Marc's Musings Reality from Marc's point of view!

Swiss Chalet is a franchise available almost exclusively in Canada. There are a sorry few (3 as of this writing) stores in the United States, but generally you need to travel to the GWN to sample the Swiss Chalet cuisine.

As of late, the past 5-6 years, Swiss Chalet has become less and less dependable for good food or service. But when it’s good it’s *really* good. Their strip fries are slightly greasy with crispy portions on the outside and wonderfully greasy inside. They hold their own against ketchup or their wonderful Swiss Chalet sauce (both at the same time if you are adventurous) and rate a solid 5 out of 5 on Marc’s french fry scale.

Posted under French Fries, Gastronomy, Opinions

I was discussing airplanes with my father earlier today and how the advent of smaller, more affordable jet aircraft will likely affect air travel of the future. Right now such aircraft are so expensive that only very wealthy folks or corporations can afford to take advantage of them. But with new “air taxi” services starting to come online hosting fleets of smaller, much more affordable aircraft, and with our wonderful TSA with all their extremism, I can see a stratification of air travel on the horizon.

Right now we have the big, stuffy common carriers – who fight tooth and nail to ensure that there are no laws to protect the rights of the traveling public – and the more agile economy carriers – who work hard to keep air travel at reasonable prices.

The Achilles heel of both carriers is that they must operate out of airports that are governed by, with all due respect, unimaginative, pandering dolts. There is a tremendous potential market growing out there as America’s super-affluent middle class decides that it would much rather not be caged in airplanes waiting for delayed flight slots or trapped in airports after having surrendered dignity and just-as-valuable time to get past the uninspired, callous, rude and ineffective security systems.

I am predicting that regional airports in America need to gear up for a boon in business as America’s middle class begin to discover affordable air transportation alternatives in their local cities while the poorer classes become relegated to the airports for long-distance travel much as the current underclass are today relegated to bus terminals for their travel needs. Just as with the bus terminal class, poorer folks do not have options and cannot exercise their power to shop elsewhere. But many Americans have more money now than they know what to do with. It will be interesting to see how much dignity is worth in airfare price premium.

*Update* Just saw this story about folks being kept on a Delta plane for 7 hours on Friday… *sigh*

Posted under Aviation, Opinions

Although somewhat variable depending if you get them fresh or not Chili’s fries rate a solid 4 out of 5 for me. These are strip fries that generally are slightly crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. They hold their salt well and have a pleasant peppery seasoning sprinkled over them.

Posted under French Fries, Gastronomy, Opinions

OK, I know what you’re thinking, but you really do *have* to see this.

For creativity alone this person deserves accolades. Then technical prowess for their costume. It’s a one-woman cast of dozens!

Posted under Amusing

I *do* like my french fries. While you must head to North Africa, specifically Morocco, for the best fries that I’ve found to date, there are plenty of great offerings here in continental North America.

On a scale of 5, with 5 being the best, I’d give the fries at Taco Mac a solid 4.

Posted under French Fries, Gastronomy, Opinions

Holy cow! My TIVO offered me “Wildest Police Videos” today in the suggestions section so I thought I’d take a peek. The special effects are even worse now than they were before when I gave up watching it a couple of years ago.

I really enjoy watching the type of videos presented in this show, and host John Bunnell, while a little big on himself, is an entertaining enough host/voiceover. But who is the genius who thinks that every time a car moves there needs to be the sound of screeching tires, or whenever a tractor trailer is shown that we need to hear a truck horn sounding.

Also, I think a good quarter of television viewers these days must have some kind of DVR unit now where they can replay these videos as they see fit (if not, and they want the replay ability, they can buy one). I think it would be useful to replay the action now and then for some crucial segment to make a point, but pointlessly replaying the entire video segment by segment over and over again is obviously just trying to fill up the timeslot with no value-add to the presentation. Even cutting to the host and having him stand there and describe the action is preferable to those terrible effects.

I finally got fed up with the excess and just deleted the program without even getting half way through it.

What is really needed is to have the already great action sequences with John’s description of the circumstances (largely what he’s doing now) and then, to fill in the time freed up by not replaying each scene a half dozen times, have some follow up to the action. You know, “Was sentenced to 5 years in jail.” or “The policeman was injured but returned to work after 3 weeks.”.

This stuff is already sensational enough, it doesn’t need any help. Just some context.

Posted under Movies / TV, Opinions

This spoof on those street magic videos is great. What do you think would happen if someone *really* could do the tricks that those street magicians do… and doesn’t stop doing them?

The two hapless marks in these videos are a riot, and “David Blaine” takes himself *almost* as seriously as the real thing…

The other videos in this series are here and here.

Posted under Amusing