MASTER THE FUNDAMENTALS: THE CLUB SANDWICH

Many an amateur art critic has regarded a Jackson Pollock “drip” painting and thought “What a scam! I could do that.” Well you probably could, but the price of admission to a career in modern art is, at least should be, a mastery of the fundamentals. You can’t just skip the charcoal sketches and go straight to the avant garde stuff. If you want me to take seriously your giant rusted car-part sculpture, I want to see a water color still life of a bottle wine and a bowl of fruit first.

No different is the discipline of the club sandwich. As I have mentioned in previous posts, and as the title of my humble blog suggests, the club sandwich is the safe harbor of the peripatetic. Before you try to “improve” the classic club sandwich through the introduction of spicy mayonnaise, chutney, or dried tomatoes; master the fundamentals.

After nuclear weapons and drive through liquor stores (no coincidence now that I think about it), the best invention of the American society to date has been a humble sandwich featuring lightly toasted white bread, crisp but not dry; juicy tomatoes not so overripe as to make the sandwich soggy; crisp iceberg lettuce; Hellman’s mayonnaise, never Miracle Whip; thinly sliced turkey breast; and bacon.

Bacon is the trickiest aspect and is the vexation of the uninitiated. It should be neither crisp nor soft. It should be both: crisp in places and soft in places. My Dad, Don-O, had expert skills in this area on the infrequent occasions when the he and his three little men were left to “fend for ourselves” while Mom was out playing Canasta (Catholic Bridge). Each one of us would have a responsibility: bacon, lettuce, tomato, and toast. Good system. If we had had a sister we could have scrapped the system and had her do it all. Oh well.

At a summer picnic in the Forest Preserves as a boy of five or six, I once won a sack race or egg toss or something and was awarded huge slab of bacon as a prize. I insisted on carrying it around like a trophy until my mother thought it might be better on ice in a Styrofoam cooler. It never made it to the trophy case (nothing has yet actually) but there were to be many glorious BLTs in the months to follow.

The obvious next step was to introduce a second protein to the concoction, but this obvious step eluded us. At least Newton had an apple fall on his head, I never had a frozen turkey thrown at me. Oh wait, I did. But that’s a story for another time.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: THE LONG OVERDUE “SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION”

ATTENTION HANDLERS: MADE CONTACT

Stopped at the bank for a cash advance on my way to my first day at the office. In front of me in line was a swarthy looking guy with a baseball hat emblazoned with the letters C.I.A. He noticed me retrieving my blue passport from my breast pocket and eagerly asked, “American? American?” I nodded. “Me, too. Leon. I from Broooookleeeen.”

I furtively surveyed the room for surveillance and in a low and quiet voice inquired “You with the agency, Leon?”

“I no understand.”

“The Agency, Leon. C’mon, we can talk. You’re a spook, right?”

“Oh, hat. Hat! No. Is joke. Is joke”.

Sure it is Leon, sure it is.

Attention Langley. Made contact, awaiting instructions.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

MORE CRITICS JOIN THE "CLUB"!

"It's the feel-good blog of the year! It's blogtastic!"

Dean Stump, Chicago

MEMORIES OF SHEREMETEVO

My first visit to Moscow’s Sheremetevo 2 was in the winter of 1992. One look at the airport told you much of what you needed to know about Russia. The airport was designed and built sometime in the 1960s at the height of the Soviet Empire and had all the strange architectural examples of the time jumbled into one giant dogs’ breakfast design: a ceiling covered with strange open bronze cylinders; light fixtures that vaguely suggested constellations or some other cosmic entity; copious amounts of concrete; and giagantic brass emblems adorning the walls.

Populating this expanse were border control officials dressed in drab green ill-fitting uniforms all of which were festooned with an abundance of cheap pot-metal badges painted gold or silver. Add a couple of palm trees and it would resemble a Paraguay cabinet meeting circa 1975. Each of them had faces scarred with shaving cuts, greasy hair, dark circles under the eyes, and a yellow pallor due to an iron deficiency or the cheap fluorescent light in the passport control booths. Everything was coated in a thick permanent carbon slick of decades old cigarette smoke and spiced with the odor of stale urine.

While waiting in interminable lines, more like mobs actually as these waiting pens were nowhere near linear in shape; an old crone would rearrange filthy water around the floor with a dirty rag on a stick.

My first face-to-face encounter with passport control took forever while he fumbled through my passport, looked up at me, back at the passport, over to a broken machine of some sort, back to me, repeat. It turns out he was waiting for his supervisor to look the other way so he could urgently ask, “Cigarette mister? Cigarette mister?” Half a pack of American Marlboros and I was on my way.

What a horrible introduction to a country, I thought. Even the North Koreans drag out some colorful flags and folklore dancers when foreigners show up. I was convinced that this was the worst welcome a country could offer.

Until years later when I landed at JFK.

Well a lot has changed in Moscow since 1992 and my last visit in 1999, although it seems that they’re starting in the center of the city and working their way out to the airport, which apparently has been preserved in aspic (if it was Poland, I would have used an amber metaphor). Other than shoe-horning a T.G.I. Friday’s into the departure area, nothing has changed.

On the road to Moscow, Andrei, my driver and nuclear physicist (really he is), points out three giant monuments in the shape of military barricades. History is not Andrei’s field, but he claims this commemorates the exact spot where the Soviet Army stopped the Nazi advance. Close one.

Moscow is vast. About 10 million people are registered as living here. Add in those from the former Soviet satellite states and it’s probably closer to 12 or 13 million. People are stacked like cordwood. In Soviet times, a typical family of three or four would be granted an apartment of 60 meters or so. That’s about a gallon and a half. Hold on, wrong conversion, sorry Jimmy Carter. No, it’s more like 650 square feet. One bedroom, one living room where the children would sleep, a kitchen and bath. When one of the kids got married, the new daughter or son-in-law would move right in.

These pods would be stacked to the sky and lined up like dominos. Picture a fifty-mile square version of the Robert Taylor homes without the Harold’s Chicken, Baptist churches, and currency exchanges. The density is incredible for a city located in the middle of a vast plain.

Imagine Tokyo, built by Mexicans and dropped in the middle of Nebraska, covered in snow. That’s Moscow.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: ATTENTION HANDLERS, MADE CONTACT

MY FIRST REVIEW

"Blabby Blogger Spins Boffo Laff Yarns in Bloody Blogosphere..from Russia"

Tom Cermak, Deerfield, Illinois

"FROM RUSSIA WITH LUFF"

Ukraine is nation experiencing political upheaval, national strikes, mysterious poisonings, and riots in the streets. I have just appointed Bud Country Manager and shipped him off to Kiev.

But not before we have a snack. We are ensconced at my friend Brian’s house in the far suburbs of Warsaw, and share a long taxi ride into the office each day. For the last three days we have stopped at McDonald’s on the way for a coffee and a cheeseburger.

This morning, Bud’s last in Warsaw, saw his eyes widen as we approached the sacred corner of the golden arches. “Hey, let’s . . .” he pleaded. “C’mon Bud, let’skip it today”. I see the same expression as after the Billy John, Elton Joel thing. “OK, I’m buying”.

After a long day at the office, I dropped into the brand new, and virtually empty, Westin Hotel next door to the office. The hotel market is tremendously overbuilt; empty hotels and cheap rates are the norm. The hotel was reminiscent of “The Shining”, only if you’re in Poland you’re kind of hoping to drown in a bathtub or get a hatchet in the skull.

When I first arrived in Warsaw c. 1992, there was only one place to have a drink without getting a pipe wrench in the jaw: The Marriott Hotel Lobby Bar. A former colleague, Steve, tested this theory and after a few dozen vodkas was relieved of his wallet, and you guessed it, had his jaw busted with a pipe wrench. Back to the Marriott for him; drinking vodka through a straw. All was not lost, however, Steve had his jaw wired shut and lost over 60 pounds. This has since been known as the Steve Groth High Impact Diet.

Saddled at the bar in the Westin, I ordered the expatriate safety default meal: club sandwich and a coke. Now many of you may immediately protest and suggest the cheeseburger as the gastronomic a lingua franca. Disabuse yourself of this notion.

A cheeseburger outside the warm embrace of the continental United States is a risk that only the most intrepid traveler should consider. The club sandwich is an alternative that is difficult to get completely wrong, but only a few can get perfect. More on this later.

Just as I regarded my sandwich and began the comparison to the sine qua non, the zenith and pinnacle of all club sandwiches: that of Majed Zamarrah of the Lila Weneda restaurant at the Warsaw Marriott; I heard a sound that only could be created here, in this city, in this country. . . .

“Fee-Links. No Thing Mo Then Fee-Links”

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. One of the more amusing aspects of Eastern Europe is that you occasionally find a singer in a bar or cocktail lounge who sings a perfect, unaccented version of an English-language standard with genuine feeling and nuance (“Tom Dooley”, the Red Lion Pub, Black Sea coast, Bulgaria 1994). Later you will discover that they speak no English. None. Except the lyrics of the song, and they don’t know what they’re singing. Remarkable, really.

On the other hand, you have lobby bar entertainers who speak English capably buT revert to the worst accents when they begin to sing:

“Trying to Forget My, Fee-Links of Luff”

My friend Dan claims the best (or worst) example from the Budapest restaurant in Warsaw sometime during the Todd’s Great Vodka Haze circa 1992-1996. Note, when I arrived the first time in Warsaw almost all of the restaurants were state owned and were named after capitals of communist countries. Join me for a drink at the “Minsk”? Well, anyway, the song went a little something like this . . .

“I vant to vake up in thee city”

Yeah, you go it,

“Such that never sleeps”

Sell it baby, sell it

“To find I am king of the heel”,

Well you get the idea.

"THIS BUD'S FOR YOU"

Following in the famous and bloody footprints of history’s notables Hitler and Napoleon, I embarked on my conquest of Russia with a quick stop in Warsaw. As many of you know, I have begun a career into the world of records management, which at first glance appears to be the most prosaic and pedestrian forms of commerce. To my dismay, beneath this stultifying veneer lies what appears to be an exciting and interesting venture. Sadly, peel that back and you're back to a truly mundane enterprise.

Upon arrival in Warsaw, named the "Paris of the East" by people who apparently had never been to France, I was assigned a right-hand man by my document storage overlords.

Bud (like in "Budweiser" he helpfully explained) and I were quickly ushered into a series of presentations explaining the dynamic changes occuring in the records management business. It seems that records management is rapidly converging with the document scanning and paper shredding industries. Couldn't they have converged with the lingerie or brewing industries, I wondered?

After the presentations, I was issued my standard company millstone: the notebook computer. Ughhh. While I was fumbling around in attempts to find the "on" button, Bud was already contacting alien species on distant planets through some infared device that has probably already given birth to tumors in my spleen.

He produced a seemingly endless supply of wires and devices from his backpack like a Radisson lobby bar magician extracting silks scarves from his sleeve. When he was done, he took pity on me and very graciously offered to "help". His "help" took the form removing the anti-virus software and erasing the meager data I had managed to load into my Outlook program. I already loathe him.
I had plans to meet up with some old friends from my previous residence in Warsaw: Tod and Jan (pronounced "Yahn"). As Bud was at loose ends and we could always use a fresh audience for our tired stories, I invited him along for dinner and drinks.

An old acquaintance had opened up a new restaurant that served as a compliment to his wine importing business. As I marvelled at the lush surroundings, Bud flatly said, "Is this a wine place? I don't drink". This does not bode well.

Over drinks, Tod, Jan, and I laughed over our exploits in Warsaw in the early days just after the transition to democracy and capitalism. The stories have been refined, conflated, and edited over time to follow a classic story arc, excepting of course a moral. Tod introduced his new wife and very large baby, who wisely left early before the more outrageous and incriminating tales were related.

Bud laughed heartily and in a brief lull, muttered: "You guys must have been something in your prime". "My prime?" Tod exclaimed indignantly. He strected out his expansive six-foot-three frame and in his full Arkansas rural, Foghorn Leghorn-like style responded, "At least I had a prime!" Never leave Bud alone with clients, I noted.

The topic quickly changed to girlfriends, wives, ex-wives, etc. And as I had little to add to the conversation, Jan and Tod related the twists and turns of their situations. I'm glad to report, after a few failed marriages and other unhappy relationships, I've never see either of them so happy and contented. Jan is now dating a young widow. "Terrific" I said without thinking, as I am wont to do. My point was that ex-husbands can be a major nuisance and that life was a little easier without one in the picture. As my parents may read this blog, I won't go into the source of my knowledge on the subject, but trust me. Not that I wished anyone in particular dead, but as he was already a goner, well . . . terrific. Jan offered a compliment of sorts, "That's what I like about you, Todd. You always go with your first instinct."

"Not me", said Bud, "I'm never getting divorced, I think its wrong, you should stick with it all the way". This guy isn't drinking? What is he thinking? Man, I'm going to work him like a dog.

Jan and Tod (along with Adrian Blake of Omaha, Nebraska) are my best sources of new music, and the conversation inevitably turned to their recommendations (to be included in this blog in the near future). Bud enquired, "What's the best concert you ever saw?" A topical enquiry; wonders never cease. The three of us culled our fading memories for something esoteric and unpredicatable; Keith Richards solo at the Aragon Ballroom was my offering.

Bud's contribution was Elton John and Billy Joel in tandem. I couldn't help myself. "You know what would have made that even better? A giant meteor crashing into the stage and engulfing them both in a fatal conflagration. Maybe Sting strapped onto the meteor for good measure. He was not accustomed to such finely honed musical critiques and sulked for the remainder of the evening. I felt pretty bad about it, but "Captain Jack" and "Nikita" in one night, come on.

On the long cab ride home, the wine and jet-lag took had their effect and I began to doze off but was saved from restful sleep by my new right-hand man. "Did you see Janet Jackson on Saturday Night Live?" I had, but wondered whether a "yes" or "no" answer would elicit a shorter response. "No", I lied.

I guessed wrong. "You see she dressed up like Condoleeza Rice, and she had the gap in her teeth and everything, . . . . . . . " I'm going to make him wish he was making bricks for Pharoah if I have to endure this. "It was so funny because . .. . . " Note to readers: Never, ever use that phrase; if it requires explanation, its not funny. Q.E.D.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: FROM RUSSIA WITH "LUFF"

GREETINGS

Welcome!

As most of you are aware, I've tired of the clean air, efficient service, and friendly people so abundant in my native land and shipped off to Russia for indeterminate period. After receiving Europe's poor, tired, huddled masses for so many generations it was about time we returned the favor. I've suppressed my Luddite tendencies long enough to figure out the basics of "blogging" and join the ascendant pajamahadeen.

So rather than clog your e-mail inbox with lengthy messages, I thought I'd fill this page with my keen observations of European life, especially the relative merits of club sandwiches in exotic locales.