kitchen confidential is a friggin' lie!

Now, nothing against the show, cause it's cute and quirky and whatever else is needed in an equation to make a sitcom work, but Kitchen Confidential is way out of line here, people, and I'm not gonna let this new television show off the hook.

Now for all of you who haven't seen it yet, it is about a head chef and his cute co-workers (back of house, and front of house) all trying to make a living in an upscale restaurant. There are only a few problems with this "idea", but they are so huge that I cannot get past it and actually enjoy the show. I shall list them IN a particular order:

1. All of the cooks are white. This is a huge problem for me. Any one who has ever worked in a restaurant or even set foot in one knows for a fact that 99.9% of all the cooks in America are Mexican. I work in a Chinese restaurant and all the guys making your fried rice are in fact of the Hispanic descent. This is not a racist comment, this is a statement based on my experience of working in restaurants since I started high school.

2.There is only one hostess who works there. She looks like a model, and she apparently works everyday, because she is the only person who is ever near a host stand.

3. The owner's daughter is a waitress there and she creates dishes not listed on the menu just to make the head chef prepare stuff. She would of been murdered by his Mexican friends by now.

4. There is no heat lamp. They prepare the food and set it on a table IN THE KITCHEN, where the servers come and pick up one dish and then walk back out to the dining room. I will not even go into health violations, server errors, blah blah, that is just plain wrong. Heat lamps are what makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round.

5. A cute little prank or something will always find itself in the middle of the kitchen involving the cooks and the servers during a very busy night, and every cook seems to find time to stop and make a joke. They are not sweating, they are not busting their ass to cook up some sixty meals, they are having a ball. I don't see the cooks having a ball during the lunch lull. They are always preparing shit.

6. At the end of the night everyone goes to a bar to hang out together. Lonely Hostess, Servers, Kitchen Staff, even Dish Washers. I go out all the time, with my server buddies. Birds of a feather, my friends, it's sad but true, we stick in our groups. Restaurants are very segregated places. Every now and again we'll intertwine our posses, but for the most part we just smile and wave and leave it at that, not finish off our beers together at the same table.

This may seem like a rant, but this show could of been genius. Everyone either works in a restaurant or frequents them throughout the week. We should all be able to relate to this show, not loathe it because it is so far off. Please people, write the creators for me and tell them they are big dumbasses, and should of done their homework at least a little, like looking in the back of any restaurant. I hate you Kitchen Confidential, I hate you so hard.

i'm going to DISNEY WORLD!!!!

i leave tomorrow (tuesday morning) and i get back on the 19th (following wednesday) and then early thursday morning (the 20th) i fly out to boise to go open a new pf changs and i won't be back until the 5th of november or there abouts! i feel like my good bloggin' buddy karen who travels more than my uncle travelling matt!

anyway... i'll try to post while on my journeys exploring outer space, reflecting on earth, meeting some ghosts and exploring haunted mansions!

it's gonna be busy, but i'll try to fit in some time! :)
see you on the other side!
love, matt

a good 3-movie day!

SERENITY
*spoiler alert*

this was everything i was hoping it would be AND more! if youre a fan of the tv show then you won't be disappointed and if you are new to the franchise, then you'll be pleasantly surprized! i was very sad to see the death of TWO major characters, but then again, it doesn't really surprize me... joss whedon has never been afraid to kill off main characters to either advance the story line, or just to shake things up! :) 5 out of 5 stars!

OLIVER TWIST
the only versions of this that i know are the musical version "oliver!" and the disney animated film oliver and company, so i was very excited to see a straight forward version of this tale as i love both of those previous versions AND charles dickens' work in general. it was very faithful to the novel and overall i loved the whole story... though it could have been a tad bit shorter (it's 2hr 20min long!) i never really felt as if i was needing to look at my watch! :) 4 out of 5 stars!

FLIGHTPLAN
enjoyable for what it was, which is an edge of your seat, is-she-or-isn't-she-crazy, what the hell is going on! thriller :) most of the time we are just watching jodie get all mad and demand to know where her kid is and for much of the film i felt like i was watching panic room 2: panic in the air! but if you just go into it with no expectations and a need for mindless entertainment, then you should be able to have fun! :) WAIT FOR VIDEO!! 3 out of 5 stars! :)

DUCKTALES on DVD!!!!

along with chip and dale: rescue rangers!!! november 8th! save the date!! :)

goodbye michael!

After 21 years at the helm, Michael Eisner will step down as chief executive of The Walt Disney Company today. Reports from around the web look at his legacy:

"Just days before exiting his post as CEO of the Walt Disney Co., Michael Eisner... called his 21 years at Disney "the most gratifying experience in my life. The culture of the company, the ethic, the assets, the enthusiasm were there when I arrived in 1984, and I'm proud as I leave to see that they are still there" (The Hollywood Reporter).

"Unfortunately for Eisner, he is more likely to be remembered for the missteps and controversies of the last decade than for the phenomenal successes of his first 10 years, when Disney blossomed into a media powerhouse. That's the way Hollywood operates, after all - you're only as good as your last screenplay" (LA Times).

"In two decades he transformed a struggling animation studio and its pair of amusement parks into a global entertainment powerhouse with 11 theme parks, a dozen television channels, a top-rated broadcast network, one of Hollywood's biggest film studios... In fact, Michael Eisner's record at Disney will be hard to beat says Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics: 'That is a feat almost unprecedented in corporate America over a 20-year period'" (MSNBC).

"Eisner didn't do it alone. He was part of a Hollywood Dream Team. There was former Warner Bros. President Frank Wells, a craggy, sometimes absent-minded lawyer who could doze off during a lengthy discussion but was the glue that held the Mouse House together. Studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg helped Eisner resurrect the company's animation unit with the tirelessness of a man who slept only five hours a night and famously told employees that 'if you don't want to work Saturdays, don't bother coming in on Sunday.' Gary Wilson came from Marriott and brilliantly financed Disney's film and theme-park expansion. (Business Week).

"However, the emperor's choke hold on this magic kingdom had begun to squeeze the life out of the company. From the huge loss of Jeffrey Katzenberg years ago, to the recent split with movie moguls Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Eisner was increasingly perceived as doing more harm than good. Investors, insiders and the board grew restless" (MSN).

"Mr. Eisner's recent years... were marred by the shareholder revolt and a bitter board fight in which Mr. Eisner clashed with two former directors - Roy E. Disney, the nephew of the founder, and Stanley P. Gold, Mr. Disney's financial adviser. They had originally lobbied to give him the top job in 1984 during another management shake-up. More recently, they sought to oust him, contending his clashes with employees and Disney's partners were a drag on the company" (NY Times).

"But industry experts say that ironically, as Eisner says farewell as Disney's chief executive officer, the company has begun to return to the double-digit earnings growth that marked his first decade running Disney" (Washington Post).