Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m part of a sandwich club in The Onion office. What started as a way to keep lunch costs down has now morphed into a four-headed beast that sees us form a makeshift assembly line at lunchtime, cranking out sandwiches, eating snacks, and rating all of them in an ever-expanding Google Doc. At the behest of another club member, we recently entered the breakfast sandwich game, because apparently we weren’t eating enough meals at the office already. Purchasing the Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker was a low-impact investment—something like $8 a person—that has quickly paid dividends. Its straightforward design allows for an egg-and-cheese sandwich to be knocked out in minutes, usually as I pour my morning coffee and prep for the day ahead. This simple, intuitive machine has spurred a love for knockoff Egg McMuffins that I never could have anticipated. [David Anthony]
Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt For The World’s Rarest 78rpm Records
Though she doesn’t fit the profile of a 78 collector by any stretch—she’s a she, she’s social, she’s not prone to obsessiveness—writer Amanda Petrusich finds herself drawn to the small, dedicated world of men whose basements and listening rooms are stacked to the ceiling with old shellac records. Her fascinating look at the hobby makes that word—hobby—seem far too weak: She meets and befriends guys (it’s all guys, she notes several times, with tales of female 78 collectors proving apocryphal at best) who spend their time at flea markets and online, desperately searching for the rarest, most beautiful specimens. Petrusich—an erstwhile A.V. Club contributor—falls head over heels for the rich sounds of old records and the truly strange, magical worlds they capture. She doesn’t for a second look sideways at the collectors, even when she could, but instead finds herself part of the hunt. Her quest’s greatest chapter finds Petrusich learning how to SCUBA so she can dig around in the murky Milwaukee River for records and metal masters that may or may not have been tossed there by employees of Paramount Records 80 years before. [Josh Modell]
Lackluster World
I received the first issue of Lackluster World as a gift from a close friend in 2010. He had met the creator, Eric Adams, at a comic convention and had him autograph a copy of what my friend picked as an ideal read for me—a dark satire about Fahrenheit Monahan, a man with albinism using vandalism and journalism to change his world while evading his fanatically religious siblings. I was immediately hooked and ordered the remaining six issues online. The entire Lackluster World run is still available for $30, but for only $5 more, you can support this Kickstarter campaign and get the entire story as a 380-page graphic novel, collected for the first time in this “Director’s Cut” version of the comic-book series. This version includes an additional 98 pages of content, with the first two original issues completely restructured and redrawn, and about 30 pages of original sketches, script fragments, copies of original character designs, pin-ups from other artists, and more. That said, Adams stresses that story remains the same, following Monahan through a goth-inspired landscape as he struggles through a life filled with religious zealots and run-of-the-mill imbeciles, asking the philosophical question, “Where were you the day you died?” [Becca James]