100 Dollar Burgers

Back when I lived in New York, the concept of the 100 dollar burger was just starting to gain traction. You could get a 100 dollar burger made of kobe beef and garnished with the sweat of supermodels at a handful of places around town. I never had one, but as a connoisseur of carnivorous pursuits, it was a dream of mine, kind of like how some people someday want to meet the Pope or write the great American Novel.

The 100 dollar burger never entered my digestive system while in New York, and even though the trend gradually moved westward, the dream was deferred, not unlike a Raisin in the Sun, but with far less suffering.

Then it happened. Not just one 100 dollar burger, but two of them. Like most dreams come true, this one fell into the 'be careful of what you wish for' file. You see the 100 dollar burgers weren't made of kobe beef, nor were they garnished by supermodels. Nope, they were $8.95 normal burgers purchased at Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill at Harrah's in Las Vegas.

That's right. I was there, eating dinner at a redneck theme restaurant. Not by choice, mind you, but I was there. You see, it was someone's 30th birthday party and his wife to be for some reason picked that place as the host venue.

Enough of the back story, you are probably wondering how my two burgers ended up costing $200 (one for me, and one for the wife). Chickenboners are the reason why. Chickenboners attend group events, eat and drink to their fill, drop 40 bones in the check folder and skirt away. They leave people like me to cover the rest. That and a bullshit prix fix group dinner markup is how that happens.

So all I really got out of that night was this great shot of a friend of mine, and fellow chickenboner coverer, who put his face in a large sheet cake. I'm thinking about printing this picture and having it framed. I'll think of it as my $200 dollar piece of modern art.