I remember seeing this; it's kind of like And Then There Were None but kinda zany too. Like a Jim Jarmusch movie with more falling down and getting hit in the testicles. That's the 90s for you.

It's a movie about some liberal college students inviting conservative shitheels over for dinner, discussing issues with them, and then poisoning them if they prove unwilling to change their beliefs. (It's a hobby they sort of fell into rather than set out to do.) Ron Perlman is like the tenth or dozenth guest they've invited over, and he's proving to be smarter than they know what to do with.

I believe, at this point, the various students have gone off to take a vote on whether to poison Ron Perlman or not. (Though it's entirely possible at this point that they're also starting to wonder if THEY are the parties unwilling to listen to reason.)

This film is notable for I can still remember the sandwich I was eating when I read a review of it, on a pleasant autumn day in the 1990s, sitting in a courtyard in the center of town. But the sandwich place is gone now -- a van drove into the building the other year, leaving a comically van-shaped hole in the wall -- and I could really go for another one of those sandwiches.

Well? What kind of sandwich was it?

Vegetarian sandwich with a sauce that I can't begin to describe. Horseradish-based, maybe. Dammit, I just began to describe it, now it's going to haunt me.

Aw man, you just made me hungry for a veggie sandwich that's 2000 miles away. And now they're closed too! Oh well, beans and rice it is.. At least I've gotten creative and now I eat it out of a waffle cone so it's portable..

"one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little lunches called 'vegetarian sandwiches,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a hippie's bong. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the horse radish laden sandwich. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it? But sadly this pleasant reverie was rudely interrupted by a white panel van breaching the wall of the cafe, an eruption of drywall dust and two by fours leaving behind a comical, van shaped hole. Bleeding waitstaff, fire engine horns, paramedics and police lights flashing. And Reality comes rushing back in..."

... and it turns out the diner was full of conservative blowhards that they wanted to take out all in one shot.

The remembrance of restaurants past is somehow sadder than that: the accident happened late at night so nobody was in the restaurant, but three dogs in the van died. Seems the van didn't have any lights on so the police gave chase and the van sped up and went airborne. Somewhere there's a tortured joke in there about Three Dog Night and "how does your light shine in the halls of Shambala" but I'm not feeling it.

http://www.cleveland.com/berea/index.ssf/2014/02/berea_commons _shop_remains_clo.html

Oscar Wildcat = John Cleland.

Wow, I've been to Berea Commons, to the Grog Shop to see bands before. Yes, I'll bet every morning radio show used the Three Dog Night joke.

I paid attention to that band more because they had a Dog name, I'd hear their songs and could imagine 3 Dogs singing the harmonies that their songs often have. I'd think of three Coyote types with their heads pitched up to the sky, singing the lyrics.

Boomer

Wow, you may have actually smelled the scent of my urine at some point!

You know what's on the other side of that building? A certain infamous library:

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=7383

Totally off-topic, but I just wanted to let Boomie know that the latest dog video made it out of the hopper (it's off the front page, so not sure if you saw it).

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=148965

The dog-to-human speech translator device is called a BowLingual, and apparently it doesn't work very well. It's a neat idea, though!

... sorry, gentlemen. Carry on.

Well, on-topic so far as dogs go. Also, dogs dying. So actually, in retrospect, I guess that WAS pretty on-topic.

Why were dogs allowed to drive the van?

obviously they weren't, hence the police chase.

Oscar Wildcat, you have lived up to your name!

Oscar, that was a fantastic comment. Even better, however, is the fact that poetvers are willing to entertain the idea that one among us can write like Proust and that it's not a big deal or anything.

UPDATE. I have managed to duplicate the sandwich pretty convincingly, with the help of a Sheetz three-cheese sub and equal parts mayo and Heinz horseradish sauce. It's like living in 1996 again.

Here's a better photo of the destruction of my sandwich shop:

http://fox8.com/2014/01/20/driver-launches-into-sandwich-shop/

Nah, it's a David Yostless production.

Off topic but I'd love to see a David Yost biopic starring David Yost, kinda like Birdman but with Power Rangers. His story mostly remains unknown and it would be cool to combine the feeling of hiding your sexual orientation with some fuckin' putty patrol monsters and cool shit.

War. War never changes.

oddeye quoted a video game...

At least it wasn't a cartoon.

No. I'd seduce her and sex her so hard that she would be afraid of going near any erect wood.

Was your grandfather Noah Cross?

No, he was a highschool math teacher.

He was a pretty cool guy, though he died when I was four, so I didn't get to know him as well as I would have liked to.

The German Empire was already itching to show the British Empire who could hoover up the earth fastest. As soon as Russia flinched with its armies to shore up their borders when Austria declared war on Serbia, Germany pulled a Germany and used Russia's treaty with France and their own with Austro-Hungary (henceforth known as Australia) as an excuse to declare war on France. Then, they had the nerve to say it was no big deal to walk their asses through Belgium, who had a near century old Treaty of London with Britain, to get there. Germany wanted WWI so bad it may as well have assassinated Ferdinand itself, and probably would have had it known. Shit, now that I think about it, it looks all the fucking world like Obama and Putin are time travelers, and have been doing this schtick all through history.

At least that's what the Illuminati want you to think. In actuality, it was aliens.

So yeah, basically what you said, only I think aliens would have triggered the war anyway.