Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

From The Top #4

Foods the Help>Slip>Franklin’s in Dave’s Picks 4 is better than:

  • Soggy fries.
  • Black coffee.
  • Gummy bears.
  • Gummy hornets.
  • Gummy Filipinos.
  • Gummy anything, when it comes down to it. Fuck gummy.
  • The bitter ashes one must eat when burying the childhood friend that honor demanded one strike down. Dammit, Yamiko-san. You knew my shuriken and nunchaku skills were far greater than yours!
  • Bugs. No matter how many times I get told to check my privilege or shown infographics detailing how terrible cattle are for the world, I am not eating bugs. Bugs should not be eaten in a non-prank context. The last sound you hear before we switch to an all bug-eating society will be a cow plummeting from a plane with TotD riding it like Slim Pickens in Strangelove. (I would assume there would be a whistling sound; I would also assume the cow would be screaming the whole way down.)
  • Bush meat.
  • Game.
  • Fowl.
  • A vegetarian patty. There’s not enough information in that description for me to eat it. It’s wonderful that the patty doesn’t include meat: what does it contain? “Not meat” is an enormous category.
  • 90% of flavors introduced after the initial flavor. Pringles, for example. They were fine. Then along came barbecue and sour cream, which were also fine. After that, Pringles decided on a bold strategy of abandoning potatoes and making the chips out of hobo vomit because all their bullshit flavors are bullshit.
  • Get your act together, Pringles.
  • Sweetbreads.
  • Marrow.
  • Offal.
  • Scrapple.
  • Spam.
  • Oysters (that aren’t actually oysters, but testicles.)
  • Oysters (that are actual oysters, because they are disgusting.)
  • Lobsters. These are coprophagic sea cockroaches, first off; and they are expensive tofu, second, in that they taste like whatever you cook them in. Or you can just boil the, in which case they need to be dipped in melted butter to be palatable. Anything dipped in melted butter would be delicious: shellfish, steaks, Billy’s itchy asshole, whatever.
  • And if we’re being real, and having real talk among bros and lady-bros: shrimp, too, is not as good as the set-opening, eye-opening H>S>F from 9/24/76.
  • Like lobster, shrimp don’t really have their own taste. Vaguely clean and refreshing, kinda airy? The shrimp cocktail is not an even partnership: horseradish is doing all of the heavy lifting; the shrimp is just the delivery system for cocktail sauce.
  • And then there’s the tail and what to do with it. That little transparent carapace looks so sad and creepy and bug-like. This is assuming you’re in a swanky joint. There might be some nonsense about peel-and-eat shrimp.
  • If you come at me with peel-and-eat shrimp, I’m coming back at you with karate, and I will fuck you up with it.
  • A plate of peel-and-eat shrimp is a plateful of work, that’s all. Don’t give me work when I asked for food.
  • There are, of course, other ways of preparing shrimp,* but the best shrimp is fried shrimp because the best everything is fried everything.
  • At the Iowa State Fair this year, vendors will be offering fried fries, which are deep-fried french fries.
  • That kind of thing is the reason America is number one.
  • Also premiering in Iowa this summer will be the really deep-fryer, which requires a caisson to be built so the teenager running the thing doesn’t get the bends.
  • There’s also the tremendously deep fryer, which discusses philosophy at you until you don’t want lunch anymore.

* Mentioning different methods of cooking shrimp will of course bring to mind the bit from Forrest Gump and the actor who delivered the lines, Mykelti Williamson. Quick update: Mykelti is now semi-retired from acting and does a lot of charity work, mostly for And Then Flipper Was On Top Of Me, which is a non-profit that helps people recover from incidents involving dolphins and the tourists who pay to swim with them.

Funny fact: Mykelti Williamson has been sexually assaulted while swimming with the dolphins over a dozen times. The last six attacks have been by the same dolphin and then he’ll pop his head into the office and be all, “Oh my God, guess what happened when I was in St. Bart’s?”

And you wanna say, “You fucked that dolphin again, didn’t you?” but he raises a lot of money for the organization, so you have to play along and not get caught filming him fake-crying on your phone while he’s all, “That fish took my dignity.”

One time, he came straight here afterwards and he hadn’t even showered; he smelled like porpoise jizz.

10 Comments

  1. spencer

    I don’t know what hurts more?my brain from reading reading this or my cheeks from smiling so big. Wow that was great

  2. cgrand

    the playin>supplication>playin ain’t bad either

  3. Jay Z

    Currently on sale at amazon.com for $190

    • thoughtsonthedead

      That is $190 more than I paid for my copy.

      Wowee. There are many, many countries in this world where you can have a whole family killed for $190.

      • Jim Z

        you could make a killing on it then.

  4. dj5000000

    I thought I was the only one who knew what a caisson was and only because I have a friend whose great-great-grand pappy built the Brooklyn Bridge. You are truly a literate man.

    • thoughtsonthedead

      There’s so much stuff in the world and everything’s got its own weird name! That’s awesome.

  5. maggiemay

    I actually love soggy fries. Fuck the crunchy French fries. And sour gummy worms… Those are damn good.

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