When it comes to the culinary arts, I often think of
something a wise old woman once told me. At least, I assume she was
wise—it’s equally possible that she was senile and demented and
incontinent, as are most geriatrics. But because I assume the best
about people, let’s suppose this depressing bluehair was, in fact,
wise, and wasn’t just muttering gibberish in a futile attempt to
distract me from her reeking incontinence.
So anyway: This sagacious woman was watching me devour a plate
crammed with Goldfish crackers and Chips Ahoy! cookies, my preferred
meal after an aperitif of M&M Tequila (take one package Peanut
M&Ms, dump into a bottle of Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville brand
tequila). “That’s how you eat?” she inquired, and when I responded in
the affirmative—speaking as loudly and slowly as I
could—she imparted the following bit of wisdom. “Some people eat
because they love food,” she noted, “and some people eat to survive.
You, my dear boy, are one of the latter.”
Wherever that crazy, half-dead shrew is now—a retirement home,
Florida, dead in some filthy ditch—she was right. I care not for
your foie gras or your caviar! Keep your truffles, your fresh-caught
salmon, your immaculately butter-poached prawns! Food is for two
things. One: Keeping yourself alive! (A steady diet of cheddar-flavored
Goldfish and tequila has kept me handsome, healthy, and dangerously
virile for 27 years!) Two: Killing other people! Which brings us to
food fights.
Food fighting began, of course, in the brutal arenas of elementary
school cafeterias, where shrieking, towheaded twits threw the lunch
lady’s “Pork Surprise” at each other with visible disgust, their tiny
brains urging them to kill or be killed—to end the life of the
shrieking, towheaded twit beside them, or have him end theirs. But
while food fighting was once thought of as merely a jovial pursuit of
retards, children, and retarded children, food fights are coming back
in a big way, taking over local eateries by storm!
To begin a food fight, you’re gonna want something that
throws well, but also splatters, for this first assault
informs all diners and passersby that, yes, indeed, a food fight has
begun! For this I recommend a Snack Pack pudding cup, preferably
chocolate in flavor. With the foil cap half removed, the Snack Pack
becomes a veritable grenade.
Like the contests of the mighty Roman gladiators of olde (or those
of the equally impressive American Gladiators of the early 1990s), food
fighting is a challenge of improvisation. Sure, that glass of
white wine might be good to throw across the table—but also
consider pouring it down the shirt of that chick with the sweet rack
who’s sitting three tables over. See? That’s improvising!
Likewise: Yes, it might cause quite a stir were you to drench your
waiter with the contents of that fondue pot! But instead, how about
throwing a fondue stick as if it were a tiny little spear? (Do not
allow your feeble conscience to argue, dear reader! All bets are off
in a food fight. To enter one is to accept your fate—be it a
comical pie to your face or a white-hot fondue stick embedded in your
cranial cavity.)
Other good foods for throwing: Apples, pizza pies, shook-up cans of
beer, half-melted ice cream, gravy boats, refried beans, baked beans,
green beans, bean dip, pad thai, sharpened peanut brittle, cheese
wheels, and various squashes and beets. Also, should you find yourself
losing a food fight, it is advisable to locate the nearest bottle of
wine, port, or Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville brand tequila. Break it
on the edge of the nearest table, then brandish the shards as if you
were in a knife fight in the sordid alleyways of Thailand. Oftentimes,
the best food fights will turn into real fights… and only when you’re
covered in equal amounts of mashed potatoes and blood will you know
yourself to be the true victor.
It’s usually at this point that some maitre’d will come up to you
and politely insist that you leave. When this happens, remember: Don’t
slash with the broken bottle. Stab and twist, my friends. Stab and
twist.
