The Big Yellow, WaHo, La Casa de Waffle, Beezlebub, the Devil has many names – wait, most of those are actually names for Waffle House, which is kind of like the devil though, in that, um, they have hot things there, and, uh, people there can be weird, and ooh, the people who work there might have goat legs, but you can’t tell because they’re always behind that counter.  So yeah, Waffle House, it’s not really like the devil much at all, which is probably a good thing, because I hang out there a lot.  Now some of you, I fear, may not have ever experienced the absolutely insane awesomeness of Waffle House.  Maybe you live in one of those accursed parts of the country where all there are are Ihops, maybe you were raised by wolverines (or possibly tangerines, or some other foresty -ines thing), maybe you’ve heard that Waffle House was just really sketchy.  But you know, the people who say that are only doing it to score you off because Waffle House is so awesome they don’t want to have to share it with you, waffle neophyte that you are.  In any case, I thought I’d use my unparalleled influence over the internet to work for the good of humanity, for once, so tonight I’m gonna try to give y’all a virtual tour of La Casa de Waffle.  So buckle your seatbelts, and put on your +2 Helmet of Surly Waitress Evasion, cause he we go.

            Now, the first thing you have to know about Waffle House is that it’s kind of like a cemetery is for goth kids; it’s there all day long, but you’ll miss all the grooviness if you go during the day.  Also, it can be kind of spooky, and you might have to fight off vampires.  So should you happen to plan your maiden voyage to Waffle House as a consequence of reading this blog, make sure you go on a night when you have absolutely nothing important to do the next day.  The reason behind this is simple, at night, you only get the real hardcore Waffleheads there.  Like, if Waffle House was Star Wars, the people who go there at three in the morning would all be dressed as Princess Leia, though in truth, some of them are anyway.

            What does one order at Waffle House?  Well, if you didn’t get waffles, that would just be weird.  I mean, would you go to Linens n’ Things, and not buy any N’ Things?  Would you go to Mongolia and not buy a Yak?  I think not.  So when you go to Waffle House, get a Waffle.  And you can order one with strawberries or beef jerky on it or whatever, but whatever you do, don’t go all Meg Ryan on them and start trying to get some funky customized waffle, and be all asking whether or not it contains hydrogenated soybean oil.  This is Waffle House, and they’ll shun you so hard you’ll fly through the window and wake up in Amish Country.  Also, if you’re one of the many people who hate to waste time sleeping but are afraid to buy powerful illegal stimulants off of Ebay, order a cup of the coffee there.  Just don’t listen to it while you’re waiting for it to cool off, because it’s probably made out of demons and stuff.  You might also want to think about ordering a Texas Cheesesteak Sandwich, because they write “Texas” in the most provocatively awesome font ever.  I wish I could post it here, but it would make your monitor explode, so I’ll just describe it briefly and hope that you’re wearing something that’s resistant to flying shards of glass.  Imagine that some crazed Texan sciency guy (yes, it was probably George Bush) somehow managed to combine that font that they burn into cows, and like, the marquee of the Grand Old Opry.  Seriously, it just leaps off the menumat and smacks you metaphorically in the face.  You could be lactose intolerant, vegetarian, sandwich-hater from whatever state is the polar opposite of Texas (Vermont) and you’d still be unable to resist its evilly seductive deliciousity.

            Waffle House also comes equipped with a truly epic jukebox.  You see, due to budgetary reasons, or possibly just an overly literal interpretation of the It’s a Gift to Be Simple song, it only has one page of songs to choose from.  And since Waffle House is like some kind of giant metaphor for some other kind of thing, they’ve tried to diversify their music repertoire and ended up with about three songs from any given genre.  The only exceptions of course being songs about Waffle House (of which there are way too many), songs by CCR (which inexplicably seems to be it’s own genre, thereby earning a good three or four spots on the list, and Lindsey Lohan (who, even more inexplicably is apparently now an entire school of music, since she gets like, a whole column of jukebox choices).  So make sure you bring along a bag fulla quarters, so you can sit there for two hours listening to nothing but Fortunate Son and Lindsay Lohan Battles the Pink Robots.

            So there you go, all the reasons you’ve been waiting for to take a random road trip with one or more of your homies this very night down to the only place in town that exposes Ihop for the godless commie plot to destroy America that is truly is.  And if your monitor exploded back there in the Texas Cheesesteak Sandwich paragraph, I’d say I’m sorry, but since your monitor just blew up, you couldn’t read it anyway.