the sun struggles up another beautiful day
and i feel glad in my own suspicious way
oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
::: MY OFFICIAL OPINION, AS A PART-TIME RED SOX FAN, ON THE SHEA HILLENBRAND TRADE :::
I kind of liked Shea Hillenbrand. He was like Jeff Bagwell without the steroids and the retarded batting stance, and you know, still on the Red Sox, and not ugly, and slightly more lucid. He had a good name too. Oh well. How can you nickname Byung-Hun Kim? Bungie? ‘Lil Kim? Neither of those are as good as Hilly. or Shea, for that matter. Everybody wanted to trade him for Colon five months ago, and that was when the knives really came out. He never waits on pitches, he probably hates children, etc. So remember that he was trade bait all along. Even if he turns out to be a perennial all-star 3B in Arizona. Although finding out he was from Arizona made me like him less. Besides, the last time the Red Sox had an Asian pitcher, he threw a no-hitter was Tomo Ohka. Never mind that point. Well, you can always take solace in the fact that both Bruce Chen and Tomo Ohka are in fact both actually Eugene Chung. Eugene Chung, come home. We miss you.
back to the other side of summer:
THE CHICKEN PARMEGAN
Height: 2.2″
Weight: .83 lbs
From: Parma
Costs: $5.95
Personal: Married to Club Breakfast #3, they have one child, Rice Pudding Parmegan.
Chicken Parmegan is a veteran sandwich, having played for at least several thousand other restaurants and institutional cafeterias in his career. His curve doesn’t have the same snap it used to, but his batterymates at the Salonica call a good game, giving him a lot of bread to work with and keeping his sauce count down as much as possible. Always was an innings horse, always will be. I dig on the CHX PARM. Good price, good hunk of chicken product for you, a hearty roll, and a not-as-crappy-as-it-could-be sauce. And they manage to keep the bread edible without skimping on the sauce. My heart swells with pride for you, Parmy.
If it were a car: Brougham D’Elegance from late 1980s.
MONTE CRISTO
Despite having the coolest name in the sandwich bracket, the MC fails because it’s disgusting. Who the fuck wants to eat ham and swiss on french toast? OK, a lot of people, but fuck, that’s not really a meal. It glistens. The whole thing glistens. The MC is cheap ($4.50) and hot (i’ll guess 100 degrees), so it gets the job done sometimes.I’ve had it five or so times, I’ll admit. it’s just not a difference maker, as far as sandwiches go. Sorry to be the one that had to tell everybody.
i’m taking a goddamn break from writing my review journal to say very, very little. apparently i am now scheduled to make an appearance in cleveland ohio on july 25 to attend the Celtic vs AC Milan match at Cleveland Browns Stadium. I would not be all that excited if i wasn’t attending this with my sister and Mr. C. Lacey, everybody’s favorite irish boyfriend of my sister. also, someone please give me a job in the world of journalism. and i have something else for you motherfuckers:
DAVE NOAH-THON 2003
LIVE FROM CELL BLOCK 5700
SATURDAY NITE, MAY 31
yes, that’s right. we’re having a party on saturday night. it’s not that kind of party, by which i mean it’s not a maroon party, wherein there would be more than $500 of free booze. but there will be a slightly tasteful amount of free booze, and maybe you will augment that with your own tasteful amount of booze that you brought. [judge smails voice] eh? eh? anyway, 5700 S Blackstone, #3, saturday night, at the time at which parties generally happen. the cause celebre? the imminent and sad departure of Mister Dave Noah, everybody’s favorite non-irish future NYC public schools math maestro. and the secondary cause of our not getting our lease renewed due to doing stuff like this too often.
the salonica projekt will have to wait for a few hours, i am at work and should not be posting this but i have shit to air: everybody else with a blog except whet is a loser who doesn’t post enough. I NEED ENTERTAINMENT. I’VE GIVEN YOU ALL SO MUCH. also, let it be known, on the topic of the new coach of the cleveland cavaliers, that i want paul silas. he is the coaching equivalent of morgan freeman. most of the time he just is around and keeping things under control but sometimes he turns into the principal from Lean on Me and beats your ass. PAUL SILAS WILL BEAT YOUR ASS.
ok gotta go
THE STORY OF THE SALONICA
VOLUME ONE: THE SANDWICHES, CONTINUED
Ham on Cheese (cold)
I’m big on mushing the contents of the sandwich together before cutting, and you don’t even have to ask for that with this number. The shit comes pressed down and cut, so that there’s a neat layering effect. although ham and cheese sandwiches likely predate candy bars, i am always remined of some crazy astronaut space bar with pink and yellow layers when eating such a sandwich. sometimes the ham is a bit knobby, but we all have our foibles. the ottawa senators of sandwiches.
if it were a car: GMC safari with curtains, maybe you live in the back during the summer. it smells sometimes but that’s not the car/sandwich’s fault.
since i apparently have nothing to do between now and the end of my life, i am going to present a review of the salonica’s menu in twenty volumes, exclusive to civil war roundtable. by this i hope to waste some time and not watch any more of the shitty mavs-spurs game. without further ado:
THE STORY OF THE SALONICA
VOLUME ONE: THE SANDWICHES
Chicken on a Pita
Before i sink my teeth into this, i just saw that mac commercial with yao ming and a midget and their respective Powerbooks. i noticed that jeff goldblum is the narrator. i would like this commercial better if they cut the midget and just had jeff goldblum and yao ming together on an airplane. and jeff goldblum didn’t even have a computer, he was just chatting up yao ming about his. in other jeff goldblum news: Deep Cover is hot. Anyway: Chicken on a pita. The chicken on a pita was born in Greece in the year 600 BC by a cabal of sheep and spice merchants. the sheep were tired of having their children eaten by gyro-mad grecians, and the spice merchants realized that the gyro required no spices, and were desirous of a dish that entailed completely covering
note: do they just play bruce springsteen incessantly at the continental airlines arena in new jersey? do they ever get tired of it? do you get lynched in jersey if you ask why no one has ever thought to just not play springsteen, for one goddamn day? i love springsteen more than you, incidentally. but i don’t see how the rambling intro to “Born to Run,” the part about mansions of glory and suicide machines, is good hockey arena pump-up music. ok back to the sandwich
the chicken with savory herbs and spices. The sandwich was forgotten for a thousand years or so before the Salonica brought it back. the thing about chicken on a pita: it’s never been served the same twice. the ratio of tomatoes to lettuce to onions, the on-again off-again nature of its relationship to the salsa tub (only known to accompany one other dish, the mexican omelette), the amount of chicken, just how covered that chicken is in savory herbs and spices, the greasiness of the pita, whether the sandiwch is wrapped in tin foil or wax paper, what kind of lettuce it is, etc. you just don;t get that kind of variability in anything else on the salonica menu, even haphazard dishes like the nick’s delight, et al. In the end, i choose the (michael chang is still playing tennis? fuck.) chicken on a pita often, partially because i like it and partially because i have a semi-misguided theory that it is somehow not as unhealthy as other things on the salonica menu. in fact, i don’t think i’ve ordered anything else from the sandwich menu in several months. then again, i’m off my game as far as eating at salonica is concerned, considering there was once a time that i ate there more than 5 times a week and i’m down to three in a good week these days. and that’s not because of subway. Fuck Subway. We’re friends with Debbie. This is an incredibly long post. SUCKERS! Anyway, to summarize: The Chicken on a Pita: A meal steeped in history, the first non-baby goat meat product involving pita bread in world history. (when did the highlight-backing music on sportscenter get so shitty? it was always bad, but now it’s actively annoying). Anyway, i came late to the Chicken on a Pita. It hid its sickness from me, and all I could do was mourn her. I mean, the Chicken on a Pita, I wasn’t ready for it as a nineteen year old, i wasn’t ready for it as a twenty year old. But in my newfound maturity i have found my life reinvigorated by the C.O.A.P.
If it was a car: the flying taxi from The Fifth Element
While I am on the subject of the Fifth Element: I really like that movie. First off, the entire movie is just setup for a goofy joke, namely that the fifth element is LOVE. “The secret ingredient is…. love?? Alright, who’s been messing with this thing?” Fifth Element has it all: drunk Gary Oldman, Tricky getting blown up by drunk Gary Oldman, visual puns, Luke Perry, Zeus from No Holds Barred, Ben Adams, before he went back to his original hair color and stopped acting. Anyway, don’t bring me your shit abouthow you don’;t like the fifth element, i don’t want to hear it.
holy shit Jean-Sebastien Giguere has a TREMENDOUS beard.
also: i made the interesting decision to start roy halladay and bartolo colon tonight despite the fact that they were pitching against one another. surprisingly, only one of them got the win for my fantasy baseball team.
ahem, back to the matter at hand
Club House
You were my meal of preference at the default setting for a very long time. or maybe just a few weeks. I can’t remember. There was a time at the end of my second year, before i lived mere moments from the salonica, that i only went there once a week. i only went to salonica one time my entire first year. i got the taco burrito, something that isn’t even served anymore, part of the defunct mexican dinner segment of the menu. and it was one of the worst things i have ever eaten in my life. that is part of the reason that i avoid all items from the center panel of the menu with the exception of the nick’s delight. that and i heard some shit about the athenian chicken taking a half and hour to make. Anyway, the Club House: A triple decker sandwich, showcasing sometimes fresh, sometimes slimy turkey breast slices, bacon de la Salonica, and a razor-thin administration of mayonnaise. The deluxe club, as with all the sandwichs except for meat loaf and turkey (open faced), can be ordered deluxed or regular. Deluxe allows the patron to choose either a cup of the soup of the day (highly recommended except on the day when the choice is clam chowder or chicken noodle [chicken noodle is ok, just not my bag] OR you can have fries instead. no reason to get fries, because if you need carbs, you get the complimentary bread basket with the soup anyway, and the fries at Salonica are kind of shitty anyway. they’re never the right temperature, and either overfried or underfried without fail. the Club House is a bulky sandwich on paper, but it turns out that it’s a lot of lettuce and toast and not all that much meat. it costs a bit too much too, clocking in around $7 after all is said and done. you can do better, particularly with the cold ham and cheese. infinitely preferable to the Club House.
If it were a car: Mercury Topaz, in very good condition but a mercury topaz nonetheless.
THE OPEN FACED HOT SANDWICHES
Meat Loaf
My dad is the only person who has ever eaten this. He dug it. Despite his hatred of ham loaf, he digs on meat loaf HARD. WTG my dad. I’ll come back the the Open Faced Hot Sandwiches later. maybe in a day or two. i am running out of steam here.
I still have a lot of sandwiches to address. Let’s plan this out here. I’ll do sandiwches for the next few days, then go through the breakfast options, which i have less to say about. maybe i will incorporate a survey of the waitstaff as well here. although i do like almost all the waiters and would feel bad talking about them on the internet. not that bad. and there are a couple of really shitty waiters. i had a weird dream last week that a second franchise of the salonica opened across the street, and all the waiters were the same, and i wanted to know whether they split time between the two stores or were clones and no one would tell me.
restaurant review, again
Tecalitan, 1814 W. Chicago Ave, somewhere in the badlands between the ukrainian village and wicker park
i remembered the burritos here as being somehow huger than they were tonight, although i did some measuring and the brto i was served had a diameter roughly equivalent to 66.7% the length of my cell phone, which is not that long but you have to remember, pi x d and whatnot. the surveyed burrito’s length was placed at approximately one cubit by assistant topographer eggleston. it was concluded to be, generally speaking, the size of a healthy non-LeBron James adolescent male human’s lower arm, from below the wrist joint to just before the elbow. for those of you still reading, i should let you know i’m just typing something because i am messing around with blogger and need something to publish. but it gets better, hold on. the burritos are good, the salsa is mild enough that you can eat it and not get all red and sweat. but not without a bit of what harold lamb, in his wildly fictionalized history Hannibal: One #$&%$# Man Against Rome !!!!!! (andy capp-style profanity and extreme emphasis mine), (also the author of Iron Men and Saints and The Flame of Islam) called the altivez, a word best translated as hispanicity. the very essence of being iberian. or in this case, mexican. i’m getting myself in trouble quick here. i swear to god i’m not making this up about the altivez, someone actually wrote that. anyway, back to the restaurant: they had big burritos. what else? huge as fuck soda pop serving sizes. i mean big. like bigger than leona’s big. like you don’t need that much soda pop in a week let alone one fucking meal. free chips are dope. it’s nice and quiet, there is a bar if you’re the sort who needs alcohol to have a good time. i have some more stuff to say about the strip of Chicago Ave the restuarant is on. one, Altana’s western wear has the best signage in the world. The sign for their parking lot is better than most. the sign for the store itself is a giant 3D plastic horse, with what i’d call tasteful neon flourishes rearing up against a marquee-style presentation of the store’s name, topped off by a BODACIOUS neon scorpion. someone more ribald than i said it looks like the horse is trying to you know, do it, with the sign. i prefer to think that the horse is challenging the sign/scorpion godhead to a boxing match, horse-style. last bit about tonight’s dinner excursion: there is, a bit down chicago ave from the horse i have spoken of, a merchant specializing in the sale of live and or dressed chickens, most likely for those interested in eating chickens and possibly killing them yourself beforehand. but there’s a typo on the awning. it says “amish chicken’s” which i took to mean “we have amish chickens. they don’t have zippers. come n eat our many amish chickens.” but as we all know, “amish chicken’s” means “belonging to mr and mrs amish chicken.” which moved me to a reverie about how things might be at the butcher shop of mr amish chicken. it involved a four-foot tall chicken who had turned heel on the other chickens and taught himself to read and use a TTY machine, and then proceeded to sell his brethen down the river to ravenous humans. this probably reads like deranged rantings. well, nobody made you read it. shithead.
note: apparently altivez just means arrogance in spanish. we’ll see about this. i might have to buy a copy of Hannibal: One Motherfucking Crazy Man Against All of Rome, Which Was Fucking Huge Brah to prove it but I WILL NOT RELENT.
civil war roundtable will be taking today off to honor our nation’s veterans. and to go to wrigley field. and to wear a baseball hat. and ALSO to look into the acquisition of some sort of muffin for breakfast right about now. now i’m not really taking the day off anymore. PS all the red sox fans on the 1984 family: DO NOT FUCK WITH JASON DAVIS. he’s no ricardo rodriguez, but c’mon, who is? in other news, sportscenter: I KILL YOU for showing the indians losing game 7 of the 1997 series last night just to set up a padres highlight in which charles nagy and jaret wright tagteamed to lose a game in similar fashion. jerks.
oh, did anybody hear about this? i haven’t been paying any attention to sports, so it came as a great shock to me.
RESTAURANT REVIEW
D’Agostino’s, somewhere on the 3000 block of N. Southport Ave
I liked the faux wanted poster of butch cassidy and the sundance kid wherein it was just a shitty oil painting of cats dressed like cowboys. they had several works of art in this same vein, cats as cowboys. other than that, uh, i don;t have much nice to say about this place. there are too many apostrophes in the name, and the bathroom smelled bad. maybe it’s time for this ironic dining experiment to end. i think it might be.
Chapter the First
In which the blackhearts come after “Hitsville UK.” I will grant, in compliance with the determination of Messrs deRogatis and Kot, that “Ivan Meets GI Joe” is clearly the worst song ever recorded by the Clash, having in fact predicted that it would be named their worst song beforehand. But “Hitsville UK” is THE BEST SONG EVER RECORDED. By which I mean obviously not the best song ever but probably the best fake Motown girl-group song recorded by a group of drug-addled Londoners in the late 70s/early 80s. OK, second best.
“This is the chair I fuck you in.”
I feel that it merits mention that I am writing this business at 6 am on a Saturday morning as i gird my loins for taking the field of softball battle. well i am not exactly girding my loins quite yet. My loins are a mere ten-minute gird even on the loiniest day of the year. i predict big things out of the AC Green softball franchise today. my heart swells. what I was saying about being awake at 6 am is that i am, right now actually, and would be elated were i to get back to sleep instead of watching Saved by the Bell. Kelly is not going to the prom because her dad lost his job. This show is not getting any better with age.
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Far East Kitchen, XXXX E. 53rd Street
i give the FEK, according to Chicago Maroon standards of restaurant reviewing, gets like one half of a bomb, and several of the other pictographs, which i can’t recall at this point. i had the lemon chicken, which was, according to the New Ships, a lot like Chicken McNuggets. i also could not get a handle on the sauce used. It tasted like lemon yogurt but had the consistency of a good latex house paint. the sole accompaniment to the chicken wads was a pile of wilten lettuce that had been entirely doused in the lemon sauce. i guess i got rice too. but the martini, @ $2.75, was rough and ready. the strawberry daquiri was described as “medicinal” by one diner. YOU LIED TO ME HONEY. I think we said some stuff about the FEK in the orientation issue pertaining to the full bar. that’s about it. they have a full bar. it’s like Nickys got a full bar. Maybe i will go to Pockets next.
Damn. I need a girl who wears jjeans like Kelly Kapowski. I don’t knwo about anyone else, but I miss the days of giant ugly asses being proudly displayed. and TBS has indulged me with a third consecutive episode of the Bell. BEIMEL! BARD! LEBRONG!
in the words of the great medievalist d. isidore noah, “i may have blown a fuse.” i’m a veg, danny. i am not really excited about anything other than
since lasted we walked this ground, i have been extremely intoxicated one time. anyone who saw me at jimmy’s circa midnight on wednesday can attest to the fact that i hugged ben, tried to pay the bartender for a drink with an ATM receipt, sang parts of the star-spangled banner, yelled, made disparaging comments about the nature of the tap water i was drinking, and then could not successfully answer very straightforward questions about how i felt, etc. then i went home and put my head in the toilet. other things i did included lighting a cigarette for tv news personality walter jacobson and almost burninating his forehead while doing so. it’s all running together, really. i remember mostly just me drinking free amstel light and martinis above boston market until i was in nichols (nee dogshit) park with a handle of bombay sapphire wrapped up in my suit coat, wondering where all the kids from that afternoon were. then i was trying to pee at jimmy’s and moving my feet more than is necessary to use a urinal. then i was with the toilet at home. then sleep.
now, this is all well and good but there is something much more important we have to talk about.
LEBRON THE FUCK JAMES.
yesterday i caught myself engaging in blasphemy on several occasions, the first was telling ben that i wanted carmelo anthony instead of james and the second was telling whet and ben that i wanted darko milicic more than either james or anthony. i may have thought these things were true when i said them but now the cavs will mr. leBron james, and i will accept the shame of what i have done. also, gordon gund is the craziest motherfucker in the world. anybody who saw the shit last night can attest to the fact that he is actually bowser/king koopa as portrated by d. hopper in the mario brothers hollywood motion picture also featuring b. hoskins as mario mario and j. leguizamo as luigi mario. anyway, let me just say something: i am more of a cavs fan than all of you put together. i have been excited about the NEW cavs since the acquisition of darius miles/dajuan wagner. then ricky davis becomes the superstar we all knew he would be after seeing him at Iowa. THEN LEBRON JAMES. i cannot even parse this shit. i am still thinking about josh bard’s recent tear: BATTING .271 IN MAY. HE IS HITTING FOR SOME KIND OF AVERAGE, MR WEDGE. Also: Chris Widger, still in the majors? my theories about wedge and widger are not looking so good. anyway, TRIBE IN ‘84: THIS IS OUR YEAR (actual promotional sticker for 1984 cleveland indians). i’m starting to yell a lot, so i should probably get going but i have one more thing for everybody: WORD ART!
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