Gimme More Biscuits!

I had some of the worst restaurant service ever on Saturday. A nice way to begin a blog, right? Our crew was due for a night out to eat, so of course I was in for that. We decided to go to Red Lobster in Morgantown. That turned out to be a huge thumbs down. The food was good, we at least had that part right, but outside of that, ouch. I'm the type that gives servers the benefit of the doubt, but the ones we had that night, pathetic and I'm being nice about that. I'm still the type of person that I'm going to leave a good tip regardless, but at least put some effort into the night, show me you're not hating life. First off, who all was in for this run? We had Ozzie, Maria, Spank, Alicia, Mudcat, Sally, his chick, his chick's buddy, and myself. We get there and knew we'd have a long wait ahead. I was in no hurry, but still wasn't wanting to wait and wait. The wait time they gave us? 1 hour and 20 minutes, great. Luckily, we got in at about the 45 minute mark.



As we got our orders in, which took forever, the waiting game began. We were already in our seats, so you'd figure it'd be time to rock, but nope. They brought our salads out, but no biscuits. What? The main reason to hit up Red Lobster to me is the biscuits. You can't go wrong with that. I could make a meal just on those things. I started to get restless. I'm the type that can't stay still for too long and I was in serious need of biscuits. We ask what's up with the biscuits and finally they bring some. There's a problem though. You can't just bring one per person. As soon as they sit them down, we wipe them out. Then it takes 20 minutes for them to bring another thing of them. I'm not into griping a lot, but I'm fairly easy to please when I go out to eat. However..

Most of the guys ordered the endless shrimp. I'll get on that tangent here in a few, but I went a different route and went with the steak and lobster oscar, the first time trying that. It was really good as you get a New York strip (gotta be medium/rare, closer to rare as I want it red) with lobster bits over top and shrimp all around it. I'm not the type that is going to eat 150 shrimp, so the endless for me isn't a great buy in my opinion. With Spank, Ozzie, and Mudcat part of the mix, these guys were on the prowl to attack this food to epic proportions. One problem is that when you order the endless, they bring you two little orders of whatever kind of shrimp you want at a time. That's fine and dandy, but as soon as they bring these out, just like with biscuits, they're wiped out. A solution? Just bring a table full of shrimp and let them really go wild on them. They're going to eat a ton anyways, it's not like they will go to waste. I know they don't want people going there and seeing how much they can eat at once, but why even advertise the endless if they're going to be stingy with it? To me, it's not really "endless".



Ok, one more food topic and I'll get onto other things. Between nine of us, we had two servers, so what's the hard part with that? I know I'd be a horrible waiter, so that's why I usually tip decent for the benefit of the doubt. You have to be able to do the basics at least though. Get some refills when necessary, check up on us, it's nothing major we're asking and we didn't give them a hard time. They finally learned later in the night to bring a pitcher of tea and water for us to devour because it'd take them an half hour to get back to us. Our guy waiter reminded us of Chris Bosh of basketball fame, looked a lot like him, I should've taken a pic. Due to that comparison Ozzie gave, he then started dropping Bosh off his fantasy NBA radar list this season for the bad service. In the grand total of things, we left Shinnston at 6:00 and by the time we were done eating, we didn't get home till 10:30. Morgantown Red Lobster, that might be my last trip to that place for a long long time. Uniontown or Parkersburg for the next one definitely and the rest of the crew agrees.

I'm usually up on just about all the new technology things except for one. I've always had a junk cell phone that I rarely ever used. It sat in the car and collected dust and was rarely ever turned on, seriously. This past week I figured why not get something that is with the times. 20 years late on the cell phone scene I know I am, but I'm finally in the mix with an iPhone. I'm loving this thing too. Not that I really needed it that bad, but it'll just be a new toy for me to play with. My buddies are joking that I go from nothing and then make that my first actual real cell phone, why not. Plus, I get 15% off each monthly bill for being a teacher, so I had to cash in on that.



I won't waste much time on the phone thing since nobody cares, but I'll go one more paragraph on it at least. I can see a wreck coming one day using this thing while I drive. I know it's not smart to do, but everyone else apparently does it and I've already found myself goofing off on it while behind the wheel. I did already realize I get messed up bad if I play with my phone when riding in the back seat, I got car sick fairly good after the food trip on Saturday, but live and learn. I'm not huge on talking on the phone too much, but all the other things on this beast have made it worth it for me so far. The apps alone are fun to play with and you can find ones that do just about anything you can think of. Plus, I'm already overly addicted to being online anyways, now I have an excuse to be online when I'm away from my computer, just what I need. Send me to internet rehab already. The internet connection is really smooth on it and it works anywhere you are at, so that's good times. Now I can mess around with MySpace and Facebook at work, when otherwise I wasn't able to through our blockages. I'm crazy busy at work, but you can't expect me to go all day without finding some good free time can you? Of course not. And one last thing that has had confused me for a long time. Whether it be an iPod or iPhone, I don't understand one bit why people pay for songs on there? You seriously can't find that somewhere else online? Or is it just the principle that you don't want it for free? That's a total rip off in my opinion I guess, maybe I'm just a dirty pirate. Thumbs down to iTunes cards as I'd never have one, which gets the same finger of shame that Morgantown Red Lobster gets.

Speaking of the technology game, one I haven't jumped into yet but may is Twitter. I have fun reading a lot of athlete pages as some are really good. These include Shaq, Ocho Cinco, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Love to name a few who have some worth your time. I'm on Facebook a lot, but never update my status a ton like some people do, although I enjoy reading status labels just to be nosy. Out of my crew, my favorite status messages that crack me up include in no particular order: Bart, Sidelli, TheAnswer, Wilbur, and Cork's brother-in-law Dale. It's a good time killer and we're all bored and nosy anyways, that's the point of the whole deal if you ask me. I'm not sure why either, I just never did the every 5 minute update to let people know what's up. Then again, most people that I talk to online hit me up through AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger as I always have all three connected 24/7 with away messages, even when I'm not home. I guess Facebook would just be another one that I'd be updating too much. I feel Twitter is the same, but you are only given 40 characters per tweet to get it out there. I may get tired of it very quick, but I'm going to give it a whirl for nothing else. If you're already on there, hit me up with your page too. Visit mine at www.twitter.com/Bird33WV



It's that time of year for high school football action. My old school hasn't been good in ages, but still nothing much else goes on in town. Last year I went to pretty much every game, even some long road trips such as Lewis County where they got their brains pounded in. Friday night I hit up the mighty Cougs game and yes, they lost again. I predicted them to get this win as I thought they'd be able to get a few this year, but it looks to be a crazy long season. I'll still be along for the ride though. I've never seen as many penalties in my life against Braxton County. Half of the fun of going is seeing the local characters and the fact that everyone in town thinks they could coach the team. They all have the answers, yet have no clue about football.

Rob Dyrdek is back and on to giving us some quality TV entertainment. Last week started a new season of Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory on MTV. If you haven't seen before, you're missing out and then some. Rob is 35, but lives his life as basically a little kid. That reminds me of someone else I know. Hey, taht's me. That's my strategy too, might as well have some fun with it. Rob gets to goof off all day and do whatever and gets a TV show based on that, crazy. Yet a lot of us are hooked on the show, I know I am anyways. DJ Drama makes that show in my mind. He's Rob's cousin and is there to more or less get picked on and be the comedy side of things. In the opener this year, Rob's plan is to be a horse jockey. You have to watch how Rob's quest on this turns out, some funny stuff. Somehow, he gets in a legit horse race and ends up winning the thing. One episode down and it's off to a great start. Thursday nights at 9:00 Eastern, be there.



What does this upcoming week hold? The usual work grind, but that's nothing to write about really. Later in the week could have some things to do though in the area. Stickball is on the menu in Nutter Fort as we hope to get a game going sometime this week. Wednesday night fellas if the weather holds up, that's the plan, get at me. Then the weekend could be packed. I'm deciding if I want to make the trek to scenic Philippi to watch the Cougs go and battle the Philip Barbour Colts. Not that it'll be a good game one way or the other, it's just something to do. Plus, with the weather getting cooler, even better. I've had enough of running in this heat, bring on the cold stuff. Also on tap for the area is the Jackson's Mill Jubilee and Tally Rally. I'm a regular at both of these as I've written about before. I should just copy and paste the past few years' worth as I'm sure nothing will change, but it's just the thing to do. The Jubilee is way underrated and the food there rocks. At the Rally, I eat that stuff all the time anyways, but you see some characters and can never go wrong with the food selection. You might even see a few good fights on the bocce court or in the middle of a morra game, it's known to happen on a regular basis. This is the 31st year of the Italian Festival for my area. If you've been to one, you know what you're getting, but it's still worth a trip to be part of. Next Monday is also another fantasy football draft, but more on that when the time comes.



Bird's Dirty of the Week: Arizona Jas is back in her regular spot with a dirty. I need to go back and count up how many times she's ran this section as it's getting up to fairly high levels. But first, her thoughts on this girl: http://www.myspace.com/but_why

Jasmine says: take a look ^.^
Jasmine says: shes got.. some.. interesting pics
Jasmine says: a shit ton of them
Jasmine says: her on a car.. a fucking toyota thats "irresistable"
Jasmine says: kissing her "best friend"
Jasmine says: things of that nature

Bird's Video Moment of the Week: This week's video submission comes to us from The_Freak. It's a good baseball clip from a few weeks ago. Even if you've already seen it, it's great. The quick story here is that it was late in a game in Baltimore. This guy was hammered and his buddy told him he'd give him $1000 if he would run on the field, touch a particular sign and run back to his buddy and touch his hand. If he did that, he'd get the money. Now you definitely want to know how it ended. Hilarious stuff and what makes it for me is the fans that were all into it and cheering this guy. The downer is that the original vid taken by his buddy has been taken down. This is a shortened version to where you don't see him touching the sign and making it back before the cops get to him. This also stops short to where they escorted him all the way off the field and each section would be cheering the guy. Either way, here ya go:



3 Quick Thangs:

1. We all know I watch entirely too much TV, so why not another TV topic? If you're like me, you're a big fan of Al Bundy. He's one of those guys, regardless of what role he plays, he's still known as Al Bundy to me and not Ed O'Neill. It's kind of like how Seann William Scott is never that to me, he's Stifler regardless. Or even Neil Patrick Harris, he's still Doogie Howser. Or Corndog never being Jared. You get the point. Anyways, Al Bundy has a new show starting up this fall and it's called Modern Family. I might give it a few tries just because he's in it.

2. I don't know too much on cars. I can change a tire if need be and probably change the oil, but not a lot else. Edmunds has a new thing out that shows the 10 most expensive cars to own and drive. #1 this year would be the Mercedes L65 AMG Black Series which has a starting price of $301,750 and apparently costs $4.86 per mile. 670 horsepower? What's the point of that? Anyways, I doubt I see any of these cars ever rolling through the streets of Shinnston, but stranger things have happened. Four of the ten cars on this list are Merdedes for whatever that's worth.

3. Want some facts to end the day on? Did you know that a man's skin ages 10 years slower than a woman's? 72% of the people in Mali earn less than $1 a day. 40% of McDonald's profits supposedly come from the sales of Happy Meals. Who knew?