Top five weird food news stories from this week – Westword
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Here’s my list of the top five weird food news stories from this week. Naked royal ass, fast-food chicken Parmesan AND porno ice cream? We just might live in the greatest time ever known to humankind.
I had a rude shock this week when I realized two things about Britain’s Prince Harry: One, he is an adult now rather than that cherubic little man-doll that Princess Diana was toting around a few years ago (I had the same problem when I saw that the Olsen twins had grown up and were dumpster-diving for clothes but not food), and two, he has a really nice ass. He has a princely, grown-up, rosy, freckled man-bum, and he’s definitely not afraid to waggle it about after a night on the Vegas strip. I don’t judge him, because if that’s the worst thing he’s done in Vegas, then he still has umpteenth miles of bad road to travel in order to catch up to me.
Sheldon’s Wines decided to immortalize Harry’s bum-rush by creating “Royal Blush,” a 2011 French rosé, which is labeled with an artist’s rendition of Prince Harry making a bare-assed trick shot on a pool table.
Now that’s cheeky!
4. Burger King makes Italian breakfast burritos.
Okay, so a few months ago McDonald’s CEO said that the company really wanted to “focus on chicken.” Apparently Burger King wants to do the same, but to make sure no one thinks they it’s ripping off McDoo’s ideas again, it’s come up with a crazy roster of nine new chicken menu items, including a fried chicken Parmesan sandwich, an Italian basil chicken sandwich and wrap, and an Italian breakfast burrito — yes, really — stuffed with scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, melted mozzarella cheese, diced onions and peppers and marinara sauce.
I think I would rather rub my private parts with sandpaper and then f*ck half a grapefruit than eat that for breakfast.
I have had a few good menu items from BK over the years, but I’m wondering what level of recreational drug use inspired the folks at Burger King to imagine that they are the perfect candidates to unleash the acid reflux of fast-food chicken parm into the world. And besides, Fazoli’s has already rung that bell.
3. McDonald’s foreign language studies fail.
This isn’t the first time I’ve looked at a McDonald’s marketing screw-up and thought, “Mission: Make Awkward Attempts at Cultural Inclusion. Status: Complete.”
The geniuses at McDoo decided to throw up a billboard in St. Paul to advertise its wares to the Hmong population (an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand) by writing what they thought was the Hmong phrase for “Coffee Gets You Up, Breakfast Gets You Going.”
Unfortunately, McDonald’s didn’t bother to use the correct text or use any breaks, making the entire phrase read like “Huminuh-Huminuh-Huminuh-Frubble-Frubble.”
As local resident Thai Lee told the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and obesity are already a major health concern in the Hmong community. Most of this is attributed to the changing westernized eating behaviors that Hmong people have adapted to. McDonald’s should instead focus more on healthy eating.”
McDonald’s Midwest Region’s marketing director Gregg Miskiel told the Associated Press, “We strive to reach our guests in relevant ways including the use of in-language messaging. While it was our intention to create a special message for our Hmong population in Minnesota, we now realize that an error was made in the translation of ‘Coffee Gets You Up, Breakfast Gets You Going.’ It was not our intention to offend anyone and we apologize for the error. We are working with our local advertising agency to correct these billboards and will re-post next week.”
Hahahahahaaaaa!!! You thought McDonald’s was going to make the food healthier to appeal to them? Please — McDonald’s could probably find a way to make steamed rice seriously unhealthy.
2. Ben & Jerry’s sues a porn company for no good reason. When I heard that a porn company was making “Ben & Cherry’s” adult DVDs with names like “Boston Cream Thigh,” “Hairy Garcia,” “New York Fat & Chunky” and “Peanut Butter D-Cup,” my only thought was: Why hadn’t someone thought of that sooner?
Now Ben & Jerry’s is suing the slutty underpants off of them, stating that the “hardcore pornographic” films have smeared its reputation. Personally, I think B&J’s is going about this all wrong — why not team up with the porn-makers for a cold, creamy, corporate gangbang? Ice cream goes with sexy boom-boom, the product placement opportunities are endless, and I’m thinking that “Schweddy Balls” would appeal to a whole new market demographic. Hell, B&J has ready-made porn names without even having to think outside the pint with “Banana Split,” “Cake Batter,” “Chubby Hubby” and “Cinnamon Buns.”
But I think I would draw the line at “Dublin Mudslide.”
1. A Fifty Shades of Grey cooking class?! Please make it stop!
Ever since Fifty Shades of Grey — that badly-written erotic Twilight fan-fiction that duly earned its nickname of “Mommy porn” — broke onto the American socio-cultural consciousness like a bursting boil releasing its exudate, I have been beleaguered with questions about BDSM, pelted with half-witted statements of “fact” about kink, and filled with ennui from watching my Facebook page being littered with 30+ women regressing back to teenage emo status at the idea that they may one day find their own “Christian Grey” — like finding an emotionally damaged, assholey pseudo-dominant male is difficult or something.
This book’s latest saturated-market-exploitation is a kink-themed cooking class, held at a California strip mall (apropo) where girlfriends, couples and mommies got to make “Playroom Pretzel Ropes,” ” Bondage Wrapped Shrimp with Vanilla Bean Citrus Beurre Blanc” and, for dessert, a martini called “The Flogger,” garnished with a shortbread cookie in the shape of a tiny flogger.
When it got into food marketing, Fifty Shades definitely passed my pop-culture tolerance threshold. Don’t get me wrong — I like that the lifestyle is becoming less stigmatized, and we dark-siders don’t have to hide our tantalizing and subversive pleasures in dank, cobwebby basements (although that is pretty hot ). But I am disappointed to the place of disgust at seeing kink reduced to a cheap fad.
And what about those poor shrimp? Were they even given a safe word before being trussed up in that bacon?
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By Molly Martin
By Molly Martin
By Molly Martin
By M.G. Marini
