mikefotis.com

Happy Friday!

Last night I went to the hip new eatery, Burger Jones. Burger Jones has been getting a lot of “buzz” in this city and as you know, if something cool is happening in the TC, I am there within 2 to 3 months of it becoming popular. What can I say? I am awesome. Anyhoo, here’s the review.

Drink: I had the water. It was fantastic. Obviously filtered and playfully chilled with chunks of frozen water. Throughout the evening, I kept kept back to this delightful treat.

Burger: I opted for the Turkey burger. I agree, I was at a restaurant known for burgers and should have opted for the classic beef option, but let’s face facts.  I need to eat better and the turkey burger seemed to be the slightly healthier choice.

The turkey burger was pretty fantastic. Most turkey burgers I’ve had were clearly pre formed patties, meaning the chef didn’t have much to do with it. This one was clearly made from scratch. Topped with avocado slices and a orgasmicly good spicy mayo, this burger had it all.  The bun was fine. In truth, I thought it would be better. Oh well.

Fries: First strike against the fries? They didn’t come with the burger. Fuck that. I am cheap. Fries come with the burger. Fuck you for making me pay more, Burger Jones.  Having to buy the fries separately makes me feel like I’m buying a lamp at IKEA. All the parts are sold separately. Also, the waffle fries, while well seasoned and tasty, didn’t exactly deserve to be sold on their own. Shame on Burger Jones! Shame!

Ice Cream Sandwich: THe vanilla ice cream was ball knockingly tasty, but the “bread” of the ice cream sandwich was crispy as opposed to soft and chewy. Why fuck with the ice cream sandwich? Why? Shame!

Overall, it was a fine meal.  Go there if you want. I DON’T CARE!!!!

Mike

Happy Wednesday.

1. An Open Letter To T-Mobile

Dear Shiteaters I mean T-Mobile,

For the most part, I have enjoyed the time we’ve spent together. You’ve offered me low rates and when problems have popped up here and there you’ve always been courteous and offered me swift resolution. That all changed this weekend when apparently your entire company decided to beat themselves about the head until they became retarded.

I wish I had known about your “Self-tardation” decision before I called, because it would have saved me a lot of time. A quick automated message in front of your usual hour long automated message saying, “Hello! We all Retardededededed today! Cracker? CRACKER!” would have been awfully helpful.

Anyway, here are some tips for helping the next person in my position.

#1-The people at your stores should know a little bit about the services they offer and how to remedy a customer’s concerns. Staring at me until I suggest calling headquarters or whatever the fuck you call it, doesn’t really do the trick. Phones break. I get that. You get that. I was 4 months away from contract renewal. Just wave those months and give me a new phone at the reduced rate being offered. If you had done that, everything would have been fine. And I wouldn’t have had to call headquarters or whatever the fuck you call it to be phone raped by your incompetence.

#2-Is the phone system as complicated as it seems over there at headquarters or whatever the fuck you call it? I only ask because I was disconnected on two separate phone calls as I was being transfered to someone else who (probably) couldn’t help me. Being disconnected while being offered no real help-”Have you tried turning it off and then back on again? Crackers!”-is enough to drive a reasonable person absolutely insane.

#3-And finally, next time, when I finally am able to get a hold of someone who waives the extra months and gives me the phone I want at the reduced price and waives the express shipping fee on the phone and seems to solve all my problems and make sunshine come out of kitty asses and blah blah blah, remind them to tell me that the phone is on back order and I won’t have it for two weeks. Finding that out on my own sucked.

Anyway fuck you and have a great day,

Mike Fotis

Happy Monday. I trust you all had a decent, if not very good, holiday.

1. Fuck you, Bears.  I went to the game last night, and while I will freely admit that the Vikings played very well, The Bears’ inability to catch balls down field when they were wide open also probably played a role in the game’s outcome.

Anyway, onto the fun stuff.

The Miller High Life guy sang the National Anthem. It was terrible, but it felt really American in a completely gross, marketed way.

The commercial break contests were great fun! The keg race was awesome.

Last year, as some of you might know, a few of us got into a verbal tussle with a group of hillbilly-ish Vikings fans, in particular a mother daughter duo who shared beer and cigarettes. It got more than a little heated and I’m pretty sure that most of us felt a little bit of guilt about things that were said.

Well guess who sat in front of us again this year? Apologies (kind of. More of a truce) were had and things went pretty well with mom and daughter. There was no more hatred to be spewed. There was no point in looking back. We would just ignore each other. Which worked until the end of the game, when the daughter was too drunk to remember the terms of our agreement and made fun of us in the most adorably inept way.

The fellas sitting behind us were tons of fun to shoot the shit with. They knew the game, and harbored no fantasies that they were part of the team.  And aside from the creepiness factor, there was a certain charm to the weird guy who every four or five plays, would leave his seat a few rows in front of us and come and  talk to me.  “Talk” isn’t the right word.  He more just stated facts at me, like “The Vikings have lost 4 super bowls” or, “My wife…she’s sitting right there…is a Vikings fan. But not me. I like the Bears…and Packers…And the Vikings are okay. Do you like stuff?”

Really, the only people that annoyed me were this alcoholic middle aged couple.  After a Bear’s cheap shot, the middle aged man, whose real shame is not that he’s an alcoholic, but that he feeds his beast with Mike’s Hard Lemonade, turned to us and screamed, “You know that was bullshit! You know it! Bullshit! You guys are dirty!”  He wanted us to apologize for the hit, but we stood by our argument that we were not on the Bear’s coaching staff and under no obligation to apologize, an argument which he rejected.  Thank God, the ensuing  MHL’s  that he downed dampened his fervor.

As for his wife, what is the best way to describe her? Maybe as the person in your office that nobody likes because she’s snarky and is in no way a decent human being to those around her?  Here’s why I say that, after being accused of orchestrating the late hit on Gus Ferrotte, we did everything in our power to ignore this couple.  They were just annoying, and were hoping to take the problems in their marriage and transfer them onto us for an evening.  Fine. People do that all the time. Whatever. The thing is, she kept trying to goad us into fights, at one point staring us down and screaming, “I know the rules of football!” , clearly hoping that one of us would scream back, “No you don’t! Girls don’t know nothin! No get out of this stadium and make us a pie!” at which point her limp dick husband would remember that at one point in his life he loved (at least liked) his wife and would defend her honor.
We didn’t take the bait and she never got to see her husband let her down.  You think I’m being a dick, but she truly, truly sucked.

Anyway, the moral of the story is this: A good time was had by all.