Growing up in a large city, I know people who’ve been shot and stabbed. There are ones that perished, peace be upon them, and ones that lived to tell about it. The former group is a group I fall under: normal people that fall on the floor crying when they stub their toe (bays fall under this category). The latter group falls under an elite class of individuals known as Original Gangsters. These are mfs with nine or more lives. They’ve been shot and/or stabbed and lived to tell about it. They aren’t afraid of death because they’ve outsmarted it. Unlike bay. The most outstanding OGs are ones that still fired back even after they were down.

For my first profile on original gangsters I give you a gentleman known as Lance Thomas. This mf was just a watch merchant that had a small business in los angeles during the high times of gang crimes. In a nutshell, he got held up on four different occasions, got shot several times in critical areas AND still refused to close down his store. Moreover, normal people still tried to stick him up even after word got around that no robbers leave his store alive. My opinion as a normal is you do not mess with a mf who has a mustache like that. Someone with a mustache like that is bound to own a lot of heaters and know how to pop them all off.

I give my salutes to you Lance Thomas. Not only are you an OG, but a respectable one that lives by principles. Stay keeping those bays at bay.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Thomas_(watch_merchant)

1- Has the business been around more than 10 years?
2- Over the last 10 years has it consistently grown?
3- Over the next 10 years will its strategy and prospects continue to grow the business at the previous 10 years rates?
4- Would I trust the management with my life savings if it meant they would continue their growth rates over the next 10 years?
5- Is the market offering the company at a discount?

I don’t invest in the company unless I’m 90% confident in answering yes to all 5 of those questions. 60% of that confidence comes from looking at their financial sheets (6 minutes). 10% of that confidence comes from thinking about the world economy and its effects on the market they compete in (3 minutes). 30% comes from what I already know about them (i.e. their ads, products, target market, etc.)(1 minute).

This is a very conservative strategy, but it has resulted in an avg return of 10% yearly for me, including dividends, over the last 4 years. Mind you, this is during the Great Recession.

Imagine that you’re Jack looking to trade your aging cow for some food at the market. Three traders approach you. One offers you several wilted plants that are barely sprouting any beans. Even though the beans aren’t in the best shape, you think you’ll be able to fix them so that they grow more beans, hopefully somewhere within the average. In this scenario, buying several bad looking plants is better than buying just one good looking plant. The second offers you a boring looking plant with enough beans to get by with in the future without your cow. The third shows you some magic beans that he claims will grow into giant beanstalks that will offer you more beans than you can possibly imagine.

In terms of what you’re looking for, your best bet is #2. You’ll be fed longer with the stable plant than what your aging cow will last around for. With a bean plant, it is a lot easier to tell which is your best option. You can inspect the details simply with your eyes and everyone’s eyes work about the same if you aren’t blind. When it comes to inspecting the plants that are companies, it’s a bit more complicated. You look for clues in the financial data and try to draw the picture of what that plant looks like now and in the future.

Value

How do you evaluate the price you’re paying for the bean plant with regards to how much it will be able to feed you in the future? Market Cap tells me how much the trader thinks the plant is worth overall. P/E (Price/Earnings) is the trader telling me how many dollars other customers are willing to pay per bean the plant can eventually produce. For the shitty bean plants, this number is usually low because no one likes the current output of beans from these plants and expects the amount of beans they produce to continue to be low or even lower. For the average bean plant an average price of $12-$20 for each future bean. For magic beans, an extraordinary $40+/expected bean is paid out because other buyers are expecting high output from the magic beans in the future. The PEG tells me more about the correlation of the price per expected bean and the expected growth rate expected bean production. I don’t want to get into the boring details, but if this number is one, then the plant is priced correctly. If it’s lower than one, then there may be some value in it. If it’s higher than one, then the buyers may be over paying for it. Again, these are all inspection clues. Finally, and this is a gross oversimplification, the intrinsic value tells me the margin of safety for purchasing this plant/beans now vs sticking around with my cow. The higher this number, the bigger my margin of safety. I typically want this to be 25%+.

Interesting how all logos have the color red with either white and/or yellow

My job is to find a plant that meets the criteria of the average plant and buy it for the price of the shitty one. Starting with P/E, other bean plant buyers are willing to pay $13 for ea. bean Carl’s plant produces and $11 for ea. bean Jack In the Box produces. The expected rate of Jack’s plant’s output is higher than Carl’s which means the PEG will be much lower. Since its cheaper to get a bean out of Jack’s plant and is highly likely to produce faster output in the future compared to Carl’s, this pushes the plant’s PEG to a value of .7. So I get more beans at a better production rate (PE/G) for a better price (lower P/E). Moreover I can give myself a safety net by calculating the discounted cash flows of Carl’s vs. Jack. I have a higher margin of safety if I’m betting Jack over Carl’s.

Better value: Like their menu, you can buy Jack for less than Carl’s.

Profitability & Growth

McDonald's Da Illest Financials

The troubles and costs associated with maintaining the plant should be much less than benefits of getting fed by it. Simply put, costs for generating a bean should be a small fraction of the bean production. This is profit. In the plant world of fast food joints, profit margins are usually razor thin. In the plant world, debt is weeds that attempts to kill your plant. The more debt on a plant, the more likelihood it can die. EPS = Bean production per seed. Rev growth = Total Bean production growth rate.

The McDonald’s plant should be the plant that your plant aspires to be. Carl’s plant has a lot of weeds in comparison to the other plants ( high debt to equity), requires a lot of maintenance (low profit margin) and has a production rate that is all over the place (negative and flat). Jack requires a lot of maintenance, has an average number of weeds, but has a pretty consistent rate of production.

More profitable and more predictable: Jack’s plant is slightly better. It’s easier to predict the bean production rate, it doesnt require as much maintenance as Carl’s plant, and its production rate is more predictable.

Management

Let’s put a microscope on the plant and take a look at it’s eukaryote cell structure. How well are those mfs synhesizing food for the plant? Ok fine I’ll stop the plant analogy since it’s starting to confuse me now.

Click to view a better resolution

Jack’s return on equity is phenomenal compared to Carl’s. The same can be said for its ROIC. Jack doesn’t pay a dividend, which is an ok thing to me as long as it’s keeping that ROE high. Carl’s dividend is laughable and they shouldn’t even be paying one when they can’t turn a profit. Both companies reduced their shares outstanding. This brings more value since it reduces supply. The CGQ is a pct of how well the management has their checks and balances set up. Insider ownership is far greater in Carl’s which means the management are also shareholders.

Winner: Jack’s has a management that has proven to handle shareholder’s investment money better and has better governance set up.

Conclusion

Wendy’s should not buy Carl’s beca…Hey guess what everybody! This entire analysis is out of date! The investors of Aramark foods bought Carl’s instead! Hope you enjoyed my mediocre plant analogy and straightforward analysis though.

In the book Made to Stick (that I highly recommend to anyone that wants to get their message across and have people talking about it the next day) the authors come up with 6 different elements that they routinely see in SUCCESsful marketing.  Did you think I emphasized one letter too few when I bolded SUCCESsful? Well, no I didn’t. For some reason, the authors were too lazy to come up with an extra S in their acronym.  Their acronym is SUCCES with the last S left out.  Each letter stands for the following:

• S -- Simple.  People have a hard time dealing with abstract ideas in short messages. Make sure the message is easy to understand.
• U -- Unexpected.  Play with the audience’s primal insticts and surprise them.  It’s very important not to use a cliché in this category. Think man on horse for the Old Spice commercial and how well that did.
• C -- Concrete. This is sort of a subcategory of simple. Make sure the audience can relate to the message.
• C -- Credibility. Make sure the audience can envision themselves in that situation.
• E -- Emotion. Make sure the audience knows why they should care about your message.
• S -- Stories. Narrative. Narrative. Narrative. Humans are wired to remember stories and connect with them.

Think about how well Aesop’s fables have done. They’ve stuck around because they’re great narratives with simple messages.  Every human can relate to them and picture themselves as the tortoise, the ant or the fox.  The unexpected may happen in some of his fables, like a hare losing to a tortoise in a race. Yeah, it sounds silly to be unexpected, but you gotta think of the time period. Back then people didn’t know what whales looked like, so they drew them with a fish body and pig head (I’m not making this up). It was easy to surprise them.

So let’s take a look at a few of Carl’s latest ads and evaluate how well they do against the SUCCES criteria:

Boring. Unfortunately, the cliched joke on snuggies is going to last for a long time. Probably as long as that Dick Cheney shooting someone joke. The message of comfort food and the snuggie was subtle and not concrete. In terms of the unexpected, I really wanted Jack in the Box to come out of nowhere, rip the snuggie off of him and strangle the mf with it.

The punchline didn’t work for two reasons. First hardly anyone orders a grilled cheese when they go to a diner or fast food restaurant so no one can relate to the main character’s predicament. Therefore it fails the two C’s. Two, the grilled cheese sangwhich (new yorker for sandwich) isn’t a grilled cheese sangwhich, it’s a fuckin burger so no one can relate to the joke.  At least it has somewhat of a narrative.

This one is a bit better. We have the unexpected burgers talking to each other. It’s simple: Carl’s gives more meat, less bread, and better value as a burger. It plays to my emotions as it’s a goddamn juicy burger. However, there’s nothing really sticky about it other than that. I’ll forget about Carl’s Jr once I see steaks advertised for $3.50/lb. in the Henry’s newspaper ad.

Plays to my emotions well and Kim Kardashian sticks in my mind for the next three minutes. After the testosterone spike subsides, I ask myself, what was the commercial for again? Salads. Girls like salads, guys hate salads. Guys like Kim Kardashian, girls hate Kim Kardashian. None of the SUCCES criteria is met with this advertisement. It’s playing to male sex emotion, but selling the sex and not the product.  This is not going to bring women running into Carl’s wanting a taste of the salad, it’s going to send boys to Google Images searching under they keywords “Kim Kardashian Playboy.” Whoever was in charge of producing this commercial would be fired the next day if I were running Carl’s. This is just more evidence that Carl’s continues to target their base instead of reaching out for newer markets (people who actually eat salad and care if they have a gut).

Western Bacon cheeseburger and Padma Lakshmi? What’s the connection. How do I relate to this other than the obvious sexual cliches (seriously how many times are they going to show a burger jizzing all over girls?).  The message is way too complex. Why am I going to eat a burger that jizzes on me for? Carl’s Jr is fast food, there’s no culinary experience needed to determine if the burger is good or not.  The story was good I guess, but it’s hard for me to believe that a culinary expert that slept with THIS GUY in a long term relationship is a total freak.  Credibility fail. To me a perfect target for this burger would’ve been old people. They love things that are gourmet, bacon and Texas (or Nebraska).  Look how well Omaha steaks have done thanks to old people loving Nebraska so much.  Stop focusing everything on horny college kids Carl’s, they have no money.

Carl’s needs to take a lesson from the way Jack in the box has rebranded itself.  Its advertisement campaigns have been extremely solid in terms of SUCCES.  The menu coincides with the quirkiness and memorable moments of its ads.  Bowl haircuts, teriyaki bowls. Mini cattle, mini cowboys, mini sirloin burgers.  Just look at how fucking catchy this fucking commercial is:

This is one of my favorite Jack commercials. Simple/Concrete -- We have a new product that offers a different and tastier cut of the cow than the competitor. Credible -- It was so believable that Carl’s Jr ended up suing Jack for making people think angus came from the anus of a cow. Don’t believe me? Here’s the link to prove. Unexpected -- we’re led to believe that angus comes from the anus of a cow. Emotion is lacking but they do mention that ’sirloin needs to be tasted to be believed.’ The narrative is that there’s a new burger that’s never been made before. I still remember this commercial after 4 years because it did so well at taking a shot at Carl’s, Burger Tang (*wink* to my hippy ice cream eating niece) and WacDonald’s angus burgers. I ate sirloin burgers literally for 3 months straight. The message still sticks with me today.

WHAT’S GOOD BURGER KING?! Simple/Concrete -- BK says have it your way but you can’t if its not on their menu all day every day. Credible -- Jack specifies that HIS menu is available all day every day so he’s the only one that let’s you have it your way. Unexpected -- Homeboy rips his arms off and you’re expecting some chicken arms to be behind that corporate facade. NOPE! Jack breaks out arms big enough to compete with Hogan’s twin pythons and says bring it BK. Also, that subtle airquote for “competitor” while he’s walking is da illest. BK sucks and Jack knows it. Emotional -- Fear I guess? I wouldn’t fuck with Jack. Story -- He’s just taking a casual stroll down the block and talking shit about BK, something I can totally relate to. Stuck.

THAT’s how you target to an extensive demographic. While the target is obviously the spanish speaking world, this shit hits all the sticky criteria for anglos alike. Simple -- I know the product because it’s in the jingle. Unexpected -- there’s midgets everywhere, hugging black people, and dancing with the spanish speaking game show hosts. Concrete -- Midgets are mini, like the sangwich. Hell they even call it a sangwich for a new yorker to relate. Credibility -- the midget plays the tuba. Emotion -- the whole commercial is fun and makes me want to dance at the next quincinera while eating these things. Story -- the story is weaved into the music and the dance. Even though 70% of anglo people have no idea what the lyrics translate to, let alone like mariachi music, they understand the story is about a mini buffalo ranch chix sangwich. How sticky is this fucking commercial? I bet you’ve already replayed it several times by now. Women, kids, whites, blacks, horny college students can all eat el mini buffahlow ranch ahora.

Clear winner: Jack in the box. Their commercials are far stickier and reach out to a broader audience. Reaching out to a broader audience means bigger market, bigger market means bigger growth and a better performing company over the long term.

Jack is in the lead 2-0 over Carl’s in terms of investment criteria. There’s only one more left and really the be all end all when it comes to investing in anything. Financials.

Frankly, Carl’s has focused way too much on their burger product line and has alienated their demographic to people like me (young males) that enjoy hamburgers. This is an ok strategy, but if its your M.O. to focus on burgers and ignore the rest of the fast food offerings, then focus on a small number of types of burgers and then make the selection of toppings the discriminator. In-n-out does this well by having a very limited menu and then having the customers feel special by putting together their own creations with off menu items like the a triple triple and animal style. Cold stone creamery (a/k/a white people’s ice cream) also does this well by offering their mediocre ice cream and then letting the customer choose from a set of prototypes or attempt to make the most disgusting thing possible (one again making the customer feel special). This allows them to mark up their ice cream at like 200%. In terms of selection of burgers, I counted 28 different kinds of burgers to choose off of carl’s menu. 28. This seems silly to me. Is there really a difference between the Big Hamburger and the Famous Star? All that is changing from burger to burger are the toppings and they’ve preselected those toppings for you. Jack has a total of 10. Jack use’s different kinds of meat and breads and cheeses and sizes in each one of these burger. In other words, they change more than just the sauce.

"By all means eat the left hand side one... ya stewpid" - Stylish Bay

Every few months Carl’s introduces a new burger, takes a tally of how it does, then determines to keep it as a long term menu item.  These pathfinders are pointless and wasteful because the burger is the exact same thing as everything else on the menu and people know what burgers taste like and what toppings taste like.  If they think for themselves they’ll say something like “Hmm, jalapenos? Hmm, cheese? Hmm, burger? That shit must taste bomb.  I’m going to order it.”  On the other hand if they see an advertisement for a topping of prime rib on the burger, they’ll immediately gag and say fuck that I’m not ordering that.  This poor sap actually ordered the burger, but at least the kid gives an excellent review on just how shitty the Prime Rib burger was and warned us to stay away. I should bookmark him based on pity.

Anyway, as long as Carl’s continues to try to just be “the best burger” and not offer up the gay factor (i.e. selection of your own toppings) they’ll fail to capture the kid, female and elderly market. Kid’s like sugar and toys. Give them the option to put sugary syrup on their shit. Females love pretty looking sandwhiches. Give them the option to select their own wrapper with some sparkly, shiney shit on it. Elderly like a lot for a little. Give them the option to sign up for senior citizen coupons mailed to their homes. These little things go a LONG way and no other fast food place is doing it. My girlfriend doesn’t like burgers, but doesn’t mind the teriyaki burger at Carl’s. Small facts like this should be capitalized on. Women want to eat your burgers Carls, you’re just a mysognist by ignoring their hunger for the sake of mine. Niche companies that can easily expand to new markets make bad investments.

In terms of breakfast, Carl’s and Jack’s selection is nearly identical. One difference is the Jack’s breakfast bowl. This bowl is almost like what a normal breakfast looks like. I see scrambled egg somewhere in there. The main difference between the two breakfast menus is that Jack has a 24/7 breakfast and carl’s stops at 11:30. Stylish bay thinks this is stewpid. Why the fuck are you going to stop serving breakfast @ 11 am when most male college students wake up at that time and aren’t in the mood for a burger yet. This a sign of Carl’s not being in touch with their customers. Lazy companies make bad investments.

Before I invest in Carl’s I want to see them targetting the female market. One way is by focusing more on their fish and chicken menu. Their sandwhiches taste great, but everything is charbroiled (most women I know don’t like this flavor -- again it’s anti-shiney/glittery), and once again nothing interesting to choose from. The only sub-interesting item on the chix/fish menu is the chicken stars, but I’ve never once heard of anyone ordering them. Jack has the chicken teriyaki bowl, chicken fajita pita (which is effing gross by the way), mini buffalo ranch chix. Three very interesting and different items that girls I eat with here usually want me to order for them.

Both will put you back $3, yet only one includes jello shots.

Finally the sides menu is a major discriminator between the menus. When I go to Carl’s it usually works like this:

TRI: Two big carls.
Carl’s Jr. Cashier: K, will that be all?
*TRI scans the sides menu and done after a 3 item scan*
TRI: Yes.
Carl’s Jr. Cashier: Ok, that’s a total $5.00.
TRI: Can you make that one big carl?
Carl’s Jr. Cashier: Ok, that’s a total $2.50.

When I step into a Jack things work out a bit different:

TRI: One Jumbo Jack and two tacos.
Jack-in-the-box Cashier: K, will that be all?
*TRI scans the sides menu*
TRI: Large curly fries.
Jack-in-the-box Cashier: K, anything to drink?
TRI: Nah.
Jack-in-the-box Cashier: Total of $4.50.
TRI: Can you throw in another two tacos?
Jack-in-the-box Cashier: Alright, that’s a total of $5.50.

Carl’s sides are non existent. Their fries are good, but boring. The criss cut fries are never enough and leave me wanting more but I won’t since it’s ~$2.50 and their fried zucchini is overpriced. Nearly all Jack’s sides are interesting and of good value. Stuffed jalapenos (bomb), egg rolls (bomb), tacos (bomb), curly fries (bomb), bacon/cheddar potato wedges (never had because I don’t eat pork, but if its a puerto rican pig they use then bomb). I usually don’t mind paying $5+ dollars just for me because I feel like I’m getting so many different things. Companies with sub-par products (weak sides in this case) make bad investments.

Winner in Menu selection: Jack’s by a long shot. More extensive menu, better values and I didn’t mention it because I’m a goddamned objectivist, but I still like their sirloin burger better than all of Carl’s 28 burgers. Carl’s menu doesn’t appeal to kids, women and the elderly with exception to a few items.

Next part of the Carl’s Jr. series will be on advertisements where I’ll expose how unbelievably crap Carl’s ad campaigns are in comparison to Jack’s.

My childhood memories eating at Wendy’s live with me, but they are somewhat forgotten. Why? Because their burgers plain suck now. Soggy, flavorless, and the burger patty size of a DVD.  When I bite into these burgers I should be brought back to my childhood.  The same way the food critic in Ratatouille was reacted when he tasted the rat’s ratatouille dish, I should react when biting into a Wendy’s burger today. Instead my reaction is one of guilt and regret. One that says I should have spent my money at Jack in the box.

Since Wendy’s has no idea how to fix itself and continues to sit like a bunch of trapped dolphin being massacred in Tajiti Japan, its going to attempt to buy Carl’s Jr.’s parent company to escape this red ocean.  Coincidentally, the day they announced interest is the same day the lady that said she found a finger in her chili admitted she actually cooked the finger before she dropped it into the chili.  Despite what Wendy’s and many of you might think, Carl’s is actually a poorly managed business.  Their burgers are the best in business, but their fast food, marketing and management are not.  Right now, it seems the only fast food companies managing their changes strategically and that are worth considering any kind of investment are McDonald’s and Jack in the box.

Like Wendy’s, Carl’s is slowly becoming a dead franchise.  Their target demographic is much too focused.  No targets for kids (i.e. a mascot like ronald or even partnerships to bring toys into the restaurant), no targets for women (i.e. parfaits, pita alternatives), no targets for the morning person (i.e. coffee to compete with starbucks like mcdonalds did), no targets for the health conscious (they introduced salads wow, great idea (back in 1990)), no targets for dessert lovers (the most interesting dessert on their menu is the oreo cookie shake). They never offer anything new in terms of products unless they’re in burger or chicken sandwich form.  They introduced the energy drinks and vitamin water, but once again this only targets the young male demographic.

Wendy’s is out of their minds to buy Carl’s Jr. Not only because Wendy’s itself is mismanaged, but because Carl’s is not a good value right now, is not a growth business and does not have a management that has the interests of the shareholders in mind.  Since McDonald’s is in a league of its own let’s compare an investment in Carl’s with an investment in Jack in the box. I think Jack in the box is a much more rational buy for an investor. To prove this point, over the next three posts, I’ll look at both restaurant’s menu selections, their ad campaigns, and their financials.

Mr. Investor, there’s something wrong with BAYbe dayvees. What? Don’t worry about it, the olympics are over.

Oops! Someone forgot to boost.

(Reprise) Mr. Investor, there’s something wrong with BAYbe dayvees. Ok then,

Bay Excitement Ranking: 10
Bay Eye Movement Ranking: 4
Bay Wardrobe Ranking: 9
Bay Loneliness Ranking: 7
Bay Voice Ranking: 9
Total Bay Ranking: 8

You ranked him as a bay! YAY!

Shani Davis is a bay, with a natural energy boost. Put bay in, get athletic bay out.

Mmm, Fried chicken/Fly vixen/Give me heart disease/But need you in my kitchen
- Nasir Jones, Poet of the Streets

Yes the black people fried chicken stereotype. Is it offensive? If I was Black I’d be Ed Reed and say HELL NAW! The rice and beans stereotype has been around since Puerto Rico itself and I’m goddamn proud of it. Too bad White people aren’t smart on PR culture to know that we actually dickride Mofongo more. Is the classification really that simple though? Can I laugh any time a Black person is eating Fried Chicken since it can be a positive stereotype the same way Puerto Ricans eating rice and beans is?

I’ve searched the Google web space far and wide and to answer the All-American question: Where does the black people fried chicken stereotype come from? No one really covers the origins. The best I could find is this excerpt from a wikimedia cookbook:

Fried chicken has a dual origin in the rural American South. The Scots had a tradition of deep frying chicken in fat, unlike their English counterparts who baked or boiled chicken. Later, as African slaves were introduced to households as cooks, seasonings and spices were added that are absent in traditional Scottish cuisine, improving the flavor. Since slaves were often allowed to keep only chickens, frying chicken as a special occasion spread through the African American community. After slavery, poor rural southern blacks continued the tradition since chickens were often the only animals they could afford to raise. Since fried chicken could keep for several days, it travelled well, and also gained favor during segregation when blacks normally could not find places to eat and had to carry their own food. Southern whites also continued the tradition of frying chicken. While not limited like blacks socially, poor whites were no better off economically. Therefore, fried chicken continued to dominate as “Sunday dinner” or on other special occasions.
Source: Wikibooks

So basically that rich Scottish prick Carnegie thought his chicken tasted good, a Black person tried it, became Ed Reed said HELL NAW, added flavor and made it taste good. After the Civil War the freed slaves remained poor (doy) and the cheapest protein they could live off of was chix. Fair enough, so the stereotype is not offensive and can remain since it has some meaning in history right?

Wrong. While the cookbook does a good job explaining the fried chix origin in the African American community. It completely ignores this shit:

These were all postcards/ads/other media used during the early and mid 1900s. Southern whites connected the fried chicken stereotype to Blacks to dehumanize them and portray them as a bunch of chicken chasing watermelon eating buffoons.

So Australian shit like:

and Korean shit like:

and American shitty news like:

should all be considered as hurtful and dehumanizing to the same degree that classy word whites had for black people is. It’s not the same as calling a Puerto Rican a Beaner or an Asian a Math Whiz or a White a Cracker. There’s a long hateful history associated with it. I’m done laughing at the stereotype now that I understand its history.

So next time you walk by a Colonel Sanders looking mf from the South make sure you let them mf know “Thanks a lot mf now I can’t laugh at the Blacks and Fried Chicken stereotype.” Make sure you look him directly in the eye when you say that, then continue walking past him and towards the nearest KFC since you allowed imagery of Fried Chicken into your thoughts.

What’s Failing

NBC is focusing way too much on wins. The people want fail. The viewers don’t care what flag the athlete is carrying unless they’re participators in tea parties (which is probably at most 3% of the American population). What’s my antedotal evidence? What video got more coverage on the interwebs: Apolo Ohno winning his 90th medal or the luger that split his head on the pole and died? While the luger’s death is extremely tragic, it’s his video that’s most popular. What video got the most play on NBC’s coverage of the olympics: Ohno or luger? Ohno. Why? Because NBC is dickriding the fuck out of America and its wins. NBC is ompletely out of touch with the modern day olympic viewer. They constantly try to bombard the viewer with these corny ass stories of dads telling their sons to concentrate on their goals, olympians that look up to their mentally disabled siblings and a skier overcoming an injury when he or she has the best health staff money can buy. This kind of feel good, rags to riches crap is outdated and lame. Again save it for the tea party crowd. I don’t currently own a TV. The only way I’ll buy one is when they invent technology that can allow me to filter out bullshit like this that is wasting electrons. Fuck 3D, I want a bullshit filter.

What they Should be Covering

Let’s think back to high school. I was in the top 10% of academics and bottom 10% of athletics. Meaning I was in the top 10 students of my class for all my studies and riding the pine (sitting on the bench) for basketball. I was expressing my passion for life in a poetic narrative written using the strict guidelines of Iambic pantameter. I was graphing linear equations using the slope intercept method without the aid of a calculator. I was able to clearly argue the points of the confederate revolution in the United States from an economic perspective.

I was sitting on the bench.

The rest of the basketball team was running a triangle offense. The rest of the basketball team was throwing alley oops off the backboard to each other. The rest of the team was getting laid. In all instances, with exception to the laid part, I got to observe. Since I was very immature and didn’t understand the world, my life lesson was: athletes will get laid and have a great time, smart people will not. All the while, I didn’t give a fuck and I just accepted it. It seemed all the athletes were good at only one thing: getting their balls in the hoop.

Sex and Parties

Official Sex Slave of the Olympics

Athletes at these olympics have endured intense training and haven’t been laid and relaxed for the past 2-4 years. They’re horny as fuck right now. Extrapolate the amount of tail the basketball players in my high school were getting in relation to what an olympic champion would get. It’s scaled several orders of magnitude. The olympic village must be looking a lot like jersey shore right now with snow instead of sand and good looking girls replacing orange wanna-be guidettes. These mfs are getting plenty of poontang.

The Official Condom for Curlers

Since conservative, boring ass NBC is keeping the after hours sexcapades under wraps, I leave it to the European press and the blogging world to give me the scoop on what’s really going on on the slopes of Whistler. After a simple google blog search of ’sex and the winter olympics’ I came across a shitload of results. Since Canadians aren’t morons that believe abstinence works and are graduates at the top 10% of their class during high school, they are prepared for these horny MFs. They distributed ~100,000 free condoms to the olympic village. They even included a special condom for curlers who are known to get the most amount of tail.

The Official Afrodisiac of Olympians

In a separate story, one of Canada’s athletes completely admits she’s going to slut it out once she’s done with all her events. Some of the stories don’t even involve athletes but the mere presense of having authority around the athletes (these would be the high school teachers in my analogy). Check this one out where there are allegations of sexual assault on staff and invitations for sex-trade workers to come aboard a cruise ship with olympic officials on it. And just to show you why I typically root against the Americans to win, I give you Scotty Lago. This mf won bronze, took the medal to a club and took pictures of himself living out every whiteboy’s dream. The Americans could’ve just let the mf live out his lifelong dream of feeding an Asian an In-n-Out burger patty in the hopes of Tiger Wooing her, but no they sent his ass back home to New Hampshire where there are no Asians. Completely fucked up in my opinion. Finally, and this is really my only proof that NBC is missing out on the sexcapades happening in Vancouver, I give you Confident Bay. Even he confidently whines about how he’s missing out on all the blonde olympic bombshells clubbing it up with atheletes he wishes he was as dope as. He thanks two blonde girls for providing him the pictures to prove it, but wishes there were more white girl videos for him to bay off to.

Failures

Tiger Wood's Wife Eats It During Super-G Photo ©Wally Skalij /Los Angeles Times

On a lighthearted note, NBC is completely missing out on the fails. While riding the bench I got front row seats to all the on-the-road, in game catastrophes. I got to see all the gym class heroes lose a game (that we controlled the first 3 qtrs of) by airballing a last minute three in the 4th. I’ve seen showoffs completely Spazz Palmitiere out while attempting a break away layup with no one on them. All the other students missed out on these epic events since they didn’t travel on the road with us. They still pictured these athletes as more than human. Kudos to Vancouver for assembling such intense and challenging courses to push these athletes to their limits. Thanks to the folks in Vancouver, we now get to see how human these athletes really are. On the other hand, NBC WONT PUBLISH ANY AMERICANS LIKE LINDSEY VONN BUSTIN HER ASS DURING SLALOM. NBC has done a great job censoring all the falls they don’t want America to see. Here’s the only three, thus my favorite, falls that I could find:

• Swede gets da ill concussion so he can score a nurse he met at bar last night.
• Guido Finishes Race on his Ass (NBC publishes this, I wonder why…)
• Cross Country skier thinks of the amount of sex she’ll be having once race is over and forgets to make turn

They are Jocks

San Diego Chargers Quarterback Philip Rivers At The Olympic GamesPhoto © Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Finally, Let’s not forget that the students at the top 10% of the basketball team were also at the bottom 10% of academia. Being that I was the only nerd on the team, I got to experience first hand how dumb and douchey jocks are. NBC is missing out of this kind coverage. Here are a few I found.

• Most of these MFs don’t even know how to lip synch to their national anthem.
• MF mistake’s medal for an In-n-out burger patty and ends up chipping his tooth

What NBC needs to do

It’s no suprise NBC sucks at covering the olympics. If they wanted to not suck they’d do the following:

• Have a special section on their website dedicated to the dirt that’s going around in the olympics.
• Have a special video section dedicated to falls and make them EMBEDDABLE and shareable.
• Stop jumping from competition to competition. I don’t want to watch figure skating in the middle of Super-G alpine. I’ve missed a lot of falls because of this.
• Stop dickriding the American athletes and give all athletes equal time.
• Commercial segments should be followed with best crash of the day
• Get rid of those bullshit stories you write around the athletes.  Everyone, except Tea Party America, knows they are phoney.  Replace with after hour pictures and/or videos of the athletes partying and picking up girls (or guys if they’re a figure skater). If a few saps care how Apolo Ohno grew up, point them to his wikipedia page.

What about you?

What would you like to see in the olympics? What do you think NBC needs to do to make the olympics coverage better? I leave you with what I wish NBC would show after each commercial break:

Jimmy Tran In Gangsta Lean

Jimmy Tran, a recovering addict of ahnline dating sites, has become another statistic. Mr. Tran is a 23 year old Vietnamese-American male living in Irvine, CA. Despite major efforts on all this dating site, he can’t manage to get a message from a girl .

“I’ve tried OkCupid. It just isn’t working. My parents are getting tired of paying an extra $50 a month for text messaging on my phone plan when I can’t even use it,” he expressed in frustration. “I sent about 50 personalized emails to these girls. Only one girl responded and she didn’t reply back to my second email that had lyrics to one of the songs I wrote for her. I’ve prayed for the last two nights that I’d see an email back from her. Nothing.”

Tran’s a recent graduate of UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in biological engineering. He’s also a lead bassist and backup vocalist for a local boy band named Soul Pho Real. So why can’t he get laid you ask? New research on the site Okcupid.com helps us understand why.

“I know it’s taboo, but the answer to the question is in the race of the chicks he’s trying to score,” says a leading Mathematician at Harvard University who chose to remain anonymous. “I know people think we’re living in a world that’s much different than 50 years ago. Race relations have improved over that time or so we would like to think and proclaim. It’s just not true that things are better now and we have the data to prove it.”

Okcupid is a website that brings math into the equation of ahnline dating. While sites like eharmony and match.com try to play matchmaker through hobbies and interests, okcupid says fuck it and asks users arbitrary questions created by other users. What Okcupid users are unaware of is the site’s ability to then use finely tuned algorithms that use each user’s answers and several social factors to determine compatibility. Welcome to modern day social engineering.

I met with the anonymous mathematician to helps us understand how the algorithm works.  He started spewing out all kinds of mathematical notation on his white board.  I smiled and nodded politely to entertain his flossing.  However, I did ask him to give the common man an example of how the algorithm works.  “As a simple example of a question that could be created by a user and asked to site members: John Mayer’s Playboy Interview was A) 100% True B) Extremely Racist C) Don’t care. The algorithm then weighs in the user’s race and gender along with how they answered. It then brings in several factors. For instance, how many white males answered A and how many black females answered B. It then assigns weights of compatibility based on those answers. The majority of Whites and Asians will answer A. People of color will answer B. Thus, if you’re White and male, and answered A, you will increase your compatibility with a White and Asian female.”

The anonymous mathematician pauses, takes a sip of his latte, and then goes on to explain with his eyes closed, “If you’re White and male and answered B, you will be matched at a higher compatbility with black females. If you’re Asian and female and answered A or B you will increase your compatibility with Whites. If you’re Asian and male and answered A or B you will increase your compatibility with blacks. Decrease compatibility with the global community if C is chosen since it showcases the user’s bias towards independent thought. That’s all the algorithm does.” The mathematician attached the following grid to help us also understand how the algorithm weighs compatibility based on the John Mayer answer. “This shows how males of different races will score against females of different races based on how they answered,” he said.

OkCupid Weighing Algorithm Results for John Mayer Question

After understanding the grid’s results and overview of the algorithm, I came to the conclusion that since the majority of Okcupid’s users are White males, most of the algorithms will be weighted towards their favor. As a result, they’ll get the majority of messages sent to them and majority of responses back. “So you’ve essentially modeled the real world using mathematical formulas,” I postured. “Precisely,” he replied. “That’s fucked up! That’s like Hitler using Spencer and Darwin’s survival of the fittest to deem the Aryan race the master race,” I angrily exclaimed. “Right, but now we have the math to prove it,” the mathematician replied. “Well don’t you think that’s extremely racist?” “No I think it’s whatever the algorithm says will favor my biological makeup that’ll increase my chance of mating based on my race. So I say 100% true.”

The Smug Mathematician Standing In Front of his Latest Racist Algorithms

I reacquainted with Mr. Tran after speaking with the mathematician, and revealed the Mathematician’s algorithm to him.  He was upset but yet became complacent. “If the fact that I can’t get a white girl is backed by mathematical proof, then it’s just part of God’s will, and I don’t like it, but I’ll just have to accept it. I’ll continue to pray to God to help me understand why. Until then I’ll just continue singing at church and doing the whole band thing.” According to the Okcupid’s latest numbers [results can be found here] that sampled a white female’s probability to respond an Asian male on their blog, Mr. Tran has absolutely slim to no chance to scoring a white girl.

“We’re White nerdy mathematicians that haven’t had female genetalia since female genetalia has had us” said the Mathematician jokingly. He admits to having contributed to the theory behind the majority of the site’s algorithms . “It’s important to finely tune and weigh the algorithms in our favor so that we can increase our probability of winning an Asian trophy wife or whatever else we prefer, but usually Asian, once we leave college and enter the workforce.”

After leaving the mathematician to his social engineering algorithms and half White half Asian family photos, I took it upon myself to find other dating sites that favored a majority over the minority group. I came across http://www.christiansingles.com/. Hang in there Jimmy, there’s hope for you. As an atheist and person of color, I on the other hand, am screwed. Oh wait no I’m not, there’s http://www.freethinkermatch.com/. Let’s see what that site’s statistics say. Total Male Members: 10609. Total Female Members: 2946. Great, that’s probably the only statistic where the majority doesn’t favor me. So in conclusion, if you’re an Atheist, ethnic minority, freethinking male, then no ahnline dating algorithm will ever work in your favor.

Author’s Note: FUCK OKCUPID.COM FOR BEING RACIST. I wrote this piece because I read this and this and I got pissed. The fact that they act like their stuff is math-based and that other sites probably have the same results is completely ungrounded.  It’s the fucking internet. OKCUPID.com has about as much credibility as streetverse.com does.

Verse I: The Homegrown

It’s a mild October night, I’m starving. It’s around half past eight. I’ve just been let out from a Master Gardener class and our lesson over the past month or so had been ‘how to cultivate your own homegrown.’  Friday is our show-n-tell night. The majority of the class chose to grow for medicinal and spiritual purposes (many growers are part of the Kapnobatai clan). It’s no surprise here in Southern California where it is the number one cash crop. In fact, this class wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for Mary Jane. Although I fully support the federal legalization of qannabos, food is my only drug, and I chose to cultivate watercress. Why? Well that MF grows fast as fuck and is mad nutritious, and while cannabinoids do add one helluva kick to brownies, they don’t really add to the flavor. Watercress got mad flavor. Also, the ancient Greeks believed that “Eating cress makes one witty” and I’ve been fairly dry and dull ever since I moved to Southern California. Self-deprecation? Self-deprecation.

So back to the class, my show-n-tell went as I expected. Only the fat soccer moms admired my fleshy, shiny, heart-shaped leaves. All the unkempt kids in the class didn’t have shit for growth on their psychoactive bullshit plants. Not even a THC bud yet. I was the winner and Shakesperean cultivation champion, but I was hungry.

I left the class and made haste in my black M3. Mazda3 that is. My stomach was thinking outside the bun and laced in MSG. Vietnamese (or Vietnese as some of the Caucasian folks say) sounded about right.

My Idea of What the Aysya Fridge Looks Like

There’s this Viet/French/Thai spot down the block from me that I haven’t been to ever since I saw the Ratatouille rat enter it by escaping from the KFC across the street. It’s called Aysya and this night is Bikini night. How delightful. Just what I need after a night of hanging out with characterless Swedish housewives and frat boys talking about plants. So I arrive at Aysya and its popping. The music is bumping loud enough to make a gang of guidos start their fist pumps to bang the beat. There were mad herds of white boys ogling the scenery, tipping big and satisfying their yellow fever for the night. Mad Vietnamese MFs hanging out at the bar fully furnished in Armani Exchange suits financed by their parents. For the most part,  it is a sausage fest and the only girls there are the ones wearing about 4 inches of fabric hiding only the body parts, which if revealed would require a bouncer at the door. I take a seat right by the dance floor.

Verse II: The Order

One of the half-nekkid legal hookers asks if I want a drink. I tell her I’m going all out tonight and want a glass of milk. She smiles at me awkwardly and thinks I’m trying to be cute. She must have thought I was giving her a line she’s heard a million times, given that her pale mammaries are pasted directly in my line of sight. I tell her, “Nah, I’m being serious.” And through the music that is now banging loudly, I say, “milk please.”

Aysya Waitress Résumé Photo

The stereo speaker is directly to the left of me and my table is starting to thump every time the bass kicks in. The legal harlot comes back with my drink and asks if I’m ready to order. With my watercress garden class trophy for Best Growth glimmering in my mind, I tell her I want a Banh Mi swich with watercress in it.

“Can you guys hook me up with it something special? I have an itch for it.”

She says, “For real? How many do you want?”

“Enough for two so you can join me (my lame attempt at flirting).”

“Alright meet me at the bar when I call you over.”

The EPIC FAIL flirt attempt turn out to be an be EPIC NGUYEN! I’m surprised the girl could hear me clearly with all the fucking guido music playing. Basking in my glory of being watercress champion of the evening and using it to pick up girls, I decide to sit back in my chair and enjoy my glass of “bovinic rum” and keep my eye on the bar. Within a few minutes, the legal tramp calls me over and there’s a plate with a Banh Mi sandwich sitting on it.

” Where’s the second one?” I ask her.

“Check under the plate,” she says. I look under the plate and see a baggy with 2 pills chillin’ inside. She looks at me as if I’m suppose to do something. “What is that?” I ask her. She says it’s mitsu. “Huh?”

“Mitsubishi x,” she responds.

It takes me about 10 seconds of a stupid dazed look at the baggy to realize what’s going on. I leave a green paper photo of Lincoln for the milk and am Audi 5000, leaving the (now) illegal Jezebel and her drugs back at the bar. I never get around to asking why she offered me the drugs, my guess is I said some kind of keyword: ‘watercress’ maybe?

Verse III: The Sandwich Millionaire

My Recollection of Slumdog Millionaire.

So it was a fun night despite the drug deal that I almost got involved in. I’m still hungry as fuck, so I head back home. Fuck man what can I make? All I got is this half grown watercress and whatever’s in the fridge. What’s in the fridge and how can I make a recipe out of it all? Let’s do this shit Slumdog Millionaire style. Question: What’s da illest sandwich you can put together using watercress?

*WARP BACK IN TIME TO THE YEAR 1987*

Context: I’m sitting in front of a fly I recently disected with a Silverhawks toy.

Me: Tio Loulou, your mustard sandwiches are great can you make me one.
Tio Loulou: Ok, Mr. cool.

*WARP BACK TO PRESENT*.

A couple of key scenes happen with me trying to find something complementing the mustard while a cop punches me, and I fall into a pile of shit.

*WARP BACK IN TIME TO THE YEAR 1997*

Context: Walking around the ghettos of Paris, France with a McDonald’s meal in my hand.

French Ghetto Kid: So which part of New York you from? Brookyln, Bronx?
Me: Bronx. You guys seriously eat mayonnaise with your McDonald’s fries?
French Ghetto Kid: Yes my American friend, we put crushed garlic in it.
Me: This shit tastes dope.
French Ghetto Kid: Yes, very fly.

*WARP BACK TO PRESENT*

Sandwich ingredients still a bit too dry for my tastes. So, I look for another wet item to throw in there and this rich fat guy named Javed tries to eat my sandwich and ends up spitting it out.

*WARP BACK IN TIME TO THE YEAR 2004*

Context: At an Italian-American household with Italian-American friend who just announced he was marrying an African-American woman to his Italian-American mega-conservative grandparents (don’t ask me why I wrote this memory with so much political correctness).

Italian-American Friend: Na, Pa, yea so this is my girl we’re gonna get married her name’s Lakeisha.
Grandparents stare at each other uncomfortably.
Me: Mr. Vanzetti this pasta sauce is incredible, what’d you put in it?
Mr. Vanzetti: Nothing just tomati e olio. ‘Tony you’re out of your mind. Is she even Catholic?

*WARP BACK TO PRESENT*

Hmm, need a protein. Egg? Nah. What else we got? I try to eat my sandwich at a train station but my childhood friend and his thugs stomachblock me.

*WARP BACK IN TIME TO YESTERDAY*

Context: I open refrigerator. My gilfriend is sewing next to me.

Me: What the fuck kinda bread is this? Has mad mold.
IndoSage: It’s not mold it’s flax seed and onion. It’s Flax-seed Onion Bread.
Me: What’s your beef with wheat?
IndoSage: Shutup, eff outta here.
Me: Da fuck is this!
IndoSage: Oil browned turkey.
Me: Why you gotta buy everything brown? You mad racist.

*WARP BACK TO PRESENT*

I spread the mayo and mustard on the toasted onion bread with the the turkey placed on the bread first. Outside, my childhood friend shoots himself in a tub of money, gangsta styles.

*WARP BACK IN TIME TO THE YEAR 1990*

Context: Sitting at my aunt’s coffee table eating a ham and cheese sandwich.

Me: This cheese is EWWWWWW.
Aunt: Et teeeeeh ["and ummm" to the English speaking world] it’s not called ewww, it’s… como se dice….. et teeeeeehhh.
Aunt #2: It’s called Heidi Ann…
Aunt: Heidi Ann Swiss Cheese. I’m on a diet.
Me: I like the monster cheese not this one.
Aunt: It’s called…. et tehhhhhh, muenster cheese not monster. When you get to be my age you’ll understand good cheese is not based on its name.

*WARP BACK TO PRESENT*

I throw the swiss cheese on the turkey, add the tomatoes and close it off with the FRESH watercress that I grew over the past few weeks. I end up with THE phat sandwich that I should’ve made at home in the first place. Every bite of it is an ode to my bitter, sweet, delicious memories.

Verse IV: The Recipe

1 handfull of fresh watercress
2 slices of flax-laced onion bread lightly toasted
2 slices Heidi Ann swiss cheese
1/4 thinly sliced romano tomato drizzled in olive oil
2 slices oil-browned turkey breast
5 pickle slices
pepper to taste
mayonnaise with roasted crushed garlic
yellow mustard

No Mitsubishi X required.

Verse V: The Pics to Prove

Verse VI: The Resolution

Watercress sandwich is a Nguyen for me. Mitsubishi X is FAIL for girl and vietnamese restaurant. My girlfriend ends up kicking me out for flirting with bikini waitress. I hope some of those Swedish mom’s from my class are single cuz I can tell they already like to eat.