I Think It's About Happiness Or Something.

Sometimes, you deserve a steak.  Vegetarians will have to translate this into whatever their language is.  I'm talking about meat.  A steak of meat.  I'm talking about the most beautiful thing in the world.  And it's perfect for any occasion... Life sucks?  You deserve a steak.  Got a promotion?  Celebrate with a steak!  Banging the girl of your dreams?  See what you think when she cooks you a STEAK.

                People act like steak has to be some kind of big production, and I disagree with that (however, I really really want to try the loaded sirloin at Longhorn).

                Fancy steakhouses are great, based solely on the fact that they have steaks, but honestly, is it ever worth the expense?  Yes, it is.  You are eating a steak, and that is worth any expense.  But is it necessary?  Hell no.  Do you think they are making better steaks than what you can make at home?  Think about that.  They aren't.  And I have further advice: there are no rules to steak--there is no right or wrong.  There are only opinions, and you remember what is said about opinions.
I used to order steaks well done.  I don't really know why.  Then one night someone made a steak for me cooked approximately medium.  I'm not saying who, because this blog isn't for that topic, but let me tell you, that steak was amazing.  So now I can say--and it goes with my wish to make people less annoying restaurant patrons--that I don't care how my steak comes out.  Living life this way is so much easier and thus more satisfying.  If I order a steak medium and it's "overcooked", hey, cool, I used to love it that way.  If I for some reason order it well and it comes out pink--well whatta ya know?  My favorite.  I seriously am probably one of the least picky eaters in all of the world, which one may say makes me the worst "food blog" writer ever.  Well I say I'm the best, and I also say "Fuck whoever doesn't like it."
Tonight I had a steak.  It was superb.  I don't remember if I deserved one, or if I was celebrating something, but I definitely am not banging the girl of my dreams.  But for whatever reason, I had a steak.  And did I mention that it was superb?  There is not much to a steak.  All of them are probably great.  I saw a Publix commercial once where two brothers are arguing about the best cut of meat to grill, and the Publix butcher says that ribeye is the best.  Okay, guy.  So whenever I'm at Kroger, I buy a couple ribeyes.  See what I did there?  But hey, there is no right answer; I bet a steak made of hot dog is pretty good too.  And there is no correct way to prepare it.  Men who want to act manly will say that you must grill it outside, no matter what, you have to go outside and grill your steak.  Bullshit.  Seriously, that's bullshit.  If you have picked up the pattern here, I am not saying that a grilled steak is bad, because oh my god it is awesome, I am just saying that a pan-seared or even an oven-baked steak is just as rewarding.  I mean, think about this, bachelors and bachelorettes.  Do you really want to go out, uncover the grill, dump in your coals, get your fire going (which, come on, is never easy), wait forever, then spend all those hungry minutes looking at your steak that isn't ready to eat?  I don't.  So look: throw a pan on a hot stove eye, tip some oil in there, throw your steak on, listen to that orgasmic sizzle, flip it, have another orgasm, then EAT IT.  Bam.  Steak'd.  Simple.  Earlier, I tossed a ribeye in a pan.  Two orgasms later, I was having a third, IN MY MOUTH.   I will give you a suggestion though, because I know you love those.  When in doubt, just pour some beer on it.  For real.  At any moment, if you are standing there looking at your steak and you are drinking a beer, just pour some beer on it.  You won't regret it.
This ribeye I had was so so so deliciously inspiring, I started to think about other things that make people happy with no measurable explanation.  Well, in the second or two it took me to type that sentence, I am starting to lose those thoughts...  Ice cream is one.  Ice cream makes people happy, except for Otis as shown in The Devil's Rejects, which by the way is an ingenius way of making you ponder the unrelatable extremes of such a psychotic character, so thank Rob Zombie for that one.  But anyway, why do people love ice cream?  You may say it's because it is sweet.  But so are brownies, or cinnamon rolls.  While I enjoy all, I would say that out of the three there is none matched in satisfaction than ice cream.
And also... You know you're in a fastfood joint when you see the baseball-capped dad covered in grease, followed by the excessively bleach-blonded mom who looks like something that grew out of the cat litter dumped underneath the trailer, followed by the flush-faced fat pre-teen daughter in her cupcake pajamas.  But look, after you naturally pass judgment on these people, do you realize why they are there where you are?  It's the pursuit of happiness.  You may think it's the price, but you're wrong; they could just as easily go to a Ryan's Steakhouse for about the same cost (see what I did there?) I think.  It's the pursuit of happiness, you shithead.
Fastfood makes people happy, because it's awesome.  Ice cream makes people happy, because it's awesome.  And steaks make people happy, because they are awesome.  It's as simple as that.
Disappointed by the "food blog" today?  You deserve a steak.  Love the "food blog" today?  Celebrate with a steak!  Vegetarians, go eat a [steak].

If You're Shrewd Enough To Be Underlined.

          I didn't really mean to get so drunk last night.  I guess.  Maybe I did, I don't know, I don't remember.  I remember being on the phone with a longtime pal (that's a shout-out to you, Kennen) and I have some kind of fuzzy memory of eating a pickle for a late snack, unless that was a dream, and then I woke up this morning and it was time to get ready for work.  And boy was i pissed.  So I had decided that today I would take a nap after work and then not drink at all... I can hear all of you lol-ing already.  But I'm serious.  Of course, one of the reasons I wasn't going to drink today was because I didn't have more than $1.38 in my checking account.  I mean, I have a little under half a bottle of vodka here at the house, but I was planning on not speaking to vodka after what she had apparently done to me.  So I went to work, reluctantly but no more than usual, and when I got there I checked my account online.  To my pleasant and much-needed surprise, my state tax return had come in.  And, as evidence of how funny the universe is sometimes, not five minutes after seeing that I got an out-of-the-blue text from Lacey, one of my little schnookums from the bar (Bullfrogz, if you remember), which said something like "I'm working at the bar all day if you wanna stop by!"  Well, how can I say "no" to that face??  Yeah yeah, I wouldn't have seen her face until I was actually at the bar, but hey...so she didn't have to do much convincing.  Also, it had crossed my mind that I should go to the bar and beg all my girlies to feed the mongrel while/if I'm in Seattle next weekend, since Jeremy won't be here either.  The mongrel.  The hungry hungry hippo.  Loner.

          And by the way, since we're again on the subject of Bullfrogz being my favorite place ever, I have to add this:  what bar do YOU go to where you can get any of the staff to feed your cat??  Yeah, I thought so.  I asked to take a picture of Lacey, but she wouldn't agree to it when I wouldn't tell her what it was for, which now I guess makes perfect sense.  Instead I'll just settle for this:

               That's my hand after being at the bar.  My other hand has something about vag1nas and a lot of orange on it.  That one was decorated by Haze.  I have yet to see what kind of Lacey/Haze argument will build from this.
               Anyway, that's not all that happened when I saw that I had some slight moneypapers.  I also decided that I would treat myself to a meal that wasn't just the plain old pot of rotini with tomato sauce I had waiting in the fridge.  I thought that I deserved some french fries.  Plus, a pregnant coworker was saying something about how bacon at the moment was "gag-errific" and I said, "I'm going to Wendy's today; I'm going to have the new Asiago Ranch Chicken Club."  And I meant what I said.
          When I got home, I decided that since I was going to the bar later, and would thus be giving out plenty of hugs, I should take a shower so I wouldn't stink from a hot, grueling workday--at a law firm.  It wasn't until halfway through my shower that I realized by the time I got to the bar I would already smell like vodka and french fries, and that the bar would be full of cigarette smoke.  Nevertheless, I bathed and put on a shirt that, inside the shape of Africa, says PROCEEDS FROM THIS SHIRT BENEFIT MY IMAGE.
              I felt somewhat strange when I, shirt donned, stepped out of my house and found myself being stared at by a large thug in a dopeboy Oldsmobile that had a set of metal testicles hanging from it.  Luckily I was wearing my aviator sunglasses so I could pretend that I didn't notice or wasn't bothered.  The thug drove away.  As of now I'm still quite confused by what happened.
          Before I hit up Wendy's, I stopped by Home Depot to take note of prices of some supplies for an upcoming project that I can't describe here.  Perhaps I'm building a gazebo??  Sure!  Just think that that's it.  Then I swooped into Wendy's and slapped my debit card down for the Asiago Ranch Chicken Club (spicy) combo.  But I was strategizing also.  See, that is a new sandwich, and new sandwiches like that one always have some kind of sauce on it, in this case a ranch sauce of some kind.  Well, look, I'm telling you here, a new fastfood sandwich with a sauce on it is usually NOT GOOD.  Sandwiches don't need all these sauces, and that's what the industry hasn't figured out yet.  Honestly, all they need is lettuce, because lettuce is awesome.  This one though seemed simple enough to work--ranch--but I still had a backup plan so that I wouldn't end up with a shitty dinner; I also got a Double Junior Bacon Cheeseburger.  If the Asiago was no good, I would still finish my meal with a sandwich that can do no wrong.
          Bag in hand, I rushed home.  And that is not writer's embellishment, I mean I literally rushed home to eat it; I am that serious about my fastfood.
          And at this point I want to throw relevant references out here of two of my favorite movies.  Michael Douglas in Falling Down takes a bag full of guns into a fastfood restaurant and throws a fit about not being able to order breakfast, then after agreeing to order from the lunch menu, throws another awesome fit about how his burger is a total let-down compared to the giant poster of the same burger.  Great, great movie.  Also, one of my favorite parts in (500) Days of Summer is the split-screen comparison of Tom's "expectations vs. reality", because it is really so true to life, and boy I am not going to tell you why that movie is so true to my life.  I told you before, this blog is for many topics, but not that one.  Anyway, I have attempted to do this with the Asiago blah blah sandwich.

          It may look bad, but my reality picture was taken with a phone.  So come on, give it a break.  It could be much worse.  I'm not here to necessarily speak of aesthetics, I'm here to tell you what an awesome fucking sandwich that is.  For real.  You know how I said I usually hate new sandwiches with some kind of sauce on them?  This is not one of them.  That sandwich is...I really want to go get another one right now, now that I'm thinking about it again.  Now, granted, you have to note this, I got the spicy version, so it likely had more flavor than the homestyle or grilled versions, due to the paprika and turmeric (yeah, I learned that today).  But I'm telling you, if you go get this sandwich and are disgusted by it, it must be a fluke of some kind, or you must be at this Wendy's in Statesboro, Georgia I visited once on my way out of town, one of the reasons why I hate going through drive-thrus.  I ordered a #6 (Spicy Chicken Sandwich combo) with cheese and bacon, and when I'm like a couple miles down the road, what do I have?  A cheese and bacon sandwich, with no chicken.  Are you fucking kidding me??  But hey, I can't hold that one incident against the entire company, and you shouldn't harbor feelings like that either.  If you have ever liked Wendy's, then you should do yourself a favor and try the whatever sandwich I've been talking about.  If you don't like it, well, don't ever read my fucking blog anymore, and go order something else, because most everything on the Wendy's menu is delicious, according to me.
          So, see you next time.  We'll have fun.