Hungry -- Why Play?

I too am flummoxed by the Japanese food obsession. Most of those who would even care probably point to “Iron Chef” as the obvious media exponent, although actual food stuffs from Japan prove better symptoms of this strange syndrome. Japan, after all, created the wonder that is Kobe beef and a million bizarre, sometimes amazingly delicious Kit-Kat bars with flavors as reasonable as hazelnut (which, I can say, are delicious), as odd as ginger ale, and as bewildering as Camembert cheese. If those who would even care also guessed that this bevy of esoteric, often seasonal Kit-Kats played into the Japanese love of collecting, they would probably be on the right train of thought.

The food obsession actually extends not only to TV, but to Japan’s (possibly) largest cultural export: video games. A cursory glance at GameFAQs reveals no “Iron Chef” video game of Japanese origin -- it might well reveal a bit about the shoddy research I put into an average blog post -- though Cooking Fighter Hao attempts to capture the same sort of silly atmosphere in the anime/JRPG style typical (pre-Disgaea) of its developer, Nippon Ichi. Still, food pops up in games where it has seemingly no business.

My first baffling experience with the Japanese food obsession came from Star Ocean: The Second Story, a Tri-Ace developed RPG that I spent inordinate amounts of time breaking, usually in competition with RockManXZ24 (one of our contests involved obtaining one of the best weapons available before the post-game content during the first half of the game, before the second CD). The Star Ocean series’ claims to fame include a few interesting, sometimes time consuming systems, one being the option for the party characters to learn a craft and create items. Alchemy, chemistry, weapon and armor forging seem de rigueur, but one of the first available is... cooking.

As a less than critical teenager, this felt odd, but not insurmountably so, and I took to the task of turning one of my characters (Rena, the female protagonist and walking cliché) into a master chef with as much gusto as one can while engaged in as solitary an experience as playing a two-disc Playstation Japanese RPG. The first few attempts ended in frustration, usually in the form of a “wilted salad” or a “spicy cake.” In order to make a character proficient at any of the item creation options, the character must have right the skills and the talents. The talents are either randomly assigned or randomly unlocked, and the skills bought with ability points gained after a level-up. So I did what any kid with enough time and the inclination to do so would: I played through countless random battles in order to unlock the skills, one of which was “Kitchen Knife.” That skill gives a “Strength x 20” bonus, which would have proven useful if I used that character to attack, ever.

The dishes I eventually created in the game probably made me into a food-nerd, at least to the point that I once thought I would use the “food and food products” category on this blog for more than complaints about energy drinks and the foul marketing campaigns associated with them. I knew what a risotto was and had a vague idea about sea urchin and abalone, but found items like konyaku, ichinogi, and steamed aspic intriguing, if sometimes scary and unappetizing.

Perhaps the great triumph of Star Ocean: The Second Story’s cooking system is how appetizing it made little clumps of polygons and textures seem, thanks mostly to the accompanying descriptions. The game inspired me to actually try cooking, although my attempts to make my own orange soda and risottos never really turned out. Thankfully, doing so in a video game was easier and more fun than learning to carefully measure my ingredients and time my cooking, and it restored my HP and MP on various occasions. Give me a break; I was thirteen.

Star Ocean, for what it is worth, never really made me hungry; that honor goes to Odin Sphere, the 2007 side-scrolling brawler cum RPG from George Kamitani’s studio, Vanillaware. The game’s gorgeously animated and highly detailed 2D graphics generated a lot of hype, but the game’s item management system (and slowdown issues) made more than a few eyebrows arch after its release. I love it, personally, if for no other reason than Café Pooka and the Pooka Kitchen, where the player can order dishes made out of items bought or found during the actual gameplay.

The graphics, as previously stated, are stunning, and the illustrated food looks more delicious than the real French dishes they’re based on. Neither the dainty eating animations nor the gorgeous environmental graphics, with their warm color schemes and ambient motions, hurt the effect, although I could do without the repetitive, squeaky saccharine quality of the voice acting.

Part of the game’s appeal is its evocation of faerie, and the dreamy quality of the eateries fits right in -- if Alfheimr has restaurants, they look like this -- but they serve a more utilitarian purpose too! To increase a characters hit points in Odin Sphere, he or she must eat, and preferably only the best, most expensive foods. Why? I didn’t know, but apparently, saving the world from intergalactic wizards or from a convoluted pseudo-Ragnarok requires the gastronomic development of a true epicurean. The twilight of the gods can wait until I've finished my pork chops. And will Expel and Need please stop careening towards each other? I'm trying to brew some sake, but it's never truly dry enough for my tastes... and my MP is low.

But y’know, I think the Japanese have it right. I would not pay a cent for a wasabi flavored Kit-Kat or watch a single episode of “テレビ朝日/Ai no Apron,” but at least the Japanese respect the inherent goodness of food. I wince at the snobbery shown to certain regional cuisines; I despise the pervasive notion of food as caloric fuel almost as much as the prevalent use of food and eating for self-gratification rather than pleasure. Food unites humanity in a more dignified manner than what we do with it biologically (especially towards the end), and Tri-Ace and Vanillaware, whether consciously or otherwise, recognize that saving the world requires good eating.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but unless Dragon Age 2 recognizes the glorious nature of bottom fermenting yeast and parsnips and mutton, I shall resign myself to the fact that at least one section of the occidental world just doesn’t understand food. It’s the same one to which Gamer Grub and Mtn Dew Game Fuel were marketed.

Tastes like Filler

I try to break myself of habits I find obnoxious in other people, but sometimes doing so requires a serious change in the way that I formulate sentences and make points when speaking or writing. I’m thinking specifically about the way that certain people express their outrage as a question to which they expect no answer. It’s a lonely game of emotional Jeopardy; you’ve already got the answer -- it’s right in front of you -- but you’ve just got to respond in the form of a question. A typical format: “What were they thinking?” Among the church ladies I spent an inordinate portion of my childhood surrounded by, it typically takes the form of “How dare they?” although this also seems to apply to middle-aged “Tea Party” women, who are, usually, more or less the same people as those church ladies that made my childhood so humorless. You might ask if what I describe is not a rhetorical question (some of you, no doubt, are asking rhetorically), but the answer is “no,” since calling such a question rhetorical implies some sort of rhetorical efficacy.

That brings us to the subject of this fine product: Naruto Jutsu Power Energy Drink. Filled with entrepreneurial spirit and spurred by a general lack of good taste, some corporation or other saw an opportunity to make money using the methods of other soft/energy drink bottlers, breakfast cereal manufacturers, and religious denominations; that is, by targeting a demographic and tossing at them a ridiculous product in line with a current trend.

This is the answer. But, still -- and please excuse my volume, Mr. Trebeck -- why the balls does this exist?
I know I bitch about these licensed Energy Drink things all the time and, looking back at some of those previous examples, can see an emerging formula. I talk about how much I hate marketing ploys unrelated to food somehow being used to sell it; I complain about the subject of the ploy; I run down the product. But complaining about Naruto is, like, so 2008 (not coincidentally, Boston America Corp. first sold this product that year). And once a subject tethers itself to a formula, the writing process suffers from repetition. If I hate writing something over and over again, you guys must hate reading it, or at least I hope you do and will hold me accountable in the future.

But – and this is the answer to those of you who exclaimed “why another energy drink rant?!” – Naruto Energy Drink is surprisingly inoffensive. It tastes more or less the same as Red Bull, and now that the Naruto fad has run its course, the continued existence of a crappy, licensed energy drink is more funny than annoying.

In fact, its pure laziness won me over. It tastes so bland and generic that it probably comes in a dozen different and unrelated packages based on cartoons and video games. What even makes it a “Naruto” themed drink? Nothing, except the can, maybe. The infamous Stephen Seagal brand energy drink makes a point of containing goji berries in its “Asian Experience.” (It’s also funny when they try too hard.) Not so with Naruto Jutsu Power. The drink is, quite literally, filler.

And -- oh, hey-seuss, I just have to ask -- why am I even writing this?

Gamer Grub

I don’t know why my blog seems to have become the review hub for vaguely food-like products geared toward that nebulous demographic known as “gamers,” but since Lightwing23 enjoys reading the torment they cause me, he was kind enough to bring me an example that he discovered at (correct me if I’m wrong) the center of navel-gazing brand centered idolatry, Hot Topic.

Gamer Grub, “energy snacks” packaged in soft plastic and filled with “select vitamins” and “neurotransmitters,” is a bit less offensive to my sensibilities than some of the other products that get referred to here at the Gilded Trough. At least in the sense that it includes natural ingredients, like nuts or chocolate depending on the flavor, Gamer Grub could at least be described as actual food, albeit heavily processed, gross tasting food. Lightwing brought two flavors, Pizza and PB&J. I tried pizza. RockManXZ24 said that the PB&J Gamer Grub was inedible and got rid of it before I had a chance to actually try it.

It couldn’t really have been worse than the pizza flavor, though, which tasted stale and vaguely like mozzarella, garlic and oregano. It reminded me of pizza flavored Pringles that I ate a long, long time ago. Honestly, the best thing about them was the texture. Like any decent, stereotypical American, I love things that crunch. I can’t speak for the other flavors, but I might have liked the Pizza Gamer Grub if not for the pizza flavor. The flavoring is too strong, too salty, and leaves a weird, persistent aftertaste.

But the selling point of this product is that it won’t leave gamers with greasy fingers while they’re trying to play. This probably works if you pick up the soft package and tilt it into your mouth, but if you actually pick the snacks out with your fingers, you’ll wind up with a lot worse than grease on your keyboard or controller; the fake pizza spice and cheese stuck to my fingers like Cheeto dust. The promise of performance enhancing vitamins and neurotransmitters (amino acids from the nuts, I’m guessing?) is quite silly and won’t actually do anything to help your concentration that a good meal before your gaming session (or during a break) wouldn’t. And how long do you have to play a game to need a snack to boost your concentration? Maybe there’s a whole bunch of hypoglycemic gamers out there that I didn’t know about. Maybe there’s a lot more gamers who just need to pace themselves. Gamers can use other things to help their concentration that will probably annoy much less. Like nicotine or meth.

I like a lot of nasty, processed snack food, so maybe one of the other flavors would actually sit better with me. The idea of food by demographic still pisses me off, which is why Lightwing23 brought it to me. He came into town bearing “gifts,” including a copy of the Wild Side Press edition of the legendarily bad The Eye of Argon. I told him about that one, and thus bear some of the blame for the pain he inflicted on himself by reading it. What pals we are.

An Evil Brand

Remember how much I hated Mountain Dew’s Game Fuel? How about those Energy Potions? In both cases, I railed not only at the awfulness of what I’ll charitably refer to as the flavor of these food products but at what they represented. Marketing something like a specific food as being for “gamers” or whoever is possibly insulting but mostly just gross. Food is more than just the sum of its bodily effects and identity is more than can be expressed by what you consume, in terms of both media and food. Products that market a food because of its effects and according to supposed social identity would rob us of that complexity. Gross.
Not to belabor this point, or the ones I made when critiquing Jacob Aranza’s Backward Masking Unmasked, but I found what is likely the zenith of this horrendous trend. No, it’s not the Blood Energy drink (which I haven’t seen in person yet); I’m talking about 1in3Trinity Energy Drink. Apparently, this stuff has infested convenience stores and local ethnic groceries for some time and I’d no clue. Not only that, but it’s part of a brand dedicated to using the name of what the owners presumably believe the Lord of the universe to sell junk like Ed Hardy knock-off t-shirts at $30-60 (!) a pop. Does plastering His name -- and even the symbols of His intervention in the drama of human existence -- on expensive junk count as blasphemy? I think He made mention of taking his name in vain somewhere (He doesn't like it). Perhaps the real question is whether or not the people behind the 1in3Trinity brand ever contemplated the possibility that maybe some things are too grave to use as marketing tools.

I told RockManXZ24 about this, and his first reaction, a trickle of bemused laughter, changed to something like irritation, and finally resentment. He agreed that such a challenge must be answered, and we set out to find this product and buy it while keeping a straight face. Say what you will; we were bored.

The nearest store that carried 1in3Trinity was a gas station in one of rougher parts of town. RockManXZ24 decided to bring his PSP so he could play Crimson Gem Saga in my car and nearly missed out on seeing the two arrests occurring simultaneously on opposite sides of the street. We eventually found the convenience store we were looking for and grabbed the remaining cans, which looked like they’d been sitting in the cooler for months untouched. We’d done a good job of not acting stupid up until we arrived at the counter and the attendant behind the register stopped for a moment after scanning our purchase. “These energy drinks?” the clerk asked us in a thick accent that nevertheless held the distinct affect of the incredulous. That’s when we failed to keep a straight face.

The actual drink is pretty foul, like most energy drinks. It’s brimming with artificial flavor, Taurine and B-vitamins, although not nearly so much caffeine compared to what I guess are the secular-humanist energy drinks. The website claims 1in3Trinity Energy Drink, “A special blend handed down from the flourishing vines and trees of the Holy Land… Fused with ‘Fruit of the Spirit.’” It tastes like sugar-free Red Bull with grape juice. For those not familiar with the New Testament, among the Fruits are peace, patience, gentleness and self-control. Is that what anybody drinks an energy drink to experience? If you do, write in and let me know. And I'll call you an idiot and a rube.

I well know that this isn’t unusual and that much of modern marketing revolves around targeting demographics and preying on their sense of identity as part of said demographic. While the Energy Potions and Game Fuel thing was lame enough to be insulting, they are comparatively innocuous. The really evil thing about 1in3Trinity products are their insistence on making religion into a marketing brand. It insults God, assuming that the people behind 1in3Trinity actually believe in Him, by reducing religion into a bland consumerist action. It then insults the religious by assuming that they’ll buy it. Unfortunately they’re basically right. Christians, who so often complain about holding so little clout in modern culture, react by curling into a circle-jerk of mindless religiosity based not on the immediacy of God within their personal lives, but consumerism. You shall know these by the number of Christian themed products they own.

What's the Food Like in New Hampshire?

I treated myself, last Sunday, by eating Indian food. No doubt, for those of you living in places with rich culinary scenes (or India) this doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but there aren’t a great many options near my home, especially on a Sunday night, when I’m unwilling to drive anywhere. The local Indian restaurant is called Roti Grill, which is a bit pricey considering the food is only pretty-okay. Again, lack of options. Still, any Indian food is better than Indian food that’s twenty minutes away. And honestly, I like the place. It’s a good for a late dinner on a Sunday night, when you’re eating alone.

Eating alone is underrated. I checked my Yahoo news feed earlier that afternoon and read somebody’s guide to eating alone. It contained what I’m sure is somebody’s idea of useful suggestions: bring a book, pretend you’re a critic, be confident. Anyone who needs a guide to teach them how to enjoy eating by his or herself doesn’t deserve the pleasure of doing so. Anyone who writes such a guide should be strung up and humiliated for perpetuating an ignorant and stubborn expectation about an activity that too few people ever contemplate as they experience it.

I walked into Roti Grill a bit after nine, and ordered bhajia (onion fritters served with turmeric sauce), deliberating over what to order as an entrée. What is it that makes people think that they should make conversation with me when I’m alone in a restaurant? The young man taking my order inquired about my weekend, about my day, where I had come from, if I was working tomorrow. Shut up, kid, I’m trying to decide what I want to eat. I ordered a lamb curry -- simple, yes, but undoubtedly good and hard to screw up. The waiter tells me I made a good choice. Thank you and whatever.

Five minutes later I’m eating my bhajia, looking out the window at the moon. It looks small, and maybe, a bit sickly yellow hanging just over Whataburger’s steeple top. I’m not in a contemplative mood, but I don’t need to be. The fritters are delicious.

The waiter is coming with my curry. The dish looks deeper than it is, and accompanied by a generous portion of rice and naan, Indian flatbread. I’m not watching my carbs. I thank him before he can ask me about my parents or my girlfriend or whatever other small-talk he feels compelled to bring up.

CNN blares on the television overhead. It’s an old CRT; the sound is tinny, but it lends a certain something of interest to the talking heads of a news broadcast. I installed TVs in restaurants a couple of summers ago. It was miserable work, since it had to be done early in the morning, before the dining rooms opened. I spent weeks mounting televisions to walls and ceilings in restaurants where nobody would watch them, where they would collect dust and eventually go bad from neglect (if you have a plasma screen, dust it often). The money I made provided for that semester’s tuition and text books and everything except personal satisfaction.

That TV was wonderful. If it had been playing old Bollywood movies instead of CNN, it would’ve been better. I like flat LCD, DLP and plasma screens, but God knows that they have all the personality of a Kindle or a Nook. The picture is clearer and the sound better and digital broadcast offers more viewing options and somehow these new TVs still can't compete with that buzzing, chirping distraction found even in the pockets of elementary schoolers.

In the background I hear Tejano music. Even the Indian food is cooked by Mexicans in this city.

In the window-view a gaggle of teenagers are coming out of the bubble tea shop next door. High school students. They’re all texting and tweeting or whatever, running around the parking lot staring at those phones that are more technically complicated than the computer I’m typing this at right now (seriously, I’m using notepad on a Windows 3.1 OS). Seven of them, drinking iced tea in the cold, surrounded by each other. None of them were focused on the people right in front of them, preoccupied as they were with sending high-tech smoke signals into the digital ether. Remember when that shit was nerdy?

More people should eat by themselves, and learn to enjoy something as simple as a lamb curry eaten in a restaurant with high windows, old TVs, and a highly inquisitive waiter.

Pork

Earlier today, I decided to go and get some lunch, which is a challenge if I want to eat something affordable and also not too gross without having to drive more than a mile. My options include things like Whataburger (I live in Texas, for those of you who hadn’t figured it out yet) or Subway or Quik Trip’s hot dogs, or one of the various non-franchise (or at least local franchise) restaurants. Among these are an Indian restaurant, a pizza place, a couple of surprisingly bad Tex-Mex joints that are too pricey for their own good, and a Chinese food place that serves a number of Pan-Asian dishes.

It’s a hard choice, in the sense that it’s fairly rare that any of these sound good and I usually eat alone, so I can’t defer to somebody else’s opinion of what sounds good. Today, I chose the Chinese restaurant, which I usually eat at with RockmanXZ24, who in the spirit of raging video gamer assholery recently changed his Xbox Live gamertag to NINTEND0FTW. Instead of getting my usual (a Thai style curry and rice) I ordered the new “Salty Crispy Pork,” which is really just deep fried pork with diced onions and peppers. Still, it was surprisingly good. I decided to get a beer to drink while I finished my pork, a deliberate process, although honestly it shouldn’t be, since most any beer matches well with fried pork. I decided on a Mexican beer called Tecate, which probably seems rather incongruous to match with a “Chinese” dish, but bear in mind that it was Mexicans who diced the onions and peppers, fried the pork and the rice and put it in a box for me to take home.
It’s hard to photograph food in a Styrofoam container and make it look appetizing.

My Shame: Quik Trip Hot Dogs

There's a dieting maxim that applies to pretty much everyone, regardless of whether they're trying to lose weight: You should never get a meal at the same place that you fill your car with gas. I have a hard time with that one. Over the past couple of years, Quik Trip's provided me much late night/early morning sustenance, and I've grown rather fond of their selection of supremely junky, nasty food. Particularly appealing are the hot dogs, or more specifically, the jalapeno sausage dogs which, because of their jalapeno and cheese content, are both more awesome and actually more unhealthful than regular hot dogs! The convenience store/gas station as a restaurant: what a wonderful world we live in.

Not too long ago, I was returning from a short trip to a friend's home. While She lives only an hour away, we tend to lose track of time while watching movies, and I usually don't leave until after Craig Ferguson's monologue on CBS' "The Late Late Show." I was nearing home at that really weird time of night when you really want to do really weird shit. There's a reason why late night programming that isn't paid advertisements for phone sex, Girls Gone Wild, or get-rich-quick scams consists of stuff like Dave Attell's "Insomniac" and all those non-sequiter-a-minute shows on adult swim. Those of us who are up that late like to do weird shit, and if we can't do weird shit, we'll settle for watching it. For me, it's around midnight to four in the morning that I want to engage in or be engaged by stupidity, bad behavior, or just genuinely strange stuff. It's also the time when Quik Trip's jalapeno dogs start to sound really delicious.

On this occasion, I planned to get a couple of jalapeno sausage dogs and eat them in the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart before I went in for some good old fashioned people watching. (There's few things more amusing than a Wal-Mart that late at night, and probably not for any of the reasons you would think) But my plans were ruined when I walked into the Quik Trip and found no sausage dogs, and in their place some unnaturally red colored weiners turning over in the hot dog rack. Apparently, this was the new "spicy red dog." Hot dogs by themselves are nasty, especially if you know what they're made of. Even the all beef hot dogs are mostly comprised of scraps, fat, and stuff that likely isn't supposed to be in there, but the FDA has determined won't hurt you any more than the absurd levels of saturated fat of what is supposed to be in there. Take that and give it an outer casing that looks like glowing plastic doused in red 5, and you have yourself one of Quik Trip's new products that you're intended to put in your mouth, chew and swallow.

It was so depressing that I ate at Jack in the Box instead. I ate at Jack in the Box! My head hangs in shame at the admission.

I've a few idiosyncrasies, I admit. I enjoy listening to the local classical music station's "Romantic Hours" program. I loiter at Wal-Mart late at night when I'm bored enough. I actually enjoy games developed by Nihon Falcom, and nothing gets me more excited than a really obscure kung fu movie. But my greatest weakness is those jalapeno dogs. I eat those while I'm listening to "Romantic Hours," and when I people watch at Wal-Mart; I eat them when I play Vantage Master and when I watch movies like Young Flying Hero and Kung Fu Cult Master and Thrilling Sword. Hell, they're what I eat when I'm watching Lolita or Venus in Firs. (that was on Turner Classic Movies a couple of weeks ago, wtf?!) They are the calories I burn to fuel the majority of my shameful, geeky pursuits. In a lot of ways, they're responsible for much of the content on this blog.

I was about to give into my despair, resigning myself to either try and like the new spicy red dogs or just settle for the regular variety. Yet to my great surprise, they're back. The sausage has returned. Granted, it shares space with the awful red dogs, but at least they're available again. In fact, I'm eating one right now. It's processed cheese and saturated fat is filling my belly with more or less the same warmth as the canned taste of the jalapeno chunks in my mouth: The same feeling of warmth and satisfaction I get when I PK somebody in Diablo 2, or when I tell my brother that I have the remastered Mei Ah dvd of Days of Being Wild, but he can't borrow it because I know that he'll make a dvd-r, and I don't approve of theft. Thank you, Quik Trip, and please don't ever screw up so badly again. Kthnx.

Mtn Dew Game Fuel -- Screw the Dew

I know the title isn't at all clever, but Mtn Dew Game Fuel - Wild Fruit is unworthy of creative insults.

Really, it's shocking that such a product exists. How could anybody produce something that tastes so absurdly bad? The first sip reminded me of babysitting a young relative who made Kool-Aid with so little water that it practically clung to whatever moisture was in my mouth and left my tongue dry and brightly hued. There is so much artificial sweetener in this particular flavor of Mountain Dew, that it actually eliminates every other flavor in your mouth, with an aftertaste vaguely reminiscent of chewing on a plastic bag.

As I understand, this is a re-released, repackaged Mountain Dew "Revolution," one of a few flavors released a year or two ago, none of which came even close to tasting good. The new "Game Fuel" flavors not only taste bad, they've tasted bad for years.

In the past, I've spent hundreds of dollars at restaurants, cooked expensive cuts of beef more or less on impulse, and drove hours out of my way to eat at burger and barbecue joints instead of just stopping at McDonald's. I watch the Food Network. And yet, I never thought the American obsession with food somehow unhealthy. Then Pepsi partnered with Microsoft, and wrought upon the world the abomination of "Game Fuel." The world is a perverse place.

Mtn Dew Game Fuel - Do the Dew Doo

It's a long established stereotype that video gamers, role players and nerds enjoy Mountain Dew to an unhealthy degree. Proof enough comes from Summoner, a game developed by Volition for the PS2, which featured a video in which various characters from the game play Dungeons and Dragons while one particular character whines over Cheetos and Mountain Dew. It's one of the funnier instances of marketing and reality misaligning; Mountain Dew frequently ran commercials with X-treme sports themes, with snowboarders and skaters doing tricks and telling us to "do the dew," while the only people who were actually buying and enjoying Mountain Dew for purposes other than the massive caffeine jolt were guys who lived the exact opposite of an extreme sports lifestyle.

I do not know precisely when it occured, that fateful moment when Mountain Dew became self-aware, but I do know that we felt its effects around September of 2007, upon the release of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360. Myself, RockmanXZ24, Pilgrim, and Waffler proceeded to the local the supermarket, where Waffler purchased a box full of Halo 3 themed Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel cans. We had balked at the thought earlier in the day, and when we actually tried it, balked at the idea that anybody else would actually drink it. Never the less, we consumed every can, albeit over a period of weeks, usually not touching it until several hours into Halo 3 multiplayer or a couple of dungeons deep and a couple of level ups into Phantasy Star Online for Gamecube. It was during one of these marathon gaming sessions that I learned RockmanXZ24 had never drank a Mountain Dew before his introduction to "Gamer Fuel," and this is somebody who owns every Nippon Ichi developed game that has been released in the US (excepting Rhapsody, but we can understand not owning that one).

Amusingly, the marketing had once again failed to match up with reality. By the time that Pepsi co. started making Mountain Dew specifically geared towards nerds, we found out that at least one of us nerds hadn't even bothered to try Mountain Dew before. After that one attempt at fitting the stereotype so carefully researched by the powerful corporate soft-drink entities, I lacked even the slightest wish to drink Mountain Dew ever again. There were a few other flavors that were attached to the label, none of which did anything for me. Apparently the rest of the world felt similarly, since I don't see most of those flavors around anymore, and Gamer Fuel was no exception...

Until last night.

With Waffler, RockmanXZ24, Pilgrim and I all in the same place for the weekend (an unusual enough occurance), Waffler brought something to help us celebrate: bottles of newly re-christened Mtn Dew "Game Fuel," the Horde Red edition. Now featuring a World of Warcraft theme and a title lessened a single letter, Game Fuel is exactly the same as it was two years ago. It touts a "citrus-cherry" flavor that tastes not only artificial but completely awful. Most shockingly, Game Fuel now has two flavors: Horde Red and Alliance Blue, reminding one of the heinous Energy Potions that I complain about so often. I've only tried Horde Red so far, but as I remembered, it's disgustingly sugary and caffeinated to a likely unhealthy degree.

Back when Mountain Dew was the unnoficial drink of nerds, there was certain ironic affection that I couldn't help but have for it. Now that I see orcs and night elves and Master Chief emblazoned all over it, that irony is gone. Now it's just gross. A google search for "Game Fuel" brought me to an online promotion for World of Warcraft, and that just makes me hate that game even more.

Cherry and citrus are two perfectly acceptable artificial flavors that simply shouldn't mix. Soft drinks and video game promotion are the same. Spelling words without vowels is jst pln stpd, and I have a feeling that I'm probably going to try the Alliance Blue Game Fuel tonight, out of some combination of fleeting interest and masochistic glee.

Restaurant Review -- Chuy's

It’s something of an unofficial rule that you have to try something twice to know if it’s really good or bad. I didn’t need a second try at Chuy’s, which is easily my least favorite Tex-Mex-for-Gringos restaurant in Texas. But I got a second helping, and a third, thanks to my parents, who love the place and want to eat there for Mother’s Day and for birthdays and sometimes just because. In fact, I didn’t really need a first taste to know I wouldn’t like it.

For one thing, I recognized the name because of a minor scandal involving former President Bush’s moronic daughters’ attempt to purchase alcohol. For another, I recognized immediately the décor of a franchise restaurant that desperately wants to appear quirky and unique. I don’t have a problem with franchise restaurants per se, but whenever a franchise attempts the shtick that Chuy’s relies on – usually with stupid T-shirts and a clashing color scheme appealing to what white people think Mexican interior design looks like – it either annoys a customer, or shows how much of a rube they are (you can never trust somebody that owns a restaurant T-shirt without having worked there). The interior is such an ugly combination of "creatively" arranged mismatched floor tiles and garishly painted walls that look so shitty, it feels like walking into a giant clown's rectum with mise-en-scene by Mario Bava.

Example: the Chuy’s that I ate at is not ten miles from The Plano Tortilla Factory, a restaurant genuinely owned and operated by Mexican immigrants. They make the best empanadas I’ve ever had that weren’t made in a home kitchen. Nowhere in their establishment is there a painting of dogs playing pool or a hubcap covered wall or ceiling to be found. I checked. They don’t sell shirts with cartoon Mexicans or unfunny catch phrases, and they don’t have Christmas lights covering their exterior. They sell food.

Chuy’s sells food too, and it isn’t that good. At least, not as good as it should be for what they charge. Tex-Mex isn’t exactly complicated food. Even the sauces can be made without a great deal of effort provided you have a basic knowledge of how to cook, with some obvious exceptions (mole can be tricky, no doubt). It is senseless to pay $7.99 for a plate of cheese enchiladas, ranchero sauce, rice, beans and garnish (the “Classic Tex-Mex”), especially when there is nothing special about the recipe being used. In fact, there isn’t anything unique on the menu. Browsing their web site, they proudly state where each of their sauce recipes came from. Again, nothing wrong with that, but I could get this same food at a restaurant without the obnoxious, clashing tiles, the ugly bar pictures, and the stupidly large margarita glasses for six dollars.

On Mother’s day, my parents decided to order tres leches cake for desert. Our server went through the achingly dull process of explaining what tres leches cake was when they asked about deserts (the pastor at my parent’s church routinely asks my mom when she’ll make him another tres leches cake, as if he were a hungry dog she once fed expensive cake out of pity). When the waitress finally took the order and left, there was some discussion at the table about how silly it was for her to go through all that trouble to explain a desert that my family enjoys pretty regularly. I finally had to break in. The Jalapeno Ranch (creamy Jalapeno, they call it), the stupid shirts, the variety of margaritas, the Elvis theme and stereotypical faux-knick-nacky decoration: this is all quintessential of Mexican food for gringos. Why would you expect them not to assume we didn't know what tres leches cake was?

My family likes Tex-Mex food, and I confess that I don’t. Expectedly, they enjoy Chuy’s, and I don’t. Still, I also feel no qualms about saying that unless you’re going to Chuy’s in Austin to laugh about eating in the place where George W. Bush’s then underage daughters tried to buy mix drinks, don’t bother with Chuy’s. Go eat real Tex-Mex. Hell, go eat real Mexican cuisine. There’s plenty of it around and most of it is better than the boring stuff that you’ll be over charged for at Chuy’s. If you're not familiar with this kind of food, you'll be doing yourself a favor.

Health Energy Potion Review

I was at Fry's once again today, attempting to get away from my family who were watching Oliver Stone's trainwreck W, and buying a 2gig USB drive for $6.99 - a decent sale price. Unable to resist looking at all of the cameras and games and hardware I'll not afford any time soon, I went from the back to the front of the store, and mid-way through (video game section) I passed by the same display where I found the heinous Mana Energy Potion. And horror of horrors, the new flavor was there! Health Energy Potion is the red colored, "apple-cinnamon flavored" (according to the website's "about" section) version of the energy potion. In my first review, I expressed confusion and anger at the audacity it must have taken to brand not only a food product but a food product's supposed effects.

Unable to resist (and having failed to locate the ever-elusive Steven Seagal brand energy drink) I picked up a bottle and headed to the check out line. Standing there, I couldn't believe I was about to waste more money on a product that I dislike not just for tasting the way that Oliver Stone's movies make my head feel (bad) but for deeply held moral reasons. However, I suppose I do have a single experience that I can now thank the creators of Energy Potion for.

I went to the checkout counter as directed by that person whose sole job is to direct you to the checkout counter, and waiting for me was a woman whom I believe to be the best I've ever laid eyes on. You could put this fine young lady in a beauty pageant, a wet T-shirt contest, and a dog show, and she'd easily win them all. She greeted me with the generic checkout "did you find everything you were looking for" bit in a rather fetching Indian accent, or I think she did, I didn't really hear her because I was too busy listening to her boobs. She was wearing a nice, low cut shirt, with just enough cleavage showing to make a man pay attention to her but not so much that he'd immediately know that he could get away with blatant disrespect. Ample enough though, to fill my head with thoughts of warm oil and tantric massage and... sex. Why beat around the bush?

I handed her the merchandise and the money and she asked if I wanted a bag. I knowingly said yes, and she bent down to grab a little bitty plastic bag to hold the little bottle and tiny flash drive that I probably could've carried just as easily in my hands, and as she bent over a tiny bit of panty peeked out and said hello. Red and lacy, probably tasty, or at least more so than Energy Potion, it was also more amusing to watch than Oliver Stone's W, more arousing too. She put the flash drive in the bag, and then picked up the Health Potion and asked me, "have you actually had one of these before?" I laughed, because her expression told me that she had herself. I told her that I had, and she pointed to the "mana" variety on the counter in a display saying, "I tried one of those and it was disgusting." To which I said, "Yeah, tastes like period blood," which I now wish had come out as "can I have your number," especially since she actually laughed at the impulsive and completely tasteless joke I'd just made.

But what's done is done. Oh, and the "Health" potion tastes just as bad as the "Mana" potion. For an apple-cinnamon flavored product, it tastes like neither. And if the blue tinted "Mana" potion tasted like period blood, the red tinted "Health" variety looks like it to boot.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my nerdiest game, Nightmare of Druaga, to run in my PS2. I had to settle for another understandably obscure (J)RPG, Okage: Shadow King. I would've liked to have drank it while playing Diablo or Baldur's Gate, but in spite of my ability to post multiple times in one week, my computer is offline for the time being. Until it's fixed, I don't want to start anything that might be lost in the near future. Of course, I would've much rather spent my day with that dark complexioned beauty with a wicked sense of humor than trudging through stupid dialogue boxes and mediocre battle systems while drinking an awful concoction of vitamin rich caffeine and obnoxious marketing.

They say that you are what you eat. If that's the case, Health Energy Potion is a tiny bottle of failure; specifically with women.

Mana Energy Potion ... Review?

Ever watch the show “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern?” I do. In one episode, the hefty host remarks that drinking fresh from the utter donkey milk on a Chilean street is one of those times that a man has to take a moment to wonder what he is doing there, about to put warm, frothy-headed donkey milk in his mouth.

I’m sitting at home, yet I find myself wondering that same thing.Not about donkey milk fresh from the utter, though. Staring across from me is a “Mana Energy Potion,” which the cardboard advertisement in Fry’s Electronics described as “energy for gamers.”

As I have always understood them, energy drinks are the 21'st century equivalents of health-tonics, promising not only an invigorating buzz brought on by excessive amounts of caffeine, guarana, taurine, or some other cocktail of stimulants, but any number of possible benefits, usually related to what is rather nebulously referred to as lifestyle. “Rockstar,” for example, is always sponsoring extreme sports competitions, unmusical music festivals and Girls Gone Wild, letting consumers know that they’ll be able to expend all the energy they need while surfing and ogling drunken seventeen-year-olds without experiencing fatigue. “Mana Energy Potion,” I suppose, let’s gamers experience that same kind of free-wheeling, devil-may-care thrill of boundless energy as they quest to level up their Dwarven raider in WOW. Somehow, even the thrill of snake oil salesmanship is diminished when its selling point is that it will help fat nerds obsessed with their fantasy games continue their unhealthy fixation without pause. They could even bring the mana potion into their larp games without turning any heads.

Unable to resist any opportunity for ironerdic self-reflection, I actually popped open the cute little bottle - as you can see, no larger than the palm of my hand - and downed the disgusting blue concoction while playing the nerdiest game I own, The Nightmare of Druaga, a faux-roguelike RPG of the “mystery dungeon” mold and sequel to a Japanese arcade game considered to be one of the founding pillars of Japanese action RPG’s (and never released in the US).

Were I a food critic, I might comment on the taste, which is sour and tart with faint traces of the B-vitamins that it’s teeming with. The nutrition facts state that it contains over %6000 (!) of the daily recommendation for vitamin B12, which supposedly helps to metabolize carbs (thus providing more energy). It has an aftertaste and aroma reminiscent of what I figure petrol to have. Now bear with me... Imagine your mouth was a vagina, and every taste bud a tiny...

Actually, screw the extended metaphor. It tastes like crap. I’m not a food critic.

I’m also not much of one for energy drinks. I prefer slower, more natural ways of absorbing caffeine. Coffee is good, so long as it doesn’t taste like a sugary-sweet milk shake. Tea is good. I love iced tea, in particular, although not sweet tea. Many southern delicacies have caught my fancy; however, the appeal of sweet tea will always elude me.

Much like the free-association of my writing (and speaking, I’ve been recently informed) I prefer to take my time with drinks that are supposed to have some sort of benefit aside from hydration – and especially with drinks that are supposed to keep me awake. There is an art to brewing tea, even with the Lipton bag variety, a ritual that effects not only the how you experience the taste, but how you use the buzz. Good tea is something to be savored; a taste to contemplate as it is enjoyed, an indulgence to compliment what you’re doing, and to help prolong it. I don’t drink tea to keep myself awake while playing video games, because tea isn’t something to be downed in between turns during your “epic boss run.”

This whole idea is completely foreign to most people, and it appears to be especially so with my fellow nerds. The company claims that they are themselves gamers, making a product for other gamers, and their blog links to an IGN article written in two parts by Mark Bozon and Scott Lowe. I don’t know much about these guys or the brand of journalism that they normally practice, but their article is embarrassingly effusive. The pseudo-irony, hyperactive descriptions, the obnoxious pics of the staff as RPG characters (along with a stat card featuring the stalest of memes) are even more nauseating than the product they're used to describe. The “hilarious” non-sequiturs fully complete the hideous amalgamation of repellent fanboyism, and still don't manage to be the least bit funny.

Go read their “impressions” and return, and if you doubted the inherent truth of what I’m saying, you should now feel like an idiot. I am not taking this too seriously. I am right. “Mana Energy Potion” stands for all that I fear becoming, and all that I fear every one else in the world has already become. If we can actually commercialize and market by demographic – especially the nerd/geek demographic - the putting of something into ourselves in order to keep us going, humanity has truly lost its soul, not to mention its taste buds and possibly its stomach, having replaced it with a fuel tank.

In its defense, “Mana Energy Potion” does do what it promises: it kept me awake for several hours with its massive shot of caffeine. If you can trade your immortal soul and any pretense of good taste for that, than the thirty shekels (it’s not far off: I paid almost four dollars for one) you drop will probably be worth it.