Still Life With Goyim

Spicy Noodle Bowl with 8-1/2 minute hard boiled egg.

Of course, the egg makes all the difference in the world, but the real reason I was so blase with the previous Spicy Noodle Bowl entry was multi-fold, and had nothing to do with the absence of egg, as that day I simply had not considered adding the egg in the first place.

Spicy Noodle Bowl is good. I know it is good. People all over the world eat Spicy Noodle Bowl everyday, and indeed, many can consider it part of their culture. But there is something inherently crappy about fast food. Always. Something. Part of the problem, maybe the whole problem, with Spicy Noodle Bowl is that it is so clearly manufactured. And, to quote Carlin, "I don't eat bicycle tires."

But still. Spicy Noodle Bowl is good-- I'm right there with ya, Annikins-- and it's a perfectly reasonable thing to have for lunch. And the egg does help alot. The name helps too: Nong Shim Picante Bowl Noodle Soup. The other one was Nong Shim Shin Bowl, which was also good. But the shin bowl, sadly, hailed from Cincinnati, which, I, well, I just don't think you should get your Oriental noodles from Ohio. Don't ask me why; it just seems wrong.

This one was made in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Much better.

The selection of the lunch of the day comes with the revelation that I have been having a hard time picking lunch the last few days due to the fact that I don't have beer in the house. Some of the lunch choices currently crowding my larder-- hell, most of the choices on hand-- are meals that don't actually require beer, but would be better off with. Fried potstickers and chicken wraps? Beer. Mexican Saltillo meal (mixed enchiladas, beans & rice)? Beer. Chili? Most definitely beer.

Pizza? Oh, come on.



In other news, Oh, my dear sweet Lord!

Every so often I actually forget this exists. AMC-- that's American Movie Classics, mind you-- is playing it right now as part of their Halloween Week lineup, which bodes extremely well for their Halloween day fest hosted by Rob Zombie. Now, I have no use for Rob Zombie, but one thing I have to admit is that the man does know his shlock horror flicks. Motel Hell is an extremely bad movie. It is awful. It is ofal. I sat through the whole goddamned thing myself, from the lousy opening title card to the crappy credits, and everything in between. It's full of badly drawn sterotypes, cliched characters, clearly fake gore, and fake scare tactics that don't work. And oh, did I mention that it's badly acted?

Love it.

If this is the kind of crap AMC is planning to show before Halloween rolls around? No limit to how low they are willing to go. There is no bottom.

Last night's movie was Executioner's Song, which I was going to write about, but I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say. The acting was uniformly excellent, and all the characters full realized. Spicy Noodle Bowl, on the other hand, has 380 calories per bowl. And while Tommy Lee Jones really makes a meal out of playing Gary Gilmore, including plenty of revelatory nuanced reactions, the advantage to adding boiled egg quarters to Spicy Noodle Bowl is that the longer they sit in the soup, the more the yolk soaks up the spicy, briny broth. And while the cinematography, showing off the glorious Utah mountain basin, was both lovely and lovingly done, at several points even giving me that lovely artificial chill that I sometimes get from watching such things, Spicy Noodle Bowl has that spicy broth that gives me a cough-inducing, back-of-the-throat bite that I love. I am glad I watched it, I would gladly watch it again, but I just don't know that there is anything to say about it. The only thing I brought out of it you could call a revelation is that sometimes people who act like assholes for no really good reason are not actually assholes at their core.

He he. Later, on AMC: Jeepers Creepers, a truly wretched flick, followed by Bride of Chucky. No. Bottom.

PS: The Spicy Noodle bowl also had ersatz pieces of fake-crab tofu pieces scattered about. Genius!