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.

Episode 78: How to Make a Fried Bologna Sandwich

Believe it or not, I have two stories about fried bologna. Oh who am I kidding? You believe it! But I think that might make me sound a little trailer-parky, so I'll leave out the one about my father's quintuple bypass and go straight to the one about the fire alarm.

One time Sister Meg and I rented this fantastic house. It was a beautiful restored Victorian, practically a mansion, with all modern updating inside and on the second night we were in the house, we were exhausted from unpacking so we didn't want to bother with a fancy dinner. So Sister Meg rustled up a couple of fried bologna sandwiches...you know, like Jackie O or Brooke Astor might do. Marie Antoinette, perhaps.

Oh, if only it had been so simple! But no, smoke went everywhere and the fire alarm went off and contacted the fire department and we desperately dialed our new landlord, who was super fancy and nice and ritzy, because we didn't have the alarm code yet and she was all "what on earth are you cooking? That smoke detector hasn't gone off in ten years!" and it was with great hesitation and through gritted teeth that I practically whispered: "We are making fried bologna sandwiches." And you could feel her regret about renting to us through the telephone.

Later that year, a tornado hit the house. We deserved it - once you fry up bologna, the White Trash Gods just KNOW.

Episode 77: How to Be a Freelancer (or An Inventor)

Oh, the exciting world of freelancing! The high-powered meetings where I'm flown by private jet from board room to board room, where I show two sketches I whipped up in the Admiral's Lounge and am then compensated with tax-free thousands and a time share in the Seychelles!

No, that's not what it's like at all. Well, mostly not. I just now looked at my Daytimer and here's what the life of this particular freelancer looks like:

8am: Roll over, stare at clock. Two more sleeping hours!

10am: Turn on The View. Get thumb ready to mute Elisabeth every time she squeaks, which is often.

11am: Get up, look over lunch menus from various local boites and bistros. Phone in order for clam spaghetti.

12 noon: Get in car, go pick up clam spaghetti. Detour to bookstore, coffee house, ice cream shop, etc.

1:30pm: Send out emails to clients along the lines of "oh, I'm sorry you didn't get that file! There must be something wrong with your email!"

2:00pm: Nap.

3:00pm: Send out emails to clients along the lines of "oh, I'm sorry you didn't get that file! There must be something wrong with my email!"

3:30pm: Turn on Turner Classic Movies and watch an Irene Dunne move. Another one. There are a lot.

5:30pm: Visit liquor store, pretend to browse the fifteen-dollar wine, buy Yellow Tail anyway. Who do I think I'm kidding?

6:00pm: Mess up office real fast so soon-to-arrive-home housemate thinks a lot of work got done. Clean house (read: hide wine bottles.) Act exhausted.

So as you can see, there's a lot to keep up with. The View is on five times a week.

Episode 76: How to Shop at the Grocery

I know you've all been biting your fists and rending your garments wondering where I've been. But I have a good explanation, I promise. I've been in an insane asylum...to which I was committed after a particularly discombobulating trip to the local grocery store. My sister found me around midnight, sitting in the pantry, wrapped only in plastic Kroger bags and a turban made from Saran Wrap, trembling and muttering "I only wanted snow peas...I only wanted snow peas" over and over again.

You see, I have a particularly awful local grocery store. Don't get me wrong: it's enormous and brightly lit and they have a pharmacy and all the current up-to-date information about Brad and Angelina and poor poor Jennifer, so it does have its good points. Alas, steady Enquirer-eating does not make for a healthy diet, which is sad because unless you can put it in a microwave or cram it in an ice cream cone, my grocery store doesn't carry it. I once asked if there happened to be any whole garlic bulbs in the back and they offered to special order it for me. I guess they thought I might be planning for a meal a few weeks in advance or something. One time I bought beets and the cashier asked me if they were "for eating or for planting?" as she futilely thumbed through the PLU booklet while I said "B. It starts with a B. As in 'bumbling.'" Whereupon she started looking for 'bumbling,' which I'm fairly certain might be some sort of seedless cucumber. And then there was the other time when I got escorted out by security after having a complete nervous breakdown because I knew the PLU number for the tomatoes on the vine but the computer did not! 4664! 4664! For goddamned sake it's 4664! Why can't they program it into the computer? I've been complaining for five years and still, only I seem to know the number. 4. 6. 6. 4. Ohhhhhh, where is my Saran Wrap turban? WHERE?

I go to other grocery stores occasionally and it's like a slap in the face, with their fancy produce sections and their cous cous. But I chalk it up to some sort of caste karma. I get the grocery store I deserve. Which means I must have fucking murdered the pope in the past or something.


Note: this diagram represents my fantasy grocery store, not my actual one.

Episode 75: How to Remodel Your House

If you know me - and let's face it: since you're reading this, you probably do - you are well and truly bored with my tales of woe regarding my double-bathroom renovation that took three years. Well, you'll be happy to know that those tales are now coming to an end, as we finally signed the "The End" paperwork last week. Of course, our vicious letters and constant bitchiness eventually brought down a national chain of (let's say) Flexpo Design Centers in the process, but hey, someone's gotta pay, right? Sorry, stockholders!

The great joke (on us!) of it all is that the two bathrooms involved in the renovation total maybe 100 square feet. They're two ca. 1932 bathrooms, so you can imagine how small they are, and we didn't enlarge any footprints or even move fixtures. Meanwhile, the short-haired lady down the street has had a Biltmore House-style addition to her house completed in three weeks and is already on the goddamned tour of homes.

But la la la, whatever. It's all over now. Though the cat that got drywalled into the walls is still severely traumatized and just wanders around in counter-clockwise circles, meowing in Bulgarian, which I do not speak unless someone has brought Absinthe into the house. And my motor-scooter is still missing a mirror from when a wayward plumbers' butt knocked it over in the basement. And several accessories from Pier One that were damaged in a tragic crown moulding incident remain unmentioned in any of your local memorial gardens and/or cemeteries.

And oh yeah: three years of my life are missing. Fuck you Crapco Design Center! I'm glad you're bankrupt!