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GateHouse — I know what you’re thinking: “Jeff, bread is stupid. It is chewy and grainy and sometimes there is entirely too much crust for my comfort. Moreover, I find myself more displeased each time I am confronted with toast. And do not even GET ME STARTED ON SESAME SEEDS, or I will punch each and every member of this litter of baby chicks in the beak right now.” OK, you probably don’t think things in pointlessly lengthy paragraphs, but I’m the one with the word count.

The point is: bread sucks. I know it, you know it, and most crucially, the Colonel knows it. And it’s a good thing he defected to our country from North Korea, because now the Colonel, though he continues to have to spend his days guarding his Secret Recipe with the jealous, flinty-eyed suspicion of the caged jaguar, has found time to address the issue of bread’s unceasing sucktasticness by coming up with the absolutely ingenious idea of taking the sandwich, disconnecting the bread entirely and replacing it with two seasoned greasy chicken flanks dripping with deliciousness and probably goo.

It is, of course, impossible to believe that I would be clever enough to dream this up on my own, but for non-believers, may I introduce you and your slowly choking arteries to the Double Down Sandwich, although please note that we are expanding the definition of the word “sandwich” into heretofore unimagined physics realms.

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Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band – Atlantic City

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Yo, Ding Dong, man, Ding Dong. Ding Dong, yo.

The Double Down Sandwich includes two kinds of cheese — when one thinks of places that really have a handle on select cheese pairings, one thinks pretty immediately of Kentucky Fried Chicken — bacon, the Colonel’s sauce and, in lieu of stupid bread for jerks, two chicken breasts, deep-fried to conveniently accelerate your body’s inevitable decline into a final uselessness. And it also comes in a combo with fries and probably a Diet Coke, in case you’re a little worried about making it all the way through the afternoon on just 35,000 calories. (Ha! I kid about the calorie numbers, which I just made up, because KFC won’t release the actual ones until the sandwich is offered nationally!)

Yeah, you hear that, Hearts of America? That’s the Colonel telling you to kiss his drumsticks, because he refuses to participate in your media’s stupid “National Obesity Epidemic.” Go back to Sweden, hippies. (Incidentally, I have absolutely no concept of the jealousy levels of the average caged jaguar; now that I think about it, I suspect they’re not much different than those of the free-range one.)

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More Columns About Buildings And Food (Note: No Buildings)

• Ladies and gentlemen, a Cheeseburger In A Can
• The Gospel of Deep-Fried Pepsi
• Snickers Charged: Caffeine = good. Caffeine + nougat = A MIRACLE.
  

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Reportedly, the $6.99 sandwich-type object will contain more than an entire day’s worth of the recommended allowance for fat, cholesterol, sodium and protein, although bear in mind those recommendations come from “the government,” and they’re just trying to get you out of the way so they can kill your grandma.

Now I know what you’re thinking, again, because all I do is apparently read your mind: “Jeff, tell me where I can get this sandwich this very instant or I will burn your house down.” OK, fine, chill, jeez, Sadly, the sandwich is only in “test markets” so far, which are Providence and Omaha. So sure, it might take a little while for the sandwich to come to your town, but on the plus side there will soon be a tremendous surplus of available real estate in Providence and Omaha.

Luckily, for me, this may answer a number of parenting issues, because this is true: My five-year-old son despises bread with the kind of pure, relentless opposition he usually reserves for any adult who’s telling him to just GET IN THE CAR ALREADY. He has never in his life eaten bread, which, needless to say, throws a pretty severe wrench into any plans you might have for sandwich construction. So every day, before sending him off to school, I pack him lunch meat in a Ziploc baggie, sans bread, and send him off on his merry way. It’s a sandwich without bread. You may be thinking this is a ridiculous and even embarrassing situation, but for coming up with this compromise I regard myself as a minor wizard. That said, I will not be feeding him KFC’s Double Down Sandwich, because I would like him very much to live to see 6.