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The Daily Dose/July 30, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
Notes from around the Human Experience, including not one, but two Capsule Reviews, plus On This Date, our 1908 Chicago Cubs, plus Trivia and the new Thought for the Day!
CAPSULE CHEESEBURGER REVIEW: The Steakhouse Burger, Burger King Restaurants, Various Worldwide Locations: This will surprise you, but sometimes here we are not experts in the particular medium we happen to be reviewing. For example, we offer movie reviews with the caveat that we seldom see movies and our review is based on our personal preferences instead of any established cinematic standards.
Not so in this case. We have eaten a cheeseburger or two in our time. Not only that, we enjoy them immensely. We are qualified to pass judgment, don't you worry about that.
Very Well, Carry On: We don't usually frequent Burger King, honestly, and the only reason we did this time was because it was convenient to where we were getting gas. The Woman and I were on our way to see 1776 (see accompanying Capsule Play Review below) and we needed gas and a meal and we didn't have a whole lot of time for either.
You Can't Tell The Ingredients Without A Scorecard: You can get your Steakhouse burger two ways: one with cheese, mayo, lettuce, tomato, crispy onions and A-1 sauce. The other way is with - and we are not making this up, though we sorta wish we were - with baked potato toppings! You know, sour cream, bacon bits and chives. This is in addition to the usual cheese, bacon and A-1 sauce, which we like, but find useless on burgers.
First Impression: This was, frankly, puzzling. As a long time consumer of fast-food cheeseburgers, we have never wondered what a burger would look or taste like with bake potato toppings. And we've thought a lot about cheeseburgers over the years.
What The Hell's Going On Here? Not only have we not thought about it, but we've never heard anyone else talking about it either.
Dry, Technical Matter: Actually, you can get your Steakhouse burger anyway you want. It's Burger King, after all; they encourage you to have it your way. We took ours with our usual mayonnaise and onions. We should have gotten bacon with it, but, for reasons we still aren't entirely sure of, didn't.
Brief, Fond Remembrance: In navy boot camp ages ago our Company Commander, Chief Boatswains Mate Tommy Grant, would issue a Burger King crown to recruits who would not get with the program and insisted on doing things their way.
We Interrupt This Column For A Word From The Ratings Department: Following Is The Official Writer's Shack Rating scale:
EX - Excellent; as good as the medium can produce in every respect.
VG - Very Good. Well worth your time.
GD - Good. More or less worth your time.
AR - All Right. Not completely without merit.
SP - Nothing of substance; a steaming pile, utterly without merit.
Official Rating: AR. The Steakhouse is burger is nothing to go out of your way for, unless 1) you have A-1 sauce running through your veins, or, 2) you have always fantasized about what sour cream and chives would taste like on a burger. If none of these two factors apply to you, don't bother. Find another way to ingest 970 calories you don't really need.
CAPSULE PLAY REVIEW: 1776, Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, The Middle of Nowhere, West of Las Vegas, Nevada. A musical that's been around since 1969, when it debuted on Broadway, winning three Tony Awards, (it won another in 1997), 1776 is about our zany Founding Fathers in the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.
Dry, Technical Matter: We hate to be spoilsports, but we found ourselves comparing events in the play to what actually happened. In this regard, 1776 does all right. Exact records of the proceedings weren't kept, and details of the debate wouldn't surface till years later, but it is not too big a stretch to presume the Founding Fathers portrayed in 1776 more or less said what Peter Stone's book had them saying. We do, however, note that nowhere does History record John Adams, Richard Henry Lee or Benjamin Franklin breaking into song and dance.
Oh, Come On, Lighten Up, It's A Play: And we are sure a historian could take a fine tooth comb to the whole thing and shred it to bits. But the only things that really stuck out to us - and we are fairly well read, though certainly not experts, on the matter - was that 1) Richard Henry Lee was never the Governor of Virginia; 2) Martha Jefferson, still sickly after miscarrying, did not travel to Philadelphia to be with her beloved Thomas; and, 3) as even a high school history geek knows, the Declaration of Independence was not signed by the Continental Congress on July 4. After approving it, Congress sent it to the printers signed only by John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, and the secretary of the Congress, Charles Thompson. Most of Congress wouldn't sign the Declaration until August 2, though some signed later.
You Wonder Why You Don't Get Invited To More Parties: Also, John Adams was probably more highly regarded than he is given credit for. And any musical, even one about the Founding Fathers, that includes a number by Edward Rutledge is probably a bit too long.
In fact, this was our biggest complaint: it checked in at just a shade over two hours and we found ourselves glancing at our watches at the 90 minute mark. This could've have been because it started at 8pm and our day started at 4:30am, just like the next morning would, or it could've been that 20 minutes could have been cut without losing too much. Since 1776 won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1969, it's probably the former.
Still Though: 1776 was very entertaining. Well acted, Stone's book kept things moving, and, while we are in no way qualified to judge song and dance numbers, we enjoyed those, too, at least until it started getting along towards our treasured beddie-bye time and we started nodding off.
Final Rating: VG. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical for Pete's sake. We're not going to argue.
Thought For The Day: "Truth between candid minds can never do harm." - Thomas Jefferson
SPEAKING OF CONGRESS: On this date, in 1631, the first legislative gathering in America, the House of Burgesses, assembles in Jamestown, Virginia.
Editor's Note: Throughout the baseball season, On This Date will take a look back at the 1908 Chicago Cubs world championship season because it was 100 years ago and remains their last World Series championship and it's always great fun to remind our reader(s) who are Cubs fans of this fact.
Let's Win Two, Dammit: On this date, in 1908, the Chicago Cubs - fresh off taking three of four in Brooklyn and winning the opener in Boston - took two from the Boston Doves winning the first game 13-4 and the nightcap 6-3.
After breezing through the first game, the Cubs trailed 3-2 after six innings in game two. The Cubs took the lead in the seventh with three runs. First, with two outs, a two-strike pitch to player-manager Frank Chance that everyone except plate umpire Cy Rigler thought was a strike was called a ball. Chance would end up walking. Then an error, a walk and another error would give the Cubs the lead.
The Post Game Show Is Brought To You By Old Style Beer: Elsewhere in the National League, the evil, league leading Pirates lost to Brooklyn 2-0, so the Cubs pick up a game-and-a-half and move to within a half-game of first place. The Giants had no problem with the Cardinals 11-0 and moved to two games back.
Next Up: The Cubs continue the series tomorrow with a single game against the Doves.
Yeah, Yeah, Whatever: On this date, in 1971, the Apollo 15 lunar module Falcon, commanded by David Scott and piloted by James Irwin, lands on the moon. They would spend three days on the moon and were the first to deploy a lunar rover.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Apollo 13 was the Apollo program's only manned lunar flight which did not orbit the moon. It wasn't scheduled to be, of course.
Today's Stumper: Three members of the Continental Congress which approved the Declaration of Independence did not sign it. Name them, and why they didn't sign it. - Answer next time!
Threats? Recipes? Trivia question answers? Email The Writer's Shack Here!
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