2log

It’s 2:37 AM, and I want pancakes.

I don’t sleep a lot. Two things happen when I don’t sleep: Either I’ll get a half formed idea for a sketch or some bigger project, or I suddenly experience the kind of absurdly specific food cravings usually reserved for pregnant women. So I either write or I eat. Or, after I’ve eating everything in the house, I write about eating.

As Sam mentioned yesterday, he used to work a night shift job at a hotel. That meshed nicely with my insomnia. We’d call each other up most nights, knowing full well we were the only two people we knew who were probably awake. Most nights I would protest that I was actually going to bed any minute (a defense which Sam, correctly, never believed), but one night, I think I surprised him.

“I’m making eggs,” I said, standing over a frying pan.
“You’re what?” said Sam.
“I scrambled in a little whole grain mustard and a dash of Tabasco. You know, to give ‘em a deviled kind of flavor.”
“Why are you making deviled eggs at two in the morning?”
“I was hungry.”
“Can you talk?”
“I’ll call you after I eat.”

Audience of Two as a whole has a pretty strong history of late-night snackage. One night during our freshman year, we were finishing a script about an hour before the radio show was supposed to air. Sam, Gerrit and I were so engrossed in arguing about the best way to write a particular joke, that we neglected to notice Flav unobtrusively helping himself to Sam and Gerrit’s takeout dinner. Flav, ever respectful of the creative process (and the fact that we were starting to yell), calmly waited for a break in the conversation to tell us the delicate news himself.

“Hey Guys,” he said, “I ate all your Chinese food.”

The three of us turned around. He had. All of it. The takeout cartons looked like they had been vacuumed clean. We were more impressed than anything else.

Other Ao2 sessions were fueled by nachos at Iron Hill Brewery. These were no mere mortal appetizer. They arrived on a plate of chips, cheese, and meat that probably qualified as a small landmass. On one occasion the entire Ao2 writing staff put away four helpings of Iron Hill nachos at one sitting. Our waitress was horrified. More than likely, we stopped at Krispy Kreme on the way home.

Then there was Tom Jones, an all-night diner that was about ten minutes away from our school, and where every single surface was upholstered in bright orange Naugahyde. For two bucks and change, you could order a blue ribbon special: bottomless coffee, two eggs, two pancakes, toast, bacon, sausage, and juice. We never visited outside the hours between Two and Four AM. Why the hell would you?

In four years, Tom Jones was only closed once. We drove there for Gerrit’s birthday one night in the middle of a blizzard. There were already several inches of snow on the ground, and more was blanketing down, horizontally at times. Our dismay turned to admiration when we found out they weren’t closed because of the blizzard, but because their fryer was dead.

We almost went off the road going to Denny’s instead. It wasn’t the same, especially compared to the mjaesty of the Blue Ribbon Special. But I'd still take their pancakes right now.