Uncle Walter's Rants

A tasty treat for the inner cannibal in all of us

Popeyes, masters of chicken for when you aren't in the mood for KFC, has decided to appease the little Jeffrey Dahmer in all of us. That's right, Popeyes new Rip'n Chick'n is a chicken breast, sliced partially through, and then fried. And it looks like a human hand. Now you can indulge your man-eating desires without the taboo of human flesh! Don't belive it is supposed to look like battered and fried human digits? Then why do you think they call the parts you rip off "fingers"?

The concept and execution are bad enough. But then they take this mangled hand-breast and serve it with fries (OK), biscuit (OK)... and ranch dressing... WTF??? Why does everything on the face of the earth have to come with ranch dressing? I mean, it looks like peppered "man-juice" and tastes like... Well, you don't want to know.

Seriously, I can go just about anywhere and they are like, "would you like ranch with that," and I'm like "Hell no, you bastard, don't deface my food with your speckled dressing!" Why would I want that??? Blue cheese, honey mustard, even ketchup, and I'm good. But ranch? That stuff is awful.

Now all I can think about is ranch. What was I talking about?  Oh well. Never mind.

-UW

 

Once upon a time there was a show called... Sliders (with spoilers, but don't worry, you won't care)

It was a basic 1995 Fox sci-fi show about Quinn Mallory who accidentally invents a "Timer" which opens a dimensional rift (wormhole) that he can "slide" through, coming out on a parallel earth. He is the same, but the world is different. It may be a small change, like Coke tasting different, or a major one where the Soviets conquered the U.S. He takes his friend Wade Welles and his teacher, Professor Maximillian Atruro on the next slide. A miscalculation makes the wormwhole too large and it swallows up singer Rembrandt "Cryin' Man" Brown. They find themselves trapped on an ice world with their lives threatened and they wind up sliding before the timer is set to return them home. They find themselves in another world, and for the first two seasons they travel to parallel earths, hoping to land back home.

I have always loved the concept of parallel universes. What would have happened if I turned left instead of right, or chose a different college? Those are the kind of things that I think of at night when I can't sleep. The first two seasons played this out well and it was an enjoyable series. Not great, but good. There was hope it would get better. Unfortunately, after watching most of the first two seasons, my life became quite a bit more hectic and I missed out on the last three. That is until this fateful weekend, when I went though a Sliders marathon via Netflix instant streaming. I still liked the first two seasons... then I saw the third.

Dear God, what in the hell are they doing? Midway through a season filled with magic "water finding people" and a giant worm that eats people, the professor dies, yes dies at the hands of some freak who needs "brain juice" to live. They are joined by Captain Maggie Beckett in their pursuit of brain juice guy, across multiple worlds. As you would expect, we move on to zombies from there. Then parasitic bugs. And on to vampires... wow. They didn't just jump the shark, they beat it into the ground. The season finally ends on an island of Dr. Moreau knock-off, with Rembrandt and Wade going home to their Earth while Maggie and Quinn slide on. That was a weak ending for a season that I could barely stomach to begin with.

Somewhere in there, all the writers were fired and all new ones were hired. Then Fox dropped them and the SciFi channel (now known as SyFy) picked them up, and supposedly brought back the original writers. The plot of the first SyFy season centers around humanity's battle against Kromaggs, which are people-ish things from a parallel earth. Quinn finds he has a brother (played by the actor's real-life brother) and they hunt for him. Not great, but getting better. There are a few decent episodes, similar to the first two seasons. But Captain Beckett magically transforms from a hardened Marine into a soft, fluffy lady who likes to shop and just isn't herself... at all. Literally they changed the character almost completely. Wade is somehow captured by the Kromaggs, but the group never bothers to look for her, although she is mentioned on occasion. Despite all of this, I had hope since the good elements of the show appeared to be returning.

Then, like so many wonderful dreams, they were smashed on the ground with the arrival of the fifth season. It wasn't just bad, it was insanely bad. Quinn and his brother (the characters and the actors) vanish. We got a whole new Quinn (who goes by Mallory) who has classic Quinn fused with him on a subatomic level. The brother, Colin, is just gone and no one really seems to care. Magically, Wade reappears as a head in a jar who then dies. Then we hear that Quinn cannot separate from Mallory, so Quinn is officially dead. Still no one cares about Colin.

And the viewers don't either. This season is so bad that it retroactively damages the first two. Only Remington survives from the original series, and he tries, oh he tries so hard, but wow this is bad. Maggie's fake affair with the president, pirates, bikers. It is just one weak plot after another. No longer are we dealing with the changes the worlds go through, but instead just the trivialities of survival. The show's soul is dead and gone. It ends, as you would expect, with a weakly formed cliffhanger that makes no sense... and Maggie crying. Yes, Maggie we all cried with you because this show didn't just die, it crashed and burned.

For those of you brave enough to venture into the world of Sliders watch Season One and Season Two. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE WATCH ANY MORE! When they throw dragons and magic into the mix you know it is too far gone.

-Uncle Walter

The Adjustment Bureau - An Uncle Walter Review **Contains a spoiler or two**

I walked into this film not really knowing what to expect, but what I found I enjoyed. The movie is not your traditional one on the surface but at its core is a love story. The story centers around our hero David Norris (Matt Damon), who stumbles upon a "readjustment" where his colleagues' minds are being nudged a bit so that they follow the "plan." What Norris has found is that these creatures (who all wear hats - watch the movie to get that one) guide humans thoughout history under the direction of "The Chairman." Much to the dismay of Norris, he learns that the woman he has fallen for, Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), is not part of his plan. The Adjustment Bureau steps in to keep them apart, yet they keep running in to each other.

It is your traditional "boy meets girl, girl gets chased by police, boy finds girl then finds reality altering creatures in the board room, boy finds girl again, boy breaks up with girl, girl is going to marry another guy, boy breaks up wedding to take girl to The Adjustment Bureau" story.  Pretty much a standard tale, but a fun one to watch.

I would recommend this if you have a quiet night without anything else to do. You can wait for it on DVD, but I think it will lose something on the small screen.

-UW

Billy Zane, thank you for the miserably bland performance in The Phantom

The Wife isn't happy, but when it came on cable today I had to watch it again. This monster of a superhero movie is so bad it is good. Billy Zane is The Phantom, a jungle hero who battles in New York with guns and a mundane voice. I am amazed his villains don't just collapse into comas from his droning. It's like his secret weapon is targeted narcolepsy. Somehow he keeps a straight face playing this guy and that just makes this mess better. Throw in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The original Kristy Swanson not the new one, Sarah Michelle Gellar) as the female interest and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a kinda villain, in their most unremarkable performances... ever and it is even better. They bounce off Zane's bland Phantom like silly putty on a newspaper.  They reflect the blandness back.  It is so bad it is great. Each line is mock-able, even the movie tag line, "SLAM EVIL!" just screams bad.  I have to recommend this traffic collision of a movie if you want cheese with a side of potato salad and have an evening to put on your own home version of MST3K.  Some movies are so bad they are good and this is one of them. 

-Uncle Walter

 

Shutter Island - Yes, DiCaprio can be in something where he isn't King of the World

Brought to me by the graces of Netflix Instant Streaming and the iPhone I just finished Shutter Island, a freaky psychological thriller with good old Leo. Now the last time I saw him, he was bumping ugly in a Model T and drowning in the Atlantic. I am happy to say that this time I enjoyed the movie he was in. I usually don't go for these kind of movies, but it was a brilliant telling of a plot with unexpected twists and psychological madness.

Overall, there was a degree of predictability, but there were enough little twists to make the movie worth watching. There are a few scary moments, and it is defiantly not for kids. Oh, and it is not the kinda movie to get someone like The Wife cuddle with you. Dead kids always ruin the mood, but it was still a good film.

It was good enough that I feel compelled to give it 4,368,398 stars out of 5,000,000.  

-Uncle Walter

Banquet Frozen Spaghetti and "Meatballs"

For lunch today I raided the freezer and found that The Wife had picked up a batch of the Banquet frozen dinners, which all seemed the be spaghetti and meatballs.  I am sure she got it for The Boy, but I needed a lunch so I grabbed it.  There are plenty left for him.  Sadly, I have not yet realized the culinary disaster I was about to experience.

At lunch I opened the package, utilizing the clever little "tear here" strip that never tears completely.  Inside was a black plastic container with a thin film of plastic on top.  Below the film were frozen noodles on one side and on the other, what resembled frozen testicles in strawberry jam. The directions were easy enough to follow.  Make a slit in the plastic, cook for three minutes, stir, and cook for one to one and a half minutes more.  I took my trusty plastic fork and attempted to break the protective film on top. The fork broke. I kid you not, this was some serious plastic. The frozen noodles laughed at me, until I pulled out my Gerber multi-tool and made a quick incision with a knife.  Into the microwave it went and I waited for three minutes.

DING!  I took it out and peeled back the film.  I pulled out the trusty "replacement" fork and went to stir.  Unfortunately the arctic tundra of jam and testicle sauce refused to budge. A few quick jabs broke it into manageable pieces and stirring of a sort commenced.  Soon the "sauce" and the noodles where commingled as best one could hope for.  Back into the microwave it went, for one and one half minutes.

DING!  I removed the tray and peeled back the film, like I would remove the dirty sheet off the bed.  Behold, before my eyes, was something that appeared similar to the cover of the box, yet different.  The aroma of bland, watered down tomatoes wafted to my nose and I took my seat to eat.  Fork #2 continued its long tradition of serving me and soon some noodles entered my mouth.

Yes, they felt like noodles.  And tasted like them.  So far, so good.  The sauce though, oh the sauce, was some sort of salty tomato type thing that was very watered down.  For some unknown reason, perhaps for seasoning, there were black dots in the sauce.  The dots still made me think of strawberry seeds, but fortunately that was where the similarity ended.  This flavor was not good, but acceptable.  Then I made a horrible mistake and took a bite out of the testi-- I mean meat ball, which yes, still looked like a testicle, despite the claims that it was a ball of meat.

It was a mass of meat-like substance that had, quite literally, no flavor at all.  It had a consistency similar to play-dough, but broke apart more easily.  It was a distasteful thing, something that sent shivers down to my soul.  It was what I would imagine eating an eyeball is like.  My eyes, and balls, twinged at the thought.

The overall flavor was poor, the consistency weak, and the mental imagery terrifying.  The price, I am sure, was good, but not worth the mental anguish of consuming the dish.  I give it a 23 out of 438827363.

-Uncle Walter