Buhchichala Reviews - People I Know

Sometimes you look around your crowded, busy life and wonder "is there any way I can communicate how I feel about certain people to a wider audience?" The answer is yes. Since there is no yelp for people, I will be reviewing some of my favorites here.

Elyse is my sister. She is 25 years old. She has at times been quite rotten. When we were little, she stabbed me in the head with the point of a drafting compass. She has her MS in geoscience, and is really into science on the whole. She doesn't wash her hands enough. She had pink hair for about two years and it was really very pink indeed.  She likes to make pasta with chicken and cheese, and is quite invested in cheese in general. She has an entire pokemon game filled with pokemon named after foods.  Recently, she watched a show about breakfast burritos because our mother thought it would interest her.  Daddy says she's using up all the bandwidth. Onions make her very sick. She makes really good faces in pictures and her butt is hilarious. Over the course of our childhood, I have racked up 35 free hits at her, based on times she hit me that went unanswered. She used to tell me I came from "Planet Mommy's Bellybutton." Her first word was He-man. She was an early reader which made it really easy for her to tell me things were hers alone when they were addressed to both of us. 
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 cheez-its. Generally a very good person. I would recommend Elyse to anyone.

Carl is Elyse's romantic interest. He is very, very easy to draw. He is the closest thing you will find to a real-life version of Doug Funnie on this or any planet. He far out-ranks several fictional Carls, including Carl, Carl, and Carl, but is sadly out-done by Carl. Carl is very active. He enjoys hiking, biking, skiing, and swimming. Whenever Carl takes part in athletic activity, he wears the appropriate safety equipment. As safety-conscious as he is, Carl manages to get hurt on a pretty regular basis. Carl totally shreds on guitar and is in a metal band called "Hear No Whisper." I have no idea what they sound like, but there's probably a lot of sweet licks and kickin' riffs.  Carl struggles to understand his place in the universe. Carl thinks about the Big Questions. When he was little, he was frightened by some monster trucks. The other day, Carl handily used a splash bomb from our pool to make it look like his brother had wet his pants, and we were all very impressed. One time Elyse accidentally pulled Carl's pants down while we were playing a game of "Everyone Hit Carl Now" and I saw his butt :( 
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 Antarcticas. Sometimes Carl is very frustrated, and it can make him hard to communicate with. Generally understandable and very easy to draw.

Irene is my mother. She likes UFO and Ghost programs. She is an author published in Women's Fiction. She went to three different proms when she was younger. She was very successful with the fellas and didn't settle down with my dad until she was in her late 20s. Her default mode of communication is shouting, which can be a bit of a shock for some people. She is absolutely useless when it comes to computers, but manages to maintain two blogs, a personal and professional facebook page, and participates in several email loops. Having battled serious medical problems non-stop over the past few years, my mother has a bunch of worries and fears and scars and every time she gets behind the wheel of a car or takes a step without her cane, she is performing an incredible act of bravery. She is peculiarly afraid of buttons and allergic to cats. She likes to come in my room to see if I have any snacks, which I usually share with her. I have some peanut butter cups now but that's it, ma. She wishes I would draw prettier things. She can't reach anything in the kitchen, but makes incredible smothered pork chops.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 flying saucers. Has trouble with modern life. Not recommended for households with cats or small children. 

Herb is my father. He has really shiny, healthy hair and a very well-groomed mustache and beard. He has invisible eyebrows and wears Hawaiian shirts pretty much full-time. He is retired but spent decades working for the county in traffic and safety services. His retirment party had really good food. He is currently the finance officer of our local American Legion post, and no one ever believes he's as old as he is. He has spent the last 40 or so years with a lot of hearing loss, and is having trouble adjusting to how loud the world is when his hearing aids are in. He looks remarkably like the Muppet Sweetums, especially when he takes his teeth out.  He is very inconsistent as to whether he thinks farts are funny or not. Whenever he farts, they're hilarious, but whenever I fart, suddenly it's a problem. He has had several pairs of aviator-styled glasses over time, and when home can usually be found with a toothpick in his mouth. Sometimes my breath smells like him and it startles me. He has a song, or at least a line of a song, for every occasion, and the look of bewildered disgust that came across his face when he heard the Kid Rock song that sampled both "Werewolves of London" and "Sweet Home Alabama" was staggeringly beautiful.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 traffic lights. Unpredictable in the kitchen and sometimes difficult to read. Enjoys TV court shows. Impressive-looking and highly sought-after.

Anne is my grandmother on my mother's side. She is 91 years old and quite good with the computer. If you're lucky, she'll be your facebook friend--as long as you don't say "fuck". She likes to play solitaire with tiny playing cards, enjoys jigsaw and crossword puzzles, and loves to eat fried chicken with the skin picked off.  She will eat pretty much anything, and knows how to make a meal stretch. I don't get why she calls fanta "lanta" every time, but whatever she calls it, she makes sure to have plenty of it in her house so I always have something nice to drink.  Once you enter her home, you are going to be offered food. Sometimes, that food is potted meat, and you try it because your sneaky grandmother wanted to see if anyone would eat that crap.  She has the same hairstyle and glasses as the Queen of England, although her wardrobe is much less extensive. When I was really young, she inherited some unopened packages of underwear from another old lady who had died. She gave them to me. They never felt right. She paid a scalper fifty bucks to get the Beanie Baby "Princess" for my sister and me. We kept them in little clear acrylic cases. She knows a lot about how to be an adult. She can always open the produce bags at the grocery store, and can get deodorant off of a shirt with a balled-up stocking. She likes to go to the dollar store and the chinese buffet.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 folksy stuffed-potato crafts. Gramma has adapted well to the digital age and is very enjoyable company. I would definitely recommend her to all of my friends. 

Alistaire is a tiny-mouthed tough-guy I met on the internet. We first bonded over a mutual appreciation for making Oscar Wilde look absolutely horrible, and became immediate friends. When I say immediate, I mean immediate. Never before in my life had I met someone I instantly wanted to spend all of my time with and tell all of my embarrassing stories to before Alistaire. The very first time we talked on instant messenger, I told him about the time when I was a toddler that I puked in the Wizard of Oz popcorn tin and crapped myself simultaneously (note: the puking and crapping were simultaneous, not the telling and crapping.) We operate rather well as a single unit, and have co-owned a sweater. We have taken some spectacularly hideous photographs together, and have smelled some of the worst smells in the world in each other's company. Alistaire has a tattoo of old-timey Pete from "Steamboat Willie" on his arm, and I watched while he got it. It looked like it hurt, but he was really good about it. We like to sit on the same side of the table and make up people that could conceivably exist. We like to sit in general. One time, we were hanging out near a Duane Reade and someone was disgusted by the sight of us.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 spooky bats. Great customer service and convenient business hours. If you're in the neighborhood, DEFINITELY check this one out!

Nancy is Alistaire's mother. She is incredibly glamorous. Her decorating sense is impeccable and her bile fascination with clowns has lead to many a strange drawing. Always down for a fart joke, "Pantz" is a very good sport for allowing me as a guest in her home. She has a knack for photographing the hoverounds and weirdos she finds in front of her house. Living across the street from a National Historic Site, she gets plenty of chances to snap pictures of bizarre shit. She is extremely well-organized and is equipped with a fantastic memory. She has a way of making things work that is absolutely uncanny. She's met influential people. Has worked at an amusement park, Lego land, and an aquarium. No matter what the style, she always has perfect hair. I cannot fathom how one person becomes so glamorous, but she is really working it. If I seem hung up on how glamorous she is, it's only because she is exceptionally glamorous and only a fool wouldn't notice. She does an eerily good impression of a witch.  She is a cat person, and her one of her current cats, Charz, is likely one of the best animals on the planet. I once mailed a horrible thing to their house and she took pictures, posing it with a Mountie. She has a lot of parents.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 Barbie shoes. Very professional, with a relaxed atmosphere. Stylish and chic, a definite must-see!

Remy is actually named Nora! That's the first surprise! I met Remy on Neopets in my first week of college. She recruited me to join her guild, which was a bustling group of kids from all sorts of different places who likes to be weird on the internet. She totally told me she was 15 when we started talking but as we got to be friends, she confessed to actually being 12, which is the second surprise. I have seen her go through some really tough crap, like what to do when you're stuck in a failing school system and how scary it can be when your parents are behaving badly. Remy has made smart decisions to get her life in the right direction, even as she moves all the way from California to Rhode Island TWICE in the past year. Remy has been remarkably brave and super mature for a long time, and has been as good a friend and support to me as any. Remy has also drawn the single funniest Machoke in history. Remy is always up for watching bizarre nostalgic crap with me, and really likes shows with cars in them.  Her hair is currently pink, which looks really cool and in these reviews you get a lot of points for cool hair. Remy had a snake named Lemmie and he was really neat but I have no idea what happened to him. Recently, Remy has been back in California, keeping some baby skunks company and making soap. 
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 :/ emoticons. Clean, easy-to-use, with great online-support. Out of the nearly 7 billion people on this planet, this one is Remy.

The Classiest Possible Thing

When I was a kid, they made a special, fancy, grown-up Lunchable with special, fancy, grown-up foods in it, like wet, floppy, turkey discs, mustard, and whole-wheat crackers. This was food for mature adults with mature adult palates. These Lunchables had napkins in them. These Lunchables were deluxe. These Lunchables came with an Andes Mint.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Andes Mints, they are dark chocolate pieces with a sliver of creme de menthe in the center. They are the classiest, most grown-up candy imaginable. Adults, who have outgrown the taste for overly sugary desserts, who read chapter books and are allowed to write in pen, adults who vote and drive and order soda at a restaurant--they are the lucky few who can partake of Andes Mints. Due to their hallowed place as a palate-cleansing, breath-freshening treat in the Deluxe Lunchables for Very Important Adults, they cemented themselves as the single most mature, special, luxury food in my mind. Andes Mints were for the jet-setters, the VIPs, real high society folks. They were not for me.

I would legitimately pray to be given an Andes Mint. If I were to be trusted with an Andes Mint, I would be welcomed to the world of culture with open arms, acknowledged as a true sophisticate. Every time my mother or grandmother got one in their Lunchable, I would stare it down, hoping to someday obtain one for myself. Meanwhile, I didn't like mint, and was having a hard time dealing with it on a day-to-day basis.

Mint is in nearly every gum, toothpaste, and dental product.  Mint is the go-to flavor for things to sweeten the breath and things to denote Christmas is in fact on the way.  Mint was everywhere, and everywhere that mint went, my vomit was sure to follow. Just the smell of mint lingering in the bathroom or on someone's breath after a morning brushing of the teeth forces me to gag. When I gag, I vomit. When I vomit, I break the blood vessels in my face and both look and feel miserable. It has been like this since I was a wee tater tot, and it remains this way still. The bright, cool smell of mint will send me sailing straight for the toilets the second it wafts my way. The taste of mint, if I'm unlucky enough to experience it, leaves me feeling something I can only describe as "nauseous in the international space station." In the middle of all this, I never forgot the holy appeal of the Andes Mint.

This brings me to modern day. I'm in college. I'm an opera singer. I've been in performance art pieces at the Guggenheim. I am classy and grown-up as fuck. I am surely qualified to eat Andes Mints. A couple of years ago, at Christmas time, our local Target offered a huge box of Andes Mints in their holiday section. I saw them. I could not resist. I was going to buy those Andes Mints and hop on a one-way train to Cool Grownupsburgh to become the popular, unanimously-elected Mayor. I was going to take control of my own destiny and become a god.

I got the package home and carefully opened the green cellophane wrappings. This was it. I was going to obtain all the sophistication and culture that had once eluded me. I was going to eat an Andes Mint, on my own, as an adult.

Instead of any of that happening, I ate the entire box in one sitting, like a hungry dog with a death-wish that just got into a Whitman's Sampler. I didn't even taste them, really. I just inhaled the whole box like a vacuum set to "suck up all them Andes Mints." I looked at my desk, covered in shiny green wrappers, and felt the first signs of regret. Oh, oh no, I had eaten the whole box. Oh god, I had eaten a whole box of Andes Mints that is not what a Mayor of Cool Grownupsburgh does. That is what a disobedient pet does five minutes before it dies of chocolate poisoning. And then the wave of inescapable nausea hit me. Andes Mints were, after all, mints. I was going to die. These mints were my Icarus Wings. I had gotten too bold, and flown too close to the sun on my quest to become a cultured adult. I had tested fate, and fate was going to win. Andes Mints were going to kill me, and it was all my fault.

I shivered on my floor, waiting to die for a good 20 minutes before getting up and hurling. I certainly learned my lesson. Mint is mint, no matter how glamourous you perceive the package to be. The powers of Andes Mints were clearly too strong for me. You'd think that would be the last time, but no. I still cannot resist an Andes Mint. I especially cannot resist eating 20 or so Andes Mints at a time, getting hideously ill, and rolling around on the floor wishing for death while my sister looks on and says "you ate the whole box again." Every time I see one, whether tucked in with the check at a restaurant or in the holiday section at target, I remember that they are the divine treat, the exalted confection suitable only for the most mature adults, those who dine on Deluxe Lunchables.

I want a Deluxe Lunchable life. I want Andes Mints, even if they kill me.