Palinode Around The Web: Double Downs and Recaps and Vainglory

On MamaPop.com I recap this week's episode of Modern Family "Manny Get Your Gun". Because it's not enough to watch television when the internet now allows you to read it as well:

Stop! Cameron and Mitchell time. They’re still in that mysterious shopping district, and Mitchell is still hurrying Cameron along. Cameron stops when he sees an old man attempting to call down to a woman on a lower level (not classwise – physically one floor down). Cameron takes it upon himself to rebroadcast the man’s hoarse calls in an earshatteringly loud voice: “Helen, I love you! Give me a chance!” Helen stares up at them with a look of cloudy surprise. Is it me, or does the actress playing Helen appear to have lip implants?

Also, I review KFC's Double Down sandwich for Prairie Dog Mag. I have a byline and author photo and everything for this one.

Back in July I described KFC’s latest product as “the insult comedy of fast food.” After a look at the “Take Down the Double Down” ad campaign, complete with a Wall of Fame on Facebook, I realized that the Double Down is part of a new approach to the way we consume food. It's no longer enough that food be nutritious, or tasty, or even ‘fun’ after the fashion of cheese strings. Lately everything is an interactive challenge, which strikes me as a really tiresome way to eat lunch.

 

I don’t want to track my waistline or post photos of myself holding a burger with an unorthodox amount of bacon. I don’t want to sign up and share my breakfast experience with the Internet.

 

More to the point, I’m not sure that these challenges are all that challenging. Is it really a challenge to eat a couple of pieces of chicken, or have yogurt for two weeks, or pour yourself a bowl of bran cereal for a month? As an average member of a developed Western nation, I can think of no conceivable roadblock to eating cereal every day.

 

Enjoy your day! It's sunny and extraordinarily cold over here. This is the kind of day that lures you outside with its bright surfaces and then punishes you with brutally cold winds. It's the kind of day that mocks your vainglory. That's right, your vainglory will get a thorough punking before this day is through with you.