20 years of Sideswipe
With burgers less is more
They’re overstuffed, ridiculously messy, and deeply unsatisfying taste-wise. A reader explains: “Tall burgers completely nullify all the benefits of burgers, and are an abomination unto cuisine. A good burger is the perfect portable food. It should be edible using only your hands and mouth, without cutlery, and without making too much mess. You should also be able to sample every layer of ingredient in one bite, without dislocating your jaw.”
Very British problems
1. When you are so British you can’t even say thank you. Shopkeeper: “There you go.” Me: “Nice one mate, thanks, cheers pal, have a good day, yeah cheers!”
2. Seeing a viral video on social media then seeing the BBC news talk about it nine days later.
3. The panic of remembering a cup of tea and thinking it’s gone cold, checking the cup and being relieved that you just forgot that you drank it already, followed by the crippling sadness at the realisation that you don’t have a cup of tea.
4. When you make eye contact with a stranger on the tube and you both look away out of the window, but your reflections make eye contact.
5. When you order a “full English breakfast” and it comes with ONE sausage, ONE rasher of bacon, ONE egg and a bloody RAMEKIN of beans.
6. When you hear someone say “chips and fish” and have to recover for weeks from the discomfort that this phrase inflicted.
Matt Groening’s favourite Simpsons moment “My favourite comes from Marge, who seems to grow funnier as I get older. There’s something about her intense rationality that feels so dignified. It’s from the episode where the parents of Bart’s best friend, Milhouse, get divorced, after having a public spat at a dinner party hosted by Marge. As Marge and Homer sit in bed later that night, Marge, blaming herself (“Just blame yourself once and move on,” Homer says), wonders what went wrong. “I shouldn’t have served those North Korean fortune cookies,” she says. “They were so insulting. ‘You are a coward.’ No one likes to hear that after a nice meal.”