What’s more comforting than a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup when it comes to the Mutant palate?
Well, honestly, seeing a wimpy mop boy fall into a vat of toxic waste, bulk up and rampage through Tromaville and exposed garbonzas in the classic Troma flick The Toxic Avenger plus a surprise return guest. We’ll get to that later…
Fittingly The Last Drive-In’s Comfort Food Night, fell on National Grilled Cheese Day — talk about planning — our host and our mail girl dished on why James Kraft pulled off the greatest trick in culinary history and some of their favorites when they need something in the stomach.
For Darcy, it’s the bean burrito, or maybe it’s Buffalo cauliflower wings, or maybe it’s angel food cake or maybe it’s grits, or maybe it’s pumpkin pie.
For Joe Bob, the “Michael Jordan” of comfort food (and with me being from Cleveburg, JB might not realize how much it PAINS me to type that), aside from his favorite pizza topping (pepperoni, which Darcy says makes him somewhat “basic), to Joe Bob is the grilled cheese. But it has to be done RIGHT.
To whit:
JOE BOB’S ORGASMIC COMFORT FOOD GRILLED CHEESE RECIPE
- Kraft American Processed Cheese Food (2 to 4 slices, not to be used as wallpaper)
- Two slices Wonder Bread.
- Blue Bonnet margarine on both sides of both slices of bread.
- Grey Poupon on one slice (Required for Retro Version)
- Toast on both sides until cheese melts.
- Diagonal slicing required.
Serve alongside canned Campbell’s tomato soup.
Optional inclusion of Fritos and appropriate beverage of choice.
Yes, well, the very fuzzy origins of the “GC” according to Joe Bob might start with a shepherd’s lunch break in Mesopotamia or maybe it was Greece or the folks in Wales supping on their “Welsh rabbits” (JB’s pronunciation and the captioner’s interpretation – if you want the true spelling, Google the f—er). Canada got into the act with the dual versions of the “cheese dream,” but let’s face it, perfection resides in the ingredients listed above.
He also says that the oldest recorded recipe for a grilled cheese involved mustard. To avoid replaying the Great Hot Dog debate of seasons past, we’re not even going to go there about adding tomatoes and so on.
Then, the public face of Troma, “Uncle” Lloyd Kaufman, and creator of the Toxic Avenger showed up for good measure, talking about the need for independent media. Fortunately for us and Mutants present and future, he has high confidence that the Tromatic spirit will endure.
On to those Tromatic totals, which launched the Toxic Franchise That Could…
And there’s is something soothing about the Death Race 2000 callbacks, the exemplary slime glopola effects of Jennifer Aspinal, the dismemberments, the kung-fu battles with guys in dresses and how just about every car scene depicts that the vehicle is being operated by someone who might have 12 Budweisers in them. (It was the 1980s.)
We all know Disney and Mickey Mouse have more money, but Toxie wins the bench-pressing contest and probably rips off the Mouse’s arms just because.
And let’s not forget that the Godfather and Toxie are connected — something you only get from the Last Drive-In.
Coming up — witchery, Walpurgisnacht and torture. What else would you expect when we’re halfway to Halloween?