2900 W Sahara Ave.

Las Vegas, NV 89102

On a recent trip to Las Vegas I stopped by an INO on Sahara Ave. My friend had never been and wanted to check it out. I had been a couple times before on previous trips to Las Vegas, but I forgot what I thought of the place. All I remember is that I didn’t think INO was anything special.

 I ordered a cheeseburger with onions and no tomatoes, freedom fries and a coke. As soon as I tasted the burger, I remembered what I had thought about INO the last couple of times I had tried it…it tastes exactly like a Big Mac from McDonald’s. To be fair, I am only talking about the cheeseburger the way I ordered it. The hamburger or other variations of the cheeseburger may not taste exactly like a Big Mac. The odd thing about the INO burger I had is, as a general opinion, I feel it is impossible to say one burger is better than another because I believe they all have different tastes, however, if I were in the mood for a Big Mac, I could easily substitute the burger I had from INO or vice versa. I have not found two other burgers I could do that with. The fries were decent. Not my favorite fry, but certainly not my least favorite. That honor goes to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. The coke was fine. I’m not sure if every INO has a self-serve soda fountain, but this one did and I like to see that in my fast food joints. I know INO touts the freshness of their ingredients, but I noticed no difference in taste or appearance from their MCDs counterparts. The size of the patty was also comparable to that of a Big Mac.  I personally don’t think MCD burgers are greasy, but you can definitely see the wrapping on an INO burger turning clear by the time you are done with the burger, for what it’s worth.

Now I’m not saying that I don’t like INO, I do enjoy it. What I don’t understand is the INO fan who praises INO as the best fast food burger in the US and in the same breath shits on McDonald’s. I guess all I’m really saying in this review is all you East Coast people who occasionally hear someone going on and on about an In-N-Out burger and you wonder what you are missing, just go to McDonald’s and get a Big Mac.  Bonus!  It’s Monopoly time again, so you can collect some game pieces with your meal. I swear McDonald’s didn’t pay me to write this review.  

- idy

1200 Morris Turnpike, Short Hills, NJ 07078

It’s been a long time coming for this review, so it’s fitting that it’s my first. Let me get right to it. From a strictly menswear perspective, this mall has been getting worse and worse for years. The first time I went to Short Hills, approximately 6 years ago, I thought it was the best mall I had been to up to that point. Now, every time I find myself there, I always think “why the fuck did I come here?”  I’m trying to recall all the stores I liked in this mall that have since gone such as, Emporio Armani, John Varvatos, D&G, DKNY, the men’s section in French Connection, Black Fleece at Brooks Brothers and possibly others I am forgetting. The men’s department (excluding the shoe section, which actually isn’t that bad) at Neiman Marcus, which was never great to begin with, has been downsized to make room for more women’s handbags. The men’s department in Saks has been and still is abysmal. I don’t know who is in charge of deciding what the men’s department at Bloomingdale’s carries, but that person needs to be shot. Bloomingdales used to be decent, now it’s pretty much a skip when I go.

                What set this mall apart from all the others was the selection, but my prediction is the selection for men will keep shrinking until the Mall at Short Hills is the same as every other mall in NJ.

-idy

Disregard the last update until I can finalize it. Also, for future reference, the email update feature of tumblr is definitely bullshit.

During a shopping trip to the Freehold Mall, my crew decided we were going to eat at Cheesecake Factory. This was not any of our first time there, so knowing that there is often a wait we put a name on the list before we were done in the mall. Sure enough, the alleged wait was 50 minutes. Perfect amount of time to go to one or two more stores, get the car, and drive around back to the restaurant, whose entrance is seperate from the mall. We threw Ian’s name on the list because we forgot that Rex is the most awesome name to put on a waiting list. So we get back to the restaurant and one of the slew of hostesses working at the greeting station tells us we haven’t been called yet and that our pager would work fine, even though Ian suggested she reset it since we went out of range. She informs us we’ll be called in about 15 minutes. We go outside, hang out a bit, go to Borders where I pick up a magazine and a book, both of which will be reviewed in the future. Here’s where this gets interesting. The hostess, while being the most attractive one working there, clearly didn’t understand anything about UHF devices, let alone how her own workplace’s pager system works because our unit never sounded an alert. Upon questioning the army of hostesses about being seated soon, she told us we were called 20 minutes ago, and that we would be the next up. After seating 2 or 3 groups of the same or similar size, we were starting to get antsy, and the manager came past, obviously noticed this, and said “Why are you standing around, don’t you want to be seated?” and instructed the gaggle of girls to seat us immediately. So, first thought is “bullshit.” Let’s see if they can turn this around. Our server comes over, and she’s clearly been around the serving block, bitch is a little old to be serving at a chain restaurant. Move up to a higher class place or get a new career. She takes our drink order (1 water, 1 coke, and 1 beer) and brings 2 of those back. Now at this point, I know it’ll be a while before she brings my Stella, and guess what? I was right! She talks to the table next to ours with my beer in her hand after passing us. How fucking hard would it have been to put the glass down on the table first? It certainly would have been the logical thing to do so your hand wasn’t warming up my beer and so that you didn’t have to hold a glass while talking to someone. Second thought: “Bullshit” Now after perusing the unnecessarily longmenu full of ads we came our decisions on what to eat. Now the menu could be another whole review in itself. Who needs a 57 page menu? I don’t even know if thats an exaggeration because I didn’t get through the whole thing. Why do you have FULL PAGE ADS in your menu? Another vote for “Bullshit” Our old maid gives me my beer, not in a Stella glass I might add, and takes our order without writing it down, because she’s sooooo experienced she doesn’t need a pen and pad for special orders. The second she walked away the first words out of my mouth were “Well, there’s an order that’s going to get fucked up” and guess what, I was right again! Ian got his salad, of which he stated “the blue cheese dressing here rocks. It’s tits!” Blue cheese dressing at Cheesecake Factory - not bullshit apparently. At this point we also get our some pre-dinner bread. This is good motherfuckin bread. What is this pumpernickel? I also think this is a good time to mention that the whole time we’ve been here, they have been playing my jams. “Hey Nineteen” by Steely Dan, a James Taylor song, a U2 song that was appropriate for the moment, overall good restaurant radio. Music and bread both not bullshit. Next we got our main courses, and mine, of course, was fucked. I had ordered the “Kobe” burger at the behest of the server, but I asked to add cheddar cheese and subtract mushrooms. Not because I don’t like mushrooms, I just wasn’t in a mushroom mood. My burger comes out with mushrooms, and without cheese. Maybe if the server was more concerned with our orders and less concerned with wearing a New York Giants tie, she would have gotten it right. A different server came over as we flagged her down and apologetically corrected my order. She was a tall drink of water, and my how I love moisture. Seriously though, she corrected my order and for that I was thankful. She wasn’t really all that attractive, but who am I kidding? I would’ve. Our server - bullshit. Other server - not bullshit. Food was good, but nothing to write home about. Fries were cold. Men’s pisshouse was like a fucking labyrinth, and that was awesome. It was an adventure to alleviate my bladder. Bathroom - not bullshit. After our meal, we asked for our check, and our server pressed incessantly for an upsell on dessert which we weren’t having. Yet another point for bullshit. Late for a train now, to be continued later…

This is the first post on our first attempt at a review blog. What will be reviewed on this blog? Well, everything and anything.

As an initial review, let’s start with a review of the process we went through to register this blog:

After deciding to finally put this idea into motion, we checked out the different options for free, easy to use blog sites. We didn’t want to get to ahead of ourselves by making our own site, because we don’t have the knowhow OR the elbow grease to make it happen. We decided to start with tumblr bc our friend Laura Monzo has one, and if she’s doing it, its definitely what everyone is into. God, how could we plug Laura Monzo and the Monzsters in our first post? Ok, on to the actual process.

First, we registered a new email address so that we share access to it as well as the blog site of our choice. Why the fuck can’t you put curses in titles on public things like twitter, youtube, etc. Really? Does the internet really have to be so family friendly? And also, who decided that specific words aren’t family friendly? If someone wants their email address to be fuckyougrandma@yahoo.com they should damn well be able to register that. Thank you tumblr for not following whatever logic lead to people not being able to use the language they use everyday on the internet.

-Side note you may actually be able to use the email address fuckyougrandma@yahoo.com, I never checked, but they wouldn’t let me use  bullshitisbullshit.

Back on track: After registering our email address we headed on over to tumblr. Registration was one of the easiest things we’ve ever done and we’re pretty sure our moms are capable of doing so.

Conclusion: If you’re reading this, we’re pretty sure you already know what tumblr is, and probably have one yourself, but we recommend it anyway. Tumblr is not bullshit.

Edit: We forgot to mention, if there is anything that anyone is considering for any reason at all whether its going somewhere, buying something, eating something, talking to a person, anything at all that you could do or imagine, we’ll give you our honest review. And we’ll probably tell you its bullshit, so you’ll never have to experience anything for yourself again.