Rice, Rice, Baby

I was enjoying a nice day at IHOP, reading and enjoying the music and intercession. Lou Engle was over on the side, rocking back and forth just like a good Jewish man would. I don't think he's Jewish, but the rocking was great.

When lunch time came, I went out since we bread was unavailable that morning. Now in Grandview, it's not like you're going to find a Chipotle or anything, so you have to think a bit in order to not end up at a cheap place because you're tired of driving around and realizing the places sound gross. I ended up going with Chinese since Lauren doesn't like it that much. And this is where the story of my rice picks up steam.

There are really only 3 genres of Chinese restaurants. There's the overpriced duck restaurant, whereby your duck with rice has soy sauce on it ... so it tastes like $30 chicken. Then there's the Oriental Buffet Garden type, where it's $6 for all-you-can-eat. Not a bad deal, but I've heard of a few of these that get shut down for sanitary reasons. And finally the Peking Express or Panda Express or whatever they end up calling it, where you can get a load of rice and chicken for only $4. The Express is where I ended up, and the atmosphere was epic.

I enjoy the Chinese restaurant, as they still try to hire Asian employees who speak broken English with a thick accent. It's like being at Epcot Center, right here in the heart of Grandview, Missouri. At the Express, they somehow have 80 items to pick from ... but I went with my usual of the chicken and rice to avoid any mystery meat. In classic low-budget fast food restaurant style, he wrote my order on a styrofoam box and handed it through the window, where I can't see what hygenic standards they maintain back there.

When I sat down is when the humorous, bloggable material began. Since I'm by myself then I grab a booth within earshot of the TV in case there's some news on the tube, next to construction guy who is staring at the screen. At first glance, it looked like news since it was two guys sitting still in a room. Well I was in for a real treat ... the Express left it on the info-mercial channel for me! How exciting! Today's feature ... a coin. It was spinning in nice circles so that I could see both sides.

This week's special was a Barack Obama coin that also had George Washington's mug on it. Of course there were two guys talking back and forth about how I MUST have this coin. The first was "coin guy" who was a very smooth talker, explaining that first I should collect coins, and more importantly that I should buy this coin. You see, newspapers wear out, so you don't want to collect those. But coins are made of metal, so they last a lot longer. And this may be worth thousands of dollars someday because it's ... can you believe it ... a limited edition coin.

Without my mentioning the price, I'm sure you already guessed it ... $19.99. Not kidding. I can only buy it right now, because it's a "President-Elect" coin. Now I did read the other day that President-Elect means nothing in our country other than hype. But the excitment wasn't dwindling because not only was coin guy smooth, but his sidekick is none other than Montel Williams! I had my cell phone on my hip like a six shooter, just ready for the phone number.

But then Montel says, "Aren't they selling another similar coin for only 17 bucks? [he really did say "bucks"] It only has Obama's picture intead of both him and Washington. So you should get this one." Now Robin, Batman is doing a fine job convincing Americans they should buy this worthless coin, why did you have to say that? I think they lost 20% of their sales with that comment right there.

Coin guy's time is finally over, and my Chinese is settling nicely. By the way I escaped the rest of the day without abdominal pain, so it was a successful lunch run. As I'm walking out, they announce that this was a paid info-mercial, and we go to commercials. The first commercial was perfect ... an ad to go to their website called something like "on-tv-for-u" whereby they are selling everything online that you didn't buy from infomercials. So if you somehow refrained from pulling the impulsive trigger, no worries ... just buy it online. Now that's funny - a warehouse with all the stuff they couldn't sell. They're going to have a few Obama/Washington coins in there unless Montel covers them.

To wrap up the afternoon, they go to one more commerical. Yet another classic piece, as they are trying to sell me a dirt-tiller/weed-wacker combo in late night commercial fashion. What's up with TV commercials for sharp metal objects like weed wackers, knives, and samurai swords?

Well, you guessed correctly ... I was able to keep the cell phone in its holster (no, I don't really have one of those hip holsters for my cell-phone) and save my $19.99, along with saving by not visiting "on-tv-4-u.com" or buying the dirt-tiller. So what's the moral to this story? If Montel mentions that there are similar coins available already, grab the remote and find that channel in order to do some quality comparison in your TV shopping.