I'll have the Craig T. Nelson

Ordering a freaking sandwich has become complicated. A pastrami on rye is no longer pastrami on rye. It's "The Dugout" or "The Downtown." Bread has become too upscale to pronounce properly ("foccacia" and "ciabatta") and a grilled cheese is no longer a grilled cheese, it's a freaking Cheddar and Swiss Panini. Do you want it grilled, do you want it toasted, do you want it crustless, do you want it smashed flat like a pancake by some Italian torture device? Don't ask for mayo, because it's not mayo, it's aioli, and it comes in 532 flavors, and you have to choose by the time your sandwich makes it through the little metal conveyor toasting belt into the Produce section, where you won't find lettuce, but Field Greens. Which are weeds, people. And then you pay $11 for something that is either too tall for your mouth to even get a handle on, or so smooshed flat you might as well slap some syrup on it and grab a fork.

Sidenote: During one of our many dot-com, slap-happy ad agency dinners, Chuck was describing a trip to a famous NYC deli where the sandwiches are named after famous people. People, he says, like "The Mark Harmon." Huh? Somewhere, out of the far reaches of his brain, perhaps channeling Summer School, he pulls out Mark Harmon. Not George Burns. Not Frank Sinatra. Mark Harmon. Who, incidentally, at the time of that dinner, had not made a peep on a screen since the late 80s. We checked and there was NOT a Mark Harmon on that deli's sandwich menu. Go figure. We have not let Chuck live that one down since.

I don't know why I'm even talking about food, as I haven't been able to eat more than a few thimblesfull of soup for the past four days.