Joe Biden, Claire McCaskill, and the Colonel

Election day was approaching so we went to a Senator Claire McCaskill rall at a local union hall. The last time I came here Billy Clinton was the big draw, and this time it was Joe Biden.

Colonel Sanders was inexplicably in attendance.

An added bonus to the speeches was observing how bad people are with their cell phones. I helped multiple people take pictures, including Colonel Sanders. You might say I showed him the Android secret recipe. See what I did there?

After the speeches were all spoke Biden was nice enough to mingle and take pictures with the common folk. Obviously getting a picture with Biden was now my sole mission. He moved a little towards the door with each picture, and there were a ton of people all smashed together trying to get to him, so I put myself where he was going to be rather than trying to beeline at him. It worked and I was proud of myself.

Luckily Joey B's iPhone selfie skills are on point. Not too shabby. I'm still confused how I managed to reach over 20 people to hand him the phone.

Kentucky Fried Road Trip

I took my mom on a little road trip from Friday, September 28th to October 1st. Our primary mission was to attend the World Fried Chicken Festival in London Kentucky. It made sense because my mom lives on a strict school-lunch diet of tacos, pizza, and fried chicken, and Kentucky is much easier to drive to than Mexico or Italy.

The Chicken Festival was definitely cool, but it wasn't quite what I had been expecting. In St. Louis there are barbecue festivals, and in Springfield they have chili festivals, and what both of those things mean is a bunch of people who are good at making those things compete at who is the best. And I like it because then I get to try food made by professionals from all over the place. I figured that's what the Chicken Festival was going to be like. Going from booth to booth, stuffing my face with awesome fried chicken. Well, it wasn't quite like that. It was more of a county fair type of atmosphere. There were the usual booths all over with people selling stuff, and political groups. There was the section with the carnival rides, and there was a stage for little shows. There was a country singing girl on stage for a while who was really good. Country on the radio makes me want to wretch, but she was playing Johnny Cash, and led me to discover Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight". I've listened to that song in the car about a hundred times since then. Tangent alert.



Anyway, so there were chicken signs everywhere, and I got this pretty rad paper chicken hat, but the only edible chicken was being made by a church group. I feel like there must be something going on when there's only one group selling chicken at the World Fried Chicken Festival. Seemed very monopolistic to me. 

And when you've only got one group making chicken at a damn chicken festival you get: one massive line.

To be fair, it was really really good. And they had this cool world's largest skillet thing that made watching the frying process pretty amusing. There was a guy walking around with a garden rake pulling the chicken in that had floated out of arms reach while frying.

Next we took a quick drive to Cumberland Falls, located in Daniel Boone National Forest. The leaves were just starting to change colors. It was very nice.

Apparently there is an actual thing called a moonbow, created when the moonlight hits the mist from the falls. It sounds pretty awesome.

I like to try local stuff, so of course I had a Diet Ale 8. Once I drank it I realized it had caffeine in it. What sort of a monster puts caffeine in a ginger ale? Why not start putting codeine in there as well? Sneaky soda pharmacists.

The final sight seen for the day was Corbin, Kentucky, home of Harland Sanders' original restaurant.

The place used to be a roadside restaurant and motel. I think the story was that they were going to move the highway which would kill Sanders' business. So he went and sold his secret recipe on the road.

I thought the story here was pretty cool. The sign said that the lady of the house would always check out the rooms at a motel before a family would agree to stay the night. So to smooth out this barrier Sanders made the restaurants bathrooms accessible only through replica of the rooms. Pretty good marketing I thought.

All of this Colonel Sanders fun times reminded me of how he rolls in Japan. Read about how he is dressed up by season and confused with Santa Clause here. Then, read about how the Colonel put a curse on Japanese professional baseball's Hanshin Tigers here.

Curse of the Colonel Lifted!

I previously reported here about the "Curse of the Colonel". You might recall that some Hanshin Tigers (a Japanese pro baseball team) fans threw a statue of Colonel Sanders into Osaka's Dotonbori River while celebrating the Tigers' Central League title win. That was in 1985, and the Tigers haven't won the title since, prompting claims of an evil, secretly spicy sort of curse.

Well a Mainichi Daily News article from yesterday reports that the "Colonel's upper body, minus the hands, was discovered on Tuesday evening by divers checking for unexploded bombs as part of riverside pedestrian walkway improvement works. The figure's legs and right hand were discovered Wednesday morning." Is the curse lifted? Or do his remaining hand, feet, and glasses need to be retrieved as well? Only time will tell. If the picture of a ghostly, cursed, handless and legless Colonel Sanders torso rising from the depths of a river doesn't strike fear into your heart I don't know what will.

"The Osaka Municipal Government, which is responsible for the riverside, is holding the statue and will consult with Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan on how to handle it." I'm really glad to hear that the government has this delicate issue under control.

11/20/07 Some Three-Person Wandering

I did my best to show my parents around Ashikaga when I got home from work. I took them to pretty much all of the shopping districts in town so that they could buy souvenirs or whatever and be entertained at the same time.

One of the big shopping areas is mercifully close to my house. A decent sized mall along with many smaller separate stores is only a few blocks from my house, and its a breeze to get there by bike. Its also where you can find a McDonald`s and a KFC, so while I only took my parents there a couple of times, I suspect that they snuck over there to pig out while I was at work.

There is an interesting cultural thing happening with the Kentucky Fried Chicken`s in Japan. First of all, most of them have a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders. That by itself is pretty amusing. One of the restaurants in Kyoto that I remember always had their statue dressed up in a funny manner. Sometimes he was wearing a kimono, sometimes he had a little hat on, and so forth. So when Christmas time comes around, colonels all over Japan are dressed like Santa Claus(I think that Santa`s wiki page is a pretty interesting read, by the way). Another interesting KFC phenomenon involves holiday feasting. Everyone sees Americans eating gigantic birds for the holidays and assume that they are chickens, because there are no turkeys to speak of in Japan. I don`t know what the deal is, but I have just never seen or heard of them existing or being eaten at all. Anyway, so when Christmas comes around, I hear that everyone flocks(hihi) to KFC to get a big rotisserie chicken to take home. Christmas and KFC are intertwined to the point that I have heard of people confusing the Colonel with Santa himself.

Tom and Mom chilling with the Colonel. Are you down with the Colonel?

Woa, this gets better. So I was just taking a peek at the Colonel Sanders wikipedia page, and it linked to the `Curse of the Colonel`. Long story short, whenever the Hanshin Tigers (Osaka area professional baseball team) win big games, the fans would jump off the ebisubashi bridge in downtown Osaka into the river below in celebration. Well in 1985, after a championship win, fans threw one of these Colonel statues into the river along with the usual non-statue type people. And they haven`t won a championship title since! Bum bum bummm. You have all been warned.

So after that sidetrack... oh, I also brought my parents to school with me on Wednesday. They got to see a couple of my classes and witness all of the glory. They also had the chance(were forced to have the chance) to have one of our delectable school lunches. It was pretty tame, no fishies at all... they really lucked out. The Principal took us to Ashikaga Gakko (oldest school in Japan), and we did an abbreviated tour of the grounds.

This cool looking suit of armor belonged to someone by the name of Ashikaga. Funny it would end up here.. It was displayed in the visitor center for the Gakko(gakko means school, by the way).

Oh there`s more. So much more. Too much more, you might say. Let`s all meet back here later, shall we?

One last picture for your consideration. This is another list of rules, this time for a local Pachinko hall. Its even better than the video arcade. Give it a look.