Heart Attack Alert

In case you wondered what the jr. High bully was doing with your lunch, look no further. Good news is he died by the time he was 20. Usually I am tempted by grossly cheesy, meaty goodness but as it's in my American blood but this is really disgusting! As a matter of fact it's irresponsible and negligent . . . shit it's arrogant for Friendly's to put this burger and two grilled cheeses out as one sandwich. I suppose you could feed three people with this meal.
I grew up on the east coast where Friendly's was a nice little family focused diner chain where you could have a burger and crinkle fries before ending the meal with a sundae. For a while they were know for there Watermelon ice cream roll which was truly a treat for the children of the north east! But now they may go nationwide with this Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt because that's what America wants! Did you know that in 1991 our nation's most obese state was Mississippi with just under 20% vs. today's lowest state, Colorado at 19.1%. Don't worry though Mississippi still leads the country in fat fucks with an alarming 33.8% obesity rate. By the way; this doesn't include children so the numbers are actually even more disturbing. Don't get me wrong I love some fast food every now and then but it would appear that is all many people are eating and whether it is all the person or family's can afford I'm not sure but that stuff will make you a fat piece of shit, give you diabetes and kill you before 60 if you don't watch it. By the way check out the growing burger. Maybe nobody cares about their body's health, maybe it's part of a greater plot that goes along with melting out brains we melt our bodies. MAybe we don't have to go to space to get enormous like it is shown in the movie WALL-E.




The thing is some people are proud to be more stomach than man, maybe we should blame Homer Simpson. Is it art imitating life or the other way around? If you watch comedy TV up until the 90s TV dads were thin dudes!



Look at Ward Cleaver, look at Mike Brady they was a lean motherfuckers, probably the planning all the neighborhood orgies!




But these guys . . . not so much. The idea of not giving a shit about your gut and butt is sad. I do understand that not everybody has time to hit the gym a few times a week but lord, spare time shouldn't always br used to stuff one's face with cheese and bread and bacon with no other physical activity that hand to mouth and finger clicking at the remote. I guess TV is just so damned good! I guess video games are better than running around with friends, climbing fences and trees.

mmmmmm .... so good!

American Cheese

Is this cheese that is known as "American" really a good example of what our country can produce or is it a symbol of just how disgusting our nation is?
What used to be made from a blend of Colby and Cheddar is now something that doesn't even fit the legal definition of cheese. It is a product that was forced into American homes during 3 months of 1942 wartime efforts as U.S. officials put a ban on all foreign cheeses.
The cheese is naturally a wonderful ingredient for Macaroni and cheese and a grilled cheese sandwich but after that the product is thin of tasty possibilities. It's something that if you're not raised on it you won't acquire the taste for like many regional dishes but like real region fair, American Cheese isn't worth much aside from cheap.

Drinking for Democracy

As Stated all over the place I am a sucker for junk food and now that Mountain Dew has tossed out some new colors for the masses to drink and then elect one to keep while the other two are sent off to a place shamed soft drinks wallow. You can find New Coke and Pepsi Clear slowly going flat over the decades.

First we have the blue, "Voltage" flavor which is a light tasting berry concoction which didn't really inspire anything in me. I can't see myself craving this beverage.



The white beverage called. "White Out" is a bit better in flavor but again it's not that interesting. The one thing that I kept thinking however was that I was drinking a white liquid; it didn't feel all together innocent.

Let's talk, CHOMP! 2

J'adore chicken and waffles, there's just no two ways about it. The thought of a tender fried chicken breast and a crispy yet supple waffle makes my mouth salivate. The first time I had the combo was in Los Angeles at one of the Roscoe's where I became enchanted in it's glory I know that to a person who's never tried the combination it doesn't sound right but man is it right, SO RIGHT! The chicken dashed with hot sauce and the waffle layered with maple syrup makes for a magical mix of marvelous taste in my mouth.

If you haven't had this meal go forth and devour!

Sugar Intake

I eat too much damned sugar! There is too much of it around and I can barely say no to it. It is not good for me to consume the myriad of sweets which I do for it will give me that Wilford Brimley disease known as Diabetes turning me into a walrus man of sorts. I don't want to turn into that! in addition it's beginning to show in the belt line as well which doesn't look so great in the low rise jeans I like to wear nor does it do anything positive for the vast selection of tight T-shirts I own. I gotta' cut out the sugar and get my Boston Cream Pie of an ass to the gym; it's been over a year since I hit the treadmill. Then again I've been skinny my whole life so plump might be a good move.
I don't do New Year's resolutions so don't think that this is one of those.

Let's talk, CHOMP!

The Burger can in fact look as American as Old Glory and a good one is much more edible. Supposedly named for the town in New York State which is named after the city in Germany by some late 1800s yokel the burger is just ground beef between a sliced bun. It is widely accepted that it is usually served with lettuce tomato and onions with some mustard and ketchup; it's just a hot sandwich. The burger is now it's own enormous economy worth about $64,ooo,ooo,000 (that's billions, folks).
We have McDonalds, Burger King, Carl's jr., Jack in the Box, Wendy's, Hardy's, In-n'-Out Burger, Sonic and White Castle are just a few of the larger, well known companies that all have a respectable product which millions of people crave and consume on a daily basis.

Man, a burger can look good!

So as I guess the burger found it's self as the United States did after the Civil War and like America it didn't really become a super power until World War II; that's when the first McDonalds opened up in San Bernardino, CA. Now it wasn't until 1948 that the fast food concept hit and laid waste to the traditional method behind burger sales. Luckily the Burger didn't just go fast food on us; it remained a solid item on restaurants all around and pretty much every American cuisine serving place has their own variation of the sandwich. It gave us the privilege to enjoy a burger that was more hearty than the flimsy disk bagged up or tossed on a tray at the local BK lounge. With big burgers popular we not only got such triumphant creations as the Big Mac and the Whopper but we also got the gourmet burger!

Burgers done every which way one wanted, served with jack cheese, zucchini, avocado, dripping with pesto, crowned by bacon, done Hawaiian style, French style, Popeye style, smothered, with mushrooms, coated with blue cheese, pasted with teryaki, piled high with japenos, served on a silver plate with caviar, foie gras and made from Kobe beef, whatever your American heart desires! Whatever those clogged vanes need! You can burgers bigger than your head, bigger than your first born, bigger than the cow!


Listen I'm not here to start any fuss; I just want the burger to be embraced like the deity it is. I don't mean I want a burger made from Zues or Odin or the one god and I'm not going to create a shrine devoted to Hamburgers but in the country religious symbolism is everything you want it to be; it is all part of our narrative and mythology.

You can find your way across this country using burger joint the way a navigatior uses stars....We have munched Bridge burgers in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge and Cable burgers hard by the Golden Gate, Dixie burgers in the sunny South and Yankee Doodle burgers in the North....We had a Capitol Burger -- guess where. And so help us, in the inner courtyard of the Pentagon, a Penta burger.

Charles Kuralt, journalist

A Hamburger is warm and fragrant and juicy. A hamburger is soft and nonthreatening. It personifies the Great Mother herself who has nourished us from the beginning. A hamburger is an icon of layered circles, the circle being at once the most spiritual and the most sensual of shapes. A hamburger is companionable and faintly erotic. The nipple of the Goddess, the bountiful belly-ball of Eve. You are what you think you eat.

Tom Robbins

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

Mark Twain

Special thanks to Mary's Danish for the album cover made back in the early 90s when irony still meant something.

Middle Meal

I can say that I enjoy a nice lunch with a certain strange pride. A lovely sunny day accompanied by a great selection of light tastes. Starting with a glass of wine and half a dozen oysters while mid day sounds curly through the ear and pleasantries abound. Sometimes a soup if it;s something nice will do the trick. A well made sandwich with almost fancy ingredients prepared with a chef's delicate precision served next to complete the meal.
This sort of thing just puts a silly smile in me and makes me feel like a better person.

Strange but there it is.

"culture" vs. "pop" culture vs value

What matters vs. what do I like vs old school entertainment that supposedly hold more weight than more modern forms. I can't lie that I try to absorb all this stuff because I'm not interesting but the things I am exposed to make me seem interesting . . . isn't that true for everybody? Isn't that from "High Fidelity"?
A friend was teasing me that I had no culture but I argued that I'd been to symphonies, I'd been to The Nutcracker, I'd been exposed to famous works of art, she argued that I would still be happier at a rock concert. I didn't respond or retort, why waste my breath with words that can't back up actions, after all I'm just a man not the son of the sun king.
I'm not exactly sure if there should be a difference between any of these things because they all made money, they all convey some sort of information, they all make people happy or feel something and maybe a grand opera tells the same story as an Aerosmith song. So there's Andy Worhal who was like some flake who said simple cocktail observations and did some art because there wasn't anything easier to do. While doing this he invented something for people with nothing substantial but not before getting art critics to go for his schtick. I actually don't know if any of that is correct but it sounds about right.
Is classic art important beyond asthetics? Personally I feel that if it can tell a good story with something interesting to say. The Greek plays or poems are a good example of this as is the next versions of those in the form of Shakespear . . . now we have Stephen king.

Have I mentioned that I have this odd hunger for sugar cereal lately? I just want to chow down on some sugar pops. I don't know why but there it is. Steak and eggs also sounds really fork licking good too!

I guess none of this matters because it can all come down to generational themes and technology. We are humans and have a lot of free time which most of us choose not to do anything important with so we need to use up that time with entertainment and leisure activities . . . so even sport gets thrown into the mix here. Athletics are important because it can represent what we are physically capable of even if we need performance enhancers. I don't know what the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians used to make themselves better in competition but certainly there was a modern idea of cheating going on.
You know classic books have more references to their times than you might expect, making them essentially pop items before the term was what it was. I like a book that can capture a time without being obsessed with it or being so much a product of it's time it doesn't transcend it.

"What's a transom, Bob"