"Taste of Home" Restaurant a Creepy Hit

ollowing the unexpected and largely unwelcome success of the country’s first cereal-only restaurant in Philadelphia, in which patrons can curl up in their pajamas and dine on a wide array of breakfast cereals while watching television and reading the paper, a troubling assortment of novelty theme restaurants have popped up across the country over the last year. From Albany’s “Nothing But Napkins� to Baton Rouge’s “Leftovers, Inc.�, theme restaurants are the current toast of the town, and not just Albuquerque’s “Toast Town.� Perhaps the most disturbing of these is Houston, Texas’ “Taste of Home,� an existential crisis of a theme restaurant that recreates the experience of sharing a meal with your apathetic, abusive parents using the magic of animatronics.

Inside the restaurant, patrons sit at a single huge, oversized table on giant chairs, recreating the experience of childhood dining, while a giant animatronic robot mother and father bicker bitterly over family finances. The food is, true to form, largely tasteless and occasionally burnt, depending on whether or not that night’s “show� includes one of the robot mother’s trademark boozy crying jags while food burns on the stove.

Though the restaurant’s menu is starkly limited—you’ll eat what you get and like it, according to the robot father’s genuinely menacing aside—patrons can plan their visits around their favorite entrees, since a strict meal rotation is in place due to the “family’s� tight finances and father’s inability to humble himself by asking for a raise at work. Sunday nights, diners can thrill to pork chops and apple sauce, while Monday nights are for Spam on toast and Tuesdays feature baked chicken. Wednesday is casserole night; Thursday is fish, and Friday night the restaurant orders in pizza from a local pizzeria. Saturday nights the animatronic parents are often absent, and diners have to fend for themselves among the half-empty cereal boxes and bags of flour left over in the kitchen. For that reason, the commune cannot recommend visiting “Taste of Home� on a Saturday, unless both you and your date are on a diet.

Though the experience might sound grim to some, it does serve as a strange sort of childhood therapy to others, not unlike a trip to Arby’s. And a strange sort of camaraderie does develop at the restaurant’s one large table, as patrons compare notes on what might be in the casserole and provide each other comfort when father flies into one of his dramatic, table-shaking rages. The restaurant also features the world’s only black and white big screen TV, though patrons are advised not to attempt changing the channel or questioning father’s viewing choices. But the warm, conversation-killing glow of television (usually tuned to auto racing or a boxing match) does serve to masterfully complete the restaurant’s ambiance.

Regardless of these positives, however, the commune must recommend skipping out before the meal’s dessert course, lest you find yourself stuck there half the night washing the restaurant’s giant, oversized dishes.

Readers interested in experiencing the restaurant for themselves while visiting the Houston area can call 1-555-EAT-HOME to let them know when you’ll be home for dinner, though we do strongly recommend against calling collect.

ormerly Canadian funnyman Jim Carrey surprised the easily-removed pants off of Hollywood this week with the revelation that burnout poster boy and O.J. trial superstar Kato Kaelin never actually existed, and was merely one of Carrey’s comedic creations. The news of this unprecedented ten-year hoax has left the world shocked, stunned, and shockastunnated.

The ditzy, bleached-blonde Kaelin shot from freeloading, couch-sleeping obscurity in 1994 after his wealthy patron, former football great Orenthal James “Breaking Up is Hard to Do� Simpson, murdered the hell out of his ex-wife Nichole and a helpful neighborhood waiter. Called upon to testify in the hit trial that followed, Kato captured the hearts of Americans everywhere with his surfer boy antics and vacuous charm. Few then anticipated that the inevitable breakup would come this hard, or this ten years laterly.

Testifying in an unrelated trial this week, Carrey claimed that he couldn’t have stolen Al Jolsen’s “ass-talking moron� bit since he was sleeping on O.J. Simpson’s couch the week Jolsen’s grave was robbed in 1994, which led to the unraveling of a raveled-up tale of confusing hoodwinkery the likes of which the world had not seen since that funny movie where the kids try to get their divorced parents back together through devious guile.

According to Carrey’s testimony, leaked to the press through a conveniently left-open window, he first developed the Kato character for the sketch comedy show In Living Color in 1992, but was rejected on the grounds that he was too creepy and that Keanu Reeves had already been doing him for thirty years. Undeterred, Carrey continued to develop the character independently, naming him Kato after a mistaken memory of the 70’s television program Kung Fu (whose main character was named Caine) and following the lead of his hero Andy Kaufman by traveling around Hollywood in-character as Kato during 1993.

Hoping to eventually spin the character into a series of Kaelin-centered gross out comedies, starting with the Yuletide fun of Kato Saves Kristmas, Carrey eventually found lodging with ex-footballer Simpson by a stroke of luck, since the Simpsons needed an unreliable layabout to watch their kids while they were off being rich. Not long after, Carrey was caught in a dilly of a pickle when Simpson decapitated his ex-wife and “Kato Kaelin� was called upon to testify.

Rather than paint his own career with the sickly stink of O.J. trial faddery, Carrey opted to ride that lightning for all it was worth, and the rest of the story went down in Access Hollywood history.

“This whole thing just got terribly out of hand,� mock-sobbed a repentant Carrey on the witness stand, barely stifling a serious case of the giggles.

While the possibility for a punishment for Carrey has been discussed, including a sentence requiring the comedic actor to write “I WILL NOT MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM� 10,000 times on the courthouse chalk board, the consensus seems to be that many in the legal profession remain enamored of Carrey and his zany antics, and their fondness for his work in 1997’s Liar Liar may likely override any calls for indictments on perjury or impersonating a bonehead.

Ordinary Americans have yet to prove so forgiving. In the wake of the news’ breakery, angry consumers returned thousands of dollars of Kato Kaelin merchandise to stores, demanding refunds or at least a nickel off on that poster of the Madonna-Britney Spears lesbo kiss.

Strangest of all has been the reaction of Brian “Kato� Kaelin’s parents, who just this week finally calmed down from the O.J. hysteria enough to realize they’d never had a son.

But most visibly-upset has been Simpson himself, who in a televised interview from his Florida tax shelter Saturday expressed his deep feeling of hurt at his freeloader’s betrayal, and called for the courts to award $33 million in compensatory damages for his hurtedness, made payable to Fred Goldman.

Talk about your shitty weekends. I've heard of Tijuana coke mule vacations that went better than this. What can go wrong at a parade, right? Try everything.

It all started out well enough. Nice day, sun's out, chicks in majorette outfits, right? Sweet. Couple of brewskies with the guys, taking in the sights. Families are out with their kids, which is always a sweet reminder that you're not saddled with any little snot goblins of your own. Old people there too, reminding you how great it is not to be them. Could have been the perfect day. Then this fucking clown shows up and it all goes to hell.

For the record: Sure, I was making fun of his poofy pink hair and all that, but ain't those dudes supposed to be all jolly and shit? Not this guy. As soon as I started clowning on his tired purple dot pants, that freakshow flew into a berserk clown rage. That dude went all postal clown on my ass. I'm telling you, this was one clown who wasn't secure in his sexuality.

It's not like I've never had my ass kicked before. Meter maids, mailmen, Tommy Frithy's auntie May—they all know how to bring it. But this clown was something different. Normally when I'm getting my dork kicked in, eventually my pathetic screams are enough to make the assailant lay off for a sec, at least long enough for me to grab the fender of a passing car and be dragged to safety. But not this clown. That dude was enjoying this shit.

I'd be at the pearly gates right now, explaining to Saint Peter why I had a big floppy shoe stuck up my ass if it weren't for that ice cream truck that rolled up on Mr. Clown right as he was about to take his belt off. Thank God that clown had a weakness for Dilly bars, that's all I can say. While he was two-fisting those motherfuckers like some kind of refugee fresh out of an ice creamless desert, I managed to drag my broken ass over to an open manhole and flop down inside. By the time he realized where I'd gone it was too late—no way was he going to risk getting his big pink afro-wig wet down in that sewer.

And by the way, thanks for standing up for me, guys. I don't know what was worse, having a big overweight clown miming anal intercourse with my limp, bleeding body in the middle of the street, or having to hear you guys cracking up and making catcalls the whole time. I might have even forgiven that indignity if you guys hadn't taken the clown out for drinks afterwards. I guess I know what kind of friends I've got. The "for shit" variety.

And to add insult to injury and total humiliation, now the city's suing my ass for ruining the parade. And I keep getting letters from some jackass who says his kid is afraid of clowns now, thanks to me. But you won't believe the fucking topper of them all. That fucking clown himself sent me a scary-assed postcard the other day, with a menacing picture of himself on the front and a smear of my own blood on the back.

When I find out which one of you jokers gave him my address, you're gonna taste my cane, bitch.

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