While I was in the shower this morning I got an idea… I think I’m going to launch a campaign at work to convince as many people as possible that next Wednesday is Bring Your Pet to Work Day. Then I’m going to call-in sick on that day, and stay far away.
Ha. I’m joking, of course… Just in case Big Brother is watching.
I hope you guys had a great weekend. Mine was disjointed, but not bad at all. I worked on Friday, but they didn’t need me on Saturday. So, I got a little downtime, which was nice. I’m a big fan of the downtime, even though I always fill it with chaos.
On Sunday I decided I needed to change my Twitter profile picture, and went to Fiverr and hired two people to do something creative with a photo of my tiny Duke head. And I don’t want to criticize anyone… but the first one was pretty close to awful. It makes me look like a zombie, on the prowl for brains.
But I really like the second one, and it’s live at Twitter now. It cost me five bucks (OK, ten — counting the rejected photo), which is a heck of a deal. I’ve done a lot of business at fiverr.com. There are some fun, and useful things there. Including this.
On Saturday night Toney and I watched The Descendants. I had no idea what to expect, but ended up enjoying it. The premise is fairly depressing, but the film itself was no bummer. At least I didn’t think so. Have you seen it? What did you think?
And on Saturday afternoon we bought two pizzas from a new shop in town. Opening a pizza joint in the Upper Perogie Belt is a risky endeavor, since the place is already lousy with pizza joints. Indeed, this particular location has seen multiple shops open and close over the past few years. Probably taking a few folks’ life savings with it…
But I think the new one is going to make it. ‘Cause their pizza is damn good, and also cheap. Between 11 and 2, every day of the week, large cheese pies are just five bucks each (they should advertise on Fiverr!). Toppings are a dollar each, and the whole fambly had a good lunch for eleven bucks.
And that’s the recipe for success, at this point in our history. Cheap, but good. Either of those things are OK by themselves, but they work best together. Ya know?
The only downside? When I called in the order, the guy who answered the phone was snorting and snorkeling snot the whole time. That doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling… Is this the dude who will be making my pizza? Ol’ Mucus Fingers?? But, so far, so good. It’s been two days and I haven’t come down with a cold yet. Maybe the heat of the pizza oven neutralizes snot spores? <Full-body shiver>
What’s your favorite “cheap, but good” restaurant? When we lived in Atlanta we were surrounded by them: Fellini’s Pizza, Tortilla’s, EATS… Atlanta, in those days anyway, was the cheap, but good capital of the world. Do you frequent any such places? Please tell us about it in the comments.
And I wrote this update in roughly twenty minutes. I’ll do better tomorrow, I promise. But, at least we got that No Politics thing off the top of the page. I’m very proud of that accomplishment.
Have a great day!
Now playing in the bunker
Treat yourself at Amazon: US and Canada
Cheap but good pizza: Little Ceaser’s
We too have a new pizza/italian place.
It’s called Mimosa: it’s the best pizza joint west of the Mississippi. Shit you I do not.
I’m think of becoming a weekly regular. A REGULAR!. I’ve never been a regular anywhere but my bathroom.
Woo-hoo, yeah-boy, uh-huh.
Damn. Shoulda left off that last “uh-huh.” That’ll teach me.
Los Agaves Mexican joint. Cheap, but great. This place has apparently made a deal with the Shoney’s Restaurant chain to take over their buildings once they close a location. There is one not far away AND……………….the Shoney’s in Dunbar just closed and guess what? Yup, Los Agaves is taking that bitch over. Not open yet, but I can already taste one of their rockin’ Jumbo Margaritas. I don’t know what they put in those things, but before I can finish the first one, my head is woosey, kinda like that dude they used to put in our health class books at school, who just got through sniffing a tube of airplane glue. Good stuff. Not the glue, just the Margaritas – I’m pretty sure they put a good slug of grain alcohol into the mix.
Further Evidence. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Um…I wonder if she knows her ass is dropping right out of the back of the vinyl shorts
Of course she knows. And in this case, I approve.
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That was nowhere near as bad as the 40 year-old guys clogging with their mothers at the county fairs ’round these parts. Mama is all made up, with pigtails in her hair (and bright red bows at the ends)…Sonny boy is almost always overweight and wearing shorts and a t-shirt with suspenders and knee socks. I kid you not…
There’s a place here called “Mullins” and I don’t think they’ve updated their menus since 1950. Hot dogs can be had for about $.75 and everything is good – except for the “slaw dog” that everyone raves about (oddly enough). It’s a hot dog topped with a heap of “slaw”, which is, best I can tell, raw cabbage mixed with ketchup. Otherwise it’s a decent place to eat. If you’re bill is more then $5 then you’re probably about to die from overeating.
There’s also a messican place here that’s absurdly cheap and good. I always order the loco idiot grande, or something like that. It takes about 4 plates for them to get it to the table, and I think it cost $6.
There are a number of Mexican street food (taco and burrito) stands in my city that are cheap n’ good. $3 will buy you all you need to eat.
Jeff, check your mail.
your real mail, the one you need a key for instead of a password.
There’s a pizza joint that had several locations around the Pittsburgh area called “Vincent’s Pizza”. Since Vincent passed away a few years ago, I’m not sure if they’re still around. Anyway… In the days when you could smoke anywhere and everywhere, you would find Vincent behind the counter making pizza’s with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The ashes would be about an inch long and very often they would fall into the pizza he was making. It was well known fact. But no one dared to say anything.
Cheap eats around here…I’d have to say Mexican too. El Campasino. Two dinners and two beers each is under 30 bucks. Included is the free chips and salsa. Once you place your order, before you even put the menu down, your food is on the table. Faster than fast-food.
Thanks bikerchick – I’m going to have to take a trip to Forest Hills. Been way too long since I’ve had one of those grease bomb pies!
We just ate at the El Campesino in Pine Township last week. Love that place! Good margaritas and they make a mean chalupa. They’re salsa is good too.
“They’re”??!! Obviously I meant “their”. The chupacabra made me do it.
Jeez, we have a pizza place spitting distance from one another around here. I can picture about 8 within a 2 mile radius.
Cheap eats – well, we have this place called Rosmeary’s Texas Taco. Very bizarre place. We were in there once and its loaded with shit and memorabilia so we started taking pictures and she went apeshit on us. I’ll include a slide show of the place. Rosemanry is the dame with the Elvira purple eye makeup. She’s about 75 if she’s a day. I swear, she dropped too much LSD in her halcyon days.
Take a gawk: http://hudsonvalley.metromix.com/restaurants/standard_photo_gallery/full-dish-rosemarys-texas/860812/content
Jesus. So she had a hoarding problem and decided to start serving tacos out of her “treasure shack”? That’s what it looks like.
This old bat has been around forever. There are pictures on the walls with her and every musician you can possibly imagine. She’s had that purple hair thing going way before it became fashionable. I’m thinking she’s at least 75 but who knows? She could be 40, she could be 103. And yes, the place does look like some erratic fuck’s attic.
madz: Let me know when she kicks and they have a big estate sale! Looks like some good pickins’ if you’re an antique-r like me. Love the old signs.
Everything will smell like taco too.
Or moth balls. Including Rosemary.
I just had Eats for lunch today… their jerk chicken plate still costs only $6.00. An absolute steal! I probably consume 50 jerk chicken plates every year.
Moe’s & Joe’s is good for cheap bar food. If you’re willing to drink PBR, your bill (with tax & tip) will never be more than $15 a person.
Every time a new burrito place opens in Atlanta, people reminisce about Tortillas. I’m not sure that I liked it any better than Willy’s. Maybe I’m just forgetting though… it closed almost nine years ago.
And Kool Korners used to make the most amazing classic Cuban sandwiches… unfortunately, the owner closed the store and moved to Birmingham.
Well, I got a job.
I move to Vegas tomorrow.
Seriously.
Congratulations! Hope you have a smooth move t-storm!
Congratulations, t-storm! (I start my new job next Monday, but I’m not moving to Vegas for it)! Best of luck to you, and would you like to share what the new job is?
Jesus man! I thought you had a job? Didn’t you just buy a house in Oklahoma?
Yea. Thought you’d been working all along.
Lost my job july 23rd bought my house march 15th. Good times. Systems and structures engineer for an airline out there
Damn. Good luck on the new gig t-storm!
Give ’em hell, t-storm!!
Congrats, T-storm!
I appreciate all the well wishes. Steph what is your new job?
I’m still waiting on paperwork, was supposed to start today.
If this one falls through there is a job in mobile and indy.
I love you guys.
t-storm: Come to the ‘Burg and apply at all the gas companies. The company my boyfriend works for is always looking for guys with smarts and want to work in the field…with some traveling involved. Weekends off 90% of the time. Some of the larger companies are hiring Mexican guys because they can’t find locals to work.
I actually submitted my resume to usair or whatever is there now. I’d prefer to be in a baseball/football town. And pburgh is 3 hrs from my family.
The only cheap but good I can think of around here is Tudor’s Biscuit World, but visit them too often and you’ll end up in a fattycart in no time at all.
Geemama lighting her ciggie with her birfday candles……bwaaaahaaaahaaaahaaaa. Hack, cough, hack.
I only *wish* we had a local place. The wife and I drive 30 miles [each way!] just to get Korean food. There’s a cotton field across the street from my house and you often find people riding horses down the main street of my town.
OK, we have McDonalds and Taco Bell and that crap, but nothing good.
We have a place called Granny’s, which specializes in the local translation of southern food (grease, grits and Carolina ‘Cue). It may cost $15 to feed my entire family, which includes an 11 year old girl with a hollow leg (grown 6″ in the past 5 months) and a spouse that is 6’4″ with “hands the size of hams”.
All meals are served with Sweet Tea, including breakfast. Coffee and water must be requested.
For 5 or 6 bucks I can get either a quarter-chicken with two sides (King Pollo), or a bowl of pho (Pho 75). Both very good, and that’s a dirt cheap lunch for this area.
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There’s a little stand called the Warrior (after the local high school mascot) around here that serves a MONSTER stromboli, loaded up with whatever you want, for about 6.50. I am a BIG man, and I can only eat half of the thing at once. It’s seriously, like a 12 inch pizza, folded over and stuffed with any pizza topping you want. There’s also a little place called the Mifflin Dairy Bar, where if you order a large soft serve cone, it will come out over a foot high. It’s ridiculous for the $1.50 they charge for it–but so worth it!
mmmmmmmmmm…………stromboli……
Here in Rockville MD, it’s tai pei cafe. Japanese on one side and Chinese on the other. Good and cheap.
I want to say that today’s further evidence is about as transcendent as anything I’ve ever seen on YouTube. This is art imitating life imitating art. There is even a donkey that goes by in one of her videos! David Lynch and John Waters would have a field day with her. I can’t stop watching it. Ivory soap wishes it could be this pure.
I used to frequent Jamaica Joe’s in Silver Spring a long time ago. I remember that it was good, but I’ve forgotten what it cost. Must have been pretty cheap if I could afford to eat there.
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Almost forgot! Havabite Eatery makes a very nice pizza, as well as burgers and a rash of Greek-oid stuff: souvlaki, etc. All good, all very reasonably priced. It’s in a small, old storefront with maybe 12 tables. Parking on the street, if any.
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I remember a fast food joint called Hot ‘n’ Now. They were great. They had hamburgers for 39 cents. You could bloat yourself on $2.50. But I don’t think they are around anymore.
Unfortunately for me I can’t really think of anything local that makes me think good and cheap.
Everytime I’ve gone to Lake Erie fishing we always stop at a little diner close to my uncle’s house for breakfast. Their idea of an order of home fries is the equivelant of two large Idaho potatoes for a $1.50.
Oh, I signed up for guitar lessons last night.
Guitar lessons? Excellent! I’ve mastered “Smoke on the Water” but that’s about it.
Seriously, good for you. I took sax lessons in my 30s.
Aww Madz, look at WVSR classic!
Too late, Jeff changed it.
Yesterday’s classic… http://thewvsr.com/learnguitar.htm
OK, that’s friggin FUNNY – I didn’t get the connection.
Funny you brought up the sax, that’s the instrument I wanted to play when I was about 12 or so but since we owned a piano, Mom said I had to take piano to see if I had any musical talent. If I proved I had an interest and could play the piano she would get me a sax in time for band. My musical career lasted about 2 months and I realized I didn’t have much eye, ear and hand cooridination to ever be the second coming of Clarence Clemons.
I had a very short sax career, too. I had moved back home after I broke my shoulder in a freak horseback riding accident. Anyway, I started tooling around with the sax and just when I signed up for lessons, my mom had a stroke. Blowing loud, ear splitting toots into a horn isn’t exactly conducive to nursing a stroke.
You wanted to play the sax…not the piano. You would have learned to played the sax because you wanted to. You might have sucked but that’s never stopped a lot of sax players I know.
Way to go, WB!!!!! I took up guitar in my early 30s down at the South Pole. A Doctor of Astrophsics from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory taught me to play.
In 6th grade, we had a music class in which we were made to learn to play the recorder. Later that led to harder drugs, such as flute and saxophone. As a result, I find woodwinds easy (as in, “not so easy to play WELL”).
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Mmmmmmmmmmm….Fellini’s. Best pizza. But, alas, people found it, and now it ain’t cheap any more. Still good. We go every time we are in Atlanta. (Oh wait. Every time we are in the ATL. I keep forgetting to be cool.)
We have an amazing hole-in-the-wall pizza place here called Fleur de Lis — rectangular pizza cut into little squares – nothing fancy, and “NO, you cannot get a salad or dipping sauce here!” Family can eat for under $5 per person, and it’s just about as good as it gets.
I love a good 20-minute special. Any day of the week.
I forgot, there is also a roadside shack called The Little Spot that sells THE BEST snappy hotdogs. I haven’t been there in years but it was a great place to stop when you came back from the beach starving.
What’s a snappy hotdog?
Most likely has a natural casing so when you cook them, they snap when you eat them. YUM! I haven’t had a hot gdog in about 6 months. That’s just WRONG.
Jeff, thanks for the heads-up on Fiverr. Good to know such a service exists.
It’s freakin’ 65 degree’s outside!! TF? Friday night into Saturday it was -7 wind chill factor… I’m packing my bags. It’s the end of the world.
It’s supposed to hit 60 here tomorow. I WANT SNOW. This means, come summer, it will be tit drenching humid AND a gazillion bugs and bees.
I just told my bf that we are definitely getting an exterminator at the house this year because of the warm weather we’ve had. The back of our house bordered by woods. I am scared to death of spiders. I could ride these fuckers to work.
I get the “shortness of breath” death pall when I encounter any kind of stinging bee so I know how you feel.
And any fucker who tells me “Just leave it alone” about a wasp – blow it out your ass. I’m PETRIFIED!
I hate wasps, hornets, etc. When I was a kid I would constantly be using up the cans of wasp & hornet killer by going on wasp hunting missions. Grew up in an old wood frame house that was infested with the fuckers.
Be careful what you ask for, madz. Here in Nome, Alaska we have 20 inches of snow on the ground. For the month of January our AVERAGE temperature was 16 below zero F. Sewer lines where I live are frozen, and we have to go to another housing unit to go potty. No laundry, no dishwasher. My wife and daughters have it the worst, All I have to do is pee in a bottle.
Coming up on 6 PM and it’s 32 below zero outside…our low was 37 below, and our high this afternoon was 25 below. Florida seems awful attractive right now!
Yeah, but it is a DRY cold.
That’s a fact. When it’s that cold, all moisture gets sucked out of any exposed skin. You get freezer-burnt.
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There’s this place here called Pile ’em Up Bob’s. I kid you not- we ordered two pork chop dinners from this man. These two dinners fed me, my son, my brother, my mother, my aunt, my uncle and we still had two left over chops, slaw and fries. All that at six dollars a plate.
When i was a teen, this place opened called Pizza Pan. They had an ever running special: buy one get two free. The pizza was $10 for a medium but you got three! It tasted alright but I boost it to the best ever because of the price. We’d have pizza for days.
A place called MexiCasa in Anaheim, CA. Good cheap Mexican eats in a clean rundown old dark coffee shop. Been around for at least 30 years . .. .Gwen Stefani grew up in the area and still returns .. ..Hubby and I eat a filling lunch with drinks and unlimited tortilla chips for about 10 bucks TOTAL.
No current cheap and good around my place. Good and reasonable but all my C&Gs are from the old days and are gone.
There was a place in Vegas called “Viva Zapatta’s”. Great place inside and had GREAT food. Couple that with the twofer coupon that would show up in the Sunday paper and boy-howdy. Back then the Sunday paper was only fifty cents. We’d buy four or five papers and we were set. I don’t think we were the only ones who did that. .
****I’m stuck in Salt Lake. Truck ain’t ready yet however the place I’m staying has decent vending machine prices.
Andy is an honorable man.
Top three in order:
1. Dick’s Drive-in in the University District in Seattle. Cheap, delicious and wonderful. My kids hate because they hand cut their own fries.
2. Coleman’s Fish Market in Wheeling.
3. The Pizza Station in St Marys, WV.
Honorable mention goes to WeeBee’s on Muldoon St. in Anchorage. Wonderful burgers, homemade fries, great milkshakes, but just a couple bucks over Jeff’s $5.00 rule to be cheap.
Speaking of cheap eats….El Campasino tonight!! El Yummo!!
I have a adversity to cheap food but breakfast at work which consist of two scrambled eggs and toast runs me about $2.15