OK, so I’m not against change. I get it when I (rarely) pay with cash, I see it when I go back to Carson City, Nevada where I go once every several years to nearly wet myself when looking at housing prices and new development in the community. But last night our family went to Fudrucker’s for dinner because Jessica was hankering for a burger and I wasn’t hankering to fire up the grill. I should have stayed home.

When we walked in we were met by a stack of beer boxes, buckets with empy beer bottles (so as to prevent stealing), and a totally scaled down menu. When you are a hamburger based restaurant that sells hamburgers and few other things scaling down your menu is like turning yourself into an overpriced McDonalds. In fact, I think that the service at McDonalds might have been better. They had a table with kids menus on it as you wound yourself through the queue… with a bucket next to it that was empty. It was supposed to have crayons but they had no crayons in the facility. They did, however, add lots more expensive video games for people to play. I just can’t get past the $0.50 per game price. And that’s what they were starting to charge when I was a teenager. Now you have to pay $1.00 or more! Call me a cheap, old fashioned kind of guy but to play a video game that involves shooting people in front of my three year old for $1.00 you’d have to pay me $1,000.00.

And they switched to Pepsi products [which I don’t prefer]. So basically everything that I loved about the restaurant is gone and I’m going to take my business somewhere else that might change, but they might do it gradually or they might maintain a slightly more family friendly atmosphere with choices on their menu. Oh, and I asked the under-aged employee working the register if they had Fat Tire beer. His response was to say, “Fat Tire beer?” slowly and loudly as if I was an old fart who was hard of hearing. “Yes, Fat Tire beer, it’s made in Boulder, CO.”

“I’ve never heard of it before.”

Sorry young’n’, but they’re advertised in neon signs at liquor stores all around the place, most other local restaurants carry them and even Texas (who still thinks they own Colorado) has it. Don’t insult my intelligence when I’m ordering – it is not good customer service.

That is all, our regularly scheduled griping will return later.

After the first week of half-heartedly keeping up with the Olympics I’ve got the drive of a jellyfish to watch this week’s athletic feats [and feets]. Is it just me or do they just have too many olympic events? Do they have to have so many side stories and announcers that are so lame that you just can’t watch more than a few hours of athletics in combination of some of the mind numbing drivel that comes out of their mouths? I imagine that the human interest angle of the Olympics is important now due to several reasons:

1. Sesame Street – The Children’s Television Workshop has been putting together short video montages since MTV was the twinkle in Satan’s eye (that’s a joke, not a Rock is from the devil comment).
2. MTV – We’ve been having short videos played to use for several decades now. We can’t handle an hour long televised event unless the commercials are so stellar that we actually watch the event for the commercials (see: Super Bowel Sunday)
3. The Women of Wisteria Lane – If there’s no drama involved wherein scandals, knee surgeries, single parents with one kidney who nearly died of a gangreen in their pinky-toes from the Olympics in 1611 then the Olympics are just not exciting enough.
4. CNN – OK, so this ‘news network’ is more like a snooze network. We’re bombarded by twenty-four hour television news feeds which are loaded with human interest stories because gosh darn it: there is not enough really critical news to cover. This is also why the media spent thousands of man hours researching Dick Cheney’s hunting accident.
5. Dick Cheney’s Hunting Accident – If you’re going to compete with the media frenzy that is the walking medical unit of our Vice President of the United States you have to have something more attention grabbing than ice prancing. 11 out of 8 guys who are flipping through the channels are going to see a man that they presume is homosexual lifting up a woman who’s not as naked as her skin tone outfit initially indicates and keep going until they see that someone that is in a sub-level-power has had an accident with a gun. Who hasn’t had an accident with a gun? Or who hasn’t been related via six degrees of separation to a person who had an accident with Kevin Bacon’s gun?

Clearly the Uh-lympics should be amazing, but I’m amazed by the coverage being so heavy in hours yet so light in content.