Sandwich

What is the best sandwich ever? Email me and tell me what you think the best sandwich on earth is. I got to thinking about this one when I was eating quite often at a place called Pret a Manger, which has tasty sandwiches to go and salads and things like that. I was talking with a reporter who said that Pret was all she ate for a while in London and it was a lifesaver. “The Coronation Chicken…” she said. “God, I loved getting the Coronation Chicken sandwich. Ate it all the time.” Well, I had decided to try every single Pret sandwich (there are only about ten different ones, so it’s not an insane goal), and the other day I had the Coronation Chicken. It was not that tasty to me. In fact, I was a little mad at the reporter for having spoken so glowingly about it. It was a little boring and a little messy without the commensurate satisfaction that comes with eating a messy sandwich.

But there you have it. It’s all a matter of personal preference, doyyyy. I still believe there are some contenders out there that would earn high marks against many others. Roast beef and plum tomatoes with red onions and horseradish on a baguette, for example. That’s unfuck-wittable. But you got your Reuben, your submarine sandwich (hoagie, hero, etc, depending on where you are from) with the Italian dressing soaking the bread and marinating all the meats and vegetables, your steak sandwich in all its simple, heart-clogging, two-fisted, blue-collar glory….there’s the Cuban sandwich – Good God, that could be the one for me – with the pork, ham, cheese, mustard, and oh yes, the pickles. Fuck I could eat one now and I just ate lunch a little while ago. There are international flavors, like a steak torta or a banh mi or a pita stuffed with lamb or falafel. Variations of bread, meat, cheese, vegetable, dressing, spice, preparation, temperature…all those kinds of mustard….heealalllgghghgghgh (Homer drooling).

And there are plain old sammies, like black peppercorn turkey on a roll with lettuce and mayo, or an egg salad with lettuce on an onion roll, or ham and swiss on rye with mustard. Or tuna on rye toast, something I used to eat with great frequency at the diner on 15th and 8th in Chelsea. I think it’s gone now. While these sandwiches in my opinion can’t hold a candle to some of the aforementioned creations in the previous paragraph, the mere fact that someone might put them up for contention is proof that the question cannot be answered. Plus, you know, what if the best sandwich you ever had was this quick creation that someone made for a drive to Maine, and it’s got no name, no country of origin, no children? What if the situation made that sandwich the best sandwich ever? Isn’t it great to ponder? The question just cannot be settled with a single answer, even for one person.

However, it can be a good way to find out my friends’ and readers’ favorite sammies. “Saaaa-myyy, sammy bay-ay-byyyy…Sammy…I wanna eat you tonight..” Wait. That’s Cherie.

Bought a copy of the Bad Boys II DVD the other day. I wanted something dumb and action-packed. Michael Bay currently sits atop the pile in that regard, and the film was indeed as dumb as it was action-packed. I think it was about an E-trafficking ring (or, as they quaintly call it, X – who the hell says X anymore? It’s all E and rolls and shit), but toward the end of the movie I became convinced that it’s about 1) dead bodies, lots of them, and 2) how long Will Smith’s arms are. I know that remark reflects the type of smug hipster cynicism that made me want to punch Goebel - whose only critique of Casino was “It was a vehicle for showing how many different wigs Sharon Stone could wear in one movie” – but it’s ridiculous how many scenes there are in which Smith spreads those arms, burner in each hand, like a black gangsta Christ.

I was thinking about doing a blog posting that was a fake QA directed at Michael Bay, since the suspension of disbelief is beyond anything I have seen in a long time – maybe since Armageddon (another Bay film). Even Armageddon – in which people land on a jagged asteroid hurtling through space, for God’s sake – is almost more believable. A few examples from Bad Boys II: Powerboats that elude Coast Guard helicopters with a simple nylon cover, despite the longtime existence of thermal imaging. Black men who infiltrate a Klan meeting, and crab traps that stop bullets. Guns where there were no guns in the previous shot. A fully loaded tractor trailer that catches up to an SUV that had a 30-second head start - and in that same scene, a Ferrari, for fuck’s sake, that somehow takes forever to catch up. And on and on and on.

I’m not doing the post for a few reasons: I would have to sit through this crappy movie again, the QA would only state the obvious, and there are more interesting and funny things to write about. But damn. How fucking stupid does Bay think the average American viewer is? “Just spray enough bullets around, they won’t notice.” One of the funnier considerations is that, despite the movie being rife with dead bodies of various sorts, police are only injured in a chase scene that includes a boat’s stern going straight into the passenger compartment of one police car and another police car completely blowing up – I mean, engulfed in flames – and ending up on its roof. Oh, thank God that propeller through the head is just a flesh wound! Now, some of you are familiar with my problems with suspension of disbelief – ‘what did you expect, Chucky? But I can’t do it over and over and over, every 5-10 minutes and at times every 30 seconds. We’re not all 13-year olds with hard-ons and X-Boxes, Bay. I have to consider whether the only thing that kept him in check – barely – in doing Pearl Harbor was that he needed to maintain some semblance of historical accuracy. That the attack was brutal and bloody and full of explosions was helpful, and he could take plenty of license with the love story. I read this really interesting Rolling Stone article about Bay that drew some psychological conclusions about his early childhood, parental relationships, and resulting style of filmmaking, and it was a compelling argument. His films are bathed in superficial ethos, representing basic human emotions like love, revenge, and loyalty in the broadest, most ham-fisted way.

Well, that’s it for now. Just thought I’d ramble and vent about Michael Bay. I am reminded of a line from The Warriors: “You’re just a part of everything that’s happening tonight – and it’s all bad.”

Peace
Chucky

Postscript: Dudes! I just checked his filmography to make sure he directed the films I mentioned – guy went to Wesleyan! Fuck this noise, I’m writing a screenplay and blowing up. This is nuts.