It’s Wednesday, which means it’s as good a time as any to unload some of those pent-up gripes from the past week in the Internet’s favorite place for complaints, The Gripe Report.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s almost May, which means that by now, just about anywhere you live in this great country of ours, you’ve got yourself some grillin’ weather.
There are few things I enjoy as much as firing up the grill or the smoker and whipping up some BBQ.
I mean, is there anything that beats a nice long cook on a weekend or a holiday?
Yeah, of course there is, but not by much.
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So, I was under the impression that BBQ might be one of the few gripe-proof subjects there is, but believe it or not, we’re going to start with a BBQ gripe.
Just maybe not in the way that you’d expect.
Highway Rest Stop BBQs
George wrote in with my favorite kind of gripes, and those are the ones that I’ve never thought of, but have been seeing my entire life, and now it’s all I can think about:
Public highway rest areas that have BBQ grills that I’ve never seen being used? Who are they for?
…
Oh. My. God.
This had never occurred to me, but he’s right. Every highway rest stop I have ever been to has some of those charcoal grills that you see in parks. The kind that don’t have lids and are just metal boxes with a rusty grate in them.
He’s right. Using one of those requires planning. They don’t supply charcoal, and there aren’t any vending machines with various cuts of meat or a place to rent a set of tongs.
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No, you have to show up with all of it, and who is doing that?
The people stopping at rest stops are people traveling, and do you really think they’ll want to pull over, take twenty minutes just to get the charcoal fired up, then grill all their food, eat, and then clean up in the middle of a multi-hour road trip and take up valuable real estate in their car and cooler to store all of this stuff?
I don’t.
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So the only other option is someone who goes there hell-bent on one thing and one thing only: BBQing at the rest stop.
No one is doing that either because I can think of a million other places that are better to BBQ at, from your backyard to a park to the beach to a parking lot. All of those are better options than a public rest stop where a bunch of other idiots are just trying to stretch their legs and empty their bladders.
And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a rest stop that didn’t have at least one rusted-out grill near a picnic table that 1,000% has a wasp nest in it.
Make it make sense…
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People Who Back Into Spaces
Tom is chiming in this week with a gripe we all encounter regularly:
I can’t stand people who back into parking spaces. They act so entitled, and we all have to wait for them as they back their two-ton pickup or little hot rod car into a space. They think they are so special. This should be outlawed!
…
Now, I like backing into a spot (although my favorite thing is the pull-thru; now that’s a satisfying parking maneuver), but I’m always sure to do it when there’s not a line of cars behind me.
The people who do not make this consideration are straight-up sociopaths.
They see a queue of cars behind them and think, “They can wait,” then try to bang out a three- to seven-point turn into a Costco parking space.
I actually think this problem has gotten worse for one simple reason: most cars now have backup cameras.
I’m a 30-year-old (and very handsome) gentleman, and when I started driving roughly 15 years ago, they were not rare, but they were not in every new car that rolled off the lot.
Now they are, and have been for years, so I’d wager that most cars on the road have them, and that makes a lot of people more confident in their skills, and to opt for the back-in.
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Honestly, it makes me more prone to do it. I think I could back my Ford Bronco Sport into any parking space on the face of the Earth, but only because I have that camera with the cool lines that move depending on where the wheel is turned. Add in the “Hey, stupid, you’re about to hit the neighbor’s recycling bin” alarm, and any idiot can do it.
I’m man enough to admit I’d probably wuss out if I didn’t have those training wheels. I’d be too scared of scratching my bumper or dinging up some other idiot’s car.
So, just because you have a backup camera doesn’t mean that you have to back it in every single time.
Oh, and if you back into angled parking spots in a one-way parking lot aisle, you’re probably not competent to be on the roads.
Actors With Empty Coffee Cups
Dara checks in this week with something that I cannot believe is still happening in the Year of our Lord 2026, but here we are.
Why do actors not know how to play like there’s coffee in their prop cups?!
It peeves me the way coffee cups are slung around, unbalanced, and weightless on TV. The Rookie seems to have multiple offenses in each episode. Does no one actually drink coffee to the extent they could ACT as a coffee drinker? Nuff said.
…
Seriously.
We’ve had motion pictures for like 130 years, and coffee even longer, and this is still a struggle somehow.
I mean, think of all of the special effects and computer graphics that appear in movies and TV shows, yet understanding the effect the weight of liquid has on a disposable coffee cup is an issue.
This drives me crazy, too, because the fix couldn’t be more obvious.
You simply put some water in those cups, and problem solved.
Yet, it still happens.
Dara referred to The Rookie (not to be confused with The Rookies), and that’s a current show that is airing new episodes as we speak.
I’ve heard this issue talked about for years, and they still haven’t figured this out.
But it’s not just in the props department; how have actors not figured this out?
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Just ask for the water or whatever beverage makes you happy and — voila! — No more waving your cup that’s supposed to be full of hot liquid like you’re an alien who has never observed the human phenomenon of drinking coffee before.
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That’s it for this week.
Thank you to all of you who have sent in gripes. Hopefully, we’ll get to more of them in a future edition of The Gripe Report, but in the meantime, don’t hesitate to send in any and all fresh gripes (or gripes you’ve been sitting on for years)!: [email protected]
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