Fidel Gastro’s

Woh - a hiatus of a ‘Dave Chappelle walking away from a $50m dollar third season contract, going mental and discovering himself in Africa’-type proportion. Well at least without the $50m dollar contract and having gone to Africa. Instead I’ve fallen into the evil clutches of Facebook-addiction, trying to avoid micro-updating my status with things like ‘Cian is thinking about going to the bog’, ‘Cian is on the bog’, ‘Cian is not finding any toilet paper left’, ‘Cian is ashamed of himself’… etc etc, and having just got back from 3 weeks in California trying to Vince Chase it Entourage style and failing.

Lindsay Lohan is your friend. She was also your housemate, classmate and fellow program participant. You hooked up. You had to take a course of antibiotics afterwards.

My biggest achievement in my time in LA/SF - apart from several hotel room ‘incidents’, not getting into LA bars along with Jesse Metcalfe, meeting and getting an autograph from an Adult Video Star, discovering ghost-riding the whip, hiring a Dodge Charger from Fox ‘Penitentiary’ Rentals which smelt like it had probably been used as a drug mule/drive-by accessory and visiting A&F enough to make sure I’m bedecked in identical polo shirts for the next 4 months - was busting out the secret menu at the baddest burger boutique bringing buns and beef beyond BK’s basic botulism burgers. The one, the only, yes it’s our family owned friend in the West Coast - ‘In-n-out burger.’

Beauty

and the beast

In-n-out’s restaurants are total idyllic 1950’s throwbacks and their main menu has a Sting-like zen simplicity which presents you with 3 options: hamburger, cheeseburger, double-double (2x patty and 2x selma and 2 x cheese) and optional ‘do you want fries’.

But what In-n-Out offers beyond this is the unbridled joy of seeing reasonable cheerful and well-paid staff peeling real potatoes and putting them through a chipper, hand leafing lettuce into great sheets of icebergy joy, getting unfrozen mince and squishing them into hamburger patties and blending milkshakes with real ice-cream rather than using paint and some by-product of the petroleum industry. And the food is still fast and still cheap and is a real burger for $3 rather than a greasy mess of frozen hoofs and testicles with a side order of freeze-dried reformed potato powder served by a 15 year old girl whose forced to clean the grease-traps with a toothbrush at 1am for $3 an hour with her greasy general manager secret-filming her directly to Youtube for kicks.

Ronald be big pimpin’, spending cheese.

But lurking behind this moral goodness and Jade Goody level of simplicity is a hidden layer of complex customisation; beyond the 3 burger options is an entirely non-disclosed list of commands to pimp your patty. Well at least non-disclosed in the restaurant as a quick look online at their website gives you a limited idea of what other options you have and a cheeky glance at the wikipedia entry for ‘In-n-out secret menu’ opens your eyes to a world of X by Y’s, 2×4’s, four by fours, flying dutchmans, protein-style, fries ‘well’, various permutations of the words ‘grilled, raw, chopped, whole, onions’, neopolitans and my favourite ‘ANIMAL STYLE’.

Animal style for the fries means you get chopped grilled onions, cheese and relish on your fries and if you animal style your 2×4 (which is 2 patties and 4 slices of cheese) they’ll fry the meat with mustard, and add more spread, lettuce, pickles and grilled onions. Genius.

Lovely Pair of buns. (I’m sorry - totally lame I know).

But what if other industries took this approach of only offering 3 product variants and then an entirely secret ordering system to allow those in-the-know to get the item they are needing. Say if Ford only sold the Ford Automobile which is a basic 4 door and you have to go into the dealership, look shiftily at the other customers and whisper - ‘and I’ll have that as a 4×4 animal style’ and a cheeky wink later and you’re off driving some tricked-out gas-guzzling bull-barred SUV into the sunset.

My mind only boggles at what a ’standard pair of men’s suit trousers’ animal-style in Saville Row would end up missing, if you’d get slapped for asking for animal-style missionary position from the missus and if an animal-style generic lager will end up being a pint of Stella and a ruck. The possibilities are endless and would be waiting for instant documentation onto the primary US government Intel source - Wikipedia.
Animal-style - it’s the choice for a dyspeptic generation.

Beck is your friend. He was also your housemate, classmate and fellow program participant. You hooked up and went to In-n-out together. He wrote ‘Loser’ shortly after this about you.