The Burrito blog

Yes, I said it, the Burrito blog. I am a huge fan of the burrito. I eat them all the time. What else is better than having a whole mean put into an edible container. I would like to shake the hand of the person who invented this amazing culinary creation. The term "burrito" is very vague as now a day there are many different types and styles of burritos. This blog is to go over the different categories of them. I love them all, but each serve their proper time and place.

1. The Mexican Burrito.
This is the common burrito that you would find at a local Mexican takeout/lunch truck or downtown cart. I guess they would be found in Mexico as well. They consist of mostly just rice, beans, and meat. A lot of places now put cheese in them, but if they have anymore ingredients than stated above, you are not eating a "Mexican Burrito". It must, and I mean must be made by a Mexican, preferably one that doesn't speak English, becuase you know it's probably an original recipe from Mexico. The size ranges in the medium to large size depending on how much they stuff it. The meat is usually really greasy so a cool call for those hung over days. Typically cost around $4 for a carne asada burrito. My favorite is from Molcasalsa in La Habra, CA



2. The Fast Food Burrito.
The burritos that fall into this category are ones from places like Taco Bell & Del Taco. Typically consist of just refried beans, cheese and some sort of red or green sauce. Made by either a Mexican or a High School student, depending on where you live.. Typically small in size compared to other burritos. Typically cost around $1. Great for the late night munchies or drunk food. My favorite is a Green Burrito from Del Taco. I drove 20 miles last week just to get one.



3. The Suburban Burrito.
I call this category the Suburban Burrito due to a recent trend of the openings of higher scaled fast food places like Chipotle and QDoba. These burritos still have the same basics of the Mexican Burrito, but with all the bells and whistles. I'm talking grilled bell peppers & onions, sour cream, guac, a pico de gayo and a sauce. Also, the beans are not refried anymore, either pinto or black beans. If you get all the fixin's with the burrito, the poor lady folding the thing can barely wrap it into a burrito shape. At places like this, they are still made my Mexicans (typically) and cost around the $6 range. I'm split 50/50 on Chipotle and QDoba. They both make a mean fajita burrito.



4. The Hipster Burrito
This type of burrito is becoming more popular with the Hipster kids. All organic ingredients, a vegan burrito option, other weird stuff (for a burrito) like spinach, organic brown rice, designer cheese (i.e. Tillamook). They also have variations of burritos, like Asian or Thai burritos with asian veggies and a thai sauce. One of the big difference is that they are made by hipsters. You got guys wearing Metallica shirts to dudes with staches. Girls with bob cuts taking the orders. There is a joint like this by my house, Laughing Planet. My favorite there is the Holy Mole Burrito. it costs about $6.



5. The Breakfast Burrito
I think the name says it all. They come in varieties from your typical breakfast food like eggs, hash browns, some breakfast meat, you get the picture. To me a real breakfast burrito has to be chorizo and eggs. This is perfect hangover food because chorizo is filled with grease. These usually run about $4. at a takeout place and $7 at a sit-dwon diner. There is a big difference in a take-out place vs a sit down place. I prefer the greasy take-out place.



Don't be scared to try something new. Mix up the burrito in you. With all these different varieties, you could eat a burrito everyday and have a completely different meal. So go on out there and eat some burritos!

Cure for the common cold

I have had a cold for the past few days. I'm not one for taking a bunch of pills or med's. The only thing I usually take is DayQuil when at work. People will be sitting in my office and I'll ask them if they "wanna do some shots". They give me the weirdest look because they think I'm talking about liquor, but then I pull out the DayQuil.

I have heard people say that drinking booze actually helps with cold. If you think about it, a lot of cough syrups have alcohol in it (c-mon, you know you've gone "robo" at least once in High School). What got me thinking about this is last night, I was having a few drinks with my friends at the local bar. I was all congested and had a runny nose. I was drinking a beer (PBR of course) and was feeling like crap. Then I saw someone walk by with a hot drink. Then it popped in my head HOT TODDY. A hot toddy is basically Whiskey, lemon, sugar water, cloves, and hot water. I started drinking it and my head completely cleared up in minutes.



I have heard of other people saying what their drink of choice is to fight a cold. Here are some of them:

1. The Hemlocker - Once you feel a cold coming, shot of Jameson in the morning, shot of Jameson at lunch, glass of scotch before bed. He claims that the whiskey and scotch kills the cold



2. TRTM - Only drink screwdrivers. He believes the combo of alcohol and vitamin C in the OJ fights off colds.



3. The Russell - a glass (or bottle) of red wine each night. She believes that, well actually she thinks that red wine goes with anything so nothing is stopping her from drinking the big cat.



Who knows if this actually works, but I know for sure I'd rather be drunk when I'm sick rather than just sick. I did read on wikipedia that the American Lung Association "now recommends avoiding treating the common cold with alcoholic beverages as they have no curative effect and cause dehydration". But what do they know. I don't feel any better this morning, but I did feel better last night when I had a nice warm buzz going on.

Bee Movie Hidden Agenda

I went and saw that animated Jerry Seinfeld move "Bee Movie" last year during the Christmas break (For the ruling, it was the $3 theater, I went with a girl, and drank a pitcher of beer myself). The movie was pretty boring. It had a lot of references to other movies, had a lot of guest voices, but the movie itself was just not that funny. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't a Shrek either. After watching it, I thought ther was some hidden message or agenda in it but couldn't pin point what it was.



The movie was on HBO last night, so while I was doing laundry and cleaning house, I kept it on the tv. I finally realized the hidden agenda. I'll explain the scene's first before I tell you what I think it is. It's not obvious throughout the whole movie, but if you piece together some key scene's I think it's pretty obvious. Also before I start, I did an internet search on it and couldn't find anything or anyone that agreed with me or even made a reference. So here I go.

It starts out where they show all of the bee's busy at work pollinating flowers and making honey. Every bee gets assigned a specific job, which they do for the rest of their life. They are each very proud of their jobs and what they have created. One day Barry Bee (Seinfeld's character) get's out of the hive and finds his way into a grocery store (I skipped out a lot of the other details that don't apply). He is in shock that people are stealing their honey at large volumes. He finds out where they are getting all this honey from (a honey farm of course) and is pissed off that people are stealing the honey from the bee's.

Barry then sues the "Big 5" Honey farm companies. He eventually wins the case and they let all the bee's go free. They then give all the honey to the bee's and the bee's no longer have to work. They then go to show scene's of police arresting people who still continue to use the honey. They show an old lady drinking tie and putting a small packet of honey into it and then show cops jumping on her. They also show people who are hiding tons of gallons and raiding them as well. Skip to the end of the movie and all the plants are dying because since the bee's are no longer working (creating honey), they are no longer go out to pollinate plants. At the end, the bee's realize that they pay a greater role in society than just making honey. What they do affect many other people. So they need to stop being selfish and start making honey again.

Here's my dissection of the movie. The bee's represent musicians and bands. The honey is the songs and records they produce. The honey farm is the internet and the humans who use the honey are people who download music off the internet. Barry Bee sues the Big 5, which I would guess would be the big download sites like Napster. The scene of people getting arrested is symbolic of a teenager getting fined for downloading 1 Metallica song to someone who has millions of downloaded songs.

The end of the movie where all the plants die symbolizes the downfall of the music industry if they do not learn to adapt to modern technology and learn to grow with the trends. I think it is also saying that musicians can't be so selfish when it come to their music because it music plays a great importance in peoples lives in many different ways. Everyone in the movie hated the bee's after the lawsuit, just as fans hate the musicians that sue their fans (go fuck yourself Metallica).



So bottom line, I think the bee movie was Jerry Seinfeld's attempt to share his feelings about the selfishness of the music industry. Being in bands for many years myself, I don't necessarily agree with stealing of music, but I do think that record companies need to grasp the fact that times are changing and grow with the changes, not just sue everyone. Thanks to sites like iTune's they are starting to roll with the changes.

The writing on the wall

I love going to bars and reading all the crap people wrote on the walls/stalls in the bathrooms. You get your typical "for a good time call _______" or "your mom's a whore". Some people get more creative and respond to them like:

"I f*cked your mother!"

and someone responded below it and said:

"Go home dad you're drunk!"

You get everything from politics, racism, sexism, drunken blabber, pictures of penis', gang tagging, band stickers... Some bars are constantly cleaning and painting the restrooms, while other embrace it. Some bars go as far as to turn the walls into chalk boards and actually provide the chalk for you to write with. I have noticed this trend popping up in bars around my neighborhood. I typically do my traditional "714" tag (the Orange County Area code!) or the old high school "squareroot 4" (or deuce). I was in a bar and saw a few funny ones last night. First, I love the cleaver people that wrote things backwards on the chalkboard so that when yer pissin or washing your hands and you look in the mirror, it says something like "Go f*ck yourself".

The one that really caught my eye that I thought was awesome is shown below. This caught my eye because I took 6 levels of calculus in college.



I found this cool web page while writing this blog dedicated strictly to bathroom writings. Check it out. I'm gonna put it in my links section too.

http://www.thewritingsonthestall.com/

After Hours Party at my house.

For some reason, on the weekends after drinking for 7 hours straight, my neighbors and I always think it's a good idea to keep the party rolling in my apartment. On a typical weekend, we start drinking around 7 or 8pm. Then we go to a bar or party around 10 or 11, close out the place at 1:45 so we can get to the store to buy beer and drunk food, then end up at my place by 2:15. This is when the trouble starts. I love cable, but why do you have to have Karaoke "On Demand" on my cable system? It doesn't help either that I have a PA and a mic (I used to play in bands so it's ok to have this crap). next thing you know, my drunk ass is singing karaoke to "Baby Got Back" or some crap like that. Next thing you know, I wake up as 10 am, probably still a bit drunk, and wake up to knocked over beers, chip crumbs, empty packs of smokes, 100's of can's & bottles and people passed out all over my apartment.

Since at this point, like I mentioned, I am typically still drunk, I have motivation to clean my house before the hang-over kicks in. Oh on a side note, when we go to buy beer, we go for quantity, not quality, so the hang-overs are that much more fun. So this exact scenario happened on Friday night. Here are pictures of the aftermath, after I cleaned up.





So after kicking everyone out of my apartment, cleaning up all the cans and bottles, eating some food, I now go back to sleep until 3pm. Now I'm hurting, hurting real bad. I run into my neighbors and they are hurting just as bad. So we walk to Zupans, get vitamin waters, juice and Jeno's pizza (the best hangover food besides a bloody mary). That would be the only time we leave our apartments all day. Now it's veg'ing out on the couch and watching stupid Will Farrell movies. The sad part is I can't wait to do it again this weekend.

Didn't you notice it's raining...

Yesterday after work, I decided to grab a cup of coffee at Peets Coffee before I hit the freeway. The parking lot was crowded so I had to park a little ways away from the place. When I got out of my car, I noticed big dark clouds heading towards my direction. I remember thinking to myself "I better hurry up and get in an out before that cloud rolls through". I walk in Peets and there's only 2 people in line. I think "Perfect, in and out". Then I notice that the person standing in front of me has a menu of everything they have there. I didn't even know they had paper menu's! The lady goes up and I see her pointing to things in it and asking what they are. Now I realize this person has no idea what she's doing. So 10 minutes go by (seriously) and she's finally done asking stupid questions and ordered her drinks. I could tell she ordered more than 2 drinks. I then see her walk over to a table with 2 kids. Now I'm thinking that if she ordered more than 2 drinks, what the hell did she order for her kids. Now there are about 8 people behind me in line because this idiot took 10 mins to order. So now I'm at bat to order my drink, med non-fat latte, extra hot, no foam (ya i know that's gay, but I worked in a coffee shop in college and you get used to this shit). Boom, ordered and paid for in 30 sec's.

Now the fun begins. I walk over to where they making the drinks to wait for mine. There's is only 1 guy making the drinks. He is slow as shit. So I see that he is making the drinks for the lady in front of me in line. He immediately pulls out 3 blenders and cups of ice. Oh, and since this lady took so long, the clouds are now over the building and it's pouring rain. GREAT. So the guy starts making these blended drinks 1 at a time. I guess no one ever taught him multi-tasking in his GED classes. So now, I'm getting pissed because I've been here for over 15 minutes. By the way, WHO ORDERS COLD BLENDED DRINKS WHEN ITS 45 DEGREES OUTSIDE AND POURING RAIN. The guy makes all of her dumb drinks, then she asks to have 1 of them put into 2 cups (insert your 2 girls 1 cup joke here). Now the guy starts to make my drink. Now I've been in the damn coffee shop for 20 mins. He finishes my drink and I head towards the door. Not only is it still pouring rain, but literally the second I step foot outside, the rain turns to Hail. AWESOME. Luckily I was at Bridgeport village so they have umbrella's in front of all the stores.



Side note: Who was the genius who decided to build an outdoor mall/shopping area in a city where it rains 9 months out of the year. Good job Einstein.

I finally make it back to my car with my coffee and the umbrella. There's no way in hell I'm gonna walk back to a store to put the umbrella back, so I just tossed it into the bushes and drove off. Then I get on the freeway and bumper to bumper traffic. Just shoot me now.

Casual Wednesday's

On Wednesday, we had the option to dress casual if we paid $5. The money went to the American Heart Association. Since I am a giving person, I decided to donate the 5 bucks (by the way, I need my tax receipt so I can write it off). Typically I wear slacks and a dress shirt to wear. It usually takes me no time to get ready in the morning. Dress shirt, kinda matching slacks, black or brown shoes, and I'm out the door. For some reason, it took me at least twice as long to get ready. All I ever wear when I'm not at work is jeans, a t-shirt, and black converse. I think a lot of the extra time had to do with the fact that I had no clean clothes since I was out of town for a week. Secondly, it was cold outside so I had to decide on what jacket to wear. When I dress in business clothes, I only wear 1 jacket (black dickies jacket). So I finally decided on black jeans, black band shirt, black vintage motorcycle club jacket, black con's (no, I'm not goth by the way). All I need is a Cadillac and i would be a rancid song. Since it took me much longer to get ready on a casual day, does this make me gay? I'll have to check the rule book on that.



The second bad thing about Casual Wednesday, is that mentally you think that since you're in jeans at work, it must be Friday. You wake up the next morning and its only F'ing THURSDAY. This is such a cock tease to the weekend. Now I'm back at work in dress clothes with 2 more days to the weekend. Thanks! The only good that came out of casual Wednesday is that I now realize I have to do laundry before the weekend otherwise I'll have to wear dirty, smoke filled clothes. Wait, actually that's a good thing since you can still smoke in bars. F the laundry, dirty clothes here I come.

The Liver and Wallet Experiment

As of this week, I have decided to not drink during the work week (Mon-Thurs). I want to see how much money I can save. So far this week, I've had to go to a birthday dinner on Monday night and a bbq & bar last night. My friends were all in shock that I was not drinking (does this mean I have a problem? STOP JUDGING ME). So far here are my saving based on what I would usually order in drinks

Monday - Restaurant - 2 beers ~ $10
Tuesday - BBQ - 6 pack or 2 tall boys ~ $8
Tuesday - Bar - 3 PBR's ~ $9

I have created a graph to show the savings over a months period. Here are my assumptions:

Typically drink 2-3x's per week - For this, I will assume on the high end and use 3
Cost/week = 2 days data (above) + another $8 for a third day of drinking = $35
Weeks/month: worst case is 5 weeks



Based off of this, I will save $140 - $175 per month depending on how many weeks are in that month. Oh and maybe I'll lose some weight doing this as well, no promises.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm still going to get blacked out wasted and use lame pick-up lines in the bars on Friday and Saturday nights, just not during the week anymore.

The Best- Worst Blog on the Internet

Blogs are stupid. I can't write that well. I only use the internet for eBay and Craigslist. Because of this, I am starting a blog. Lets see how often I update it.