We Have Great Soup: Lies About Pickles & Rice

Dear Internet,

After two weekends of fairly total debauchery, Mike and I figured it was high time to start hating on Chicago again. The latter part of April brought forth a unending flow of alcohol that led me to delirium tremens as well as many hours attempting to recall the stupid, ridiculous, and simply crazy things I had said and done to people I had just met and, God willing, probably won't meet again.

Yesterday, mostly without intention, ended up being a trifecta of crap ass. And crap ass food, which is the theme of this post.

1. Smallest Hot Dog Ever Makes Shelly an Angry Gal. The day started out well enough: we had enough toilet paper. The coffee wasn't burned by the time I mustered the willpower to get out of bed. My shower wasn't totally frigid. It had all the elements of being a decent day. But after taking the longest bus ride on the face of the planet from Hyde Park to the Loop, and we were starving, it was time to really shit things up.

As hot dogs are a very hot commodity in the Second City, Mike decided it was a good idea to check Yelp! for some suggestions. I have maintained for several months now that the jerk offs that review restaurants and bars on Yelp! are full of crap, and wouldn't know good food from an anteater, but nonetheless I went along with it because we were in some far off land of frat boys so I figured these douche bags would be able to pick out a good hottie from a bad one. Well I was wrong. Dead Wrong.

First of all, it was the smallest hot dog ever. Certainly not a Vienna Beef. Also, if you will think back to all of the hot dog pictures I've ever posted on this blog you would be destroyed when you saw this. This hot dog, although charred, was reminiscent of one of the crappy hot dogs you can get in Liberty Plaza: the ones that don't fill you up and frankly (wink wink) taste like wet cardboard. On top of its smallness, it was not coupled with a pickle spear or neon relish. Do you believe this? They used pickle chips. Where am I? I must have been in the nexus of the Chicago universe, or maybe even Des Plaines, because this was simply not right.

Beyond the pickle chip and non-neon relish, it was also proffered up with a stale bun that upon first bit splintered into a million pieces and I surrendered. What kind of surrender do you ask? Well, I didn't eat the hot dog.

The Horror. The Horror. (Make sure you read this whispering in a Marlon Brando-esque Kurtz voice. Commence eating mangoes and letting the juice drip down your arm while you earn $3 Million for showing up late.)

I didn't even take a picture I was so upset. I actually am still upset. Hence the blatant Apocalypse Now reference.



2. Bread and Sugar in Square Format is Expensive. After the hot dog debacle (I just learned how to spell this -- I was always adding a Long Island accent to the phonetics making it "de-baucle") I decided I was going to find De Stijl on vinyl.

Getting back to the point. The record store was a bust since there was no copy of De Stijl and I was too irritated to ask the owner to order it for me, what with the internet and all. I did get OK COMPUTER on vinyl, which, in the interim, will satisfy some vague need for something. Although I don't know what that something is. I fought an internal battle not to buy Icky Thump and The Chronic, only remembering later that I should have looked for Justin Timberlake's Future Sex/Love Sounds.

What an ass. So anyway. We went onward into the valley of frat boys and boutiques in quest of a bar. Instead of a bar I bought some awesome magnets. And then we went to some waffle house where you can order a waffle on the street through a window. Max would love it, by the way.

By now you should realize the problem: it was now close to 5:30 PM and I had not had a beer yet.

Mike, a graduate student at the acclaimed University of Chicago, doesn't know how to read a menu. He thought that the waffle itself cost $0.91. So digging around in his pockets he found $0.91 and ordered a waffle with powdered sugar. I hung out in the gutter smoking cigarettes and wondering if you can drink in public in Lincoln Park. Mike was dismayed to learn that the waffle not only did not cost $0.91, but that the sugar cost $0.91, and the waffle was actually $6.00. Total for square bread with sugar: $6.91. Not worth it.

3. It Doesn't Datter How Much You Like Pickles. Pickle and Rice Roup is Disgusting.
I learned this the hard way. Or rather, with a Polish man forcing me to get this bizarre concoction. First off, it looked like vomit. Second, it tasted exactly like what it said it would taste like: pickles and rice. Except worse because I didn't think it would be so disgusting. The reason I caved in was because there was no red borscht, which is what I was craving, so I would have probably agreed to anything at that point.

This was the culminating point of my day. From there on out it was ruined. And I still hadn't had a beer.



I should have airbrushed myself in that photo. Or at least been more Kim Kardashian-ish. Whatever that is -- I don't have much of an ass so that would be difficult.

I don't even have anything to say now because reliving that pickle soup moment has placed in me such a state of despair that all I can do is look at sketch pictures with the crayons from the Mason jar. That, or smoke crack rocks.



Shelly D.