Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is New York

(If you get this title, based on the best line of a pretty bad poem, I can only say: I'm sorry.)

I often find myself defending fast food for entirely the wrong reasons. Mainly that fast food gets a far worse rap that it really deserves, because, come on, people, it's crap. McDonald's burgers are not made of worms, the corporation is not responsible for South American deforestation, and even if KFC is called KFC because what they are serving isn't legally chicken, you really don't need any vast conspiracy theory or grotesque inference of the origin of the meat to indict the product. It's crap. It's stuff that developed and thrived because people travelling to far flung places on the highways and byways of America had to eat something. And while I have my objections to, for instance, Patton Oswalt's critique of the failure pile in a sadness bowl-- come on, dude, you took it home? You tried this fucking thing to go? Of course it sucked. But it sucked more because you gave it a chance to cool down. That's the kind of crap that, if it's got any chance at all, you gotta treat is like adamantium: you gotta keep it hot.

On the other hand, all it takes for me to curse at the TV is some fococta spokesman proclaiming that KFC uses real chicken to make its-- wait for it-- popcorn chicken. Oh, come the fuck on! For fuck's sake! Who the fuck would ever know or care if those little greasy breading balls were made of anything besides breading and Styrofoam? In fact, given what they end up as, I'd be slightly comforted knowing that they weren't real chickens, after all.

Of course McDonald's is bad food. That's all ye know in this world, and all ye need to know. But the fact that McDonald's is bad food because it's processed does not make my pastrami, not to say my rye bread, unprocessed. (And don't get me started on the mustards! That's right: plural.) But the cheese curls were a really odd choice. Not to say that they don't dance along with the deli in their own odd way, but it's not something I would do on a regular basis, I don't think.



This is something I have been trying to get my head around for awhile. I've known of Louis CK as a comedian and as a comedic theorist for quite awhile, but I shied away from his show from the get go, for no reason I could put a pin in. I have been trying to catch up with it, but so far, it's been a little painful. As I noted to the Wifey, if nothing else, it's pretty good New York porn, getting in a fair amount of gritty, cheap, street-level shots-- just my kind of thing-- but the plotz are all self-induced cruelty humor, which is in keeping with CK's stand up material, comedic theory and life in general, but so far, it's a little hard to take. Not that I am giving up on it, or even worse, hoping he'll change. Just that I have to say, as a fan, watching it is more a labor of love that a joy to the heart. So it goes.

On the other hand, if one is to be a fan of New York, one has to admit it can be more than a bit of a miserabilist place. It's easy to be very happy in New York; it is also very easy to be pissed off and depressed and convinced that all the forces of the universe are aligned against you.


That's better.