Even fake food is better than fast food Wednesday, Feb 20 2008

Continuing my reflections on food, as promised I went out and bought a prepared pizza crust and cheese since I had a lot of toppings left over from the other day when I attempted to make my own pizza. The results were exponentially better than my horrid crust which is what I expected. What I was surprised by was how much better it ended out than the likes of what’s served at so called “pizza delivery” chain restaurants. I refuse to name names but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. There’s a lot I could say about chain restaurants and fast food but three topics is a bit much.

Back to the prepared crust, I happened to buy a “fresh” variety that I’m assuming was partially pre-baked before being sealed in plastic. You can get different crusts in different states of prepare that have been preserved in varying ways, but I imagine that they’re all pretty comparable. Since it wasn’t raw dough the baking time (to say nothing of the overall preparation time) was less than what I made the other day, really you just need to let it go long enough to get the cheese to your desired state or 10 minutes, whatever is longer. I had to bake my pizza the other day for almost twice that amount of time. All in all, with the time it took to heat up the oven that I spent arranging the pizza it was 20 minutes. Most delivery chain pizzas take at least that long to arrive. I thought that the price for the crust was not great, but if you combine everything it’s not more than the regular price of delivery pizza unless you use premium ingredients. And of course if you use premium ingredients and don’t fuck it up then it tastes exponentially better than delivery pizza and might justify the price.

I must say though that for me pizza is a well below ideal food. Why? Because if you make it so that it tastes good it’s very high in calories, however it’s not especially filling so if you eat enough to feel satisfied you’ve also eaten enough to make yourself FAT. You don’t want to be FAT do you? Well to be fair you could say the same thing about any high fat low volume food, like cutlets and steaks. Although you tend to eat those more along with other things whereas when you get a pizza don’t you just get the pizza? Are you trying to tell me that you really eat a salad before you eat your pizza? Come on? You know you’re just eating other junk along with the pizza unless you’re just stuffing your face on pizza alone.

I may or may not try making my own pizza dough again some other time. Although I doubt that I’ll try kneading it by hand again if I do. By the way I topped my pizza with a cheese blend, and cured meats. I probably would have had to put pure lard on (the crust called for you to oil it so perhaps I did at that) to get a higher fat content.

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Misleading Corruption In The Fall Wednesday, Feb 20 2008

So for a change of pace I watched the 11 episode seinen anime series Moyashimon もやしもん which has an english subtitle “Tales of Agriculture”. The premise of the series is that the main male character is the son of a famed japanese yeast brewing household named Tadayasu that can see and hear and interact with bacteria. Or rather limited numbers of caricatured looking whimsical creatures that are supposed to represent the presence of billions of given bacteria. The story follows his mis-adventures at an agricultural university in tokyo. Hilarity attempts to ensue.

The show is amusing enough. However the unique ability of the protagonist and even the setting of an agricultural university in one of the least agricultural countries in the world are both extremely under-utilized. Instead most episodes just see the characters messing around and drinking with the two things I just mentioned only being used as set-up at best. The series even has a continuing serious theme of identity and self-determination that get totally glossed over. Such as one character deciding to dress in drag and live as a girl and another being in an arranged engagement. Probably the latter wasn’t just presented as an excuse for utilizing a can of surströmming like a grenade but it quite possibly was.

All that said the series comes off as a cross between the regular college days of an obscure group like in the otaku anime Genshiken and the isolated main character that can see things other people can’t see of Mushishi. Not coincidentally both Genshiken and Mushishi ran (well I think the latter is still running) in the manga anthology “afternoon” and Moyashimon is published in Afternoon’s sister anthology “evening”. There’s also an anthology “morning” but I can’t think of a series that runs in it at the moment.

That said 11 episodes is pretty short for an anime series. Predictably this does not cover the entirety of the original material which I have only glossed over. For the most part the anime faithfully covers the first 2 volumes of the manga out of about 6 so far, with a few stories and elements taken from the 4th volume and a slightly different chronological order to a few key events. Considering that, and how little actually happens in the manga, I’m actually a bit surprised the series got animated at all but even though the story plainly isn’t finished I doubt that they’ll release a different series. I could give a few reasons for this opinion like how there isn’t perceived foreign interest as there is for popular shows, or how in the final omake the bacteria said “the show is over but bacteria is everywhere” instead of “we might see you again someday” or the likes, but you just get the impression from the show that it was only a short spurt sort of thing.

And that’s OK every once in a while. I’m really not sure of the veracity of much of the science behind the show, but actually they just end out talking about fermentation and contaminates most of the time. And similarly eating smelly food and drinking either really bad or really good alcohol.

For an obscure otaku observation, there was a Jet Stream Attack parody in the anime but nobody ever said “jet stream attack”! This was a first. Every single time I’ve ever seen a parody or homage to the jet stream attack, whether it was invoked during the maneuver or someone simply noted what it was, without fail someone would utter the name. Until now. Perhaps considering that the Jet Stream Attack is almost 30 years old this isn’t that surprising. But I’m not sure how much I want to live in a world where nobody shout’s out ジェットストリームアタック!  That might be another story though.

In my usual poor conclusion fashion, I’ll recommend seeing the series if you’re looking for something easy going. And the last notable thing about the series for me was an ending that made me think “that’s one of the strangest endings I’ve ever seen in an anime”. I don’t want to say too much about it in case I spoil it for anyone, but I don’t think that other people will share my sentiment. If you happen to think the same thing I’d be interested to hear why though.

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