Broad Audit

tonight i had dinner reservations for 10 at Volcano Sushi & Grill. it was nice. i was vegetarian for maybe 7 years until this year, i started eating fish. id never had sushi before and to be quite honest i was terrified and disgusted by the idea of it. but due to peer pressure i gave in and had my first experience tonight. it was good.

on the advice of my personal sushi mediators, Brittney, John and Lauren, i kept my order simple, yet daring for a sushi novice such as myself. i ordered a “dinner box?” which included a soup, salad, and 3 choices of sushi type things off this huge list. i chose spicy tuna rolls, volcano rolls, and shrimp tempura rolls. it was a lot more food than i expected really. $20 got me a soft drink, a soup, a salad and this:id taken a couple bites by the time the picture was taken. i liked it all. the tuna rolls were my least favorite. i really liked the tempura and volcano rolls though. i had to force it all down, it was surprisingly filling. MSG? and i don’t throw away food so… I’m stuffed. i guess since we were there with such a large party, and the economy sucks they gave us some free appetizers to butter up hopeful return customers. it worked, the appetizer was awesome. i don’t remember exactly what it was called. happy face, or happy feet or something. it was really good though, actually, that was the best thing i ate. all in all i enjoyed it and will eat more sushi in the future. it was pretty good. not TOO expensive really. backed.

I’m told by certain food critics that Volcano is not the place to break greens if you’re a sushi noob. but i thought it was good, so hopefully it only gets better as you graduate onto better sushi joints.

ugh. i wish i wasn’t. let me begin with letting you all know a little something about myself. i am a grown ass man. i don’t read fucking comic books or “graphic novels”. i like sports. i play poker. i fuck chicks. I’m a fucking man. that being said, i thought this movie was straight up bad. alright here’s the plot without giving up any juice for the dweebs that didn’t go out opening night to see this: an ex-superhero is murdered, a vigilante named Rorschach begins an investigation into the murder, which begins to lead to a much more terrifying conclusion. alright, this movie was rated R. for good reason. plenty of gore and nudity for a “comic book” movie. it was also a painful 163 minutes long. about 150 of those minutes were wasted explaining the extremely looooooong boring plot lines and character backgrounds.

the first half of the movie was insanely slow and sleep inducing. way too much plot and little to no action to speak of. most of the characters are lame as crap also. the main group of vigilantes is a night owl guy, who’s really just a nerd who’s into birds and mythology. the worlds smartest man, seriously, that’s a guys power, hes smart. cool. some slut who’s only “power” seems to be to have sex with half of the super heroes in her posse. a member of the blue man group, who is some all invincible, all knowing, all seeing, telepathic, telaporting asshole, hes like a blue, naked Buddha. and last my favorite and I’m sure general crowd favorite Rorschach, i don’t know about the “book” but this guy is the true star of the movie. hes the only reason to watch. he rules new york with an iron fist. no mercy, no surrender. throughout the movie he pretty much calls everyone a pussy and beats the shit out of people. so once they finally get all the back story told they bring on some excellent action scenes. from street justice brawls, to awesome jailhouse fights, even with a few sex scenes thrown around in the mix(not jailhouse sex). I’ll give it to them, the fight scenes were awesome. some of the special effects and the way the super heroes fought were creative and really the only thing that kept me entertained. the acting…. oh man, the acting was awful. there wasn’t a single actor that i recognized really. and they all stunk, excluding only the man who played Rorschach. the actor/character was all around awesome. BUT i will say this… attn: Rorschach, Batman called, he wants his voice back. i LOVED The Dark Knight, loved it. and i felt obligated to defend any and every negative thing people had to say about the movie. and at least in my particular circle of friends i heard a ton of criticism on Batman’s “super hero voice”… Rorschach had the same exact voice. i don’t predict i hear one person say anything about it in this movie.

i should also mention that the movie takes from the 60s into the late 80s with an alternate past. America was successful in the Vietnam War, thanks in part to Watchmen, and Nixon is some sort of dictator. the bulk of the movie takes place in the 80s in heightened Cold War scare time.

there’s a lot i could say, but i fear I’d give up too much of the movie really. so i don’t really know what else i can say about it without spoiler content. just know that its a really long movie that moves incredibly slow, then has some worth while action moments, then moves on to its again slow boring ending.

all in all, i think it was pretty boring. i could have done with about 30-40 minutes less of endless plot, and more action. it was a really long movie to begin with and with the lack of action it just made it seem like a lifetime. if I’d went to a showing after 8pm, i bet i could’ve fallen asleep. i did however love the soundtrack. full of songs from the appropriate time frames and good, relevant choices for the situations.

me and Emma rented the movie Changeling last night. this isn’t going to be funny, i just liked the movie, I’ve read a handful of awful reviews and don’t know many people who have seen it, so I’m gonna give you my rundown of it and tell you to netflix this bad boy.

from the  director that brought you the racist hit Gran Tarino, and nationalist docu-drama’s Letters From Iwo Jima, and Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood corrals Angie Jolie, and my man, KGB, John Malkovichok to star in this joint. the movie is not “based” on a true story, it is not “inspired” by a true story, it IS a true story. this single mother raising her 9 year old son in the late 1920’s L.A. comes home after being called in on her day off, only to find that her son is missing. her son goes missing 5 months, till the LAPD find her boy… only it isn’t her son. she is insistent that this boy is not her son, and this embarrasses a police department that is already walking on egg shells with its city. when Mrs. Collins(jolie) rasies a big stink over the whole thing they throw her in a mental ward. Malcovich’s character is the west coast Pat Robetson i guess, he’s some rich, big shot televangelist who has made it his life’s work to rid the city of its corrupt, violent police force and sees this case as a great way to do just that.  so Malcovich gets some hot shot lawyer to get her out of the loony bin and they put the LAPD on trial. there’s so much more to the movie but id really not want to give it all away. but yea, if you know my taste in movies at all, and you agree with it in the slightest, you may enjoy this one.

red box this shit.

my friend jason and i have been joking about going to this new hair salon “for guys” called Knockouts, which is supposed to be like the Hooters of hair cutteries, and when i told him about this today, he suggested i audit…

so I’ve been told several times by numerous people that it was haircut time for ol’ dobson here, so i gave in to peer pressure and got an edge up. i only get haircuts like 3 or 4 times a year, and i wear a hat everyday, so these things have never been a big deal to me… until now.

I’m in love with my hair “stylist”. she’s cut my hair once before, and i wrote this about her on a local message board that i frequent when i was asking other gentlemen where they get their hair did…

“Ok, I had some time to kill and was in Hilltop so I went into Dimensions Hair Studio. It was very good. A cute girl named Kelly did my hair. She washed it and gave me a DANK head massage(I’m not gonna lie, I was slightly aroused) and did a pretty good job on my hair. I detected some quality flirtyness, but that’s their job I guess kinda. Fuck it, she was into me. It was $20 though, I’m used to a $12 haircut. But she did a good job, I will return for the happy ending and her phone number in 2-3 months.

Oh, side note… while doing my hair she gave her standard small talk “what’re you doing tonight?” and I said going to eat and see some bands play. And she asked what bands, what type of band or some crap. And I said “oh, I doubt you’d heard of them, just some loud rock bands” and she says she’s into loud music and that’s the stuff she listens to and that I shouldn’t judge her by her barbie doll hair stylist facade because she just has to look/act that way for work and she told me to check out some band but their name went in one ear and out the other…  but I think she was just trying to get me to ask her to come to dinner/show. Thinking about it, she was def into me. She called me Johnny Cash when my hair was slicked back and she almost landed me for that one.”- july 14, 2008

so today i went back for round two… of course i had an appointment to ensure that i would be seen by kelly again. let me be more descriptive about her looks since this is a full on audit of this place. shes short, “thick” dare i say a little “chunky” without meaning it negatively? has some meat or baby fat on her bones, she reminds me of nicole kidman if she were a foot shorter and were really into Wawa subs or something. ok, you get it. so i sit down, she asks what we’re doing with my hair, bla bla bla. while she’s going to town on my head, she asks if I’m a hockey fan, i answered that i was a very casual fan and barely follow at all, but can get into the sport. she starts telling me how awesome the flyers/caps game last night was, which leads to other sports talk. she says she’s a fan of all the Philadelphia teams, loves the eagles, could watch football all day, every day, and doesn’t get into basketball really because “the Sixers suck”. all of this is said while i am not with a Phils hat, or any philly paraphernalia. she asks what teams i back, and i have to tell her of my unhealthy obsession with the Philadelphia Phillies, so we talk baseball a bit, then she goes back to football, saying “she cant stand Andy Reid”… so legit. i disagree with her, but I’m really into how SPORTS! she is. eventually the haircut comes to an end and i must go. pretty much end of the story until 3 or 4 months of hair growth call me back into her chair, where i can talk sports like I’m hanging out with dudes on a sunday afternoon, get my head massaged like I’m in a fucking spa, and get hit on by an attractive young lady.

so the long/short of it is this, Dimensions pretty much is the Hooters of haircuts. all the stylists are pretty attractive, and you can go in there, talk hockey and get hit on. mike lawson seal of approval.

so it would only make sense that eventually we’d start doing some music reviews. its after 2am on thursday night, i have nothing better to do. im gonna tell you what i think about my most recent album acquisition, Shook Ones/End of a Year split 7”.

before i get into this record let me say that i do like both of these bands… you wouldnt think so after you read what i have to say about this record.

i’ll start with End of a Year. for those who may not know them, they play a rare form of punk that isnt played/appreciated enough nowadays in todays punk rock scene. its a “revolution summer” vibe that gets compared to Rites of Spring and Embrace a lot, its a fair comparison. now the record…they only did one song. lame. it does ring in at over 5 minutes, but i dont want that from this band. i dont want it from any band really. the only good song thats over 5 minutes long is Boston- Foreplay/Long time. i just dont like this song. boring. long. same riff over and over. poor recording quality for them, but that may have even been intentional. while the vocals for this band have always seemed whiney to me ive never had a problem with them until hearing this song. it just got annoying. the song lacks energy and i dont think it is well written enough to just be the laid back chiller of a song that i think they were going for.

no onto Shook Ones… this band dubbed themselves a Kid Dynamite/Lifetime worship band and its exactly what they are. this record is no different. short, fast, melodic punk songs, full of “whoooaaooooo”s and sing a longs. they bring 4 songs ringing in at barely over 4 minutes total. once again im disappointed. these songs just seem thrown together for the sake of making a record. all of them, with the exception of “Asterisk”, just dont seem finished. i think they just tossed together 4 “fast” riffs and a couple melodic parts and went to the studio. it just seems like a really poor effort on both bands parts. i know theyre friends and they just wanted to do a record with their buddy bands but still, shouldnt you put some thought into the songs and make them good still? maybe i’ll be alone in this one, but i think these are the worst songs either band has done.

ok, so i bashed this record enough. i feel like i should say how i feel about both bands, excluding these bad songs, so it doesnt seem like im killing them. i really like both of these bands. end of a year play a style that you dont hear very much right now, and they play it well. ive seen them live a couple of times and their singer always has great things to say between songs whether its explaining lyrics or just talking about whatevers on his mind. it never sounds rehearsed or like some bullshit speech and i love that. theyre energetic and fun to watch play, and most of their songs are really well written and unique from what every other punk band is doing now. shook ones are no different, they are really fun guys. ive seen them play HUGE shows at fests and ive seen them play the smallest show and they act the same on stage no matter how many people are watching them. they just come to play. they were supposed to play norfolk last year on halloween and the show was shut down before they played, and outside jamie seagraves was joking with me about how they should just come play in our practice space and one of the band members overheard us and they all got really excited and wanted to do it. so they drove to chesapeake and played a storage shed to 15 people. thats awesome. most bands wouldve packed up with their nose in the air and said “fuck this town”, but they just wanted to play.

so in closing both of these bands are really good, but this record is terrible.

now i leave you with this…

last saturday night emma and i went on a date type evening with fellow couples travis/blair, and J.Bibby/becca. we had your standard dinner and a movie date. for dinner i suggested we go to travis and blairs’ favorite spot, Vietnam Garden in virginia beach. id been there once before with Streit house and remember not caring for it too much, but on the request of a couple of Broad Audit readers i gave it another chance and looked to audit my meal to appease the reading public.

ok. so first of all, we had a party of 6. thats no unusual is it? 6 people is not hard to accommodate is it? well apparently the vietnam garden needs to prepare for a rush of customers of this gigantic proportion. the fucking mean, old dude that runs the place gave us some lip for not calling in advance with such a large party. i mean, there were plenty of empty seats. fucking John and Kate Plus 8 could have come in and sat down with no wait and still had room to seat us.

so we sit for 20 minutes or so and becca and jehou finally arrive. our waitress is this wonderfully cute asian women. she takes our order, recommends something for travis to have since he was unsure, and was just generally pleasant and happy, i dont know how since the fucking Grinch of Vietnam was yelling at her the whole time in the back. we get some sort of sesame pancakes as an appetizer, they were awesome. theyre like fried corn meal type stuff, with some sort of vegetable in it i guess cause there were specs of green inside the pancakes, but while we wait for that… the previously mentioned saint of vietnam tried to poison us with some chicken dumpling bullshit that she brought “on the house”, BITCH! WE’RE VEG! emma and i almost ate it cause we didnt know what it was and we were getting impatient waiting for the waitress to come back so we could ask what was in it.

the pancakes were awesome and stole the meal for me. i loved them, i could have just got a plate of those and been happy.

me and emily both ordered what i guess is the vietnamese version of Pad Thai Tofu. it was ok. everyone else’s order looked really interesting yet not really good to me, except for travis’. he got some green beans and tofu meal that was good, i tasted.

so now its time to pay. us being the young, cheap, difficult kids we are, of course need the check separated. DUH. act like youve had a table full of 20-somethings before. its not on 1 bill. so of course the guy is gonna bust our balls. this guy looks like an aged, fat version of Luigi from the Super Mario Bros. games. he was rocking an uncomfortably tight polo shirt which made his “outtie” belly button painfully obvious. fuck this guy.

overall the place was decent. but for what i had and my taste, i could have gone to Bangkok Garden, got real pad thai, paid a couple dollars less, been in a nicer restaurant, and not had to deal with some deformed belly button prick. not bad, just not good for me either. meh.

Alicia recently discovered a new mexican joint to break the incredible repetitive dining at Plaza Azteca. no disrespect to the wonderful people at Plaza, but i dont even like you really, and ALL my friends love you, so im forced to eat with you like 3 times a week. fuck. so we break our exclusive mexican dining rights with Plaza and head to Gringo’s. the dining area in this place is way small, there are like 5 tables, they even stuck a table out in the hallway. it was pretty crowded so i can imagine slightly uncomfortable eating in close quarters most of the time. it was just a little hole in the wall spot off norfolk ave. at the oceanfront. they spared many expenses with dolling the place up, i mean this was their dry/erase board bathroom sign for christ’s sake.

youre not paying for ambiance here, thats for sure. we eventually settle on cramming 5 people to this tiny table and order. they have your standard mexican food items, no big surprises from the menu, apparently they had a nice selection of beers and wines, i didnt notice, i wasnt drinking that night… the staff of Gringo’s, top notch. there was a man and a women taking care of all the tables together, they were both really friendly and hilarious. i got the impression that they owned the place, im pretty sure its a family run spot for some reason. the guy putting alicia and mike in the headlock, he was our waiter waiter. when the guy is taking our order, emily has a question, she asks how big are the fish tacos, cause there was an option to only buy one or two, and he answers with this gem “well, its a 6 inch tortilla, but i am a man, so you never really know what 6 inches really means.” great, 2 minutes into our dinner and we’re getting dick jokes from the waiter. not bad. also while ordering the guy asked if someone was veg or vegan because something they ordered had chicken stock in it. i appreciate the shit out of things like that, most places wouldnt care to ask or even know that someone would give a shit about that sort of thing. i got 2 fish tacos minus the salsa. it was good. better than your standard mexican food fish tacos. quality ingredients, you could tell. not from a can. it was good. my only beef with the food was actually not with the food, but the price. i ordered 2 fish tacos, and it was like $12. and it was just 2 tacos, no rice, beans or any other bells and whistles. now at Plaza for $12 i could have gotten 3 fish tacos, beans, rice, a bottomless glass of my favorite diet cola, and a night with a waitress of my choosing. but maybe you get what you pay for, it was pretty good. i didnt hear any complaints around the table. Alicia ordered this, i think it was a veggie burrito with some mess next to it. im not sure if it translates in the pic but the burrito was really big, i mean not like Chipotle big, but big.

the real exciting thing about Gringo’s is easily the celebrities. we were just sitting there, enjoying our meal and in comes motherfucking Bodhi himself, Patrick Swayze. he just pulled up a stool and threw back a couple of his favorite cervesas. fucking legit.

the waitress was a young, big breasted, fairly attractive women(sorry, no pic). christian asked her on a date when she got off… she declined his offer.

overall Gringo’s was cool. its a slight change of pace from your standard authentic mexican restaurant. slightly over priced if you ask me, but its good food, good people, good times for sure. i back it.

i caught up with one customer later, and here we have an exclusive Broad Audit interview with Gringo’s customer, broad audit supporter, chronic masturbator, general dude, Christian Arnold.

other noteworthy points: i dont have a pic, but a little kid peed his pants while we were there. i also overheard one patron with this comment: “the habenero sauce is bitchin.”

Went to the State Fair last month for bunnies, cowboy boots and fried foods. This stuff – baby livestock, giant pumpkins, fried anything, shami cloth demonstrations, lionhead rabbits, potato art contests… is what separates the State Fair from the shitty carnivals that show up at Mt Trashmore. The “kill you” rides, paying to view a midget on a couch, and amazing dayglow outfits are also worth mentioning.

This state fair I had my first experience with fried soda – nasty. I thought for some reason I’d be able to drink it (how do you fry a beverage??), but it’s actually soda syrup inside batter, then fried. I think. Like a dirty sugar nugget. It was edible, but nothing I’d ever want again.

After eating every fried vegetable I could find, I tried to go to the bathroom. This lady’s stall door was wide open and I saw her vagina so I held my pee until we got home.

Today I audit the Painted Lady Tea Room’s GIFT SHOP. Fruitiest audit on record.

I’ve liked hot tea for a while, but recently been wanting to step it up and brew loose tea, and possibly even display tea (like in Marie Antoinette). Saturday Mike (not Lawson) took me on a hunt for loose tea. After a few failed attempts we ended up at the Painted Lady on the advice of his friend. Apparently it was Special Hat Day, and I was so relieved that we only had to go to the gift shop upstairs. Fancy hat people are intimidating! I couldn’t take any pictures inside because it was all hot and balmy and small and full of teddy bears dressed in clothes. The gift shop was occupied by ladies fanning themselves as well as a woman I mistook for a mannequin. I loved it! I want to go back for lunch, or afternoon tea even! We bought two kinds of tea, Apricot and Darjeeling Gold Tipped black tea (i think that’s what it was called). The apricot smelled good, but they both tasted pretty much the same. I probably don’t have a sophisticated palette, YET.

WARNING! THIS IS THE MOST INTERACTIVE AUDIT EVER. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY BE ON A REAL COMPUTER TO FULLY ENJOY THIS ENTRY. VIDEOS AND PICS AND STUFF. ALL WORK SAFE OF COURSE.

so ive had this idea for a long time now, to audit justin timberlake. just him as a person. i think hes cool as crap. in the ensuing audit i will challenge all haters, and for the lovers just give you a general appreciation entry and some funny things to look at.

1. hes a great musician. emily has this CD of his, “justified”, and she knows every word to every song. i gathered a few choice lyrics that i will share with you now to back up this claim.

“dont need no Mabeline, cause youre my beauty queen. dont need no L’ Oreal, cause bitch youre bad as hell.”

“lets hit the floor and cause a scene, get real wet if you know what I mean.”

now that ive typed that out, and read it out of context, its not that cool. but seriously, listen to the CD, its good, hes smooth, its hot. hes just a feel good, smooth mothafucka. its like if Prince, R. Kelly, and that slutty blond chick from desperate housewives all hooked up in some alley somewhere and he was the strange offspring. all that sexuality and good taste had to come out somewhere, and it just busted its nut right onto your ipod.

also on the music front. justin timberlake and andy samberg won an Emmy Award, for best comedic song. with this instant classic “dick in a box”. seriously, it won an emmy.

2. hes funny as balls. hes hosted SNL a bunch, been in a few movies. hosted the ESPYS, was on one of very few enjoyable episodes of the MTV series PuNkeD, and seems to just be a generally humorous guy. the following are a few pictures and youtube clips to back up this claim. i really suggest watching these videos from the ESPYS especially if youre a sports fan. but even if youre not, watch. sorry, i couldnt find any SNL clips on youtube.

and as if 2 very strong points werent enough i give you three…

3. the ladies. justin timberlake has plowed through the finest of hollywood cooze. from britney to camron diez to finally end up at this(for now).

jessica biel.

he must be pretty cool right?