Happy National Cheeseburger Day!

Celebrated: in the United States, by the Cattlemen's Beef Board

This is a real thing. Read more about it here.

I came to cheese relatively late in life, and still rarely put it on hamburgers or sandwiches. It might be some deep, unconscious longing to keep kosher, it might be the relic of a childhood spent insisting on no cheese, or it might be that the combination of flavors and textures still doesn't really appeal. But I understand that I am in the minority on this, and I am grateful to cheeseburgers for inspiring brilliance in music and art.

Without cheeseburgers, we would never have Mayor McCheese — although he was retired sometime back, and a whole generation is growing up without the McDonaldland characters, and that's just wrong.

Without cheeseburgers, we would never have the immortal "Saturday Night Live" skit — which, it turns out, is actually called "The Olympia Diner," and is based on a real place in Chicago called the Billy Goat Tavern.

Without cheeseburgers, Jimmy Buffett would have had to call his restaurant chain something else. 

But most important to me, without cheeseburgers, Lyle Lovett would never have been able to give us the ultimate example of regret and missed opportunity.