I come from Pittsburgh, where our favorite style of food is A Thing With French Fries on It.
A sandwich with french fries on it has, outside of Pittsburgh, become known as a “Pittsburgh sandwich.”1 Within Pittsburgh, a “Pittsburgh salad” is a salad covered in french fries and most of a cow. Pittsburghers will gladly pay the $38 admission to Kennywood amusement park just to get inside so they can line up at the legendary Potato Patch and pay several additional dollars for three or four pounds of hand-cut fries afloat in liquified cheesefood.
I mention this because last week comedian Brandie Posey led me to what could become Pittsburgh’s next Thing With French Fries on It.
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Happy Bruce Day! Every couple of years on a Tuesday a new Bruce Springsteen album comes out, and I gleefully race from the house at lunchtime to buy an actual physical copy. My excitement’s tempered somewhat this time because the tracks from Wrecking Ball have poured from the web for a couple of weeks now,1 and because the $12.99 special edition CD is my one luxury purchase for the quarter. Nevertheless Bruce Day always brings a little joy to my world.
Today the joy’s mixed with anger. Actually, it’s joy sprung from anger: that primal elation that comes when you find someone else who’s angry about all the same things you are. The exuberance you only feel from someone singing loudly against everything that’s wrong. Wrecking Ball is Bruce’s angry album, and it makes me happy to hear him writing the most vital, pissed-off protest songs out there today.
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I’m winding up this unique triple-#SethBuyMeLunch-post day with a belated announcement of last week’s winner. It’s Brandie Posey, AKA @Brandazzle. Brandie and I shortly will be enjoying Peruvian food in Glendale.
As I’ve said twice already today, you can win a free lunch from simply me by tweeting #SethBuyMeLunch any Monday. Details here.
Looking at Brodie Hubbard there, obviously the first thought that comes to mind is, “I’d like to know the history of that beard.” Luckily, at my urging, Brodie has told it. Now let’s move on to other things.
Brodie’s a vegan, so he suggested we meet at animal-byproductless hotspot Flore in Silver Lake. Flore specializes in meatless versions of popular non-vegetarian dishes: reubens, tacos, veggie burgers, etc. served by Fred Armisen rehearsing a character for Portlandia. My experience has been that that style of vegan cooking — with stuff like tempeh bacon and seitan pork — rarely works out well and results in a disappointing ersatz mess when the chef could’ve better spent his time making something distinctly vegetarian and enjoyable. But Flore pulls it off and has even created a tofu chicken for their club sandwich that so closely mimics the texture of a browned chicken breast that I picked it apart to examine it like something I’d dug out of my ear, while Brodie smiled politely.
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My favorite fast-food burger joint, mid-Atlantic staple Five Guys Burgers and Fries, recently started a massive push into southern California, to the great joy of certain parts of my body and the great dismay of other parts. I try not to get in the middle of those internal disputes. I figure they’ll sort it out between themselves. But I’ve noticed two things since Five Guys came to LA: 1) they’re perfectly thrilled to have doubled their prices, and 2) In-N-Out Burger devotees, who are legion, find Five Guys perplexing and seem vaguely offended by the whole thing.
My fellow lunchee, comedian Barbara Gray, is just such a devotee, but she admirably suggested we give Five Guys’ new Miracle Mile location a shot. When we’d finished she diplomatically pronounced it “okay,” in the same sort of way one would describe a tax accountant who didn’t let you deduct your Xbox Live subscription fees.
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If you originally discovered me through my travel writing, you’ll enjoy Follow Elys, the blog by the intrepid Elys Muda.
I’ve never met Elys in person. Back in 2010, she discovered my site and IMed me out of the blue asking for advice for a trip around the world she’d be embarking on in two years. Keep in mind that the amount of time that passed from the moment I suggested to Sophie that we take a trip around the world to when we boarded our first plane was about 150 days. Also keep in mind that I’m an impulsive nitwit, but nonetheless I was kind of skeptical that Elys would actually see the thing through.
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The IndieGoGo fundraising campaign for my radio series Special Relativity ended last night at midnight. The project fell well short of its $8000 goal. We raised $2486. Minus IndieGoGo’s 9% cut, that leaves me with just over $2260.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing some research and math to figure out the bare minimum budget I need to produce the project the way I want to. Based on that I’ll decide if and how to proceed, then report back.
I’m extremely grateful to everyone who donated to the campaign and shared it with others, and I’m especially appreciative of everyone who sent me messages of support and encouragement. Thank you, and stay tuned.
We’re down to the final hours of the fundraising campaign of my web radio series Special Relativity. If you’ve been meaning to give, please do so now. The need is no less than on day one; at this point it’s questionable if the project will have the funds to continue. If you can’t contribute, please share the campaign via email, Facebook, Twitter, or your web site.
Thanks for all you’ve done, and watch this space to see how this ends up.
Click here to contribute.
SAFE California announced today that they’ve reached their goal of 750,000 petition signatures to place an initiative to end the death penalty on the statewide ballot this November.1 This, of course, is due mostly to me and the upwards of five signatures I collected.
It’s excellent news, and the work now shifts to convincing people to vote yes on the measure. SAFE will need money and volunteers to do that, so please visit their web site to see how you can help. Also, to boost the size of their network, SAFE’s running a contest to guess the final number of signatures. The entrant with the closest guess wins a $50 iTunes gift card. Click here to enter, or text SAFECA to 74700. (Doing so will, of course, sign you up for their mobile alerts.)
In a time of unending bad news, it’s nice to have some good. To celebrate, I’m treating you all to a Super Dickmann’s Party-Pack.
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I come from Pittsburgh, where our favorite style of food is A Thing With French Fries on It. 
