I tackled Chicago pizza here during a trip to Chicago a couple years ago. The condensed version: It’s delicious, but it’s not pizza. It’s like a pizza-style cake. It’s really cute that they call it pizza, but as far as I’m concerned pizza is something that can be — and often should be — eaten by the curb late in the evening, folded in half with one hand while the grease drips out the back and onto the increasingly translucent paper plate you’re cradling in the other. Chicago-style “pizza” requires a knife and fork and takes 45 minutes to prepare. Bah.

Again, still good, and good enough to be good anywhere. My issue with it is entirely semantic, and pretty silly really.

Notable exception to “good enough to be good anywhere:” Pizzeria Uno, at least in its non-Chicago locations. Not a fan. Actually, my wife and I first bonded over our mutual distaste for Pizzeria Uno and the movie Titanic.

OK, how about a five-show lineup?

1. Paul McCartney: I know McCartney already played Citi Field back in 2009, but I was busy getting married and I missed it. Plus, McCartney is a living legend, a former Beatle, and still awesome. I saw him at Yankee Stadium last summer. The guy rocks. He’s all over the stage, plus he’s actually playing the instruments he purports to play and not just holding them pretending to play while relying on the band behind him for the sound. How does a 70-year-old man have so much dexterity and energy? Also: Despite being one of the band’s lead singers, McCartney is somehow perhaps the most underrated Beatle. Listen to the bass parts. They’re so good.

2. The Flaming Lips: Regardless of how you feel about the Flaming Lips’ music, go see them live sometime. I can practically guarantee they’ll do something awesome that you’ve never seen a band do before. Confetti guns, giant hamster balls, Wizard of Oz covers, laser shows, everything. It’s great spectacle, and I’d love to see how they translate it to a venue that big.

3. Styx: Though I am no fan of REO Speedwagon’s, I really enjoyed the fact that REO Speedwagon was playing at Citi Field because REO Speedwagon is hilarious and bad and great fodder for comedy. Styx is even worse and even sillier. Maybe we could have them come play all of Kilroy Was Here for the second set.

4. The Wu-Tang Clan: Because duh.

5. Bill Withers: What’s Bill Withers doing these days anyway? He wrote pretty awesome songs and it’d be good to see him get some work.

Santore! For those uninitiated, Chicken Madnesses are available from Wisemiller’s, a small deli and grocery right near the Georgetown campus. It is without a doubt the university’s most popular and frequently discussed sandwich. It’s grilled chicken, bacon and red and green peppers all chopped up and covered with some seasoning (which I’d guess is a mix of paprika, cayenne, and garlic salt), topped with melted provolone, lettuce, tomato and mayo. What makes it special, I think, is the distinctive flavor of the Wisey’s grill, which is strong enough that it makes everyplace where a Wisey’s sub has been smell like Wisey’s for the next several hours.

So I would say that no, adding barbecue sauce or replacing the mayo with barbecue sauce does not make it a different sandwich. It’s the overpowering Wisey’s-ishness of the creation that makes it (as well as its better, burger-based cousin) Madness, and Madness can be sauced in plenty of ways.

Also, if you’re in the Georgetown area of D.C., you should probably check out Wisemiller’s. I suspect the Madness sandwiches don’t taste as good to those who didn’t rely on them to get through college, but they have bacon regardless.

Via email, Chris writes:

The Foo Fighters song ‘Rope’ popped up on my Ipod recently and the beginning of that song always reminds me of the song Detachable Penis that was popular back when we were in middle school. Which leads me to my question.  Is Detachable Penis the dumbest or most ridiculous song of our lifetime to ever get regular mainstream airplay? I know there was some ridiculous stuff coming out of the 80’s but that’s mostly in hindsight.

More like awesomest song of our lifetime to ever get regular mainstream airplay!

Chris is right though; that’s a tremendously weird song to be in a rock radio rotation. And it’s not just the subject matter. The song itself is weird, and it’s more of a spoken word/standup routine than a proper song.

I kind of love it, for what it’s worth. I bought the album after I saw the song featured on Beavis and Butt-head, I believe. Two notable stories: I had a short-lived sketch comedy show in college called The Brodeo, and we used the beginning of Detachable Penis for our opening credit sequence. I edited it, and though I had no idea what I was doing, I did a pretty solid job aligning the guitar hits with still-screens of the actors in the show. The only problem is I screwed up the audio fade-out. So, unintentionally, as the credits ended you could hear the first line of the song — “I woke up this morning with a bad hangover and my penis was missing again.” We decided it worked and left it in; a happy accident.

Second: King Missile and their lead singer, John S. Hall, both released albums on labels that were under the umbrella of the Knitting Factory’s record company while I interned there one summer. It was a tiny operation and, among other things, I answered phones. Sometimes John S. Hall would call in, and every time I heard his voice I wanted to be all, “say you checked the medicine cabinet because you leave it there sometimes! Say it!” I never did though.