Broad Audit

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?

so emma has an iphone and they have some fancy new music program called Pandora… its internet “radio”, by request sort of i guess… you type in the name of a band and the program finds bands like the band you typed in and it just makes a playlist of similar bands. its awesome. i did a few bands and i was impressed with the bands it came up with, heres some details… i typed in Tragedy, and bands like Hirax, Disfear, His Hero is Gone, Coliseum, etc came up. for Hot Water Music it gave me The Bouncing Souls, Alkaline Trio, an old Against Me song, and an old Rise Against song to name a few. Cat Power gave me a bunch of stuff like Feist and Regina Spektor but that one wasnt so tuff. nothing VERY obscure yet, but heres the kicker… i typed in a former band of my own, Tarpit, and it gave me Born/Dead, Reversal of Man, and a ton of bad hardcore bands that id never heard of, but the point is that it even recognized a small indie band like Tarpit, and there isnt any Tarpit stuff on her itunes or phone or anything… i was surprised by that. emily had a few other stations programed and said it has been pretty accurate with the mixes it creates.

i only played with this thing for about 30 minutes, but i think its really cool and convenient. my only beef was youre only allowed to skip 6 songs per hour for each “station” and its really hard to not just skip when you get to a song because youre really curious of what song is gonna be next. you dont really need to load up your phone with music to be able to jam out which is cool as crap, and i wouldnt think apple would be cool with that since with this program you dont really need to spend as much money in the itunes store. i support this program to the fullest.

All auditors can agree, we have not just uno complaint about this mess.

Questionable ketchup, missing lemons, no refills… Salsa on a veggie burger?! Slab of frozen fish! Disappointing shrimp! I’ve been told that Uno’s thing is deep dish pizza , not burgers, fish, or shrimp, and maybe that is the root of the problem. Regardless, I hate it.

about a week or so ago my boss and i went to see Step Brothers, while on the clock of course, it was interesting. we wanted to go early and were working in Poquoson, VA so i found an extremely convenient theater with a showing at 10:30am… the Cinema Cafe of Hampton.

those of you not familiar with the Cinema Cafe’s, heres the run down. its a movie theater with a legitimate food menu, not just popcorn and twizzlers. you could order a steak if you want to and watch a movie. now i thought that Cinema Cafe’s only showed older out of theater movies, but apparently just the Virginia Beach location does that. our tickets were only $3.75, im not sure if that was due to the very early showing, or that it was a weekday or what, but it was less than $4 to see a current movie and every ticket comes with a free popcorn. i didnt order any food but i just think its cool that a place like this exists.  i will say this though, ive been to two of these places before and they are definitely not nice, clean, modern looking places. theyre dumps. just saying.

now the movie. eh. i was waaaaaaaay over the Ferrell schtick long ago, and was told that this film redeems him and isnt at all a typical Will Ferrell movie. i was lied to. it wasnt bad by any means i guess. it was just the same old thing though. i laughed a few times i made this face a few times

it was the standard Will Ferrel type movie, the only twist was that this one is rated R so every other word out of their mouths is a cuss word. one very good thing about this movie is that Mary Steenburgen(Ted Danson’s wife), the chick that played Doc Brown’s girlfriend in Back to the Future 3, plays Ferrell’s mom and is very hot for a 55 year old women.

but over all im gonna give this film a “meh”, not really recommend it and tell you that if you want to see Anchorman, dont see this cause it is no Anchorman, but if you want to watch Talladega Nights over and over again then you might want to see this one. and on the Cinema Cafe, two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

my friend Jeff Crag is an artist. he made me a pair of shoes. here i will review my shoes and some of his art.

i asked him to make me a pair of shoes with two of my favorite musicians on them Cash and Mccartney. here they are.

i like them a lot. he pretty much did EXACTLY what i expected them to look like. which is all you can ask for right? he charged me $60 for it. which i think is fair for a cool pair of shoes. i am 100% satisfied with my shoe purchase.

id seen maybe 1 or 2 pairs of shoes that Jeff did before i asked him to make some for me, and maybe one or two band T shirts that he designed but i hadnt seen a big variety of stuff. he gave me links to some of his work and i like a lot of it, so im gonna post some of that cause i think its awesome.

i LOVE these.

now onto non-wearable art.

now im not gonna pretend to know anything about art. in fact, i dont even like 90% of the worlds “art”. but i know what i think looks good, and i think most of Jeff’s work looks good. if you like what you have been shown and want to look at more of his work or contact him you can check out these fine websites… jeffcrag.blogspot.com or myspace.com/jeffcragart

you know something funny? Jeff Crag applied for a position as a printer or something for a design company Alicia used to work for, and Alicia was in charge of hiring for the position, she asked me if i knew him and i vouched for him being awesome and she didnt hire him because he was “PUNK!”. what a bitch right?

Fart club for boys? WAY cool MC’s? Wait Around Your Mean Castle? WAY secretive Men’s Club?

Known Members: Mike Lawson, Christian Arnold, Chris Togetill (sp???)

Origins: Captain D’s

Suspected Activities: Gas.

All attempts to attain further information were thwarted.

Conclusion: I think it’s a harmless men’s club, provided they keep their activites to themselves.

so last night christian, chris, matt and i went to a hip new restaurant in Ghent called The Boot. we went with the intentions of auditing it as a restaurant and seeing some bands play after we ate. well we arrive and see a Captain D’s on the corner next to it so we just ate there instead.

i had the fish and shrimp dinner. it was the shit. spots like captain d’s and long john silver’s i think are overlooked in the fast food world. i understand that fast food fish is like the bologna or hot dogs of seafood but its still awesome. seafood is really hard to fuck up. if it comes out of the water, fry it and it tastes great.

these guys were there…

they were cool as crap. they were drinking orange juice and vodka and not hiding it, while matt was scared to bring in his taco bell. and they bought a bum a meal. they were rowdy and just really funny to be around. once they left the bum stuck around and was creeping everyone out. we left. went to The Boot. chris had bad gas. bands played. i got 4 hours of sleep. i went to work. and now i cant take a nap.

sorry to The Boot. theyre audit will have to wait. this one goes to Captain D’s and fast food seafood. i like it. i dont understand why processed fish isnt flying off the shelves of these places.