The show originally aired on the BBC, but is now shown on Fox. Though the program has been unnecessarily amped-up and dramatized for American pea-brain attention spans, the show still follows the same basic pattern. On day one, Chef Ramsay goes to the failing restaurant, meets the owner(s), attempts to eat lunch, and then goes back to the kitchen to give them a righteous bollocking for serving him a disgusting meal. That evening, Chef Ramsay observes dinner service and identifies the problems with the restaurant. On day two, painful changes are made with the usual resistance from owners and staff, often with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Chef Ramsay acts as a dictatorial battlefield commander, encouraging cheerleader, and sometimes even gentle counselor, depending on the situation. On day three, owners and staff arrive to a newly renovated and decorated restaurant and there is a grand re-opening, usually featuring a fresh new menu, higher standards, and renewed energy.

There is some criticism that Kitchen Nightmares is “just TV.” Perhaps. But I have seen every episode from the beginning and while I certainly understand the business of TV, production, and ratings, I honestly believe that Chef Ramsay is trying to help these people. I see it in him. I hear a lot of complaints about his language and bearing, but I like to compare him to a military drill instructor. Ramsay’s behavior is nothing compared to a DI, but there isn’t a red-faced, apoplectic DI in existence that wants anyone in his company to fail. They care. Ramsay is no different. And even as he is swearing a blue streak at a chef who has just tried to poison him with old crab meat, his tone is much different on Kitchen Nightmares, than it is on his other contest-style shows, like Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef. He’s here to help.

I got word that Kitchen Nightmares would be shooting in Austin at a Greek restaurant named El Greco. I started checking around and finally found El Greco’s Facebook page, where there was a call for diners who wanted reservations during the shoot. I sent an email and a producer got back to me and told me I had to fill-out a survey and then wait and see if they would accept my reservation. The survey was simple. It asked if I had ever dined at El Greco. I had never even heard of El Greco, so that was easy. It asked if I knew of El Greco’s reputation (no), did I eat at other Greek restaurants around town (yes), and then it asked me to take five factors in determining where I eat (recommendation, menu, scene/vibe/atmosphere, review, and price) and put them in order of importance to me. I returned the survey and within a couple of days, my reservation was accepted!

My lunch companion, Kang Lee, looking incredibly happy that I chose him to be food poisoned with me. He had never even heard of Kitchen Nightmares! Chef Ramsay’s trailer is in the background.

On the day of filming, we arrived early with our signed release forms in hand. We checked-in, had our photos taken, and were given a couple of simple instructions such as – no cell phones or cameras allowed in the restaurant, don’t look at the camera and don’t engage Chef Ramsay, unless he speaks to you. After that we stood in line around the side of the building and a producer sent us into the restaurant, party by party, staggering us so that the restaurant wasn’t unfairly put into the weeds. After that, we were real patrons enjoying having lunch. We ordered and paid for our own meals. Nobody asked us to sit anywhere in particular and we were allowed to stay as long as we liked. As you can see from the finished episode, we stayed longer than any of the other patrons. My hope was that I would have a chance to meet Chef Ramsay, but it didn’t work out.

In fact, after the initial instructions and the fact that there were people walking around with professional video cameras, there was no indication that this wasn’t an ordinary lunch service. Well, our waiter did seem to be a little jumpy, but that was to be expected and at least he gave us helpful and friendly service.

The biggest surprise to me about the whole shoot, was how linear and uninterrupted it was. I was expecting there to be many start and stops from the director, but that was not the case at all. Except for editing to tighten everything up, Chef Ramsay’s initial visit occurred just as you see it in the episode. The only out-of-sequence editing I saw was when he was served the stuffed zucchini before the lamb shank. I noticed this, because when he is served the zucchini, Kang and I have already left. A moment later, when he is served the lamb shank, we are back and visible in the background again.

Jimmy and Kang enjoy lunch with Gordon Ramsay. Photo: FOX Broadcasting via hulu

Speaking of lamb shank, I should get on to my lunch. The El Greco lunch menu was very strange. Except for side dishes and three other items, everything on the menu was $9.99. The Greek Burger was $8.99, the Lamb Chops Plate was $10.99, and the Braised Lamb Shank was $16.99. Two of those items are with a dollar of the rest, so basically, only one item didn’t cost $10. So, a cup of soup – $9.99. A small salad – $9.99. A soup and salad – $9.99. A lamb gyro – $9.99. Wait, huh?

Here is the old menu:

El Greco Lunch Menu (old)

To me, the Lunch Lamb Chops Plate looked to be the best deal, but I was told they were out. Uh oh. I hoped Ramsay wouldn’t ask for that. “Fine,” I told the waiter, “I’ll have the Braised Lamb Shank.” The waiter told me that market prices for lamb had required them to raise the price of the lamb shank to something over $20, but he assured me that it was the finest lamb imported from New Zealand. I snickered to myself and thought – yeah, I’ll be the judge of that. I was unhappy about the price increase, but it was a special occasion, so why not? I ordered the lamb shank and a side portion of Greek salad.

El Greco's New Zealand Braised Lamb Shank Photo: FOX Broadcasting via hulu

The food was disappointing. The salad was a watery, goopy mess. The lamb shank was microwaved to within an inch of its life and covered with a tomato sauce, which normally I would have hated, but in this case was welcomed for its ability to mask the condition of the meat. Lamb shank? The pain in my stomach made it feel more like a prison shank. I was told that I got the last lamb shank, but as it happens, Chef Ramsay ordered the same thing and they managed to find another one. God knows where they found it.

"It's depressing." Photo: FOX Broadcasting via hulu

For dessert, I ordered the baklava. Traditionally, this comes as a layered pastry of phyllo, ground walnuts, butter, and honey. El Greco served their baklava rolled, so that on the plate it looked like a small, curled…cat poop. It looked disgusting. I suppose it tasted fine, but I couldn’t get over the serving presentation or temperature. I was told that baklava is traditionally served cold. That’s fine, but I can now say for certain that I do not care for cold pastries that taste as though they have just been pulled out of the refrigerator.

The lamb shank, side salad, tea, and dessert came to $28.33. That is a really expensive lunch, especially for a small Greek cafe, located near a university campus. For what was delivered – yeah, I got shanked.

The El Greco decor redesign. Photo: El Greco Facebook Page

The Kitchen Nightmares episode followed the template, with Chef Ramsay helping diffuse the staff problems, updating the decor, and improving the menu. While almost anything could be seen as an improvement to the bare, lazy decor (basically an industrial canteen with photos of Greece on the wall to add some color), the update wasn’t much better and was one of the weakest of the series. Chef Ramsay banished the microwave (in a dramatic fashion) and updated the menu here:

El Greco Revised Menu (front)

El Greco Revised Menu (back)

By the end of the episode, the owners and staff had come together to smash plates in a Greek tradition of celebration!

My intent was to revisit El Greco after Chef Ramsay made his changes, but sadly, El Greco closed before the show even aired. Based on what I saw in the episode, it was a bit of a Greek Tragedy. It appears as though most of the problems stemmed from family infighting and the resultant lack of passion for the food and for the restaurant. It seems clear to me that by the time Chef Ramsay arrived, nothing could have saved that restaurant. Though the restaurant has closed, and maybe because the restaurant has closed, I hope that the family has a chance to come together again. I wish them well.

The full El Greco episode of Kitchen Nightmares is available on hulu here:

Luckily, there are other very good Mediterranean food restaurants in Austin. I recently discovered Pars Mediterranean Supermarket and Deli, located in the strip center at Burnet and Research (next to Trudy’s). It’s a warm, unfussy Persian joint with friendly owners and simple, but delicious food at a reasonable price. On weekdays, you can tell a joke for a free side dish. Opa!

J I M M Y

1. Airbag Sticker Delete

The first mod to any car that I own is the removal of the obnoxious airbag warning stickers from the sun visors (always present on the driver’s side, too, just in case you are strapping your baby in to drive and you look up to see that your baby should never ever drive an airbag-equipped car).

Cost: Free!

2. LED Lights

I replaced the map lights, trunk light, and license plate lights with LEDs from HIDguy.com. This made a huge improvement all around, especially with the interior lights. The first time I opened the door at night with the new lights, I thought I was being abducted by aliens. The intense white light looks modern and more appropriate for a brand new car, especially one which already has such nice instrument panel lighting. This mod is a must.

Cost: $43.

3. Alcantara* Shift Boot

In every other sports car that has ever been equipped with an Alcantara-covered steering wheel, at a minimum, the shift boot has also been Alcantara. For the Boss, Ford has the steering wheel covered in fake suede, the shift boot made out of fake leather, and the parking brake boot made out of some other kind of fake leather. Look, the collar should match the cuffs. It’s as simple as that. It isn’t as if any of this were actual leather, it is just three different kinds of fake leather. Why couldn’t they be the same? Was there a cost savings somewhere? Are there really grades of polyvinyl chloride fake leather?

Anyway, this bugged me, so I ordered a new shift boot and parking brake boot from www.redlinegoods.com, a Polish company. That’s right, to get a proper shift boot for my American car, I had to have one shipped from Poland. Well, good on them, because I am very pleased with their service and with the quality of their work. Instructions for installation are here, but I have added larger photos and a few extra comments here.

1. Remove the shift knob by rotating it counter clockwise. That’s all that Redline tells you, but you need to know something about that shift knob, or you are likely to get a hernia. It’s held on with blue Loctite. That’s right, Ford fitted this car with a Chinese transmission made from the melted-down pots and pans of dead dissidents and it’s almost certainly destined to fall apart faster than a student protest. But by God they don’t want that shift knob falling off. No sir.

Check the forums for ideas on how to remove the shift knob. You might get a musclehead friend or somebody on PCP who doesn’t feel pain. You also might try applying heat to break the Loctite bond. A rubber-strap oil filter wrench might work, too. I’m not going to tell you what I did, but let’s just say that now I have to order a new shift knob.

2. Open the storage compartment and then pull the center console trim piece by pulling up here. It will unclip easily. Unplug the traction control/hazard/trunk release connector and remove the trim piece, sliding the boot over the gear change lever.

3. Remove the shift boot by unclipping the plastic mounting ring from the indicated clips.

4. Once the shift boot has been removed from the center console trim, use a putty knife, gasket scraper, or flathead screwdriver to remove to separate the shift boot from the plastic mounting ring.

5. I used a hot glue gun to glue the new boots to the plastic mounting rings. Because hot glue guns are dangerous, I had a safety officer present.

6. Detail. This is from the parking brake boot. In this area, the fitment can be very tight. In my case, the fabric was pulled so tightly at the bottom that it began to curl and it would not adhere. So, I made a 2-3mm cut in the fabric at the bottom, which was just enough to alleviate the tension and allow the fabric to lay flat and adhere to the plastic ring.

7. I used binder clips to clamp the boot to the plastic ring after I had applied the hot glue. They worked perfectly.

8. The finished boots!

I am very pleased with the quality of these pieces, but I have to say that the change is so subtle, that most will find this mod not worth the trouble. Also, the boots do not exactly match the color of the steering wheel. The boots are closer to black, while the steering wheel is a charcoal grey. In fact, to my eye, there is even a little bit of almost purple tint to the steering wheel cover. Anal retentive detail oriented people might try to wash or fade the material to get a closer match and folks with serious issues could just send the company a spare steering wheel and have them find the dye lot with the closest match. The original pieces didn’t match in color either, so I’m just happy that the material looks the same. The difference is subtle, but pleasing to me.

* I am using Alcantara generically, because it is easier than saying faux suede. Alcantara is a brand name and only the faux suede on the Recaro seats is actually Alcantara. Neither the steering wheel cover nor the boots provided by Redline Automotive Accessories Corp. are made from Alcantara.

Cost: $78

4. Window Tint

My car sits outside during the day, while I am at work and I live in Texas. That means window tint is mandatory. I took my car to Dave Angenend at Sideways Auto Salon and he tinted my windows with 30% Wincos film, a new Japanese product that features very high heat rejection, no RF interference, and a lifetime warranty.

Wincos-30:

Visible Light Transmitted 34%
Visible Light Reflected 5%
Solar Energy Transmitted 22%
Solar Energy Reflected 5%
Solar Energy Absorption 73%
IR Rejection 92%
UV Ray Rejection 99%+
Total Solar Energy Rejected 53%

Dave managed the up-sell, because he happened to catch me during the hottest Summer in Texas history. Worth every penny. The film works as advertised, is the perfect tint level for me, and looks beautiful on the car.

Cost: $375

5. License Plate

The standard Texas license plate is an atrocity. It looks like a 3rd-grader’s art project (don’t bother with the emails, 3rd-graders). Luckily, there are lots of options available for a modest fee. I selected this popular design, which fits nicely with the Boss livery.

Cost: $55

6. Stereo

The Boss comes with the base stereo and no option to upgrade from the factory. There is a head unit, AM/FM, CD, aux input and four 6×8 speakers. The bass is muddy and the sound is terrible. I took my car back to Dave Angenend at Sideways Auto Salon and he hooked me up with a nice mid-range upgrade. Dave said there was no reason to replace the head unit for sound quality reasons, until I moved even further towards high-end speakers (or if I wanted more functions and features). I like this, because the car retains a completely stock appearance, until you look in the trunk (more on that in a moment).

Easily, the most important upgrade was to replace the front speakers with Hybrid Audio Technology 6.5″ Imagine Series speakers. The front sound stage is now clean and crystal clear. Just like tires are ultimately the most important performance components of a car, the front speakers are the most important performance components of a car audio system. If you have a limited budget, put all of your money there.

The stock 6x8 door speaker. Photo: Sideways Auto Salon

Constructing a frame to fit a round peg into a square(ish) hole. Photo: Sideways Auto Salon

The Hybrid Imagine. Photo: Sideways Auto Salon

A Diamond Audio 10″ subwoofer, and a Diamond Audio D300.4 (50 x 4 watt) amplifier round-out the modifications. The stock rear speakers are still driven by the head unit and are retained to provide fill, if so desired.

The amplifier is mounted on the back of the fold-down back seat. I admit that I didn’t specify where I wanted the amp and I don’t like it here. It’s fine for now, but I will most likely move it later.

The seat has to be folded down in order to access the amplifier controls.

A subwoofer enclosure could have been built into the car, which would have looked better and taken less trunk space, but I specified an enclosure that could be easily removed for track days. To keep the enclosure from moving around the trunk, I made a couple of tethers that snap to the underside of the package shelf and then to the front of the sub box.

This system can be reproduced with more reasonably-priced components for just a few hundred dollars and it will still be a vast improvement over stock. I invested in higher-priced components and am very happy. The front speakers are especially pleasing to me. Clear, transparent, and they never seem to be straining at any frequency or volume level. Sometimes I catch myself grinning, not because of the music itself, but rather because of how well the speakers are handling the music. The sub is nice for really deep tones, but the stock rears can’t keep-up with the mid-bass. So, I will probably swap those at some point, put them on the current amp with the fronts and then give the sub its own amplifier. For now, this was far-and-away the most expensive mod, but for something I use every day, it was well worth it.

Cost: $1100

In the next chapter, I will install a few performance-oriented modifications.

J I M M Y

Also, unlike most of Ferry’s solo albums, which feature the artist on the cover, Olympia follows Roxy Music’s tradition of featuring beautiful models. From the glamour-girl pin-up of the eponymous first album and the Newtonesque photo of Amanda Lear’s vamp on For Your Pleasure, to the ripped-bodice romance and soft-porn suggestiveness of Stranded and Country Life, the Roxy Music album covers are a more suitable thematic background for the Olympia cover, which features supermodel Kate Moss. As evidence that this is really a Roxy Music album, the cover argument backfires, because…well, it says Bryan Ferry right there. See?

What’s more interesting though, is how the cover photo sets the tone for the music contained within. Mr. Ferry goes to great length in the liner notes to explain the artistic inspiration of the album title and cover photo, which turns-out to be a Manet painting of the same name. But even after four paragraphs of conceptual justification, photographs of Ferry seeking inspiration from art books, and a documentary of the photo shoot itself, the end result is that most people will see the album cover as just another perfume ad lifted from the pages of Vanity Fair. It might as well say “Olympia…by Bryan Ferry.” It’s slick sheen confounds and betrays the thought that went behind it.

This has always been the case with Ferry’s music, as well. He spends years developing ideas and crafting songs that are burnished to such a high gloss upon their eventual fruition, that most casual listeners only hear soulless pop pap packaged to sell premium vodka and Cadillacs. Only those willing to hold the crystal up to the light and peer within to see the unique bubbles, cracks, and imperfections are rewarded with something more.

Ferry’s voice has aged well, like port from an oak cask. It’s darker, mellower. Ferry calls it “more experience(d).” It isn’t as strong, though, and I found it buried just a bit too far into the mix for my liking. But there is a gravity to it and when the 65-year-old crooner sings about “the evening of your years” he has my ear. I want to hear what he has to say.

Lyrically, Ferry treads familiar ground, exploring the pain of lost love without ever becoming desperate or cynical. He knows that even one blissful night with an infatuation is worth the eventual heartache. In fact, the album plays as a soundtrack to a story that begins with an aging lounge lizard singing to revelers 40 years his junior (as in the video for You Can Dance), asking “Do you want to play?” and finally ending with our man slumped in a chair after the after-party, smoldering cigarette in hand, left alone with his thoughts. In the anthem Heartache by Numbers, he is heartbroken and longs for things to be different (“Every night I run around with every girl in town / I would rather stay at home, if you were still around”), but without any regrets (“I would do it all again”). On my favorite track, he lays it out simply “No reason or rhyme, by chance or design / Just a dance to the music of time.”

Along with the members of Roxy Music, there is an impressive guest-list of musicians on this record: Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Nile Rodgers (Chic), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), Groove Armada, Scissor Sisters, Marcus Miller, and Steve Nieve. There are a couple of groovy dance tracks (You Can Dance, Shameless) and a stripped-down ballad (Tender is the Night), but most of the other songs are the smooth, lounge-rock we have come to expect from Ferry. As can also be expected, there are two covers – Traffic’s No Face, No Name, No Number and a beautiful rendition of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren, which is one of the highlights of the album and another possible nod to the days of Roxy past and their album Siren, the cover of which featured Ferry’s then-lover Jerry Hall as the siren. This is only speculation on my part, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Ferry has sent a message to Hall on one of his solo albums, the last time being Kiss and Tell from 1987′s Bête Noire.

Olympia isn’t Ferry’s best, but it is the best he has done in 20 years. With a catalog back-loaded with albums of cover songs (good as they may be), this effort comes across as relaxed and more confident. It’s densely layered, but never too busy. It’s fussed-over, but still restrained. It’s good enough for a younger generation to hopefully discover this oft-cited inspiration and influence for so many acts over the last several decades. For fans, it’s a must have. Until an official Roxy Music record is released, this will get you through the night.

J I M M Y

Since I was five years old, one of the greatest pleasures of my life has been to sit at the kitchen table almost every night before bed and have a bowl of cereal while reading. Because of the short time it takes to eat, some awkward dexterity requirements, and collateral damage from milk droplets, I found that it was not conducive to reading books in this manner (though I have certainly done so). I found that suitable reading material was similar in requirement to that perused while meeting another of our natural appointments. The “easily digestible” metaphor seems to lend itself almost too easily to resist, so there it is. Therefore, for the first ten years of this cereal-time experience, my reading material was exclusively the back of the cereal box itself and Marvel comic books.

However, at some point while I was an early teenager, probably through the influence of James Bond movies, I began to become interested in cars. So, my cereal-time reading material changed to car magazines and has largely remained so ever since. Simple arithmetic will show that I cannot possibly afford to keep a new car magazine propped-up in front of me every single night, even if there were that many available each month. This means that I read and re-read lots and lots of back-issues. Out of this familiarity with my back catalog has emerged a favorite issue. The November 1987 issue of Car and Driver magazine stands out as having featured an uncanny number of my all-time favorite cars all in a single regular issue.

I purchased this issue at the Sembach, AFB BX in West Germany, where I was stationed at the time. Despite the “Special Import Issue” title, it is a 160-page regular monthly issue, not a true special issue, like the “Road & Track Exotic Cars” series published around the same time.

Almost every page is special to me, causing sparks from cool car content and twinges of ordinary 80′s nostalgia. There, I haven’t even reached the contents page and I have come across a Pirelli ad featuring an UrM5, one of my all-time favorite cars. The Letters page features an almost full-page letter (all three columns) from a gentleman protesting a feature on Bernd Rosemeyer. The letter was written on behalf of Herr Rosemeyer’s widow and contains very interesting information about the famous Auto Union driver.

“The world has become a better place, thanks to the likes of the Audi Quattro Sport, the Ferrari GTO and F40, and the Porsche 959.”

The FYI section has some nice spy shots of the “King of the Hill” Corvette (the rare, Lotus-tuned ZR-1) and the restyled Lotus Esprit, another of my all-time favorites. “No word on whether the revised car can be driven underwater,” says C&D. There is also a preview of the Alfa Romeo 164, a car that I have always found handsome. The most interesting item to me though, is an article about Dr. Ferdinand Piëch planning to build an Audi hypercar. “The plan is to build a four-door sports-luxury automobile that will be to normal sedans as the Porsche 959 is to everyday sports cars. It will probably be powered by a twin-turbo version of the 32-valve, 3.6 liter V-8 that Audi is planning for it’s all-new 300 model, due in 1989.”

The first feature is a full five-page preview of the Ferrari F40. Despite only being a preview, the article is as detailed as a road test and features beautiful and detailed full-color photography of the supercar. “Wrap your reverie in artistic coachwork. Paint it red and let it blur.” Indeed. This feature alone is worth the magazine’s price of admission. But there is more to come. Oh so much more.

Next up we have a full road test of the E30 M3, another of my all-time favorite cars. All the full-page color money went to the F40, so with two exceptions, the M3 review suffers from bland b&w photography. Otherwise the review is well done and the editors fall all over themselves in praise of this car. “The M3 leaps through the corners like a cat, its feisty engine spinning and spitting until you snatch another gear or the rev limiter grabs it by the tail.” 80′s values are really apparent here as much of the article is devoted to exorcising the “yuppie” attachment to this BMW in particular. And, as with most other reviews in the magazine, a column-inch is devoted to the drag coefficient of the vehicle: 0.33 Cd, which as we find out later, is unimpressive by Audi and Honda standards.

The next article is a full review of the Toyota Celica All-Trac Turbo. While I can’t say that this is one of my favorite cars, I will say that this is a car that has always interested me. And why not? It is a 190 hp, turbocharged, four-wheel drive coupe. It’s also a Toyota. Could this be the answer to many of our dreams? Could this be…a dependable UrQuattro? C&D thinks so, calling it “a better Audi Turbo Quattro for fewer bucks.” Ouch. Still, my interest in this car, bolstered by this good review was enough for me to shop around for one once. Unfortunately, I found out that they (like older Audis) are rare in my area and they had held their value more than I had hoped (or could afford at the time). These days, I think they would make the good basis for an inexpensive AWD rallycross car.

Next we have the first real miss of the issue. A review of the Mitsubishi Galant Σ (Sigma). First of all, any car name that has me having to go to my character map utility in order to properly type the name, can’t possible reflect a well thought-out car. Is that a ONE-spoke steering wheel? The review claims that this is a decent car, but it suffers from the same cockpit techno-excess as the Isuzu Impulse and 300ZX Turbo Anniversary Edition. This is painful 80′s nostalgia.

Still less than halfway through the issue, we have a two-page “Driving Impression” review of the new Audi 80/90. “Although the Sahara is hardly an ideal environment for assessing a car’s capabilities, we did manage to learn a few things about the new Audis. They can run at redline all day long in temperatures of up to 127 degrees Fahrenheit without overheating.” Drag coefficient: 0.29 Cd for the 80, 0.30 Cd for the 90.

This is followed by a three-page, full-color “Driving Impression” review of the Honda CRX Si. Great car. Drag coefficient: 0.29 Cd for the HF, 0.30 Cd for the Si.

Only just now wading through the middle of the magazine and we have another two-page “Driving Impression” review, this time of the BMW 750iL. “Under its hood, however, lies a magnificent 5.0 liter V-12 – the first twelve-cylinder engine in a German production car since the demise of the Maybach Zeppelin in 1939.” This review is followed by three single-page impressions for the Mazda 929, the Toyota Corolla, and the beautiful, if unexciting, Mercedes-Benz 300CE.

The issue contains a “Charting the Changes” section, where all current import vehicles are listed with the changes for the model year. What is most noteworthy are all of the companies no longer importing to the US (or no longer in existence): Panther, Sterling, TVR, Citroen, Peugeot, Renault, Bitter, Merkur, Alfa Romeo, Bertone…and Yugo, among others.

Next is a feature article about vintage California Cadillacs…like I ever read this article knowing what follows.

How can they have held off until page 116? The sunglasses and sheepskin seat cover ads are just a few pages away. Can the full road test of the Porsche 959 really be buried behind a prancing horse and other such distractions (fine distractions, though they were)? Apparently so. But the shock of its position within the magazine is soon replaced by the shock of how much content is really in this magazine. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

“With rocket-sled acceleration and the highest top end we’ve ever measured, the 959 stands alone at the pinnacle of production-car performance.”

“If that sounds like hyperbole, how does a 0-to-60-mph time of 3.6 seconds strike you? The drill was to switch the 959′s programmable four-wheel-drive system into its locked setting, engage low gear, wind the engine to 7000 rpm, and drop the clutch. The result was a cloud of rubber dust from the four spinning Bridgestone RE71 gumballs, and a car that disappeared as if shot from a cannon.”

Whew. This is good 80′s nostalgia. Decades later and the 959 could still hold its own against the modern supercar. Having a full road test of probably my favorite car ever at a time when otherwise finding this information meant a trip to the library microfiche reader is truly priceless.

Let’s see here, a couple of short takes to finish things off. Here is one of the Shelby CSX and as a bonus, the Volkswagen Jetta GLI 16V. Less than two years after I bought this magazine, I would own the smaller version of that car – the Golf GTI 16V. Okay, here we go into the ad zone. C&D paraphernalia, radar detectors, an ad starring a girl in leg-warmers, the dubiously-named “Muf-Loc” (which is a locking cover for your tailpipe that supposedly keeps thieves from starting your car), an ad for Shokan that looks like it was made with an early dot-matrix printer, sunglasses, seat covers and…oh…my…God.

No way. No WAY! Just when I am tiring of the ads, just when I’m deciding not to turn to Patrick Bedard’s commentary on the last page, just when I’m about to lock this issue into a safety deposit box…I come across the “Sport” section. There, beginning with a stunning full-color photo, is a seven page article about Walter Röhrl’s record setting run to the top of Pikes Peak in the Audi S1!

The article was even written by the late Larry Griffin, who wrote one of the greatest articles I have ever read about the Audi quattro rally car. His writing for this article was almost equally as clever, “When they pounce up the heights, they annihilate the quiet. The fastest Open Rally cars are demonically, hideously fast. More than ever you regard performance as a relative thing. If Einstein could see Vatanen and Röhrl apply the sciences of turbocharging and aerodynamics and four-wheel drive, he would clap like a kid and rewrite his theory of relativity to allow for such pluperfect aberrations.”

Griffin’s interview with Röhrl also turns up some items of interest for the technoweenies, “Last year, Unser demonstrated the thrilling effect of a toggle switch on the dash. Audi remains reluctant to discuss the particulars, but Walter confirms that, as rumored, the switch kicks in a jet of compressed air that keeps the turbo singing even when the throttle is closed.” Walter goes on to amputate Bobby Unser’s previous record (also set in an S1) by eight seconds.

By the end of the article, I’m spent. This issue of Car and Driver is for sale for one meellion dollars (or you can probably find it sans milk spots on eBay for $5). It comes with my highest recommendation and with the hope that Car and Driver can rebuild itself and reclaim its former glory.

jimmy

But, we of Generation X were born into a better time – the golden age of kid cereals. Kid cereals owned the cereal aisle. There were seemingly hundreds of cereals for kids and only Corn Flakes or Cheerios for the grown-ups. That’s it. It was also an honest time when the cereal manufacturers could just describe their product as it really was – brightly colored, 100% pure crack cocaine sugar. And when Sugar Bear couldn’t push enough of his Sugar Crisp cereal, he changed the name to Super Sugar Crisp. General Mills’ Monster Cereal commercials had Franken Berry (Franken Berry’s monster?) and Count Chocula arguing over who had the “world’s super sugar cereal.” We went wild! And by wild, I mean we got ADHD.

Now Super Sugar Crisp has become Super Golden Crisp, Sugar Corn Pops has become just Corn Pops, the Franken Berry box is covered with nutritional information (more on this later), and kid cereals fight for shelf space against a staggering variety of organic, sugar-free, gluten-free, heart-healthy, go-lean cereals. Of course, the ubiquitous prize in every box has all but disappeared.

Speaking of disappearing, Franken Berry is so rare that it is often thought to be discontinued, but it is still available in a few limited markets, directly from General Mills and of course, from Amazon. Wal-Mart and Target carry Franken Berry during the Halloween season and that was how I stumbled upon a box recently and decided to revisit my old friend.

The Box

The box has gone through some changes, since the cereal’s introduction in 1971. The changes have been mostly subtle with the front of the box usually featuring the goofy-looking Franken Berry’s monster eating or preparing to eat some cereal. However, in the mid-90′s, the monster got a terrible makeover. His skin was no longer pink, his metal eye sockets became flesh colored, and the box showed him levitating the cereal’s marshmallows using electricity or magic. The monster lost his goofy charm and instead, looked like he was high on his own supply.

The current box is better and goes back to a more lovable, cartoonish character, although the predominant color of the box is purple and there is no picture of the cereal. If you didn’t know any better, you might think you are going to get blackberry cereal.

The Cereal

The cereal itself has undergone some changes over the years, too. The cereal is a strawberry flavor, frosted grain cereal with strawberry flavor marshmallows. Originally, the cereal had a generic wagon wheel shape (shared with other cereals), the marshmallow bits were really tiny, and everything was strawberry pink. Early on, there was an emergency reformulation using a different red dye, after it was discovered that the original dye did not break-down in the body and resulted in what medical literature refers to as “Franken Berry Stool.” Use your imagination. This was so horrible and startling to parents that it ended-up in one of Stephen King’s books.

In the 80′s, the cereal became ghost shaped and thankfully, the marshmallows got bigger, but they did not get their own scary shape. In the 90′s, the marshmallows finally got scary shapes (ghosts, bats, etc.), but they also got new colors. New colors?

Part of the excellence of this cereal was its pure visual commitment to its strawberry flavor. The cereal was strawberry pink, the marshmallows were strawberry pink, and when you were done, the milk was strawberry pink. Now there are colored marshmallows, which is just lazy and derivative of Lucky Charms, even if the taste has been unaffected.

Nutrition

Wait, why would I even bother to talk about nutrition in this review? For starters, part of this review is comparing and contrasting what I used to eat, with what I currently eat. Secondly, it’s hard to avoid, since the box is covered with nutritional information. So, I did a quick comparison chart and…hello…what’s this?

Okay, I’m not a nutritionist, so I will let those facts stand on their own. However, there is a fact that the numbers don’t show. I can eat a bowl of Grape-Nuts and feel full. But Franken Berry is very light (it’s a puffed grain cereal), so I kept reaching for the box again and again in order to eat enough to feel full. That Franken Berry serving size isn’t likely to be realistic for me. Your mileage may vary.

The Experience

I have already mentioned some of my initial impressions – I don’t remember the cereal being such a vibrant, deep red color and of course, I was disappointed with the colored marshmallows. I conducted a separate, blind taste test and determined that marshmallows of different colors still tasted the same. The consistency of the marshmallows was firm, rather like that of tiny, foam packing peanuts, instead of the soft, spongy texture of full-sized marshmallows. In my experience, this is the case with all marshmallows found in breakfast cereals and I do not fault this standard.

As I mentioned before, mouth-feel is light, but this is definitely a cereal that will tear-up your palate. Another surprise was that the sweetness of the cereal did not shock me. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to even get through a single bowl. Not only do I not have quite the sweet tooth that many people have, but I actually went on a sugar fast earlier this year. For whatever reason, the sweetness wasn’t a problem and I have…er, gone through three boxes of Franken Berry while doing research for this review. (God, I hope Dee isn’t reading this.)

As for the taste, there is no complexity whatsoever. It is pure, artificial Strawberry flavor all the way through and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. A sick part of me wonders if I could construct a grown-up version of Franken Berry using one of those healthy cereals coupled with fresh strawberries and homemade marshmallows, but what would be the point? I complained earlier that there were no more prizes at the bottom of the box, but if you eat Franken Berry, there is a prize in the bottom of the bowl. Would an organic version of Franken Berry have such a prize? Could you look down after having eaten your fill and see that there was still half a bowl of rich, pink, strawberry milk left to drink? To me, even this prize alone was worth waiting for. See you next year, Franken Berry.

jimmy

Sure, I could buy from ChaseCam and call it a day, but their basic kit is almost $1000 and isn’t HD. This camera is for LeMons, not LeMans. I have bought a bullet camera coupled with a cheap portable video recorder, but the quality, usability, and durability of the recorder was poor. Then I tried a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ8. The video quality was good (still not HD), but like many other digital cameras that also shoot video – it has a 2 GB file size limitation. In the case of the Lumix, that equates to about 20 minutes of footage. Perfect for a session at an HPDE or similar track event, but useless for seven or eight hours of continuous racing.

Luckily, thanks to YouTube and well, people like me, who like to upload racing videos, there has been an explosion of small, inexpensive video cameras from companies like Flip and GoPro. I have been watching carefully, trying to figure-out when to jump-in, when from out of nowhere, the perfect camera comes along from…Kodak. Kodak? I thought I would be buying a camera from a hip, edgy company from a tattooed kid skating up to me with a POV camera strapped to his helmet. Instead, I bought a camera from a guy with a top hat and monocle. Did he deliver?

The Camera

The Zi8 is about the size of an iPhone, but a bit thicker. The front has the fixed lens and a large plastic cover, behind which is the rechargeable Li-ion battery. The back of the camera has a 2.5″ color LCD screen, four buttons, and a joystick, which is also a fifth button. There is also a tiny speaker for playback. Around the edges of the camera are various ports and jacks, a macro switch, a standard camera mount, access to the SD card, and a built-in, flip-out USB dongle. The camera is intended to be held upright during filming, more like a cellphone, rather than a traditional camera.

My overall impression is that it is a nice little design, but it is all plastic and it looks like it will break the first time it’s dropped. The flip-out USB dongle is also something that concerns me. I understand its inclusion, but it seems awkward in some situations and also seems like it might break over time. The benefits of the all plastic construction are that it is very light (about 4 oz.) and the camera is inexpensive.

The Specs

This camera meets every specification that I had for an in-car camera:

The camera also comes with an HDMI port and cable(!), so you can just plug into an HDTV and start watching your videos. This wasn’t a consideration for me, but it is a very nice feature at this price point.

Use and Performance

The camera cannot be easier to use, which is perfect for a driver or crew member wearing gloves. The camera boots very quickly and displays the resolution options on-screen for a couple of seconds (defaulting to the last resolution selected). The user can quickly change the resolution using the joystick, or he can ignore the prompt. Then he can press the red button to begin recording. That’s it.

Still, there was no time for a test video before installing this into our Miata for the 2009 Yee-Haw It’s LeMons Texas endurance race in October 2009. We hardwired the camera into the car and mounted it to an I/O Port camera mount, attached to the dash bar of the car. Again, I don’t like that the camera’s mount receiver is plastic, but since the camera is so light, I suppose there isn’t much force being applied to it.

We used a 32GB card, set the resolution to 720p/30fps and recorded the whole 13 hour race! Well, we would have recorded the whole race, but we left the camera unplugged on Sunday morning, so it ran on battery power until it died. When we noticed it wasn’t on, we plugged it back in and it started recording again. I have uploaded a sample video to Vimeo. This is a little over one lap of MSR Houston during the LeMons race. The raw .mov file was converted to .avi, which I then imported into Windows Movie Maker and exported as a Windows Media HD 720p file. There has probably been some video quality degradation, but since this is typical of how most of my videos will be uploaded, I thought this would be a more realistic example than providing raw, unedited, and uncompressed footage.

I will say that we watched the raw (.mov) files on a friend’s 16:9 TV and the quality was amazing.

Conclusion

This video camera met my specifications, exceeded my expectations, and performed admirably under racing conditions. And it did so for an unbelievably low price. I can highly recommend this camera for in-car videos.

Highs: HD video, SD memory, AC power, external mic input, image stabilization, good user interface, price
Lows: all-plastic construction, USB dongle, Quicktime file format difficult for PC users to edit

jimmy

Note: Like all Amazon.com links on this site, purchasing products through these links helps support this site. I was not provided a test camera to review.

“The coldest blood runs through my veins
You know my name”

So sings Chris Cornell in the lackluster theme song to Casino Royale, the latest film in the James Bond franchise (now pay attention, because you have already heard one of my only complaints about the entire movie and there won’t be many more). After decades of the series creaking along using the same tired tricks, EON Productions has started over again, right where they should have – not with the first movie, but with the first book.

* SPOILERS *

Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (1953) was the slim introduction of Her Majesty’s Secret Agent 007, though it was far less of of an “origin” story than is being expoused elsewhere. When we first meet Bond, he is already a double-O agent. The two kills required for that status are mentioned, but not actually described until later in the series. In fact, most of Bond’s background is fleshed-out in other books. Instead, Fleming’s Casino Royale is a spare portrait of Bond at a turning point in his life. From the novel:

“But he was honest enough to admit that he had never been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by luck or by love. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility.”

And when Bond does fall in love with Vesper Lynd, he is brought to his knees…in spades. [Heh, sorry about that one.] It’s this story – the story of a fallible…broken Bond that the producers have brought to the screen this time.

It should be noted that there were two earlier Casino Royale films. The first was as a 1954 CBS Climax Mystery Theater teleplay (filmed before a live studio audience), starring Barry Nelson as CIA agent Jimmy Bond and Peter Lorre as the criminal LeChiffre. The second was a 1967 motion picture, starring Woody Allen, David Niven, and Peter Sellers (among others) as James Bond. Yes, you read that correctly. It was an unwatchable psychedelic mess. Neither production is accepted canon and the less said about them, the better.

Martin Cambell returns to the director’s chair and brings along the writers of the last two Bond films Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, now with some help from Academy Award winner Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash). Cambell directed Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan’s entry into the series and one of the better modern Bond films.

The plot of Casino Royale follows it’s respective novel more closely than perhaps any other Bond film. LaChiffre, banker to Ugandan terrorists, has lost their money in a foiled stock market fraud and he plans to win it back in a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro, before he can be killed by his disgruntled investors. Bond’s mission is to defeat him in the poker game. Sound thin? It is, but Bond stories aren’t about the plot, they are about…Bond.

Let’s get this out of the way. Daniel Craig IS James Bond. There was a firestorm of early criticism and doubt about Craig’s looks. He doesn’t fit the classic tall, dark, and handsome Bond. He is short, pale, and…um, not conventionally handsome. And of course, he has blond hair. I admit that I was also taken aback at this. How could they make James Bond blond? In over 40 years of making Bond films, they couldn’t even be bothered to make Felix Leiter (Bond’s friend and CIA counterpart) blond. At least eight actors have played the part and not one “straw-haired Texan” (as Ian Fleming describes Leiter). Twice he has been black! How hard can it be people?

Craig appeared on screen and I never once thought about the color of his hair. His ownership of the role (along with the pre-credit sequence being filmed entirely in black and white) rendered the silly concern for his hair color moot. And though he is the shortest Bond (though not really all that short and certainly not Tom Cruise short), Craig is built like a boxer and is the first Bond since the 60′s who looks like he has the physicality to do the superhuman things that we expect from 007. It’s fitting and just a bit cheeky that for this reboot of the series, they took one of the most iconic scenes in all of the Bond films, that of original Bond-girl Ursula Andress wading out of the ocean in Dr. No and stood it on it’s head by instead having Craig wade out of the ocean in a skimpy swimsuit.

Craig plays Bond as a blunt instrument. He grunts, he vomits, he sweats, he bleeds. He kills with his bare hands. Bond is still sophisticated, but one gets the feeling that unlike earlier Bonds, this 007 can’t sniff-out an “overdose of Bons Bois” in an indifferently blended brandy (Goldfinger). In a harsh send-up of those who have come before, Bond orders a martini and when asked by the bartender “Shaken or stirred?”, Bond spits back, “Do I look like I give a damn?” Bond behaves like a man who knows he is living on borrowed time and when he is finally brought to the edge of death in a raw, humiliating torture scene that strips Bond of any possible arrogance, pride, even manhood, our new Bond does not sit back and coolly activate a Q-Branch gadget on his wristwatch, a deus ex machina to save the day. Instead, Bond cries out like an animal in blood-curdling anguish and then says what he has to say to bring his death quickly. Bond is beaten. This is new ground, indeed.

Also new is a Bond-girl that finally works. Eva Green is absolutely radiant as Vesper Lynd, a government accountant sent to oversee the funding of Bond in the high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale. When she first meets Bond, she goes toe-to-toe with him, showing-off her quick wit, intelligence, confidence, and lest we think her just a nerdy bean-counter, her sexual assertiveness, with a comment about keeping her eye on the government’s money and off of Bond’s “perfectly formed ass.” As a nit-picky aside, when she meets Bond for the first time, he is seated and remains seated until she leaves their dinner. So just how did she know he had a perfectly formed ass? Is it in his dossier? Hair: blond, Eyes: blue, Ass: perfectly-formed. Yeah, that’s what my dossier says, too.

Vesper talks tough, but when the game goes from poker to hardball, we see her outer layers start to peel away. In one of the most brilliant moments in the film, we see what almost looks like a domestic scene as Bond and Vesper are dressing for the first evening at the casino. Bond walks into Vesper’s bathroom and tells her to wear a dress that will draw attention to herself. Vesper counters by telling Bond that she has bought him a new dinner jacket, because his wasn’t suitabe for such a high-class affair. Ouch. But then we see her face reflected in the mirror. She isn’t wearing any makeup and she looks softer and younger than before. She is looking back at Bond, a tuxedo covered razor blade, and there seems to be a hint of doubt around her eyes, perhaps a realization that she is about to be in over her head. By the end of the evening, for the first time ever, we see a Bond-girl that is utterly disturbed about being in such close proximity to the cold violence of Bond’s world. It’s this vulnerability that warms us to Vesper, just as it does Bond.

Still, despite the added depth of character and other more superficial changes (mostly for the good), the Bond formula is alive and well. The Bond franchise is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and the old guard would never allow it to begin again from a blank sheet of paper. Let’s run down some of the elements of the Bond formula and see how they fared:

The Pre-Credit Sequence

Say, where is the gunbarrel shot? You can’t tell me anything was wrong with that! More serious and less thrilling than most, we see Bond earning his license to kill, first in a brutal fight and then quietly, in cold blood, all rendered in beautiful black and white photography. This is a stark announcement that things will be different. The gunbarrel shot comes at the end and the more traditional action-packed pre-credit sequence is queued after the title sequence.

Title Sequence and Theme

The title sequence also gets a new animated look, but misses the mark. The playing card theme gets tired quickly and when Daniel Craig finally appears in sillhouette, it looks too much like they are riffing on the iPod ads (which by the way, look to me like riffs on the 30 years of classic 007 title sequences done by Maurice Binder.) While I don’t think we need to go back to the Freudian-heavy title sequences such as the one for Thunderball (with it’s scuba divers pursuing naked sea-nymphs and shooting at them with their…um, spears), they were at least fun in their outrageousness. The new title sequence contains no female figures and worse, no humor. It doesn’t help that over this sequence is played the aforementioned theme song which apparently is so bad, that it isn’t even included on the soundtrack album. For a change of pace, I would have liked to have seen a title sequence like that done by Kyle Cooper for the recent film Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang (the title which, for those who don’t know, is a reference to James Bond.)

Bond Girls

There are just two. Vesper Lynd and another woman with whom Bond has a brief, unconsumated fling, strictly for queen and country. There are still the female hotel clerks whose eyes make open invitations to Bond and it is with this convention that I take issue. I don’t think our new man is up to this. For example, in one scene, Bond drives up to the front of a resort in the Bahamas, gets out of his car, and two women walk past him, look him up and down, and share a lascivious giggle. Admittedly, this is classic Bond. But this isn’t the penultimate Bond, Sean Connery stepping out of his 1964 Aston Martin DB5, nor even the handsome Pierce Brosnan stepping out of his Vanquish in a beautiful Brioni suit. No, it was a somewhat jug-eared man who looked like his face had been beaten repeatedly with a potato masher, wearing ordinary clothes, stepping out of (I kid you not) – a Ford Mondeo rental car! In fact, less than 30 seconds later, Bond is mistaken for a valet. Now that I believe.

The Villians

Never were there a bunch of more ordinary thugs. Criminal and cruel, yes, but as LeChiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) explains to a business partner about his eye that weeps blood, “…it is a (damaged) tear duct…there is nothing sinister about it.” And so there isn’t. Le Chiffre is not a megalomaniac with a bonkers plan to destroy the world, but rather an investment banker just trying to get back some money that he lost short-selling some stocks. Nothing more. In fact, until Bond involves himself in LeChiffre’s affairs, the only person in danger of being killed is LeChiffre himself. There are terrorists, henchmen, and a bomb-maker that can run and jump over stuff, but they are otherwise rather ordinary. No scary names or superhuman abilities. This is good.

Q-Branch

There is no Q and there are no Q-Branch gadgets in Casino Royale. None. For now, this is also a good thing. It lets us see Bond have to use perhaps his single best attribute – his resourcefulness. In one scene, we see Bond break into a security office using nothing more than a simple distraction. In another, Bond is caught without a weapon and instead of reaching for an infallible Q-Branch gadget, he snatches-up a table knife and strides towards his quarry. This kind of simplicity serves Bond’s character well.

Other classic Bond elements like Exotic Locations, egregious Product Placement, Fast Cars, and Drinking (lots of drinking in this film) are all present. There is less humor than in most other Bond films, but we still get to see Bond enjoying himself once in awhile and there are still a few quips and double-entendres, though thankfully no real groaners.

Casino Royale might be the best introduction of a new James Bond ever. Yes James, we know your name, but now, we’ve got your number. Welcome back.

jimmy (a straw-haired Texan willing to play Felix Leiter at any time for SAG minimums) 

The roaring wind, the cold air stinging my face and numbing my fingers, driving fast on the best road in Austin, and listening to new music formed a perfect storm of joy for me this morning. I couldn’t stop smiling. I don’t know if it was therapy or a drug, but it was a welcome break from the melancholia that I have been feeling, as I do every year when Summer changes to Autumn.

The Killers’ first CD Hot Fuss never left heavy rotation around me. Literally, it never left the CD changer in my car. As a complete work, it satisfied and thrilled like no other album I had heard in years. Every song was a hidden treasure of sonic tracings and echoes from the 80′s in a way that was like authentic genetic influence rather than a band playing dress-up. Rising above the rest was a song that has become one of my favorites – Brandon Flowers’ discussion with God on “All These Things I’ve Done” - a song I have quoted on this blog before.

On their new CD Sam’s Town, The Killers continue to dazzle, if perhaps to a slightly lesser degree. The DNA strands from my youth are still there. I hear the Styx opening to Paradise Theater on Enterlude. I hear Springsteen’s Born to Run (or Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s superior(!) remake) in When You Were Young and a Book of Love synth thread in perhaps the best song of the album Read My Mind. OCD keeps me from absorbing the whole album at once, so I am rotating through my first favorites, the aforementioned three plus Sam’s Town and Reasons Unknown. In my opinion, these alone substantiate this sophomore effort as near-brilliant in its own right. If I warm to the second half of the CD, I will consider it great indeed.

“Slipping in my faith
until I fall
you never returned that call
woman, open the door
don’t let it sting
I wanna breathe that fire again

She said
I don’t mind
if you don’t mind
’cause I don’t shine
if you don’t shine”

- The Killers “Read My Mind”

jimmy
 

I stopped to have lunch in Lampasas and review the burger at Storm’s:

Storm’s is legendary around Central Texas. I swear, any time that I hear anyone mention Lampasas, the very next words I hear are, “Did you go to Storm’s?” It could be a conversation between two people, or you can just walk outside and mutter “Lampasas” under your breath and a passerby in a car will call out, “Hey, be sure to go to Storm’s!” I’m not kidding. Go try it. So, inspired by the Texas Burger Guy (TBG) blog that I stumbled upon recently, I decided to stop and see what all the fuss is about.

A quick note about my review style. I hope to submit my review to TBG as a guest reviewer, so I will try to follow TBG review rules.

Storm’s has been serving burgers at their original Lampasas location for over 50 years. Originally called Dairy Cue, it sounds suspiciously like Storm’s started life as one of the many Dairy Queen knockoff restaurants that are strewn around small towns in Texas (Dairy King, Dixie Queen, Daisy Queen, et al). Dairy Cue, or Dairy Q? No matter, Jim Storm and his family were setting themselves apart serving quality burgers and attracting legions of loyal fans, including perhaps the most famous gourmand in history - Elvis Presley, who is said to have frequented the establishment while stationed at Fort Hood.

Old School Drive-In

New School Patio

The original Storm’s is a drive-in and still has the look of a bona fide burger joint. But they also have a new patio across the parking lot for those wanting to “dine-in.” The patio is contemporary and clean, with a fountain made from Llanite and landscaping that uses native Texas plants. To be honest, the patio didn’t look very “burger joint” at all, but the fact that they chose to keep the original drive-in alongside the new structure, shows their solid values and commitment to their own heritage. Okay, I can feel TBG getting impatient; let’s get to the food.

The menu is simple and features the Storm’s Special – a 1/2 pound, triple-meat cheeseburger and fries. If they say it’s special, then that’s what I want. I placed my order from the patio, using the same intercom and menu system found in the drive-in stalls. In just a few minutes, I was served. My initial observation was that the burger came wrapped in paper rendered clear from the grease. I wondered if I could get an angioplasty in Lampasas.

Undeterred, I unwrapped the burger. I had ordered the special without pickles or onion, which is my custom, and this is what was left: three beef patties, one slice of American cheese, shredded lettuce, tomato, and mustard, on a lightly toasted white bun that looked like it had been run over by a truck. This was a good burger, maybe even a very good burger, but I would stop short of saying that it was a great burger. Maybe it just goes against too many of my preferences. For instance, the fact that it is a triple-burger might sound impressive at first, but the individual patties are thinner than the ones found in an Elementary School cafeteria. They are so thin that it would be impossible not to overcook them, which is the real problem here. If anything, one of the valid reasons for having multiple patties, is to increase the cheese to beef ratio, but Storm’s only has one slice of cheese to hold together three patties (obviously, extra cheese is available). I also prefer to have my vegetables on top of the burger, rather than beneath it. It’s a small thing, but it does matter. Let’s run down the TBG categories:

Ooze Factor
Let’s talk about ooze for a second. There is good ooze and there is bad ooze. The best ooze is the cow juice from a nice medium-rare to medium burger. To a degree, grease can be good ooze. Bad ooze is a wet burger from watery vegetables. This was a medium-wet burger, but there was very little cow juice. The ooze was mostly from grease and wet vegetables. If you like grease, this is another advantage to a triple-burger, especially if it’s fried – there are six sides of burger holding grease for you. I’m going to go straight down the middle on this.
Ooze Factor Rating: 5

Herd Killer
No mystery here; this burger is a 1/2 pounder. With more patties to cook-down, I bet it comes out less than a single 1/2 pound burger when it’s served.
Herd Killer Rating: 4

Handling
This burger was very easy to handle. By design or by accident, this burger was squished-down flat, which made for good maneuverability and easy ingress. It had good ergonomics, but was not very impressive looking.
Handling Rating: 4

Bling Bling
My total bill was just over $5, an incredible bargain. Also, to aid in digestion and to keep my blood thin enough to hopefully stave off an aneurysm, I ordered water with my meal and they gave me a huge, Super Big Gulp sized cup, which I thought was unusually generous. However, I noticed that there was a $.50 charge for any substitution, no matter the item. I can admire that concept from the standpoint of this being a burger joint (“You get what you get,” according to Alan Richman), but I have to dock them under this category. It would be silly to charge me $.50 for tater tots instead of fries.
Bling Bling Rating: 8

Gravedigger
Half a pound of meat and a little grease isn’t enough to get me too worried. If you think food is going to kill me, you haven’t seen me drive. This was less than an hour later with the top down and the little tin can getting blown all over the road:

Storm’s Gravedigger Rating: 4 shovels
Jimmy’s Driving Gravedigger Rating: 9 shovels

Overall Storm’s Special Burger Rating: 5

This is a case where an overall rating might make a burger look poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said before, this is a good burger, especially when considering other factors of the dining experience. First and foremost are the fries. The fries are outstanding. They are fresh cut and fried in the skin to a perfect level of crispiness and saltiness. The only thing I found unusual was the fact that I found a packet of ketchup at the bottom of my pile of fries, like the prize at the bottom of a cereal box, when it was too late to use it. I couldn’t tell if that was a Storm’s custom, or just a fluke. I don’t usually put ketchup on my fries, so it really didn’t matter.

Finally, on my way back home a couple of days later, I stopped at the Storm’s in Burnet to check the consistency between the two locations. I ordered the exact same thing, except that I also ordered a vanilla malt. The burger and fries were exactly as I had found them in Lampasas (except no ketchup packet prize). The malt was thick and delicious. In fact, it was so thick that I couldn’t figure out why they bothered having an “extra thick” option, which I didn’t try. I suppose it comes as a solid, rather than a liquid.

There are Storm’s locations in Lampasas, Burnet, Hamilton, Kingsland, and Marble Falls. For more information, check their website at www.stormsrestaurants.com.

Overall Rating for Storm’s: 7 

After lunch, I turned up 183 and continued heading north. The weather was stunning and the roads were clear. I found that with the top down, but the side windows up, I could cruise comfortably at fairly high speeds. I still had On The Road in my CD player, but there was no hope of hearing anything but subliminal whispers from it.

This might sound a bit strange, but I love the Southern Gothic dilapidation found in small Texas towns and the adjoining countryside. I love the abandoned shops and the broken barns. I love the fallen stables and the (not really so) ancient stone walls. I love the faded signs of times past. I stopped in Zephyr, Texas and snapped some photographs of the Miata in front of such a building.

I also snapped some fashion shots of the car at our final destination – the hunting camp, which is a boxcar located in the middle of the lease property as if set down by the same mischievous UFO that dropped a boat in the middle of a desert in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Now with Super Shock Control!

I arrived before anyone else, so I had a chance to just sit back, crack open a beer and dig into a book. Despite the mild weather and a gentle breeze, the afternoon sun eventually made me tired, so I dug around in the boxcar until I found a hammock. I tied it between a couple of trees and lay in the shade until Steven Sylvester and his stepson Riley drove up. We unpacked their truck and visited for awhile until the sun started to drop and then we geared-up for an evening hunt. Just as we were driving off, Steven’s best friend, Sam Roach, drove into camp. Within a half hour, the four of us were setup near a tank under a tree line where the doves were known to roost for the night. We waited for them to fly in. When they finally came, Sam and Riley each got a bird, but Steven and I were shooting blanks. We each mumbled something about the beer.

It seems migratory birds are completely safe from me as they appear to be small enough to evade my target locking computer. The same cannot be said for the cute, fuzzy bunny rabbit that Riley flushed out of the brush for me, though. The rabbit ran straight at me and fearing death at the end of sharp, pointed teeth, I was forced to defend myself.

We got back to camp and Sam showed me how to clean the rabbit. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Riley and I built a fire and Steven grilled steaks for everyone. He also grilled the two birds they had got that day. He put the meat into jalepeños and wrapped them with bacon. Delicious. David eventually arrived late in the evening. We told him what had happened and then we turned-in so we could get up early for the morning hunt.

The morning hunt didn’t go as well. I think Sam got another bird, but they were scarce. We spent the rest of the day walking David’s new property. He and his wife just closed on a property about half an hour from the lease. Dave plans to just hunt the property, but eventually they will build and probably retire there. It was a very nice plot. Unfortunately, walking around in the woods was starting to take its toll on me and I developed a fairly righteous allergy attack and I had left all of my meds back at the camp. When we drove into town for lunch, I stopped in a grocery store and bought some Benadryl. When I walked up to the checkout to pay, the cashier and the bag boy acted like I was some kind of alien. The cashier had no qualms at all about checking me out, looking hard up and down as if to say, “What is your story.” Sure, I was in my hunting drag, which is really just my Air Force BDU, except that I can’t button the top button on my trousers anymore. And I was wearing a hat, so my hair couldn’t have been too bad. I just couldn’t figure out what she was looking at. The bag boy (who was really on the verge of being a bag man) kept grinning at me like an idiot. When he asked me if I wanted paper or plastic, I said I didn’t need either and that I would just walk out with it. Then he laughed and pointed at me as if I had said the funniest thing he had ever heard.

Later, we went back to camp and shot skeet to practice for the evening hunt. As usual, I did very well shooting skeet, but I still couldn’t bring down a bird. One time, after another wave of birds had flown safely past us, I turned to Dave and expressed some frustration.

“No dude, you clipped that last one. I saw it.”

Just about then soft, downy feathers began falling gently all around us like snowflakes. I had indeed clipped a bird and the wind had blown his feathers back over us. It was surreal and funny. I never did get a dove, but the other guys each got at least one.

The next day, after another lame morning hunt, we got out our frustration by going redneck and shooting inanimate objects at the camp. Dave shot an old pair of his boots. The best though was an old TV that somebody had brought. We set it up on a chair and I went after it with my 9mm. I didn’t think it would do much…but it did. Then we stepped it up by shooting it with Sam’s AR-15. Finally, we went absolutely medieval by shooting 00 magnum loads at it with a 12 ga. shotgun. We obliterated that TV. I suppose one could argue that we were making a social statement about being outdoors vs. staying indoors, but more realistically we were probably just making a statement about us wanting to shoot up stuff.

It was a great trip.

After I got home, I checked the Internet for rabbit stew recipes, read about six of them, took the elements I liked, and then struck-out on my own. I cook by feel, so don’t expect any measurements. Here is what I did:

1 rabbit
vegetable oil
flour
red wine
potatos
carrots
red (purple) onion
bella mushrooms
2 cans beef stock
salt
pepper

Salt, pepper, and brown both sides of the rabbit in a large frying pan. Then put the rabbit in a crock pot with diced potatos, carrots, bella mushrooms, and anything else you want in your stew. I like to keep it simple. In the frying pan, make a roux out of the remaining vegetable oil, flour, salt, and pepper. Add sliced purple onion and red wine. Reduce. Add beef stock and reduce until you have the consistency you want. Pour the reduction into the crock pot and cook everything on low for a couple of hours. I was going to cook it for two, but it ended-up being three because I went into my office to work on this entry, drank the rest of the bottle of red wine that I had used to cook, and lost track of time.

I took the rabbit out of the crock pot and pulled the meat off of the bone. The stew would probably be best served with/on biscuits, but I’m too lazy, so I had mine with toast points. Okay, they weren’t really points, I just tore up a couple of slices of toast and threw them in the bowl. I thought the stew was quite good. In fact, I wouldn’t change anything except that I would start earlier and cook it longer. It wasn’t undercooked by any means, but if left in the crock pot longer (say, eight hours), the meat would be even more tender. The stew was even better a day later. And the day after that.

jimmy      

My 2000 Audi A6 2.7t quattro turned 100,000 miles a couple of weeks ago. I have owned it about three and a half years and still have another year and a half to pay for it. Unfortunately, the warranty has run out, there have been some expensive services, and the car guzzles premium gas, now at around $3 a gallon. Is this car worth every cent, or is it an albatross around my neck? Let’s see.

I bought the car in December of 2002 from Roger Beasley Audi in Austin, with 46,368 miles already on it. That left over 3600 miles of full factory warranty and free maintenance available. The car was also Certified Pre-Owned (CPO), so it had a two year extension of the factory warranty, though the extended warranty carried a $50 duductible for each dealer visit. Without hesitation, I can tell you that the CPO extended warranty saved my skin. For a mere $200 in duductibles, I had thousands upon thousands of dollars in repairs done to the A6. Most notably, the A6 had a turbo replacement (which actually involves the replacement of both turbos) which would have cost $3500-$4500. During that same service, my instrument cluster was replaced. That would have cost another $1000 or so. Instead, the total bill came to $50. Whew. However, it served as the first serious warning about the potential cost of this vehicle.

By the numbers:

Service & Maint is just that. Included are the repair or replacement of normal wear-and-tear items. The repair category is for items not considered normal wear-and-tear items. Warranty is for anything replaced under warranty. Other parts is for parts that I have purchased and installed on the car myself.

The first thing to notice is that the biggest ticket item was the regular 90,000 mile service, which includes an important timing belt replacement. In fact, almost all of the TCO (not counting fuel) is associated with regular maintenance and repair of normal wear-and-tear items. That makes the car seem reasonable, if not dependable. Now might be a good time to mention that this car has never stranded me. It has suffered vaccum leaks, suspension problems, electrical problems, and even blown turbos, but it has always started and made it to the dealer under its own power.

The cautionary tale is to be found under the warranty category. Without an extended warranty, just the turbo replacement would have been more than all of my service & maint costs put together, easily doubling or perhaps tripling my TCO. That’s important because that’s the position I find myself in now. Many of those expensive problems fixed under warranty are known issues with this model and therefore are potentially recurring issues. In other words, I can expect that my turbos and my instrument cluster (among other things) will fail in the future. If I weren’t still paying for the car or if I had extensive cash reserves, this might not be a problem, but I am and I don’t, so it is. My driver side window has been giving me problems, so I am on the verge of another repair.

Maintenance and repair (not counting tires) is costing over $1100 annually for this vehicle with some benefit from a warranty. I don’t see how that number will decrease, now that the warranty has expired.

Also, in mixed driving (admittedly with a lead foot), I am only getting 20.2 mpg. My car requires premium grade gasoline, so at today’s prices (temporarily down from $3+ to about $2.85/gallon) I’m paying around $50 for a fill-up. That is SUV territory. 

But is it worth it? Don’t I love this car? Yes and no. The A6 has been a very good car to me. As I mentioned, it has been very dependable. It is very, very fast and has excellent brakes. The A6 looks nice. It is elegant and graceful from some angles, though plain and dumpy from others. It’s homeliness (especially with the stock 16″ wheels) has probably saved me from undue attention and scrutiny from the local gendarmes, even though I bomb down the roads daily at menacing speeds. There is no other explanation for how many times I have blasted past the police and they couldn’t be bothered with me. I think my plain car must look amusing to them at speed, like a fat man rolling down a hill. Only once have I been cited in this car and it was an unusually flagrant violation, even for me.

The interior of the A6 is beautiful, comfortable, and practical. My passengers have plenty of space, even in the back seat. I have massive amounts of trunk space and with the rear seats folded down, I have even slept in my car, while comfortably stretched-out to my full length. I love the automatic, dual-zone HVAC that I never have to touch and the Audi/BOSE stereo sounds good. The cabin is very quiet, there are no squeaks or rattles from interior bits, and it feels dead solid, even at 100,000 miles. And though I have never had to test it, I feel very safe in the A6. It has the performance to get me out of most trouble and if that weren’t enough, I am surrounded by a solid, well-engineered structure with lots and lots of airbags, as well.

The problem is that many of these benefits are almost never actually realized. I talk about my passengers having plenty of room, but I almost never carry any passengers. Even my wife and I never take the A6, because her 4Runner is either better for the task at hand (i.e, grocery shopping), or simply because it’s cheaper to operate. So, the size and weight of the car, which contributes to the car’s problems (fuel economy, poor handling), isn’t even being utilized.

At 100,000 miles I must say that I’m inclined to move on. This isn’t news; according to the posts below, I have been inclined to move on since eight months after buying the car. It’s a good car, but it’s not hitting the sweet spot in my performance/dependability/utility/value/happiness matrix™. So, I’ll be looking for a car that is closer to that sweet spot soon. Stay tuned.

Here are some links to posts that I have previously published about this car in other forums:

• ’95 S6 vs. A6 2.7t (long) (05.06.03)
• Life with the 2.7t… (08.01.03) – “What do I need instead?”
• TWS Clockwise Track Report (11.18.03)
• …and a data point about the value… (12.19.03)
• Top o’ the mornin’ to ya… (03.17.04)
• Good morning (06.18.04) – You win some…
• A6 2.7t Question (06.23.04)
• Replacing both turbos (07.09.04) – “…getting rid of the A6.”
• Jimmy sure knows how to pick ‘em… (01.26.05) – …you lose some

 jimmy