Archive for February, 2009

The Potbelly Sandwich Shop is Terrible

by Glenn Vance on February 27, 2009 in Food with 3 Comments
potbelly

I am a sand­wich guy. Love sand­wiches. I could live off of them for days and weeks given the oppor­tu­nity. I even like cre­at­ing new ways to make sand­wiches. Grilled chicken and spicy mus­tard on a grilled cheese com­prised of pro­volone and moz­zarella? Why not?

Jason’s Deli, Which Wich, chopped beef, sliced turkey with honey bar­be­cue, I love them. And if they were sen­tient and could feel love, they would love me too.

And so I was at Pot­belly Sand­wich Works the other day with Kim. I ordered the Pizza Sand­wich and she got the Turkey Skinny. I had to go back to the house so I took mine with me and she met a client. About twenty min­utes passes.

I eat the sand­wich when I get home.

Seri­ously? They call this a Pizza Sand­wich? Pep­per­oni, mari­nara sauce (who­ever put that on pizza?), provolone(again, who put that on pizza?), mush­rooms and Ital­ian sea­son­ing. Those are the ingre­di­ents that make up the vaunted “Pizza Sandwich”.

It was ter­ri­ble. Pos­si­bly the worst sand­wich I’ve ever bought at an estab­lish­ment that pur­ported to be a sand­wich shop. It didn’t taste like pizza, and it didn’t even taste good. It was like the bread was a wet sponge and the “pep­per­oni” (all two slices) was so low rent that it needed a bailout.

I talked to Kim later and told her the Pizza Sand­wich was ter­ri­ble. She imme­di­ately retorted, “My sand­wich was ter­ri­ble too!”

So good­bye and good rid­dance, Pot­belly Sand­wich Work. You’ve been in busi­ness for 32 years but hope­fully you’ll go out of busi­ness very soon and stop pol­lut­ing the world with your crummy “sandwiches”.

In Defense of a Looooong Academy Awards Show

by Glenn Vance on February 18, 2009 in Movies with No comments
oscar

Peo­ple always com­plain about the Acad­emy Awards show; it’s too long, it’s bor­ing, it has all of those lame musi­cal numbers

But whether it’s Rob Lowe and Snow White danc­ing to “Proud Mary” or Savion Glover tap-dancing to the music from Schindler’s List, the musi­cal num­bers do serve their pur­pose. Imag­ine you’re the one sit­ting in that giant the­ater wait­ing for your name to be called as one of the hon­ored few in your cat­e­gory. You’re crowded next to your co-stars and the pro­duc­ers, you kinda need to use the restroom but the lines are incred­i­bly long and just at that moment the pro­duc­ers of the show have shined their tim­ing wis­dom on you and start show­ing a dance ret­ro­spec­tive from the past eighty years of Oscars.

And all of those peo­ple that make the movies, most of them are the lit­tle guy, the guy you’ve never heard of that did some­thing really cool with the spe­cial effects from Iron Man or The Dark Knight, shouldn’t he be hon­ored too? Yes, he’s crammed into the bor­ing part of the show, the part of the show that every­one watches just to see what the goofy cos­tume designer is wear­ing and what bizarre polit­i­cal rant they’re going to go on dur­ing the Best Doc­u­men­tary award.

The Acad­emy is made up of TONS of peo­ple, and they all want their moment in the sun.

What if you were that lit­tle guy? The guy that won Best Live Action Short? Wouldn’t you want your moment?

So stop com­plain­ing dur­ing the bloated, overly-long Oscars. Let’s win one for the lit­tle guy.

So Ellen Tigh is the Final Cylon…

by Glenn Vance on February 4, 2009 in Television with No comments
katevernon

And I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed about it.

Not that she’s not a great char­ac­ter, we just haven’t had a chance to get to know and like her like we have her hus­band, Saul. While Saul’s per­sonal stand­ing had con­tin­ued to rise as the years went on and the fleet con­tin­ued their quest through uncharted space, Ellen died in the early parts of Sea­son 3 after pass­ing infor­ma­tion over to Brother Cav­ill in order to get Saul out of prison. She was manip­u­la­tive, cruel, evil and las­civ­i­ous. She drank heav­ily and plot­ted against every­one so that her hus­band (and her) could ben­e­fit from oth­ers fail­ings. She is not an easy per­son to like.

But Saul loved her (until he had to kill her) and still loves her, and now that he’s had his vision as he pre­pared to kill him­self in some icy radioac­tive ocean on Earth he’s con­vinced that she’s the final Cylon.

But I wasn’t con­vinced about that. How to explain Star­buck and her res­ur­rec­tion from the dead? What about that Viper she and Leobon saw with her charred body in the cock­pit? If any­one had a legit­i­mate claim to the Final throne I thought it would be her. Maybe as the final Cylon she is the most pow­er­ful and can res­ur­rect with­out the Res­ur­rec­tion Ship? Maybe.

But Ron Moore, cre­ator of the re-imagined series, said -

“[Ellen and Saul Tigh have)) always been Cylons, and there’s some­thing pro­found about that. They’re a mar­ried cou­ple who just have to go at it peri­od­i­cally and just have major issues and major prob­lems. But the bond between the two of them was some­thing that lit­er­ally could not be bro­ken. And I thought that was a really inter­est­ing and ulti­mately very pos­i­tive thing to say.”

So I’m apt to believe it. And I thought it would be inter­est­ing if some­one that had been killed off of the show was the final on, but not her. Maybe Billy or Dee or that lit­tle girl that died on the cruise ship dur­ing the pilot. Ellen just seems like such a…blah choice.

If and when Ellen returns (and they’ve set it up where she just has to return) how will she? Can she cre­ate her­self? Will a Higher Cylon Power cre­ate her? Will she be all know­ing? I doubt it. The other four don’t know any­thing even though they’ve been asked. Do they know the way to Earth? Nope. Do any of the Final Five have the answers to the big ques­tions? Prob­a­bly not. If they do it’s been drib­bled out of their pro­gram­ming, like that song they all sang together, which was cute, but they don’t seem to share a hive mind of higher pow­ers or advanced knowledge.

Will Ellen be the Know It All? Prob­a­bly not.

I’d hoped (hoped hoped) it would be Tom Zarek because that way when it was (hoped it would be) revealed in the last episode that he was the final evil Cylon then Adama could nuke him and his evil com­pa­tri­ots. Of course, the way the sto­ry­line is pro­gress­ing right now along the lines of trea­son and rev­o­lu­tion Adama may have his chance to do just that. But now we know it isn’t going to be Zarek.

Oh well. Had to be somebody.