Place: Subway
Lunch: Foot-long Cuban pulled pork sandwich, Lays potato chips, Dr. Pepper
I'm a sucker for LTO's ('LTO' is restaurant jargon for 'limited time offering') so I had to give this a try.
Subway Sandwich Artist: "They recommend yellow mustard and pickles for this," making a face when she says "pickles".
Me: "I agree."
Subway Sandwich Artist: "I don't like pickles, but I tried this with them anyway. I didn't like the pickles. Now I put peppers and banana peppers on mine."
Then she giggles.
It's pretty good, but pulled pork is always better with barbecue sauce, in my opinion. They also put Black Forest ham on these.
Remember when Subway sandwiches were cut by putting a V-shaped wedge into the bread? The sandwiches were FAR more impressive looking then. Now they cut them in half and they look like they were stepped on somewhere in the assembly line. Who is the idiot who came up with that idea?
My friend @michaelkreagan did a blog today about the increasing irrelevancy of the Yellow Pages. I have to agree. I must get four or five different versions dumped on my door step or in my mail box a year. I keep one...in case I need a quick reference to a local plumber or something...but the rest go straight into the recycle bin. There are several easy ways to find this info online from your computer or even your phone. The only time I ever use them is if I'm in a strange town and I want a quick and easy alphabetical list of local restaurants.
I find myself thinking the same thing about newspapers anymore. We keep hearing people complaining about wasting our natural resources, and yet here's all this paper and ink that can be delivered electronically FAR easier, cheaper, and with fewer tree sacrifices. The hotel I stayed at in New York last week left print editions of USA Today in front of everybody's door each morning, which for some reason really annoyed me. (I took each edition and left it in front of a door that didn't have one, hoping the guest already picked theirs up and would open the door to another one, thinking "Huh?" That's me...Mr. Obscure Humorist.)
The reason these ancient technologies continue this way is because the print industry hasn't figured out how to make their electronic editions the cash cows their print counterparts are...or used to be. Several perfectly good magazines and newspapers have folded because they couldn't figure out how to survive with (or against) the internet. And their business models aren't changing...A lot of big-city newspapers spent millions modernizing their presses over the past ten years. Reminds me of the movie multiplex building boom that happened just before stadium seating came along. Hundreds of complexes nationwide suddenly became irrelevant and closed just a few years after opening.
With devices like the iPad and Kindle now, I can see the death of print editions coming. If publishers can convince people to pay subscription fees for complete editions delivered electronically that can be read on their iPads or desktops, why deal with big, bulky newspapers.
Books, whole 'nother story. I realize Kindle and the iPad have changed the perception of print books, but a lot of avid readers just want the comfort of that binded edition in their hands. Electronic copies will absolutely hurt print, but I don't think it'll kill the industry outright.
But newspapers and phone books? Not so much.
