Wednesday, April 20, 2011
American Pie
I hear that little Jimmy Oliver has been making waves in the USA. Schools in California have banned him from their kitchens for fear of being shamed into feeding their children his “pukka” recipes. Someone should tell them that celebrity chefs like Jimmy are basically entertainers. You can watch them sprinkle and toss over a hot stove without the slightest intention of attempting to emulate their culinary feats. Jimmy is a sprinkler and a tosser par excellence, but British fans who want to taste his food just go to his restaurant.
The nature of Jimmy’s true calling should have been obvious when he appeared on the Letterman show and beguiled the audience with his cheeky cockney banter. His most memorable quip was that vanilla ice-cream contains an ingredient found in a beaver’s anal gland. Full marks to Jimmy for doing his homework and knowing that “beaver” is a rude word in America. There are no beavers in England, of course, only otters and ferrets, which are not particularly rude unless you put them down a man’s trousers.
I’m sure Jimmy means well in promoting healthy eating across the USA, but the premise of his transatlantic odyssey seems flawed to me. The problem with food in America is not its quality but its quantity. On my first visit to the country, I was surprised to discover that the restaurants served portions large enough for my appetite. While this was excellent news for me and other 500-pound gorillas, watching humans gorge themselves on this abundance made me feel queasy. When I noticed the overfed diners trying to squeeze their wobbly behinds into their capacious motor vehicles, my queasiness turned to revulsion. The USA, it seemed, was the Land of the Fat and the Home of the Bulbous.
Not everyone in America is overweight, of course. President Obama cuts a particularly pantherine figure as he prowls across the prairies, announcing his intention to run for re-election. I can’t help wondering whether the lardish folk of middle America resent being governed by such a svelte figure. Maybe Barry could win them over by promising to give them the secret of his slim waistline, which I suspect has something to do with sleeping with a black woman. His new campaign slogan might be “Vote Obama if you want to see your genitals without the aid of a mirror”.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, let me emphasize that I will be strictly neutral in next year’s presidential election. A gorilla does not meddle in human politics or hand-out endorsements willy-nilly. I have no idea who the Republican candidate will be, but I’m sure he’ll measure up to Barry in his vital-statistics – or her vital-statistics, for that matter. Let’s not forget Sarah Palin, still wowing her supporters and keeping in shape with her dumbbell exercises. If she wins the nomination, she’d be a much stronger candidate if she divorced her husband and persuaded Hilldog to be her running mate. The thought of two ladies cohabiting in the White House might be just the kind of gimmick that voters find irresistible.
Labels: Barack Obama, beaver, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Oliver, Sarah Palin
Friday, February 12, 2010
Britney's squirrel denial
Britney Spears has denied eating squirrel, but did anyone believe it in the first place? Having chased one of those critters up a tree, I am certain that no human is agile enough to catch one. Certainly not Britney, whose dopey face suggests slow reflexes and poor hand-eye coordination. What’s more, there isn’t nearly enough meat on a squirrel to justify the effort. When I finally grabbed the one that stole my nuts, I thought “this puny little rodent wouldn’t feed an anorexic weasel.” Not that I had any intention of eating it myself, of course – we gorillas are fastidious in abstaining from unauthorised meat products.
Now that Britney has responded to the squirrel allegation, it can only be a matter of time before she is forced into further denials. There is no end of furry mammals that an unstable young singer from a Hillbilly family may be plausibly accused of eating. Possum, raccoon, coyote, beaver? I doubt she’s tasted any of them, yet after making such a fuss about the squirrel story I can’t help wondering.
A circus clown once accused me of eating his pet gerbil. “Gorilla Bananas ate my gerbil” was the line he gave people who noticed the gerbil was missing. I knew at once that denying this absurd story would be undignified and counterproductive. “He who denied it, supplied it” was a popular saying of the time. So I responded with satire, putting up a succession of gerbil recipes on my trailer door. Here are some of those dishes:
Roast gerbil with parsnips and carrots
Southern fried gerbil with sweet potatoes and corn
Smoked gerbil with runner beans and wild mushrooms
Stir-fried gerbil in yellow bean sauce with rice noodles
Gerbil stew with broad beans and shallots
People soon got bored of hearing about gerbil main courses and started accusing the clown of being my stooge in a comedy routine. This upset him so much that he went to a psychiatrist to get over the loss of his pet. Under hypnosis, the clown revealed that he’d trodden on the gerbil by mistake and thrown its squashed carcass into a cement mixer. The memory of this event was so painful that he’d repressed it, substituting the false story involving me. I forgave him the calumny because he’d genuinely convinced himself of its truth. One must show compassion to the mentally unhinged whenever possible.
If I were Britney’s manager, I’d tell her to stop responding to the gossip sheets and take control the debate herself. No one will speculate about her appetite for bushy-tailed rodents if she gives them juicy titbits from the filly’s mouth. A confession is worth more than a hundred second-hand stories.
Christina Aguilera is one who has adopted this strategy, recently declaring that she feels irresistibly sexy in the nude and would rather see pictures of naked women than naked men. Unlike the Britney-eats-squirrel story, this is entirely credible and gives the reader useful information in relatively few words. It also diverts attention from Christina’s dietary habits, whatever they may be.
Labels: beaver, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Possum, Raccoon, Squirrel
