Comments on J-List side blog: American uniqueness vs. Japanese uniformity, a new...

Mmmm, sounds good. The best BBQ I've had has been ...

2006-11-20T09:53:00.000+09:00

Mmmm, sounds good. The best BBQ I've had has been Sonny Brians in Dallas, which is good, except for the fact that they got rid of Shiner Bock in lieu of Ziggy Bock, which is brewed secretly by none other than Anheuser Bush. http://www.sonnybryans.com/ is their homepage if you're in the area.

A bit late, but I agree on the "famous barbecues" ...

2006-11-20T08:46:00.000+09:00

A bit late, but I agree on the "famous barbecues" thing. (WARNING: Religious debate about barbecue ahead!)

I'm a devotee of what's called the "Lexington" or "Eastern North Carolina" style of barbecue, which totally eschews tomato sauce and relies instead on a fiery, red-pepper-and-vinegar concoction to infuse the meat (always shredded or minced pork, canonically served with hush puppies, Brunswick stew and sweetened iced tea with things like potato salad and baked beans being optional); the canonical way to cook Lexington-style barbecue is to take a whole cleaned and dressed pig, split lengthwise, and slow-roast it overnight in a converted barrel while sitting around drinking beer.

I will put up Lexington-style barbecue (often spelled Bar-B-Q) against your tomato-sauce-based glop any day of the week and twice on Sundays. :)

The relevant part of this post is that there is a famous Lexington-style barbecue restaurant called Ralph's in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, just south of the Virginia-NC border on I-95. It used to be a really good place, but over the last half-decade or so, it's pretty much fallen into the famous-barbecues-are-never-good mold. I think they need to go back to the converted barrels. :) The sauce, however, is still first-rate.

Interesting, Thomas. Never been to Kansas, but if ...

2006-11-16T10:40:00.000+09:00

Interesting, Thomas. Never been to Kansas, but if I were from there I'd do like Captain Kirk and say, "I'm from Kansas, I only work in outer space."

Liberty Memorial -- oo, sounds like a bad science fiction story.

Famous barbeques are never good. The BBQ in San Diego, where Top Gun was filmed, is a snoozer. We love Sonny's Ribs in Dallas, used to go there religiously but I don't think we'll be doing A-Kon in the future (bummer).

For comparison, let's go over the memorable landma...

2006-11-15T04:10:00.000+09:00

For comparison, let's go over the memorable landmarks that probably would be in an anime set in my hometown of Kansas City:

The Country Club Plaza--Got a couple thousand dollars lying around? This is where you put it. Though I should warn you, take one step out of the CCP area, and you're in the slums. Don'cha just LOVE capitalism?

Crown Center--Hallmark's little reminder to the good citizens of Kansas City that they own you. That, and a little interactive craft place for the kids and a "Crayola Cafe" (Don't ask).

Bartle Hall--The big convention center in town, named for former KC mayor H. Roe Bartle, who also has a Boy Scout camp named in his honor (one that I went to for many summers). The NRA had their annual convention there about four years ago. My dad and I want. That should say enough.

Union Station--Used to be flooded out condemned building, but then the voters passed a bi-state sales tax increase to re-do it into an activity hub with a children's science museum. Unfortunately, it has the same number of people going there now as when it was condemned. That's probably why there haven't been any more bi-state taxes passed since we passed that one.

Liberty Memorial--It's supposed to be the official U.S. memorial to WWI veterans, but it turned into the local gay hangout (no kidding). Like Union Station, there was a big push to revitalize it due in large part to the fact that it's across the street from Union Station. Now it's the veteran hangout.

Sprint Worldwide Headquarters Campus--So big, it has its own zip code. The funniest thing is, once they opened it, Sprint got bought out and the the new company slashed a bunch of the proposed buildings, so it now looks like some government laboratory, sitting about five blocks back from the nearest street.

Arthur Bryant's Barbecue Restaurant--Yeah, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and even Steven Spielberg have heralded this as the best barbecue on the planet. They're wrong. It's just the most well-known. The best is Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue out in Mound City (south of KC, essentially the souther edge of the KC metro area). Second is Gates and Sons. AB is, probably eighth or ninth.

Truman Sports Complex--Comprised of Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, the respective homes of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs and baseball's Kansas City Royals. Yeah, the Royals suck, but the Chiefs are about fifty-fifty. I'm just proud of them because they still haven't sold the naming rights yet. (FYI: Kauffman was the original owner of the Royals and founder of Marion Laboratories (now part of Aventis Pharmaceuticals))

There ya go, more information that you probably wanted on my slice of the globe.

My wife, of course, thought me very silly to go to...

2006-11-13T22:21:00.000+09:00

My wife, of course, thought me very silly to go to the places in my favorite anime. Come to think of it, she also throught me odd when I went to L.A. and walked into the Nakatomi Plaza lobby from Die Hard. ^_^