best burger contest is back on!

The odds are that many of you have been just heartbroken since my last entry regarding The Great Food Court Project, in which I reported that Burger King had closed, giving Nathan’s Famous the “best burger in Lenox” crown by default. Well, folks, I am happy to report that what opened in Burger King’s spot is…a burger place!!!

The new burger place is called Flamers, and while I have absolutely no evidence to back this up, I’m betting that the person running Flamers is the same person that used to run Burger King. Flamers is likely a cheaper franchise and you don’t have to deal with the King getting all royal and up in your business.

So Flamers has burgers, chicken sandwiches, salads, a fish sandwich, fries with various toppings and hot dogs. At first I got excited about pitting the Flamers hot dogs up against Nathan’s Famous hot dogs for a “best hot dog in Lenox” contest, but according to the Flamers web site, Flamers uses Nathan’s Famous hot dogs. Do you think that means that the burger patties are the same as well? It’s a concept I didn’t even consider when I was doing the taste-testing, although I did have a hard time picking the winner. Maybe they are the same. Maybe this is no contest at all. We’ll have to continue on as though it is.

Flamers offers more burgers with toppings, such as a mushroom swiss burger and a bacon cheeseburger and a lumberjack burger, and although I studied the picture for awhile, I couldn’t quite figure out what was on that. The menu shows all the burgers with two patties, so you have to specify that you just want one patty and that can make you feel like a wimp, but it was the perfect amount of food for me.

I got the mushroom swiss burger, which is kinda strange because normally I’m not much of one for mushrooms, but it was good. After they fix your burger there is a condiment guy standing at the end of the counter and you get to request the other toppings you might want. Sorta like Subway, but with fewer options.

The cheese was perfectly melted, and there were some sautéed onions in with those mushrooms, so I guess I have to give the best burger crown to Flamers, though I’m well aware that it really wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, in that it’s a cheeseburger to mushroom swiss burger comparison, and those things just couldn’t be farther apart.

But don’t be too sad, Nathan’s Famous. I’m giving the “best French fry” crown to you, because the fries that I had at Flamers tasted like maybe Burger King had left a few old bags behind in the very bottom of a freezer somewhere, and the Flamers guy found them and cooked them improperly. Plus, Nathan’s Famous, you serve your fries with a little red fork and I find that frickin’ adorable.

While I was eating, Flamers did a pretty brisk business that did seem to outdo Nathan’s Famous. Also, I saw a guy walking around with a tape measure around his neck. He was dressed up and wearing a nametag so I guess he works in a department store nearby, but he’s so much of an important badass that he can’t even be bothered to take off his tape measure before he goes to Asian Chao. I found it amusing.

an observation

You know those TV commercials that try to get you to pick up your phone and call to order a CD compilation that is not sold in stores? I think all those commercials are awesome, and I am going out on a limb to observe that it’s impossible to make a bad commercial in that genre. Even if you don’t like the kind of music that’s being sold, they’re still awesome. Every song sounds good in 5-10 second snippets, when you play the best part of the song. If you do like the kind of music that’s being advertised, you get excited just by the names of the songs that are scrolling on the screen while the awesome clips play. It’s a miracle that I don’t have 1000 CD compilations that are not available in stores.

rear window

This week we had some rain showers in the ATL which cooled things down a bit. This means it was in the 80s and not the 90s, but losing those 10 degrees meant I could enjoy my balcony deck a little bit this weekend. That enabled me to continue my project of spying on my neighbors.

I live on the third floor, and my deck faces three other apartments. I have discerned they are two bedrooms (I live in a one-bedroom). Here is the rundown on my neighbors:

Top-floor: From what I can tell, two girls live there. Now, I don’t know if these girls just lack distinguishing features, but it seems like every time I see a girl over there, it’s a different girl. As I say, these gals could just be so bland that every time one of them changes clothing, she looks different. Or it could be that it’s some sort of hostel or underground railroad sorta place where young women can crash when they’re passing through Atlanta.

I do know that one girl is very concerned about a plant that is on the balcony. Perhaps she’s the innkeeper. When people come over, she brings them out on the balcony to show them the plant, ask their opinion on the plant, talk about her troubles with the plant. As I said, I can’t be sure whether it’s the same girl or not. She always looks different.

An interesting thing about the top-floor apartment is that they leave their living room light on ALL NIGHT EVERY NIGHT. It’s on when I go to bed, and it’s on when I get up, no matter when those times are. And it’s always on when I get up in the middle of the night for a bathroom break or after a weird dream or something. The light is always on. To my mind, this is support of the hotel theory, because many hotels will “leave the light on for you.” What do you think their electric bill is? Why do you think I can’t tell which girl is which or even whether they are the same girl?

Middle-floor: Two guys live here. They have a dog. Sometimes they leave the dog on the balcony and it sees its reflection in the glass and freaks out. They only come out on the balcony to smoke and drink. Frequently they leave their beer bottles and cans on the balcony rail which worries me because I fear a strong breeze could knock them over and an unsuspecting person below would be hit in the head and I might be a suspect. Surely the wind trajectory would prove me innocent but I think I’d have to be questioned all the same.

Bottom-floor: Okay, I hear and see one girl from this apartment all the time. I have never seen the roommate, but the girl talks about him/her. I get the sense they don't get along. The girl has an extremely loud voice so I have picked up a lot of things about her. She is either a waitress or a stripper, but I think in the spirit of keeping things interesting for myself, I tend to interpret things on the stripper side while ignoring clues that would confirm the waitress part.

Basically this girl has a lot of DRAMA. One of her favorite things to do is to have people over, and tell them about her drama. Drama is primarily related by reading aloud text messages that people have sent her. (“ohmigod, listen to this text she sent me. So then I texted her this. And she texted this back” etc.) I have never seen the same person over more than once (although I may have flawed observation; see my notes on the top-floor occupants), which I can only conclude means that each person has, in turn, caused some DRAMA and is banished.

Sometimes she has guys over on dates and she tries to talk about deep things. She told one fellow the story about the man who got stranded on the roof of his house in a flood, and he prayed to God for help. Then a helicopter came by for the man and he refused it, and this happened a bunch of times, and when the guy died he asked God why God had not helped, and God replied that he’d sent all that help. Everyone’s heard that story. Anyways, the anecdote was used as a sort of justification for some DRAMA that the girl was involved in, and the girl was comparing herself to God.

Also, this girl does a ton of drugs, which is her business but it seems like a poor idea to talk about it so loudly on her balcony. Also, mostly what she’s talking about is how sick the drugs make her, and sometimes I just want to shout, "stop taking drugs if they always make you sick!" Like, one time, this guy at work sold her some bad ecstasy and she was sick for three days and now she has DRAMA with that guy’s girlfriend.

So that’s all I know about my neighbors so far. Oh, but I did overhear some other DRAMA this weekend. This weekend I was at the mall, trying on some clothes. In the fitting room next to me, this girl was talking on her phone REALLY LOUDLY to her friend that had just gotten out of jail that morning. Here’s what I was able to ascertain:

Fitting Room Girl and several friends were out Friday night and Fitting Room Girl told one of her friends to steal a road sign. The friend who stole the sign got arrested. Fitting Room Girl and another friend sat at the jail for awhile waiting for her to get out, but then they decided to ditch their friend and go get some breakfast instead. Then Fitting Room Girl, instead of going back to check on her friend who had to go to jail, decided to go to the mall. Jail Girl called Fitting Room Girl to let her know that she was finally out of jail. I was just amazed at Fitting Room Girl’s brazenness. She admitted it was her fault Jail Girl got arrested, she admitted she should have waited at the jail for Jail Girl, but she didn’t really seem to have any guilt over either thing.

Now what I kinda hope will happen is that Jail Girl will turn out to be my Bottom-floor neighbor, so I can hear about the DRAMA from Jail Girl’s perspective. But I guess coincidences like that only happen in sitcoms.

b-b-b-b-b-b-b-best weekend ever wrap-up

Perhaps you’ve been wondering why all the weekend posts have been tagged b-b-b-b-b-b-b-best weekend ever. Perhaps you haven’t. But it was no accident. This was a B-themed weekend. When George and I started talking about things we wanted to do while he was in town, we immediately noticed a theme. Beer. Braves. Breweries. Ballet. Blogging. Beer. Because we share the same anal-retentive genes, George and I decided to make this a B-themed weekend, where as many activities as possible would involve the letter B. So here’s a recap of weekend, b-style.

Friday night, my BROTHER arrived. We walked down the street to get a BEER and a BURGER. We chatted, having some BONDING time. There was also a BASEBALL game on one of the televisions. George started talking about BOSCO, a Seinfeldian reference to George Costanza’s BANKING code. Then we went to another BAR. We had kind of a BRITNEY Spears moment, because our waitress told us, “I’m your slave.” It was B-AWKWARD. At that very moment, we looked up at the BAR’s television, and the Seinfeld episode that was about BOSCO was on. It was BONKERS and BANANAS. After finishing off some more BEERS, it was time for BED.

Saturday started with BREAKFAST, which consisted of BAGELS. George told me a weird dream he had about BABIES. George asked me not to BLOG about that because he doesn’t want it documented forever, because he’d rather try to forget it, but I am BRASHLY including it anyways. Since Hillary finally suspended her campaign, I declared the day BARACK OBAMA Day. Then we did some BUMMING around, driving around Atlanta, going to shops, etc. We saw some signs for a FISH FRY which I found intriguing, but as George reminded me, this was a B-weekend, not an F-weekend.

So instead, we headed off for lunch at a place called BRICK Store, because we knew it had BRATWURST. It also had BEER. I guess George was strangely swayed by the FISH FRY signs because he ordered fish & chips, while I kept faithful to the theme by ordering the roast BEEF. While we were dining, we talked about BIOLOGY, as George told me that the hops plant is very similar in form to the cannabis plant. So we had the conversation that probably many people under the influence have had: could you have a marijuana beer? We thought it should be called BUD BEER, which we liked because of alliteration and because of the B-thing. Then we remembered about BUDWEISER and figured the name was already taken. Then a police officer came into the BAR and we stopped talking about the matter.

Then we came back to my apartment and watched the movie Jackie BROWN for awhile, which led me to ask, whatever happened to BRIDGET Fonda? Then we headed out to Summerfest, as recounted in a previous BLOG post, where it was BLISTERINGLY hot. We went into a BAR to watch BIG BROWN lose the BELMONT Stakes. It was a BUMMER, particularly for the guy in the bar who said he had a $10,000 BET on the horse.

Then more BEER while we watched the BRAVES game on television. Then we went BACK-AND-FORTH between my apartment and the Mexican restaurant, as recounted in a previous BLOG entry. The meal was BODACIOUS despite all the troubles getting there. Then we went to another BAR that is basically in my BACKYARD, which made the walk home very easy. On the way, we called our other BROTHER, William.

When we got home, the heat and the alcohol hit us like BAM! because while I remember sitting down on the couch, the next thing that happened was that I woke up three hours later with the television BLARING and George had gone off to BED. As you might have ascertained from the previous posts, we were quite BLEARY-EYED this morning, and George, dedicated to the B-theme of the weekend, actually BARFED. Luckily we got our BELLIES back on track to have a BANQUET of a lunch. By that I mean we went to Jimmy John’s to have some delicious sandwiches. I had the BOOTLEGGER Club and George had the BULLY Club.

Then we BURNT some CD’s so George could have some BOB DYLAN and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN for the BORING ride back to his home. Then it was time to say BYE-BYE. The B-B-B-B-B-B-B-BEST weekend ever had come to an end. I can tell you, it was a BEAUTIFUL time and never BORING. I hope my BROTHER comes back soon so we can explore the fun that other letters hold.

"I can vouch for him, he's my little brother."

It’s Molly again. I tried to get George to write this entry, but he deferred, saying, “It will be better from your perspective,” which I think was just a way to continue his current activity of watching a movie and occasionally moaning about being hungover. Despite his bragging about blogging this weekend, George has learned that blogging is a hard lifestyle. Especially when you’ve been drinking so much.

He did just grumble something about how I should point out that all drinks this weekend were consumed legally, unlike his previous visits to Atlanta. (You may want to re-read that post…that’s foreshadowing for something that may happen in this story)

So being the less hungover one, I’ll shoulder on for both of us with this mildly humorous anecdote about what happened when we went to dinner last night. After walking around the festival for a few hours, we decided to drink at my apartment and then walk to this bar/Mexican place that’s behind my apartment complex. This place was chosen for two reasons: 1) we were getting sick of pub food of the sandwich/burger variety and 2) this place, being a five minute walk, was the shortest walk available to us.

So we walk down to the Mexican place, congratulating ourselves on our smart pick. We each order up a margarita, at which point we were asked for our IDs. This is the point where I hope you re-read that linked entry, or at least have a pretty good memory for detail.

George had forgotten his wallet.

As we mentioned in the post of George’s previous visits to Atlanta, George once forgot his wallet when he had sixty bucks in there from our parents to pay for our meals. This caused some strife since I was a poor college student. And despite George and I rehashing that weekend and talking about how awful it was, George went and forgot his wallet again.

We tried to sweet talk the waitress a bit, but she said firmly that she didn’t want to go to jail for George, and there was a big guy behind her watching the whole encounter, so we didn’t have much choice. We did the walk of shame and went back up to the apartment to get George’s wallet. So by the time we returned to the restaurant, we had made a 5 minute walk into a 15 minute odyssey. Thus defeating reason #2 why we went to this place at all.

But I will say, reason #1 was still a compelling reason to go, and we found our meals of Brazilian steak tacos and chicken chimichanga to be a great switch-up to what we had eaten so far. The margaritas also seemed like a great switch-up to the beer we had been drinking, although the margaritas have gotten a very bad name and been cursed many times in the harsh light of the day.

When dogs fly

In preparation for my brother’s visit, I purchased a great deal of beer. Throughout the weekend, George and I have been sampling all of the beers in a Flying Dog Mixed Pack. If you’re not familiar with Flying Dog, it’s made in Colorado and it’s endorsed by Hunter S. Thompson. Here we present our reviews, which we just know will influence your buying decisions:

1. In Heat Wheat Hefeweizen Ale
What the bottle says: We spent 25 days brewing this German-style Hefeweizen to create its award-winning flavor and you just wing a lemon slice in it for showmanship? You’re not getting style points from us. Germans don’t drink it that way, so save your attention-grabbing tactics for the karaoke stage.

What George says: It tastes exactly what it sounds like, an ale and a hefeweizen

What Molly says: One time, my friend told me hefeweizen was worse for you than a milkshake. I’m glad the bottle made me feel better about not buying any lemons.

2. Old Scratch Amber Lager
What the bottle says: Some itches can’t be scratched. Like your fantasy involving latex and flavored lotions. So it’s best to concentrate on the ones you can scratch. Like your itch for this Amber Lager with a malty mellow flavor. As for your other fantasies, you’ll probably need to find a chat room for those.

What Molly says: I think it tastes like stale juice.

What George says: “Amber is the color of your energy,” which this beer will give me.

3. Snake Dog IPA
What the bottle says: Tired of those annoying 3 am hang-ups from your crazy, stalking ex? Turns out the same qualities that make your ex so damn annoying make our Snake Dog IPA so attractive. Chock full of bitterness, bite and attitude, it slaps you in the face with flavor. Just like your psycho ex did at the bar last weekend.

What Molly says: I don’t normally like snakes or dogs, but this beer is okay with me.

What George says: I’ll take the second bottle of this if you don’t want it.

4. Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale
What the bottle says: Dogs have it figured out. They sleep all day, lick themselves and eat everything but veggies. Be like the more enlightened species in your house by sipping this classic Pale Ale with its perfect balance of smooth malt and crisp hops. It’s so good. You’ll want to lap it up like your hour laps up toilet water.

What George says: Tastes like a wookie. I love these dogs.

What Molly says: Tastes like a gremlin or an ewok.

5. Tire Bite Golden Ale
What the bottle says: Know how to spot a stupid dog? Just look for the one biting the tire of the car that’s running over it. Know how to spot a smart one? He’ll be lapping up our refresing Golden Ale. This perfect warm-weather beer goes down so easy, you’ll be lifting your leg all over town. Smart dog.

What George says: I like it!

What Molly says: I agree!

What George says: But when it’s your 6th or 7th beer of the day, who cares?

6. Porter
What the bottle says: We spent four long years in court fighting for our first amendment right to display the phrase “Good Beer, No Shit” on every bottle of Road Dog. In honor of sticking it to the man… This shit is some dark, rich and malty shit. The best shit you’ll ever try and that’s not bullshit.

What Molly says: It’s so light it’s like drinking a coke, but then putting a beer mint in your mouth.

What George says: You’re just getting crazy now.

-----------------------
Well, those are the reviews. In the interest of full disclosure, we’d hoped to get around to reviewing a whole box of Sam Adams beers as well, and we did get to the Sam Adams Summer Ale, but we also consumed these beverages: Newcastle, Terrapin India Brown Ale, Abita Strawberry, Victory Prima Pils, Lagunitas Lucky 13, Harp, Sweetwater IPA, Reissdorf, Red Stripe, Sweetwater 420 and a margarita. The amount of water we had is extremely proportionally low in comparison to the amount of beer. So we’re not feeling too hot today and we just don’t have the energy to consume more beer or type out our little reviews. We’re frankly just fortunate that we took notes on the Flying Dogs as we went.

this post is too awesome (by george) (it denotes authorship, not the expression)

“To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.”

Alright, so, what’s the literary reference? Fuck. I’m giving up on this literary reference shit. It’s just the first sentence of a random book:

For this to be relevant, I’m writing… To the humid country, and the hot country of Atlanta. This is George. Molly is reading the book that the quote comes from. Do you know it?

First off, you need to know that every time you see the word “Festival” in this blog, imagine I’m giving it a very Latin pronunciation. Like, festi-VAL. Molly doesn’t think this subtlety will come through on a blog, but what do I care? It’s not my blog now… you bastards. (sons-of-a-bitches)

…It was hot back then, (2 hours ago). You’ve been thinking about what we have been doing all day. We’ll, we’ve been at Festival (did you read it like Festiv-VAL? that was a test). Specifically, Virginia Highland Summerfest, which is right outside my sister’s door. Going to Festival (good job, now you are getting it) involves walking and looking at a lot of art that people want to sell you.

I can pretty much sum up this Festival with the phrase, “I could have made that.” Like, you see a piece of art/craft and think, “I could have made that!” For example, we saw a wire fish that was wrapped around a airplane size battle of liquor. I could have made that! Luckily, Molly and I thought of a craft idea that would sell out the wazoo, but I can’t reveal it here. I’m pretty sure we could manufacture it for $4, and we think we can sell it for $10. Look for us at a local Festival near you. Plus, we would drink the liquor out of the bottle before wrapping a wire fish over it. YES!

We talked briefly about how much such a craft tent would cost at such a Festival. Molly says $250, I say $600. We’ll never know. We thought Google would settle this argument, but you have to register. Bullshit. We’re too drunk to register, and I’m right anyway.

A couple beers and a horse race later, we’re ready for food. Imagine the best snack ever. You should have imagined two hot waffles cradling a slice of ice cream. If not, you did not think of the best snack ever. Losers…. At the Festival, we had waffle ice cream sandwiches.

Dude, I just saw a commercial with a peanut butter sandwich. It was awesome. Go to www.peanutbutterlovers.com to learn more about peanut farmers. Wasn’t Jimmy Carter a peanut farmer… Oh Atlanta, you love your peanuts.

As awesome as a peanut butter sandwich is, let me get back to this waffle ice cream sandwich situation. I guess I don’t have much else to say about it though. It was just too awesome. I feel bad for everyone who didn’t have a waffle ice cream sandwich today.

So that’s what we did for two hours today. Most of the rest of the day was drinking. More later…

third time's the charm

It was the best of times, it was (not) the worst of times…George has requested that all blogs this weekend start with a literary reference. Molly here with the latest blog entry from the b-b-b-b-b-b-b-best weekend ever.

George rolled into Atlanta around 8:30 p.m. last night. When recounting his trip for me, we started to compare it to his other visits to this fair city. Like me, George spent a fair number of family vacations in Atlanta, enjoying one of the best hotels in the world. But, he has made two solo trips to visit me, each of which occurred while I was in college.

To distract ourselves from the heat, we started to recount these odysseys. The first trip was easy to remember. I was but a freshman in college, and George an impressionable high school junior. George remembers this trip as one of the first times he ever went to a bar, being that he was only 16. If you can do the math, I was only 18, so really neither of us should have been in the bar, but it was one of those glorious college bars where nothing couldn’t have been fixed by slipping the waiter ten dollars. So with that Alexander Hamilton, George’s freedom was bought. Although I’d like to point out that I had to pay for this, because George conveniently “forgot” his wallet in my dorm room, despite the fact that it had a little parental spending money for the both of us inside.

We also reminisced about a Hardee’s trip I made him make because I had a coupons for free sandwiches (as you’ll recall, George had a habit of “forgetting” his wallet). George also remembers hanging out with the big kids, going to Blockbuster and watching movies. Man, college is exciting! I’d like to think that this was the most formative experience in George’s life, and since he didn’t say anything when I read this sentence out loud, I’m going to conclude that it was.

George just said, “I wasn’t even listening to you. I was watching ‘Jackie Brown’ and looking at your coffee table book of historic Seattle.”

I’m not reading this sentence out loud to him, but I think what he was really trying to say there, was, “yes, Molly, it was the most formative experience in my life. Thanks for being such a great big sister.”

The second trip to Atlanta was apparently not as memorable for him, as we had a lot of problems trying to reconstruct exactly what went down. Here’s what we remembered at first: I was in a park and had to leave to meet George, who distinctly remembers the parking structure he parked in. We knew at some point we ate a bar called Brick Store, where George yet again got to feel the vivacious high of drinking underage in public. But other than that, we couldn’t remember anything. Why was he there? How long was he there? Was there someone with him? What was going on here?

Based on George’s description of the parking structure, I was able to ascertain that this must have occurred my senior year. He remembered that I was reading in the park with people when I had to leave, which made me have a flashback which led me to believe that it was first semester as opposed to second semester. But why was George in Atlanta in the fall when he should have been up at Virginia Tech, learning? We still weren’t sure. We pondered it the entire walk to the bar. We pondered it as we ordered some delicious burgers and some refreshing beverages. We thought about calling our mother, which we were going to have to do soon, before she went to bed. We wondered if this mystery would occupy the whole weekend. Then, George, between bites of burger, said, “maybe we were switching out cars.” And immediately, I knew he was right.

I don’t know what other people do when their cars on the fritz, or how other families handle such a crisis. But in my family, you take your dad’s car, even if you’re going 3 ½ hours away. But make no mistake, he wants that car back. He will orchestrate elaborate driving schemes to meet his goals. So best we can figure, my car must have been in the shop, so I drove my dad’s car back to school to Atlanta. When the car was fixed, George was tapped to drive my Avalon back to Atlanta. Lunch most likely was paid for by Dad, as a way to bribe George to drive seven hours round-trip to acquire the car. Like I said, I don’t know if other families work this way, but as soon as George brought up that a car swap might have been involved, I knew he was right. That would explain why George had no memory of spending the night, or stopping off in Atlanta in the midst of a road trip…he was there specifically to switch cars.

So that is one of the reasons why you will see us blog this weekend obsessively. So that the next time we meet up, we don’t have to waste a lot of time trying to remember what happened. We will just read this blog. I hope this blog never gets deleted!!!!!!!!!!

B-b-b-b-b-b-b-best weekend ever!

Call me George…cause that’s my name. (That’s a literary reference, you bastards.)

If you’ve been reading my comments lately (and why wouldn’t you?), you know I’m pretty, pret-tay, pret-tay upset about the frequency of Molly’s posting. So I decide to come down to HOT-lanta to straighten things out.

The trip was no easy task. Battling high temperatures, traffic, gas prices and the state of South Carolina, I endured great obstacles on my journey to see my sister (have any of you driven through South Carolina, Really?). And I intend to inspire and write enough blog postings to make this journey worth it…you bastards.

Do you think I’ll see Outkast? I hope so!

Craziness, surely will ensue, so lock your doors, crank up your AC and stay close to the computer. Keep hitting refresh, cause we’ll be posting a lot…well, actually, we’re getting ready to go out for a few hours, so you have time to go to the store for snacks and beer. I’m a chips and salsa kinda guy if you need a recommendation.

it is too hot to wiggle

This is the 10-day weather forecast for my old zip code (98109):

This is the 10-day weather forecast for my current zip code (30306):

Does anybody know which zip code is in the middle of those two things, weather-wise? I think that's where I was supposed to move.