subway 12/10/09

before subway had their walking weight loss story, jarod/jarrod/jared/whatever, i knew them by their jingle "subway, eat fresh!"

well i've thought about it and i think they should change their jingle to something along the lines of "subway, eat stale!"

i know it's not nearly as catchy, but the $5 bill i paid with was probably made more recently than most of the sandwich it bought.

let's review the bread. freshly baked? please define freshly, good sir. i know you think you're fooling me by pulling it out of an oven, but know how i can tell you're full of shit? because oven-fresh bread isn't colder than a cadaver.

oh the cheese is fresh, perhaps? not according to the sticker that says "miercoles" on it. i might be white, but i know that miercoles is spanish for "that shit went bad yesterday." and my taste buds confirmed it.

tomatoes? no, not fresh. tomatoes aren't pink, but nice try.

olives? too delicious to be fresh. from a can.

pickles are, by definition, not fresh.

mayonnaise? LOL.

salt and pepper? i don't think so. it tasted like a cupboard. i think the salt was held over from when it used to be a currency.

i mean, i really can't complain too much because i had one foot of food for $5 and it probably was more fiber than i've had in the past week. i just wish that they weren't trying to trick me into thinking i'm eating anything fresh.

chocolate pizza?

i've always rolled my eyes at novelty pizzas. when dairy queen offered that frozen ice cream pizza thing in the 90s, i was disgusted.

"pizza's already junk, who wants it to be even junkier?"

fifteen years later, apparently i do.

i thought we were joking: "haha, let's get a chocolate pizza." sort of like, "haha, let's go to vegas, get drunk and then get married." it seems like such a trashy, vulgar idea that no one would ever want to draw it into reality. but we did.

i'm not quite sure how the pizza guys did this. the crust was an 18" sheet (there were two of us, after all) that had been split and the bottom piece, slathered with nutella. (pause: i know, i know, if you've ever traveled to europe, you probably discovered nutella on the same trip that you discovered manu chao and you think it's a godsend, you may have even just moaned, europe is so much better than america, blah, blah, blah.) the crusts were then sealed back together, covered with powdered sugar, strawberries and some other chocolate sauce, that may have been nutella but i'm not really sure on account of i lost all sensation in my mouth from the sugar burn.

this was maybe the first time i didn't finish a pizza.

i don't really know what to say. delicious, overwhelming, america's coq au vin...

non-sequitor: i once had a french friend offer me "american champagne." it was coca-cola.

the most interesting thing about this pizza is that it shows, in one quick glance, everything that is wrong and everything that is right with america.

cheesecake 11/25/09

i don't really know what to say about cheesecake that hasn't been said already. nature's perfect food? proof that god exists? heart disease with blueberries on top?

i'm currently playing guido son, meaning i eat leftovers from my mom's fridge every time i go over, regardless of how recently, or how much, i may have eaten before arriving.

like a good italian mother, mine just happened to have an extra cheesecake laying around in her fridge. and i'll be damned if she didn't also have some blueberry topping.

if i were woppier, i'd have eaten it with a spoon out of the pan, but since i wasn't born on a stoop in new jersey, i ate it on a plate that looks like the the 19th century had sex with the 70s.

i bet i'd find meat balls (pronounced bowls) and gravy waiting for me if i ate them. but it's probably for the best that i don't- it seems like vegetarianism is the only thing standing between me and gold chains and a tracksuit.

chest discomfort, discomfort in the jaw, shortness of breath and lightheadedness are all symptoms of either a heart attack or eating dinner the way i do.

this was a bed of rice, covered in black beans, corn salsa, pico de gallo, sauteed peppers and onions, sour cream, cheese and guacamole. it was eventually amended with a downpour of tobasco.

the line to get this was about eight minutes long, but the time it took them to assemble the ingredients throw a giant mess of crap in a bowl was less than 20 seconds. it was really impressive. i think we ought to consider letting chipotle run our state. if california were as efficient as my meal, we'd have a surplus.

the only bad thing was that i got a bay leaf in my mouth, but as far as fast food experiences go, that's not bad at all. i'll take an authentic bay leaf to an authetic e. coli any day.

breakfast of champions 11/17/09

i don't care what wheaties think of themselves; frosting and cookies is clearly the breakfast of champions. of course, by champions, i mean people who wake up at the crack of 11 AM and eat sugar and cottonseed oil with their fingers.

i could have picked something more nutritious for breakfast, but if you are what you eat, consider me preserved until 2094.

and people think cold showers are the key to longevity.

that's something that really pisses me off: the obsession with things that will allegedly prolong and improve your life- superfoods. green tea is a superfood, açaí berries are a superfood, blueberries are superfoods. know what else is a superfood? the fukk-yu berry from the amazon rainforest.

really? i'm supposed to believe that my quality of life will be infinitely improved by chewing on rainforest fruit? and if you really believe that green tea is going to fix what ails you, i have a car i'd like to sell you.

the people who rave about superfoods are the same smug people who find chocolate mousse "too rich" and push it away after one bite. the next time someone tells me about the health virtues of a rare berry from a poor country with a lot of kidnapping and gun violence, i'm going to strap them into their ergonomic chair and force feed them bread pudding.

another demographic that pisses me off is people who talk about how "red wine is so good for you." oh, shut up. just because you saw that shit on msn after you logged out of hotmail doesn't mean i want to hear you talk about it. do you like the taste of red wine? fine, drink it and enjoy it. do you want to improve your health? take a fucking multivitamin, it burns less.

excuse me while i go finish my can of superfrosting.

wtf? 11/14/09

i woke up hungrier than usual this morning, so i did what most people do and looked for leftover pizza in the back of the fridge. luckily, i didn't have to reach too far back, because my dad bought some recently.

everyone knows that microwaving pizza is gross. it makes the crust soft and rubbery and the cheese melts unevenly, leaving a molten lava bed that scorches your mouth just below some still-cold cheese. but i did it anyway.

i was one bite in when i figured that maybe i should douse it in hot sauce, because that's how i roll at 7:30 am. between the magma cheese and the tapatio, i'll be lucky to taste again in 2010.

i don't know what barrio i think i'm from, smothering my breakfast in hot sauce, but i guess it's par for the course for someone who starts shaking after 12 hours without a burrito.

i'll take pizza scorch over pancakes any morning of the week. sweet breakfast items gross me out. they make my stomach hurt and give me a sugar coma before i've even brushed my teeth. however, since the pizza with hot sauce made me think it was dinner, i did eat a reese's peanut butter cup right after.

welcome to planet fat, ladies and gentlemen, where even breakfast comes with dessert. fuck.

mount nacho 11/13/09

i'd missed my friends and went to "taco tuesday" with them last night (i know, i know, last night was thursday, but that's just what they call it). for the record, i fucking hate theme nights. i hate drink specials, i hate dinner specials, in fact, i hate specials. who are you to tell me something is special, anyway?

specials are almost as bad as "champagne thursdays" which is something i heard about from a jowled coworker at a law firm who looked like an angry bulldog. as it turns out, a lot of people are into this. they buy some korbel (and sometimes strawberries, which sounds like another bad suggestion from marie claire or cosmo) and get sloshed on thursday nights, because nothing's better than going into work on friday with a hangover.

anyway, i'd bet that 80% of the people at taco tuesday (alliterative, by the way, how clever) also celebrate champagne thursday. what i really should have done was photograph the number of faded tattoos on upper arm fat as a warning for people who think that taco tuesdays and champagne thursdays won't catch up with them.

i was happy to spend time with my friends, but i could have done without the crowd that looked like the USS Asshole had just docked outside. we got tacos (duh), guacamole, chips, salsa and drinks. we lasted about thirty minutes before we got the check and split.

maybe i'll go again next tuesday and have enough $6 taco-and-margarita combos to think it's a good idea to get an upper arm tattoo. if my friends will drive me home after, i'll be forever grateful. i'll even have them over next thursday night for some korbel and strawberries.