Empty Bookshelf Reviews

This might be my last traditional review of the year, considering we’re nearing the end of 2006. In this last month of the year, everybody likes to see best and worst of the year lists, so be prepared to be bombarded with those for the next few weeks, culminating with my Top 10 Lists of the Year. Ooooh meta-humor.

Ahhh the good old days when TV about Dinosaurs was relegated to them hitting each other with frying pans. If only Prehistoric Park had a little more of that.

Imagine, if you will, if Jurassic Park were a TV show. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Dinosaurs running around, tearing up each other and people, and all kinds of exciting action week after week. You could have park rangers dealing with all of the problems of running a park for dinosaurs, getting eaten while trying to feed them. I can’t really think of any good storylines, but this is dinosaurs and people in the same environment! This is like the holy grail of excitement… unless you count the Flintstones, and that horrible movie “Carnosaur“… god that was bad

So when I heard about this show, Prehistoric Park, that’s on Animal Planet (originally, it was made for British television, but I would bet that they had a deal with American TV before it was made for funding purposes), I just had to check it out. I was completely let down. There I am with my bowl of popcorn and my dino-pajamas, waiting to see an action-packed hour of dino-tainment, and I’m bored to tears. Why?

Well, “Prehistoric Park” is a documentary about an animal preserve where the curator goes back in time through some sort of timecube or stargate:atlantis or something and brings the dinosaurs back to his park, where he doesn’t do anything except keep them in pens and watch their health. That’s not entirely true. The last episode had a large “plot” involving saber-toothed tiger husbandry. You heard me. As a documentary on this completely real place, and the fact that it’s been made for educational purposes, obviously the main point is to tell us all about the behavior of these dinosaurs and how to medically and behaviorally care for them. And that’s about as exciting, as say, a documentary on real tiger husbandry, and who would really care about that?

I’ve boiled the conceptual problems down to three areas: First of all, since this park is entirely real (it is a documentary after all) are we to believe that these people have never seen or heard of Jurassic Park? You would think that if you were planning a dinosaur island theme park, Jurassic Park would probably be the first place you would look to do research. And you would realize that no matter how safely you think your T-Rex is kept, it’s not. Rule number 1 about having an island dinosaur preserve” No T-Rexes. Even if you have your giant electrical fences or in the case of Prehistoric Park, just giant wooden fences,he T-Rex is gonna get out. If we learned one thing from “The Lost World“, it’s that San Diego is not prepared for a T-Rex attack. (granted, that was pre-9/11, but I seriously doubt that the D.H.S. has a plan for dinosaur attacks). I understand that it’s very unlikely and that The Lost World was a movie, but this is a documentary, so you’d think these Palienticians would be more responsible. They’re just as bad as Cartographers

Secondly, haven’t they ever seen a time-travel movie? In fact there was one that came out about a year or so ago called “A Sound of Thunder” that dealt specifically to going back to the time of dinosaurs and hunting them. When the wrong ones ended up shot, the future (present) was entirely changed. Who knows, they could be abducting the dinosaur that brought their great-great-great etc grandparents together creating a eggs. Everything in this show is presented so seriously that we automatically take every single word for fact. It’s like if the croc hunter went after velociraptors instead of stingrays”. well the result would still be the same either way. Anyway, they could really tell us anything about dinosaurs (say they all wore blue hats, drank horse urine, and were the largest exporter of human pubis in the world) and we’d believe them.

I always liked learning about dinosaurs because there were so many different kinds, all with their own special features and fighting styles. I wanted to see them fight each other and stuff like all kids do. This show totally de-mystifies the whole dinosaur idea, basically showing us the medical side of running a dinosaur theme park, and unless you’re one of the few people who are interested in paleo-veteranary-zoology you’ll be as completely bored as I was.

The concept of “Prehistoric Park” gets one star due to having a good idea to start off with and completely wasting it. This show is like watching people oil and polish Transformers instead of letting them do what they do best: shoot laser beams.

I guess I just don’t understand the point. U2 needed a single for their approximately fifth greatest hits collection. Rather than come up with a really good song themselves, they enlisted the help of a band that while good, just doesn’t seem like the right fit with U2: Green Day. Not that Green Day can’t play, but the two bands’ styles are just a little too different to mesh collectively, not unlike that time where about 16 different musicians got up onstage at the Grammys and butchered Lennon/McCartney’s “Across the Universe”. Paul’s probably rolling in his grave. “route involving thoughtful lyrics about the condition of the area, or people’s struggles, they decided that the second half of the song should consist of the phrase “The Saints are Coming”, repteated over and over and over again, in a musical phrase that has definitely been taken from somewhere that I can’t quite place. They chose to debut this song at the reopening of the Superdome, for the Saints-Falcons Monday night game a few weeks ago, and it works perfectly as an opening theme song for the football team during games. I can’t imagine, however, that this song is going to be remembered at all in even one year’s time, and that’s a shame considering that this is all that two of the most prolific bands of the last 15 years could come up with. It’s almost like they weren’t trying.

They could very well have been trying something new though. This could be the start of product placement within the music industry. Well, I guess that’s not new” but maybe actually using the songs on the radio to promote something. It would be like the Eagles writing a song about how great the Philadelphia Eagles are, to get them pumped up, or AC DC writing a song for the Chargers (HA!), or Bad Company writing a song called “Bad Company” and using it at Enron meetings (BA-ZING).

And isn’t Bono’s thing Africa , anyway? Why didn’t they use the power of song to put together a group to raise funds for Africa “. Oh wait” I forgot” Well, why didn’t they do it again? A world-renowned, self-appointed ambassador to a far-off and underprivileged continent can’t be taking time away from that to help another cause, especially one that’s been nigh on forgotten by most of the world ( You know you’re lost in your own logic when you can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not). I mean, you don’t see Brangelina Polie out there helping America ‘s homeless people, or fighting drug abuse, or all the millions of issues people here face every day. And that’s because they have character. They know that if they multi-task, not only do run the risk of reducing the importance of their cause, but they also reduce the importance of other, more useless celebrities. By doing double duty (I said Doody!… I guess that doesn’t work as well when typed out) when it comes to activism, you’re the one putting Rob Scheider out of a job. It’s on your head Bono.

What was I talking about? Oh, this dumb song. Like I said, it may be good for the football team, but call me cold; I don’t really care about the Saints. It was nice to see them play well, but not nice enough for me to listen to an awful song that could’ve been better.

One star for trying to bring some attention back to New Orleans , and making a song that they’ll be playing forever at Saints games. Minus four stars for making the rest of us listen to it, and possibly starting a trend of individually-made rock songs for a specific sports team. The last thing we need is a re-made version of “Benny and the Jets” about New York’s lesser football squad. We already have to deal with that annoying J-E-T-S cheer. That should be enough.

Just when you though I wouldn’t be able to find a picture to go with these two topics…. BAM!

A few days ago I read that Turner is going back through their catalogue of old Hanna Barbara cartoons to remove all intimations of smoking. First of all, I’m not really sure how they’re going to do this. I undestand that if they can take the cops’ guns away in ET and replace them with walkie talkies, they can pretty much do anything, and with 5 color animations they can do it easier I’d assume. But the question isn’t the technical ability. The question is the context of the situations and how they’re going to make them make sense to people. Granted there is a valid point with making sure that kids aren’t starting to smoke because they see Quickdraw McGraw or Snagglepuss doing it. After all, I’m sure the only reason that kids buy Fruity Pebbles is because Fred Flintstone does, right? But should the works of the past be censored because of semi-questionable content? Disney will NEVER let Song of the South see the light of day because of some supposed racial issues with the movie. But how are we supposed to remember what things were like when these cartoons were made, unless we’re able to see them. Being a gatekeeper is one thing, but erasing history is another. And who are all these kids who are watching Hanna Barbara cartoons anyway? It’s not like you can even watch these cartoons unless you have the Boomerang channel which may not even exist anymore. Kids today are more interested in watching fake anime and Pokeymans than anything else. Where are the robots that change into things? Or the magical cats from far off planets? I’m getting away from my point.

Today they discovered that Pluto isn’t a planet. Once and for all. The thing is, these are planetarians saying this. I would expect these sort of mistakes from a cartographer (the study of uncharted lands), but these people are studying something more important, the whole solar system. What are we all supposed to do? Go back to the science books that we had during that brief period when Pluto wasn’t a planet last time? Actually, knowing my school district, they probably still use those books. Next thing you know, we’re going to be told we never had to wear those stupid glasses to look at an eclipse… like these “cool kids“. Seriously, I could understand the decision if it really meant something. But what’s the point of this change, except to make trouble for anyone who’s ever learned that Pluto is a planet. Whoever was pushing for this is on notice!

People should really worry about changing things that matter to the masses, or will cause trouble if they’re not changed. In the case of the cartoons, censoring for kids is one thing, but not allowing people to ever see these cartoons the way they were originally made is a disservice to the people who made them in the first place. Kids should listen to their parents and not cartoons anyway.

Oh, those kids. Always at it. You guys really shouldn’t've.

So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word “milestone“, and don’t believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell.

The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005… remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge?

Dan’s first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled chese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”, a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan’s opinion of My opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”. Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn’t last, which seems to have been proven false.

October seemed to be us finding our footing.

November saw Dan’s Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of “Coach“, and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he’s an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth”paste” that doesn’t work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep.

November didn’t see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining.

December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam’s first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a suprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert’s take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing.

December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews.

2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because “Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego“, and “The Simpsons” after season 9 is so easy to complain about.

January’s topics fell off a little.

February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan’s digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper.

Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking.

March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega-reviews by Dan.

April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that’s going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star.

For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan’s contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Davinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything.

June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn’t designed to suit his needs.

July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase… and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shayamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I’d give it a 3.5

This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn’t too shabby.

In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn’t be able to keep it fresh, that we’d run out of ideas, and that we wouldn’t be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was “It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs.”

Well, I think we’ve significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We’re still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the ‘A’ game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I’d be willing to bet that we’ve provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near fututre. On the upside, it hasn’t gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs.

For all of these reasons, I’m willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I’ve also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I’m gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five.

And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review.

I’m no Civil Engineer, but I’d like to think of myself as a Monday Morning Traffic Planner. Some people have football; I have traffic jams. I don’t think of myself as an impatient person; it’s just that I hate indirect routes, especially within cities. I also think highways should be endless straight lines with no changes in altitude or direction. In fact, I think roads in cities should all be highways, too. You say, how would this work? I say, it would all cater to me.

Bring. It. On.

It’s be very simple. Roads would be paved to connect points to which I frequently travel. I don’t need a highway to get to Wawa or the supermarket, but for anything over 3/4 of a mile, it’s the highway or the, uh, no-way. Longer trips simple involve longer new highways.

Well, there isn’t much more to it than that. When sitting in the car on a yet another long trip to a familiar destination, I’ve come up with some more details.

• Obviously, there’d be no speed limits. Well, none for me at least. Imagine going 100mph with nothing to worry about because the road is perfectly straight and perfectly flat. It’s top speed cruising the whole time.
• I’ve realized that other people might find use for the roads, even if the exits are only at my frequent destinations at one end and my house at the other. Everyone can use the roads, but I have to approve them first. They also have to pay a toll. To me.
• All the roads would be named after me.

Among many others there would be:

• The Dan Fuller East-Side / South-Side Expressway
• The Fuller Cross-Country Thoroughfare (stopping in Evanston, IL)
• The Dan Fuller Media to Concordville Extension
• The Allentown to Bear Creek Highway
• The DF (a highway connecting Media and Allentown)
• The Dan Fuller Honorarium Bao-An to Industrial Zone 7 Overpass
• and on and on…

Obviously, a very good idea.

My Frequent Stabs at Highway Planning receive four hopeful stars because of how much more useful the highway system would be when it would cater exactly (and only) to my needs. Unfortunately, part of my “frequent stabs” involves thinking about how much money it would take to enact such a plan, but unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a number that big, and I’m stuck with yet another half-invented idea.

It looks like the FAO bear is a bandwagon jumper.

WOW. That’s all I have to say. Actually there is a lot more to say. Going into the city the other day, I was kinda skeptical of what I was going to be doing. I was dropped off, by bus, into the most consumer-based part of the city, probably even the east coast, or even the country, on the most consumer-driven weekend of the year, with three women. After going to a plethora of stores that I really didn’t want to spend as much time in as we did, but were interesting nonetheless, we walked about sixteen blocks, to the corner of 58th St. and 5th Ave. The FAO Schwarz Store. It was packed. A little more packed than I bargained for. So packed, if fact, that there was a line that went halfway down the block, just to get in, guarded by employees dressed like toy soldiers. They said it was going to be a 20-25 minute wait to get in, and I grumbled as we got in line. Even though we didn’t really have anything to do for the rest of the day, I was wondering if it was worth a wait like that. Yes. It was. In fact, it took little more than 10 minutes to get into the store, which was remarkable considering the length of the line.

Inside we found three floors that just kept going and going. First floor had stuffed animals. Any kind. Lifesized elephants and giraffes, cows and hippos. They also had smaller sized stuffed animals, like lifesized german sheperds. It also housed a vintage toy collection, and a glass case with extravant upgrades of old favorites, such as a gold slinky and gem studded Mickey Mouse-headed Pez dispensers. There was also a candy section, complete with gummi pythons (over 3 feet of gummi), and an old-fashioned ice cream parlor.

Downstairs was home to puzzle toys, action figures, video games, something called the Street Surfboard or thereabouts, and pretty much anything that you could have stations set up to demonstrate. They had an expert teaching kids the skateboard thing, a guy who could solve a rubik’s cube in under one minute and thirty seconds (to brag a bit, about 5 years ago, I could solve it in about that time, but he was a bit more personable with the people than I could ever be, and he was obviously more skilled than I could ever be), and all kinds of other fun stuff. It did kinda get me angry when the rich mother in her fur coat was asking her 5 year old son which 3,000 dollar Star Wars collectable ship model he wanted(a similar one), maybe not realizing that he was totally gonna treat it like a 40 dollar toy and not a 3,000 piece of art.

Going up to the third floor, I was blown away by the amount of stuff once again. There were the guys doing the show on the floor piano, a ridiculous doll section, with men (it is NY) sewing doll clothes and using some mini bedazzler to put sequins on them. There was a case with all these old school-looking barbie dolls, that actually smelled like the flavor associated with the color of their dress. As you kept walking, there was this glass encased platform about 8 feet high, where, if you were younger than 8, and presumably a girl, you could go and dance with a woman who was made up to be a princess of some sort. Not that I’m an eight-year-old girl and was really into this, but the amount of effort that went into this section of the store was amazing. Around the corner was the boys section, filled with an erea where you could design your own hot wheels car. There was some VR type thing, more car-related toys, and some completely drivable mini cars, ranging from a $12,000 mini-one seater audi to a $40,000, two seater, 7 foot long, mini hummer-type vehicle< , with an all-weather fiberglass body with a protective frame, rack-and-pinion steering, dual hydraulic disk brakes, a manual emergency brake, full front and rear suspension, and a three-speed transmission. You can buy one online here, if you like. There was also rare toy room where people could buy and sell really old collectible toys. Again, most were really expensive.

And even when we were walking out we passed whole sections on the top floor that we hadn’t seen before, and there were just so many people out doing demonstrations of toys, inventors of toys there to sign them, and people there just to get the kids involved.

All in all, the store did an incredible job of providing an experience that a kid would never forget, getting them to not only say, “I want this”, but creating a bond between the kid and the toy to make them want it even more. It was at least five times as impressive as the Times Square Toys R Us, which I think was about five stories tall, and there was plenty to see and do, enough that it would take at least an hour and a half just to see everything there, without actually spending time to take it all in. The only downside was that it was so crowded with kids, but what else would you expect?

The NYC FAO Schwarz Store gets five stars due to the vast amount of things to see and do, the incredible amount of effort put into selling toys and creating an experience that children won’t forget, and along with that, an incredibly successful way to sell toys. The only negative aspect was the incredible amount of people there, but that could hardly be deemed the store’s fault, and they did an admirable job of keeping the amount of people reasonably under control with the line system. Well worth the short wait to get in.

This review is the final installment of the Cleveland Trifecta

A programming note: Being that one of the goals of this site is to avoid becoming a “rant blog,” I’ll apologize for my three most recent reviews. (Those two links are only coincidentally related to computer topics — they’re on the first page of google results for “rant blog.” You guys strike me as the type that check your ‘external page links’ section of your log analyzer, so that’s why you’re getting some hits from this crazy, random site) Upon deciding to review a collection of three Cleveland-related things, I didn’t realize that even though I was planning on negative reviews, my opinions weren’t creatively negative. There’s nothing wrong with negativity, but unfortunately, the way that the Cleveland items were bad was more in the “disappointed” way than the “this sucks more than anything has ever sucked before” way. So, with that in mind, on to the last Cleveland-related review.

The Cleveland Marriot at…

With a ridiculous name like “The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center,” I should’ve known something was up. I have exceedingly low expectations when it comes to hotels. I’m even less of a snob about hotels/motels than I am about restaurants, and the fact that I consider hotels and motels to be in the same category should let everyone know how I go about choosing lodging. Just like the ChopHouse & Brewery, prices were high and because of that, so were my expectations. There was a special group discount rate due to the eye show, but due to the fact that it was very much in the middle of “metropolitan” Cleveland, and was (at least superficially) rather fancy, I had high expectations, as I’m sure that the Marriot expects that of their customers.

Even though work paid for the stay, I’m still hesistant to even spend someone else’s money for a hotel over $75/night, much less the Marriot’s $160. Much of that price is due to the fact that, again, it’s in the middle of downtown, but still, it’s Cleveland. In all fairness to the hotel, I’m not really the target market; I travel on “business,” but I’m still rather cheap thrifty, so I’m not the type to rave about the quality of the food brought by room service, if only for the fact that I could never justify spending that sort of money to eat-in (or out, for that matter). Regardless, whether or not I’m part of the “target market,” I was staying at (deep breath) The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center.

The Key Center is one of the modern-looking skyscrapers that I talked about in my review of Cleveland, and the “Marriot Downtown” is, obviously, a hotel that occupies a fair amount of space of this skyscraper (It’s a Cleveland-sized skyscraper, so 57 floors, not anything really big but still tall enough to make you dizzy when looking up at it from the ground.

The hotel itself had doormen, a concierge, and all of that fancy stuff, so again, even though I wasn’t really planning on using those services, I can’t hold it against the hotel for offering them. My room was on the 15th floor, facing the lake (and Browns Stadium), so the view was nice, but being that I was there for work, it’s not like I really spent that much time in the room, anyway (again, not the hotel’s fault). The bed had about 10 pillows of pretty much every shape and size (apparently, an obscene amount of pillows is par for the course in “fancier” hotels these days), and the bed was comfortable, but not Tempurapedic comfortable, but no hotels have beds that nice, anyway.

At this point, I guess I’m really just reviewing this hotel based on how much better $160/night is compared to ~$70/night. Having stayed at a hotel in that latter price point a couple weeks earlier, I was expecting more and better, beyond the convenience of not having to commute to/from the hotel to the convention center. I guess it’s been said that the more expensive hotels are, the more you have to pay for conveniences. The $70 hotel offered both wired and wireless internet access for free, while The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center offered a free “demo” of TV-based internet, and of course, the “demo” simply said “It’s the Internet — On Your TV!!! Only $9.95 per day!!!” Wired and wireless access were also $9.95 per day. I guess it’s a matter of the “businessmen” that need an internet connection will pay for it, even if it’s $19.95 per day, but it strikes me as cheap. Is that the only complaint I have about the hotel, no free internet access? Well, I didn’t end up buying it any of the days, but it definitely would have made my job simpler, as some doctors had questions about content on the website and so on.

The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center receives three stars due to the fact that even though it was rather pricey, they skimped on the fact that if they consider themselves to be the “business traveller’s destination” (my words, their insinuation), most all business travellers have some sort of need for an internet connection, and charging for it on top of a rather high daily rate only serves to make the hotel look cheap, not accomodating. Also, perhaps even more damningly, that insufferable dropping of the “the” in The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at (where’s the “THE?!”) Key Center” and the fact that they always include “The” at the beginning really grinds my gears.

This review is the second leg of the Cleveland Trifecta

There’s nothing worse than not getting what you pay for. I’m no “fine diner;” I don’t consult dining guides (Zagat’s, Mobil, or the new-as-of-today Michelin guide for New York). Some have called me a picky eater, but this isn’t “picky” due to anything other than the fact that there’s a reasonable amount of food I simply don’t like. I’m not talking about, “my god, I could never eat a cheeseburger from McDonald’s!” but a more straightforward dislike of particular foods (fish, onions, and so on). That makes me a picky eater but not a selective eater. In no way shape or form am I too good for a restaurant; I’ll eat anywhere, but though this doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed certain expectations of a particular restaurant. Especially expensive ones.

The best picture I could find.

Choosing price as the index, restaurants can be broken up into five categories: fast food/convenience food (McDonald’s, Wawa), family dining (Friendly’s, Perkin’s), theme dining (Outback, Olive Garden), upscale dining (there aren’t really national examples of this… though P.F. Chang’s would count while The Cheescake Factory straddles the line between theme and upscale), and fine dining (the restaurants found in the Michelin guides). Very few people have the money to visit these “fine dining” establishments and many areas don’t even have any of these restaurants within reasonable distance. All this is to say that at each price point there are particular expectations. Every now and then a fast food restaurant offers something better than an entree at a Perkin’s-type restaurant, but that’s not expected. These positive “category jumps” are rare, and it’s found much more frequently that a restaurant in a higher category only manages to deliver the quality expected at a lower price point. The Cleveland ChopHouse & Brewery is one of these restaurants.

Looking for a nice-ish place to eat after a full-day of conventioning, I took a walk toward the “warehouse district” of downtown Cleveland (the rough geography has been previously discussed) around 9:00pm (yes, late but not a problem as most places closed at 11). Most every restaurant was in that “upscale dining” category, so wherever I’d choose, a not insignificant amount of money would be spent. Simply, The Cleveland ChopHouse & Brewery was the most eye-catching of the options.

The intentionally sparesely decorated space was dimly lit and moderately full, with a combination of the sounds of jazz music from the speakers and conversations throughout the space. I’m not picky about interiors or decor, so even though it was perfectly comfortable, it didn’t strike me as anything special, but the three (+?) shiny vats (hence the “brewery” part of the name) were eye-catching in their glassed-in section of the main room. A better than neutral experience so far, but the unfriendliness of the hostess was the beginning of the end of any meaningful positive experiences to be had. I don’t need to be pampered or coddled to, but you’d think that in the usually limited interaction (“Non-smoking please” “ok”) there wouldn’t even be room for someone to be unfriendly, but apparently I said the wrong thing. The table was perfectly fine and happened to face a TV. Water service began right away, but that was it for about 15 minutes. No servers stopped by to take a drink order for those 15 minutes until one stopped by after seeing how long I was sitting. Naturally between that order was taken and its arriving, the actual server came by to take my drink order again. Having worked at a restaurant, I know how much servers hate when customers at a table they’re not serving need to get something from the proper server, so I didn’t say anything. When the proper server came by, she was very apologetic about how long I had to wait, but in that “I’m apologizing even though it’s not my fault” sort of way, like when the food is under/over-cooked. Except, in this case, it is usually the server’s fault (more restaurant experience talking here). Oh well.

Bread service began (a small pie pan’s worth of fresh corn bread with honey butter…. rather good), but my now twice-ordered drink was still MIA. Of course once I had enough of the bread, the drink showed up. It was some sort of “Irish Stout” made in the brewery section of the facility, and I’m not beer connisseur, but it was fine, sort of like Guinness without as much of the cigarette butt taste.

At a new-to-me restaurant, no matter how expensive, I have a simple strategy for deciding what to order: pick three things from the menu, ask the server what they like, and pick one that was common with my list. This happened to be Shrimp Scampi. **A note on this selection. Some have said, “Why would you get shrimp at a steak house. You should get beef.” Well, it’s not like seafood is any cheaper at these restaurants, and they claim to specialize in “steaks, chops, and seafood.” Naturally, it took a particularly long time to get to my table, but it (and the mashed potatoes it came with) were “just finished” hot, so at least it hadn’t been sitting in a heat lamp or equivalent (restaurant experience tells you when it’s “just finished” hot or “heat amp” hot). The whole “steak house” thing usually implies slow (“relaxed” might be a better word?) service, but without making a stupid joke about them pulling the shrimp out of the lake, it took forever.

The actual entree was ok. For $26.95 I’m not looking for ok. There’s nothing bad to say about it, but nothing good to say either. It was shrimp scampi, just that simple. No particularly interesting flavors, just plain old shrimp scampi. Some say that the “atmosphere” is included in those prices, but as discussed above, it wasn’t anything special either.

The Cleveland ChopHouse & Brewery receives one-and-a-half stars due to its not meeting expectations set by attempting to establish itself as an “upscale” restaurant. This is decidedly different than confusing hype and product, as restaurants create their own hype/expectations simply by deciding which price point to which they intend to cater. These expectations are as much a part of a dining experience as the food itself, especially for pricier restaurants. If a restaurant in a lower price category receive higher star ratings, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are “better.” They are simply better for the price point. Soon there will be a higher level discussion of star ratings to attempt to establish “rules.” Go Rules!

This review is the first leg of The Cleveland Trifecta

Cleveland is a very weird city. The stereotypes surrounding it are…um, everything that goes with the “Cleveland Rocks” intro of The Drew Carey Show and people who look like Drew Carey and like the Browns. That’s not really much upon which to base my good-intentioned prejudicing.

Wishful Thinking

I’ve actually been to Cleveland three times in the era of my life I can remember. The first visit was high school trip, and the only “feel” of the city I got was from the 50 or so feet between where the bus dropoff point and the entrance to an attraction (The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and The Hard Rock Cafe), so that first trip doesn’t count. In the last two years, to attend the East West Eye Conference, I’ve made the trip twice. Unfortunately, I’m sort of an expert on downtown Cleveland. Maybe some Cleveland fans can inform me that where I stayed/visited is depressing and/but there’s another “downtown” not so business-oriented that is unspecifically better.

Anyway, on to business:
The Chicago Loop (a section of “downtown” Chicago) is dead after 5 or so each weekday and all weekend because there’s no more work to be done, and there are lots (and lots) of other bustling areas still “downtown” to do things. To be in the “loop” after hours is a bit unsettling, skyscrapers that go way up, traffic lights doing their thing, but very little traffic and even fewer people. Downtown Cleveland is just like this, but all the time. Except instead of no people, Cleveland some of the most aggressive panhandlers/homeless people that I’ve ever come across. So it also has that goin’ for it, which is nice.

To better paint a picture, one can cross any street downtown during business hours (or any hours, really) without looking in either direction and not get hit by a car. This isn’t because the drivers are friendly and slow down to avoid hitting pedestrians; it’s because there aren’t many drivers. Likewise, I found no McDonald’s in downtown Cleveland. McDonald’s isn’t a sign of class, just a universal symbol of people being busy and needing a fast, cheap place to eat. The only other “quick” food I could find was a run-down Subway and some hole-in-the-wall reuben deli/eating area (I think the reuben is Cleveland’s official sandwich). All of this weirdness is compounded by the fact that the downtown is clean and exhibits lots of new/newish buildings. Unless there’s some other downtown area, it’s like the people go to these buildings at 8 or 9 in the morning then zip out of the general area around 5.

There’s a hip/trendy (read: expensive) part of downtown called “The Warehouse District,” where if you want to spend $30 for yourself on dinner and wait interminably to get it, it’s a great chance. But even here, especially at what should be busy times (weekend nights), it’s oddly quiet. Something doesn’t feel right when you and your “work buddies” are part of the ten people in a bar at midnight-thirty on a Saturday night. These businesses (restaurants, bars, etc.) stay in business, so the rent must be shockingly low for such metropolitan locations. The football stadium is part of the “downtown,” so it (the whole area) must get busier on football Sundays, but that’s only 8 Sundays each year unless the Browns happen to make it into the playoffs (good luck with that).

Cleveland, Ohio receives two stars due to its general “deadness” and obliviousness regarding that “deadness.” (Songs talking about how much it “rocks” paint an ignorantly optimistical picture.) Its positive points are earned from its aesthetic appeal (minus the fact that there’s no challenge when playing “I Spy a smelly bum”) and the 45 minutes of walking around before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets old.