimp Munchies (TM).

I might recommend going to an antiques store or if not readily available finding on e-Bay a copy of a restaurant menu from the 1930s. Look at what people ate: Eggs, Pancakes, Tuna Sandwich, Coffee, etc. It was simply normal, ordinary food without the pretentiousness, hype or advertising. Plus, it probably was a menu from small home-town restaurant owned by a guy named Tom and his wife Gwen who “looked the part”. Not some gaudy throwback to a 50’s style diner that was more 1950s than it was in the 1950s and is owned by a Japanese hedge fund.

Aggregation Aggravation

The sum of all these irritants, I finally had enough. As I said in a previous article, perhaps it is more honest of a living to make one’s own meals like a regular guy. It’s better in all respects to pay less for better living and in this case eating at home (which is tax free) as opposed to paying 9.1% tax on 20% service fees to benefit government bureaucracies. I still enjoy though a good cup of coffee, so I might indulge myself with that and an occasional croissant that was accidentally labeled as a quiche lorraine.

By Darren Smith

The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.

RestauRant: Why Dining Out Is No Longer Worth It To Me. published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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