Bread Venn

In the reliably brilliant words of JAF, aka MSMINY (my main sandwich man in New York):

I noticed on the Lunch Encounter that you actually made Joes for the Wash Post!  I’m surprised that this went unmentioned to me, your MSMINY.  Your construction looks beautiful, as always, and is of the traditional type of Joe that you see everywhere EXCEPT the Millburn Deli,

As far as I’m aware, the millburn Deli’s sloppy joe is ONLY oval version of the sandwich, conforming to the natural shape of the rye bread.  

The typical square Joe is generally drier than the creamier Millburn Deli version, has multiple meats (often including corned beef) as opposed to the Millburn single meat Joe, and has no crust on the bread which, to me, has always seemed to be a cosmetic, and not a culinary, choice.  

The bread on the Millburn version is sliced much thinner than the traditional Joe, allowing the other stars of the sandwich to shine, whereas the traditional square Joe has always leaned more heavily on its bread component.  

The height of the traditional Joe also exceeds the open jaw limit of many eaters, while the Millburn Joe presents no such contest.  

All versions of the sandwich are SLOPPY!

Regarding buttering the bread (which you mentioned in your WaPo Joe post), I agree that, while adding some flavor and calories (as if the Millburn Deli Joe needs any more of either), it does serve to seal the bread and prevent it from sogging from the slaw and Russian, and this is a good thing.

– Jeff Simmons

I need a sandwich. 

(In the middle of one song called “I’m in the Music Business” he says: “I need a sandwich”.)

The longtime bassist for Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, Jeff Simmons, also issued a rare solo LP for Zappa’s Straight imprint, the 1970 cult classic “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up”. Born and raised in Seattle, Simmons first earned local notoriety as the singer/guitarist for Indian Puddin’ & Pipe, a popular Pacific Northwest psychedelic band that in 1967 signed with producer Matthew Katz’s San Francisco Sound label. Katz — the infamously unscrupulous manager of Moby Grape, It’s a Beautiful Day, and other luminaries of the San Francisco psych scene — structured his contracts so that different lineups could appear under a given group’s name anytime and anywhere he desired, and he ultimately bestowed the Indian Puddin’ & Pipe moniker on a rival Seattle act previously known as the West Coast Natural Gas. Left without legal recourse, Simmons and his bandmates (guitarist Peter Larson, bassist Phil Kirby, and drummer Albert Malosky) returned to Seattle and rechristened themselves Easy Chair, issuing their one-sided, self-titled debut LP on the Vanco label in 1968. After another name change, this time to Ethiopia, the group opened for the Mothers of Invention in Seattle and later appeared alongside Wild Man Fischer, Alice Cooper, and the GTOs at Bizarre Records’ legendary “Gala Pre-Xmas Bash” at Santa Monica’s Shrine Exhibition Hall in early December of 1968. Zappa soon after convinced Ethiopia to relocate to Los Angeles, pairing the group with producers Jerry Yester and Val Zanofsky. When nothing concrete emerged from the sessions, the group dissolved but Zappa quickly offered Simmons his own two-record deal with Straight. The first, a largely instrumental soundtrack to an obscure biker film titled Naked Angels, features a series of acid-fuzz guitar jams. It was immediately followed by Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up, a more conventionally song-oriented psychedelic opus produced by Zappa under the alias LaMarr Bruister. The album generated little attention outside of Zappa cultists, however, and Simmons was installed as bassist for the Mothers of Invention’s late 1970 LP Chunga’s Revenge. He left the group during production on Zappa’s feature film project 200 Motels, but later returned to the fold for albums including Waka/Jawaka and Roxy & Elsewhere. By the 1980s Simmons returned to Seattle, fronting a series of local acts including the Backtrackers and Cocktails for Ladies. He also wrote an unpublished memoir, I Joined the Mothers of Invention…for the FBI, and in 2005 released Blue Universe, his first new solo material in 35 years. ~ Jason Ankeny

And THAT is that. So much in those four letters. T. H. A. T.

If you can read the above and process the information, you are are more clear-minded than I. My brain is in complete conflict from day-to-day living. Backtrackers, acid-fuzz, Roxy & Elsewhere, Pre-Xmas…those, that, things, indulgences I would love to indulge in brainwise, could I just get through, past, in, beside, along, the life of being the child of a very old person.