We Named The Dog Indiana

TODAY's lunch is brought to you by a general sense of desper-ation. Of the several options I was faced with, none of which were gaining any kind of moral traction, what I ended up with is what I am electing to call the Doggie Club: grilled cheese and turkey, with both white and yellow American cheese-- the real stuff this time, not the plastic-wrapped cheeze variety-- and two different kinds of mustard, both my beloved yellow Plochman's and the ubiquitous Grey Poupon. The only thing about the sandwich that is at all strange, though, really, is that the turkey I used is the stuff we buy for our dog as a nightly treat. Not that there's anything wrong with the turkey-- it's Oscar Mayer Organic, which we get for the dog on the grounds that it has a lower volume of sodium than other varieties-- it's just kind of strange to know that I am eating food we bought for the dog.

The beer is not just a mistake, it's a cruel joke, and insult, a big, flacid slap in the face of a fake beer. I sampled the stuff about a year ago at a beer and wine emporium we never go to, and it didn't seem that bad. On pouring a whole bottle, and specifically on the third or fourth gulp, it was clear that mischief was afoot. A cursory examination of the neck band revealed that Blowing Rock Ale is made for the Boone Brewing Company (both places in the North Carolina mountians) in Wilkes Barre, PA.

That was yesterday. Today's revelation? This stuff is McSoreleys. Plain and simple. Boom, like dat. I got two more of the things to cringe through before I am done, and at least they're not horribly, horribly bad if you more or less bolt them, gulp by gulp. At least they were on sale.

Today's film ended up being The Eiger Sanction. I caught this more or less by accident when I was in college, and today it just happened to turn up about the time I was starting to consider lunch options. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a pretty good movie about mountaineering sandwiched around a pretty bad spy flick. The truth is, I learned subsequently, that the novel was meant as a satire of the whole spy book genre, and the movie plays it right down the middle: if you are a fan of spy movies and buy into all the cold war bullshit, it's a pretty good spy movie. If you hate spy movies and understand that all the cold war, spy vs. spy bullshit is bullshit, it's a pretty good satire. Problem is, I love spy movies because I know all the cold war stuff is bullshit, so to me, it is still a pretty good mountaineering movie sandwiched in a pretty bad spy movie. This isn't near so satirical as some of the mid-age Bond movies.

Scratch that. Great mountaineering movie. And really, how many of them are there? Besides that, see where it says GEORGE KENNEDY in great big letters at the bottom? This is really a great George Kennedy movie. Really, he takes a while to come in, but he really takes the thing over. It's a beautiful thing, so long as you like George Kennedy. Which I clearly do.

So do I recommend it? Eh. Fly by your own lights. I like it well enough to watch it when it comes around, which so far proves to be every five years or so. Don't eat your dog's food, unless your dog is so spoiled that it demands to be fed people food. And the beer I wouldn't wish on my dog.