12/5/97 - Whassa Bee?

As PWC's readership count surges forward into the double-digits, I feel obligated to keep providing more and more services to the public on which I inflict myself. Frankly, it's a pain in the ass, and if you'd all just stop coming here, I'd have more free time to go out and "bag babes", as we say in the journalist community. We also say "score with chicks" and "get our tires rotated". We are a very juvenile bunch of people.

But since you insist on hanging around and poring over every word of these silly little missives, searching for spelling mistakes and mustard stains, I must continue to give. Give, give, give. That's my job. And what better job to have during this time of year? Isn't the holiday season all about giving, after all? Or perhaps it's about avoiding obnoxious visiting family members by hiding in the basement while they mill about upstairs, and then sitting around making fun of them after they leave.
Special Holiday Bonus Hint

Hey kids, play this little game as the family begins dispersing this Christmas after a glorious meal of turkey, ham, and that strange gooey green bean thing with the crunchy things in it that remains the one thing your 97 year old great-grandmother remembers how to make:

Get a stopwatch. Then, as soon as the door closes behind a departing loved one, start the timer, and see how long it takes for someone else to make some snide remark about them. Here's an example:

Aunt Jane, with her new husband Warren cowering behind her: "Well, goodnight everyone! God bless us, every one!"

Everyone: "Goodnight Aunt Jane and your new husband, Warren!"

[Door closes] <--- Start timer now!
[...pause...]

Random family member: "Okay, who wants to take bets on how long before he blows his brains out with a shotgun?" <--- Stop timer now!

Write the time down on a piece of paper, and keep listing the times as people continue filing out. Once everyone has left, you can go through your list and do many fun activities, including figuring out who made the quickest comment, figuring out who made the nastiest comment, and looking for a decent foster home.


Ah, look. There I go giving again. But I'm getting away from the purpose of this introduction, which was, ironically enough, to introduce a New Feature which I hope you will all enjoy. I know I will enjoy it, because I don't have to write it, and I can spend the rest of the week sipping pina coladas while lying on the vast, pristine beaches of Germantown, Maryland, and of course "getting my muffins baked", if you know what I mean. So without further ado, except to tell you that if anyone sends me another email with the sentence, "What's up with that White woman?" in it, I will find you and give you a wedgie, I proudly present...

Grub Review
By Dale "P. D." Hackford

Hey folks! How y'all doin'? This here's P. D. comin' at ya. You can call me Dale, though, if ya want. Aw, hell, you can call me whatever you want, as long as you don't call me lackin' the sensitivity to write tasteful restaurant reviews! Ha! Tasteful, get it? Woooeee!

Anyways, this week I decided to check out a right quaint little place called the Matuba Sushi Bar. Now I'm a good ol' boy from down south, and I ain't never been to no sushi place before. I mean, the whole idea of eatin' raw fish is just a little, how you sophisticated types up north say it, "disconcerting". I mean, as far as I'm concerned, there ain't but one kind of raw fish that I'd like to be eatin', and I think you know what I'm talkin' about there, eh buddy? Heh heh heh. Yeaaahsir. But then my pals down at Rick's Saloon told me, "Hey, P. D., I think you're needin' to broaden them there horizons of yours!" Broaden my horizons? I'm thinkin', what the hell are these boys talkin' about? Well, I'm a right open-minded sort, and I gets me to thinkin' about what they said. Now, all these sushi bars been poppin' up all over creation, bein' some sort of high-falutin' fad, like that damn Starbucks coffee. (I mean, really. Cafe Latte? You want Cafe Latte, you just pour a cup of joe and put some milk in it! I ain't payin' no goddamn $2.35 for that!) So I said to myself, "P. D., you gotta go try one of them places before people start sayin' you lack cultural diversity!"

So that's how I happened to find myself down at the Matuba Sushi Bar, and after chowin' down there, all I got to say is that it's a darn good thing we didn't bomb ALL of them slanty-eyed Jap bastards off the planet in WWII, because them devious little suckers have really come up with somethin'!

After walkin' in the place, you're greeted by three of these Japs behind the sushi bar itself, and they do a little of that funny talk that they do, with the "hoo cho hoo chee hoy hoy" stuff. Then this nice Jap lady comes up and asks if you wanna sit at the bar or at a table. Now, I got nothin' against these people, but if I'm gonna enjoy my meal, I can't have them three slopes starin' at me while I'm doin' it, so I chose a table.

The place ain't fancy, which I like, because I get all nervous in them hoity-toity places, because if I accidentally make a "fo paw", they might not think I'm the well-respected restaurant critic that I am. I hate them snobby rich sons-a-bitches.

After grabbin' a seat, they hand you this menu. Now, they tell me it was in English, but I'll be goddamned if I could tell what the hell it was talkin' about. One half of the thing was talkin' about "sushi", and the other half was talkin' about "rolls". Rolls? What the hell is that? I mean, I been to one of them chink places and had egg rolls, but they're cooked, and I thought this was supposed to be raw. And the sushi? Here was my big decision. They had all these nasty-lookin' things like "salmon skin" and "flying fish egg" and "eel". It was lookin' like a long evening for your pal P. D. over here.

The Jap waitress came over and asked if I wanted a beverage. All the beer on the menu had these funny foreign names, and there ain't no beer for me in the world but good ol' American-made Heineken, so I asked her to bring me something else, something "authentic". (You gotta throw words like that at `em, or they'll never know you're a restaurant critic.)

She brings me this thing called "socky". I don't know what the hell it is, but it's served hotter than the devil's posterior, and with this tiny little cup. I dunno what kinda pansy they thought I was, but I told `em to get that little kid's toy away from me before I stuck it up their scrawny little yellow butts! The bottle was still too hot to touch, so I waited a while for that sumbitch to cool down, then I gulped that baby down in one swig! Hoooooeee! That stuff had some bite to it!

Then it was my turn to order. I asked the waitress what she would suggest, but she couldn't speak more than a word or two of English, and when she started in with the "hoy yoy chee cho" crap, I said, "Fergit it, honey." Now, a good critic's gotta have some courage, right? Well, one of the sushi menu items said "tuna", and I like the tuna sandwiches that my wife fixes up for me on Sundays, so I figure, how bad could it be? Then I ordered a roll, just to see what that was like. I'd like to tell you which one, but I'll be goddamned if I can remember. Just somethin' with some kinda fish in it, like crab or somethin'.

I'll tell ya, for raw food, it sure took them Japs a long time to fix it up for me. I was almost ready to go grab a Filet-o-Fish over at the McDonald's across the street when they finally showed up with my chow. I made sure to order some more socky before the waitress headed her skinny butt back to the kitchen. I knew that whatever I was about to eat, I was gonna need somethin' to wash it down with.

Now, they got a funny way of servin' this grub. All ya get is this big ol' slab of wood, and on it is whatever ya ordered, plus this little green mountain of somethin' I ain't ever seen before, lookin' like some midget martian turd. I say to the girl, "Hey sweetcheeks, what in the hell is this?" She tells me "Ohh, you put on sushi, ahhh sooo." Damn foreigners come into this country and can't even speak our language.

Oh, another thing is, they didn't give me a fork. All's I had were these chopstick things, which ain't how Americans is supposed to eat. "Calm yourself, P. D., let's just try to experience the 'cuisine international', galdangit!" I thought to myself. Except I ain't got a goddamn clue how to use chopsticks, so I just used them like big toothpicks, stabbin' at my entree like in that Eagles song. I love those Eagles, man. That Walsh boy can play a guitar like nobody's business.

So this was the big moment. The sushi just looks like they cut a slab off Flipper and slapped it down there on top of some of that sticky rice that all them Orientals are good at. Only surprise was, it's all wrapped together with what looks like dark green Scotch tape, but git this, the dang thing is made of seaweed! Man, that socky didn't arrive at the table a moment too soon. I swear to Jesus I almost lost my lunch right on top of my dinner. Anyway, I finally get a good handle on it with my chopstick, and then spread a big ol' wad of that green stuff on top. I asked for ketchup, but they didn't have none. Well, down the hatch!

Hooooooooeeeeee!! I swear on the grave of my dear grandmother, rest her soul, that I thought the Lord Himself was going to call me home right then and there! That there green stuff is like eatin' the horse that the horseradish came from. Blew my ten-gallon hat clean off, it did. I'm here to tell ya, I think I figured out why them Japs don't know how to drive, cuz all their brain cells been melted away by this stuff. I've tasted chili from all over Texas, and hot sauce from all over the great state of Louisiana, but I ain't never tasted anything like this.

To make a long story short, I ate everything on that wood, and had to ask for three more helpings of the green stuff, and a couple more bottles of socky too. God's honest truth, I wasn't really too sure what any of the fish tasted like, since it all kinda got drowned out. But hey, I made it through, and I was right proud of your ol' P. D. here!

I left Watuba a pretty happy customer, and even though I didn't get a fortune cookie, I left a 10 percent tip, which I would never ordinarily do for those Hitler-lovin' yellow-ass slanty-eyed Jap sons-a-bitches. But even though I was happy about my "culinary adventure", I tell ya, I couldn't get to Rick's fast enough.

Well, that's all I got for ya today, partners. Y'all come back next time for another exciting restaurant review, y'hear? Hooooeee!

And remember, tell 'em good ol' P. D. sent ya!

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That was in case any of you devious types were thinking of stealing all my cool stuff. So there.
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