Never Trust The Gorton's Fisherman

SO THIS was an experi-ment. By and large I have always known the stuff they sell under the Gorton's banner is crap, and their recent re-purposing of the brand to suggest they are selling actual, recogniseably different kinds of fish, should hold no better promise. Still, I figured what the hell. I had recently put together a fish-and-chips lunch using a brand of frozen "pub battered" cod, and, I thought, it wouldn't take much of a difference in the Gorton's product to elevate it past the bland, unobjectionable, generic, frankly kind of insulting stuff I have experienced before.

And it was fine, really. A little disconcerting that the "fillets" are in almost geometrical form, and the breading still accounts for a dissapointing portion of the portion. But it tasted recognizably like fish, and actually enough like flounder that it might actually have been flounder. And, really, the only real reason I might have to dislike it is the standard reason, which is that this is the kind of food product that make it reasonable to claim all sorts of rotten things about Americans-- that we have no taste, that we value quantity over quality, that we voted for George W. Bush-- twice-- and that we will buy anything so long as it is packaged prettily and we're told it is special.

But really, the whole point here was the condiments. You see before you Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce, tartar sauce, Polish mustard, and ketchup spiked with Cholula and jalepeno Tabasco. Whee.


The weekend turned out to be movie weekend, mainly because we'd had a long week, the Wifey in fact had a long month, travelling for the majority of it for business, and it was easy enough to plop down and put something in the DVD/Birdy* player and just let 'er rip. This wasn't bad. The reviews I read of it played it pretty much right-- kind of heavy on the battle and light on the LA. Which is not to say there were no recognizeable locations or that it didn't feel like LA or SoCal for any reason. Just that . . . I dunno, it just kind of lacked personality. This bothered the Wifey more than it did me. Aaron Eckhardt was playing the lead as a character who doesn't have much of a personality outside being in the service, and having known a few of those types, I think he did a pretty good job, so I at least enjoyed that aspect of it. But the aliens only really appeared at great distance or as crafts flying overhead for the first two thirds, so the Wifey had great difficulty enjoying it as an alien invasion movie. It wasn't until I suggested that it was Black Hawk Down Vs. Aliens that she managed to find a level on which she could appreciate it. Still, in the final analysis, it was largely a great deal of smoke and noise. You could easily do as well playing a video game, and almost certainly better.



This, on the other hand. What is there to say? What's green and red and goes 200 miles an hour? They took a bit of Solaris here, some old Twilight Zone there, a dash of physics, a pinch of popular psych, a sprinkling of Dianetics, bleh bleh bleh, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrz, aaaaaaaaand garnish with Cillian Murphy.


So do I recommend it? Nah. I like my fish & chips with beer. The Battle: Los Angeles you could see once, but its' not going to change your life or anything. And if you happen to meet the Gorton's Fisherman, just punch 'im in the @#$%ing face for me.


*Birdy is what I call the Blue Ray Disc, both because I think it's cute, and because I think calling it a BD is stupid.