Important TV Viewing Report: PINK, Chelsea, Howie...

I mentioned not too far back that I was using Hulu via my laptop to keep my mind occupied while I walk on the treadmill. This has opened up an opportunity to consider some new shows worthy of a gander, a few minutes at a time.

The way it works is (as if you people didn't know this years ago), you go through the web page looking for shows or clips or full movies and such, then you add them to your queue. So, aside from a few commercials, the shows you select play one right after another.

I realized that I don't walk long enough to watch an entire movie, and to be honest, when I started looking at the half hour TV shows, I didn't see anything that would motivate me to walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes. Finally, I decided to start with a bunch of clips. Of course, I had to see all the Family Guy clips and the SNL Digital Shorts, but at some point, I decided to expand my horizons and find something new.

I found something called PINK. I know what you are thinking; with a name like that it must involve s-e-x! Actually, the show is about a lady who is a government hit lady. In spite of the frustratingly short webisodes (less than 5 minutes each), we learn that the lady named Nate (Natalie Cross) was brought up by her father, a former Delta operator, to be a trained killer. Pink refers to "pink mist" and who doesn't like the sight of that? If you have never watched a Web Series, this one is pretty spiffy. I especially like the production quality.

Another series of clips I have been watching are of this lady named Chelsea Handler. I know, she has been around for a while but I can't say that E Television is on my standard line-up (though I'm a long time fan of Talk Soup whenever I remember to watch it). Anyway, I doubt I would sit down and watch this lady for a full half-hour (or how ever long her show is), but I do enjoy the clips on Hulu of her closing remarks. Funny stuff. Oh, and as a bonus, she has a small Hispanic man named Chuy who is, a little person. I know it isn't right to admit it, but I think all talk shows with a little person tend to be funnier. And that is just wrong.

Finally, we have added a new show to our regular TV rotation called Howie Do It. I admit that at first, I thought it was a crappy knock-off of Candid Camera (which, of course, it is), but these hidden camera pranks are seriously funny. Okay, some of them are anyway. Of course, Howie Mandel is the star but he is not afraid to let other people run the prank. We watched one prank that had tears rolling down my cheeks from laughter. He has this man on the street sort of guy interviewing people but getting awkwardly close to them. In one scene, the interviewer is asking a huge biker dude about the economy or something while he gives him Eskimo kisses. You know, rubbing his nose on the other guy's nose. The same guy was giving another interview little kisses on the cheek and then would apologize and the guy kept saying, "It's okay." Funny, funny stuff.

Anyway, there you have it; three new shows or webisodes you may want to check out.

Snack Report: Happy Hour at Sonic...

If you're gonna call it Happy Hour, at least serve beer.But aside from that, my wife asked me to pull into the Sonic by our house on our way home from grabbing some shirts at the new Alamo Ranch JC Penney. So ordinarily, I would have pulled into the drive-thru line, because I really hate the whole set-up of ordering from the Sonic pull-in bays (if that is what you call them), but the line to the drive through was long.

It isn't that the drive-thru is supposed to be any faster, I mean, technically, if you have to wait behind a few cars, you could have pulled into the pull-in bay and placed your order right away. But what I don't like about the set-up is that if you pull in close enough to reach the order button, you really aren't leaving a lot of room for the person to deliver your food, say in the case that they are overweight. So I find myself routinely parking a few feet from the ordering thing, opening my car door and reaching out to push the button. Thus, if the line isn't long, I go to the drive thru.

Okay, so to be clear, the drive thru lane had about 4 to 5 cars in line, and I decided to go to the awkwardly designed pull-in bay. Fair enough.

Ordinarily, when we do this thing, my wife just gets the medium sized lemon-berry fruit slushy and I just have a sip of hers. But hey, it was happy hour, so I decided to order one for myself - a large in fact. My wife also ordered one of those little mini-banana split things, and since she was splurging, when the girl on the other end of the speaker suggested I get a chili cheese Coney, I went ahead and got one.

So I have this issue whereby I have historically picked the wrong line, regardless of where I go. It could be the wrong teller at the bank drive-thru, the wrong lane driving down Culebra, anything. I always get it wrong. But in the case of Sonic, this was a sure thing. The drive-thru was backed up and we placed our order within 20 seconds of pulling into the place.

And this is where things go wrong. I'm sure that in other places, it would be a wise decision to turn off your vehicle when you pull into the place while you wait for your order. Here, it is a hundred degrees in the shade. So I'm sitting in the truck with the engine on, window rolled down and the A/C blasting. And within a few minutes, I start getting that little twitch that my wife recognizes as I start to take note of the vehicles in the drive-thru that are pulling away. It is at this very moment that a little Al Gore voice in my head said, You might want to go ahead and turn off the truck and live with the global warming at hand, because this is going to take a few more minutes. But I knew that if I listened to that suggestion, I'd jinks myself, and it would take even longer. Hmmmm.

My wife was encouraging, she pointed out that there were only two Sonic Girls running in and out of the store, and she said they were literally running, not taking their sweet little time. You gotta appreciate that.

And then I started to notice that at least three of the cars that had been in the drive-thru when we pulled up, had already left. WTH? Oh, get this, a car pulled into the pull-in bay next to ours, ordered, and were served multiple bags full of food in less than five minutes. At this point, I'm starting to reconsider the whole thing and either turn off the vehicle or simply leave.

My wife even started to get ticked. She looked at the clock on the truck radio and reported that we had been sitting their like dumbasses for 20 minutes, all the while watching more people pull into the drive-thru and leave with lemon-berry slushies, all manners of banana splits, an no doubt, endless buns filled with cheese and chili Coney dogs. Cover your ears kids, but you have got to be shittin' me! I was starting to think I was in the Twilight Zone and Alan Funt was going to rise from his grave and point to a camera any minute.

Now, my wife suggested that perhaps I should push the ordering button and ask if they had forgotten our order. I had a better idea, I was going to push the button and order the entire thing again, just as a test to see if they knew we had already ordered.But then there was movement. My wife noticed a lady of considerable size pounding on the door to inner office of the Sonic, seemingly wanting to speak to someone in charge, or at least get her food. I attempted to get a picture of the incident, but the lady moved right when I snapped, and my wife wouldn't let me get out of the truck like some sort of National Geographic reporter and film the engagement.

With this new excitement, it was clear that we were not the only wrong-lane choosers, and in fact, my wife began to speculate wildly that employees had walked off the job or that some manager had locked a few unruly employees in the walk-in cooler. Finally, after at least a gallon of gas, and twenty-five minutes (or more), the frazzled Sonic girl came out with our order. Poor little thing started apologizing about the long wait before she even got to the window, and I simply handed her the money and a tip and told her not to worry about it.

My wife mentioned to her that we had ordered one medium and one large lemon-berry slushy but both were mediums. Again, I said don't worry about it, just keep the difference as a tip. Then, seeing that we weren't going to take out crappy management on her, the Sonic girl told us the banana split was messed up and she would go get a new one. It was clear, not just because of the 100 degree weather, that the banana split was made and set on the counter seconds after we placed the order - 25 minutes earlier.

My wife (who knows a thing or two about running a restaurant) told the Sonic girl she needed to tell her manager to shut down the drive-through until the surge of the happy hour was over. Just put a sign on it that says temporarily closed and concentrate on the customers in the lot. Sometimes, when you don't have enough people to run a store, you have to make do with what ya got.

In the end, I inhaled my chili cheese Coney dog before the girl returned with the large lemon-berry slushy and the new mini banana split. And to be real honest, it wasn't that good.

As that Chinese guy from Six-Flags says, "One Flag!" Or in my case, No Tasty Treats for Sonic.

Lunch Report: TGI Friday's

I'll make this very brief; The new TGI Friday's at 151 & 410 had acceptable food but bizarre service.

My wife and I had finished up our Sunday sightseeing and on the way back home made several false starts at places to eat. I had even considered the idea of - gasp - just eating something at home.

We drove by Henry's Puffy Tacos on Bandera & 410 even though neither of us wanted Mexican food, but since we had never been there and looking to try something new, we figured what the heck. But, they were closed. I don't know if they are closed on Sunday's or don't open until later or they are really, really closed. Who knows?

Next stop, Jason's Deli. But, my wife said instead of Jason's we should try McAllister's Deli over on 151 since neither of us have tried it. So, I get going to 151 and before we can pull into McAllister's, I see TGIF's and we go there instead.

Okay, to the point. I ordered up a Cobb Salad. In all honesty, I didn't know what a Cobb Salad was, but the last time I was with some co-workers at a TGIF in New Jersey, one of the guys ordered it and loved it.

So, our waitress was friendly and pleasant and such and other than the fact that they seated us between two families with screaming kids, everything was going rather well. I got my iced tea and my wife got some sort of frozen slushy drink and was very pleased to get one of those straws that bends. That is real value if you ask me.

Anyway, we sit there a little bit and before too long, a guy comes from the kitchen to deliver our order. My wife got a sandwich so there wasn't an immediate reaction by her that something was missing. And frankly, when he set down my Cobb Salad, I was immediately consumed at just how huge the portion was. He was gone before it hit me that we had never received any silverware or napkins for that matter.

I sat there for a minute or so and thought that I might get up to ask the hostess for some silverware but just then, our waitress made her way back. "So," she says, "how is everything? Can I get you anything else?"

I stared down at my untouched salad and looked up and said, "A fork?"

I don't know what I expected as a response but she answered with an "Oh? Okay." as if I was asking for something extraordinary. My wife quickly added in a request for some honey mustard and the waitress smiled and said, "sure".

I sat there for another minute or two and I was strating to get this really bizarre feeling like I was either on Candid Camera and Mr. Funt would pop out from one of the booths of screaming kids, or perhaps I was no kidding starting to feel some sort of transferred chemical reaction from having read Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (it has quite a bit of chemical abuse in the book). I mean, this had to be some sort of crazy Twilight Zone thing.

Finally, as my wife was a good third of the way through her sandwich (she was really hungry), our waitress came around as if she too had been reading Mr. Thompson's crazy account of a trip to Vegas, and casually handed me a fork. A single fork, no napkins, not a fork or anything for my wife; just a single fork.

Realizing that there would be no appearance by any TV crews to have me wave and smile, I stopped our waitress before she could move along and said, "I'm sorry. I guess there was a miscommunication. You see, we never received any forks or napkins or any other service items aside from a fancy bending straw, so really, I wasn't asking for just a single fork, I was hoping for the full compliment of utensils."

She leaned in and said, "Oh, there is a slight problem in the kitchen. We are out of forks and knives and things, but I'll get you some napkins."

I then held up my fork and asked her if this one had been washed or had she grabbed it from someone else's table. She got a nice chuckle from that and promised it was clean.

So, in the end, the food was good and in fact, I ate half of it and took the rest to work for lunch today.

I'll offer up my Tasty Treat status for the quality of the food, but you might want to give TGI Friday's at 151 and 410 another few weeks to have the rest of their silverware arrive. Either that or just order sandwiches.

How was your last visit to TGI Friday's? Tell me about it.