Thursday, February 12, 2004

I don’t know if you’ve ever popped any cheesesteaks from this joint, gentle reader, but I think it’s safe to say that opinion varies wildly about the house dish. I’ve met some who begin salivating immediately upon first sniff, loudly declaring that manna could taste no better. Others claim to have found bones in these sandwiches, not once but every single time.

“Every single time?” you ask.

That’s right–every single time. It’s like they’re archaeologists, for the love of Benjy, and persistent ones at that. Yet another group of people swears that these hoagies not only taste marvelous, but that they also double as convenient laxatives. Heck, maybe it’d be more efficient just to have the chef flush a couple of cheesesteaks.

Given all this, I’d say that the entrée is damn nigh legendary, which is the perfect adjective to describe the bet taken on by co-worker Hooper. The challenge: to ingest cheesesteaks every day for lunch over the course of a week. The prize? A sweet, sweet Hamilton. That’s ten bucks, for those of you who can’t remember that Hamilton’s got ten dollars less hair than Jackson.

Embedded in this scenario are grave implications about our betting culture, not that I’m one to judge. Because when your great uncle twice removed began a grand tradition of betting on curling championships featuring three-legged cats as contestants, can you really cast the first stone?