Episode 81: How to Make a Hot Brown

Seriously, it's not dirty - it's a sandwich. I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago during Kentucky Derby week, but I didn't want to post it so close to the fried bologna one because you might get the wrong idea about my eating habits. Which are above reproach, FYI.

Hot browns are like my third favorite food. Let's talk about that, the difference between food and ingredients. For example, tomatoes. Tomatoes are not food. Tomatoes are ingredients. If you slice them up and put them on a lovely BLT, well, then now you have some food. The same with eggs. An egg alone is just a dumb old ingredient that came out of a chicken. But if you whip it up into a chocolate souffle, well ta-da! Food!

Actually, I don't really know if hot browns are my number three food because I can't think what the two above it might be. But I hesitate to say hot browns are number one because I might think of something I like better later.

Anyway, the hot brown. Do they have them up north? They originated in Louisville and Kentucky was a Yankee state but people forget that all the time and I think of the hot brown as pretty southern. The only place you can get them here are those little old lady tearooms where they have Victorian needlepointed chairs and lacy window curtains and they're only open from like 11 until 1. So getting one these days isn't very easy. But it's worth it!

You know, if you type the words "hot brown" enough, it does start to sound a little dirty, like something my father might say. "I'm going to the bathroom to make a hot brown." I guess that's why they're #3. Because if I made them #1 or #2, it would seem even dirtier and I could probably never eat one again.

Episode 80: How to Stay On My Good Side

Y'know, I think the single worst thing about the onslaught of the internet* is this idea that everybody gets to say whatever they want and have a valid opinion. I assure you: you have no right whatsoever to an opinion, especially if I think it's dumb. I have one friend who insists that that's wrong - that everyone's opinion is valid - which as far as I'm concerned just proves my point. Hi, Carol!

I have some other friends who own a new restaurant and they're suffering through an onslaught of suspiciously-organized-sounding negative web reviews and comments by people with names like "FauxFoie" and "Pork-ePig" and oh, whatever - don't get me started on Foodie people who think they're clever - you get the picture. The reviews always start "my husband and I have dined in the FINEST RESTAURANTS in the world..." which means they haven't been outside of East Twatsqueal in fifty years but, you know, they watch "Top Chef." Gah, these people. Excellent choke-on-their-own-vomit candidates, all of them.

They had one lady call out of the blue after the chef appeared on one of those loopy noontime television shows (they're always called "Hey There, Whereverville!") wearing a baseball cap instead of a chef's toque. She ranted and raved and cussed for like an hour about that, how it was an an insult to the word "chef" for him to not wear a chef's toque. They responded that she was an insult to the word "lady" and then they went and got all likkered up on Makers' Mark. Ha ha, so there are some opinions I can get behind. But if you want to stay on my good side, you better be pret-ty careful.



*Don't say "internets" or "webernet" or "intertubes" or any of those other dumb hipster things. You know it's called the "internet," just like I know you're a complete "idiot." Oh, and stop using unnecessary quotation marks. I promise the next one won't be so rant-y.

Episode 79: How to Avoid Annoying Hipsters

Okay, first off y'all, if you are a self-proclaimed hipster and are reading this - and let's face it, you aren't because I am neither Charles Bukowski nor Chuck Palahniuk - you can rest assured that I know whereof and whatof I speak. For fifteen years, I was the hipsterest hipster who ever did live and I can tell you one thing: I was one hundred percent insufferable. So just quit spluttering your pursed be-French-cigaretted lips and either read on and learn or just head on over to the vegan green tea restaurant you like so much. Meanwhile, I'll be sitting here in my recliner, typing away with my Cheeto-covered fingers waiting for tonight's IDOL! on FOX! results.

The tiny hamlet in which I reside used to have one relatively decent record store. Yes, record store. I know: I'm old, right? Anyway, every Tuesday I would brush my asymmetrical hairdo with my patchouli fingers and put on my thrift store togs and black Doc Martens and trudge up in the late morning sunlight to the record store, where I would head straight to the "Import Section." You know the section I mean - this is the section where you can get a particular record two weeks before everyone else for three times the price - but you were the first one in your ten-roommate apartment with the awesome new Siouxsie and the Banshees twelve-inch single and by the time everyone else could get it, you were rolling your eyes and yawning with boredom, having moved on to some other new obscure thing put out by 4AD.

ANYWAY. One time I was in there and the cashier was going on and on about some new record she had just heard and about how fabulous it was she could get me an advance copy and ohgodIjusthadtogetitrightthen because this was a cashier I secretly admired because she seemed even more genuine hipster than I could ever be. So I bought whatever record it was and raced home and dropped the needle on my new acquisition and....it was Tracy Chapman. And I don't know if you know this - did you know this? - but once you even listen to a Tracy Chapman record, your genuine hipster cred goes down the drain. Sell the thrift store clothes, let your hair grow out. Sell the Allen Ginsberg volumes (if you can!) and the little John Giorno chapbooks. You get to keep the Doc Martens though, because you have now officially become a Lesbian.