I think I've written a few times about my love for the Yes Theory YouTube channel.

I can't remember where I first heard of it. In all likelihood somebody via the internet... probably even a total stranger... who contacted me through this blog. They see that I loved traveling the world and meeting new people and discovering new things and said something like "You should really check out Yes Theory on YouTube". And so I did. This was many years ago, and I've watched everything they've ever released.

And the members of Yes Theory have meant the world to me. Because they don't just want you to watch, they invite you into their lives and you get to experience everything with them. It hasn't always been an easy road, and there have been many changes over the years.

Which is why this reunion video is so incredibly special to me...

The way Yes Theory looks at the world is how I want the world to be.

I cannot wait to see what happens next.

And if you're looking for a massive dose of positivity in your life, I highly recommend checking out their channel. But be forewarned... if you are remotely human, those videos are addictive. You cannot watch just one.

Oh boy.

Every October for years I've changed my Facebook profile picture to my goth look for Halloween. It's kinda a tradition and nobody is hurt by me looking awesome for a month. OR SO I THOUGHT! But more on that in a minute.

Here is the photo...

Long time Blogography readers might recognize this as a still from a video I made fifteen years ago for a video edition of "Bullet Sunday"...

But anyway...

I've started increasingly commenting on posts that are racist, bigoted, antisemitic, hateful, or stupid. The reaction is mostly what you'd expect. And I'm used to the hate... this is not my first time on the internet. But now the comments are all about my profile pic, not my comment. I have been called absolutely every name you can imagine. Because I'm wearing black makeup. For Halloween.

This is weird to me because I don't think much about my appearance (which should be obvious to anybody who meets me). The idea of having perfectly matching clothes or dressing in the latest style or looking "cool" or whatever just doesn't interest me. Except when it comes to Halloween, apparently.

I'm fascinated how people don't bother to make an actual argument about what I've said now. They don't like what I'm saying and how I look in my profile pic, but it's how I look that's what they choose to comment on. Which just reinforces the fact that ignorant assholes are ultimately bullies above everything else. Hating people for how they look or how they choose to dress is their priority.

I am trying to be unshocked, but this is not remotely surprising. It's the easiest shot to take, because forming an argument in support of your opinion is hard. And the easy shot is all they know.

Not that I really care. Goth Dave is the hottest Dave.

The world has gone mad again, but it's still not worse than reading this blog... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Dr. Nick! The world is so small. I'm watching a fascinating series from NatGeo on Disney+ called Superstructures: Engineering Marvels. One of the episodes is about a massive semi-submersible cargo ship. And one of the experts speaking is Nick Bradbeer, who is billed as a naval architect...

My brain immediately does a flip-flop because the name sounds so familiar. Bradbeer? Where have I heard that name? So I search my computer and come across a slideshow from a talk I downloaded called Spaceship Design Considerations for Writers written by Dr. Nick Bradbeer. And then I remember... I tried to contact him years ago to see if he knew of a video recording of his talk because I'd very much like to see it. Same guy. Yes, he's a naval engineer teaching at University College London... but he's also a massive gaming geek who applies his career speciality to designing games. And when I Google him, I find him on Mastodon where he's engaging his naval engineering students to play games he wrote! What an amazingly cool guy! Still wish I could find a video of his talk on spaceship design, because I'd very much like to see that. If anybody knows anything that could help me track that down I'd appreciate it.

   
• Spherical! A lot of footage is being released of the concert experience at "The Sphere" Las Vegas (featuring the U2 residency). It looks insane. And absolutely everybody I've heard talk about it says the same thing... "It's incredible." What's really amazing is that video from a cameraphone cannot possibly capture what you see and hear, but it still looks absolutely amazing. This is a pretty good look right here...

The structure is mind-boggling...

Image from MEGA/The Daily Mail - Capacity actually 20,000 including standing room

It sounded intriguing enough that I actually considered going to see it. I'm not a big U2 fan, but it seems like the spectacle of it all might be worth it. Until I found out what it actually is. This is not U2 playing all their greatest hits. It's U2 playing the entirety of their album Actung, Baby... plus some other songs (namely off Rattle and Hum). And as if that weren't enough of a buzzkill, apparently the massive video screen isn't actually used to fullest effect on all the songs. So it's like... what's the point? Not a ton of acts could fill 20,000 seats night after night (though Taylor Swift could do that easily for a year or more). But how many acts could do that without playing all their hits? As a one-off, no problem. But as a residency in a single city? Taylor, Pink, Madonna, The Stones, Elton John, Coldplay, Celine Dion... maybe? And given how expensive the visuals must cost to produce, you really need a residency to have it pay off. Odds are that the best shows for this would be multi-act shows... or reunions of major names. One Direction, The Spice Girls, etc. So I dunno. I'd still like to experience The Sphere, I just don't know for who.

   
• QUAID! Every once in a while I run across something from years ago that I never even knew existed. This time it's a Funny or Die clip featuring ennis Quaid from eight years ago that is ridiculously funny...

I love it when celebrities are such good sports and willing to particpate in things like this. And now I need to re-watch Undercover Blues for the hundredth time. A movie so good that I remain despondent that it wasn't a massively huge hit so we could have gotten a sequel.

   
• Ho Ho Ho! Hallmark Channel's annual "Countdown to Christmas" started on Friday... and it started with one of the best Christmas movies I've seen in a minute: Checkin' It Twice...

The story is great... but the actors take it to the next level. Charming and funny. Could it be that my favorite Hallmark Christmas movie of 2023 is the first Hallmark Christmas movie of 2023? Maybe.

   
• Left Bloody and Broken! How big of an idiot do you have to be to pick a fight with Disney, a company famous for employing countless bloodthirsty, vicious, soulless lawyers? Can you believe that dumbass Ron DeSantis was actually a contender for the presidency before everybody woke up to what a fucking disaster he is? All he did with his war against Disney was galvanize people against his worthless, bigoted, meatball ass... all in the name of being “anti-woke”... and the hilarious story of how it happened is right here, courtesy of the Legal Eagle...

Now if only people would wake up to the total tidalwave of idiots either in office or running for office and send them packing, that would be great.

   
• Way To Go! So awesome! People aren't considered freaks anymore based on their weight, their body hair, or their tattoos! I never thought we'd get here as a society, but this bigoted fucking cartoon says it's true, so it must be true!

Congratulations everybody on embracing humanity instead of persecution!

Ugh. If only.

   
• Drought? Oh joy. This precipitation forecast for Winter 2023/2024 might lead to less snow in the mountains where I live this Winter, which means the possibility of another drought Summer 2024 (at least on my side of the mountains)...

But as bad as this might be for us, it's looking disastrous for poor Hawaii. Can't catch a break.

   
And now to return you to the madness of life on earth. At least until next week.

I can't really comment on "The Fall of Twitter" because I've rarely ever used that platform. On the contrary, I've actively avoided it when at all possible. Finding a way to condense my thoughts into 280 characters or less was a hassle that was rarely rewarded with any meaningful dialogue (but I did get plenty of public hate, whether from my content or the misunderstanding of truncated content). Eventually Twitter allowed you to become "verified" by paying for it, and those users were allowed to blow past 280 characters to 1,000 or 2,500 or some more respectable number. I never wanted to pay for the privilege, so I took a hard pass. Again. Regardless of my personal experience (or lack thereof) using Twitter, I've been reading an increasing number of articles which have proclaimed it dead. Or, in the case of The New Yorker, "no longer fun."

What I can comment on is the disastrous rebranding of one of the most valuable brands in the known universe. Elon Musk renamed "Twitter" to "X" which was a bizarre strategy that could only be dreamed up by a billionaire who doesn't give a shit about the irreplaceable power of brand recognition. "Tweets" have been embedded into world culture (and the world's lexicons) in a way that companies fantasize about. But Musk has an obsession over the name "X" for some reason, so now instead of tweets we have xeets or what-the-fuck-ever. Musk does a lot of crazy shit (but likely no more crazy than the things I would do if I were a billionaire) but this one takes the absolute cake. The guy paid FORTY-FOUR BILLION DOLLARS for something he proceeded to utterly decimate.

And don't think that I am just making an observation over something I refuse to investigate. I read numerous stories and watched interviews where Elon Musk attempted to explain it all. And it goes something like this...

“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video. In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”

On the surface, this is not at all illogical. Chinese society runs on an app called WeChat (微信).

If you are unaware of the sheer insanity of just how critical WeChat has become to the Chinese people, I've got a mindblowing video for you. It's quite a long video because they address a number of controversies surrounding the app, but it's a fascinating watch...

   
Now, if you didn't watch the above video (and who could blame you), this is a frame from it that's the critical bit...

WeChat combines the shopping of Amazon, the videos of YouTube, the dating of Tinder, the music of Spotify, the search of Google, the financial transactions of PayPal, the social media of Facebook, the telephone connectivity of WhatsApp, the movie studio of Netflix, the ride-sharing of Über, the reviews of Yelp, the videoconferencing of Zoom, and the food delivery of Deliveroo (the American equivalent being InstaCart and ÜberEats)... all in one app!

And this is what Elon Musk is wanting for his "X" platform (a concept he tried once before but never got off the ground). It is, apparently, the main reason behind him wanting to buy Twitter in the first place (along with his ego, I'm sure).

Now, I have serious doubts that a WeChat-type service conglomerate could ever emerge in the USA. We have anti-monopoly laws, sure, but they get ignored or enforced seemingly at random, so that's not my reasoning. My thinking is that there is no unifying government mandate which encourages this to happen. Of course there are politicians who want to keep us from having access to things they don't like (or, more accurately, things that they are fucking PAID to not like, such as TikTok), but apparently nobody has paid them to work on app consolidation yet. Somebody should just tell Musk that he needs to start buying off politicians to make it happen! Heaven only knows that there are enough of them up for sale, so it's really only a matter of money. Of which Musk has plenty.

But anyway...

I am watching the fall of Twitter, er, "X"... with disinterest. Why would I care that a platform is either "dying" or "no fun" when I don't use it?

Okay... I'm watching with a little bit of interest since Twitter is part of the reason that blogging died (ah, those were the days!).

Ultimately to me this is just like the death of FAX machines and pagers. It seems to actually be happening, but we won't know for sure until it's really gone. I take no joy in it, especially because of those who rely on it, but don't expect me to care. And if Twitter weathers the storm and roars back as the "X Everything App" that Musk always dreamed of? Well... I wouldn't want all the apps I use to be consolidated under Elon Musk any more than I would a government... so I wouldn't be thrilled about it (that's why my primary "social media platform" is Blogography!), but I guess I'd have little choice but to install it.

It's either that or retreat to a cave and commune with nature.

Something that is getting more appealing by the day.

I haven't given a shit what people think of me for a long time now.

It's this irrefutable truth which allows me to keep blogging on the internet.

I left a discussion group last week because an asshole wouldn't stop going after people for things like spelling and grammar, even though the meaning was perfectly clear. I finally said something... essentially saying that gatekeeping the English language isn't the purpose of the discussion... then I left. This morning somebody still in the group copied some of the responses to my comment and sent them to me before she left too. The guy I replied to replied to me with something stupid, then other people jumped in and agreed with him. Proving that I made the right decision to go.

Liz Climo put this drama into vivid relief for me...

   
Those poor, poor people.

It's another scorcher out there today, but never you fear about my melting... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Strange Decks! There is now no question what-so-ever that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is my favorite Trek. It has eclipsed The Original Series, as I knew it would. And this latest episode (dropping early in honor of ComicCon!)... which is a mind-blowing crossover with the comedic ANIMATED show, Star Trek: Lower Decks... is beyond genius. They brought voice actors Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid into Real Life and the transition is seamless. They are very much the same characters, just no longer animated...

Now, they could have easily did this as a throw-away episode. Or dismissed it as a dream. Or any number of things which would have kneecapped it into irrelevance. But it was well-thought-out and completely serious while honoring the tone and characters of their respective shows. It's borderline thrilling how Strange New Worlds keeps one-upping themselves episode after episode. AND THAT ENDING! Brilliant Trek. Brilliant television.

   
• American Heartland! In a shocking announcement, a new $2 BILLION theme park is being built in Tulsa. Called "American Heartland" this seems like a carbon copy of "Disney's America," a theme park outside of Washington, D.C. that was never built which is based around Americana...

Now, I think this is a cool idea. Definitely. But Oklahoma?!? And not Southern Oklahoma which is close to Texas and might have a longer operating season... Northeast Oklahoma, which likely has fairly mild winters, but not California/Florida mild. And it seems primed for failure given that the biggest city (Oklahoma City, 2-1/2 hours away) has under 700,000 people. The nearest actual major city is Dallas or St. Louis, but they're a five hour drive. Which begs the question... why not just put it near Dallas or St. Louis? They at least have a big population and a major airport there! But still... they are promoting a laundry list of experienced Disney/Universal attraction designers, so there's that. I'd like to see it, of course. But it seems as though this is going to go the way of "Disney's America" and won't be built.

   
• Seek Discomfort! one of my long-time favorite YouTube channels is Yes Theory which is a group of people doing extraordinary things via travel and adventure by stepping out of their comfort zone. It's a channel I binge for a while, then leave for a while, because while it's beautiful to behold... it's also emotionally overwhelming. We're so inundated with reasons to feel cynical that watching the opposite of that for too long can be tough. And a couple of their latest videos are pretty darn special...

If you're a longtime fan of the channel, that surprise guest in France was almost too much to take.

How amazing is that?

   
• 'MURICA AI! This Buzzfeed article is nuts: I Asked AI What Europeans Think Americans From Every Single State Look Like, And The Results Are Just Plain Mean. Mean? Maybe. But some of them are scary accurate. Go ahead and click through. I dare you.

   
• Rescued! Miracles happen. What an incredible story...

Is it wrong that the entire time watching the video I'm screaming "BUT HOW IS THE DOG DOING?!?

   
• Ketchup> Hallmark Channel's "June Weddings" event is over... but I went back to watch the first half hour of The Wedding Contract because I wasn't paying much attention until the end when I watched it last month. What's REALLY NICE is that Hallmark is putting a little diversity over the same old story... they had an Indian wedding, and this is a Jewish wedding (seriously... she's baking a challah for Shabbat dinner!). But the best part is how it takes place in Chicago... but not really. It's shot in Vancouver. BUT IT'S TOTALLY CHICAGO BECAUSE SHE'S SITTING ON A PARK BENCH WITH A SLICE OF DEEP DISH PIZZA NEXT TO HER! BWAH HA HA HAAA! But wait, there's more! They get a coffee at cart called Chicago's Finest Hot Dogs and... what's that on the cart there?

THERE'S A BOTTLE OF KETCHUP ON THE CART! BWAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! HA HA HAAAAAA!!! Clearly the set decorator has never been to Chicago. That ketchup would be hidden and provided (RELUCTANTLY) by request only. Ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago... BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA =gasp= HA HAAAA!!! People have died for less!

   
• POD PEOPLE! I really, really want to see this...

Looks interesting. Looks different. Has great lead actors. Why not?

   
Hope you're having a cooler Sunday than I am!

I am really torn on this whole "link tax" bullshit that's getting signed into law by certain countries.

Essentially this boils down to governments forcing major media companies like Google to strike agreements with news organizations. That way, when you search for something on Google (or Facebook or any company that monetizes results based on another company's content) and a result from a news organization pops up, Google has to pay them money because their content has been monetized by Google.

On one hand, it's like... okay... Google is making money by serving ads in their search results or news feeds, so why shouldn't the news organizations showing up in those results get paid for making Google rich with their hard work?

On the other hand... why the fuck should Google be held responsible for other companies not monitizing their own content? If you don't want Google to make money off of you, then no problem. Add code to your website's HTML instructing Google bots to not crawl your content. Problem solved. Why in the hell are governments getting involved in this? And if you're going to pass laws for news organizations to get paid for making Google money... why not everybody? Why not bloggers? Blogography is heavily indexed by Google, and I have a lot of content that gets looked at by Google search referrals. So where is my money??

I have to say... I am kinda on Google's side this time.

Which is something I haven't said very often.

Google is merely refering people to your content. It should be up to you to monetize everything once somebody clicks through to visit your site and read your stories. Run ads. Offer subscriptions. Whatever. Just be grateful that Google is sending you the business. How else will people even find you if you're not getting Google search referrals?

With the recently-passed "link tax" law in Canada, Google is telling the Canadian government to fuck off. They will just remove all Canadian news sources from appearing to Canadians who are now legally required to be paid. Sure Google will have less content in their search results to monetize... but they won't have to pay anything out either. I'd argue that this doesn't benefit Canadians at all, but what do I know? Google said the same thing to Australia and France, but eventually capitulated. It will probably be the same for Canada.

And the USA is likely going to be adding a "link tax" soon.

If I were Google, I'd do some things...

• Stick to their guns and not capitulate to governments requiring them to pay money to news organizations. Let the news organizations monetize their own shit. See how long it takes for news organization to come begging for Google to add them back to their services and tell the government to abandon the law.
• Put a badge saying "PAID CONTENT" on all news sources that charge people to read their news articles. That way, when a search result includes a story by The Washington Post, for example, people will know that if they click through they'll have to pay money to read the full story. Because, hey, why isn't The Washington Post having to pay Google for sending them new subscribers? Fair is fair, after all.
• Extend an olive branch to all official news organizations by offering them free ads on Google services, especially on their news page, based on how much of their content ends up in search results. This is kinda a no-brainer compromise.
• Extend another olive branch by offering revenue sharing to companies or individuals who agree to NOT have paid content, with the amount received based on actual clicks. That way sites without the deep pockets of The Washington Post to set up a subscription service can have a mutually-beneficial relationship with Google. If they are making content which is interesting enough for people to consistently click through, then they are helping to make Google successful and can be rewarded. Set a threshold of how many clicks you need to get payment, then extend it to everybody. If sites like Blogography are getting a million clicks a month (HA!) then why can't they be considered along with "official" news outlets? I work just as hard on my content as they do, and consider my hot takes on things just as valid as "editorial" content, so why the fuck not? Hopefully this will allow cream to rise to the top and auto-generated, inflated, and artificial crap fall off of Google's radar. Ain't nobody wanting to read that shit anyway.

Ultimately I think it's important that news organizations get paid for their work. But to put that responsibility on Google is outrageous. That should be up to Google. And if people don't like it... then everybody can tell Google bots to not crawl their site until Google agrees to fork over the money and share their success. That's how the market works. If governments wants money to go to news organizations, then have that money come from the government.

Regardless of how this all shakes out, to have governments jumping in the fray is a terrible precedent. Today it's Google... what's tomorrow? Me? Every time I share a news story I'm going to be responsible for paying them money? I call bullshit. They should figure out their own monetization just like I do (which is $0 since I don't charge for anything, but still).

Have a government-mandated monetized weekend, everybody!

You're probably best off skipping this entry.

I know that USA Today panders to the lowest common denominator (i.e. people as a whole are stupid as fuck), but this headline! Isn't it a foregone conclusion that if debris was found there could be no survivors? Like what... the passengers would just be hanging out 2-1/2 miles down on the sea floor waiting for a ride back to the surface?

But anyway... I have a few thoughts on this tragic situation, if you care to hear them.

• The ghoulish way that the internet laughs over tragedy will always amaze me. The father and son that perished had a wife/mother and daughter/sister waiting to hear about people they loved. And a shocking number of people were all over the internet saying the most horrific things about them... even going so far as to say that they hope they die. What kind of asshole takes joy in something like this?
• The ghoulish way that "news" organizations compete for clicks over tragedy, however, will never amaze me, because that's what they do. That's all they do.
• The bragging rights to say "I've seen the wreck of the Titanic" should not be seen as any different than saying "I saw the Stones in concert" or "I've been to Iceland" or "I own a Camaro" or whatever people like to brag about. It's just another thing you can do. And people are going to do whatever shit they can afford. If you've got a QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS to blow, and using it on something frivolous while you could make real change for people whose lives are in crisis, then you get to do crazier shit than most people. That's how it's always worked.
• While I think every effort should be made to rescue people from an awful fate whenever possible, I also feel that taxpayers having to foot the bill for that rescue is absurd. If you've got $250,000 to spend on a ticket to the sea floor, you can chip in another $250,000 to spend on insurance in the event you need rescuing. When I went to Antarctica, I had to buy a huge insurance policy in case I had to be air-lifted back to South America. This is the price you pay to play the game. Except if you're a billionaire, I guess. Typical.
• The fact that five incredibly wealthy people had their misfortune broadcast around the world and shitloads of money were spent attempting to rescue them... ALL WHILE a boat with hundreds of poor immigrants sinking off the coast of Greece barely gets a mention and is given the "Oh, that's too bad" treatment should not be lost on anybody. Your wealth is directly proportional to your value in this sick, sad world.
• Everything you do has risk associated with it. Flying in a plane. Climbing a mountain. Crossing the street. Everybody has to decide for themselves which things are worth them dying for. If you are okay climbing in a metal tube with a guy who says that "safety is a waste of money," where even the tiniest of cracks could crush you like an eggshell, and you're literally signing a paper that says you could very easily die from all the shit that could go wrong... well, what you do with your life is your business. I've done plenty of risky things... skydiving, travel to dangerous areas, eating at Chipotle... and the consequences are mine, and you judging me will be ignored BECAUSE IT'S NOT YOUR BUSINESS! So, while I may think that it's crazy-stupid and too big of a risk to go into a patchwork "submarine" that's been deemed "unsafe" by a former employee (who was fired) and is driven by a Playstation controller... somebody else doing this is NONE OF MY BUSINESS.
• I will, however, feel however the fuck I want to feel about the situation. Am I sad that people died in a tragic accident? Of course I am. Am I going to celebrate that they're gone? Of course not. Am I going to descend into grief because vastly wealthy people did something I consider to be a stupid waste of money and ended up paying the ultimate price for their folly? No I will not. Fuck no. And I'm not going to pretend that I'm devastated to make other people feel better about life choices that were made WHICH ARE NOT MY BUSINESS.

As an aside... the irony of people dying because warnings were ignored while going to see the wreck of where people died because warnings were ignored, is not lost on me.

It's time to be human... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Again. The shooting at the Colorado Springs nightclub "Club Q" last night is yet another in a string of violent attacks on marginalized communities. And it's like... I just don't get it. LGBTQ persons are not made to feel welcome in general society, so they carve out a space where they can enjoy life for even a short time away from general society... and that's not good enough? Senseless violence has been out of control for as long as humans have existed. That's just fact. But the hatred behind the violence is quickly reaching unsustainable levels as the weapons to act out violence keep getting more powerful. Dozens of people can be cut down in an instant by a single individual, and pretty soon that's going to be the only thing we have.

   
• Let's Go Brendan! This GQ "Iconic Characters" series is always great. But this one? Oh wow...

I want... quite badly... for Elizabeth Hurley to get one of these.

   
• Todd! If you are not watching So Help Me Todd on Paramount+, then you are missing out on one of my favorite shows on television. It almost makes me forgive Paramount Network for canceling Magnum P.I. (which, thank God for Peacock TV and NBC, is actually returning despite it all)...

Skylar Astin is a gift, and this show uses him to maximum effect. So COLOR ME SHOCKED that CBS actually renewed the show for a second season! Yay!

   
• Big Animation! Floor 796 may very well be the coolest thing I've seen in my browser in a minute...

Worth a visit if you like looking at cool stuff!

   
• I'm Batman! And here's what I wish I would have had to post when Kevin Conroy passed...

A lot of people... like a lot a lot... have Kevin Conroy as "their" Batman. This will go on for a while.

   
• SHIT! And here we are again. Apple's HomeKit... which has always been HomeShit... is still a pile of shit. And Apple doesn't fucking care. It is absolutely outrageous how there are known issues plaguing the system and Apple doesn't even acknowledge that there are problems. A company worth billions of dollars, but they won't fix it or offer any solutions. For me the biggest problem is that Automations tied to timed events (like sunset or a time of day) don't fucking work! The event arrives and nothing happens. Which is shitty, because I have all kinds of things set up. Like turning my outside lights off and on. There are hundreds of threads on various forums with people trying to find a way to get their timed Automations working. Some things work... for a while... but the overreaching problem of HomeShit being garbage can only be addressed by Apple. And, once more for the people in the back, Apple doesn't fucking care.

   
And now back to your regularly scheduled Sunday antics.

Today I will be cooking up a grilled cheese sandwich recipe that I've been working on forever. More on that in a second, because first I feel obligated to put some bullshit story in front of my recipe. Apparently that's The Law of the interwebs...

When we went into lockdown, I spent a lot of time in cooking forums and groups trying to find ways to get creative with limited groceries. One day there was a conversation built around your favorite grilled cheese sandwich.

Now, I have many, many "favorite" grilled cheese sandwiches. I love bread. I adore cheese. I have made so many different combinations of both that I couldn't possibly count them all. Growing up my grilled cheeses were American on whatever white bread was cheapest. I loved them. Still do.

All that being said, here is my favorite grilled cheese sandwich. Which got me some hate, I won't lie...

Blogography's Grilled Cheese

• Two slices of rustic bread... my favorite is homemade. But if I'm not making it myself, I like Seattle Sourdough Baking Company's "Waterfront" round loaf.
• Thinly-sliced, good quality Cheddar. It doesn't even have to be expensive or an import. I love Tillamook Medium.
• Spreadable cream cheese.
• Grated parmesan cheese. Not the "real" stuff... you want the cheap Kraft shaker stuff in the plastic bottle.
• Thinly-sliced Granny Smith green apples or ripe tomatoes (if you got them, which I do not).

And here's what I do...

1. On a microwave-safe plate, pile up the thinly-sliced cheese between the slices of bread and nuke it for a short time. Ideally you want to stop just before the cheese is melted. On my microwave it's 12 seconds. Cheddar is a hard cheese that doesn't always melt easily, so this is just to make sure that the cheese gets really gooey when you actually cook it.
2. Place in a cold pan and turn on the heat to medium-high. Butter one side then turn it over and butter the other. Yeah, yeah, I know it's en vogue to use mayonnaise, and that's fine... but I prefer plenty of real butter.
3. Grill the one side until it is lightly toasted. You don't want it browned (you'll see why soon).
4. While the bottom side is grilling, take the top slice off and smear the inside with cream cheese. Stick the thinly-sliced green apples (or ripe tomatoes) to the cream cheese and stick it to the bottom slice.
5. Flip and lightly grill the top side.
6. NOW... once both sides are lightly toasted, that means the pan has come up to heat. What you do now is turn the heat down to medium. Lift the sandwich out of the pan with a food turner, then sprinkle a bit of the Parmesan into the pan and quickly place the sandwich back in the pan. Grill until the cheese has fused to the bread and turned deep brown (careful! It will burn quickly!).
7. Repeat for the other side.
8. Use a sharp knife to cut at an angle (you want that point on the end for your first bite!). The knife should be as sharp as you can make it so the bread doesn't get too smashed at the cut. I used to use a bread knife, but it really isn't necessary.
9. Serve on a plate with whatever green apple slices are left.

I didn't have green apple or tomato for this one, but you can get the idea...

Now, there's some method to this madness. And I ended up having to defend my sandwich to people who were upset about my choices in a frickin' cooking forum...

• "IF YOU MICROWAVE IT, THEN IT'S NOT A REAL GRILLED CHEESE!!" — As I said, cheddar isn't the meltiest cheese around and needs a little help. You can skip this step if it offends you so much, but those 12 seconds makes a big difference.
• "CHEDDAR IS SO BASIC! THERE ARE BETTER CHEESES FOR GRILLED CHEESE!" — Then use them. Medium Cheddar is my favorite taste for this sandwich, especially when paired with green apple or ripe tomatoes.
• "CREAM CHEESE ISN'T EVEN CHEESE!" — According to the FDA it qualifies, but whatever. I use it because it's a lovely, creamy texture addition... and does a darn good job of keeping the apples from sliding out of the sandwich. Unless you go too thick. Or over-cook it.
• "GRATED PARMESAN? FROM A BOTTLE? IT'S NOT REAL CHEESE! IT'S SAWDUST!!! — Preaching to the choir. You're telling me something I already know. But whenever I use real parmesan, it sticks "wrong" and makes a mess. But the Kraft grated (with sawdust!) works perfectly for what we need. I don't want the "crustiness" to come from cooking the bread until brown. In my opinion, that's overcooked. But you want that crusty topping! Using grated Parmesan gives you a nice crustiness on the outside while keeping the bread soft and delicious. The texture is remarkable, and that small hit of Parmesan is so tasty.
• "THAT'S A FRUIT SANDWICH, NOT A GRILLED CHEESE!" — Then leave off the green apples or the tomatoes. As you can see in the photo above, it's still a fantastic sandwich. I just like that small addition of other flavor to add a bit of complexity to the flavors and elevate it a bit. Cheddar has a strong enough flavor to not be overwhelmed.
• "THIS IS A SHITTY GRILLED CHEESE. YOU DO EVERYTHING WRONG!" — If wrong tastes this good, I don't want to be right.

Thus is the politics of grilled cheese sandwiches. If you have a favorite of your own, then by all means keep doing what you're doing and not tell me how much my favorite sucks!