You just made my list!

This photo is more beautiful than any piece of crap Ansel Adams ever photographed. I took this photo at a “Waffle House” and I’m planning on having it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids so I can dream about it every night. I LOVE Waffle House. These people are my heroes. Sadly, the amazing Waffle House chain does not reach as far north as Chicago, but you can bet your fat ass that any time I’m on some awesome road trip, being cool and kickass, I will search one of these fuckers out and eat the living shit out of some waffles. Luckily, there are many great greasy spoon diners in Chicago. Unluckily, there are also a ton of trendy bullshit breakfast spots too.

Every once in a while I’m forced to go to one of these horror shows, but never again, I’m putting my foot down. Here’s what you can count on at the trendy places…

1) A long wait. All you want is to nurse that hangover with a plate of fat with a side of fat and a tall glass of fat, but instead you get the pleasure of waiting for an hour and a half surrounded by guys in khaki shorts and dress sandals.

2) A cramped table. After feeling like you might die on the sidewalk, you finally get a table. Yay? Sadly this table is so close to your neighbor’s table, you can feel khaki shorts rubbing against your leg the entire breakfast and are forced to eavesdrop on a conversation about the Counting Crows.

3) Fussy food. These places try to reinvent what short-order cooks already perfected decades ago and fail miserably.

4) A huge bill for your boring, fussy food. Let me just quickly run to the bank an apply for a small business loan so that I might pay for these eggs.

5) GET OUT! Yeah, your waitress (she’s really a performance artist) has no interest in calling you “honey” and letting you take your sweet time.

Nothing beats A good, fatty, greasy, classic diner breakfast. It tastes better, it’s cheaper and your waitress will either be awesome because she is so nice, or awesome because she is so rude. So take your fancy, expensive, bullshit breakfast and place it in the darkest of dark places.

Here’s the thing about tapas, I love to EAT tapas and that’s where the problem begins. Any time I go to a tapas restaurant I end up eating approximately one cube of potato, three pieces of bread and an olive. But wait, when I looked at the table it was covered in food. There were miniature plates everywhere!

I suppose it’s really my fault for not taking more food from each tiny plate as they whiz by. I just feel guilty taking too much when 10 people are trying to share food from plates that belong in a doll house. Half the time I don’t even get to taste the food I ordered. I just sit there and watch like a hungry dog as my dish travels around the table. As it passes through the filthy hands of my soon to be ex-friends I watch as the cubes of cheese I ordered begin to disappear. I quickly do the math and realize no cheese will be entering my mouth hole this evening. I fantasize about fabulously violent ways to kill each and every one of my cheese-filled “friends.” One will get an oily skewer to the neck while another I will drown in sangria. You will all pay the price for eating my cheese you pieces of shit!

I’ve always really hated this dumb take off of Edward Hopper’s legendary painting Nighthawks. I know you’ve seen this hunk of crap titled “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” hanging on the walls of about 50% of the diners you frequent and 15% of the rooms pornos are filmed in. It features the famous corpses of Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart drinking coffee and eating onion rings and I think it’s supposed to bring a tear to your eye and make you want to listen to all 5 hours of “American Pie” by Don McLean.

I always thought this poster was the ultimate example of bad, mass-produced “art” but now that I have done a little research about the artist who created it, Gottfried Helnwein, I am beginning to wonder if this was a joke that just got out of hand. When I took a look at his work I was shocked by how twisted, edgy, bizarre and quite frankly, how fucking cool a lot of his art is.

Even though Helnwein might be a talented artist it does not excuse you from displaying this bad art in your first apartment. If you’re going to do it, at least buy the classy version. Good news, it’s in stock!