Where I'm Calling From, Episode XIV-a: Delusions of Pretense

SO IT'S the chili-cheese fries again. The beers were . . . Well, it's tempting to say they were inconsequential, but you wouldn't think I meant it the way I mean it. I had the India Pale Ale (bright green label) first, and while I always expect the following beer to cower

under the glare of the IPA's high, sparkling hop note, the chili trampled that out like an elephant stepping on a match. The lager (straw colored label), on the other hand, proved much more resilient, and went along with the chili like a tag-team wrestler.

(And if you don't like belabored metaphors, you ought not to read this blog. Orange you glad I didn't say banana?)

Note the presence of the "display fry." I originally included it as an afterthought, just one fry that didn't quite fit in the bowl, and then as a taunt to the Wifey, and finally as a kind of study aide for whomever reads the stuff herein, as I seem to think, for no particular reason, that many of my readers somehow doubt the actual presence of a layer of fries underneath.

Nope. No particular reason whatsoever.

The movie of the day was almost Scrooged, which I love, but at the same time it was starting I was busy in preparation to prepare the chili, and then all of a sudden I was watching Tony Bourdain's Chicago show, which . . . Well, Chicago.

I mean, I can dig Chicago, but there's something about it I always distrust. The constant protestation that the reason they are as good as New York is that they don't have to keep crowing about how great they are. Which, y'know, is just another way of crowing. And the segments were suspiciously short, in one case just barely over three minutes. Late in the game, one of the chefs he was interviewing summed it up rather nicely: "What we try to acheive is a lack of pretension." Which is, y'know, pretentious.

And, while I'm at it, Tony? Only 2 real cities in America? New York and Chicago*? Oh, dear, my lad. Get a fucking job.

A real one, I mean.

So anyways. Scrooged. I clicked in and out while I waited for the commercial breaks to outweigh the segments of actual show, and in the mean time looked it up on Wikipedia, where I found this:

"The film was marketed with references to the film Ghostbusters which had been a great success four years earlier in 1984. In the USA, the tagline for Scrooged was, 'Bill Murray is back among the ghosts, only this time, it's three against one.' In Brazil, it movie was named 'Os Fantasmas Contra-Atacam' (The Ghosts Strike Back). In Spain, the film was titled 'Los fantasmas atacan al jefe' (The Ghosts Attack the Boss). In Italy, the movie was released as 'S.O.S. fantasmi' (S.O.S. ghosts)."

Which is a nice demonstration of the value in hiding you light under a bushel. As long as your light is under the bushel, it at least keeps people from pissing all over it.

*Not to claim that Charlotte is a real city. Charlotte is very much a fake city, which is a large part of what I like about it.