Stuff Black People Hate

A restaurant snob may not be what you think. It’s not one of those people who, when they go to restaurants, must go to the most expensive one on the fucking planet and will settle only for a seven course French supper complete with caviar, champagne, snotty French waiter dressed in a tuxedo and a goddamn sommelier named ‘Henri’ (pronounced ‘Ohn Rhee’ - a suspiciously Asian-sounding name for a Frog).

Figure 1: Is secretly Korean

A restaurant snob is far more common: one of those fucking assholes who’s constantly attending ‘Restaurant Week’ events - so to render this definition complete, we must define Restaurant Week.

Restaurant Week occurs in major cities throughout the country, and is a week-long culinary fuck fest in which yuppie douchebags blow sunshine up each others asses for three damn hours at upscale restaurants that make them feel wordly and sophisticated by offering prix fixe menus and wines/cheeses that nobody’s ever fucking heard of before.

Figure 2: Warming up at the bar before prime-time douchebaggery

Aside: Prix Fixe Menus

Prix Fixe menus are a stepping stone on the way to fascism. Prix fixe menus are popular in Europe because fascism has been popular there for so long. Why then, are these menus becoming popular here? Simple: laziness and indecision (which, incidentally, lead to fascism). Have you ever watched a yuppie try to order food? It’s fucking EXCRUCIATING as they pick apart every goddamn thing on the menu as if their choice of what to eat tonight is as important as the decision to push the big red button to launch all of America’s nukes at Iran.

I’ll hear this idiot ask me over and over again “whaddyou think about [stupid entree #1]? I’m thinking about ordering a glass of [stupid obscure wine #1] or [stupid obscure wine #2], but I dunno if [stupid entree #1]‘ll compliment it. Maybe I should just get [stupid entree #2]…shoot, what should I do?”

I’ll tell you what you should do. You should make a fucking decision before I jam Henri’s corkscrew in your eye.

Figure 3: Cure for indecisiveness, or Fascism’s Outbreak Monkey?

You’d think, then, that Prix Fixe menus would make me happy. You’d be wrong. Because instead of making people grow up and learn to make decisions, prix fixe menus just take the decision away from these people altogether. They never actually LEARN to make decisions, they’re just given fewer choices. This makes people stupid, and as people get more and more accustomed to the ease of effectively ‘deciding’ on things that were actually decided upon in a smoke filled room somewhere, fascism is gonna pop up. The same people who like prix fixe menus are gobblers of Mussolini’s cock.

End Aside

The only thing more annoying than a restaurant snob is two restaurant snobs in the same fucking room. God forbid you get two of these motherfuckers together and they discover each other to be restaurant snobs. These pompous shitbricks will hijack whatever conversation was going on previously and spend the rest of the time talking about goddamn expensive food and quizzing each other about the fare at restaurants with stupid names like ‘Oya’ or ‘Lima’. For each restaurant snob, the goal of these conversations is a.) to mention a restaurant that the other snob hasn’t been to and thereby demonstrate superior snobbery, and/or b.) reinforce their opinion of “OMIGOD! The filet creme fraische was soooooooo GOOD!”.

During their little game of grabass, one of the snobs will say something to the other snob like “the BEST scallops in the city are at [stupid fucking restaurant]…”. Then this shit hole will turn to you, whom now sports a soulless and glazed over countenance reminiscent of Keanu Reeves, and ask that oh-so-condescending question - “Have you ever been to [stupid fucking restaurant]?” In the old days, I used to be nice. I’d smile and just say, in the whitest voice I could muster, “No I haven’t, but it sounds DELISH!”

Nowadays I just say fucked up shit like “Yea I’ve been once. I had the fish vagina. The taste was as predictable as the name is redundant.”

Then there is silence from the restaurant snobs, and I am happy again.

Figure 4: A friend and I celebrating our torpedoing of a restaurant snob conversation

My life hit a new low point last Friday.

I was at a club called The Park with a Vietnamese friend of mine who I call “Chicken Jon”. He earned this name after displaying, over a period of several years, a disturbing affinity toward fried chicken and red/purple Kool-Aid - especially for an asian person*.

Figure 1: Chicken Jon

Chicken Jon and I were on the second floor of the club (the only one that plays hiphop, if you’re thinking about going) when we noticed a pair of women behind us dancing at a table. Both of them were fairly drunk and neither of them was being very subtle about trying to get our attention, as they were both doing some weird strip-tease type dance on their chairs while constantly looking at, in particular, Chicken Jon.

Most heterosexual men in this position would’ve sauntered over to the table and started chatting the girls up with the intention of getting their phone numbers or even going home with them. Not Chicken Jon and I. No - we started making downright Byzantine plans to steal their juicy and delicious chicken tenders, which come free with cheese and grapes whenever you order a bottle at a table.

You heard it correctly: our desire to eat chicken trumped our desire for sex in a battle of internalized primal urges, and the contest wasn’t even fucking close.

Figure 2: Better than sex

Chicken Jon and I spent the next thirty drunken minutes off and on trying to figure out how to chat the girls up in a way that would lead to us getting their chicken. Of course, we were too drunk to actually decide on a course of action, and instead spent most of the time pointing and laughing at Indian people (they amuse Chicken Jon to no end, and for God knows what reason) and dudes wearing stunna shades. The night ended with the girls and their chicken disappearing, and Chicken Jon and I exiting the club both angry and hungry.

Some years ago, Dave Chappelle did a skit about black people being afraid or embarrassed to order chicken in the presence of white people because of the stereotypes involved. They’re even afraid to profess their love for it, as in StuffEBPLike.com’s claim that educated black people love baked chicken more than fried chicken - a claim which, with all love and respect to Charlee, is bullshit. Charlee even told me later that as she wrote the baked chicken post, she was gnawing orgasmically on a fried chicken drumstick like a half-starved badger**. All in all, our collective shame regarding fried chicken has never actually stopped us from eating it when we wanted it (which is all the fucking time), and has even prompted a few of us to eat it in inappropriate places out of spite.

The following is an abridged list of poultry-pertinent idiocy indulged in by my friends, family, and self:

• Snuck an entire box of Popeye’s chicken into a movie theater (my cousins and I)
• Walked along a beach in Spain eating a bucket of KFC per person (myself, Chicken Jon, and a friend we call ‘The Puppy’, see figure 3)
• Ordered $300+ table/bottle service at The Park twice, looking forward more to the chicken than the liquor (me)
• Swore loudly in front of old folks at a family gathering upon hearing fried chicken would not be served (my father)
• Sent his youngest son 20 miles away to buy three buckets of chicken upon hearing fried chicken would not be served at a family gathering (my father)
• Stormed into a tiny African chicken joint dressed in full native dance regalia and smelling like a stack of sweaty man-asses angrily demanding copious amounts of fried chicken (Admiral Furious and I)
• Bludgeoned her youngest grandson with a rolled up newspaper for ‘eyeing her chicken sideways’ (my grandmother)
• Demanded his friends take 20+ pictures of him downing, by himself, a 12 or 18-piece chicken box from Popeyes(?) (Chicken Jon)

Figure 3: You thought I was kidding…

Fried chicken makes us do stupid fucking things, and that’s why we hate it. We’ll pass up sex, risk getting kicked out of movie theaters, swear in front of family matriarchs, scare the shit out of unsuspecting Africans, and beat our grandchildren with heavy objects to get it.

It’s fried crack and we know it’s bad for us - but if you try to take it away, we will fucking murder you.

*This, combined with his love of old school hiphop, BBQ, Hennessy, Alize, Ben’s Chili Bowl, big-booty Filipina women and, notwithstanding the items above, a general hatred of everything, makes Chicken Jon legally black.

**This almost certainly did not happen.

Don’t get me wrong - black people love to eat, and buying food is one of the few activities in which we’re happy to spend a relatively large amount of money, especially if BBQ is involved. But the Yin to that Yang is this simple fact:

There is no venue in America more indicative of the plight of black people than the black grocery store.

I’m a spoiled motherfucker. After completing my 18 year sentence in southeast DC, I spent the next 7 years removed from the black grocery store. Between 18 - 21, I pretty much never shopped at all because I always ate at this godforsaken place. From 21 - 22, I lived near White Oak and was treated to grocery stores filled mostly with Hispanics*. From age 22 to the present, I bounced around in more affluent neighborhoods like Rockville and Germantown, and found myself shopping at goddamn Whole Foods and Harris Teeter**.

Then, about 2 months ago, I bought a condo in a neighborhood that’s in…transition - that is, a black neighborhood sprinkled with nervous-looking white people.

Figure 1: This happens on my street constantly

My reaction to re-entering the black grocery store after spending the last three years or so at Whole Foods was kinda like the reaction between really really cold water and really really hot oil (for those who don’t cook - it’s unexpected, loud, confusing, messy, and painful). My first trip to the local Safeway involved the following:

• Getting cursed out by the homeless dude who loiters in front of the store because, apparently, $5 is way below the unit price for the giant pile of absolutely fucking nothing he gave me in return for it. This was followed almost immediately by me being bowled over by…
• …a boy, about 12 years old, shoplifting two sacks of oranges and being chased by an elderly store manager. But at least he’ll be eating healthier than…
• …the 400+ lb man with a shopping cart OVERFLOWING with Hungry Man dinners (and nothing but Hungry Man dinners), as if his fat ass could possibly be Hungry or even remotely resembled a Man. Perhaps he eats because he’s depressed as a result of being married to…
• …the woman whose eyebrows were a.) drawn on with b.) a turquoise fucking pencil. She was, not surprisingly, the mother of…
• …the toddler who was screaming, I kid you not, “YALL NIGGAZ AIN’T SHIT!” to virtually anyone who got within six feet of him, including…
• …the 15 (?) year old girl who was dressed like a stripper named ‘Sable’ and kept asking me for my phone number. To get her off my case, I figured I’d busy myself by reading a magazine - so I look over at the mag aisle to be greeted by endless copies of…
• …’Guns ‘N Ammo’ magazine, conveniently located in the main grocery store of a neighborhood with a 30 year history of rampant gun violence.

Figure 2: (l to r) Before grocery shopping, after grocery shopping, and how I got over it***

I love my black people, but goddammit…I miss Whole Foods.

*Hispanic grocery stores, even in questionable neighborhoods, are remarkably immaculate.
**Every time you shop at Whole Foods, God kills a kitten. Or if He’s busy, this guy will.
***Yes, these are actual pictures of my goofy looking self

I was enjoying the hell outta myself in Puerto Rico until, during my complimentary breakfast at the hotel, I was served a so-called ‘banana’ that was about the size of my thumb.

The tiny food didn’t end there. There was also a tangerine about the size of a testicle, a grapefruit the size of a small orange, and a slice of watermelon from a fruit that couldn’t have been much bigger than a softball. For the wait staff to serve me, a 6′3″ 190 lb grown-ass man, this diminutive clusterfuck of fruit led me to the very obvious conclusion that everyone in Puerto Rico is trying to kill me. I spent the rest of my vacation giving the locals the stink eye.

Figure 1: Puerto Rican breakfast…and the reason they don’t have the strength to assert their independence from the U.S.

I was only mildly upset about the tiny fruit until my companion, who grew up in Africa and is a newly naturalized U.S. citizen, proceeded to say this:

“Dude, this is how big fruit really is. It’s not that genetically engineered, hormone injected giant fruit crap that you find in the States. This is what real fruit really looks like.”

This statement hurled me into a dimension of pissed off I never even knew existed.

Don’t you just love it when foreigners come to the U.S. telling you how shit ’should be’? They say that things ’should be’ as they are in their home country, in spite of the fact that their country is so fucked up they found it necessary to flee to this one. Their opinions of this kind extend from international banking all the way down to how big food should be.

Figure 2: Knows how to fix your country

Well ya know what goddammit? Being from the world’s sole remaining superpower entitles me to tell you foreign fuckers exactly how big food should be*:

Figure 3: George Washington Crossing the Delaware

That’s right - if the food is too small to be made into a fully functional kayak, it ain’t fuckin’ food and it sure as hell ain’t American - and least of all is it acceptable to black people. Wanna piss off a black person? Offer that fucker some finger food and watch what happens to you.

Figure 4: Offered his friend Keyshawn a Bagel Bite

Feed me giant fruit and pork ribs, or get your fucking ass kicked. I’m pretty sure that’s the last sentence in the Constitution.

*I truly cannot wait for non-Americans to respond with their cliched “yea you’re a superpower…for now” bullshit, as if dudes from Tanzania, Canada, and even China are just chomping at the bit to invade North Carolina. Yes, fool, we ARE a superpower for now - and NOW is all that matters right NOW. Staking a claim on the global moral high ground ain’t gonna topple the U.S. - because while you may have sophisticated worldly rhetoric, we have this fucking thing. So until you can field a blue water navy to shove a new opinion down my throat, shut the fuck up and eat your tiny fruit.