Yesterday we had a few family and friends over for a small (15 people) Labor Day Barbecue. This year more than ever before, I am acting as the grill master for these events and we have been offering up a blend of burgers and hotdogs. I have tried CostCo burgers and sausages, Omaha Steaks burgers and sausages and, this time, Von’s Pub-Burgers (with cheese, bacon and, sometimes, jalapenos) as well as their standard mild Italian sausages. I worry a bit about my grilling capabilities since I really have very little experience and I’m never quite sure if I’m overcooking or undercooking the burgers. The sausages are generally not a concern, but those burgers (especially when I get caught having to buy several different sizes due to holiday rush at the meat counter) have enough variability to make me wonder if I’m handling things properly. This time I actually went to AI for some advice and got a few pro-tips like only turning the patties once on the grill and NOT smashing them down with the spatula. The new trend towards “Smashburgers” notwithstanding, it’s considered bad form to squeeze all the juice out of the burgers in that way. I keep getting good feedback on the burgers and sausages, but I am never 100% confident that’s honest feedback since people are still surprised to see me in front of the BBQ grill and they might be choosing to say nice things to their host rather than detail the deficiencies in my grilling technique. This time, it was 90+ degrees out in the afternoon and with the BBQ blasting out even more heat and smoke, it was getting more intense and eye-stinging than I generally like. It may have been that or it may be that I don’t get hungry when I cook (I remember this from when I was Steward of my fraternity house back in my sophomore year in college), but I didn’t bother getting a burger and only had half of one sausage by the time I sat down. I guess that means that I had a nothingburger.
I noted in my story yesterday that I was getting less attention than normal from Kim this week, as she prepares for her shows and keeps her pal Lennie entertained. That means that I have to wrangle food for myself most days. As some have and would say….how pitiful can you get, right? Well, I am simply not a cook, nor do I aspire to be a cook. I’ve gone so far as to suggest to others that if I had to cook for myself in order to eat, I would probably weigh 120 pounds. My lack of respect for food that has driven my lifelong weight problem also drives my ambivalence to cooking for myself. Add to that longstanding attitude, a newfound dislike for much of what is on offer at the fast food emporia (the exception being the $1.79 bean/cheese/rice burrito from Taco Bell, which I consider to be the pinnacle of drive-through excellence), and a decision that GrubHub is a rip-off of all us lazy men, and you have a situation where I have been driven to actually start doing some cooking…out of necessity. Now, my definition of cooking probably does not rise to the level of what most people would consider real cooking, but it does involve buying specific foods that I will combine and prepare via microwave to consume as dinner for myself. I will go one step beyond the microwave tonight…something that has almost never happened in the history of the world… and fry up a few of the extra hamburger patties left over from yesterday’s festivities. I figure a cast iron skillet is as good as a propane grill and easier to manage and clean. It will be an adventure and perhaps even fill that nothingburger gap from yesterday.
The real reason I have nothing burgers on the brain today has little to do with real ground beef. It’s on my mind because we were suddenly made aware last night, compliments of my slightly over-reactive daughter, that Donald Trump was making a special and supposedly earthshaking announcement at 2pm that was going to be something “nothing can stop” per his social media tweet and after several days outside the view of the press. Media speculation about his absence and then about what was in his announcement was running wild with the backdrop of a major global summit of the modern Axis powers of the world, China, Russia, India and North Korea and others, getting together to finally topple the “hegemonious tendencies of the United States”, per Premier Xi. “Hegemonious” means having or characterized by hegemony – essentially describing something that has dominant influence, control, or authority over others. It refers to a position of leadership or supremacy, especially in political, cultural, or economic contexts. A hegemonious power in international relations would be a country that exercises dominant influence over other nations…like the U.S. does. A hegemonious culture might be one that shapes and influences other cultures around it…also like the U.S. tends to do, and in economics, a hegemonious entity would be one that dominates its market or industry. The word comes from the Greek “hegemon,” meaning leader or ruler. It’s often used to describe relationships where one entity has significant power or influence over others, though this dominance might be exercised through soft power (like cultural influence) rather than just force. Well, there is nothing soft about Trump other than perhaps his belly. The hegemony that must very much trouble the world right now more than anything else must be Trump’s need to be constantly praised as the most powerful man in the universe. Strange that this summit involves all of Trump’s favorite autocrats (other than Bolsonaro, who is busy fighting imprisonment). How must it feel to see your supposed best friends and role models conspiring against you?
Today, when the big hour of the announcement arrived, the White House told the public that America’s Space Command headquarters would be moving from the blue state of Colorado to the very red state of Alabama. While arguments are being made that this all non-partisan and meets the desires of the Air Force and Space Command, Trump’s comment today that, “One of the big problems [with Colorado], is that they do mail-in voting”, frames the issue for what it really is…another tribal partisan issue. There was probably a big behind-the-scenes sigh in the White House Press Office with that comment and Trump once again takes his place as master of the obvious and outspoken. What was trumped-up to be some big earth-shaking announcement today, proved to be somewhere between another distraction from the more meaningful events of the world that are being badly handled by the Trump Administration and a great big nothingburger.