Category Archives: AFFotD Special Features

Every so often, our writers run out of whiskey when the liquor stores have already closed. Unsure what to do in such a terrifyingly sober world, we try to occupy ourselves by writing comprehensive long-form articles about some of the most important aspect of America.

We’ve put each of our special feature here for you to peruse, because deep down you’ve always wanted to know about the lives of each of Teddy Roosevelt’s kids, or about the most American quality of each American state. Or it’s just a slow work day and you’re looking to pass the time with a healthy dose of America.

An AFFotD Thanksgiving: Wherein AFFotD Decries the Fiendish Practices of the Mother Nature Network, Who Have Actively Tried to Ruin Thanksgiving by Making it Healthier, While We Offer Methods to Make Thanksgiving Even More Un-Healthy to Spite These Malcontents

“Get.  That.  Healthy.  Shit.  Out. Of.  My.  Goddamn.  House.”

~Americans That Appreciate Thanksgiving

photo(78)

America, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means that all of us will be spending some quality time with our families, eating gobs of unhealthy food and washing it down with copious amounts of wine and waiting for that one family member to get a little too tipsy and start talking about “the things wrong with society” with a slightly racist tinge.  Or, if you don’t have a family member who does that, you’re probably that family member, so wait until your fifth glass of wine to talk about how Kim Kardashian was naked in Paper magazine, and how that makes you feel.

Of course, Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of the year.  It’s a day that basically is dedicated to making a bunch of delicious food, drinking with family, and watching football without having to leave the house.  It lacks the gift-giving pressure of Christmas, and the inevitable failure to meet expectations of New Year’s Eve.  Sure, a lot of food has to be made, but that tends to be more of a communal experience than anything else, while your dad gets half-jokingly ribbed for spending all of his time drinking beer on the damn couch watching the Dallas game.

The point being, we love Thanksgiving, and we love that people say it’s the one day a year where they really can “let themselves go” when they mean to say it’s like the 150th day this year that they’ve said “fuck it” and decided to really “let themselves go.”  That’s a beautiful thing.

And then you get websites that say stupid, bullheaded things like “9 Thankgiving Dishes Made Healthier.”  No.  We do not want our Thanksgiving to be healthier, Mother Nature Network.  We do not want that one bit.  Stop it.  We said stop.

Wherein AFFotD Decries the Fiendish Practices of the Mother Nature Network, Who Have Actively Tried to Ruin Thanksgiving by Making it Healthier, While We Offer Methods to Make Thanksgiving Even More Un-Healthy to Spite These Malcontents

 turkey bacon Continue reading

Halloween Costumes That Should Not Exist (Female Edition)

“Honestly, I just kind of feel sorry for the models.”

~You

like the fuck is this

We talked to you earlier this week about Halloween costumes for men that, essentially, are crimes against humanity.  Now, it’s time for us to talk about the ladies, because AFFotD is a gender-equal institution, and also because all bad idea women’s Halloween costumes are, let’s say, revealing.  Which, you know, gets page hits.

That said, while the men’s article required multiple categories, you don’t need such nuanced distinction with the Halloween costumes that, we guess, in theory, someone has bought.  They have to have, right?  Anyway, while horrible men’s costumes covered a moderate range of awful ideas, today’s article adheres to just one basic theme.

Sexy versions of blatantly unsexy things.

Let’s delve in.

Costumes That Should Not Exist (Female Edition)

 sexy straight jacket more like gay jacket that was just a joke

Continue reading

Halloween Costumes That Should Not Exist (Male Edition)

“Wait, let me guess—you dressed up as a giant douchebag.”

~All of us

ice bucket

Halloween is a wonderful time of the year.  No, we’re not saying that sarcastically, Halloween is one of the better holidays out there—you’re not expected to do anything other than dress as something goofy, get drunk with your friends, and maybe steal some of the candy your kids got Trick-or-Treating when they’re not looking (they are guaranteed not to notice, unless you snag one of the full-sized snickers that your neighbors keep offering just to show up everyone else on the block, the bastards.)

We’ve, long ago, talked about how Halloween is the holiday that ages with you.  That might sound like an indictment, but it’s quite the opposite—almost every other holiday is so inflexible, you’re inevitably bound to have periods of your life where you don’t find them as enjoyable as you once did.  Not so with Halloween.  When you’re a kid, and want candy, boom, you’ll get to fill your little chubby cheeks with enough sugar to force us to make some diabetes joke that leads to weirdly hostile diatribes being posted on our website.  You’re in your 20’s or 30’s and would like an excuse to get smashed while dressed in 1990’s pop culture references?  All yours buddy!  Feeling like settling down, dressing up your baby as a pumpkin and having a shindig at your house?  Halloween has you covered!

It’s a great holiday.  We can’t stress that enough.  It’s great.  Great great great.

But people who buy and wear novelty costumes for it suck.  Like these following costumes.  Do not buy these costumes.  Do not suck on Halloween.

Costumes That Should Not Exist (Male Edition)

 bed costume

Continue reading

Regional Hot Dog Styles Of America: Part 4

“Goddamn it, I knew Chicago would win.  Those bastards.”

~The, like, four New Yorkers who actually were upset that the New York-style hot dog was so low on this list

ChicagoHotDog

When we began our trek through America’s regional hot dogs, we were legitimately worried.  We had just finished writing about 11,000 words talking about long bread sandwiches, and it literally tore families apart and drove half of our staff to insanity.  And we were going to immediately follow that nightmare up with a systematic breakdown of hot dog styles?  Did we have a death wish outside of our normal “eating and drinking so much that interventions pretty much have become a part of our weekly schedule” death wish?

As it turns out, the task wasn’t quite so daunting.  Most hot dog styles follow a pretty basic blueprint.  Talking about the different regional kinds of, say, chili dogs requires about as much research as talking about various pizza toppings.  New Jersey wanted to put chili on their hot dog.  Georgia puts their chili dog in a bowl.  Pennsylvania likes to name things from Pennsylvania after Texas.  It’s not exactly academic research, but it is hot dogs, so it’s still worth our attention our affection.  And these four hot dogs remaining are the ones we love the most.  So let’s dig in.

Regional Hot Dog Styles Of America: Part 4

hot doug's

Continue reading

Regional Hot Dog Styles Of America: Part 3

“Put chili on it!  PUT CHILI EVERYWHERE!”

~Some of the best hot dogs

chili dog

We’ve been chugging along with our hot dog series here, which has been surprisingly much less traumatic than our sandwich series.  Most regional hot dog styles exist, and even if we can’t come up with a good origin story, we can at least tell you, “this hot dog has these ingredients.  People eat them to feel happy.”  And that makes us happy.  And it makes all of us fat.  Oink oink oink, let’s eat some more hot dogs.

Um.  Okay so maybe it’s warping our minds a little bit.  But no matter.  More hot dogs to shove into the expanding maw that is your stomach!

Regional Hot Dog Styles Of America: Part 3

hot dogs Continue reading

Regional Hot Dog Styles Of America: Part 1

“We will eat enough hot dogs that our blood type will become ‘Nitrates’ and then we will eat some more.”

~AFFotD Official Credo

chicago flag

Recently, we at AFFotD painstakingly researched over 25 different long rolled sandwiches in America over the course of 11,000 words and four articles.  We learned a lot during that delicious (though at times, excruciating) journey—mainly that it takes most wives and husbands about four hours of listening to a writer drunkenly talk about sub sandwiches before they take the kids and go spend a week at their parents’ place.  While it’s all well and good to spend your time writing about submarine sandwiches and Italian beefs, when you try to list every type of sandwich in existence you end up scrapping the bottom of the internet to find anything at all that explains why “sarney” is in the dictionary as a type of sandwich, or why whiskey doesn’t always chase the demons away.  After we ran ourselves ragged trying to write about every sandwich, we were pleased with our results, but swore an oath that we would never again take on such a daunting, impossible task.  Unfortunately, we then celebrated the publication of the series by getting really drunk again and thinking of another article suggestion, and since we were hungry, we decided to talk about every kind of regional hot dog in America.

God…goddamn it.  We just will never learn.

Anyway, it’s time to delve into the magical tube of nitrates that is the hot dog in all of its wondrous (and occasionally not-so-wondrous) incarnations.   Hold onto your hats, America, here’s another multi-part, nation-sprawling series on unhealthy foods.

Regional Hot Dog Styles Of America: Part 1 of 4

 hot dogs Continue reading

The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America: The South

“New Orleans, please, guide us back into the welcoming arms of sandwiches that actually exist and aren’t goddamn sarneys.”

~Recently Adopted AFFotD Credo

po boy

Throughout the course of about 9,000 word and 21 sandwiches (so far) we’ve learned a lot about the diversity of America’s lunches.  In trying to discover every type of submarine sandwich, or sandwich on a long roll that can somewhat remotely resemble a sub, we’ve lusted after the Philly cheesesteak, we’ve saluted the simplicity of the sub or hoagie or not hero because we arbitrarily decided that we hated New York’s reason for naming it a hero.  We’ve existentially pondered the creation of the French dip, and we’ve lost most of our collective minds at all the goddamn sandwiches that seem to have been named by like, the only three fucking people that use that particular term to describe sandwiches.  Tunnels?  Who calls their sandwich tunnels, huh?  That’s stupid, they’re stupid, and they should at least post a blog or something about who first started calling them tunnels so our staff can finally have a peaceful night of sleep.  Now, we just toss and turn.  “But what the fuck is a bomber?  What the fuck is a bomber.”

We’re tired.  We’re hungover.  We haven’t shaved for days.  But hey, we have a lot of delicious southern long roll sandwiches to talk about, and practically all of them exist!  Yay for that!

The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America: The South

 sammich Continue reading

The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America: Pennsylvania

“Huh, so apparently there IS such a thing as eating too many sandwiches…”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt, shortly before getting his stomach pumped

big old sandwich

As mentioned in our previous post, the simple concept of “a sandwich on a long roll of bread stuffed with cold cuts and condiments” has expanded well beyond our wildest dreams.

While many of these variations are all words for the same thing (the submarine begat the hero begat the grinder begat pointless regional squabbles about lexicon and so forth) these linguistic shifts have also helped create entirely new sandwiches made to be stuffed into submarine or Italian bread and embraced as a regional dish so fervently that even New Yorkers sometimes have to step in and go, “Woah, easy there,  Philadelphia, we get you invented it, but people are allowed to add different things to a fucking cheesesteak.”

Ha, just kidding, they’d never say that, they’re too busy trying to pretend they make the nation’s best hot dogs because…what, they’re sold in carts? Because it’s easy to go to a cart and have someone scoop out a three day old frank and top it with sauerkraut and mustard and that somehow makes your hot dog “supreme” to, say, every other type of hot dog that at least tries? Get off your fucking high horse, goddamn you.

Okay, sorry, back on track.  Anyway, for whatever reason, the state of Pennsylvania accounts for like, 40% of all the sandwiches on rolls of the entire East Coast, so we decided to give them their own section in our series on…

The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America:  Pennsylvania

italian sammy Continue reading

The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America: New England and New York

“Subway—it’s..it’s fine. I mean, it’s Subway.  It was open.”

~Rejected slogan for Subway

sub sammich

For nearly a century, the Americanized Italian sandwich has played a pivotal role in filling our bellies efficiently and deliciously.  Cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, onion, and tomato, all shoved into a sliced loaf of Italian bread and drizzled with oil and seasoning, has long been the default, “I don’t know what I feel like for lunch, eh, I’ll just get a sandwich” lunch choice for generations of workers.

Widely known as the Submarine Sandwich, it goes by about 17 different names in different regions throughout America, with dozens of additional variants from people who want hot sandwiches or beef doused in it’s own juices in elongated sandwich form.  While many long roll sandwiches end to differ in name only (subs, meet hoagies, you are the same), others are radically different and even manage the eschew cold cuts entirely, but all are delicious and American.  So instead of awkwardly stumbling through the history of the “submarine, or, uh, grinder, or, uh…” sandwich, we’re going to look into each type of this classic meat delivery system in the hopes that, that by showing our differences, we can bring our nation together.  By spending some 11,000 words talking about sandwiches that are shoved into Italian bread or rolls over the course of four articles.  We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, over 25 types of sandwiches total, but first, let’s start from the beginning.

The Regional Italian and Submarine Sandwiches of America:  New England and New York

sangwitch

Continue reading

The Mountain’s Holiday Shirt Collection (Part 2)

“Let’s see them sleigh bells ring-a-ling, jing-jing-jing-a-ling too/  Come on it’s a lovely weather for WHO ARE YOU YOU ARE FULL OF SPIDERS I AM BECOME DEATH DESTROYER OF METH.”

~The Mountain’s Most Recent Holiday Jingle

yeti tank

Last week, we could barely contain our excitement that The Mountain had released a holiday collection, combining Christmas cheer with the best shirts for absorbing Robitussin stains.  Any time we get an opportunity to write snarky-but-honestly-we-love-them-so-it’s-all-in-jest articles about Big Face Animal shirts is a special occasion for us, so you can only imagine how thrilled we were to open our email to see the following message greeting us after last week’s post.

mountain

Again, to members of The Mountain reading this, we’re not above accepting free samples.

Anyway, as previously mentioned, the glory of The Mountain’s holiday collection could not dare be contained in a single fun fact, so we’re here to double your pleasure, and double your fun, or at least double your desire to find the nearest gas station that still sells Sparks.  And to you readers out there, if you see a shirt you un-ironically (or, for many of you, let’s be honest here, ironically) want to purchase, feel free to email us asking for the URL that we literally put in the first sentence of our article.  No, seriously, do that, it would make our day.

Ahem.  Shirts.

The Mountain’s Holiday Shirt Collection (Part 2)

orangutan shirt

Continue reading