Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I Got Yer Dark Ages Right Here

(Sorry. I am watching a show on the History Channel anout The Dark Ages, and they just went through the segment about whether the Dark Ages deserve to be called The Dark Ages, and they went through a brief explication of the fact that Petrarch coined the term, without bothering to note that Petrarch was a snob. Ahem.)
Back in 1989, when hurricane Hugo came through our fair city, I just happened to have a pot of chili in the fridge. For the next three days, cold chili was basically my diet, since there was no power and, being a college student, I didn't have anything else on hand. You might have thought that experience would have poisoned me on chili for the rest of my life, but no. A week later, after power was restored, the first thing I did was make a fresh pot of chili, and the following day lunch was the then ubiquitous chili cheese grilled sandwich. Far above being the best thing I ate that week-- my pal Dog Nagel staked me to a meal at the first joint we found open, which was Sonny's Barbeque, which sucks-- it was absolutely revelatory. It's not just food. It is love.


This was the result of, let us say one of the by-products of, the Wifey's coice to attend Dragon Con this year, and a damned good thing too. I think we had both heard bits and pieces about it over the last year, and I seem to think that the History channel screened it at some point, but getting it on DVD and sitting down and just chewing though the damned thing was the best way to do it. Even at that, there was a HELL of a lot of shorthand involved. James Marsters, who played Buzz Aldren-- oops! More shorthand required: this is a biopic detailing the Apollo 11 mission. So Marsters did a preso at the D*C and dished quite a bit of background, which the Wifey parsed out as we watched, and then I, with my own extensive knowledge of the moon landing, kicked in what I knew on background, and back and forth through the whole thing, to the point where we came to the conclusion that you might not have any real shot at enjoying this if you didn't have significant background to deal from. Whether that's true or not, eeeehhhhh, dunno. We managed to enjoy it, anyways, so that's enough for us.




This, on the other hand . . . We watched an unfinished version of it on a draft DVD about six months ago, with disjointed subtitles and about half the English commentary of the finished version, but I knew enough about the era of F1 involved and the driver himself-- Woops! This is a doc on the life and death of Ayreton Senna, possibly, no, probably, no, certainly the best Formula 1 race car driver of all time-- that we managed to digest and enjoy it with little effort. My Dad and I then went to watch the finished version, in it's limited release, at one of the local part-time art film theaters a week and a half ago. I enjoyed the hell out of it-- better subtitles, more racing footage than there had been in the scratch cut, more English speaking talking heads, and a lot more footage of Senna himself-- but my Dad seemed to think he would have enjoyed it more had there been mor subtext and explanation. And he's right. It'd be good to know that the first four seasons Senna competed in were not held solely at Susuka in Japan, just that that's where the final race of those seasons took place, so that's where the driver's championship was usually decided. Etcetera. I was going to keep going, but, honestly, it's F1. I find it largely the case that, on this subject, you either already know or just don't care.



This. Um. Well! This . . . This I tuned into periodically while I watched Tony Bourdain's show about Dubai, which is wack, and almost got sucked in several times. Ray Wolstone as an ethics professor! Tony Perkins as a star basketball player! Hanoi Jane as an embryo! And say what you will about her politics, she was, back in the day, and continues to be, and incredible piece of pulchritude. (And honestly, her politics don't bother me that much, largely because she really doesn't seem to have much in the way of politics, frankly.) But I just couldn't stick it out, in any way whatsoever, because it was just too ridiculous. Pop psychology and a bullet primer on the philosophical groundings of ethics drive a plot about a failing scholor who happens to be a hot shot on the court being offered a bribe to throw the big game against-- get this-- the Sputniks. I didn't stick around long enough to find out if they were supposed to be Russian or not. But I was there for the big punch line, wherein the hero is told to tell the ethics prof all he knew about Socrates. ("Socrates was a Greek. And they poisoned him.") Wherafter the Dean (or something) declares he passed the quiz because that's literally all he knew about Socrates. Now eat your spinach!


So do I recommend it? Hard to say. I think it takes a particular form of stalwart to even contemplate the notion of a chili cheese sandwich. It also violates at least five points of the Unified Sandwich Theory, not that you'd care per se. I suppose if you know enough about the moon shot you could enjoy Moon Shot, but I think being a big fan of either astronautics or James Martsters would help. You're only going to go see Senna if you're a fan of Senna or with one. But I can't see any reason in the world why you'd want to sit through Tall Story, unless your name was Alex and you were being reconditioned, in which case it might just make for a pleasant change of pace.

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Chili Cheese Fries Of The Damned

EVERY ONCE in a while it dawns on me that my ususal summer practice of vowing to stick to cold sandwiches and potato chips is really pretty silly, and then I start giving in to the impulses and cravings that, for good or ill, frame my world. This time-- what I refer to as Cold War Chili Cheese Fries, because the flag, to my eye, vaguely resembles the flag of South Korea-- paid dividends in spades, not only in providing a damned hearty meal and a spicey delight, but also in providing the absolutely most perfect companion Sara's Black Forest ever had. The black lager-- I gotta stop doing that: the Saranac people describe it, on the label, as a Bavarian style black beer, and I have exactly zero reason for calling this a lager-- anyways, it has a slightly sweet undertone that the chili, spiked with chili garlic Cholula and green Tabasco, curled around like an affectionate cat. Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.


The movie of the day-- well, lets' suffice to say that Jerry Lee has now seen Voyage of the Damned.*

This is something I have kind of been meaning to see for at least a couple of years, but had been instincively avoiding for no reason that I could really put a finger on. Plenty of stuff argues for the film-- great cast, compelling story, historical impetus, real human drama-- but I just always got the feeling, seeing the few small moments of it I had in the past, that I just didn't want to sit through it. This time it happened to be coming on with just the kind of perfect timing than made me think that this was an opportunity I ought not to ignore.
(The Wifey points out that this revierw completely omits what the movie itself is about. In 1939, the Nazi German government selected nearly a thousand Jews and gave them passage to Cuba. Accoding to some, they were never expected to be allowed off the boat, and, in fact, once they got to Cuba, they were denied passage, either as tourists or refugees. The captain spent the next months sailing about the Atlantic, trying to deliver safe passage to his cargo, failing in both the US and Canada, finally managing to scatter them between Britain, France and Belgium. Then, of course, the war broke out, and eventually two thirds of the passengers met their demise at the camps.) (Wow. That was cold.)

With the result that this is one helluva movie. Great cast. Great performances, Extraordinarally compelling source material, driving plot, great dramatic moments, great sets and costuming. But good LORD, does it go on and on and on. Of course, it was originally a TV movie, so it may have-- MUST have-- gone on over two nights, but it was still a helluva thing to sit through, regardless. On the one hand, I understand that the filmmakers felt compelled to include a fair amount of the on-boardschmoozing and politicing and interpersonal conflicts, but in a large way, this was just kind of like a chicken salad with far too much mayonaise. Still, I am glad I saw it.

I went to all the trouble of researching this, ordering it from Netflix, and setting myself upo to screen this, and then guess what shows up in rotation on Showtime? So I considered watching this earlier in the day, but noooo-ho-ho-ho-ho! You do fine fork, Lizzie, and please understand that I am a fan, but, really, genuinely, please, once was enough. Or at least that's how I feel right now. I'm a little scared that while the first time it was compelling and engrossing in a slightly painful way, a second time it just might come off like cruelty drama. Which, finally, I have the same visceral reaction to as cruelty humor. Not that humor can't be cruel, folks, just realize that all cruelty is not humorous.


But I still recommend it, same as last time. Chili cheese fries are one of the world's most perfect experiences, and those white American cheese hashes, which are what makes me think of the South Korean flag, well, as Frost might say, those make all the difference. You could probably do as well to read the Wikipedia entry, but if you have a few hours to put into it, hearty provisions, and black beer, my advice is: go for it. And if you don't mind being punched in the gut repeatedly by a beautiful woman, so long as she gives you a peck on the cheek after each one, well then, my friend, this is for you!



*Know that story? You could look it up. It'll probably funnier that way, than if I explain it for you.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Bald Soprano

SO FOR the last few days, I have been in a funk, a little off my feed, and yesterday morning I finally realized why. I had a gum-line infection which was manifesting as a deep toothache. A visit to the dentist confirmed this-- or at least proved nothing else evidently wrong-- so after a third dose of a VERY stout antibiotic, I decided I owed myself a very stout lunch. Thus, chili rice. This is something my parents introduced me too in my youth, originally meant to be an economical dish of about half chili and half rice, but I make it with about a 2 to 1 ratio of chili to rice, about three times the amount of cheese my Mom would put on it, and about twice as much sour cream as she would have allowed me to have.
Let me give you a cross section of that.
And beer is the proper beverage for this. I spiced up the chili with both chili garlic and regular Cholula, along with cracked green and black peppercorn. The cheese is something new in Kraft's line of shred mixes, what they call Classic Melt: American process cheese shreds with Wisconsin sharp cheddar, Vermont white cheddar and Monterey Jack. A well travelled cheese indeed? It's fine stuff, but, as the Wifey points out, it has about twice the sodium of the usual Mexican cheese blend, So I don't think I will be making it a regular in the rotation. My sodium intake is monumentally high as it is.


This is almost the movie of the day, in that it is almost a movie, and I almost watched it.
Not that it wasn't well done. The 80% or so I watched of it was quite nicely done, with some sharp, surprising dialogue, some fine character acting, especially from Ally Sheedy, who took what I thought was a fairly superfluous character and investing her with a very welcome sense of presence, and Casper Van Dien, who did a smashing job in what was all but a bit part as a tough, wise and pragmatic officer, coming in and taking control of a very bad situation. (Also, a couple of really great scenes: one where a character is interrupted berating another at gunpoint by the arrival of room service, and explains, "I wasn't sure how long this was gonna take, so I ordered us lunch." One where the conventions of made-for-TV movies were circumvented: instead of accusing the college-boy commissioned officer of "fucking with my men," he accuses him of "having a hard-on" for them, which turned into quite an affecting little scene.
Still, it was a TV movie, and it was a fake Vietnam story, and I really have very little patience when writers make up fake versions of the Mai Lai massacre in service of fake stories about post traumatic stress disorder and the number and state of our MIA's from the conflict. And as well done as it was, I don't know that I would give it a complete airing, just on those grounds. Although I don't know that I wouldn't. Like I said, it was mighty well done.
The first part I missed, when I nipped out to the store for the cheese mix, was a bit of exegesis I probably could have filled in pretty easily, maybe eight minutes or so, after which they went back into the thick of the Vietnam War part of the tale. The second part I missed while I was out assembling the dish, which, as you might have guessed, took more than a bit of attention and precision. I came back into the room with the assembled dish, and, boom. Closing credits.
So I almost watched it. I know how it goes, I know it has some excellent bits. But I have no idea how it ends.
So do I recommend it? No idea. For many years after leaving my parent's house, I held the opinion that chili was something to be taken straight: no beans, no veggies, no starch, meat, spice and sauce. (Although later I started adding onions, cheese, and sour cream, which, had you asked, I would have described as "the purist's cheat. Which would be a great title for a novel.)
Also, the real reason this crops up is that no one sells a chili that stands up to basic doctoring these days, so the rice, nice as it is, is actually something of a crutch. So while it may be a really, really well done chili, after all, it's still a made for TV chili.

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Uncommonalities

SO TO CONTINUE the trend of unrelent-ingly eating stuff people have warned us about for years, today's lunch eventually became chili dogs.

"You know how you feel when you've been out all weekend, drinking cheap whiskey and eating chili dogs?" one considerably ill character asks another in one of the more dire later episodes of the series M*A*S*H; "I wish I felt that good."

The weird thing about that statement always seemed, to me, that if you felt bad from drinking whiskey and eating chili dogs all weekend long, at least you could do so remembering how good you felt while you were drinking whiskey and eating chili dogs. It's the sort of thing a writer thinks up in the confines of the writers' room which, in that specific vacuum, sounds not only witty, but wise.

But I digress.

These were awesome.

The chili is plain, flat, out-of-a-can Patterson's Hot Dog Chili Sauce. I had never had it before, and I highly recommend it. It is a pretty basic down-the-middle chili sauce, mildly spicy and nice and sloppy, the way it has to be for the chili dog application. Beneath it, if you can't make out by the picture, is a layer of cole slaw. I don't get why people don't put cole slaw on hot dogs. Underneath that is a generous caulk of yellow mustard-- Plochman's, of course-- and under the dogs themselves is a layer of cheese, because, really, why not? The Saras are part of what's left from a mixed 12 pack, but chosen pretty deliberately, and they went along well. The lager came across as a natural companion to this kind of fare, while the brown ale brought out some extra spiciness and exotic notes in the chili and mustard. Excellent. (Also, I didn't really want to leap off the ledge and go to having chili dogs with an IPA, although that is something which, in retrospect, I am anxious to try. )


The film of the day is soemthing I completely stumbled onto right around lunch time. I had been out provisioning for the better part of the mid-morning, and when I got back and settled in, shortly after noon, this was playing on the station that I had been tuned into previously. I saw this on DVD shortly after it was released in that format, and I have been able to catch it once or twice a year on cable since then. American Splendor is like a chili dog . . .

No. I don't mean that at all.

American Splendor is a movie that I find both easily watchable and maddeningly frustrating by turns, depending on what kind of mood I am in. Today it was both. On the one hand, it's easy to watch Paul Giamatti dig into the role, which he does with vigor and, I think, pretty obvious glee. (It would be just as easy, if not more than a little crass and tasteless, to suggest that the character he is playing in this film is not a far cry from the one he played in John Adams, or to suggest that Pekar is the kind of guy Adams would have been had he been born and grown up in middle century Cleveland, but that is a muddle for another time.) Also, there's enough of Pekar himself (as well as other characters in the living drama) in the flick to lend it a strong air of authenticity.

On the other hand, speaking as one who has only once or twice surveyed (found, not bought) any volume of American Splendor, and didn't find it to be terribly enlightening. Or even very interesting. Indeed, I can only imagine that the world is filled with legions of people who watched this movie but were not strongly moved to seek out and read the works that supposedly inspired it. So does that make me a hypocrite? Should I, on some level, feel a little cowed, a little guilty about enjoying this depiction of a man whose works I have not given a fair hearing and judged as wanting anyways? (It is at this juncture that the Wifey would declare "He's got his money." To which I would probably add "He's dead." Pekar passed away just shy of three weeks ago. A cause of death still has not been announced, so far as I know.) Or can I just watch and enjoy this attempt to portray and, to some degree, sum up what was, apparently, a quirky, interesting, and, eventually, relatively satisfying life?

Do I recommend it? I think you should always question life. Interrogate it, challenge it, examine it from any and every angle you can catch. Ask yourself how much you know about it, wonder what you might be missing. When presented with the facts of someone else's life, why shouldn't you do the same? Try and figure what's the case and what's been made up, painted in, tacked on with epoxy, buffed clean, blended along the edges. As for the chili dogs,* just eat them. Never question a chili dog or a Chinese dumpling. It's better for your sanity.

*I am very tempted to change the title to "Ceci N'est Pas Un Chiene de Chile," for my pal Doc Nagel, who's a big fan of the Matisse gag, but this'll do just as well.

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Friday, January 08, 2010

Subjekt Zwei

SO THIS is not today's lunch. This was yesterday's lunch: chili cheese fries. Bush's stopped makign their chili, so I was compelled, after several months of chili-cheese-fry-less-ness, to once again go back and try the Armour chili as a component. Initially, I was far less than optimistic. Despite having added all 3 varieties of Cholula-- chili garlic, chili lime, and original-- two kinds of chili powder, a dash of sea salt and a double dose of gracked green peppercorn, nothing seemed likely to defeat the chili's overall consistency, which was that of something thickened with far too much corn starch, or perhaps epoxy resin. At one point in the process, I turned the burner to low for a long simmer, but apaprently the sauce didn't have the residual heat to make the simmer happen. Next I checked on it, the contents of the pan were calm as the Sargasso Sea. I bumped the heat up to a low setting, which after a few minutes resulted in a low, rolling boil, which translated into a simmer. Now, any chef wil tell you that's the wrong thing to do, but in this case, the wrong thing turned out to be the right thing. The sauce broke! which translates out into no more sticky-gumminess. Which also meant that my additives sang out like robins of the spring! Which means this was some damned fine chili cheese fries. (Screw grammar. I was happy.) I had this (these?) with a couple of Saranac Pale Ales, which has been the beer of the week. It will also be the beer of the day today, with either a Jamaican patty etc. or a double cheeseburger. Or maybe yet another tuna melt. Time will tell.

I'd just like to cut in here and assert that I am the worst Facebooker ever. The Wifey got me hooked up there three days ago-- yes, I couldn't even bring myself to make the physical effort of typing in my freakin' information, someone else had to do it for me-- and I have like 34 friends and I've made a total of three comments, one of them on my own wall. Hell, at least I'm trying.

The film of the night before last was this. The Wifey was off at derby paractice-- yes, the Wifey is a Derby Girl-- and, as often happens, I stumbled across something I thought she wouldn't watch in a million years. With the resul that, I think, we're considering putting this in the Netflix queue.

It was good. It was nothing particularly groundbreaking-- I mean, this is alot like a Stephen King joint, everything is stolen form somewhere else, except where it's hung out like's it some kind of homage or something-- but it's mighty finely acted, and done in such damned earnest that it's just goddamned adorable, and the scenery was so beautifully filmed that I feel warmly reassured, once again, that I don't have to go back to Colorado again yet. (Went there twice as a kid. Yeah, it's beatutiful, but it's also alot of trouble getting up to the beautiful. Especially not worth it if you hafta go through Denver.) And also-- and I don't think this is giving anything away-- the one guy looks sooooooooooooooo much like a very young Jack Nicolson, of course they dressed him up as some kind of genius-doppelganger McMurphy! (Our Hero from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.) And yeah, I saw the big damned plot twist coming a mile and a half away, but the thing was just such a numb pleasure to watch, by the time it came along, I had actually forgotten it. (Goodrich doesn't have a blimp!)

The one thing that bothered me came during the credits, which I watched because the cinematography is just so goddamned lovely. Can one say "nepotism?" There were an awfully small group involved here, and some of them seemed like, maybe they were, um, flogging a product. Like maybe craft cabin kits. Like you might be watching this mad scientist/genius doctor/fake kill his med school grad student sycophant/assistant (you'll have to watch the film to get all that, I'm not gonna try to lay it out here) over and over again so that he can use his blood-replacement nanobots to revive him, and the whole time be thinking to yourself, "Hey, if I had that craft cabin kit, all's I'd need is a little plot of land with a long driveway, and I'd have my very own Rocky Mountain resort!!!" Which was, actually, the creepiest part of the whole thing, really.

So do I reccomend it? Hard to say. If you make your own chili and have some left over, that's probably the safest thing, so long as you made real chili and not chili-soup. There is not a single brand of chili on the market these days I can vouch for, for any application other than as hot dog topping. I got lucky; that doesn't mean you can count on the sauce breaking. SubjectTwo? Sure. Drink heavily, wear helmets, face forward, and a canoe is not just as good.

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Monday, March 02, 2009

What's Going On

SO here we go again. Chili cheese fries can be addictive.
This was actually just a perparation, a prelude, to this:
This is the chili-cheese grilled sandwich, something that I
stumbled into during my last year of college, in the name of stretching the utility of a can of chili as far as possible. (Actually, this is just a picture of a grilled ham and cheese, but I could not find the pic I took of the chili-cheese monster.) Anywho, the iteration is basically a grilled cheese sandwich with a layer of chili in the middle. It is insanely good, especially with beer and fries. (And the beer was, in fact, the Red Hook Longhammer IPA, which went along like a dream.) (The beer with the chili cheese fries was a Saranac pale ale folowed by the brown ale, which was beautiful; the pale started out strong against the spicy smack of the chili, and then the brown ale cozzied right up with its slight, sweet undernote. Utterly gorgeous.
But, in fact, this is what's going on today.
Reports of accumulation varied wildly; predictions of traffic stoppages and the catalogues of closings did as well, but there were people on the road as early as eight this morning (as far as I know, since that's about the time I got up). Normally this much snow would cripple my town for a week, but thus far the melt-off has been rapid and comprehensive. Of course, there will be the ubiquitous talk of "re-freezing" overnight, something that has never actually happened as far as I know.
But it's been enough of an excuse to ground myself for the day, sit in and read junk on the internet and have chili cheese fries and beer. The Wifey got off to work about a quarter past eleven, and since then it's just been me and the dog, staying in and watching the snow melt.
The closest thing we have had to a Film of the Day was when we put in Babylon AD about a week ago, which was a huge mistake. We watched the whole damned thing, and it never once stopped to make sense. The whole damned thing just rolled along without explanation. Not only do I not recommend it, I still, to this day, feel insulted that it was ever made,* insulted that it was ever distributed, insulted that it was ever transferred to DVD format, insulted that it was stocked at Blockbuster Online, insulted that it was ever mailed to my house, insulted that it was ever brought inside, insulted that it was put into the DVD player, and insulted that I sat there during the whole goddamned thing and expected it to make, at some point, at least once, some kind of goddamned sense. Although that last part is realistically my own stupid fault.

*I suspect that editing may have been a part of the problem, but it would seem an odd thing for all of expositive scenes/speeches to have been left on the cutting room floor.

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

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.

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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Advanced Physics


Chili.
Cheese.
Fries.
That's actually something of a deceptive statement. If you ordered this in a restaurant, in all likelihood, what you see here is what you'd get: layer of fries, layer of chili, layer of cheese. What you DON'T see here is there's a layer of cheese BETWEEN the fries and the chili. A layer almost as thick as the layer of chili. This is the way things ought to be. Screw Rush Limbaugh.
(No, screw Rush Limbaugh. I know he looks like he might have an appreciation for chili cheese fries, but when a man is as soulless as that, you almost have to assume he consumes all his meals in a drug-induced haze, and has no idea he has consigned a Guatemalan toddler to a fiery, painful, conscious death.)
There is no movie of the day. The movie of the day is Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List, which I am watching (read: sentient in the presence of) while I work on a short story. Except for right now, when I am sentient in the presence of Kathy Griffin while I eat chili cheese fries and drink Kona Longboard. (And in case you were wondering if you were seeing things right, the Longboard pictured there was unopened at the moment the picture was taken. This has since been remedied. As we are fond of saying in this household: SECOND DIRGE!)

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