Theme Week, Part Fire

Jeremy's Sametime Status Proudly Presents: Back From Vacation Week! The perfect solution to the California Wildfires: Food Club brand Charcoal!


Okay...here we go again. I'll prepare the legal briefs.


What if I prefer the legal boxers?


Wait, what?


So anyway...last week's vacation included grilling, as vacations on a lake often do. Unlike home, where I push a button and fire appears in my propane grill, I was roughing it. The grill at the lake is one of those old-fashioned ones where you have to put charcoal in the bottom and light it with a match first.


The horror. Whatever did you do, Jeremy?


I went to the grocery store in town...a chain of Markets with a self-distributed reputation for Quality products, including the store band "Food Club." Seeing as how I didn't want to spend any more money than necessary on charcoal that wouldn't be necessary anywhere outside of this vacation, I purchased a bag of "Food Club" charcoal for all of my grilling needs. What followed was ridiculous.

I poured charcoal into the grill, arranged the briquettes into a pyramid, like I'm supposed to, and squirted some lighter fluid (Incidentally, also Food Club brand) and lit the stack. The lighter fluid proceeded to burn happily among the charcoal, so I went inside to tend to my upcoming food. I went back out to the grill about 10 minutes later (You're supposed to wait 15 minutes for the charcoal to properly start and be all burning and charcoaley), and the entire pile was black and cold. No heat whatsoever coming from my charcoal. I tried more starter fluid and re-lit...a couple minutes later, all evidence of flame or heat were a distant memory. This process, I kid you not, went on for an hour and a half...futily trying to turn a pile of charcoal into a grill only hot enough for long enough to cook a frickin' hamburger. No luck. I ended up cooking my burger inside on the stove.

It was right about then that I came up with a new episode for my sitcom.