REVIEW: The Donut & Dog

The sickening, indiscriminate pulse of the universe thumps its density harshly into our daily lives. The connection we have with this unflinching force of mortality is real. The cycles of its creation rule the screed that is mankind. Like the alienation of the global mechanization we've surrendered ourselves to - enslaving each other and ourselves like some kind of twisted demon-god in the name of profit - life itself is constantly working with indifference to us, and our spite-driven, pseudo-indifference in return gains us fuckall. We cannot unfuck ourselves. Life, death, the primitive cycles - these are the forces of nature, not of any god. The animals die, and are eaten by other animals, showing life's survival from death. So when profit dies somewhere, profit must arise from it. It is how man survives. This, of course, is purely in reference to last year's closing of the Dog of Nashville, a once beloved hot-doggery in the Hillsboro Village area.

In its absence, we have become a lost society. Our rich mayor had intercourse, multiple times, with our city's richest cop, and then our rich mayor stepped down to be replaced by the mayor that took the bus? Where have we gone wrong? What strength of the cosmos contorted this asinine present, and, God help us, is it a history that will repeat itself?

Call it love or call it a romance-less, sex-only affair between Nashville's liberal elite, these two made love time and time again.

The Dog of Nashville was a display of the times. In the post-Clinton, exquisite Bush-era economic booms, it showed the best of what our country can be - a boom for the old, until we got all the money, and a horrible financial strain on the young. In those days, this writer could be found wistfully sucking down dogs night and day. I had the money. What did I care? My indifference to virtue is steadfast, regardless if the universe pays no mind. But in times of bad (the Obama-era, and the summer of the Clinton e-mail scandal), the dinginess of the joint was all I needed for a solid night of reflection and wiener ingestion. But then they closed. It was run by the college kids, who probably got scared off to Canada by our current Prez (and current Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan). Or maybe they stopped making money, thinking their socialist god Che Guevara would show up to keep them in business. Always looking for a handout!

Che Guevara was a dick!

It closed, though, regardless of what savage act of capitalism drove it to its death. And the Donut & Dog took over - a place with no sense of right or wrong, which has been long documented by this publication. But some punishment-glutton deep inside me feels kinship with their brand of ruthless self interest. Gone is the grime of the lower class Dog of Nashville. This building now employs a hot gaudiness built in pure synchronicity with my own tastes. The flash of the place has a fresh bourgeois pop. The sort of attention to detail that would make the poor groan that we weren't paying enough attention to them. Whichever gauge that measures sticking it to the have-nots must be going of the charts, and thank the Lord because this town needed this display of solidarity to move forward in our time of deep scandal and reflection. I had long been avoiding this place. A fool, as if I was once in sync with the moon, and now with the sun. The world was clearer, if only for one fleeting moment, and I had a brief desire to at least try the place out.

The menu, although a little too foreign and inviting sounding, was mostly made up of ingredients I could tolerate, so long as they were mounting a juicy wiener. I ordered the Banh Mi, an opus so perversely topped (sriracha aioli, pickled carrots & daikon, jalapeno slices, cilantro topped), that my hedonistic heart had zero say in my body's reaction. It was strictly an impulse of the universe. The actual product was something that left nearly nothing to be desired, as my strained and turbulent affair with former Dick-exposer Carl Bernstein. He obsessed over Nixon, leaving me unattended to, feeling unloved and ugly. Alas, this hot dog was nothing like that. I felt empowered, cared-for, and beautiful! I was in the throws of a star-crossed romance with whomever led this wiener to my cracked and undeserved lips. It was spiritual and poetic. I cried at the end, with immense joy, and with no shame. 

These feelings were proven awful and wrong, as usual, though. The only thing worse than having no objective beauty in this world is having it thrust upon, and having it thrust away from you. Or perhaps there is a deeper rock bottom: that these things that we hold dear, even though we find "objective meaning" within them, ultimately mean nothing. Our words having no meaning. Our lives having no meaning. We are a series of cycles, moving at the whim of the universe, shouldering the infinite weight of burden, while the universe itself retains no consequences for its selfish actions. All horrid things happen to us horrid humans. Only we can decipher pain. And why? For what?