All Cooks Do Not Smoke and Curse

I've worked in the service industry most my life. From washing dishes, preparing food for my college cafeteria, and working as a server for many years in varying qualities of restaurants, I have seen a good cross-section of the food preparing populace.
45% of food service professionals smoke. It's a high stress job that requires quick decisions and no excuses. If you screw up at your job, someone get sick or goes hungry. Most people do not like to get sick or go hungry, so your performance must be as close to perfect as possible for at least 5 hours straight. Unlike the "glamorous" cooking shown on television, real kitchen work is grueling, thankless, and extremely tiring. If you don't hurt all over and smell like your frying medium and/or bleach at the end of the night, you did something wrong. Nothing gives you a closer or more raw look at this pain than Fox's Hell's Kitchen television program. The cameras stay on the kitchen and give you a face-full of hand-burning, sweaty, white-knuckle action.
While the artists are in their studio, let them do what they please. I applaud Gordon Ramsay for his unflinching honesty. He IS enraged at his amateur cooks ruining his reputation and consuming his more-valuable-than-gold time, and he gives them exactly what they'll get from any sous chef in the world . . . a first-class ass chewing. I take no exception to the anger and emotion that comes out in the super-heated vortex of a busy kitchen under stage lights and the eyes of the nation.
I do, however, get annoyed at the way these people act after they are finished cooking. In all the years I have worked in my various restaurants, you leave your work at work. When the whites and checks come off, you are first and foremost a team. The almost fraternal connection of those in the service industry is universal. You have gone to war together and survived, on a nightly basis. When the TV chefs are finished cooking, not only do they all begin chain-smoking in their apartment, but their dialogue gets lost in a shameful array of expletives. Don't kid yourself. Anyone who knows me knows I am no manners coach. I would not complain at all where it not for the growing perception that ALL cooks act like this after work.
Rather than bash these people, I would simply like to take up the mantle of the protector and assure those of you reading this humble blog that not everyone in the kitchen acts this way. Other shows, like Bravo's Top Chef, are equally to blame for the stereotype. You hear the *bleep* sound effect almost as much as you hear the name of the show. I understand that television and the money at the end of the show are incentives to create drama among the contestants, but to me the show would give them a chance to show how classy they could be under pressure. Those are the people that really last in the service industry. The ones that can stay cool, tell a joke, shrug and stir the rice properly without bursting into tears or chopping their finger off.
Just remember, folks, when you go out to eat for Valentine's Day today . . . not all cooks are like that. Yours is probably a cool-headed, hard working person with an eye for quality and (hopefully) no facial piercings.

Friday the 13th Celebratory Rant - Is Jason a Zombie?

Greetings, all.

Welcome to the first of many very weird blogs that my diseased brain will likely belch in an effort to vent the toxic gases building up within. Our topic for today is a celebration of the upcoming "Friday the 13th" movie (directed by that Michael Bay guy and a bunch of other rip-off artists) on Friday the 13th. How quaint. I would have been more impressed if they had released this movie on Christmas or President's Day. They could have said, "@#$% you, cliche! We deny your public victory!" Sadly, no. We are talking about a man that has made a little over 50% of his movies from crap we saw already.
Here is a handy list for those too lazy to look at all the movies he has made on Wikipedia. These are the movies that are remakes of the original ideas circa 1970-1980.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Amityville Horror
The Island
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
The Hitcher
Transformers
Friday The 13th
The Horsemen
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
A Nightmare on Elm Street

Bonus points if you can guess which of these was actually STOLEN from the original film-maker, who sued the pants off the production studio and won big. HINT: the original was featured on MST3K (Parts: The Clonus Horror). HINT 2: It's The Island.

At any rate, on with the purpose of the blog. As I sit and wait with childlike innocence for my favorite horror movie to be filmed in nausea-inducing shaky-cam and peppered with long, lens-flare looks at the heroine's dirty face, I put my addled brain to considering what the hell Jason Voorhees really is.
As those of you playing the home game will already know, Jason was NOT (repeat) NOT the main villain of Friday the 13th. Chew on that like so much Red Man tobacco and get back to me when you consider the implications of completely changing the villain of a classic movie for expedience. Friday the 13th was a story of a mother that wanted revenge for the death of her child at the hands of irresponsible, debauched camp counselors. It was the fact that, to a point, we could sympathize with Mrs. Pamela Voorhees that made Friday so damn unnerving. Her little boy drowned and she was going to kill anyone who even so much as reminded her of the counselors who were responsible for his death. When, in the second movie, it was revealed that Jason himself was not only alive but a total bad-ass, we were given pause to consider what the hell happened. In truth, it was the 80s film industry furiously churning out horror films in an effort to make money off of the ballooning interest in thrillers (no doubt caused by Michael Jackson).
When the next 26 movies came out (exaggeration purposeful, I know there have been 10 Friday the 13th movies, one Jason vs. Freddy crossover, and this new one makes 12), I was delighted. Jason just would not go down. After every blood-soaked, more and more violent and less and less plot-driven movie, I found myself slavering for the next gory masterpiece.
After all, these movies had the three things that make horror movies perfect: gratuitous nudity, hyper-realistic violence, and a villain that has absolutely no redeeming qualities. You CAN'T love Jason unless you are mentally ill (like me). He never even has a real line (ignore the flashbacks, just like I did).
So we know Jason was a little boy, and that he had a mother. In some versions of the movie, he was a mentally challenged child. Most of the movies agree that he drowned in Crystal Lake. Some movies have him drowning rather innocently when the counselors were more than 50 feet away, but unable to hear his struggling cries. Other movies ramp up the repulsion toward the counselors, showing them taking drugs and rutting like rabbits while Jason drowns in plain sight.
At least one movie has Jason being maliciously killed by the kids at the camp while the counselors took an R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket approach, hoping that the good-natured torture would cure him of his genetic malfunction. I like the first version. The counselors where stupid kids themselves, and Jason's mother was psychotic. That makes the whole series more brutal.
So little Jason drowned by hook or crook and wound up dead . . . or not. Whatever. Not detered, he rose from the "dead" in Part 2, setting out to kill people for no good reason. No, revenge for Mom is not a good reason. It's just an ordinary reason when you're dead. At this point, Jason is little more than a big, strong freak of nature. He's tough, quiet, and he wears a ridiculous flour sack on his head (the mask came in part III, home game players). He kills people with whatever is lying around in whatever spot he happens to find them. As with many of the early movies, he's not a stalker yet. He's just like an open bear trap. You step in the wrong spot and *bang* life sucks for you. He moves around at a normal pace, and even rushes from place to place on occasion. He might as well be Michael Meyers, Leatherface, or any other lunch-box slasher film killer of the early 1980s.
It's what happens to Jason after the hilariously named Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (4 of 12) that makes me wonder. SPOILER ALERT: He takes an axe to the @#$%ing head. That makes you officially dead. I know that Phineas Gage lived a long life with a railroad tie in his head, but that is a 100% freak occurrence. Now I am convinced that some dark force animates Jason. When he is shocked back to life in the again hilariously named Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, he gains full fledged monster status. His movies are no longer slasher films and are now monster movies (a la A Nightmare on Elm Street). We will be referring to this "Super Zombie" Jason going forward.
Now we see that our old buddy, Jason Voorhees (now routinely played by the massive, hulking Kane Hodder) is unnecessarily huge, stronger than 10 gorillas, and will always trade "up" to a machete when given the chance, as if Craftsman outdoor products had endorsed him. The trade-off includes maggot-eaten, hideously scarred flesh and the inability to move faster than a brisk mall-walk. Pokey-slow, rotting Jason is now approaching zombie status.
The only facts preventing his rise to the King of All Zombies awards platform is the fact that he does not eat flesh/brains, does not moan, and is not particularly vulnerable to head-shots (see above). Apparently, his one true weakness is being chained up in Crystal Lake to simulate his "drowning". Since he didn't actually drown according to canon, this is lame. Jason is otherwise completely without fear of bodily injury, cannot be reasoned with, and has no goals other than to smash cheerleaders against trees while they are still in their sleeping bags. Since he was killed so many times and brought back to life by something as simple as an electrical cable or as complex as his black, hell-spawned heart being passed from one victim to another. He was even dissolved in toxic waste in his one and only trip abroad (good old NYC, always making with the toxic waste at appropriate times to kill masked monsters or spawn ninja turtles).
If we take a step back and look at the evidence, Jason is a fine example of a slow moving, invincible killing machine. That is certainly zombie territory. The only thing that makes a zombie cooler is the simple fact that they are never alone. If there were an army of Jasons, that would not only make the greatest movie of all time, it would redefine the zombie genre forever.
I guess what I'm saying is I want an army of Jason Voorhees clones. Get to work, Danny Boyle.

Enjoy Friday the 13th on Friday the 13th!

Regards, Aaron