Cool Jerk...

So yesterday I'm wandering around Chinatown with my girl and some friends, and we walk past this place called Chinatown No. 1 Jerky or something like that, and I sloooooooooowly walk past the window like a kid walking past a chocolate store, before finally passing it. And I stop. And I debate amongst my selves as to whether I take my broke ass in there and buy some jerky. Because. I am a mark for jerky. But I am also one broke S.O.B.

I've liked beef jerky forever. And like a lot of jerky aficionados, I started out with the usual - some sort of Slim Jim product. But, as I got to that age when I could travel around, it became fun to seek out regional jerky brands. You never knew what odd flavor combo you might find, or whether you'll find some damned good jerky, or maybe something nasty that tastes like it was run over by an F-150 pickup truck and left on the road for a week.

Probably my favorite jerky when I can get it is Rosie's Beef Jerky, out of Vermont. I used to live in Vermont, and bought it all the time. Then, after I'd moved away, I'd make sure to get a mess of it when I visited. Of course, I could order on-line, but there's something impure to me about ordering jerky on-line.

Once, when I was visiting a friend outside of Detroit, I tried Ted Nugent Gonzo Meat Biltong, which was decent enough, but more interesting for the packaging: a photo illustration of the Motor City Madman himself, straddling a buffalo and proclaiming "I Test Drive All Meat!!"


And finally, of course, all of us who have a "preferred choice" of anything, also have the "preferred settle," that being the option that's more easy to obtain than our preference, but not nearly as ghetto as the rotgut variety (aka, Slim Jim branded anything). In my case, it's Jack Link's.

Jack Link's blows away pretty much any Slim Jim product. Sure it's got MSG in it, and sure it's got lots of other ingredients I can't even pronounce, but for mass-produced, chemical-laden beef jerky, it ain't half bad.

I definitely dig the Jerky Chew, because between the round Skoal tobacco type container, and the fact I can drop some of that beef chew between my teeth-and-gum, I feel pretty goddamned fucking cool, like a cowboy about to lasso up some dawgies.

But of all the Jack Link's products (and that doesn't count the Fully Cooked Ground Beef, something I haven't tried yet, but kind of scares me despite my affinity for dried out meat parts), my preferred poison is the Peppered Beef Jerky, probably just because it's chock full of peppery goodness.

Anyway…I've WAY WAY WAY digressed. I feel like I just did my Master's Thesis on Beef Jerky.

Back to Chinatown for my experience at Chinatown No. 1 Beef Jerky.

So yesterday I'm wearing this really cool t-shirt a friend at a record label hooked me up with. It says "Fuck The World" on the front, and it's kinda got this cool flame motif, somewhere between the worlds of metal and rockabilly.

I walk in, and the man I presume to be the proprietor gets up from his seat, where he's eating what is probably lunch with two fairly attractive Asian women. He greets me at the door, looking every bit like the stereotypical grizzled old American expatriate that seems to exist in every single movie that takes place in Asia.

He's got a silver-grey short-cropped military style haircut. He's got a stocky build, he's wearing a t-shirt with some forgettable logo on it, he's got on cargo shorts, and his feet are clad in sandals.

And most importantly, he's got a scar that runs from about an inch above his eye to an inch below his eye, and that eye is opened slightly wider than the other, and the eyeball itself is a different color from his fellow eyeball.

His jovial greeting of me, while speaking English, slightly inflected with slight Asian accent, doesn't help to dispel the stereotype at all.

"Great shirt man," he says, admiring the flames that adorn it. "That shirt is HOT!"

"Hey," he continues. "Lemme ask you something, because that shirt is so hot it's on fire. Do you set the shirt on fire first, or do you set the ladies on fire first?"

i must admit the question caught me off guard. I was expecting to buy some oyster-flavored beef jerky or something.

"Ummmm," I stammered. "um. Both?"

"No man, you set the ladies on fire first," he explained. "Because if you set the shirt on fire first, the Fire Department's gonna come quick, and ain't no ladies gonna wanna be around you with all that commotion going on."

And with that he pointed at one of the women and snapped his fingers, and she scurried up to the counter to take my order for a 1/2 pound of fruit-flavored beef jerky.