Oddly enough I became even more of a fan when I got the box set and could watch unredacted entire episodes. I first saw it on MTV in the 80s, but they cut out most of the linkages, and left only the sketches, which were good, but as others have said, seemed more like contemporary comedy than cutting edge.
When I saw more complete episodes on PBS in the 2000s, I still think they cut out some of the linkages, more due to their prurient nature than for time or popularity constraints. It was only when I got the box set that I understood that their unique genius was to link sketches together at a very certain level of absurdity. Neither always completely random nor always logical.
They do have some really bad sketches, though. But their great ones make up for the bad ones.
I try to go at least twice a year. Three if I’m lucky. I absolutely love their steaks. And their artichoke dip. I would go more often if we had time to go on dates, and if my husband could enjoy that.
He’s allergic to beef, but he humors me occasionally. But expensive? Yes. He once ordered a plain baked potato - not even buttered - and they charged $11.
They sell giant turkey legs at Disney and some faires. If you are on a High Protein, low carb diet- they can be a good option. But they certainly are overrated.
That’s why they were dried out.
The Worm Ouroboros, pushed upon us Tolkien fans. Now, I had been reading Fantasy since a kid, Edith Nesbit, Edward Eager and such, but Eddison left me cold.
Airports for me. It’s often cheaper, easier, and a known quantity in some random airport somewhere at some awful hour after hours of flying, than trying to divine what local restaurant in the airport is good, and what to order.
Actually, that’s another category- the games that sound interesting and cool, but turn out to be remakes/reskins of some old game from 30 years before. Case in point- Star Wars: Squadrons sounded so cool, and it looked cool. So I spent the $50 on it in hopes that it would be amazing, as I’d been a huge fan of the old X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter games of the early-mid 1990s.
But no… Squadrons was almost an exact remake of the old games. To the point where once I recalled the keys, it was the SAME game- you did the same shields vs. engines power adjustment, and everything. Talk about annoyed and disappointed.
Currywurst. It’s just a mediocre sausage in ketchup.
Beer in Germany / Belgium / Czech Republic or whatever isn’t appreciably better than what you can get in the US (Westvleteren is pretty good though). I think that’s probably just a holdover opinion from the 90s.
Eric Clapton in concert, around 1974-5. Technically brilliant, I guess, but no emotion I the music. Made me think Cream was driven by Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. Santana was the other act that night, and was great. And a few months later, John Mayall was also great.
I’m pretty fearless in trying anything at a good quality sushi bar, although I’ve always had a major psychological hang up about eating anything, sushi or not, that has the head still attached. But everything else, I’ve generally loved.
Having said that, I had never tried Uni (sea urchin) because I’d heard some people say that they really didn’t like the flavor. But I also have heard that many people consider it a delicacy. One night, after a chef friend raved about it, I decided to give it a go. It was not for me. I didn’t like the flavor or the texture. There was something almost medicinal or metallic about the flavor that was quite off-putting. I really wanted to like it, but that was the last time I tried it.
This is the opposite of an endorsement for me. It’s like that expression ‘well, you know what you’re getting’. Yeh, exactly, that’s why I don’t want to eat there. It’s very meh.
I’m surprised that so far, none of our American friends has suggested, “Cuban cigars.” Because Cuban cigars are unavailable in the US, of course.
I enjoy cigars, and being in Canada, can get Cubans any time I want. They’re nice, but Cuba is only one of many cigars’ country of origin. There are many fine cigars in my humidors: Cubans, Dominicans, Hondurans, Jamaicans, and so on. So to me, Cuban cigars are just another cigar. Sometimes, I feel like one, sometimes, I’d rather have a Dominican. It’s nice to have a choice.
But back in the 1990s, during the cigar craze, I was working at a place in Toronto where we had a lot of associates come up from the American offices. They attended for technical training, and being one of the trainers, it was often up to my associates and I to entertain them after business hours. This was not a bad thing at all, as the company paid. Within reason, of course; the most expensive restaurant in town was right out, as were strip bars. But a trip up the CN Tower was fine, a night at the horse races was fine (the company would pay for dinner in the track restaurant, though the company would not pay for wagers), hearing a local band in a pub was fine.
Hitting a cigar bar was fine too, and there were a few Americans to whom that was top of their list. “Oh boy! Cuban cigars!” And they were invariably disappointed. “That’s it? Hell, that’s just another smoke!” They were invariably disappointed, because a Cuban cigar is ultimately, “just another smoke.” There’s nothing special about it.
Back in the day, the special thing about beer in the Czech Republic was that it was so cheap. Which mattered to 20-something travelers who weren’t alcoholics, but valued a cheap night out.
Special thing about beer in Germany was that it was everywhere – not just in some dive bar on the edge of town.
And special thing about beer in Belgium was that there was so much variety. In my home town, beer was whatever was on tap: one kind, your choice when ordering was how big you wanted the glass. And although there were pubs tied to the inter-state breweries, 80% of the pubs were tied to the local (state) company.
So beer in Germany / Belgium / Czech Republic was special, but not because the beer was special. Unless you drank a lot, In which case Germany / Belgium / Czech Republic beer was week as piss.
There are some outstanding Belgian beers, most of which tend to be on the strong side. Probably about 90% of lager that I actually think isn’t awful is Belgian.
I’ll second this. After I’d read The Lord of the Rings more than once, I looked for something else, and the good folks at Ballantine Books, who published the Authorized edition of LotR were also publishing this in a multi-volume set. I bought the first volume, and couldn’t finish it.
Ditto for Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. (“Hey! It’s fantasy! And it’s a trilogy! What more do you want?”). Couldn’t finish the first volume.
Ditto for John Bellairs’ The Face in the Frost, which was touted as a great fantasy novel for fans of Tolkien. I read the whole thing (It’s not a trilogy, and the one novel is not long), but I didn’t like it at all.
Actually, although I really am a fan of fantasy, Ireally don’t care for a lot of popular stuff, especially when it was marketed as for fan of Tolkien. So i hated Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (which lost me when he brought in a wizard named “Schmendrick”) and Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara (which is Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off)
Given it’s about 65 years now that the legend of how great they once were has been building, it’s not surprising the mystique of the “forbidden fruit” looms large for Americans.
It’s also the case that the rest of the Caribbean cigar industry has had 65 years to up their game. While the Cuban cigar industry, like the rest of the Cuban economy, has all but imploded into the early 1900s, not even the 1950s when Castro took over.
A heck of a lot of Cuban tobacco genetics got exported in the early days to neighboring countries. Where it has flourished for a long time now.
IANAC, but I would expect poutine to be better (on average) in its native Québec. Niagara Falls is in Ontario.
(I know you know this…this is for anyone who is not unfamiliar with poutine.)
But I’ll suggest that visiting an American chain tourist trap in a Canadian tourist trap city catering mostly to Americans is probably not a good source for authentic Canadian cuisine of any sort.