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There's food at the house!

2/7/2018

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​ As of recent times there has been a bit of nostalgia that has gotten us remembering a point in most of our childhoods that I thought were isolated incidents.  When people talk nostalgia, it’s always about toys, movies, TV shows or places that once existed & now are gone due to a bunch of suits who hate fun. If you clicked on this blog entry for the title, I’m guessing you experienced what I’m about to talk about.
We’re not eating out, there’s food in the house.
First off, maw & paw, we live in an apartment! Second, I just got an B+ on Math!
 So more than a few times we as kids would crave fast food & sadly that’s nobody’s fault but advertising, we were conditioned to love fast food, beg our parents to take us to Disneyland & cry if we couldn’t get it! It’s true, we were conditioned with all the advertising in both Saturday Morning/Weekday Afternoon cartoon blocks of the 90’s & 2000’s that boasted a whimsical world featuring Ronald Mc.Donalds and the Burger King kids club full of the diversity kids that would make your uber liberal professor orgasm & make your uber conservative grandparents shit a brick. Burger King advertised to kids, Mc.Donalds has pretty much built an empire on selling to kids & then you get the weird restaurants who were trying to target the kids but failed because all they offered was a unique meal box  & a maze with crayons, but no licensed toys & as kids we bet on the known over the unknown. Whether you remember it or not, Wendy’s had happy meals that were heavily advertised too. It’s odd, Wendy’s would have licenses to cartoons that were genuinely popular (I think they had ‘Ed Edd & Eddy’ toys once. I believe they had the licence to the Cartoon Network library. I do know they had the license to ‘Arthur’ & while some of the toys were ‘meh’, they did give out a computer game & it was pretty ballsy), yet I never in my childhood knew anyone who either ate a Wendy’s or were psyched for Wendy’s toys. Mind you, this was pre-Twitter snarky Wendy’s girl who roasted a bunch of people on Twitter. Remember that shit? Then they turned her to porn in zero to none seconds. That is the fate for everyone now, if you’re popular, you are porn. Nowadays marketing happy meal toys is sorta there (Mostly in the form of Mc.Donalds Happy Meals because they won the Fast Food wars. Should have been ‘Taco Bell’), mainly because of idiot parental groups who called for fast food chains to stop advertising to kids & outright ban toys from happy meals, actually it was a ban for all junk food (Cheetoes, candies, sodas, etc.) to stop advertising to kids. If you watch those kids commercial compilations from 2003 all the way till the 80’s, a lot of junk food brands were targeting kids which are now heavily advertised in prime time like Doritos & Burger King. I know that was an issue in both the middle school & high school I went to. I recall ‘Sprite’ having a commercial on Kids WB where a CGI sun was chasing a family through the house, that was a funny yet creepy advert. I say the people voting to ban junk food on kids TV are idiots (Though they were kinda right) because rather than these parents enforcing rules among their children to not eat a lot of fast food (Like my parents did!), they just called for a nationwide ban on advertising to kids & honestly, the ban on happy meal toys is retarded.  I know I repeat the stereotype a lot, but I bet these parents are the same type of parents who raise these fucked up kids who can’t make friends, eat nothing but rice cakes and water & sadly end up becoming serial killers due to being repressed. Mc.Donalds circumvented that with their ‘Mighty Kids Meal’ which made healthier alternatives & sadly nobody else followed suit & that’s why not a lot of restaurants give away free toys to kids. It’s kinda sad. Here I go again with the tangents.

Ahhh, the days when Saturday morning commercials advertised sugary drinks to kids & actually tricked people (On the first few seconds) into thinking this was an advert for something else.
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​Doesn’t matter where it was from, cravings will bite us in the ass & will continue to bite us in the ass until we die. We would ask mom or pop if we could get something, but we would sometimes hear the response we always dreaded. “There’s food at the house”. Now with my parents, for some fucked up reason they would say there’s food at the house & my mom would cook food me & my sisters weren’t fond of, like cactus. My parents are crazy for cactus & both of us were not feeling the cactus.  I just don’t understand why! Even in my grown up age I don’t fucking like cactus & here are my parents “You should try it once.” I tried it once & it fucking sucks, boiled & shit. It’s like they could read minds & thought “They don’t want cactus, well let’s cook it for them anyway! That good ‘ol fashioned catholic guilt will take care of most of it.” But most of the time it would be food you’re not necessarily disgusted by, but you would only eat moderately. Too many of those fucking types of food anger me less, but very much feel like you’re ending the day in a sad way. Especially coming from a shitty day from school, then your mom or guardian made some food that you aren’t really a big fan of, but it’s one of those plates you look at & still eat anyway because it’s either eat that or starve the night. There have been very few times where my mom would use the ‘Food at the House’ card, but would make something good like Spagetti or Salad, that is always worth it which brings me to another side of this. Some of you fucking kids out there are picky & ungrateful. I’ve seen kids get into shit fits because their parents wouldn’t take them to Mc.Donalds, but at home their parents serve some tasty grilled steak & mashed potatoes & all this delicious goodness. Are you serious you punk ass little shit?! Here you are begging for cheap fast food & your mom & pop made something only my parents cooked once a year at a special occasion (Those were the days before I fucked everything up)! Fuck you kid! They ought to send you to the desert where the only food there is cactus & coconut water that tastes like an unerotic 70’s Brazillian porno!
I’m sure there are some of you out there who have gone through this either back in the day or recently, there’s very little food in the house & all you can do is whip up something with whatever’s available. There have been many a time back in the day when I would make butter & syrup sandwiches. Holeeshit! The STRUGGLE! Then there was a time where I raided the cupboard to see what I could eat. I’m sure if you go to the kitchen right know you would find tin cans full of chili, stew & whatever tin can food was available that either someone gave you or it just magically appeared. There was a can of beef stew in one of them, I think I started hallucinating & smelling words after cooking & eating that at age 12. I was home that summer & my parents weren’t around, watching nothing but ‘DIC’ cartoons. Those were them days. That is the struggle right there, so all you kids should be grateful to have a magical fridge that’s always full. Then you get the weird moments where you’re expecting to eat at home, but the parents decide “Nah, let’s eat out!” That always struck me as cool & odd, mainly with my thinking. Here I am a week ago being bummed out that we aren’t eating out, but here is my mom suggesting we eat out, ON A SCHOOL NIGHT! Especially if I was planning on eating something from the fridge. ‘Sigh’, my mind is a fuck.  Well nowadays I’m not as all pissed off for not eating out, what pisses me off more is when my nose would play tricks on me. I would smell what I would think as the scent of grilled chicken or meat frying on the girdle (Vegans fuck off) & I would come out to see my mom is just frying cilantro for some stew & my heart breaks more than being sent cellphone porn of your crush & some masked guy getting it on. Wowe, that went dark, but it’s raw, like life!!! 
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I remember scaring the hell out of my younger sister by showing her this commercial on TV.
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 On this final part of the blog, I wanna get light here. Restaurants today (Unless they’re small businesses, but even then they are falling to this trap too) aren’t fun places anymore. There are two places from my childhood that I loved going to & that would be both ‘Pizza Hut’ and ‘Mc.Donalds’. Mc.Donalds was my kinda place for one big reason & one reason only, fucking N64 & Gamecube right there, available for free play! I admit, I was a fucking pussy to attempt to go up on the playplace playground, I would get Final Destination visions from that place. The whole place would topple down, all the kids would fall off & break their faces & shit.  Actually, that sound funny now. That shit looks rickety & also there would always be that one kid covered in snot, saliva, Vaseline & melted popsicle who would get all up in your face & ask “Want to be friends?” in a  very creepy Michael Jackson voice. Those are the same kids who would call ‘Time Out’ just as you corner them or they would push the reset button on the SNES when you were kicking their ass in ‘Mortal Kombat II’. For some reason some girl from school & her mom invited me to go with them to Mc.Donalds. Was this some arranged marriage thing? I don’t know, wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Now that same girl despises me. Hahahah, fuck you too bitch. Then we get to Pizza Hut, there was a big Pizza Hut restaurant where I loved going to in Lomita on PCH. It was pretty much molded as a family diner complete with round tables, there would be a big screen TV bigger than my current bedroom. Then we get to the motherload (For 12 year old me anyways), ARCADE GAMES UP THE ASS!! My parents never took me to ‘Chuck E. Cheeses’ or anywhere they knew I would love, this makes up for it! Pizza Hut would have a little place where there was nothing but Arcade games & there would be a TV hanging on the corner ceiling playing some random movie. Once they were playing ‘Back To The Future: Part II’ & another time they were playing ‘Basic Instinct’ for some reason. Alright, pizza, arcade games & Sharon Stone beaver shots, heaven on earth! These weren’t your typical laundromat, NeoGeo (4 games in 1) cabinets here. I’m not complaining, NeoGeo made some of the best arcade games ever! The arcade games at this Pizza Hut were the greatest shit ever! I remember first playing the original ‘California Speed’ arcade game there. My first time playing this game was on the N64, but the arcade game is both a fun and broken experience. The courses are more like roller coaster rides & of course the graphics are much more better on the arcade than on the N64 port. The N64 game made a lot of downgrades from the arcade as expected. For starters you have more shit happening on the screen, specifically the Area 51 course where military jets shoot at you & blow up everything around you as you race through the base. You don’t get that in the N64, but you also don’t get the broken (On purpose) gameplay. The arcade game was purposefully designed so that players couldn’t win first place & you had to spend a lot of money to race through all the levels. The only way you can get first place is if you play it on the Mame emulators. Most of the games at this Pizza Hut were Midway racing games from the 90’s & they were both awesome & cheesey as hell! One of these days I’m going to write about those games, they’re so full of charm. ‘Off Road Challenge’ was great (Just got the N64 version for 8 bucks at the local flea market) & so was ‘Cruisn’ World’, but also here's another thing I forgot to mention with California Speed, they got away with a lot in their original arcade versions, despite being sold as an ‘All ages’ video game. Of course Nintendo has to be as family friendly as they can, but I was astonished at the fuckery these arcade versions contained. In ‘California Speed’ there’s a part where you drive through a mall & get to run over people with your car. Well not exactly run over, but you hit them as they bounce off the car with a ‘Boing!’ and a yelling sound from the pedestrians as they fly off screen. It gets worse, ‘Cruisn’ World’ you could run over animals & they explode in gallons of blood & guts. The N64 version of Crusin’ World takes out all of that & replaces it with bugs hitting the windshield when you put the camera on the dashcam setting. OOhhhh, edgy! A good bug is a dead bug! Then of course they had the flag girls in almost all of these games which looking back is just tame & corny. In our current realm of rule 34 & pornhub, the so called allure of a woman in a bikini saying “You won first place. You’re hot!” is tame & laughably bad because you could tell these ladies aren’t the acting type. The only N64 port which kept the bikini flag girls in those Midway racing games was ‘Cruisn’ USA’ (which is played by a Canadian pornstar ‘Whispers’ Shyla Foxxx).  I remember playing that light gun ‘Area 51’ game which was not that bad, but light gun games are a hit & miss (No pun intended). That was then replaced with ‘Tekken 4’, that was a fucking trip for me. I remember playing this & my older sister saw me playing as Mokujin (The guy made completely out of tree stumps) fighting Panda! I could only imagine her thoughts at that moment, “What the fuck is he playing?” Then there was an arcade game based on Harley Davidson with a motorcycle cabinet & it was just basically ‘Crazy Taxi’ with a motorcycle. Now we get to my all time favorite arcade beat ‘em ups (Well, second to ‘Turles in Time’), ‘The Simpsons’. That was an awesome arcade game, especially since four or five people could simultaneously. I remember one Sunday, way back when, I came to a packed Pizza Hut. A local little league baseball team pretty much took over that Pizza Hut that day. These guys put up a little chain with a sign around the entrance that said something like ‘Closed for Party’. Me being the rebel I am, I snuck in there & blended in as well as a pale European extra in a Bollywood film, yet nobody called me out on it. Me & a bunch of baseball kids were playing four-player Co-op & it kicked ass! I was playing Marge that day, typically I would play either Homer or Bart. Then I remember playing some game called ‘Total Vice’, I remember thinking it was a typical light gun shooter game which I only played once. Can’t really say anything other than it was a light gun game in the same look as ‘Virtua Cop’.
This was a fun Pizza Hut to be in, I could imagine playing Roleplaying Games on that gaming arena, eating nothing but breadsticks & pizzas with Pepsi. That place had an 80’s, 90’s vibe to it & I loved it. Then we get to the idiotic decision corporate made & they’re the only culprit for this crime! They sold that property, they put up a sign that said ‘Pizza Hut will be moving up the street on PCH’ & that property was sold to some grilled Baja Burger place that just doesn’t appeal to me. This looks like type of place where the only entertainment they offer is to watch the big game on the televisions. It’s like a sports bar! Sports bars are just not for me, I’m not a sports person. What did Pizza Hut do? They set up shop a little shop up the street, but they just bought a small little space & turned their restaurant into a kiosk. That’s all that it is now, you call Pizza Hut, they make the pizza & all you can do is pick up the pizza on that little kiosk. No longer are their dining tables, no longer are there big screen TV’s, no longer are there arcade games! It’s all just a cashier table with a kitchen out back, a small bench which only holds one obese person, a menu & a little fridge where they sell liter soda. It makes me sad, but also I do got a funny story about this place. I once tagged along with my older sister to grab a pizza she ordered & we had to wait an eternity for the pizza to be done. So I was sitting on the bench & this random (Pretty) plus sized Asian woman tried to start some easy talk with me. All I gotta say is I use that experience as a wild card to tell people “I met Kelly Shibari at a Pizza Hut once.” I say that, even though I’m very sure that was not her. I just wanna sound cool! 
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Can't believe someone actually took a photo of the Pizza Hut I frequented as a kid & uploaded it to the mid-2000's internet. Sadly, no pictures of the interior were found.
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So Pizza Hut became lame, but then there was another change that just infuriated me. Now the Burger King I used to frequent in my childhood didn’t have a playplace or video games or anything that outdid McDonalds, but the aura, style & dining seats gave the place a hospitable, down home restaurant look to it. I know it sounds weird saying this about a fast food joint, but the Burger King which used to be on PCH (Same road) back in the 90’s & early 2000’s was like that. I always remember two framed paintings which hung on the wallpaper walls. There was a photorealistic painting of a sea shell & another one of a boat on the ocean. The whole place looked like a grandma’s house from the 80’s & 90’s & I fucking loved it! Now the demise of this Burger King wasn’t as bad as the demise of Pizza Hut, but it was bitter. That Burger King was destroyed & replaced by a hand dried Car Wash. Then me & the family decide to go to another one, specifically the one on Sepulveda in Torrance (It’s still there). At this point Burger King became shit, but also I was coming of age so I was getting too old for Happy Meals (Sadly) and getting too big for the playplace. Oh yeah, this Burger King on Sepulveda had a playplace & it was both fun & gross. There would always be red puke on the fucking area from the previous kids who had too much fun. Not only that, the food started to suck. This is when I started calling Burger King the appropriate name ‘Mayonnaise King’. The amount of mayo they shove into their chicken sandwiches is too damn high! Seriously, they must have a fucking mayo surplus. Also, something in their food changed to where I used to be able to finish a burger without feeling like shit. Is it the mayo or the GMO’s, I don’t know. Hahahaha I’m gonna die. Not only that but like I said earlier about the parents & government destroying Happy Meals, right around 06 or 07 there was a moment when they still had the little plastic cupboard canopy on the corner showing the hot new happy meal toys with the Burger King Kids Club newsletters there. Those cupboards were empty & eventually they just removed them. That was fucking sad, even at that age when I was old for a happy meal, I still got a kick out of reading those newsletter because you can’t murder the child within me, only nourish it. Before I finish, I have to also talk about the fucking people at this specific Burger King. Here’s a personal fun fact about me, I don’t like to eat in the restaurant, especially eating by the window facing the Drive Thru or parking lot where everyone orderingcan see me. Everyone inside or outside the place would always stare at me eating my food, like excuse me, do I got lint on my hair? If not, then go fuck yourself you cheap ass whores! There was this guy with pink skin who always liked to watch me for some reason. Fucking pedophile, hope he’s dead or getting raped by bubba in prison. All he did was buy a large soda, sat in this usual spot near the soda machines & just watched people eat. The fuck was his problem? He looked like a background character from ‘Seinfeld’, mid season Seinfeld. 
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I got a nagging suspicion it was this mother fucker.
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​I don’t get fast food joints anymore, they’re trying so hard to tell everyone they’re trendy, sophisticated and classy dining establishments (In the same vein as a Hollywood rich people restaurant by the name of ‘KATSUYA’) but the common consensus time & time again always proves they can’t be sophisticated. How many times must we see a commercial advertising the Mc.Donalds café with all the white collar people drinking their frappes ‘n’ shit, then afterwards we hear of a woman (Mostly a woman, sorry feminists) raising hell because “Ice cream machine broke” at the local Mc.Donalds? The you get most of the beef mainly being 30% beef & the rest being some unknown meat that doesn’t register on the periodical table. There was that time Mc.Donalds had Mac Tonite which was encouraging people to have dinner at Mc.Donalds. I’ll say that’s pretty ghetto there. Nowadays the only restaurants I squee for are small independent restaurants like Tom’s Burgers in Wilmington CA. Despite what I said about eating in the restaurant, I love eating in there because the interiors remind me of the restaurant in ‘Pulp Fiction’. It may cost more, but at least I’m not giving ‘Mayonaise King’ money. I ate some ‘In & Out’, but I never set foot in an ‘In & Out’ for some reason. I imagine I couldn’t because the place has a 50’s vibe & the 50’s were a pretty fucked up time in American history, even though the workers there look like the type that would always sneak in an onion ring in the fries. I feel like if you’re colored, everyone in the restaurant would send out helmet wearing cops with German shepherds at you, it comes with the territory. When I get the chance I still get cheery ordering a plate at the Chinese food from a restaurant that’s been in my hood since I was a zygote! Chinese food restaurants, not meaning to sound racist, are all pretty much the same, mainly here in LA. A restaurant I’ve been campaigning to eat at with my family is ‘Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles’. Those two foods sound like they never should be eaten together, but they work together!!!
At the end of the day I guess when our parents said ‘There’s food at the house’ they were counter training us to eat whatever was in front of us & not be picky about food, but on that same token we as people like what we like & most of that won’t or can’t change. I don’t like liver, neither does anyone with tastebuds! On that same token of that same token we need to try new things & not rely on fast food as a common choice because too much of a good thing can’t be good for you. Hell, America’s the fattest country….or is it Mexico…or was it India? Taiwan? Seriously, these obesity documentaries don’t have a clear answer, what is the fattest country? I don’t care, we’s all chubsters & yet despite making sex robots ‘THICC’, we still get the bullcrap of the unrealistic body expectations. Also parents were training us for that day when there’s no food on the fridge & money’s tight. That’s something all kids should learn, also teach boys to cook!
To end this, food at the house can’t be bad. Parents, when you say there’s food at the house, make sure there is good food at the house. Nothing hurts more than being told there’s food at the house only to find out it’s liver. I’ve been thinking, since I grew up with kids who would come to school with baggies of Mc.Donalds to eat at lunch along with bags of hot cheetoes, will they even tell their kids there’s food at the house? I’m talking the kids who aren’t smart, but also didn’t eat enough paste in middle school. Who knows, we already got a bunch of fucking idiots (Teens mostly) eating those laundry detergent pods.
To those idiots, keep on eating them. You won’t be missed & hopefully your parents can replace you with another kid & get this one right this time. I know, dark. That’s where I hang out.
Thank you all for wasting your time with this blog, expect more & keep on trucking, I guess.

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