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.

The Jimmy Page of Rage

Onstad has been convalescing with the last Gordon Ramsay, aka The Last Chef on TV:

In other news...if you're like me, you know the power of watching Gordon Ramsay yell at people. He is truly fantastic at it. He is the Jimmy Page of becoming angry. I'm almost afraid to make fun of him here, as I have a tiny fantasy of running into him at the San Francisco Airport executive lounge. He is one of the very few people I would touch on a weekday there, as the thousands of YouTube videos of Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, etc. (and there is quite a lot of etc.) show him to be a man who just might yell at himself in the bathroom mirror if he didn't "wash up" after using his much-referenced "widger" to "do up a proper boys' piss." So, in a nutshell, if you are a member of the SFO executive lounge, I would very much like to visit with you while keeping an eye out for Gordon Ramsay. Some wish they could have seen Gehrig hit his first home run, some wish they could have seen an intact Led Zep play at Wembley, but I'd love to see Gordon Ramsay give a proper dressing-down to the next Taco Bell food court employee who gives me meningo-form coccxylampreys, or whatever it was I contracted recently.

Come to think of it, Ramsay would be perferfect for the lead in a Father Coughlin biopic.

Teodor Orezscu - Man of Ideas

Achewood's fourth most popular character rolls out an opinion column:

VEGETARIANISM
There’s simply no need for it anymore. In this enlightened age I can buy meat from a cow that was pushed in a pram, wet-nursed by Thora Birch, and flown to Santorini for private pronking lessons. In the wild, this same animal would have been trundled off by a peckish eagle before it had traveled the distance from the womb to the grass below, so what’s there to be upset about? People who can’t stomach the idea of humane slaughter ought to see how inhumane nature is when it’s outside of our control, where Temple Grandin has no say over which end of the emu the dingo pack tears off first. As for the vegans, the vegetarians can start with them — they are no doubt fairly easy to digest, being composed mainly of wadded yarn and rhubarb poop.

Just another reason to go on living.

Puffy shirts and plagiarism

So Mr. and Mrs. Seinfeld are being sued for plagiarism:

Missy Chase Lapine, author of the The Sneaky Chef, has filed suit in federal court against Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld. Lapine alleges that Jessica Seinfeld, author of Deceptively Delicious, "brazenly plagiarized" from her book, and she accuses Jerry Seinfeld of making defamatory statements against her.

For reasons not quite clear, plagiarism has been a hot topic at the Cod, and without consulting both books, I'd say that this has seven minute abs written all over it. It is tough titties for Lapine that a book with a similar concept came out right after hers, but this kind of thing happens. Just ask Armageddon and Independence Day. Also, as is so often the case, Onstad got there first.

Entr'acte

Various items to share, but first to get into the cah, and not get out of it until it is a car. (Don't worry, we have the proper IN-surance. In the meantime, you might enjoy reading about Nice Pete's visit to Rachael Ray's home. (Nice Pete is an author and felon; Rachael Ray is a television personality.)

Separated at Birth?

  Not only do Lyle and Mario share similar Rabelaisian appetites, but now Mario has ganked Lyle's steez for his blog:
Mario:

All meet at 9 and drive 700 km to bilbao...easy ride with pete and maria   arrive to cool hotel combine directly across the st from the gooogy   it is simply stunning… meet at 7 to shoot in the plaza of the basque language school then 4 run and gun tapas scenes that worked remarkably well  home at 1030 to rest  play golf tomorrow at a olazabal course with cp and maybe a sick eric

Lyle:
fn manager at Corleone's gave me the saklc tonight cause I was eatin stuff off plates onn away back from busin the table. fn people shouldn't oredwe4r a staek if they'er not gonna finiash it. fudcking quaiil too an dpasta s lookin too good ot leanve alone like barely mot ven touched. fuckers and look how they live throw away food and go off in a fucking jaguruar, ill fucken eat it cause don't waastrew good shit like that on hte sculler anywaysa he'll eaet it an he nevaer getrs sacked assahoel

Uncanny.

Via Eater, out of Snack.

Taco Beef, Outerburough edition

October is shaping up as a good month for taco beef. The same wizard who blasted Esquina for failure  to keep it real (personally, I knew as soon as I saw the stacks of Taaschen books behind the bar), is back at it:

Now comes a stunning development on the eastern front: in about two weeks a taco truck will be parking on (get ready for it) North 7th Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. It will be manned by comedian (and front man of the Jewish) Jeffrey Jensen and Bad Wizard singer Curtis Brown, who conducted research at the trucks on Roosevelt Avenue.                                                                                                                  Brown tells us he's cooking “less skanky” versions of the classics: pulled pork, roasted chicken and beef, Baja-style fish, plus menudo soup (with tripe) and corn chowder for winter.

You may want to let that "less skanky" rattle around your brain for a while. Consulting the Periodic Table of Skank,  developed by Linus Pauling and Appolonia in 1985, indicates that your skank exposure, expressed in parts of skank per million is likely to be at least one thousand times higher  at the corner of North 7th St. and Bedford Ave. than it is at a traditional taqueria. And even if he means skank not in the sense of a PBR-addled Bard 05 alum falling out of her American Apparel tube top, but in the sense of a safe, fun taco, what the fuck is he talking about?  You are less likely to  get a parasite eating food prepared on a truck by the vocalist of a band called Bad Wizard and a comedian than you are in a regular taqueria?

Here in the P.M.

Still, you know, 'busy." But luckily Achewood has some ideas that would work as Food Network shows for the Post-Mario era. You figure they have everything they need on hand except for the clams.

Truer words never spoken

The most trenchant writing on Bay Area food is coming from a cartoon animal:

You can picture Alice Waters, 80 miles away in Berkeley, sautéing morels with the nose of an age-pocked Remington six-shooter she picked up off some blanket sale on Telegraph Avenue. Suede fringe on the arms of her tie-dyed chef jacket.