Archive for the ‘Weinerschnitzel’ Category

I read an article on Alternet recently that revealed the quarter pound double cheese burger from Burger King that sells for a dollar actually costs the average individual franchise as much as a $1.10.  For some reason this fact has been stuck in my brain and really has me thinking I need to get me a couple of them.  Apparently the bun alone has over 35 ingredients.  That’s some drama there.  Not to be outdone, McDonalds has the McChicken and their own McDouble among other items available for a dollar as well.  I read somewhere some months ago that the the house that Kroc built has enjoyed an increase of profits of some 200% percent in the current economy.

Have it your way.

No matter what culinary astrophysics are applied to zucchini or green beans, they will never taste as good as any item on any fast food dollar menu.  Not even to aborigines or rain forest tribes.  Even the French eat it.  You know Taco Bell has three tacos and a large drink for $2.99?  Subway’s got the five dollar foot long.  They screwed the pooch when they removed the tuna sub as an option though.  Pricks.  And I bet those sandwiches and tacos don’t look exactly the same after a decade like Mickey D’s burgers, McNuggets and fries do without refrigeration even.  No shit.  Not a single blemish of mold after ten years.  Absent only the glisten of hot grease.  The sheen of recent rescue from beneath a heat lamp.  That’s not food, that’s textiles.  You gotta hand it to them, in the fine tradition of Henry Ford assembly line methodology, it tastes the same wherever you go.  Weighs the same, looks the same and smells the same.  Here’s to two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

I love fast food.  I try to stay away from it but I love it.  I was a vegetarian for nearly a decade.  I got fat on pasta.  I read “Diet For a New America” by John Robbins.  I’m aware what meat production does to our environment.  They aren’t kidding when they bemoan bovine flatulence.    Yet I thanked the BK lounge for it’s delightful Big Fish Combo in the credits of the first record I ever produced, recorded and mixed.  Jack In The Box has seriously good fish and chips, make sure you get some packets of malt vinegar along with the tartar sauce, and their egg rolls don’t suck.  I’m pretty sure it’s because they keep neither item on hand, thus they are cooked to order.  The secret with the egg rolls by the way, is to ask for ranch sauce in addition to the sweet and sour and to shamelessly double dip.

The Extreme Sausage Sandwich from the aforementioned is a gut bomb like nobody’s business; an excellent prescription for depression consumption.  Get some mustard packets.

Without a doubt, In and Out has the best burgers, and fries animal style, is a meal of itself, though Wendy’s doesn’t suck.  I adore the Beef n’ Cheddar from Arby’s with the eponymous sauce, but I’m boycotting the one here in Carson Shitty for distributing right wing propaganda.  Have you heard some highway patrol organizations stock Coca Cola in the trunks of their cruisers for blood cleanup from asphalt after traffic fatalities?  Have you also heard it’s one of the best solvents available for cleaning the household toilet?

Should I be brushing my teeth with it?

I’m not much for sodas but when I do it’s usually diet, still, I can’t avoid the pairing of it with onion rings from Sonic.  Sour cream and onion potato chips are awesome in a vanilla shake and a can of SpaghettiOs has a full serving of vegetables and fiber.  There is no redeeming value whatsoever with Ramen noodles, especially the way I prepare it.  I fry them in butter after boiling and then add the sodium.  Talk about a booze mop, it’s either that or Bombay Sapphire at 9:30 in the morning.  One is the short cut to a vomit comet, the other a gastrointestinal trek in the peaceful forest to a rehabilitating nap.

Countdown to angioplasty.

I lied about my age to get my first real job at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the gulag of fast food careers.  I was fourteen and said I was sixteen.  The Super Max of the food service industry.  Because of the pressurized vats of boiling animal fat and copious amounts of various flower recipes that harden to a near concrete consistency within minutes, the entire kitchen had to be hosed down with steaming water and scrubbed with a toxic, skin withering detergent every single night.  Giant squeegees were then used to direct excess water and flotsam towards the floor drains.  Finally a mop.  Winter nights, my pants would literally freeze to my legs on my bike ride home.  I stank like a dumpster full of discarded deep fried infant chickens.  Every Sunday we scrubbed the walk in freezer free of the fetor of it’s blood and gore.  We had to”break” carcasses by the case.  This involved snapping the breast bones, ripping off the tail and scooping the mucus yellow detritus of who knew what from iced boxes of chickens so young their bones were like paring knives that would lacerate my palms and fingers.  We actually competed for time in this grisly endeavor.  Those that would be champions would use their teeth.  It goes without saying I found myself to be a reluctant competitor.

Worse job I ever had with the exception of insulating a roller rink in the dead of summer and running a 90 pound jack hammer for my old man.

It was decades before I could attempt to eat at KFC and when I did, my bowels began to percolate instantaneously and I shat like a goose.  Volume and velocity.  Mere seconds from soiling myself in my own office.  What emerged, in the company bowl, floated like fowl in a slick of oil from a ruptured tanker.  It was delicious though.  Now they’ve got this batterless and skinless thing going on and I’m tempted, but so far lack the courage.

I went on to graduate with my masters in grease, saturated fat and carbohydrate slinging by becoming manager of a Der Wienerschnitzel.  Now, I know about hot dogs too.  But I still enjoy a good chili cheese dog with mayonnaise, mustard and onions on occasion.  There’s a Der Wienerschnitzel in Burbank that has Rolling Rock on tap.  Fuck me.

Questions?  Comments?

See, fast food is a uniquely American phenomena and arguably as important a contribution to world culture as is jazz.  Maybe not as important but certainly as significant.  Work with me here.  It is discussed at length in one of the most important movies of our time, “Pulp Fiction” and documentaries like “Super Size Me”.  Books like “Fast Food Nation”.  The industry literally feeds billions.  Bill Clinton patronizes.  They sponsor Nascar.

For what it’s worth, a good friend of mine died from mad cow disease.  That’s right.  Spongiform bovine encephalopathy.  He was a vegetarian.  When they say there are no American deaths as a result of it, they are lying.  In the same way they lie about everything else.

Here’s something else you may not have been aware of.  Too much oxygen and too much water can and will kill you.  I smoke between a quarter and third of a pack of cigarettes a day, I drink too much and treat myself to the infrequent fried or deep fried delight.  My body may be my temple but it’s also my only vessel for pleasure and by any measure, life is short.  I do my best to avail myself of life’s simple, and extravagant pleasures.

Beluga caviar and a good blanc de blanc.  A big ass cabernet or a pricey smokey zinfandel.  Sushi and cold beer, driving too fast and having casual sex.  A well written novel or an intelligent, well scripted, dialog driven film.  A really good crap.  The advice, consent and love of my mother.  A passionate well executed musical performance.  The color of the sky or the unconditional love and acceptance of animals in my charge.  The love of a really good woman.  Fireworks and art of all kinds. Family and friends.

I avoid the burger as best I can, but it is simple.  Life is bigger.  Much, much bigger.  It is the least of my concerns.  Moderation but still, indulge because we all fall down.  People get ready, there’s a train a coming.

Drinks for my friends.

I’m a little weary of politics.  What say we do something a little different?

You have no choice you fucks.  Ha!

I saw a woman today I haven’t seen for more than twenty years.  I remember her as being somewhat meek and a little mild.  She worked for me back in the day.  In my food service management period.  I was a teenage fast food restaurant manager Werewolf.  Pre-law.  Pre-med.  Pre famous record producer.  Post cartoon character.  Her husband worked for me as well.  He was always a sneaky little shit.  Slow eyed and devious.  I never trusted him and suspected him of abusing her.  Saw him at Costco the other day.  I have the absolute luxury of not being recognized in my hometown.  Looked right at him while he pushed his cart with same sociopathic countenance he always wore when he assumed he was anonymous.   The gift of anonymity works both ways.  I haven’t lived here for nearly a quarter century.

Nobody knows who I am.

Thank Zeus.

The Sunday afternoon dining at Costco is pretty goddamn something.  I’m not sure exactly what, but there were samples at the end of each and every isle.  Soups, pastas, pizzas and sausages.  Weird dumb people everywhere but the vittles were all up in my periphery.  I left satiated and thoroughly entertained.  Mother bought giant portions of things she required like double A batteries and Marie Calendar chicken Pot Pies.  I purchased six months at least of hair conditioner, thirty pounds of cat litter and some decent wine.

I see people I know all the time but choose not to talk to them.

I’ve been here in Nevada for too long but not long enough.  My father fell from a ladder, broke six ribs and a shoulder and is recovering slow but steady.  I’m back to pursuing the business I came to pursue.  Had a very good day today. The finance manager of the Washoe Indian Tribe returned my call to say he’s very interested in giving me a crack at the credit card processing for all four of their retail smoke shops.

I feel as though I’m in a state of suspended animation.  Time seems to pass so quickly here without a lot happening.  Carson City Nevada just may be the strangest place in the universe for me.  Despite any amount of anything, it’s indescribably weird.  People tend to be friendly but ugly.  Nice but dentally challenged.  The ugliest woman I’ve ever seen in my life works at the closest convenience store that carries American Spirit Ultra Lights.  Festooned with moles, blemishes, boils and a rather manly crop of whiskers, she is the most physically repulsive woman I’ve ever seen.

Ever.  Poor woman.  Sheezus she’s ugly.

We’ve spoken.  She’s very nice.  But holy shit, she may as well be the Elephant Woman.

The youth in this town are nearly invisible.  I never see the 16 to 25 crowd.  I don’t get out much because I’m still somewhat fiscally challenged and in lockdown mode.  Keeping my head down and working the phones.

I’ve gone two months without a haircut and pot and I’m rapidly advancing towards an early eighties Jew fro.  I’m not particularly susceptible to vanity but a man does not want to look an unkempt fool.  Keeping my nose and ear hair in check.

I wanted to look her in the eye.  Brenda.   She had no idea who I was.

Same woman has been cutting my hair in LA for almost a quarter century.  From short to half way to my waist and back again.  We grew up together.  Her name is Suzanne and I adore her.  We are very good friends.  She understands my misshapen head and unruly kinky, copious and curly prodigiousness.

So now it’s Brenda.  She worked for me.  She has blossomed.  The truth is, I fooled around with just about all the girls who worked for me.  I think actually, every single one of them.  A few of them, I wrote their high school papers and they brought me breakfast.  That was the deal.  I ended up with more than breakfast.   I crashed a car with one of them.  End over end off the side of a cliff.  We shared way more than breakfast too.  I loved them all in one way or another.

I wanted to look her in the eye.  Brenda.

I drove by the 70 x 24 foot trailer on the corner of Viking and Nye that I grew up in.  In my early teens we built a 25 x 40 foot addition on to it with a garage.  Property lines and zoning codes dictated that I’d lose my bedroom window but I gained a built in bookcase and my own bathroom.  We put a solid mahogany custom pool table and a wet bar in the giant room that was built “hell for stout” according to my father.  He constructed a massive two level deck behind it and sunk a twelve seat, kidney shaped hot tub in the middle of the lower level.

I could play my drums all night without disturbing my parents or sister.

No cable television but life was good.

The lot itself was a quarter acre and we all worked hard maintaining it.  My parents hated the weed choked portion that belonged to the city so we tore down the fences and cultivated lawn up to the road.  My mother had beautiful roses and desert shrubs.  Multiple trees including a crab apple front and center with a rock garden at it’s base.  Elaborate sidewalks all poured by my father with our infant foot prints and a front deck carpeted in astroturf, with an awning and siding to match the trailer that ran almost the entire seventy foot front built by my father.  Two driveways, one off either street, one leading to the garage.

It was a beautiful blooming yard in the summer.  Flowers, roses and trees all celebrating.  Often a race car being wrenched on in the driveway without a garage.  Men drinking Olympia or Hamm’s beer, thick and muscular tanned arms waving arc welder torches and spark spraying grinders while the sun made rainbows in pools of water and petroleum collecting on the sun baked asphalt.  The women sitting on the front deck smoking long feminine cigarettes wearing beehives and hornrims , flipping through Avon catalogs sipping mixed drinks and moving in and out while tending to the inevitably late Sunday supper.  Us kids playing and running in sprinklers, away from bees, perfecting a makeshift slip and slide fashioned from construction site visqueen.  Craigmont grape, black cherry and cream Soda, barbecued potato chips and the constant sound of a sliding screen door smacking closed and sliding open.

Watermelons and cantaloupe…………tater tots and ketchup……….

Flies in the hot kitchen despite collective effort.  Corn on the cob and potato salad.  Jello concoctions and vinegary bean dishes with awful flavor and texture.  I will never comprehend “three bean salad”.  It is vomit.  I’ll bet it’s worse going down than coming up.  Who eats that shit?  Old people with atrophied taste buds and dumb hicks who can’t know better.

Seriously, fuck me.  I’d rather sip from a bedpan.  Nastiness.

Moving right along.

Steaks, hamburgers and hot dogs.  Fruit salads with throat blocking coconut shreds, Cool Whip and mandarin orange slices tasting of tin.  Delicious homemade cobblers, pies and ice cream.  Yes, homemade ice cream.  Huckleberry and lemon-vanilla  you bitches.

Alive and thriving.  A real neighborhood with real neighbors.  A community.  A village.  Safety and security.

Winter holidays were just as festive, somewhat more decorous and far more elaborately decorated.  At one time my mother had an entire outside structure devoted exclusively and extensively to storage of holiday decorations.  She was raised with ten brothers and sisters.  Birthdays were never a big deal but holidays, Christmas in particular, were huge, in her childhood and mine.  She made sure.

I think what I’m doing here, is writing a love letter to my mother.  Everyday for the past week, she’s been in the 38 foot home away from home, cleaning.  I’ve watched her clean every wheel, every window, apply wood wax to every wooden surface and take clean rags to every blind.  She’s dusted, mopped, vacuumed and wiped every surface accessible.  Her plan is to rent an industrial shampooer tomorrow for the carpets.  She is a house on fire.

She then comes in every single night and prepares a balanced meal for my father and I.

I help as much as I can.

She is a fart in a whirlwind.

She sets things for the meal in motion and then we sit outside and play with the the black canine tripod, throw her toys across the lawn, giver her treats, have a smoke and a drink or two and eagerly talk about nothing or things very important.  I find myself getting impatient for her to join me on the patio.  I’ve learned to make our drinks and just wait until she’s ready.

My mother always has something else to do.

I help with cleanup in the kitchen every night.  I wipe up and dry and put away and collect and wrap and stash.

Then I stun her with my prowess at Jeopardy.  We seriously discuss my appearing as a contestant.  “Goddamn you” she tells me because I’m good at it.  I’m really thinking I should look into it.

I wonder, wonder, wonder.  My mother is so bright and perceptive.  Such an active and adroit mind.  What does she think about while keeping herself so busy?  It can’t be the singular curse of an overactive mind because mine never stops and I’m a relatively lazy bastard.  She’s a thinker.  I know she is.  I know she’s churning.  I’m going to ask her about it.

So anyway, I found myself over on that side of town the other day, my spirits were buoyed a little by the beauty of the day.  A high desert Indian summer.  I’d been warned but wasn’t prepared for what I saw.  No lawn.  No growth.  No greenery.  Grey and black.  Decay and rot.  The slow and insidious violence of absolute neglect.  Like beauty and spirit and air had been sucked out.  Trees angry and twisted and dying.  Rotting crab apples littering where lushness used to be.  A sagging roof, curtains askew and windows like blank crazy eyes.  Like a horror movie.  I still dream there.  I hope what I saw does not go that far into my twilight.

It hurt my soul.  It took my breath.  I thought about me and my sister’s impressions in the sidewalk my father made.  I intend to save those.  I will get them.  I will knock on that door and pay the man whatever he wants to lose that part of his sidewalk.  I will do this before I leave this town.  All the magic is gone.  All that we did and built has been erased by apathy.  Everything is still intact in our hearts and minds and spirits.  What we did and who we are is still complete and golden and thriving.

Lonely is the night.

Drinks for my friends.