No ketchup/catsup on (hot) dogs!!!

I couldn’t help but get my chuckle when I stumbled this week on the Facebook page that Vienna Beef uses to advertise its meat products.

Evidence of a 'crime?' Photo provided by Vienna Beef

The staged photo purports to be a hot dog vendor in the act of being arrested for committing the “unspeakable offense” of slathering a hot dog with ketchup.

WHICH, OF COURSE, led to a lengthy and spirited debate over one of the ultimate issues of triviality that people use in an attempt to verify the legitimacy of their Chicago-ness.

Ketchup on the hot dog. Or more like it, a lack of ketchup. As in only a total rube would think to use the icky sweet condiment when eating a sausage. What next – you’re going to argue in favor of those thin crust slices of pizza that New Yawkers think are special because they can be folded in half while you eat them? Don't even get me started on the notion of sauerkraut-smothered hot dogs!

Now before we go any further, I’ll clarify that I personally would never put ketchup on a hot dog. But then again, I don’t put ketchup on anything I eat.

I wasn’t kidding about the “icky sweet” comment. I think anybody who puts ketchup on anything is obliterating the natural flavor of their food. What’s the point of eating a hot dog if you need to smother it in ketchup.

NOW HAVING SAID that, I also think that people have a right to eat whatever they want to. If they want to ruin their hot dog with ketchup, that’s their choice.

Just don’t expect me to argue on your behalf that there’s nothing wrong with your use of ketchup. The “American Way” with all its freedom of expression may defend to the death your right to use ketchup on a hot dog.

But it also defends the right of myself and everybody else who realizes mustard, particularly a sharp spicy one, is truly the only basic condiment of choice to ridicule your ketchup practices to the death.

You use ketchup at your own risk to your culinary reputation. Don’t argue with me otherwise – you brought it on yourself! You’re ridiculed solely because of your own doing.

SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, I have to admit to the Facebook-oriented debate taking place on this “issue” is kind of scary. At least to the degree to which certain types of people are taking this seriously.

Aren’t there issues much more serious for us to worry about? If anything, I’d be more concerned about the actual content of the “meat” used in putting together hot dogs – just how disgusting is something sold under the “Oscar Mayer” brand name.

And is anything sold under a brand name implying kosher status with a Star of David logo attached truly any more pure a meat product than something sold in the supermarket aisle at a discount price?

Instead, we’re worked up over ketchup. Or maybe “catsup,” as some people persist in wanting to spell the condiment.

NOW I KNOW people who insist on using ketchup who claim it’s the way they’ve always eaten a hot dog going back to childhood. In fact, the Facebook debate included one person defending the use of ketchup as being reminiscent of the grammar school cafeteria when the ‘hot’ lunch was a hot dog with ketchup and mustard.

Personally, I’d think that’s more of an argument against ketchup – there were a lot of disgusting things we ate as kids because we didn’t know better.

Just like my own memories of school lunch included the pizza slices that, to be even then, seemed flavorless with its crumbs of sausage and ketchupy-like sauce – and were a large part of the reason why as a kid I didn’t care for pizza from anywhere. It took the introduction of Due’s later in life to make me realize something significant was missing.

Now for those of you dismissing this argument as trivial, I’ll admit it is. I promise we’ll get back to serious issues in coming days. Although “serious” could easily delve down to the proper composition of an Italian beef sandwich – where I like onions added and think some people go way too overboard with the giardiniera -- and I agree with a one-time editor of mine who insisted that the gyro was made from the worst cuts of meat.

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Five more days ‘til we bring on the mass confusion we call Election Day

When it comes to the upcoming mayoral election Chicago faces, there’s only one prediction I feel comfortable about making – an overwhelming majority of the electorate is going to feel nothing but contempt with the outcome.

Our new mayor will be … ?

Tuesday is the day we will have the vote. With 14 people in the running and no one showing signs of taking overwhelming support, it’s ever so likely that no one will get a majority – which means we’ll have the “run-off” that will require Tuesday’s top two vote-getters to take each other on.

I’M NOT ABOUT to make a solid prediction about the victor. But I’ll say I won’t be surprised if the two candidates who qualify wind up with a combined tally of some 33 percent.

With some 67 percent people being those who didn't want either of the two to prevail, but couldn't agree amongst the remaining 12 candidates for any one of them to prevail.

The April 2 run-off could wind up something along the lines of the 2015 run-off, which was between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and now-Rep. Jesus Garcia, D-Ill., who basically kept the support he had during the initial election, with Emanuel managing to get the support of everyone else.

Or maybe it could be that many of the people who took the time to support someone like Lori Lightfoot, Susana Mendoza, Amara Enyia or Garry McCarthy will come to the conclusion they can’t back anybody else, and just won’t bother casting ballots in the April run-off.

Will McCarthy and Lightfoot (below) … 

THIS COULD EASILY be the municipal election cycle that has significant interest amongst the electorate, but winds up with a ridiculously-low voter turnout.

Which could mean four more years of listening to voters rant and rage about how “it’s not my fault” that Mayor Lamebrain managed to get elected which depending on the mindset of the particular voter, could wind up being used as a descriptive for just about anybody.

It could definitely be an interesting outcome for our municipal elections. It most definitely won’t be an election cycle that inspires the masses.

If there really will be a theme to the way people will cast their votes come Tuesday, it may be the idea that people will have to decide if we want a return to the days of a “Mayor Daley” in charge.

… be amongst top two on Tuesday?

AS IN AN establishment-oriented, business-motivated guy whose focus will be on the strengthening of the downtown business district. Keep “the Loop” strong, and it will hold up the city as a whole.

A concept that will offend those people who’d rather see enhanced investment in the neighborhoods, feeling that Chicago is only as strong as its weakest, most-vulnerable neighborhood.

More likely, we’re going to see that Chicagoans are split between these premises. Further reflected by the fact that no one candidate is dominating the polls and showing signs that they’re capable of taking a majority of support when people cast their ballots on Tuesday.

In fact, the real political tale of the near future may well be to see which of the 12 ‘losers’ manage to resurrect themselves for future elections – creating the impression that we’d have been better off picking them for mayor in ’19 so as to avoid the calamity they’re bound to claim the city will face by 2023.

ALTHOUGH THERE WAS one intriguing moment Tuesday when WTTW-TV conducted another candidate forum – one for the so-called lesser candidates in the running. The question: “Ketchup on a hot dog?”

FORD: Forevermore remembered for ketchup?

Candidate LaShawn Ford may well have killed himself politically when he said, “yes,” to which Lori Lightfoot responded to him, “There’s the exit. Never, never, never!”

As one who personally doesn’t put ketchup on anything I eat, I couldn’t help but admire Lightfoot’s enthusiastic retort.

Although sadly enough for the state representative from the West Side, his response may well be the only reason people remember his campaign – and why he’s likely to be the one who finishes 14^th and last in the voter tally on Tuesday.

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July 4 about more than a weenie roast

Call it one of my biggest pet peeves – the people who think of the holiday we celebrate Wednesday as the “Fourth of July,” and who think the term “Independence Day” is nothing more than that ridiculous film from some two-plus decades ago.

For the holiday that celebrates the events of some 242 years ago on this date is supposed to celebrate the events upon which the one-time English colonies of North America declared themselves an independent nation.

OF COURSE, I’M sure many people think that’s “boring!” and nothing more than ancient history. They prefer to think of this as the day we’ll dig out the barbecue grills, roast a few hot dogs and watch an explosive spectacle in the skies as we go out to our local park in the evening for a fireworks display.

That, and we find a way to turn this into an extended weekend – taking time off from work to make for an unofficial vacation.

If anything, the Independence Day holiday of 2018 will be unique because the actual “day off” comes on a Wednesday. We can actually pick if we want it to be the end of an extended weekend, or the beginning.

Or, for some incredibly lazy types, it will be a double weekend. A whole slew of time off – because why try to work when so many of your colleagues have disappeared.

I DOUBT MANY people will be giving history much thought. Which really is a shame.

Because at a time when our nation and our society is split so seriously, what I think we most are in need of is a history lesson. If anything, I think our “commander in chief” could most use such a lesson – since his sense of ego is such that I think at times he truly has no comprehension of what his campaign slogan truly means. Either that, or his sense of history comes entirely from those “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoons of the 1970s.

I’ll be honest; I don’t know exactly how I’m spending the day on Wednesday. A part of me thinks it would be useful to spend the day in historic meditation. Pondering the many sacrifices that generations past have made to create a nation and a society that so many from around the globe are eager to be a part of, while trying to calm the family dogs down as they endure an evening of explosives.

Instead, it could turn out to be little more than an over-glorified weenie roast, with me getting all outraged over my other pet peeve – people who persist in slathering their hot dogs in ketchup. Now that’s a truly un-American concept!

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We in Chicago ought to applaud the idea of “mustard-only” hot dog vendor

If either of our professional ball clubs had any sense, they’d figure out a way to make Charley Marcuse a part of their ballpark atmosphere.

He’s not capable of pitching 200 innings, playing a stellar shortstop or depositing fly balls into the outfield seats on a regular basis. He wouldn’t help the on-field activity.

BUT HIS HIRING would make a statement totally in character with the ethos of our home city – or at least the way we’d like to think of ourselves.

Marcuse is a hot dog vendor. Or at least he was until this week. Since 1999, he has worked concessions at Detroit Tigers baseball games. He’s one of those guys roaming through the stands with a metal box – selling you overpriced hot dogs to munch on while you watch a ballgame.

His particular schtick that made him stand out was as the “Singing” vendor. He’d sing out his cry for people to buy hot dogs as though he were parodying an operatic singer.

But that’s not why he ought to come to Chicago. In fact, I suspect if he did set foot inside a Chicago ballpark, he’d come across as being more annoying than Ronnie Wickers, the “Woo Woo” man in the stands at Wrigley Field.

WHAT MAKES MARCUSE stand out in my mind that he believes hot dogs are meant to be served with mustard. He is known for letting people who ask for ketchup on their ballpark hotdog just how little he thinks of them.

In fact, it seems that attitude is what caused Sportservice (which handles concessions at Detroit’s Comerica Park) to let Marcuse go. Friday’s Tigers game against the Kansas City Royals was the first since 1999 where he wasn’t present.

The Detroit News reported that “general employee conduct” was the reason Marcuse was given for losing his job. Although speculation is that it was his “no ketchup” attitude – which some fans have said on various Internet sites was so over the top that he came across as intimidating to fans.

Which reminds me of the one-time “Andy the Clown” who used to roam the stands at old Comiskey Park – using his loud, piercing voice to be able to shout cheers over the din of the ballpark crowd. Some fans hated having to be the one sitting near where he stood because he could be that loud.

OTHERS FOUND HIM to be part of the atmosphere of the old ballpark that never carried over to the structure now known as U.S. Cellular Field.

Now in writing this commentary, I don’t seriously expect Marcuse to relocate his life from Michigan to the greater Chicago area just to take a job as a hot dog vendor.

Hot dog lovers to an extreme in L.A.

But the whole idea of someone willing to take a stand for the lack of ketchup (which I personally don’t put on anything I eat) is something I wouldn’t mind seeing promoted. Even though I realize that the vendors at our own ballparks don’t offer ketchup (you have to go to one of the stands underneath the seats if you want it).

A no-ketchup vendor who’s proud of it would be a kick – even if it were just to last for a day.

BESIDES, IT'S ONE of the quirks of Michigan that Marcuse has actually developed his own brand of mustard that can be bought in assorted stores and served in some area restaurants.

Perhaps a Chicago stint could help him expand his market. At the very least, it would appease those people who get all worked up over the genuine “Chicago dog.”

Although I’ve always found a hot dog with mustard and onion to be an adequate edible item.

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: For anybody who thinks crusading against ketchup on a hot dog is silly, keep in mind that it makes more sense than anybody who can't envision the Wrigley Field baseball experience without an Old Style-brand beer.