Brick Fight

I wrote out a bigger post that was more vitriolic (towards the NRA, not anyone here) and whiny, but dumped it. My problems with the NRA aren't lobbying. They're public relations. Nobody without a gun knows about the NRA's information or safety programs. All they see are news stories of NRA figures blaming victims, appealing to nutsos, or organizing pro-gun rallies down the street from a major shooting within the month of the tragedy. Their public relations arm is losing the non-owner voter, and it's going to seriously hurt them (and us) down the line. People to whom pro-gun and anti-gun ownership is a very important issue are both in the minority. The rest are fence-sitters that you have to keep on your side. Otherwise, opinion shifts away from you, resulting in a legislature that you can no longer lobby.

Same. We get about one last go before it's all apples and butternut squash in PA until winter, so I was just sucking down cantaloupes and red/yellow watermelons. They make great drinks as well.
 
Between horror stories about Bolsheviks and "re-assignments" in the old country, my Ukrainian babysitters used to feed us this stuff they called Vareniki (lived in a neighborhood of displaced Central and Eastern European families). They were sort of like pierogies. They probably weren't as tasty as I remember, but whenever I see pierogies, I get nostalgic for vareniki.

A Ronson to surpass Metal Gear.

Now that we've been able to get all the useless shit out of my grandparents' house (they were Wal-Mart bin junkies), we're starting to get to the good stuff. I finally found the High Standard .22 I've been trying to find in that mess forever. It's the only pistol I've ever really been able to shoot with any accuracy, but it jams about every fourth shot.

Now that we've been able to get all the useless shit out of my grandparents' house (they were Wal-Mart bin junkies), we're starting to get to the good stuff. I finally found the High Standard .22 I've been trying to find in that mess forever. It's the only pistol I've ever really been able to shoot with any accuracy, but it jams about every fourth shot.

Always forget to include this guy, my most-used rifle:

It's a Savage 4C my grandpa bought in the '50s and my dad gave to me. This is the guy I always take on my hikes and camping trips. It's the only gun I have that's actually fed me. I really like it because it's one of the few .22s I've handled that feels comfortable for a grown man to fire and I've had no problem pegging rabbits and frogs at 100 feet with it.

Always forget to include this guy, my most-used rifle:

It's a Savage 4C my grandpa bought in the '50s and my dad gave to me. This is the guy I always take on my hikes and camping trips. It's the only gun I have that's actually fed me. I really like it because it's one of the few .22s I've handled that feels comfortable for a grown man to fire and I've had no problem pegging rabbits and frogs at 100 feet with it.

I got to admit, the reasons above are why I don't really get into most gun channels. The amount of times I've clicked away as some shaky video with a mush-mouthed hick in an iron lung starts with
 
"Uhhhhhh this is uhhh the uh Sturm-Gyooer 44 and uhh fun fact actually it was uhhh actually Adolf Hitler himself actually who actually uhhh."
 
It's not really always action that grabs me. What usually grabs me by your videos is clear, un-obscured views of the guns, occasional action, and good conversation between you and Patrick. Likewise, for Forgotten Weapons, I know he's going to give me good views of the interesting and moving parts, and a massive dump of information without any sort of politics or hyperbole. Setting a tone of what's to come instead of just mumbling with no direction can help at least someone like me pay attention.

I got to admit, the reasons above are why I don't really get into most gun channels. The amount of times I've clicked away as some shaky video with a mush-mouthed hick in an iron lung starts with
 
"Uhhhhhh this is uhhh the uh Sturm-Gyooer 44 and uhh fun fact actually it was uhhh actually Adolf Hitler himself actually who actually uhhh."
 
It's not really always action that grabs me. What usually grabs me by your videos is clear, un-obscured views of the guns, occasional action, and good conversation between you and Patrick. Likewise, for Forgotten Weapons, I know he's going to give me good views of the interesting and moving parts, and a massive dump of information without any sort of politics or hyperbole. Setting a tone of what's to come instead of just mumbling with no direction can help at least someone like me pay attention.

I'm also seeing a spike in appreciation in my industry as well. Young folks don't want to eat garbage anymore. In the same way with how we were able to get lots of sweets in the HFCS boom and went overboard, the people raised on that are starting to rebel from what I can tell. It's really quite nice, and since it takes more effort and expertise to make real, good food, kitchen incomes are starting to finally get a little higher.
 
I regularly get people who will either squeal over glee when I mention I work a truck, or people who scoff at me being a part of a fad. I don't see food trucks as some big game-changer. They'll likely die back out in a few years, with mainstays sticking around. The big thing they have going for them are:
 
1) Cheap. The core problem with the modern American restaurant is cost. You either need to build a building, which is incredibly expensive, or take over an older one which can be (oddly enough) even more expensive. Code inspections are not grandfathered in, so lots of hapless owners who just spent the last 80% of their budget on fancy tableware are side-swiped by the fact that they need to spend $10,000+ each on new fire-proofing, ventilation, and plumbing after forking over ten life-savings' worth of dough for the liquor license. This means that someone who's worked as a chef for 30k a year is right out as a financier on a restaurant. Most people in the US who fund a restaurant opening are either a single wealthy individual or a group of fickle people with no interest or experience in the industry who want an immediate return on their investments.
 
2) Most are started by people with the actual interest in food. The latter two groups of people produce a lot of problems that result in bad restaurants. It's usually said that to open a restaurant, someone needs more money than brains. Unfortunately, when someone's money is at stake, they really want control over everything. Since we've established that these people aren't particularly bright, they pretty much proceed to fucking shit right up as the first customers sit down. I've worked at places that demanded a 6% food cost to the point where we were butterflying Tyson's garbage "chicken" while the owner tried every scheme in the book or the investment hive-mind would fire a chef "wasting" money by not having a gigantic menu meant to please every pleb on the planet. There's just this giant snowball of stupid horseshit that could have been avoided if people were patient and realized that people want some good food. Food trucks are typically run by people who want to make good food, so if you want to eat from someone who at least wants to try, then it beats the traditional US restaurant system of trying to sucker what you can out of people. Cutting all of this results in:
 
3) Simplicity of service. "The customer is always right" is so dangerous in the business, especially these days. This common problem is "one person complained, go to DefCon 4." One person complained the prime rib looked undercooked, so now we need to make it into well-done superheated carbon that nobody will eat. The waitstaff refuses to even politely recommend against a customer's request, resulting in several customers who would have enjoyed something new leaving un-satisfied due to their own (perfectly acceptable, mind you) ignorance. Being able to sell what we make removes so much of the stupid garbage of management and poor service. I made something, now I can sell it. I don't have to have a waiter acquiesce to every whim out of fear of losing a gratuity. I can say "My way or the high way."
 
We still insist the best day we ever had was the day where we broke down to a few peoples' demands and passive-aggressively served our version of the "Classic" American Taco: Ground beef, lettuce, cheese and tomato made with local farm ingredients. Our regulars didn't like it, and it was one of our worst days. The next week we run the weirdest fucking crap we could think of and sold out every day. We've had so many people just succumb and try our food the way we recommend it, and have them come back regularly afterwards because I made what I thought was good and convinced them to try it. I think of what would have happened if I had left out this or that in the "sauce-on-the-side" vein of my more conventional jobs. We'd have probably just had people who ate what they wanted to eat, and gained no interest. It pays to remember that you sell a product, and it doesn't hurt to try to sell that damned product.
 
 
By no means am I saying trucks are superior, or that there aren't a few dumb-dumbs serving bad food out of them. I'm just saying that they have an edge in allowing people to try to enter the market without the usual hurdles that block perfectly adequate proposals or people from starting something up.

Chorizo (Mexican) and poached egg.

Chorizo (Mexican) and poached egg.

Someone on SA used the phrase "Man-pack the Fagot launchers" like three years ago (and not as a joke), and I still giggle about it.

Every time I see the TFB comments, I get reminded of that series of joke posts with an AR-15 shoved into a Sprite box passed off as a "hidden weapon."

That's really interesting and I'm glad you took it all into account. I get to handle all kinds of WW1/WW2 stuff at my museum job, but not too much Cold War stuff.

I met a forumer from an ancient land...

I would like to just see a Joint Chiefs meeting where they each show up in casual clothes with like a sixpack and a few handles of Old Grandad, and are just like "Okay, truth injection time." Then they lock the door and start talking about Soviet unit structure and equipment.
 
Lemnitzer kills a Nat Sherman in two drags, leans back, cups his hands over his eyes and whispers:
 
"fuuuuuuuuuuuuck"

I would like to just see a Joint Chiefs meeting where they each show up in casual clothes with like a sixpack and a few handles of Old Grandad, and are just like "Okay, truth injection time." Then they lock the door and start talking about Soviet unit structure and equipment.
 
Lemnitzer kills a Nat Sherman in two drags, leans back, cups his hands over his eyes and whispers:
 
"fuuuuuuuuuuuuck"

My friend was working for a bakery, and the owner of said bakery bought a food truck. The owner didn't really want another project, so my buddy offered to take it over to make authentic Mexican food (he's a huge Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy nut). He was given complete autonomy to run it, and hired me up to help. We do tacos, tamales, drinks, and guacamole. Everything is from scratch, including stuff like the tortilla and tamale doughs, which we take from local corn that we soak and grind ourselves. We'll do more complicated dishes for when we cater, too.

We're mostly at the stage where we have to drag the dullards kicking and screaming into the right places, but it's certainly easier these days. If I can sell nopales to Pennsyltuckians, then we're on a good track.
 
We're doing sous vide for all of our meats on the truck now, and I have to say I've been converted. I wasn't at all impressed by the few times I'd seen it, and I never imagined it to be conducive to a business that cooks in volume, but I'm sorely mistaken. Throwing a pork shoulder into a bath and letting it go for a day or so cuts at least two hours off of a prep shift, and results in a shoulder that lets me pull all the meat off with my fingers.

Shame about your fish-head soup, it's been one of my favorites wherever I go.
 
(Keep in mind I'm talking about majority of urban and suburban America, and many places don't apply to the generalizations)
 
Food in the US is getting better. Cooking five years ago is night and day compared to now. I work in traditional kitchens off-season these days, and I think I make one well-done or med-well a month these days, when both would dominate ticket line-ups (I'm not a snob, both have their places for certain cuts, but you get where I'm going) while I was still in college. Anthony Bourdain gets down on himself lately for Kitchen Confidential (and I mostly agree he should be), but he's more important today than 90% of chefs because he and Zimmern built a foundation of reviving taste in America. Seeing Zimmern smile and melt as he jammed a raw urchin into his mis-shapen head was more important than any cooking show barring Julia Child's.
 
I have cookbooks going back to the '40s or so, and you can see that around the mid '60s, there was a huge ingredient bottleneck. Half the recipes are usually tough beef cuts, chicken, iceberg, and celery. There was some kind of disdain for being seen to serve or eat anything that wasn't "clean" and plain. The '70s, when  chain restaurants and massive standardization of food hit, people could demand to eat the same thing throughout the entire year. The phrase "in season" pretty much doesn't exist in culinary books between the early '70s up to maybe the late '00s. It's only in the past few years that I've seen the words "seasonal" alongside words like "chops" or "offal" again.
 
Farmers' Markets are popping up all over. It seems like there's a new one every year in my area. Vendor testimonies corroborate some of my un-sourced ramblings. 25-35 y/o. generations and ones above the 70 y/o. mark buy up chard, ask if bread's been fermented, mark their calendar for strawberry season, and research what they can make out of lamb, goat, and pork/beef trimmings. There's still the gluten with the younger crowd, but it's dying down and GMO has thankfully been a wet fart in food controversy. Glassy-eyed baby boomers still demand year-round iceberg and open-mouth chew snap peas and sweet corn while scoffing at poblanos picked the day before. For once, I'm interested in being where I am, and I owe it to two formerly-homeless cooks eating meat jelly for the Travel Channel.

It could just stand out when the opinions of Japanese firearms are generally low to abysmal based on correct and incorrect information. When someone who knows quite a bit about firearms compliments them on what should be uncontroversial design choices, then it stands out, especially when they know what they're talking about. Strategically, things like clip-fed machine guns were bad choices and hurt combat effectiveness overall, but there's nothing to suggest that the firearms that the Japanese fielded  in large numbers were intrinsically mechanically terrible until the end of the war (not counting things like the Type 99 and Nambu, which were either rare or rarely used).
 
It's kind of like the whole debate on bolt-actions of WW2. Besides a few harping points, they were rifles that were going to be used from a months up to about 6 years, and niggling little debates about things like bolt wear don't really come in. They generally all have the same accuracy, mostly have the same size or weight, and could produce similar volumes of fire (And yes, I'm taking things like the Enfield into account). Governments genuinely had to try to produce a bad bolt-action service rifle by that point (like the messed-up Carcano carbines for example), and practical differences can only be noted in things like weight, comfort, and ease of using the bolt. An Arisaka isn't all that different from a Mauser, from a Mosin, from an Enfield etc. when it's cleaned, oiled, and being operated by a trained soldier.
 
I guess what I'm saying is a compliment goes a long way when most of the focus is on the poor aspects of something, and that the Japanese generally have a poor reputation, but did some things right that aren't focused on or didn't even really matter. A compliment's a compliment.

Shame about your fish-head soup, it's been one of my favorites wherever I go.
 
(Keep in mind I'm talking about majority of urban and suburban America, and many places don't apply to the generalizations)
 
Food in the US is getting better. Cooking five years ago is night and day compared to now. I work in traditional kitchens off-season these days, and I think I make one well-done or med-well a month these days, when both would dominate ticket line-ups (I'm not a snob, both have their places for certain cuts, but you get where I'm going) while I was still in college. Anthony Bourdain gets down on himself lately for Kitchen Confidential (and I mostly agree he should be), but he's more important today than 90% of chefs because he and Zimmern built a foundation of reviving taste in America. Seeing Zimmern smile and melt as he jammed a raw urchin into his mis-shapen head was more important than any cooking show barring Julia Child's.
 
I have cookbooks going back to the '40s or so, and you can see that around the mid '60s, there was a huge ingredient bottleneck. Half the recipes are usually tough beef cuts, chicken, iceberg, and celery. There was some kind of disdain for being seen to serve or eat anything that wasn't "clean" and plain. The '70s, when  chain restaurants and massive standardization of food hit, people could demand to eat the same thing throughout the entire year. The phrase "in season" pretty much doesn't exist in culinary books between the early '70s up to maybe the late '00s. It's only in the past few years that I've seen the words "seasonal" alongside words like "chops" or "offal" again.
 
Farmers' Markets are popping up all over. It seems like there's a new one every year in my area. Vendor testimonies corroborate some of my un-sourced ramblings. 25-35 y/o. generations and ones above the 70 y/o. mark buy up chard, ask if bread's been fermented, mark their calendar for strawberry season, and research what they can make out of lamb, goat, and pork/beef trimmings. There's still the gluten with the younger crowd, but it's dying down and GMO has thankfully been a wet fart in food controversy. Glassy-eyed baby boomers still demand year-round iceberg and open-mouth chew snap peas and sweet corn while scoffing at poblanos picked the day before. For once, I'm interested in being where I am, and I owe it to two formerly-homeless cooks eating meat jelly for the Travel Channel.

Shame about your fish-head soup, it's been one of my favorites wherever I go.
 
(Keep in mind I'm talking about majority of urban and suburban America, and many places don't apply to the generalizations)
 
Food in the US is getting better. Cooking five years ago is night and day compared to now. I work in traditional kitchens off-season these days, and I think I make one well-done or med-well a month these days, when both would dominate ticket line-ups (I'm not a snob, both have their places for certain cuts, but you get where I'm going) while I was still in college. Anthony Bourdain gets down on himself lately for Kitchen Confidential (and I mostly agree he should be), but he's more important today than 90% of chefs because he and Zimmern built a foundation of reviving taste in America. Seeing Zimmern smile and melt as he jammed a raw urchin into his mis-shapen head was more important than any cooking show barring Julia Child's.
 
I have cookbooks going back to the '40s or so, and you can see that around the mid '60s, there was a huge ingredient bottleneck. Half the recipes are usually tough beef cuts, chicken, iceberg, and celery. There was some kind of disdain for being seen to serve or eat anything that wasn't "clean" and plain. The '70s, when  chain restaurants and massive standardization of food hit, people could demand to eat the same thing throughout the entire year. The phrase "in season" pretty much doesn't exist in culinary books between the early '70s up to maybe the late '00s. It's only in the past few years that I've seen the words "seasonal" alongside words like "chops" or "offal" again.
 
Farmers' Markets are popping up all over. It seems like there's a new one every year in my area. Vendor testimonies corroborate some of my un-sourced ramblings. 25-35 y/o. generations and ones above the 70 y/o. mark buy up chard, ask if bread's been fermented, mark their calendar for strawberry season, and research what they can make out of lamb, goat, and pork/beef trimmings. There's still the gluten with the younger crowd, but it's dying down and GMO has thankfully been a wet fart in food controversy. Glassy-eyed baby boomers still demand year-round iceberg and open-mouth chew snap peas and sweet corn while scoffing at poblanos picked the day before. For once, I'm interested in being where I am, and I owe it to two formerly-homeless cooks eating meat jelly for the Travel Channel.