Though ICE has gone after some musicians, in most cases the ones owning bar and grills via their staff — Vanilla Ice to the best of my knowledge has gone unscathed, as he is just too … vanilla.
If you heat it up a bit, as in spicier toppings on your entrees, you just might get a trip South of the Border. Free transit — does that bus in these days of climate change have AC, standing for American Crossing? — to go to international-prison incarceration, on the dime of the taxpayer. But will the cost to them, as someone has to pay for all these raids, be more than just upping your tip amount?
Rockers have been in the news for more than just miss-striking a chord on guitar, which is rare even in live shows. They have struck a chord with their political views, and the fallout that comes from anything close to free speech. In at least in one prominent case, their restaurants have been virtually shut down.
— So wanna burger? Maybe you are grilling out, rather then going out and about, on Memorial Day weekend. So here is a hamburger tip courtesy of Festival Foods and the big one on the cover of recent ads. They say: Stop in. Cook out.
Wait, is that not contradictory? Anyway here is what I advise you do, following The Rules Of Fifths. (It is up to you to decide and determine how many fifths of booze you want on your boat cruise or deck party.) Here we go, ordered from top to bottom, the five components of a really cool burger, all close to the same height, about an inch: Big bun, basic or otherwise; a stack of veggies, pickles on top, then onions and lettuce and cheese; 93 percent lean ground beef in a thick patty; the same veggies stacked up in the same way and add tomato; then the other half of the bun.
What makes this cool is that all five layers weigh in at the same 20 percent in height, even after frying, at least according to the Festival Foods cover burger. (You can screw it up by adding bacon, or a slew of other condiments and toppings, pulling it up to seven layers, and at least a half-foot high, if you score each ingredient at 16.67 percent, and with bacon that might be pushing it.
Here’s where we heat up the info. There are many different kinds of cheese you could use, of course, maybe in tandem and going beyond cheddar or American, and pick a kind that has other non-dairy pieces blended in. The same with using onions of various colors, and can we go purple and also include seared red cabbage? The lettuce could be romaine or other leafy alternatives to iceberg, and you might even chop up a hot pepper.
But be careful about the price of ground beef, as these days it might add up more than too many Fifths. I mentioned loin on sale recently at a meat market for $6.29 a pound, and now at such a market we have basic hamburger, at the 85 percent lean and in bulk rate, for $6.99, mixing apples and oranges again, but up 70 cents. —
Three of the Nashville steakhouse and bar venues owner by Kid Rock had the “closed” sign put up on their door the weekend before Memorial Day weekend — don’t get it wrong and call it Labor Day or heaven help writer and country make a typo and term ICE as ISIS — as workers either called in sick or were sent home really early because of rumored ICE raids later that day. This was more feared than getting a pink slip because you made the steak too pink/rare.
— But there’s more to to Kid Rock then rolling joints, as shown below as I analyze his song “Cowboy.” It tells the ever-present tale of trying to make riches Out West in Hollywood, but his gold is of a different type, though his phrasing is sophisticated in an odd rap way. However, he paints a Picture well in more than one song, and tells about downtrodden laborers who at least have the access to party like rock stars in their rare time off from being a prep cook or hotel maid: “Palm trees an’ weeds, scabbed knees and’rice, (he could have said ICE), get a map to the stars, find Heidi Fleiss …” And who do they work for, the irony is it could be Kid Rock! “Get West Coast pussy for my Detroit players, Mack like mayors, ball like Lakers …” The Mack reference, too as coy, could be a nod to Mack the Knife.
See more below. —
It turns out that ardent Trump supporter Kid Rock, in an ultimate show of hypocrisy, had undocumented workers slaving over the hot stoves needed to make steak for his customers. The same type Trump wants to send packing.
Is this not the ultimate irony and case of bite the hand that feeds you?
So Kid Rock, who once famously sang-rapped, “I can smell a pig a mile away,” (from Nashville?), is in the hot seat and not as a fry cook. The guy does have talent, and helped make it cool to be white trailer trash — there are ironies everywhere here — with his debut album. But he has put on the patriotic pants, both literally and figuratively and putted on the golf course with Trump — can someone who thinks with like mind about immigrants safely take a mulligan? — and performed for him too, at an event or two, as the trailer home meets White House.
So where is a song from such a man coming? Never to be shy with words, I’ll take a stab. The first thing that always stabbed at me when my bartender friend Danyiel played Cowboy (jukebox version) to death when it first came out is this line: “Cuss like a sailor, drink like a mick. My only words of wisdom are ‘radio edit’ … and so on.” (You can guess what the full three words are.) At first not a fan of this line or two, but as I like Kid Rock grow older decades later, I appreciate this is an original bit of genius. Normally a radio bleep is just a single bad word, and the censors must be sleeping on the job because they often miss one, this goes back as far as The Who, but this is three words, constituting in its constitution an entire phrase. One more f— you to the establishment, even if that’s just those insane record labels, as Kid Rock does have a message and it resonates. (Like any too dumb to turn down back in turn-table days extending an offer to Insane Clown Posse, damn, and just ask Dr. Phil.) But I would make it better, by saying “think” like a mick, as it gives secondary rhyme and we’ve already established the drinking part after pulling time-and-a-half, and not being careful where you throw the cans. And Kid Rock understands the mindset of a construction roofer or carpenter, and plays to them just as well as Trump.
You’ll have to wait just a bit for the rest of the full story on what makes Kid Rock tick and the message he’s trying to get across, and two other singers who have recently gotten caught up in the web of ICE, and this could be seen as the mutual plight of extreme rural meets inner-city urban, and the blue-collar blues. This will be added soon to this piece, including the draw to Trump, and is the next in line.
Hey, here it is. One of his most famous, and noteworthy songs is the aforementioned upbeat ode to wanna be a cowboy, modern-day style. It captures the angst of the laborer class, who is trying to attain a better stead and sees barriers and proper-in-society people in the way, and thus turns to a life lived on the edge of being legal, or ethical. Lyrics say, amongst other things, to get a drop-top trashy truck “and find a spot to pimp.” It is presented in a manner that is almost comedic, and self-deprecating, but also a send-up to such an on-the-edge lifestyle, with a styling of phrase that is very much like rap, gangsta or otherwise.
Such a one where you might read the word, as heard on the street, put out there that ICE is coming. Despite coming from an affluent family, Kid Rock might be in that category, too, and take a peak back at that first lyrics phrase I cited. He has in recent days distanced himself from his Nashville restaurants, and adding that he is not really the owner, at least not fully, and does not keeps tabs on their day-to-day operations. He also says he backs deportation of illegals, but supports having people immigrate here legally and following the required procedures, a rare nod by someone on the right wing to due process.
In topics to later be explored fully, Kid Rock is like many other rockers in that he has both accumulated a tremendous wealth of assets, well over $100 million, and has given a lot to various charitable causes. But unlike so many others, especially earlier musicians, he is a shrewd businessman, and arguably has moved beyond his commoner persona to become Hollywood upper-crust. But being a Trump backer, he has had a real beef with one of rock’s superstars, Bruce Springsteen, who has criticized the current president from the stage with lengthy speeches, despite also dealing with working class issues, but with a different twist. Also speaking out against Trump noticeably in such a way are Bono and Pearl Jam. I will keep following that conflict and report back.