That Could Be a Post

five out of what OR and the Oscar goes to?

What does it mean when someone says "I give it five stars". I am guessing not what you might think.

Give me a steak with bacon. I read a BUNCH of reviews that say it is GREAT. I’m never going to that old deli with the long lines again where they smoke their own corned beef.

The Inspiration

Today I decided to climb out of a rut. I have a Newsletter I read on Substack to thank. Sometimes fun and imaginative writing bring us to something we’ve also thought about. I think that is a good definition of inspiration. Today I’m going to keep it light.

The Setup

I loved the show, Seinfeld. My favorite part of the journey was the descent into their ‘making a show’ about their show, that sounds a lot like meta. Thanks to Facebook changing their name, more people sort of know what meta means. Facebook could have been inspired to change its name to Meta much earlier if Zuckerberg watched Seinfeld instead of making the creepy website “The Face Book” while at Harvard.

Here’s an excerpt for fans of the show where they discuss the fact the show they wish to make (as well as the one they are in) is about nothing. Eventually, we reach the point where the most unlikely thought gets the retort “that could be a show!”. I think today, just reading something funny and clever that I read on Substack led me to “that could be a post!”. I hope you enjoy the change of pace.

The Details

A show about nothing is a bit like a restaurant that has nothing to do with the food. I recently discovered a GREAT Newsletter that just made me laugh in a post. A particular post talked about the ratings and reviews that food gets and it reminded me of reading reviews. Regardless of the restaurant, there are the enthusiastic who throw around five-star reviews like rainwater. Reading a post from a newsletter titled CAFÉ ANNE about some sort of coffee-like thing just made me laugh. It was titled “The Krazy Food Issue”. Maybe you might enjoy it also.

I occasionally write reviews of businesses, restaurants, hotels but not that frequently. However, my habit of looking at reviews can send me down the rabbit hole. Human nature is funny and it is amazing to me how ‘into it’ people can get. I enjoy when people take the time to write reviews of a rather basic place and heap absurd praise far beyond reasonable. This captures for me the extremes of human behavior. I think great humor always resides in the 1-star and 5-star reviews.

What do I mean by this? Well if the world truly is configured to rate hamburgers on a 1-5 scale, it would seem we should reserve the 5 ratings and be a little more measured in our enthusiasm. Even on their best day, McDonald’s is not serving a five-star experience or Michelin Stars have been misguided for decades.

I started looking at a few places with Google reviews in my little suburb and of course, was not disappointed. I am not knocking these places. We’ve all had a great burger. We’ve all had a great sandwich. We’ve all had a great pizza. BUT THEY CAN NOT ALL BE GREAT. That is the way ratings are supposed to work. Here are some highlights. These are real but anonymized:

Burger King — “Best hamburgers I've had in a long time! I had 2 Big Macs for $6 what a deal absolutely excellent burgers well put together very nice staff great place to go eat I want to do it more often thank you Burger King is the best!” 5 stars — not sure where to start. Most of the statements are just inconceivable. I would guess that the wrapping paper for these perfect burgers are lodged between the seat and the console.

Domino’s Pizza — “Our favorite pizzeria!” 5 stars — what is the point of having a rating system. This would seem to be the goto spot when a school orders pizza for pizza day in 3rd grade and just wants someone in a minicar to deliver 10 pies :(

Subway — “One of the staff let me know before I started ordering that they were out of a few things which helped me decide my order….they gave me a lot of ranch.” 5 stars — so now not having meats and condiments in a sub shop but still having large squeeze bottles of ranch dressing constitutes top end performance. Who needs a deli?

Arby’s — “I always enjoy the flavor of Arby's roast beef sandwiches, there (sic) always fresh and delicious. I also love the horse radish sauce 😋“ 5 stars — this was the last straw for me. For those that know me and love for my hometown food memories, I draw the line at 5-star reviews for horsey sauce. While a little self-serving, take a look at this old post and you will understand why I can’t take the Arby review without a fight. Read this before concluding I’m a ranting old man “Food Time - Beef on Weck”.

Part of all this is probably just a bit of recency bias. I get a kick out of asking people what’s their favorite movie or who’s the best “fill in the blank sport” player. People’s assessments will ALWAYS be biased toward what they’ve seen recently, alas that is the storage system in our heads WE ARE STUCK WITH. We all forget stuff. I guess that is why when somebody is in the parking lot eating a Whopper Junior, if they write their review soon enough, they may just possibly conclude this is the best burger they’ve had in a long time.

Many years ago I was sitting at a lunch table with a group of friends. Some of the people started talking about movies, perhaps the upcoming Oscars, and what their favorite movies were. The conversation went for a while and it was kind of going nowhere. I think a bunch of us were talking about something else.

At some point, someone asked me about what my favorite movie was. Almost concurrently, one of our tablemates remarked “this is the best burger I’ve had in a while”. I stopped and turned to my friend Brent (he likes burgers) and said something like:

When it comes to burgers or movies, I have always thought the better question is: “What is the best burger you’ve had or the the best movie you’ve seen that was AT LEAST FIVE YEARS AGO. For the next few minutes, many of us at the table had a laugh and realized that the answer to that question will hardly ever be a Whopper or the ‘classic’ movie we saw last week.

My conclusion is our filing system in our heads is not as good as we think.

As an aside to this discussion, I can still remember the outrage of my children when the Academy in its wisdom went with their “inside baseball” favorite Chicago in lieu of the epic Lord of the Rings. In a household of three youngish boys, this ensured they would discount the Oscars as a silly spectacle or at least be skeptical. For those of you who get into the Oscars, here is a fun article that provides some absurdly GREAT movies that did not win Best Picture. To return to the saga of my children, I remember them all remebering a substitute teacher at their High School playing “Dances with Wolves” as a time filler incessantly. Things would have been different if the substitute chose to show Goodfellas.

For me, I harken back to the MPAA choosing Shakespeare in Love in lieu of Saving Private Ryan. Nice.

The next time someone is talking about “the best whatever”, ask them to think about what “the best whatever” they can remember that was at least five years ago. I think that answer will be better advice and almost always different.

As a guy who now eats a largely plant-based diet, I still can remember the great barbeque of my past. There are even now some great barbeque specialty locations in the Twin Cities that do a fantastic job. However, when I answer the latter question, the answer is always the same for me; Dreamland Barbeque, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In those days I think the only side was Wonder Bread. The BBQ has to be damn good to overcome that. That will be a post for another night. Here’s a photo I found that looks close to what I remember. The parking lot was not paved and it was a simple wooden structure. Good and memorable barbeque and the setting was OOTW. I promise a post about it someday and it is a great memory.

Close to how I remember it. Unpaved parking lot. Crowded. Thankful we called ahead to reserve our ribs or we would have gone hungry.

Since this post made you think about food and the movies, here’s a fun article to explore great movies about food. I wonder if there is any recency bias in the ‘best movies about food’? I remain partial to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Thank you to a fellow Substacker for inspiring tonight’s post. This is just another example of the great and entertaining writing on Substack. Here’s a fun song (with the lyrics) since the post made me hungry.

WHAT’S NEXT

My next post is about our eyes, what we get to see and what we choose not to. It is titled “Eye Disagree”. As always, this is a dead link until the post actually happens. Patience is a virtue.