"Taste of Home" Restaurant a Creepy Hit

ollowing the unexpected and largely unwelcome success of the country’s first cereal-only restaurant in Philadelphia, in which patrons can curl up in their pajamas and dine on a wide array of breakfast cereals while watching television and reading the paper, a troubling assortment of novelty theme restaurants have popped up across the country over the last year. From Albany’s “Nothing But Napkins� to Baton Rouge’s “Leftovers, Inc.�, theme restaurants are the current toast of the town, and not just Albuquerque’s “Toast Town.� Perhaps the most disturbing of these is Houston, Texas’ “Taste of Home,� an existential crisis of a theme restaurant that recreates the experience of sharing a meal with your apathetic, abusive parents using the magic of animatronics.

Inside the restaurant, patrons sit at a single huge, oversized table on giant chairs, recreating the experience of childhood dining, while a giant animatronic robot mother and father bicker bitterly over family finances. The food is, true to form, largely tasteless and occasionally burnt, depending on whether or not that night’s “show� includes one of the robot mother’s trademark boozy crying jags while food burns on the stove.

Though the restaurant’s menu is starkly limited—you’ll eat what you get and like it, according to the robot father’s genuinely menacing aside—patrons can plan their visits around their favorite entrees, since a strict meal rotation is in place due to the “family’s� tight finances and father’s inability to humble himself by asking for a raise at work. Sunday nights, diners can thrill to pork chops and apple sauce, while Monday nights are for Spam on toast and Tuesdays feature baked chicken. Wednesday is casserole night; Thursday is fish, and Friday night the restaurant orders in pizza from a local pizzeria. Saturday nights the animatronic parents are often absent, and diners have to fend for themselves among the half-empty cereal boxes and bags of flour left over in the kitchen. For that reason, the commune cannot recommend visiting “Taste of Home� on a Saturday, unless both you and your date are on a diet.

Though the experience might sound grim to some, it does serve as a strange sort of childhood therapy to others, not unlike a trip to Arby’s. And a strange sort of camaraderie does develop at the restaurant’s one large table, as patrons compare notes on what might be in the casserole and provide each other comfort when father flies into one of his dramatic, table-shaking rages. The restaurant also features the world’s only black and white big screen TV, though patrons are advised not to attempt changing the channel or questioning father’s viewing choices. But the warm, conversation-killing glow of television (usually tuned to auto racing or a boxing match) does serve to masterfully complete the restaurant’s ambiance.

Regardless of these positives, however, the commune must recommend skipping out before the meal’s dessert course, lest you find yourself stuck there half the night washing the restaurant’s giant, oversized dishes.

Readers interested in experiencing the restaurant for themselves while visiting the Houston area can call 1-555-EAT-HOME to let them know when you’ll be home for dinner, though we do strongly recommend against calling collect.

ormerly Canadian funnyman Jim Carrey surprised the easily-removed pants off of Hollywood this week with the revelation that burnout poster boy and O.J. trial superstar Kato Kaelin never actually existed, and was merely one of Carrey’s comedic creations. The news of this unprecedented ten-year hoax has left the world shocked, stunned, and shockastunnated.

The ditzy, bleached-blonde Kaelin shot from freeloading, couch-sleeping obscurity in 1994 after his wealthy patron, former football great Orenthal James “Breaking Up is Hard to Do� Simpson, murdered the hell out of his ex-wife Nichole and a helpful neighborhood waiter. Called upon to testify in the hit trial that followed, Kato captured the hearts of Americans everywhere with his surfer boy antics and vacuous charm. Few then anticipated that the inevitable breakup would come this hard, or this ten years laterly.

Testifying in an unrelated trial this week, Carrey claimed that he couldn’t have stolen Al Jolsen’s “ass-talking moron� bit since he was sleeping on O.J. Simpson’s couch the week Jolsen’s grave was robbed in 1994, which led to the unraveling of a raveled-up tale of confusing hoodwinkery the likes of which the world had not seen since that funny movie where the kids try to get their divorced parents back together through devious guile.

According to Carrey’s testimony, leaked to the press through a conveniently left-open window, he first developed the Kato character for the sketch comedy show In Living Color in 1992, but was rejected on the grounds that he was too creepy and that Keanu Reeves had already been doing him for thirty years. Undeterred, Carrey continued to develop the character independently, naming him Kato after a mistaken memory of the 70’s television program Kung Fu (whose main character was named Caine) and following the lead of his hero Andy Kaufman by traveling around Hollywood in-character as Kato during 1993.

Hoping to eventually spin the character into a series of Kaelin-centered gross out comedies, starting with the Yuletide fun of Kato Saves Kristmas, Carrey eventually found lodging with ex-footballer Simpson by a stroke of luck, since the Simpsons needed an unreliable layabout to watch their kids while they were off being rich. Not long after, Carrey was caught in a dilly of a pickle when Simpson decapitated his ex-wife and “Kato Kaelin� was called upon to testify.

Rather than paint his own career with the sickly stink of O.J. trial faddery, Carrey opted to ride that lightning for all it was worth, and the rest of the story went down in Access Hollywood history.

“This whole thing just got terribly out of hand,� mock-sobbed a repentant Carrey on the witness stand, barely stifling a serious case of the giggles.

While the possibility for a punishment for Carrey has been discussed, including a sentence requiring the comedic actor to write “I WILL NOT MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM� 10,000 times on the courthouse chalk board, the consensus seems to be that many in the legal profession remain enamored of Carrey and his zany antics, and their fondness for his work in 1997’s Liar Liar may likely override any calls for indictments on perjury or impersonating a bonehead.

Ordinary Americans have yet to prove so forgiving. In the wake of the news’ breakery, angry consumers returned thousands of dollars of Kato Kaelin merchandise to stores, demanding refunds or at least a nickel off on that poster of the Madonna-Britney Spears lesbo kiss.

Strangest of all has been the reaction of Brian “Kato� Kaelin’s parents, who just this week finally calmed down from the O.J. hysteria enough to realize they’d never had a son.

But most visibly-upset has been Simpson himself, who in a televised interview from his Florida tax shelter Saturday expressed his deep feeling of hurt at his freeloader’s betrayal, and called for the courts to award $33 million in compensatory damages for his hurtedness, made payable to Fred Goldman.

Well well, welcome back to the chaotic worm fart that is my life. I don't know what it is that's out there, call it God, Buddha or the force, whichever stirs your Kool-Aid, but I have discovered that it has a sense of humor.

Over the past couple of months I had worked my life into a pretty boring rut. Don't get me wrong, I still think my life is the shit stuffed between two slices of bitchin', but every once in a while I need some adventure. Now I'm not talking about a road-trip-go-see-stuff kind of adventure, but your bona fide "Indiana Jones-Grand Theft Auto-pull a badass heist like in that movie Heat" kind of adventure. You know the essentials: drugs, hookers, and all kinds of "ill shit."

It took about two seconds to decide that the best setting onto which to unleash my bad self was America's Playground. No, not the multi-colored play area I've been living in at the McDonalds down the street, because last week those bitches took my land and slapped me with a restraining order, just to put the In'jun in injury. Those imperialist dogs got their anus in an Andy just because I went in there pretending to be blind, then demanded loudly that my seeing-eye midget be given twenty Happy Meals for free to make up for my disability.

Leave it to Nevil to fuck up my wet dream.

Everything was going smoothly at first; they even put a toy in every Happy Meal. Booya. But what I hadn't noticed was that Nevil was walking in circles around me the whole time, following a bug or something, and before long his leash was coiled around my body like a goddamned python. Playing it smart, or at least blind, I kept my eyes closed through the con. If there were any witnesses, there'd be no way those rat fucks could scream out "Hey I thought that guy was supposed to be blind! He was all lookin' around and shit!" just to ruin my good time.

Then I heard something that sounded like the dude behind the counter dropping one of the Happy Meal toys on the ground. Either that, or it was an entire Mariachi band stomping on cockroaches, but I considered that possibility less likely given the situation. Either way, Nevil's instincts from his time in the wild took over and he pounced on that toy like Ted Kennedy on spilt booze. Thanks to the leash, that little shit spun me so hard I turned into a blind tornado, devastating everything in my path. My seeing-eye cane smashed against the wall and I accidentally stabbed the day-shift manager in the pills with the sharp end. And the dude did not take it well. I said that I was sorry and shit, what the hell else did he want? The worst part is, I didn't even get my Happy Meals before they chased me out of there with buckets of hot French fry oil.

The wound didn't kill that prick, but apparently it went deep enough that my face and novelty tee-shirt stuck in his memory, and now I'm permanently banned from every McDonalds by old Ronald himself. I can't go within a mile of any of their establishments without risking extradition to the Royal Court of McDonald in Paraguay for a life sentence of breaking rocks and making apple pie pockets. Those fuckers even put up police sketches of me in every restaurant they own. Lousy sketches, too. Who am I, Jesse James? Now what in the hell am I supposed to do for food?

Thanks to the McDonalds incident my whole caper had to be moved to Las Vegas, which is still cool, but can't hold a flame to that play-pen. But since I was planning on letting it all hang out in Vegas, I needed to find someone to watch Nevil for me while I was gone. It's never fun to lose a midget in the city that never sleeps, plus he's far too sensitive to be exposed to 99% of the shit that goes down in that mafia wonderland. Finding a midget sitter was harder than I'd expected, because I really didn't want to pay anyone and I had no idea when I would be coming back. One by one, my neighbors slammed their doors in my face like I was a naked Jehovah's Witness selling used condoms. Man did that bring back memories.

Down but damn sure not out, I dreamt up the perfect solution to my problem: I took Nevil out behind my apartment complex and chained him to a fire hydrant. And I didn't pay the hydrant shit. Who knows, maybe some sympathetic pedestrian stopped and fed him salad croutons or something while I was gone, stranger things have happened. "Good work Mickey, way to kill two birds with one stone," I said out loud. Then I hopped into the back of a pickup truck driven by some Mexican who looked like he was headed to Vegas, and prepared to blow the world's mind.

When I reached the city of sin, I was in high spirits from all the fresh air and a can of boot black I'd found in the pickup's bed. "I'm young, relatively healthy, and ready for what the night will bring," I thought to myself. Thirteen minutes later I was in a strip club, and I didn't come out for two days. Mainly because I spent all my money in that first half hour, after which the mentally unstable-looking bouncers stapled me to the wall in the men's room. They used me as a human spring-loaded billy club dummy for about nine hours, then it was decided that I had repaid my debt.

I could have left sooner than I did, but it took some time for my fractured shins to heal up enough for me to drag myself out through the bathroom window. It was a tight squeeze, but enough of my ribs were broken that I was able to squirm right on through. Just let it be known for the record that I think something is wrong with my spine, because every time I step on my left foot I piss my pants, then barf up dry-roasted peanuts.

I couldn't think too clearly at that time because from all evidence my skull was cracked, and a piece of my brain was dangling carelessly out of one of my ears. While I was trying to remember who I was, what language I spoke and why my feet were covered in dead purple cow-flesh, some homeless crackhead wandered upon my mutilated body and started poking me with what was left of an umbrella. He was eyeing me like I was going to be in his next homemade snuff film, which is why it surprised me when he leaned down and put a crack pipe to my lips, while motioning for me to inhale.

With all the breath I could muster, I forced my torn diaphragm and punctured lung to fill with the thick white smoke. This guy must have been the Yoda of homeless crack addicts, because in minutes I was on my feet, and feeling better than ever. And I do mean ever. After a few more tokes I felt like a million bucks, and all my limbs were working again. But when I looked up to thank my crank-fueled angel of mercy, that little ninja fuck had vanished like a welfare check. Oh well, off to face the city once again.

Feeling rejuvenated, I wandered into the cheapest motel that I could find, which was an empty dumpster behind the Golden Nugget. My trip hadn't started off exactly as I'd expected, but I still had big plans for this monument to man's greed. Mickey Hanes was born to take advantage of a town where the only moral is that if you have enough money, you can do whatever the fuck you want. For the first time in three days, I closed my eyes and rested.

In the morning I awoke to the all-too-familiar sound of a dump truck lifting my dumpster into the crisp morning air. With a quickness I dismounted the dumpster using skills I didn't know I had. I floated through the air almost in slow motion, graceful as a ballet dancer dodging blowdarts. If an angel had seen the grace and elegance of my execution, he would have pissed himself.

The landing, however, was a completely different can of beans. Cirque du Soleil doesn't have shit on me. Caught up completely in my kick-ass performance, I forgot a small but important detail... the landing. I remembered the landing only in retrospect, after the sidewalk tried to shove itself dow

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