Sweet or Bitter?

  • November 30, 2023

Has reviewing Salt & Vinegar chips become a monthly series? Is there even that many types to keep us going? For a third month in a row the answer is yes!

As a reminder the review systems is based on gatcha game rarity: C is worthless, R average, SR exceptional and SSR once-in-lifetime good! And for the first time today you’ll see a new category…

We found these Humble brand chips at a ‘health food’ shop, which was probably a warning. They were appalling, absolutely disgustingly tasting and quite possibly one of the worst chips I’ve ever eaten. They tasted like greasy rot, and had no real taste of vinegar at all. These were so awful I’m confused why they’re even on the market. Far, far below C, these things get the lowest possible grade of Z.

A slew of ‘not worth the calorie’ C rank chips this month, one of which surprised me since I used to think it a good chip!

The Siete chips released a pungent stench when the bag was opened, and the base chip had a taste of petrichor I found quite disagreeable. Upon further mastication I noted almost no vinegar taste but a hint of heat, which I quickly found unpleasant. They have serrano pepper in them! Obviously I hated them and give them a solid C, but KLS for her part thought them at least an R (due to the heat).

The Cape Cod brand has been a favourite of mine for years, and the normal version of their salt and vinegar scored an SR in the first installment. But this reduced fat version was powdery and a bit tasteless, and far below the quality of the ‘full fat’ ones. It’s not worth it even considering the lower calories.

365 is the Amazon brand, and while the chips were crispy and not too oily, the taste was terrible and not at all tasting of vinegar. The aftertaste was even worse, and reminded me of gherkin pickling juice. Overall, an awful chip and at the low end of the C’s.

Bowl & Basket is the store brand of Shoprite, which recently closed all its local stores and left our area! While I liked the supermarket in general, these are a very poor chip. They were paper thin to the point they seemed to be 90% oil, and the vinegar taste was excessively acidic. Not worth eating at all, and a very low C.

The shtick with these Dirty chips is they are a bit burned and a bit ugly and a bit like the sort of chips other brands would have removed during the QC step. I’m not a big fan of this, but I won’t deny the chips were crispy and had a good mouthfeel, and the vinegar was adequate if not exceptional. I’m putting them here only because the previous five were so poor, but I think I’m being (too) generous giving these an R.

Things were looking grim after six bags of very poor chips. Thankfully we struck gold as well, and these three SR brands were unique in their own way.

The Hannaford kettle chips specify malt vinegar, but did it make any difference? Yes it absolutely did! The taste of these was the same as the ‘brown vinegar’ of my youth and while initially sweet and moorish, I was shocked by how quickly it ramped up as I shoveled them in my mouth. Very quickly the vinegar burned and I started sweating! Heaven and Hell in a single chip then, and while I’ll never eat them again I won’t hesitate giving them SR.

The Kettle chips are air-fried, and this gave them a very light and airy feel quite different from the usual chip. They were very easy to eat, and as a bonus the vinegar was sweet and delicious. However there was a slight pining for the delicious taste of oil, which keeps them out of the highest rating and solidly SR.

I had been snack deprived the day I tore into the Deep River chips and they were exactly what I needed at that moment. A delicious potato taste in a not-too-greasy chip accompanied by a wonderful and sweet vinegar taste. These are a chip to fill your mouth with and then perhaps regret you ate so many, as I did that day. Regardless, a solid to even perhaps high SR.

I don’t even remember where we bought the Uglies chips, but for whatever reason I was hesitant when we opened them. My caution was unwarranted: they were superb! They were delicious and sweet and just kept going into my mouth with hardly any effort from me. They were perhaps the sweetest chip so far, and they have cemented in my mind that I prefer sweet over bitter and mild over strong. Without doubt, SSR!

Saratoga Chips are a local brand, and rather than wax lyrical I’ll simply paste the notes I took when I ate them: “Godlike. Best so far. The chips turn to joy in your mouth and you could live on them. Easily best so far!” I think you’ll agree such a review is absolutely worth SSR 🙂

That’s an astonishing 27 different brands reviewed so far, and I can say there may still be a few unopened packs in this abode waiting for our taste testing. But what of more exotic brands, perhaps even in distant realms? Let’s hope when we travel we might even find some…

  • Posted in Blog
  • Robert

Review: Riddick Series

  • November 28, 2023

Last week, in order, we watched the 3.5 films in the Riddick series. We’d only ever seen the first one, and were interested in the others. Here’s reviews of all of them.

Pitch Black (2000)

This was a low-budget sci-fi horror film about the survivors of a crashed spaceship fighting for their lives against a legion of alien predators on an otherwise barren planet. As the name suggests, the film is very dark and this is doubly integral to the plot: the aliens only ‘come out at night’ and the antihero can see in the dark.

His name is Riddick, and he is played by a young Vin Diesel. He’s a villian and murderer, and for this reason there’s initially tension between him and the other survivors. Ultimately his martial skills and unusual vision make him invaluable to their survival, and a truce is formed.

The film is obviously inspired by Aliens but weaves a unique story of its own, and despite some dated visuals (especially use of colour grading) holds up fairly well. It’s not a great (or even good?) film, but it’s fun to watch.

The standout of course is Vin Diesel, who has strong charisma in the role of an (objectively) awful person, and very much carries the film. Pitch Black was a success and made a lot of money, and when it came time for a sequel it was obvious which way the story would go…

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004)

This was a direct-to-DVD short animated film spanning the time between Pitch Black and the sequel. It was directed by Peter Cheung (famous for Aeon Flux) and Vin Diesel returned to voice Riddick.

The story is simple and not at all required to understand the film sequel, and I found this animated interlude a little unpleasant due to the grotesque art style. Completely skippable!

The Chronicles Of Riddick (2004)

Set five years after Pitch Black, this sequel focuses on Riddick as he becomes involved in a plot to destroy a planet. The story is absolutely bonkers, and includes grand space battles, an evil empire called ‘The Necromongers’, magical beings called Elementals and all sorts of weird elements such as ‘the Underverse’.

We learn more of Riddick as well, including the fact he’s maybe not so bad after all. It turns out he’s one of the last remaining ‘Furyans’ and has superhuman abilities and mystical powers that may help wipe out the Necromongers. The film keeps throwing stuff at you hoping it sticks, and even when it doesn’t you won’t care because it’s always visually interesting (it here’s a strong Warhammer 40k vibe). Once again Vin Diesel’s weird charisma steals every scene he’s in.

Somehow they got Judi Dench and a young Karl Urban in this. There’s creepy alien dog things, many crazy fight scenes and one of the most insane endings you’ll see. The budget was obviously much bigger than Pitch Black, but for all its bombast the film underperformed and almost killed the nascent franchise.

We never saw this when it came out, but we thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s crazy and silly and very guilty of adding plot elements without any hint of explanation, but it’s also a lot of fun. The best film in this series and very much worth a watch!

Riddick (2013)

Nine years later Vin Diesel had become a megastar due to the Fast & The Furious franchise and the franchise holders decided to return once again to this series. But the budget was scaled back and the studio wanted a film more like Pitch Black and less like Chronicles Of Riddick.

What they made was a sort-of Pitch Black remake, only now the nocturnal aliens are replaced with weird scorpion-things. There’s a very lengthy setup sequence of Riddick being marooned on a planet (and befriending an alien jackal!) before mercenaries turn up to catch him only for all hell to break loose when hordes of the creatures attack.

It’s a well paced film – even if it feels like two – and for its lowish budget I thought the special effects (solidly in CGI territory now) were very good. There’s some decent acting from the mercenaries, including one that has become famous in recent years in a Star Wars show, but once again Vin Diesel steals the show. This is a much better film than Pitch Black, but not quite reaching the enjoyable lunacy of The Chronicles Of Riddick, and I think it’s worth your time.

And so – perhaps to our surprise – we thoroughly enjoyed this somewhat overlooked series! Despite very lengthy gaps between the films they tell a more or less consistent story, and the more we learned about Riddick the more we wanted to learn. There’s still many questions, about the Furyans and Necromongers, and it feels like this is a story that can continue.

So it’s perhaps good to know there’s another sequel on the way, likely to be released a dozen years (or more) after the last one. And with the working title of Riddick IV: Furya maybe we’ll finally get some answers to the true past (and future?) of this fellow Riddick? Let’s hope so.

Autographs: Musicians

  • November 24, 2023

In compiling these entries, I’ve often thought about whether there are any other autographs I’d like to own. It’s an interesting question, because while I consider them novelties I have far less attachment to our autographs than many of our other possessions. Would I value another any more?

Assuming I did, my first choice would be original art, such as a signed work from Frazetta or a mangaka. Theres also certain musicians like David Bowie or Nick Cave that I wouldn’t mind owning an autograph of, especially if it was on one of my favourite records.

Todays entry showcases our autographs of goths and pop stars and ‘genderbenders’ and alternative icons: Musicians. Not one of these did we obtain ourselves, but we’re fairly sure they are all authentic, and a few have somewhat unusual provenance.

This is Dreamscapes, a multi-CD box set released by Alphaville many years ago. As you can see I have one of the earliest, autographed, versions. The signatures are of Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd, the two most important members of the band. Interestingly this CD set is very rare and expensive these days. I’ll never sell mine.

Many years ago, shortly after I moved to the USA, we stopped in an unremarkable record shop (remember those?) in Utica, NY and we’re astonished to find two autographed Fields Of The Nephilim albums just sitting in the racks. They weren’t expensive at all, and we snapped them up quickly. Both are promos, and are autographed by four of the five members around the time of the release of these records. Here’s a detail of Carl McCoy’s autograph:

As you can see they were done in a non-permanent marker (although it’s long since permanent) and smudged a bit. Compared to other examples from the era I’ve seen online I’m fairly sure these are authentic, but it’s a real curiosity how they ended up there and how the shop didn’t even seem to know what they had. Given FoTN is the band that caused Kristin and I to meet, this was quite a find!

Speaking of autographed records, here’s a fully autographed copy of Black Celebration by Depeche Mode. This was Kristin’s since she was a teen, and was obtained for her by a friend in England (who bought it at a record shop after the band made an appearance). The autographs on it are spectacular and a quick search online suggests this could be a fairly valuable item.

Speaking of this record, here’s a photo of the back:

Now you know where the line at the top of my blog comes from!

The above is Pete Burns autograph, again obtained for Kristin by her British friend. This one was obtained in person, and cleverly it’s on the back of a Pete Burns postcard! If you don’t know he was the lead singer of Dead or Alive, and passed away some years ago.

Lastly, here is another contender for our most famous autograph: Boy George! A big, beautiful signature worthy of the artist in his prime, this one was also obtained in person by Kristin’s friend (the mind boggles what his personal collection was like), and is on a page torn from Smash Hits magazine!

There’s also another celebrity autograph somewhere in this house, although try as I could I wasn’t able to find it. The signer in question is Green Gartside (aka Scritti Politti), and KLS obtained the autograph herself on an airplane napkin when she flew from England back to the USA 1985. She had spotted him boarding the plane, and wandered up to first class to ask for his autograph!

And thus ends this five day showcase of our autograph ‘collection’. It was a lot of fun to compile these, and we learned that we had many more autographs than we thought. But in addition to the few I mentioned this week, I still think there may be others forgotten and hidden away somewhere in this house. If I ever unearth any, you can expect an addendum followup one day 🙂