The Wienery, 1 June 2019

   Tuesday was National Hamburger Day and I decided to celebrate by breaking my diet and eating beef for the first time in a month. And who did I turn to for my hot beef injection?
   Frank's-A-Million in the food court next door to work, aka, the place run by the dude who's definitely probably ex-Russian mafia and his Latino sidekick who looks bummed out and confused at the same time, sort of like he's had his heart broken and he doesn't know why he's at work.
   Seeing as how I didn't write about my Frank's-A-Million cheeseburger, you can guess it probably wasn't great or awful. Just a frozen patty, slapped on a flat-top grill and browned. That's it. Nothing fascinating.
   This was the worst National Hamburger Day ever.
   See, I'm not going to My Burger because My Burger aint doing shit for the day. Not even free onion rings or half-off burgers or anything. Just a stupid bitch-ass tweet about "come on in and enjoy our burgers". Motherfuck you! Celebrate this holiday properly or go fuck yourself, My Burger.
   I'm not going to Five Guys because the downtown location pretty egregiously fucks up my order by forgetting half the shit I want on my burger.
   I'm not going to The Burger Place because their staff have just the shittiest attitude in customer service and B-Cap from the office found a shoe print on the inside of her box once.
   So, to correct this, I felt a hankering to go to the Wienery, only to find out they close at three on Tuesdays.
   OK, well, that's a difficulty to overcome, isn't it?
   That's why I went back today, to eat beef once again, after three days of tuna and broccoli.
   And that's how I got that beautiful bastard pictured up top. Let me tell you about it:
   It's beef. With cheese. On a steamed bun.
   It isn't seasoned, it isn't even dressed. I had to apply my own catsup and mustard. There were no pickles or onions. And I could link to the Parks & Rec clip where Ron Swanson's meat-on-a-bun beats the Chris Traeger turkey burger but do we really need to further the comedic representation of a patriarchal an-cap's superiority over a health-conscious individual whose sensitivity and positivity are characterized as feminine? Do we need to amplify that toxic horseshit? No, we don't. And just because there's a chance that Nick Offerman is a solid dude doesn't mean Ron Swanson is. Ron Swanson is the kind of guy I've met in a bar and then I had to find a different place to sit after hearing him talk for three minutes.
   Hell, one time at the bar, this old fuck that I guess Kafe Nasty was cool with started talking shit to me, asking me what I thought about how there's ninety seven genders. I asked him why he cared and he just kept asking me what I thought about it so I told him that if we hope to eliminate prejudice, we should all be intermingling and accepting until distinctions like gender and race are meaningless outside of medicine and that was just too much for this old drunk fuck to comprehend so he asked me again what I thought of there being ninety seven genders now and I look at Kafe because - yeah, I'm outing - while Kafe is cis, he is LGBTQ and this is a little relevant to his interests and I wonder why he's tolerating this shithead and he just kind of shrugs and I say, "Well, I already paid my tab, I'll see you later," and got up and left.
   Ron Swanson is like that guy.
   Wow.
   We got off road, there, huh?
   Anyway, I'm chowing this burger and I'm thinking it could legit give Band Box a run for its money. That's legitimately how I felt. But a few hours removed? It is just unseasoned beef. And there's something novel about that but there's nothing great about it. I like that the patty was irregular, I like that it was shaped to order, I like that it wasn't frozen but there's nothing remarkable about it outside of those things. Granted, there are other burger options on the menu but I wanted to see what the base was like before I started getting into the wild territory. You have to start with Coltrane before you jump into Coleman.
   I think that was a hot take. Jazz heads, get at me.
   So it's good, might even be a close-ish distant second to Band Box if it had a bit of salt and pepper on it.
   I've told you to give your money to the Wienery before, this doesn't change that. Just maybe try a more adventurous burger than I did.

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