Eat it! I dare you.

Let's be honest here. We've all eaten things we've regretted. Perhaps you're drunk, or super sad, or someone dares you and calls you a wuss, or maybe you lost your sense of smell and taste while playing with fireworks and a gallon jug of bleach. What seemed to be an amazing idea at first ends up making you really sad and in need of a brillo pad and some more of that bleach we just talked about (to scrape that hate off your tongue or clean the vomit off the carpet).

But once in a blue moon you warily eat something that seems like it will be a nightmarish food experience. You take one quivering taste and realize that you have just struck gold. Tasty salty gold. You're standing there in the gas station with a belly full of malt liquor but no real sustenance to hold you upright. Glaring at a wrinkly moss colored hot dog rotating around a hellish glow stick behind a murky piece of grease coated plexiglass. "I need that right now in my mouth" you say to yourself and without a single shred of caution you put your sweaty rolled up cash onto the counter and point to the magical swirling "meat" carousel. Perhaps you should have asked the surly attendant "Excuse me, but how long has that wiener been sitting there?" or "Why is that hot dog green?" but you have made up your mind. It is done.

Okay well, that particular experience almost put me in the hospital with severe food poisoning but sometimes taking chances on strange things work out in a good way. Like the first time I tried chicken feet. Or the time I ate a chunk of Epoisses (a runny, slimy French cheese that smells exactly like baby poop mixed with dirty sock mixed with 30 day old rotting roadkill). Both of those things were amazing and delicious. I was pleasantly surprised.

Back when I used to be in punk bands and whatnot (before I got sick and my wrist imploded - long story) I used to stop at this crackmart (mini-mart or whatevs) and purchase pre-band-practice snacks. One combination of un-appealing but delicious munchies that I stumbled upon happened to be a spicy pickled meat snack and a large can of clam flavored beer. Sounds like a kind of horrible torture method but in fact it happened to be a winning combination of wonderfulness. The Hot Head pickled sausage is all wet and mushy. Salty and sour. Meaty and squishy. I bet you want one now, don't you? The Chelada is a can of beer mixed with clam juice, tomato juice, and lime juice. Lots of salty juices mixed with watery beer. It's like if you poured beer into your Manhattan clam chowder. So refreshing and delicious. I know it all sounds like a terrible nightmare but it really is delicious (perhaps in a super trashy kind of way but none-the-less). Sometimes in life you just need to put your pretensions behind you and eat a brain taco from a shady looking truck, you know what I'm sayin'? See something weird to eat? Try it, you just might like it.

Or you may end up in the hospital but at least you'll have a cool story to tell. If you're still alive of course. xoxo