When the guy on the tiny Delta plane that I was sharing a seat with told me about “Cincinnati chili,” all I could think about was the notorious “Cleveland Steamer.”
I mean, how was I to know any different?
Everything I knew about Cincinnati had been mainlined into my body via two sources: “WKRP in Cincinnati” and my favorite NFL head coach of all-time, former Bengals boss Sam Wyche. And this guy looked nothing like Johnny Fever. Or Wyche.
The man’s hands were strong – too strong. And when the flight attendant stopped in our row and examined a lanyard around his neck, he nodded at her — a slow, pronounced nod that was accompanied by the universal “shhhhh” hand signal of an index finger placed tenderly over his lips while making intense eye contact with the stewardess — it became clear he was some kind of TSA officer.
Needless to say, I crossed my legs and looked the other way. But all this guy wanted to talk about was chili.
“Yeah, so you can have a two-way Cincinnati chili, a three-way, heck, even a four-way.”
Old Spice is known for weirdness, and on the tarmac in Detroit en route to the “Queen City,” the weirdness was already cranked up to one billion percent. Old Spice actually came into existence due to a four-way of sorts.
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