Sandwich of Ruin!

There's A Chip On My Shoulder

I think there's a little-known economic indicator that speaks volumes about the health, or lack thereof, of the American economy, and that indicator is the abundance and variety of potato chips.

And, judging by the potato chips in the market today, our economy is strong, or at the very least on the definite rebound.

Maybe I've just never really noticed, maybe I've lived my entire existence seeing life simply through Doritos-stained glasses, but holy crap if there isn't an amazing variety of potato chips available today.

Last week, I stopped at a convenience store to gas up the car and buy a Diet Pepsi for a ride up to the Twin Cities, and I decided I wanted a bag of chips to gnaw on on the way.

Lo and behold, I was confronted with a selection that would humble even the most moderately indecisive people of the world. There are baked chips, and there are kettle cooked chips, and there are kiln-dried chips and there are chips fried in the acne oils of the multitude of WB teen celebrities.

And that doesn't even begin to cover the variety of flavors. There are, of course, the standby flavors such as nacho cheese and sour cream and onion. But, there are also such breath defying flavor matings as parmesan and garlic (one of my favorites, by the way), steak and onion, vinegar and urine, and skunk roadkill and dog poop.

But all those flavors, as unsavory as they can often be, pale in comparison to the most horrid potato chip flavor ever conceived: pizza flavored.

So of course I bought a bag of pizza-flavored, kettle-cooked potato chips.

I don't know why I always feel compelled to buy snacks that tout themselves as "pizza flavored." I think it's the eternal child within me that will perpetually believe that "pizza-flavored anything" automatically means yummy. Yet, time and again, pretty much without fail, a pizza-flavored something or other ends up tasting like burnt hair.

So it was last week, with a bag of pizza-flavored, kettle cooked potato chips resting in my lap as I drove onward to the Cities, I found myself placing an oily, crumpled plank upon my tongue, expecting a pizza experience of some sort.

What I experienced, however, was more of a "I-just-willingly-placed-a-dung-beetle-in-my-mouth" sort of moment. I rolled down my window and let spew with a mouthful of shards and spittle. I couldn't believe how horribly horrible that thing had tasted. The realization that somebody, somewhere, honestly thought that those chips tasted good briefly made me lose faith in humanity. Again.

I shouldn't have been surprised because, like I said, snacks that advertise they taste like pizza rarely, if ever, taste like pizza. That, too, is not surprising, considering that most pizza rarely, if ever, tastes like pizza. And, really, I've never seen "potatoes" as a possible pizza topping, so I shouldn't have been expecting much when "pizza" was essentially a potato topping.

Still, those chips were a particularly vile blend of herbs and spices masquerading as "pizza." I think they'll haunt my dreams for at least the next month or so.

Still, I expected at least some semblance of a taste similar to a circular Italian food item. I would have been happy with just a hint of oregano but, no, it just tasted like garbage mixed with something dead.

Posted by Ryan at August 2, 2004 01:24 PM