Say what you will about junk food, but you’ve got to admit, as a cuisine, it’s out of this world. Any recipe involving Velveeta, pie filling, a can of Coke, or all three is okay in my book. It’s an undervalued genre, but its contributions to gastronomy are too many and varied to deny. Today I enjoyed that superstar of the junk food kitchen: the potato chip sandwich.

“What is a potato chip sandwich?” you may wonder. Oh, my friend, your meals will never be the same again. Picture this: two slices of bread, two pieces of American cheese, and a fistful of potato chips. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the particulars of assembling this edible masterpiece, but I do recommend laying the chips between the slices of cheese. I did kind of bourgeois it up with multigrain bread, but if ever there were a recipe for Wonder Bread, this is it.

My sister, good sport that she is, assented to trying a bite. I actually had to go eat it in the living room, due to aforementioned sister. She’s working on an art project for class, and she’s been taking silhouettes of women and assembling various pictures of plastic surgery and raw meat on their bodies. The effect is… pretty disgusting. There I was, arranging my potato chips, deciding whether or not to spread chip dip on the bread, when out of the corner of my eye I see a photo of a human breast covered with “Cut here!” dashed lines. I start to carry my sandwich to the table but I’m assaulted by pictures of liposuctioned bellies, T-bone steaks, and gory-looking things I don’t even want to identify.

It’s all very lovely. Somehow even I lost my appetite for my potato chip sandwich.

On behalf of Kiki’s Demolition Co., I’d like to wish you a happy Have Your Child Kick a Soccer Ball in the Street and Run After It in Front of Cars Day!

In driver’s ed, I became convinced that children want nothing more than to fling themselves in the road when you drive by. I was just starting to think that they’re not that fatalistic.

I was driving around in the ‘hood when I came across a curious sight. On a particularly curvy stretch of subdivision street, a family with what appeared to be six children under the age of six had raked the entirety of their yard’s leaves into the road. There was a horde of kneebiters wielding miniature rakes running amok in the street while their mother strolled about in a most laissez-faire manner. I will grant you, a mother of six children under the age of six has a lot on her mind, but I’d imagine “DON’T LET THE CHILDREN PLAY IN THE ROAD!” would be somewhere in those thoughts. Anyway, I steered far, far away from the children, and reduced my already-pokey speed of 15 mph down to 7. As I drove by, a little boy started walking toward the car, arms outstretched (not unzombielike).

HOLY ZOMBIE CHILDREN WITH MINIATURE RAKES, BATMAN!

I guess I can’t blame a 3-year-old for being attracted to a Day-Glo green hemisphere on wheels. If I saw the Bug driving by I’d zombie-walk after it, too. Wait. I DO do that.

After the leaf-raking debacle, I decided I better get outta there and drive on REAL roads that don’t have children in them. When I returned home it was dark. As I drove through the neighborhood, I saw a soccer ball zip across the road in front of me with an 8-year-old boy in hot pursuit. Hel-loooo, boy! Street? Darkness? Impending doom?

Thanks to my LIGHTNING reflexes and keen understanding of the juvenile mind* I braked and it was a nonissue. I was like half a block away anyway. But jeez, kid, go back inside and play with matches or something. It’s safer.

* Okay, so it’s not so much an understanding of the juvenile mind as it is the possession of one.

I learned two very important lessons today. One is that children have a certain magnetic attraction to asphalt. The other is that you can save a lot of trouble bagging leaves if you just dump them in the street.

This weekend, I did something I swore I’d never do. I’ll give you a hint: it involves a DVD.

I was walking through Blockbuster’s* New Releases section when I succumbed to my advanced case of NBAD, and before I knew what was happening, I was clutching Herbie: Fully Loaded in my hot little hands and palming the friendly clerk an Andrew Jackson.**

* Since when did I become Blockbuster’s poster girl? Am I getting any royalties for this advertising? Blockbuster: call me!
** Andrew Jackson doesn’t have quite the same ring that a Benjamin would, but I’ll take my cha-CHING in whatever denominations they’ll give me. At present, I’m more likely to be spending Hamiltons.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I can’t claim the devil made me do it. It was totally premeditated. When I saw that all of the copies were out, I kept returning to that wall on the off chance that it would get restocked. When that didn’t happen, I asked the clerk to check the drop-off box. Shut up. You’d have done it, too.

Herbie: Fully Loaded is the tale of a VW Bug who, with a little bit of chutzpah, manages to overcome adversity and save the day. (Sorry, I hope that wasn’t too much of a spoiler.) Herbie was very cute with his droopy headlight eyes, smiling bumper mouth, and sun visor eyebrows. In a wincing, I-can’t-believe-I’m-watching-a(nother)-Lindsay-Lohan-movie kind of way, I found Herbie surprisingly unpainful. (By the way, Michael Keaton, what happened? What was the defining moment in your career when you went from being the best Batman since Adam West to Lindsay’s dopey dad? Ahh… Multiplicity. It’s all coming clear.)

Ostensibly, I rented the movie to see Herbie’s love interest, a curvaceous, yellow New Beetle. (”Herbie: Fully Loaded: come for the hot chicks and their voluptuous 2.5 Liter engines, stay for the gratuitous CGI!”) Unfortunately, with 30 seconds in the limelight and no lines, she served as mere eyecandy, but I’m not complainin’. I was, however, a bit creeped out by Herbie’s occasional antenna erections.

You’ll be glad to know that I did NOT tear up during the movie, not even when Herbie would shrug his shoulders in that sad, dejected little way of his. I did NOT smirk when Herbie outraced muscle cars, and I did NOT feel an overwhelming sense of Volkswagon Pride by the movie’s conclusion. Such reactions would be juvenile and obviously beneath my level of emotional maturity, and so quite clearly, I would never behave in such a manner.****

**** Curse you, Disney!

I did kind of hope that Herbie would team up with some other VWs and drive around town in a gang of Jettas, Golfs, Rabbits, Busses, and Karmann Ghias. VW, if you’re interested in marketing this idea and hooking me up with some Benjamins, call me!

Anyway, as you can imagine, I had Beetles on my mind the next day. While subbing for a math class, I thought I overheard two 8th grade boys talking about them.

“Are you talking about VW Beetles?” I perked up, hoping to join the conversation.
There was a pause, and then one of the boys replied, “Huh?”
“VWs? Beetles?” I persisted.
Another pause. “Um, nope.”
“Sorry,” I said stupidly. By means of explanation, I added, “I just watched Herbie last night, so I have Beetles on the brain.”
They kind of sat there for a moment. “Beatles rock!” one of the boys suddenly piped up. Enthusiastically, he continued, “We all live in a yellow submarine….”

We decided to check out a new restaurant that had opened up on Wednesday, one of those joints with an outdoorsy theme and the word “Lodge” in its title. As I scanned the décor, complete with its bear-and-moose-patterned carpeting, my eyes stopped at the sight of what looked like a bear’s pelt smooshed behind glass and fenced in with a big gilt frame.

“Do you think that bear is real?” I asked.
“Yeah, probably,” my mom replied.
“Gross.”
“My grandfather used to have a bearskin rug,” she commented.
“Oh yeah?”
“I used to stick grapes in its mouth.”
I started laughing.
“I wanted to feed it.”

Somewhere out there, there’s an unhappy pelt wishing it didn’t have petrified grapes crammed in its maw. A little later, we were inspecting two rifles that were hanging above the mantelpiece.

“Do you think you have to disable guns that are used for decoration?” I mused, apparently appeasing my inner Trading Spaces designer.
“Good question. You know, when your father lived in that house [long, long ago], there was an old man renting an apartment in it who would get drunk and wave his rifle around. One night your father broke into his apartment and removed the firing pin.”

The food wasn’t that fantastic, but I will give credit where credit is due. The cheesy, faux woodsy decorations taught me a little more about my eccentric family history. Ancestry.com can shove it, fake free iPods notwithstanding!