Tag Archives: Teutul

What’s in a name? Plenty.

22 Mar

March 22, 2102

Those of you who read my first Celebrity Apprentice Recap will recall that the challenge was to sell the most sandwiches at a Café Metro location. Café Metro is a place where I take out food fairly regularly. In addition to pretty good sandwiches and entrees they make amazing salads, fresh, right in front of you, with almost any ingredient you can think of. But enough of that, this is not going to be a free ad for Café Metro. In fact, part two of this blog will demonstrate just how little they want my business.

As I said, I am a semi-regular at the Café Metro near the Company I Am employed by. The day after that episode of The Apprentice aired I was standing at the register and looking at a video screen they have mounted in front of the counter and of course it was showing highlights of the show and behind the scenes photos taken during the shoot at Café Metro. So who do I come face to face with, so to speak? Paul Teutul Senior, looking straight at me. Anyone who follows The American Chopper Weekly Rundown will know that being face to face with Paul Senior is not on my list of Top Ten things to do at lunch. But at least the salad was good.

Café Metro is not the only place to eat around where I work. A few blocks away is a slightly seedy place called Metrocafe. Metrocafe is a bit of a dump but it has an A rating from Mayor Bloomberg’s vaunted food regulators so it has to be good, right? Right? Anyway, they sell pizza in the front and upstairs they have a hot food counter. The pizza is passable if a little bland and the hot food is edible. There is a ton of foot traffic where I work so there is more than enough business for this place and the other 20 or 30 restaurants located within a few square blocks.

I was in the Metrocafe eating some bland pizza for lunch one day with Saarah when she asked “Isn’t the salad place named the Metrocafe? I was thinking the same thing. In fact, I was sure they had the same name but looking around at the cramped, old, and honestly dirty pizzeria I was sure there had to be no connection between the two. How could this be a part of the same clean chain we saw on TV and I see in person every day? It could not and the next day when I saw that the name of the salad place was not Metrocafe but Café Metro you can understand the dawn of realization that spread over my brain.

Obviously the Metrocafe is treading on the good name of the Café Metro. The similarities end there, however, as one place is clean and has good food and the other is the Metrocafe.

Now, much as I would like to stop here while the story makes sense I cannot. There is a third contender in the culinary obfuscation race, and sadly it is my own office building. We have a world class cafeteria (which for some reason we tend to ignore in favor of gas station food) in our back pocket and it was not until just this week when I was pondering the Café Metro/Metrocafe nonsense that I noticed that our cafeteria is called The Metro Café.

So we have:
The Metro Café in my building.
The Café Metro across the plaza.
The Metrocafe a couple of blocks away near the other end of the plaza.

I have to assume that I have simply not yet stumbled across the Cafemetro, which is the last combination left unused above.

Clearly, the Café Metro has a good name which they are failing to defend properly. But that is no surprise since they did so little to get my business in the first place and even tried to drive me away.

And all over a discount card.

To Be Continued
(But Not Tomorrow)

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American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior: Drastic Steps

19 Mar

March 19, 2012

American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior
Drastic Step
Mikey launches a “Fill the Diaper” fundraising campaign for March of Dimes, OCC starts an eco-friendly build for CIMA Green and PJD unveils the March of Dimes bike. Meanwhile, Senior takes bold steps to reunite with his sons.

The tease this week is that Senior appears, unannounced at Paulie’s house (who appears to not be home) and then he pops up at Mikey’s (snicker) “art” studio. It is the OCC version of Where’s Waldo?

PJD’s purple March of Dimes bike build continues. And I seriously mean purple. So far, it is solid purple. It is a nice purple, but so far, nothing but purple and chrome. As Paulie says, it is all up to Nub and how he designs the tins.

OCC is building a bike for a biofuel company and they take a tour of the factory where soy bean and vegetable oil gets turned into diesel. Bikes running on biodiesel smell like french fries. Literally. The exhaust smells like french fries. I’ve complained in the past that Jason didn’t go on these tours but there he was this week, drinking smelly soy oil.

For The March of Dimes, Mikey has come up with some sort of “fill the diaper” challenge. Mikey’s huge, legally blind personal assistant was there this week, carrying a sign and standing much closer to the edge of the road than a legally blind man should be. So what was the “fill the diaper” challenge? Mikey stood my the side of a road with a diaper in a bucket and screamed at passing cars to toss in some cash. That was it.

“We resonated the echo of what people need to hear down the line.” -Mikey, describing a good days work. Huh?

Why isn’t Mikey auctioning off some of his art for charity? I asked Mr Allen Keyes, watching with me this week, and he replied “because nobody would buy that shit.” Mikey, BTW, with shorter hair and a shorter beard, looked pretty much presentable this week.

Paulie and Mikey are being interviewed by The March of Dimes newsletter for their website, and of course they were asked about Paul Sr. “He’s got a real poison sort of mentality.” -Mikey, talking about his father.

“The problem doesn’t lie within us. We are not the ones perpetuating the hatred.” -Paulie, taking the blame off himself and Mikey. “He’s always the victim. That’s his mentality.”

Over at OCC, Jason has, for some reason, named the twin CIMA bikes. One is Sally, the other is as yet unnamed.  The bikes will be mostly green since the company is CIMA Green. Mike pointed out that the bikes will have turn signals and be street legal and EPA compliant in all fifty states. That is worth noting. When was the last time you saw an OCC bike that had turn signals?

OCC bought a fender this week for $1,000 and it was too small for the wheels. Rick offered to make another fender. Senior explained that OCC was under a time crunch which is why they bought a fender rather than making it. I think OCC buying a fender is a cheat. In the end, they compromised and modified a stock fender. Same with the tank- not an original OCC part.

Nub showed up with Paulie’s March of Dimes tins and Nub knows his stuff. He used various tones of purple and a lot of silver. Nice job.There was some drama with a plug fused into the socket on the bottom of the tank which had to be drilled out but it all turned out well in the end.

Speaking of all turns out well in the end, at 9:39 the show finally got to what it promised, with Senior driving over to Paulie’s house. As noted earlier, Paulie wasn’t home. “BLEEP,” Senior said. “BLEEP.” Where was Paulie? Filming an American Chopper special in Florida, according to the bumper. How edited is this show? How far apart in tine are the March of Dimes build and Paulie visiting his son’s house? The show makes it appear like they are concurrent events but you have to wonder if they are days or even weeks apart. The show is filmed for a certain amount of weeks, then they are edited down into separate episodes. How much mixing and matching across time do they do when creating each “reality” show?

After the break we are back at PJD working on the March of Dimes bike. We have apparently also traveled back in time. either that or he got back from Florida really fast.

Cut to the future, where Senior is telling his wife he just came back from his son’s house. Senior liked Paulie’s dogs.

His next move is to go to Mikey’s studio and donate some money for The March of Dimes. “I’m gonna walk in there, ask him how he’s doing, and give him a bunch of money for the March of Dimes… Here, how are ya, here’s some money for The March of Dimes.” Does he do it? How does it go? I don’t know yet. It is commercial time.

9:52, back from commercial, and Senior drives over to Mikey’s gallery. Guess what? It isn’t open! Mikey isn’t there. “I guess I’m striking out.”

Amazingly anticlimactic.

NEXT WEEK: Muscle Car Special.  Junior builds a muscle car.

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