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We went to San Fran on 5/23 to see Evelyn Evelyn!

What, you haven’t heard of them?  The conjoined twin sister singer-songwriter sensation?

Yeah, okay, so it’s just Amanda Palmer & Jason Webley dressed up as conjoined twins, but still fun, damn it! The story is actually really interesting.  Some might even call it disturbing.  They really get into the characters too, which makes it even more fun.

Anyway… we started out fairly bright and early (for us anyway) to drop the parrots off at the birdie hotel and go pick up a rental car.  I like driving rental cars over the mountains because I can punish those little engines in a way I wouldn’t Rick’s Honda.  HA!

Uneventful 4-ish hour ride.  Oh, I DID get a road-couch-cushion stuck to the front of the car for a few miles.  Had to actually pull over to set it free. That was fun.

We got into the bay area and I tried to find Emperor Norton’s grave… and failed miserably.  In retrospect, I know ALL the wrong turns I took and could probably find it if given another chance, but I wasted an hour driving around.  Just went to the motel at that point because it was getting late and I had to pee.

The motel was two blocks from the concert so we decided to just walk over.  Rick napped while I got ready and we headed out about 15 minutes before the doors opened.  Walked past the historic Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater, a famous tittie bar with live lesbian sex shows where Hunter S. Thompson allegedly worked in the 70s. It was right next door to the concert venue. YAY!

Got in line at the Great American Music Hall (another historic place) & were ushered in shortly after. My friends came!  YAY!  It’s always cool to see Fox & Autumn, but this trip I actually got to meet Sierra!  And we all looked fanfuckingtabulous.

A bunch o’ Discordian hawtness right there, I tell ya!

The opener was a dude named Sxip Shirey.
Oh. My. God.

Honestly, I’m not much for opening bands, but when this man ran his harmonica through the distortion pedal and then bullhorned it… yeah, I was hooked.  TOTALLY love him!  I would honestly call him a modern day Spike Jones.

He also has really cool hair.

Then the twins came out and they were awesome.  They really played to the audience and gave a very enjoyable performance.  They skipped the whole child prostitution part of the story, though.  They did the first part of the story of the twins in lightshow puppets.  Very cool.

I love this picture:

After that we had some Jason Webley by himself and I was pleasantly surprised by his music.  Will definitely be putting him on the ‘pod.

After Jason,  AFP came out and her crazy ass fans all smooshed around into my personal table space and gave me dirty looks when I shot pictures over their shoulders.  Seriously -  love that woman… hate her fans.

Look at the cutest AFP picture ever!

It was a very good concert.

Afterward I thought about standing in line to get some Jason & Sxip stuff and possibly get another picture taken with Amanda Palmer just to piss Galen off, but I was so damn tired.  We ended up just wading through the homeless beggars and heading to the motel for bed.

Got up early-ish the next morning and went to see a dear old friend:

OMG YODA FOUNTAIN! I believe that Yoda was, indeed, life size.

Here’s the cutest picture ever of me & Rick:

We went in the lobby next.  It was like NerdMecca™.

Oh hay boys!

Of course we had to get our pictures taken with those guys.

The lobby was just a big old mess of nerd – all kinda of really cool/interesting books on the shelves, vintage Star Wars/Indiana Jones coffee table books on the tables, replica props all over, small bronzes & dolls of  Star Wars characters… I could have spent a long time just LOOKING.

We walked down the little hill and grabbed some $bux.  There’s a great view of the Palace of Fine Arts from just outside the ‘Bucks inside the Presidio.  I really want to go there sometime.  Oh hell, I just want to wander around the Presidio for a few hours.

We thought about going to Fisherman’s Wharf for some crab and going to Telegraph Hill to look for the cherry head conures, but we really had to be on the road in two hours if we wanted to get back to Reno to get the parrots before the birdie hotel closed.  So we headed to Japan Town instead to try the Korean restaurant there.

On the way there I drove up Webster street.  And when I say “up”, I mean “WAY THE FUCK UP”.  I swear the car was vertical a few times. Crazy ass rollercoaster street, I tell ya.  Seriously, an earthquake there would just tumble cars all the hell down the road.

Oh Japan Town, how I love thee!  Well, actually we just went to the little mall there, didn’t walk around because of time constraints.  After driving around there and trying to park, I can see where certain *cough* racial stereotypes *cough* about a certain demographic’s driving skills have their roots.  I’m sure it’s not universally true, but damn.  LOL.

Ichiban Kan  = love.  So much weird Engrish shit in there and weird snacks at really cheap prices.  I spent too much money on odd little things and, of course, got some more matcha!  For five dolla I got about as much as you can get at the Whole Paycheck for $25.  So nice.

These were taken after we got home, but this is some of my Japan Town haul:

Instant miso soup, green tea candy, matcha, matcha with some weird starch shit in it, rice candy and men’s Pocky.

Look at the cute little dishes & spoons I got for my instant miso!

Lunch time will make everyone happy.  Monotone lunch.  Slow and healthy time.
<3

We waved goodbye to San Francisco and got back on the road for an uneventful drive to Reno.  Then we got the so-happy-to-see-us birdies and went home.

The end.

There are more pics on my facebook.  If you haven’t added me as a friend there… you suck.

Okay, so I’ve been seeing people saying the caloric analysis of that little slice of heaven known as the KFC Double Down simply CANNOT be accurate.  KFC claims the grilled version has only 460 calories and 23 grams of fat.  CityRag started the whole hullabaloo with their brilliantly titled article, Kentucky Fried Bullshit and it just kinda memed itself all the hell over from there.  Joe Peacock at AOL News got the skinny from the actual nutritional analysis place and posted a great article about it.

Quote:
KFC’s official caloric breakdown was performed by Silliker Inc., an internationally accredited nutrition lab, which published the following breakdown on the Double Down:

Sliced bacon (7.4 g) = 39.88 calories
2 Original Recipe fillets (192 g) = 335.62 calories

Colonel’s Special Sauce (0.5 oz.) = 73.67 calories

1 slice pepper Jack cheese (14 g) = 48.54 calories

1 slice Monterey Jack cheese (13 g) = 45.83 calories

Total: 543.54 calories

Rounded Label Data: 241 g = 540 calories

The CityRag.com breakdown:

2 Original Recipe fried chicken breasts = 720 calories, 42 grams of fat

2 1 oz. slices of cheese = 200 calories, 18 grams fat

2 servings of sauce = 200 calories, 20 grams fat

2 strips of bacon = 70 calories, 6 grams of fat

Total: 1,190 calories and 86 grams of fat

So, is the Double Down really only 540 calories? According to both sides, the answer is no. But the lab-certified ingredient list puts it at 543.54 calories, which is only 3.54 calories off — compared to the CityRag estimate, which is 646.46 calories off.

BUT!  No one has actually weighed/measured one of these bitches and posted the photographic evidence.  That’s where I come in.  Guess what I had for dinner tonight?

So here is my setup with my tasty tasty grilled Double Down and my kitchen scale.  I had asked for it without sauce for, while I like to think of myself as a saucy girl, I really don’t like wet sandwiches and the last one I had was a bit slippery for my taste.  Of course, we are talking about the fast food industry here, so they put sauce on it anyway.  Good for the calculations, I guess.

I decided to weigh each individual element of the “sandwich” and record the weights.  I wrote them down in ounces, but I’ll convert them to grams for the sake of continuity with the measurements above.  I’ll use calorieking.com to calculate calories, since it’s my favorite site for that kind of stuff.

The first chicken patty came in at almost exactly 3 ounces (keeping in mind that “exact” and “kitchen scale” aren’t really two words that should be used together) which would be about 85 grams.  85 delicious grams of KFC’s salty grilled chicken goodness.  Damn, I was hungry while I was doing this.

I placed the fillet face down after I weighed it, for I had decided to reverse assemble my dinner for nomming when the weighing was done.

Next came the bacon.  The bacon was very very disappointing.  Half an ounce (14.2g).  REALLY?  That’s like two miniature size pieces of bacon.  So sad.

Cheese is next.  Now, as an uber cheese aficionado, I can tell you that your average slice of cheese is usually about one ounce and 100 calories.  The TWO slices of cheese on this thing were about an ounce (we’ll say 29g).  Lame.  I guess CityRag wasn’t taking into account the skimpiness of fast food when they did their calculation.

It’s supposed to be one slice of pepper jack and one slice of regular jack.  It pretty much just looks like a saucy blob.

The last chicken fillet weighed in at just over three ounces, which we will call 87g.  That went face down on the pile and my dinner was sucessfully reassembled.

Now I had all my weights and the photographic evidence, and it was time to do some calculations:

• Two chicken breasts at 172 grams calculated using KFC’s values from Calorie King = 266 calories/8g fat
• 14.2 pitiful grams of bacon calculated as pan-fried (probably actually microwaved) = 77 calories/6g fat
• 29 grams of jack cheese calculated as “average all brands” = 112 calories/9g fat
  
• Special sauce from calculation above = 74calories (fat not given)
  TOTAL  = 529 calories & 23 grams of fat PLUS however much fat in the sauce

So, in conclusion, my grilled Double Down sandwich was 70 calories more than the nutritional information issued by KFC stated.  Or at least that’s what I estimate.

Honestly, there’s gotta be some kind of weirdness in the cheese that knocks off those calories.  Look at the nutritional analysis – that looks like it’s some weird lower calorie jack cheese there. My bacon weighed in at almost twice as much as the nutritional analysis bacon did.  Bob only knows how many extra grams of fat that damn sauce adds.  See, that’s another reason I don’t like sauces!  Except barbecue sauce.  On hot links.

But good god damn those things are tasty! Don’t let the way it looks fool you.  Do you REALLY need that nasty empty calorie white bread roll full of HFCS anyway to enjoy a pleasurable sandwich? No, you don’t.  Get messy, bitches!

They are very very salty, though.  So if you’re like me, expect a nice case of water retention bloat for a day or two.  But it’s worth it.

And yes, I nommed the HELL out of that thing when I was done!  And then…

Who’s an addict? I’m an addict!