Sub-par A few days ago,

Sub-par

Reluctantly—for we take criticism about as well as well as the average Islamic fundamentalist—we agreed to offer an installment of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” that is more, as the common folk say, lumpenproletariat. A column for the people, of the people, and by…us.

So, you relentless aesthetes who are frothing at the mouth for a couple of Ralph Vaughan Williams yuks are going to have to hold your proverbial horses until tomorrow. Today’s edition of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” is dutifully down-home and perfectly plebian. Why, the only prerequisite necessary for today’s addition to “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—other than basic literacy, of course—is a GED, which one can easily obtain from Sally Struthers or the University of Phoenix On-Line. All right, all you uncouth rustics, this one’s for you.

Not a single member of our crack young staff can cook worth a darn. I know what you are thinking, fellow feminists: What about the broads? Alas, though almost 47 percent of our staff is female, it still takes us an hour to make Minute Rice.

As a result, we do a lot of fine dining: Red Lobster, Applebee’s, Whitecastle—you know, the good stuff. But there is one establishment that we absolutely can’t stomach: The poisonous peddlers of so-called submarine sandwiches known as “Quizno’s.”

Quizno’s, which is a kind of déclassé Blimpie, is a sandwich shop built on one brilliant idea: Toasting. Yes, that’s right, dear reader: Toasting. Quizno’s, unlike the relentlessly up-scale Subway, has put all of its eggs—and mustard, and mayonnaise—in one basket. The ingenious board members of Quizno’s have decided that the miracle of toasted bread will separate their outfit from the competition. In fact, Quizno’s was going to take out a patent on toasting, before it discovered that Prometheus had already brought the invention of fire to mankind years before even McDonald’s was up and running.

Thanks to the magic of toasting, every branch of the Quizno’s franchise smells suspiciously like Jeffrey Dahmer’s basement. But the mephitic ambiance of your local Quizno’s is a small price to pay for the delectable creations found therein.

But before we expatiate on the savory victuals Quizno’s fires up, let us mention the franchise’s helpful personnel. The last time that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” made a collective trek to a Quizno’s, we noticed that one of its dutiful employees was dutifully choking the other dutiful employee with a telephone cord. Nothing gets the appetite up quite like a little teenage violence! After translating our order from English into Ne’er-do-Well, the accomplished young team of culinary creators had our hoagies ready in no time. If, by no time, you mean forty-five minutes.

But it was all well worth the wait. Unlike McDonald’s, which only offers one “special sauce,” our local Quizno’s has a variety of special sauces—some of them not even provided by the employees. The tempting blend of burnt bread, copious onions, drippy sauces, and mystery meat made for a meal to remember. In fact, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” still can’t forget it. And we’ve swallowed a whole cartload of Tums by now.