And... we're back at it

Another weekend has come and gone. And although it's not like I went back to work on Monday, I'm still lamenting its passing. For it was a good one.

As prefaced here last week, Friday was our friend Jez's buck's night up in Newcastle. With the theme being red, Short, Maz, Yogi and I procured some hideous, bright red wigs to go along with our red shirts. Really, they couldn't have been more awful/perfect. Here are a few shots to illustrate:




Anyway, as I said in my last post, while I didn't know what we'd be up to at the party, I was positive that we'd (a) stop at Harry's and (b) get up to some shenanigans. Well... hmmmm. The first one very unfortunately didn't happen. And the second one? Well, I'm still not sure. It was very fun -- don't get me wrong -- but many of Jez's friends up in Newcastle are very religious. A ridiculous bachelor party* full of tomfoolery this does not allow for. But still. It was good.

*I did a very quick search on why it's called a bachelor party in the US and buck's night in Australia, and this is the best I could come up with... at least without consuming too much of my precious time. Other names around the world apparently include stag party, stag night, stag do and bull's party. Whatever.

HOWEVER, I found the Wikipedia entry on bachelor party/buck's night to be quite amusing. Especially the section on Australia. Consider: "The groom's mates often, after heavy drinking, subject the groom to various humiliations, sometimes in public. These often include leaving him tied naked to a pole or placing him on an airplane to a remote location. It has also been quite common to start the humiliation at the beginning of the night by dressing the buck up as a female or making him wear a 'mankini'."

Tying the groom naked to a pole? Placing him on a plane to a remote location??!? Making him wear a mankini???!??!?! HILARIOUS!! Clearly I did not experience your "typical" Australian buck's night. That is, of course, assuming the description on Wikipedia is accurate. Which it always is.

Saturday was a wash. Big time. Quite hung over, we drove back to Sydney and then did nothing. It was fantastic.

Sunday was Tropfest, the largest short film festival in the world. Broadcast simultaneously in open-air settings in each of the capital cities, it features 16 short films. The movies started at 7:30pm, but a few of us got down to the Domain (located next to the Botanical Gardens) by 3pm to get a good spot, soak up the sun and get our picnic on. It was good.

And now it's the week. Back to the job hunt.

Going back to Newy

By my count, I've made the two-hour drive north to Newcastle three times since I moved to Sydney nearly a year and a half ago. The first time was for a very quick car tour with Jez, after our weekend in Forster. Then I came back for the infamous Fumblers-B Newy Decathlon (chronicled here, here and here). And the last time... well, I don't believe I ever recapped the horrific events of that fateful Saturday night here, but it involved myself, a bouncer, some shoving, and a torn shirt. I'm still emotionally scarred from the incident, so that's about as much as I'm willing to share at the moment.

Anyway. Late tomorrow morning, I'm going back to Newy for a fourth time. And this time, it's for Jez's buck's night (better known in the US as a bachelor party*). I have no idea what's planned, but we've been told that there will be plenty of alcohol, to bring a spare change of clothes and that the theme is red.** What I do know is that (a) our car will be making the obligatory mecca to Harry's beforehand and (b) there will be shenanigans. And no, I'm not talking about the restaurant with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks.

*I'm actually not sure why it's called a buck's night. I should probably look that up. Same goes for hen nights, aka bachelorette parties. I'm sure it's all on Wikipedia or something, but our Internet's being shitty right now, so I really couldn't be bothered.

**This is due to Jez's very red hair. On our way up there, we'll be stopping at some shops to find some ridiculous, red outfits. As far as I'm concerned, the more ridiculous, the better.

Recap (and pictures?) to follow next week? I'm Ron Burgundy?

Home brew: it gives my life meaning!

So. Unemployment is really starting to hit home. I have no solid leads for a new job, and there's seemingly nothing on the horizon. I'm progressively sleeping in later. I'm running out of things to do, and the fact that Sydney's been hit with an awful week of weather has not helped the cause. I've officially lost track of what day it is. The money is dwindling, day by excruciating day. And my potential DOD (day of deportation) just lingers over me.

Of course, I'm not alone. For I currently live in an apartment full of unemployeds. On the weekends last year, I'd sleep in and wake up to an apartment full of people. Now, I do that on a Tuesday. Or a Thursday. Or, well, every day. So we're all very much in this together.

We needed something to do, clearly. To keep us occupied, keep us motivated, keep us sane. The main caveat, of course, was that this activity couldn't be expensive.

And that's when one of Maz's friends introduced us to the world of home brewing. At first, I think we were all skeptical, and had many questions. That would be a really time consuming, right? Isn't it a complicated process? And doesn't it take forever to yield something that's not only alcoholic but actually tastes good?

Quickly, these concerns were put to rest. Yes, there'd be some work, although it wouldn't be nearly as much as we first imagined. (But would it have been a bad thing if it was that labor-intensive?? We have nothing but time!) And the actual process, after you get past what can look like a daunting set of instructions, only has to be as complicated as you want it to be. And it doesn't take long at all; on the shorter end, you can have a quality beer ready to drink within two weeks!

So, to recap: a cheap task that will keep us occupied... and that task involves producing alcohol??!?* Ummmmm, where do we sign up???

*Yeah, we might currently be in a reduced-spending mode, but you know that we're not sacrificing alcohol. God forbid.

Maz and Short bravely did the first few batches: first an Australian-style lager, then a European-style lager, then an India Pale Ale. Each beer was surprisingly good, and each one seemed to improve upon the last.

Yogi and I, encouraged by the results, teamed up to have a crack as well. But before starting, there were a few matters to attend to. First was our "brewery's" name. And for that we decided on Little Bear Brewery, which is derived from parts of each of our names. In German, Klein means small or little. And Yogi's name is like, well, Yogi Bear. So Little Bear it was! Simple, straightforward, catchy. A logo is very slowly in the works.

The second matter to attend to before starting was collecting bottles in which to bottle the beer. Because while Maz and Short bottled their beer in plastic bottles that they simply bought, we decided to bottle our beer in glass bottles. This, however, posed the challenge of acquiring said bottles. And as far as we were concerned, there was only one way to do that: drink ourselves silly! So for the next several weeks, just about every time we bought beer, whether it was to casually drink at our apartment or to rambunctiously drink at a house party, we'd buy 750 ml (25 fl oz) long necks of Cooper's Pale Ale. Why Cooper's? Well, it's a solid beer, the bottles' brown glass is good for keeping light out, and the tops aren't twist off. (This last point was important because our cap press can't put bottle caps on twist tops.) And why 750 ml bottles? Well, each batch of home brew nets about 23 liters of beer. (For the metric system-challenged, that's roughly equivalent to six gallons. Let me repeat that: SIX GALLONS OF BEER!!!) So we could either collect 60 regular-sized bottles or 30 long necks. And after a few weeks of calculations, we concluded that 30 bottles is precisely two times more manageable than 60. We're still not sure if that's purely coincidental or not.

For about a month we drank those long necks, slowly accumulating our stock. And finally, after a big Australia Day Weekend in late January to cap off this monstrous month of long neck after long neck, we reached our goal. Our hearts were content. Our livers were furious. We were ready to start brewing.

We made a trip to Dave's Home Brew in North Sydney, consulted with Dave himself on our first beer and settled on modeling it after an Australian pale ale called Little Creatures.

Yogi and I came back to the apartment, cleaned and sterilized all our materials, mixed up the various ingredients (boiling water, liquid malt extract, brewing sugar, hops, yeast and enough cool water to get to 23 liters) and then... well, we let it sit for a week to allow for the mixture to get its fermentation on. Then we cleaned and sterilized our 30 bottles, filled each one with our precious beer, added carbonation drops, capped the bottles and then... well, we let it sit for another week to carbonate and mature.

And that's it! That's it! One week after bottling, Yogi and I had our first sips of what we had come to call Bears and Creatures Pale Ale.* A week probably didn't give the beer quite enough time to mature -- it's generally recommended that you wait at least two weeks -- but our curiosity got the best of us. And you know what? It was still great! Fantastic! I couldn't have been much more pleased. A really rich, hoppy flavor and a great amber color. The head left a little to be desired, but we're hoping that that develops a little more in the coming weeks.

Now we're on to our second batch, which is a wheat bear. Tentatively we're calling it Wheat Bear,** and we just bottled it this morning.

*The origins of this name are fairly straightforward. Our "brewery" is Little Bear. And the beer we modeled this batch after was Little Creatures Pale Ale. So knock off the "Little" from each name and you have Bears and Creatures Pale Ale.

**Really hope I don't need to explain this name!

Maz and Shorty bottled their fourth batch the other day, and they've recently dedicated themselves to glass bottles as well. However, this poses our next challenge: accumulating more bottles! But this time, we've spared our livers and have purchased 84 empty Cooper's long necks on eBay. That will bring our bottle collection to 140, which is enough for five batches of beer. So I'm hoping that's all the bottles we'll ever need. But if it isn't, well, that just means that we'd have 105 liters (NEARLY 28 GALLONS!) of beer. And that should hold us over for a while. I think.

AIM: An obituary

Sunday was a historic day for me. A day of introspection, of retrospection, of... of... nah, can't think of any more applicable "spection" words. Anyway. As I did some housekeeping on my computer, deleting old files and uninstalling programs I don't use anymore, I came across AOL Instant Messenger.

At first, my eyes wandered past it. But then I paused. I realized that I hadn't used AIM for months. Years, maybe. I looked back at the program. I stared at it. I contemplated. And after a minute or so of back-and-forth internal debate, I did it. I did what a short few years ago I would have considered absolutely unfathomable, perhaps even blasphemous: I uninstalled AOL Instant Messenger.

AIM: You were good -- nay, you were great -- to me. Let me count the ways.

One. We grew together. As you gained popularity as just one part of the larger AOL program, I started to use you with increasing frequency in high school. And then when you proclaimed your independence and went off on your own (leaving the rest of the short-lived AOL empire to wilt away), so did I go off on my own in college. And for those four years, you were an integral and very necessary part of my life. Hell, my whole college experience could probably be told through conversations that I had using you.

Two. You carried the torch of my "vhing9" screen name,* and you represented it well. That name became a part of me; to many, it defined me. Now, with this final nail in your proverbial coffin, so too do I place a nail in that of vhing9's.

*What a supremely random screen name. When I first started my account, I was obsessed with Ving Rhames. I knew there was a random 'H' in his name somewhere, and erroneously thought that it was in his first name. So I tried to get the screen name "vhing". Preposterously, this was taken, so I tacked my favorite number onto the end.

Three. The away messages. Oh, the away messages! The hours I devoted to coming up with witty things to say -- just to elicit maybe two or three responses from people -- is incalculable. And during my peak years with you, no notable quote from a friend, a movie, a TV show, a book, a newspaper column or a song would escape my notice.*

*Some of my favorites:

• "How could it be boron, you goddamned moron??!?!" -- an irate Paul Slocombe to a scared Todd Fasen
• "He's probably the least qualified person ever to be nominated by a major party... What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?" -- Ronald Reagan on George Walker Bush
• "It's important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That's why I manually masturbate caged animals for artificial insemination." -- Clerks
• "Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is." -- Barb Bush
• "You know, there's a million fine-looking women in the world, but they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them just cheat on you." -- Silent Bob

That's what you meant to me.

Of course, you weren't just special to me; you were a gift to the world. For it was you who championed the instant messaging revolution, and that has opened the doors for so many Internet innovations that have followed. Without you, there might not be Gchat. Or Facebook chat. Or Twitter. Or Skype. We'll never know for certain what new programs and technologies you inspired, directly or indirectly, but it's safe to say that you certainly had an impact on a vast majority of them.

For this, you belong in the Pantheon of revolutionary and influential web programs, somewhere after Mosaic (generally credited as the web browser that set off the explosion of the Internet's popularity) and before Napster.

But now it's over. I've moved on. The world has moved on. There are so many more ways to communicate, so many more efficient ways that are much more integrated into my daily life. But I won't forget you; you will forever be part of my personal history and live in my conscious.

RIP, AIM.

Throwin' some Super Klein-Bowls

It had been a long time since I watched a full football game, professional or college. Not this season. Not Super Bowl 42.* Maybe sometime last season. Maybe not. Honestly, I can't remember. But with my unemployment in full effect circa 10:30am last Monday, I was able to soak up the entirety of Super Bowl 43 in all its glory. And it was fantastic.

As I soberly described when I threw some Kleinballs the other day, far too many of my friends are out of a job. And since the Super Bowl, for whatever reason, is actually sort of a big deal here,** and none of us had anything better to do on a Monday morning, I decided to have a little soiree at my place.

*No way am I gonna take the time to figure out those Roman numerals.

**Honestly, I have no idea why it's big here. But, you know, it is the Super Bowl.

I decided that this would have to be as authentic a Super Bowl party as possible, with a real celebration of Americana. And the first order of business was the food. For this, I decided that the main dish would be what my dear and deadbeat of a friend Ross has dubbed "manchos". That's right: nachos for MEN.


How good does that look??!? Corn chips, cheese, refried beans, beef with chilli seasoning, onion, tomato and jalapeno... lots of jalapeno.* And best of all, the above photo actually shows a very incomplete dish. For after it was taken, a very, very, very liberal extra layer of cheese was added. Good times.**

*I'm just gonna say it: Australians are idiots when it comes to anything Latino. Maybe we -- and by "we" I mean Americans -- are used to it because of all the Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc in the States, but most Australians are really ignorant of the language and food.

Take, for example, when I bought the jalapenos at the store. The woman scanning my food saw them, gave a bit of a blank stare and asked, "What are these?" I responded, "Jalapenos." She typed away on her screen, trying to bring up the right code. Ten seconds later: "I can't find it in here. How do you spell it? Is it h-a-l...??" I stopped her. "No, no. It's j-a-l-a-p-e-n-o." She typed away. Ten seconds later: "I still can't find it. So it's h-a-j-a-l...??" I stopped her again, a little annoyed: "No! J-a-l-a-p-e-n-o. No 'H'." Finally, mercifully, she found it.

Relaying this story to my friends back at my place, they laughed and one of them suggested that I should have just pronounced it phonetically: jah-lah-PAY-no. And another one countered that she would have come back with, "Oh! The jah-LAH-peh-nos! I love those things!"

**While we're on the topic, why don't you give the manchos a "10" rating on my new favorite web site, WouldYouEatIt.net.

Next came the guacamole. For this, I used a recipe I found online, and then doubled the amount of green chillies that it called for. Awesome.

And lastly came the booze. And for this, there was only one way to go: The King of Beers. So the day before, I bought a case, brought it home and put the beers in the fridge. But I wasn't done, oh no. It was time to get as American as absolutely possible. And so, using the cardboard from the beer case, I present to you this:



You know you love it.

Maz, one of my roommates, had a few bets on the game. One of them was that Roethlisberger would score the first touchdown, which was courtesy of a tip from me. So when Big Ben ran that broken play in for a touchdown on the Steelers' first drive, we went nuts. NUTS! Maz and I were jumping up and down and shared in a moment of bromance as we embraced. I was so proud of myself. And then, when it was called back on a challenge, well, that sucked. Ahhhh, the joys of gambling.

From what I understand, Ben Graham, the Australian punter for the Cardinals (and ex-Australian Rules Football star), got some press in the US during the two weeks leading up to the game, as he was the first Aussie ever to play in the Super Bowl. Now, to get a sense of how much attention he received here during the game, I want you to take whatever mentions he received during the telecast from the States (as far as I can tell, that consisted of one graphic that said "Ben Graham: first Australian to play in Super Bowl")... and then multiply it by about 8,568. Because when everyone in the States went to commercial and were treated to porn, we had a studio of Australian analysts gushing over Graham and breaking down every single one of his punts. It was hilarious, especially from my perspective. But hey, I guess that's the hook here.

One thing I absolutely won't complain about was the feed that we got for the game. Last year, we received some feed meant for international audiences, with play-by-play by Dick Stockton and color commentary by Sterling Sharpe. My lord, it was awful. AWFUL!* This year, we got the same feed as in the US, with Al Michaels and John Madden. Say what you want about Michaels and Madden (or Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who did last year's game), but for me, to have access to the regular telecast for this year's game, that was heaven on earth.

*Here's what I wrote to a friend shortly after last year's game: "Stockton was passable, but Sharpe... my GOD! He is such an idiot. As the Pats marched down the field to reclaim the lead, he kept saying, 'This is perfect for the Giants! The clock's still running, the Pats aren't picking up any big plays, this is going perfectly for them!' Meanwhile, the Pats are absolutely picking apart the Giants' defense. So what if they're only picking up 5 yards per play? So what if the clock's still running? Despite what happened on the Giants' next possession, that was a perfect march down the field! And on the Giants' next possession, on that play where Eli under threw Burress to just miss a first down, Sharpe says, 'It doesn't get any better than that!' Heck??" Yes. Heck, indeed.

Hey -- I don't think I ever wrote anything about Australia Day! Well, yeah, it was good. Barbecue at my place, Short's famous potato bake, Snellfinger, many drinks. Then we went to a bar that had some karaoke on and watched in pure delight as some guy, drunk out of his mind, simply tipped over halfway through his song.

And while we're on a tangent, the Penn men's basketball team currently has a ludicrous 1-3 record in Ivy League play. That includes losses to freaking Dartmouth and freaking Columbia. Earlier this decade, if you told me that I'd ever utter those words, I would have laughed you out of a room. Excuse me while my head explodes.

I've heard a lot of mixed reviews about Bruce Springsteen's halftime show. For the detractors, the argument generally seems to center around how it was cheesy and over-the-top and maybe a little campy. And I absolutely agree with that assessment; it was all of those things. But I guess I had a different interpretation of the intent; I think it was a conscious effort on the Boss' part to get a bit ridiculous, as if he just wanted to go out there and celebrate the biggest day in American sports by having a fun, goofy time. So while others disliked the performance, I found it to be a little endearing. Although he may have gone too far when he decided to rocket his crotch into millions of homes around the world. What I want to know is, where's the uproar??!? The fact that there hasn't been a backlash equal to that of the wardrobe malfunction tells me that all the politicians and pundits out there clearly have some personal vendetta against Janet and JT Two.*

*JT One, of course, being James Taylor.

And hey, have you ever noticed the resemblance between Larry Fitzgerald and Ronaldinho? I hadn't, but Shorty picked that up during the game, and it's definitely there. Sports Illustrated clearly agrees as well:


Here's a very cool feature from the New York Times, showing what words appeared in Twitter messages the most over the course of the game. I'm still trying to figure Twitter out -- don't forget that you can follow me here! -- but just the fact that we have the technology to do something like this... very cool.

Oh, and the commercials! Ummmm, yeah. They didn't show those here -- they were far too busy breaking down every one of Ben Graham's butt scratches on the bench -- and despite their omnipresence on the web, I somehow haven't found the time to watch them. Even the porn.

I'm embarrassingly giddy

As if Joe Torre's recent book wasn't damaging enough, with the latest news that he tested postive for steroids in 2003, Alex Rodriguez's name is now forever tarnished. And I'm finding myself giddy. Embarrassingly so.


I really shouldn't allow myself to get so excited at the misfortune of others. (Then again, he did bring this completely upon himself.) But I think many of us here know how much I loathe the man. Not just because he's a Yankee. But because of how fake he seems, how desperately and disgustingly he apparently needs to be loved, how everything in the winter of 2003/04 went down,* the fight with Jason Varitek,** the slap in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS, his purple lips, how he selfishly announced his free agency in the middle of the 2007 World Series, all of the nauseating rumors about Madonna and, well, just look at him!

*The ironic part is that he actually did the Red Sox right with most of his actions during that off-season. Aaron Boone, on the other hand... he's not only the man who ripped my heart out of my chest on October 16, 2003, threw it on the ground, defecated on it, put it in a paper bag in front of Grady Little's house and lit it on fire so that Grady could stomp all over it -- wow, yeah, still painful... but by ripping up his knee that same off-season, thus allowing the Yankees to void his contract, he's probably also the person most responsible for A-Rod landing in New York. But still, despite this ability to rationally break the situation down, I hate A-Rod -- and only A-Rod -- for how it all went down. It's completely illogical, I know. I don't care.

**"We don't throw at .260 hitters!"

One day, maybe I'll stop being so petty. Not today.

Throwin' some Kleinballs in the GFC

Sorry for the mini hiatus. That post on the Ascoto's didn't just write itself, you know. It was draining! So I needed to take some time off, take a deep breath and regroup. And now that the batteries are recharged, what better way to come back than by throwin' a couple of Kleinballs editions at you over the next week! It's been a while since we've done even one of these; brace yourselves.

Now, I've heard all sorts of reports of doom and gloom out of the States about the global financial crisis (henceforth to be known on this blog as the GFC), but what's happening with myself and many of my other friends here... well, in the words of Luke Wilson's newscaster character in Anchorman, this getting to be ri-God-damn-diculous.

Currently, my entire apartment is unemployed. As we all know, I was laid off almost three weeks ago. Another one of us was let go a week later. Another was going to start a job this month... until the employer called to say they were postponing his start date by six months. And the last, knowing that his old company would shortly be letting people go, left his job a few months ago and went to grad school.

An entire apartment of unemployeds. Fun. But that's not all! For if you count our group of 12 friends that live within a three block radius of each other here, EIGHT of us are unemployed. That's right: our unemployment rate is 67%! Ummmm, yikes.

Below is a lovely illustration of exactly how much havoc the GFC has wrecked upon banks.* Big ups to Santander (whoever those guys are) and JP Morgan for managing to retain at least half of their market cap from a mere 18 months ago. Can't really say the same for Citigroup and RBS. Yeah. Yikes.


*Okay, after uploading that picture, I see it's pretty much impossible to make out a lot of the writing. To view it at a much larger and more legible size, you can click on it. But the point is that those big blue circles -- representing each bank's market cap from Q2 2007 -- absolutely dwarfs the small green circles, which represent each bank's current market cap.

And just to really depress the shit out of everyone (in case I haven't sufficiently done so yet), there's a KFC near our apartment that has had "Now hiring" on its marquee* for at least six years, ever since I first came to Sydney. This has been an ongoing joke among some of my friends, as if KFC can never hold on to employees long enough to stop hiring new ones. Well, guess what? It's down now, my friends. It's down now.

*Can you call those signs outside of fast food joints a "marquee"? Or should usage of that term really be limited to big signs at Madison Square Garden or The Mirage or grandiose places like that? Well, you know what I mean by the term, right? Like those McDonald's signs that say "Billions and billions served"?**

**Remember when McDonald's actually gave a precise number of billions of people served? Like "87 billion served"? Why don't they still do that? Has it become too hard to count? But who would call them on that if they just made a guesstimation? Anyway.

You may remember this video, titled "Where the Hell is Matt?", which I included in this Kleinballs entry way back in June. Well, after watching the below video, in which the folks at First Round Capital stole the idea and had the people in all their offices dance around like a bunch of idiots, I'm fairly confident that if you played that song over a video of a monkey taking a crap, you'd still consider it to be the most profound and uplifting thing you've ever seen. My God, the music!

Just got access to Season 5 of Entourage a few days ago and have blown through it. I've come away with two thoughts. First, before this past week, how come only one person told me there was a character named Andrew Klein on the show, when those episodes aired in the US three months ago??!!?!? Come on, people! And second, the scene at the end of Episode 7, where Ari tells Vince that he's been offered the studio head job, killed me. Killed me. Maybe Adrian Grenier can't act worth a lick, but Jeremy Piven, in the most beautifully subtle way possible, absolutely nailed that scene. And when Vince closes the window shade on Ari, who was helplessly looking to him from outside for any sign of encouragement, well, it was for moments like that that the term "cold blooded" was invented.

At 3pm last Wednesday, I received a call from an agency I had sent my resume to. They asked me to come in at 8am the next morning, and I responded as enthusiastically as anyone could when asked if they'd like to go to an 8am interview, epecially when the rest of their day is wide open. And then the kicker from the agency: "Can you please put together a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates your viewpoint on the customer life cycle with a credit card?" So of course, I responded as enthusiastically as anyone could when faced with the task of preparing a presentation on the customer life cycle with a credit card in 17 hours. And then, this unemployed guy came damn near close to pulling my first all-nighter since college. Ahhh, the things we do for the GFC...

PCW: The Ascoto's

You take the blue pill -- the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill -- you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

- Morpheus, The Matrix

We took the red pill. And everything we knew -- well, everything we thought we knew -- is no more. And so, we enter the next chapter in the Portuguese Chicken Wars.

THE BACKGROUND

It all started here, with my nice, little anecdote about how I had been caught in the middle of a vicious feud amongst the three Portuguese chicken restaurants in my neighborhood, all separated by a one minute walk. The bad blood, according to the post, came to a head when a fire gutted Ogalo, one of the original two restaurants (the other being Ole). Some people allege that Ogalo burned itself down to claim insurance money and rebuild a new and better store. Others say that Portogali, the newcomer to the Portuguese chicken market, was simply trying to eliminate one of its competitors. Of course -- of course! -- none of this is true.

My creative liberties from the first post were -- ahem -- "clarified" here. Again, to be perfectly clear, there is no evidence of any ill will amongst the three establishments noted above, and there's certainly no evidence of any tomfoolery regarding the circumstances of the fire at Ogalo. That would just be silly.

The last installment was chronicled here, as we introduced Angelo's, the fourth entrant to the Portuguese chicken market in our neighborhood. Granted it's a bit further down the road, but it's still very much within our sphere of influence.

THE STATUS QUO

So: Ole, Ogalo, Portogali and Angelo's. Along with the three other guys in my apartment, we'd all been to each of these establishments. And the pecking order -- whether it was because of proximity to our apartment, seniority of the establishment or, more possibly, for no real rational reason -- was always just that: Ole, Ogalo, Portogali and Angelo's. And we lived every day, every week, every month with this unfounded hierarchy in our minds. It went unquestioned.

But one day, sometime shortly after Angelo's entered into our conscious, it went questioned. Why do we go to Ole and don't give Portogali any chance? Yes, Angelo's is more expensive, but maybe the food is that much better? Since the fire, has Ogalo changed for the better or worse? And, the kicker: Shouldn't we find out? We were faced, in essence, with Neo's choice from The Matrix: the blue pill or the red pill? Blissful ignorance or stark, unforgiving reality? We took the red pill. And that rabbit-hole, my friends... that rabbit-hole goes DEEP.

THE PROPOSAL

A blind taste test, pitting food from each of the four establishments, was agreed upon. But first, we had to iron out some details:

Name of contest: This actually came quite easily and naturally. We live on Ascot Street and often refer to our apartment as The Ascot. So clearly, "Ascot" had to be a part of the name. But we also wanted something that sounded Portuguese. And without much thought, the name Ascoto's was proposed, which we all agreed worked quite well. Just to do our due diligence, I came up with a few other ideas -- Ascotogali's and Ascotogalo's -- but the original name still stood, as it was the shortest and sweetest.

Food item: What kind of burger should we judge? And should we get it with or without chilli, a preferred add-on by all members of The Ascot? And what about chips? Should those be judged as well? In the end, it was determined that we'd judge each establishment's regular chicken burger, with chilli. But no chips. Keep it nice and simple.

Criteria: It was agreed that we'd judge each establishment and its burger on a variety of factors, each on a scale from 1 to 10, with taste being the overriding component. These were broken down as follows, with weighting for each criterion noted in parentheses: taste (70%), appearance (10%), price (5%), ambiance (5%), service (5%) and speed (5%). So taste would clearly trump all, but if a tiebreaker was needed, the other elements could tip the balance.

Prize: For one full month, we would provide the winner with our exclusive Portuguese chicken allegiance and patronage. And, of course, we'd provide our unwavering endorsement to any and all people who asked. We'd become evangelicals, if you will. (There's also been talk of presenting a trophy or plaque to the winning establishment, although I doubt we'll ever get around to that.)

THE DAY
January 18, 2009

Everything would change.

The four members of The Ascot convened, and we drew names out of a hat to see who would go to each establishment. The draw ended with the following assignments:

• AG Klein (aka Andy, aka Akka, aka Klein) – Ole
• M Sathiyamoorthy (aka Maz, aka Mayuran, aka Sathy) – Portogali
• AP Davis (aka Alex, aka Yogi, aka Fats) – Ogalo
• PF Short (aka Pete, aka Shorty, aka Francois) – Angelo's

For us, even the simple task of doing the draw made for quite the thrilling event, especially because no one wanted to walk all the way to Angelo's. The look of disgust on Shorty's face when he drew that name cannot be described. And then he sulked. He actually sulked.

Upon completion of the draw, we synched our clocks and headed out. All walking in the same direction down the street, we first reached Ole, my establishment. I bid adieu to the other guys as they continued down the street and I headed inside. There, I was greeted fairly indifferently by the guy behind the counter. I placed my order, sat down, and looked around to get a sense of ambiance. Now, as I've said, Ole has generally been our establishment of choice. It's close, it's fast, it's easy. But looking around the place... WOW. It's a piece of shit!!! The walls were dirty, there was food on the ground, newspapers were strewn on tables and the back door was propped wide open, providing me with a view of the garbage stacked outside. A fine dining establishment this is not. After a few minutes, the guy behind the counter very apathetically called out my order and gave me the food without so much a "Have a nice day!" or "Thanks a lot!". Left feeling quite dissatisfied and perhaps even a bit unnerved by the whole in-store experience, I headed back to the apartment.

I reached the apartment a short eight minutes after we had all departed. Quite an impressive time. And shortly thereafter, Maz showed up. Then Yogi. And then Shorty. Which means that the "speed" criterion was in exact correlation with each establishment's distance from our apartment. Makes sense.

We took a minute to record our ratings on the four criteria that didn't take the food into account: ambiance, service, speed and price. The former two are, of course, fairly subjective, with the latter two being very objective. Here's how the scorecard looked after this round:


So before we got to the big two parts of this test, here's how things stacked up (out of a total possible score of 20):

• Portogali: 14.5 points. Middle of the pack on most items, but completely unbeknownst to us, took top prize as the cheapest burger.
• Ole – 13.5 points. To no one's surprise, this won for speed. Also did well on price, but took a beating on ambiance and service.
• Ogalo – 11.5 points. Middle of the pack on everything.
• Angelo's – 9 points. No surprises here. Took top prize for ambiance but shat the bed on price and speed. The rating for service may have also been a little lower than expected.

And then, to the really exciting part: the taste test. Each burger was placed on an identical plate in the kitchen, with the name of its corresponding establishment taped to the bottom. As the other three guys waited in the living room, I shuffled the plates around so that we didn't know what was what. Shorty then went into the kitchen and sliced each burger into quarters. And finally, Yogi went into the kitchen and randomly picked one of the four burgers to bring out first.*

*There's no perfect place to make this admission, so I'll just do it here: I fully comprehend and acknowledge how ridiculously lame and absurd this entire exercise may appear to most people. I get it. You don't need to make me any more aware than I already am. But you know what? I don't care. It was awesome. I can't remember the last time I had such a fun and fulfilling afternoon.

Okay... back to the taste test!

We viewed Burger #1 to rate on appearance. Then we ate in silence. For there was to be no table talk here, no opportunity to bias the other judges.



We noted our ratings on our scorecards, Yogi cleansed his palate by gargling and spitting out water, and we then moved on to Burger #2, where we repeated the above process. And then again with the third and final burgers.

After completing the last burger, we tallied up the scores (still not knowing where each burger was from), averaged them out, and had a bit of a constructive dialogue. We all had our favorites, we all had our least favorites. And for the most part, we were in agreement. Following are the average point totals on taste and appearance for each burger (out of a total possible score of 80) and some of the group's collective thoughts:

• Burger #1: 60.5 points. This scored highly for three of us (with two giving it their highest rating), as it had a great spice and taste. Yogi was the only dissenter here. Appearance-wise, it was mediocre.
• Burger #2: 50.75 points. Generally average scores from all; certainly no one was gushing about it. However, it did very well on appearance. (It should also be noted that based on appearance, we all clearly knew that this burger was from Angelo's. While the other three burgers looked almost identical -- and we honestly didn't know where each was from -- this one clearly stood out like a sore thumb.)
• Burger #3: 56.5 points. No real consistency here from the group, as it received taste scores of 5, 7, 8 and 9. I was the vote for 9; this was my favorite burger, as it had a nice spicy, creamy sauce. This burger also received the worst scores on appearance.
• Burger #4: 52 points. No one was overwhelmed by this burger. While everyone agreed that the quality of the chicken may have been the best of any of the burgers, it lacked in taste and spice. Appearance scores were also relatively average.

So! Burger #1 finished first on taste and appearance, followed by burgers 3, 4 and 2. But which restaurant was each burger from? It was time for the unveiling.

We decided to go from last place to first. So Yogi first picked up the plate for Burger #2 to reveal Angelo's. As mentioned above, this came as no surprise to us. (What I thought was a bit of a surprise, however, was how dissatisfied we all were with the burger. Surely such an expensive burger would perform better! I guess not.)

We then moved on to unveil the third place burger, Burger #4. No one was ready for what was about to happen, for it... would... change... everything. EVERYTHING. Yogi picked up the plate:

Ole! Ole! OLLLLLEEEEEEE!!!!!! Holy crap!!! We honestly couldn't believe it. Our Portuguese chicken restaurant of choice for all these months/years had finished third in voting!!! THIRD!!! In case you couldn't tell from the above video, we were shocked, bewildered, astonished, dismayed, flabbergasted. Our lives would never be the same.

From what I can remember from the next few minutes, things were fairly ballistic. Shorty went into a corner and curled up into the fetal position. I blacked out and have been told that I killed a man with a trident. Yogi started hyperventilating into a paper bag. I think Maz may have even vomited.

But then we snapped out of it. We had come too far. We had to keep our composure. So we regrouped, had a group prayer and moved on. And now that we were down to two burgers -- from Ogalo and Portogali -- we decided to reveal the first place burger next, Burger #1. We honestly had no idea what to expect. Here's how it unfolded:

Unbelievable. Portogali won on taste/appearance! PORTOGALI!! Who would have thought it! The black sheep for all this time, and it easily won! We were all stunned.

And when we added up all the scores for each of the six criteria (click here for full tally of the voting), Portogali still stood on top, followed by Ogalo, Ole and Angelo's.

PORTOGALI! Winner of the first ever Ascoto's. Amazing.

THE FALLOUT

One person who didn't find this amazing at all, however, was Yogi. For he gave the Portogali burger a 5 on taste and would now have to get all his Portuguese chicken burgers from there, and only there, for the next month. Watch his reaction in the above video. He was shattered.*

*Ironically enough, Yogi was actually the first person to go to Portogali after the Ascoto's. And he's been back several times since. Guess he got over that one pretty quickly!

Yogi wasn't the only person who was shocked and dismayed by this outcome. Other members of the community couldn't believe what we had done. Nugget, a previous member of The Ascot and currently living in Canada, expressed his severe disapproval via Facebook. Joe, upon seeing the scorebook, threw it away in disgust. And so on and so forth.

We took the red pill and opened our eyes to a whole new world order. Was it what we expected? No. Was it without shock or disappointment? No. But it's the truth. It's the stark, unforgiving reality. It's the latest chapter in the Portuguese Chicken Wars.