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Interstate-80 bridge across the Mississippi linking Illinois and Iowa.

This was taken on the Illinois side, from the Illinois Welcome Center.

Zz.

Guy Fieri's Time Square Restaurant Got Roasted By NY Times

I don't read many restaurant reviews. In fact, I don't recall when I last read one. But this one is a hoot and a half!

Now, I do love Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" on the Food Network. So when I came across a review of Fieri's new restaurant in NY City's Time Square called "Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar", I just had to read it. And man, was this restaurant got skewered big time!

Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights) in the review:

What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?

When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered?

Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?

At your five Johnny Garlic’s restaurants in California, if servers arrive with main courses and find that the appetizers haven’t been cleared yet, do they try to find space for the new plates next to the dirty ones? Or does that just happen in Times Square, where people are used to crowding?{ZapperZ: This, btw, is one of my big pet peeves when dining out}

How did Louisiana’s blackened, Cajun-spiced treatment turn into the ghostly nubs of unblackened, unspiced white meat in your Cajun Chicken Alfredo?

By the way, would you let our server know that when we asked for chai, he brought us a cup of hot water?

Tell me, though, why does your kitchen sabotage even its more appealing main courses with ruinous sides and sauces? Why stifle a pretty good bison meatloaf in a sugary brown glaze with no undertow of acid or spice? Why send a serviceable herb-stuffed rotisserie chicken to the table in the company of your insipid Rice-a-Roni variant?

Somewhere within the yawning, three-level interior of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, is there a long refrigerated tunnel that servers have to pass through to make sure that the French fries, already limp and oil-sogged, are also served cold?

Oh, and we never got our Vegas fries; would you mind telling the kitchen that we don’t need them?

Holy canolli, Batman! Those are awful reviews!

I  know! Maybe Guy could call Robert Irvine and do a Restaurant Impossible episode on his new restaurant! It sounds as if the restaurant needs an overhaul on the food and the service. Food Network will have a double-whammy for an episode since it will involve two of its stars!

Not gonna happen!

Zz.

C'mon, Knock Me Out, I Dare Ya!

There's poetic justice in something like this, when one is arrogant enough to leave oneself open.

This boxer was taunting his opponent to hit him and letting his guard down. He got what he asked for. He got hit and knocked unconscious!



Would love to hear what he had to say when they revived him him.

Zz.

3 Years In The House In The Suburbs

I mentioned a few years ago of us moving out of the city and buying a house in the suburbs. It's amazing how time flies. Today is the 3rd Anniversary of the closing on our house. And it has been an amazing experience so far. We lucked out, and in more ways than one. We have am amazing neighborhood, amazing set of neighbors that we have grown very close to, and a location that does not make me miss the city that much, other than the occasional cravings for a very good Vietnamese food on Argyle street.

But what has been amazing about our home is that it has become a place where we entertain our friends on a regular basis. Since the first day we moved in, the house has been a meeting place, a party place, etc. for our friends. And that's the way we intended it to be. We specifically looked for a place with enough room to entertain, and when we got the house, we redid the patio so that it becomes an extension to our house for outdoor entertainment. All of those have come a reality.

The smiles, the laughters, the tears, the conversations, and the sharing of each other's company have turned our house into a home we love. As we moved into our 4th year of owning this house, I wouldn't have done it any other way.

Zz.

Way Cool, Dad!

This is an amazing thing that a Dad did. He took a photo of his son each day throughout the 21 years of the boy's life, and have compiled it into this 6-minute video. An amazing dedication not only to snapping all those photos, but also to do this compilation. As someone who also does video editing, I can tell you that this isn't trivial.



Zz.

Oh, He Missed A Spot!

So you spray-tan yourself all over your body, but you missed really the most obvious spot!

It does look rather odd, even comical.

It turns out that this isn't that uncommon, as seen in this video.



I guess many of them just don't want to spray their faces. But still, when you have that deep of a tan, and your face/head is pale while, it looks VERY strange!

Zz.

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30,000 feet above somewhere.

Zz.