THE GURGLING COD

Possibly the final Pizza Beef post

As the first comment on the Slice post on the Papa John's/Le Bron Crybaby kerfuffle indicates, it is tricky for a national
chain to get behind any athlete or team, on the grounds that more folks will be agin' it than fer it.

...as the Director of Marketing for a very large franchise with 28 of our stores in Ohio, we are deeply saddened by this judgement call that put all Papa John's stores in jeopardy. I hope that people will see this as something done without consent of every Papa John's owner. PJ Ohio stands firm and supports LeBron James. We are sorry this happened.

Once, not so long ago, Dunkin' Donuts was the Official Breakfast Sandwich of the New England Patriots. Now, instead of the sexy but polarizing Tom Brady, we have the preternaturally uncompelling Rachael Ray. But still, no PJ's owner has set up a rival location with a fake white supremacist message board. The same cannot be said for all  Subway locations.

Nice Pete's Quizno's creative nonfiction.

It seems to be a fast food kind of day, what with the pizza beef and all. And now Nice Pete is at work on the fictitious biography of Quizno's founder Giugliacomo "Johnny" Quizno.*
*In its way, enjoying a Quizno's sandwich is stronger evidence of mental illness than is being the Dr. J of murdering people.

Sliding by on grease

We got the Guiteau stuff out of the way, but the bullshit keeps rolling in:

CLEVELAND --  Papa John's Pizza issued an apology to Cleveland and the Cavaliers for making T-shirts with LeBron James' number and the word "crybaby" under it.
To apologize, Papa John's will sell Cleveland residents a large, one-topping pizza for 23 cents on Thursday. The 23 is an homage to James' jersey number. The company also will donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund.

What? This entire thing is more contrived than the Cyrus contretemps. If, Papa John's Pizza were, say, a cousin who'd had about eight too many Natty Lites at your cookout, and called your sister-in-law a whore, an apology would be in order.* But this is a large multinational corporation, which went to considerable effort and expense to make these shirts. Meetings were had,  things were run past legal. Did not happen by accident. The predictable kerfuffle, and predictable apology, generate predictable publicity for what may be the worst thing ever to disgrace the word "pizza." (The dipping sauces should be a tipoff that it's about the diabetes, not the flavor.) Any Clevelander that takes advantage of this deal is a sucker, since PJ's is still covering ingreident costs at 23 cents a pie. On the upside, feasting on Papa Johns will likely force Cavs fan to spend a long time in a room without a television, meaning they will not have to witness the beatdown the Cavs will suffer at the hands of the Celtics.**

*No idea where the "I'm sorry I got drunk and called your sister-in-law a whore" cards come from.

**On an unrelated note -- go Penguins!

Hef is slippin'

And not in a good way. Via the tireless Fiddler, comes news of a new "Girls of..." search from Playboy. Like Harley-Davidson, only more so, Playboy offers the paradox of a shitty and outmoded core product, but a brand  so strong, you can use it to sell guayaberas in Nome. But things must be getting a little bit desperate at the Grotto, as the new search is "Girls of Olive Garden." No disrespect intended to any individual OG employee, but somehow, the chain that famously introduced oversized chairs for their most loyal customers, the land of unlimited pasta and free refills, seems like an incongruous context for any but the most outre' cheesecake.

Twelve nuggets, one cup

Adam Kuban is a trooper for modeling the Colpop for Serious Eats posterity, but I swear I saw the same combination cola vat/nugget trough in Idiocracy.

The Blooming Onion is 20

I think I'll just shut it down for the day. When a college football blogger dunks on you in your own gym, celebrating the 20th birthday of the Bloomin' Onion in terms far funner than you might even have imagined, it's time to focus on not quitting your day job:

Not only did Outback have the audacity to take a 27 cent onion, slice it in an innovative flower shape, coat it in no more than two cents of batter, salt, and pepper–oh, and their secret blend of yuMmy Spices and inGredients!– and baptize it in the sweet roiling fury of a deep-fryer, friends. No, Outback goes a step further and charges you over twenty times what they paid for it in the first place and serves it with mayonnaise, motherfucker.

Read it all, if you dare.

Where have you gone, Billy Paultz?*

The word "deconstruction," when it appears in food writing, is like the phrase "I'm not a racist or anything" at a wedding reception. You can bet the rent that some dumb shit is in the offing. Viz the Grinder:

The Wall Street Journal has written an in-depth deconstruction of Burger King’s “Whopper Freakout” campaign that goes beyond the typical “restate the catch phrase” level of analysis and delves into what makes this oddly persuasive bit of salesmanship so effective.

Uh, the WSJ article does not so much deconstruct the campaign as it does reconstruct it, explaining how BK pulled it off and why it works. As such, the article is more of an advertisement for an advertisement than any kind of analysis of the campaign. It's easier to talk about what deconstruction ain't than what it is, but it is emphatically not disassembling the subject of critique via the same terms that attended its construction, and permit its reassembly in the same form. Rather, speaking very generally, we can profitably think of deconstruction as a process of revealing the contradictions that are already inherent in the text.  For instance, Derrida's "Declarations of Independence" does not "delve into what makes this oddly persuasive bit of salesmanship so effective," but instead leaves you wondering who the hell the "we" is holding these truths self-evident, and if we don't know, then maybe then we are still Brits. Yes, I've belabored this idea before.

I do not think, however, that Derrida is the right French dude for getting after what's going on in these commercials. Instead, look to Max Robespierre, the Terror guy from the French Revolution. In recent years, folks have noticed that they have giant fat asses, and that eating hell of fast food might have something to do with it. In this light, folks write books, ban trans fats,  and introduce legislation that would bar obese folks from restaurants. Not hard to imagine that the braintrusts at fast food corporations would prefer not to see  Prohibition 2.0 shut down their businesses, or even regulate them. I am confident that the real audience of these commercials is not those who come to praise the Whopper, but those who come to bury it. The idea that "if you take their Whoppers away, they will freak out" seems like it just might pop into the mind of a legislator about to cast a vote regulating the fast food industry.

*Billy "The Whopper" Paultz: before there was Kurt Rambis, there was The Whopper.

Greatly exaggerated

Reports of my demise, that is. I gave up Deadspin for Lent, so I'm sure there's stuff there, about in re the ruffled feathers in re Pedro Martinez appearance as a soltadore,  what Molly said. Especially the part about KFC. Fuck TMZ, viva Pedro!

Puzzling

Quodba = the rich man's Chipotle? Sure, whatever.
But a "Mexican fast food community"?
Good to know Gibby has found something to do since the band broke up.

Regicide

Schlosser's op-ed on the fucked-up economics of fast food tomato growing in Florida is worth a read and a reflection. Almost as remarkable is the significant cohort of Times readers who are batshit Idaho meth-brewing ultra-right
zealots and make comments condemning Schlosser's lack of respect for the market.*  If you can walk into a  BK after reading this between now and Christmas and order a fucking Whopper, you deserve a lump of coal in your stocking, and said coal inserted into your temple, bolo-steez.
*With such a significant proportion of Times readers likely committed to drinking only their own filtered urine, it hardly seems worth it for Maker's Mark to splash out for a full-page ad, even if it is cheek by jowl with an article on Bourbon's new cachet.