Playing chicken

I’ll admit I was a little late to the party on the whole spicy chicken sandwich thang. Oh sure, thanks to my son who’s been willing to make runs to downtown L.A. during the pandemic, I’ve been introduced to the overheated pleasure of Howlin’ Ray’s Nashville Hot Chicken, which, for those of you keeping score really brought the craze home.

Now I like spicy food, always have always will. But like anything in life, it's a matter of degrees. And there's only so much spicy my sensitive yet larger stomach will tolerate. Before you go ahead and make the fat jokes, let me just remind you that like my Lexus, I’m built for comfort, not speed.

Anyway as you can see from the chart on the left, at Howlin’ Ray’s sandwich heat runs the gamut from none to can’t touch this.

So I decided to try the mild, which is the starter sandwich. And I loved it. The problem is my kid couldn’t be running to DTLA nearly as often as I wanted to have a spicy chicken sandwich.

Enter Avid, my friend and 2004 runner up for the bronze in curling. On his Instagram feed, in a rare break from the dog pictures, he posted the sandwich you see above, which happens to look startingly similar to Howlin’ Ray’s. So I asked him where it was and he told me about the Cluck Kitchen in Irvine.

Now Irvine is a much easier drive than DTLA. And if you know anything about me, you know I’m all about easy.

While there ain’t nothing like the real thing, come to find out Cluck Chicken is pretty close. They have the same spice range as HR, and their sandwiches taste uncannily similar.

But if oversized, dragon-breath hot sandwiches aren't enought to fill you up, Cluck Kitchen also has some mighty tasty sides to go along with it. Things like fried pickles, vinegar slaw and, my personal favorite, bacon potato salad.

Yet one more dish proving my timeless theory that bacon makes everything better.

The other thing Cluck Kitchen has is a snappy little hashtag. It's what we in the ad biz like to call "on brand."

Things I was wrong about: Butt heaters

This time, I think I've stumbled on to a series that, as my wife would be the first to point out (can I get an "Amen" from the husbands), will give me a limitless supply of material to drone on about.

Joining the already wildly popular series on this site like Don't Ask, Guilty Pleasures, Things I Love About Costco and What Took So Long is now Things I Was Wrong About.

First up, car butt heaters.

I used to laugh at people who raved about butt heaters in their car seats. After all, it's not like we live in Minnesota. It just seemed like a useless option no one needed, a waste of money and a car fire just waiting to happen.

That is, it seemed like that until I finally got a car that had them.

Suddenly, magically, I couldn't get enough of those frigid Southern California nights, you know, where the temperature plummets to around 58 degrees. With my driver's seat butt heater set on high, driving on chilly nights became a comfy, cozy ride that I wanted to go on for as long as possible. Especially since on my car, the heat also extends to the mid and lower back. Which, if you've never experienced it, is just a little bit of heaven on wheels.

As the seat warms up, so does my attitude behind the wheel. The asshats who text while they drive, the people not signaling when they turn or change lanes, drivers with the eternal turn signal or just plain slow drivers seem to bother me a little less when my butt is warm.

I'm pretty sure Einstein had a theory about that. Look it up.

So I'll just say it. I was wrong about butt heaters. It's one of those things, like remote controls and GPS navigation systems (by the way, watch for those items in future installments), I didn't know I couldn't live without.

Until I didn't have to.