It Came From Chinatown... Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen Edition

Okay, so first thing first, thanks for putting up with me and my bonkers schedule shifting over the last couple of weeks. This has seriously been the most hectic month of May that has ever happened in the history of the everything ever and the fact that I've even been able to blog at all is a minor miracle in and of itself, not to mention proof that I'm pure, uncut awesome imported straight from Bolivia and ready for snorting by the Badass Gods of Badassery, but we all knew that anyway, right? Right??? Did I mention I was in the newspaper?

But anyway, my point is this: Thanks. Now, on to business... the final ICFC! Until we decide to do it again! Which, you never know, could happen at any time! I'm running out of ideas!

Because this is going to be the last of it's kind (for a while), I wanted to do something sort of special. But what? Well, I wasn't too keen on killing an animal or anything like that... we'd tossed around the idea of eating live eels, but I nixed it, not wanting the stink of death all over me... and there was also the issue of neither of us wanting to do just a whole lot work as far as prep and/or cooking was concerned (see: hectic month of May), so... after a fair amount of brainstorming, drinking, more brainstorming while drunk, and finally consulting the fine folks at 1-800-PSYCHIC... we hit upon what can only be described as a Nobel Prize-worthy idea. And it was?

CELEBRITY GUEST!!! Oh shit yeah!!! I mean, I'm a big celebrity now myself, so it makes sense that I should surround myself with others of my kind. And so I made a few calls... reached out to some famous friends and agents and big-shot power players and Hollywood Madames... and I ended up with, if I do say so myself (and I do), quite a coup. Kids, I give you, my new best friend...

JACKIE CHAN!!!



Hey, Jackie Chan! Thanks for agreeing to be on the Season Finale of ICFC. You're truly a man amongst men. And you only cost $1.50! C'mere, you old son of a bitch, give us a cuddle!!!

Jackie Chan just punched me in the mouth. Which I guess I deserved; I get a little "handsy" when I've been drinking. Oh... so much blood... Okay, let's just get on with this... he's looking like he might kick me.

Kiddos, I give you... Jackie Chan Balls:



For serious, I have no idea what these are. None. There's no label... or not one in English, anyway... and the picture on the package shows them only to be vague lumps of white in a bowl. They literally could be anything. And there's every chance that they actually taste like Jackie Chan. Which, hey, maybe he's delicious. I certainly don't know. Yet.

Let's take a look-see at the Jackie Chan Balls in all their glory:



Er... well, that's not really illuminating. Still just lumps of white, but frozen. I'm guessing it's some sort of dumpling, filled with I know not what. Amazing stunts? Drunken boxing? Shrimp? Only one way to find out, I guess. But first, they must be cooked!

But how? Again, no instructions for we non-Chinese. In the end, we decided on boiling. Seemed like the most Jackie Chan-ish thing to do. Or something. Gaze upon the Jackie Chan Balls as they boil:



Admittedly, not that exciting. But neither are most of his movies when he's not all jumping around and kung fu-ing people in the neck. And in this scenario, kung fu-ing people in the neck equals eating the Jackie Chan Balls straight from the pot. Yeah, they're pretty much the same thing.

Hi-YAAAAAA!!!:



Ew. But then, yum! Okay, the outer part... the dough, I guess... is like biting into an eyeball that's wasting away from a broken heart. All squishy and flavorless, all weak-willed and full of sorrow... for some reason, it brings to mind Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven. Or a Victorian fainting couch. Or wilting flowers in a vase full of tears. But... But...

When you get to the center of these downer dumplings, you get...



PEANUT BUTTER!!! Jackie Chan Balls are filled with PEANUT BUTTER!!! Tasty peanut butter, no less. Sweet and a little crunchy, it tastes like your childhood memories of running towards a picnic in a meadow full of all your friends after a Field Day where you won the blue ribbon in the sack race. It's like paging through old photo albums with your Mom... delicious nostalgia wrapped in a blanket of mourning for your lost youth.

Which means the final product of this season's ICFC gets a hearty:



I have to admit, this is not the way I expected to go out. I figured that, at the very least, the thing I ate would try to eat me back. But actually, this is perfect. I should go out on an up note. I've eaten a lot of gross, butt-nasty things in this series... true enough... but that was never my goal. What I set out to do with ICFC was to try new things, hoping that people would follow my example and broaden their own horizons. And by closing this out with something tasty... something that doesn't jump up and down on my gag reflex and make me wish for a bullet to the back of the head... I'm saying that taking a risk with food is totally worth the trouble.

Yep. That was totally my intent. To bring cultural understanding to the masses, that's what I'm all about. I mean, I book deal would have been nice, but whatever.

And so with that, we close the books on ICFC. I hope you've had as much fun as I have. Well, maybe "fun" is stretching it (especially when you consider the durian), but it certainly hasn't been boring.

Gotta give me that.

Say goodbye, JACKIE CHAN!!!!