It’s been awhile since we last made fun of Guy Fieri.  That has been fine with me, I know his barely coherent tweets make for perfect examples of Guy’s legendary douchebaggery, but overall he is too easy of a target.  So we’ve eased up on the Guy bashing, and judging by the e-mail I’ve received, many of you are not happy about it.  Well, wait no longer my friends.  Besides, did you think I would have six posts in seven nights without one about Guy?

I was leafing through my cat’s copy of Food Network Magazine the other day (yes, my cat really does have a subscription to FN Magazine, it’s a long story) and what did I stumble upon but an advertisement for Guy Fieri’s Knuckle Sandwich Series Knives.  I kid you not, gentle reader, that is what they are called.  Sometimes truth is douchier than fiction.  Isn’t a knuckle sandwich a euphemism for a punch to the mouth?  How is that related to a knife in any way?  Oh right, it’s really lame.  Fits Guy to a “T.”

Who wouldn't want to buy a knife from this clown?

Knife sets rely almost exclusively on slick marketing.  If you purchase a high quality knife set (or like me receive one as a wedding gift) and treat them with loving care they will last a very long time.  So the only way to get someone with a perfectly good knife set to buy a new one is to market it in a way that makes it irresistible.  And judging from the gullibility of the Guy Fieri Mafia, I’m sure they are selling like spikey-haired hot cakes.

The knife set, excuse me, the Knuckle Sandwich Series Knife set, consists of four rockin’ blades.  The “Big Stick” is an all-purpose chef’s knife.  Former President Theodore Roosevelt coined the phrase, “Walk softly and carry a big stick.”  Which means that if you have massive military power, or a badass knife, you should STFU about it and not make a big spectacle of yourself.  Which pretty much should exclude Guy Fieri from being associated with it.

The Big Stick and the Dragon Dagger. I feel 23 % douchier just typing those words.

There is also a serrated knife, called the “Dragon Dagger,” which is ironically the name of the serrated knife Beowulf used to slay the dragon before suffering his own mortal wound in the eponymous epic poem (we know about all things epic here at EP).  Also, isn’t a dagger for stabbing?  Anyone need to stab a loaf of bread with a dagger?  Imagine if Guy had left one of his knives at Juliet’s side,  Shakespeare would never be the same. “O Happy Dragon Dagger,” cried Juliet, “I shall use your serrated blade to exeunt from this mortal coil.  But first I willst slice this tomato.”

The other knives include the “Lil’ Guy,” which thankfully is not the name of Guy’s penis but a paring knife.  And that is all I have to say about that.

Finally, there is the “Chopper.”  I guess whoever was in charge of coming up with edgy, Guy Fieri-esque names decided to leave early that day.  One must assume this knife is for chopping things.

We’ll be on the lookout for the next Guy Fieri endorsed products to emerge.  Hair gel, sunglasses, home pregnancy tests (if it says money, you are pregnant!), and the one I’m most looking forward to, the Guy Fieri brand sensory deprivation tank.  Enter the tank and be guaranteed of freedom from all things Guy, if only for a little while.

Ruff, Ruff!! I'm Hop Hound the rockin' dog!

It’s difficult to know what to expect when macro-brewers endeavor to create a craft beer.  Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.  As for the effort, I like to think that even though the idea sprang from a whorish money grabbing attempt by the marketing department, those who actually get to brew the beer relish the opportunity to construct a legitimate, quality beverage.

Hop Hound Amber Wheat, from our old pals at Anheuser Busch/InBev, fills the entire spectrum of poor marketing and decent craftsmanship.  Has anyone seen an ad for Hop Hound?  If you have, please clue me in.  And why not blitz the airwaves with advertising for Hop Hound, I mean, there’s a freaking dog on the label!  The possibilities are endless.  Never mind that the dog on Hop Hound looks like Poochie, the cartoon dog from The Simpsons that was used to make Itchy and Scratchy seem new and fresh, it’s still a dog!

I have to go now. My planet needs me...to sell beer!

The Hop Hound dog may not be totally in my face, but he’s got a modicum of attitude and style.  Besides, before he was jailed for statutory rape, sent to rehab and found Jesus, Spuds McKenzie proved that even a crack-addled canine can sell beer.

A sweatshirt? Really, Spuds? I know it was the 80's but come on...

As for the beer, Hop Hound isn’t bad at all.  Certainly not the disgrace that is Bud Light Golden Wheat.  Hop Hound, for starters, tastes like beer.  It has a decent amount of complexity to it.  Sort of a light, malty, wheat flavor with citrus undertones.  Not bad for a hot July 4th barbeque, certainly better than Bud Light, my other option.  I do wonder why a beer that has relatively little hoppiness (is that a word?) calls itself Hop Hound.  Maybe to a dog it is hoppy, but I digress.  The fact that it falls short of Costco’s Kirkland Signature Amber Ale is perhaps a question of taste.  I have no doubt that there will be those who really like Hop Hound, and kudos to them.  Personally, I don’t see myself buying it again but who knows, like I said it had some things going for it.  I just can’t help but feel that it lacked soul.  Maybe it was the dog.  Maybe there is a degree of prejudice because this is the same conglomeration that created Bud Light Golden Wheat. 

I will say that I am now interested to try Michelob’s Shock Top, their take on a Belgian white.  Hop Hound is good enough to give me a little hope.  If I do try it, you will be the first to know.  Not literally.  The person who sells me the beer will know, and so will my wife, and maybe a friend or two.  But rest assured dear readers, you will be no more than fifth or sixth on the list…

On a side note, how come there are never any cats on beer bottles?  And I don’t mean tigers or lions or leopards or ocelots or any other near relation.  I mean a domestic house cat.  As the owner of two cats, I can assure you that they can party with the best of them.  I’m throwing down the gauntlet, beer makers, I want a cat on my beer bottle by the end of the year.  I can see it now, Founders Ferocious Feline IPA.  Make it happen.

The Hamburglar.  Part corporate invention, part hard core thief, this Prometheus of the picnic has been an enigma since he first burst onto the scene with McDonald’s.  His hamburger thievery is the stuff of legends, something we will not see the likes of again.  He brazenly stole a hamburger from the Yakuza.  He pilfered a patty from the Pope.  He even stole a burger from a kid in Reno, “just to watch him cry.”  The self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Beef” was at the top of the food chain, as it were, in the 80s, and his cocaine-fueled binges of burglary have come to symbolize Reagan-era material excess.  After his break from McDonald’s, Hamburglar sadly went afoul of the law once too often, and was sentenced to seven years in San Quentin for stealing a hamburger out of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Humvee.  He granted EP a rare interview request, and I caught up with him last month.

Hamburglar love from the fans

EP:  How did you get started in the business of stealing hamburgers?

Hamburglar:  I wish I had some great reason why, but it just kind of happened.  I was 13 years old, pretending to be Zorro and was wearing this mask.  Well, I forgot to take it off when I went to McDonald’s for lunch and the lady at the counter thought I was robbing her.  She just gave me five Quarter Pounder’s.  After that I was hooked. 

EP:  Didn’t you ever get caught?

Hamburglar:  Yeah, but mostly people thought it was funny and ‘cause I was a kid they let me off easy. 

EP:  When did you begin your formal association with McDonald’s?

Hamburglar:  I was 16 years old and snuck into a local McD’s and swiped two Big Macs.  I got violently ill and had to go to the hospital, presumably from food poisoning.  Some lawyer from McDonald’s told me if I didn’t sue they would sign me to a contract and employ me with some other characters.  And so, it began.  Joke was on them;  I later realized I got sick from huffing rubber cement, but was so f’d up I didn’t remember. 

EP:  What was it like working with the other characters?

Hamburglar:  At first we were tight.  Grimace was hilarious, after a day of shooting commercials and we would head straight to the nearest nightclub.  He’d order Hennessey and yell “Big Poppa is in the house!!!!!” whenever we arrived.  After a couple years of doing this, Notorious B.I.G. came out with the song, “Big Poppa.”  Grimace loved it.  Said he got laid more after that song came out than all the years before combined.  He made McDonald’s give Biggie free Big Macs whenever he wanted.  They were even working on a project together before Biggie’s tragic death.  Ronald McDonald was another story.  We all hated him and called him Ronald McDouchebag.  Also, the mother fucker was a vegetarian, which is one of McDonald’s great secrets.  We’d all be eating Quarter-Pounders and fries and there he would be, sitting in a corner eating tofu wrapped in lettuce.  Also, between takes he’d sit around smoking weed and saying shit like, “I wonder if the girl from Wendy’s is real.  I dig redheads.”  We once saw him staring into a mirror for 30 minutes, he kept saying, “Dude, I look like a clown.”

EP:  How rampant was the drug use?

Hamburglar:  It was wild, man.  We never let it affect our work, though.  When the cameras were on, we were all business.

EP:  When did you break from McDonalds?

Hamburglar:  It was about 10 years ago.  Turns out some corporate jackass decided it was a bad idea to encourage hamburger thievery.  So they came up with this brilliant idea to make me a vegetarian and use that to market their new McVegetarian Crap Burger.   I told them to fuck themselves and left.  I do miss having their lawyers cover for me. (laughs)

EP:  And after you left McDonald’s you kept on stealing.

Hamburglar:  Of course.  By then it was in my blood.  My new goal was to steal a burger from every decent burger joint in these here United States.  I did pretty well with it, even went into action in Japan when I stole a Kobe beef burger in Kyoto.  Turns out it was from a big time Yakuza boss.  I was lucky as hell to get out of Japan alive.

EP:  Tell me about your biggest hamburger heist.

Hamburglar:  That has to be the 2003 raid of the In and Out Burger in LA near Magic Mountain.  It all started when George Clooney, Bernie Mac, Matt Damon and I were jonesin’ for In and Out Burger at 3 AM.  Of course they were closed, but we drew up this crazy-ass plan to disable the alarm system and break in.  It was easy, man, we cooked up and chowed down 20 burgers between the four of us.  We barely got out in time, and the best part of the story is that the whole thing got pinned on Mel Gibson.

EP:  Didn’t you steal a burger from Bobby Flay once?

Hamburglar:  (Laughs) Hell yes I did!  Ivanka Trump and I were eating at this pretentious $14 burger joint with cloth napkins in New York, when I hear this obnoxious jackass (Flay) preening about how the chipotle mayo they used on his burger sucked and that his was soooooo much better.  Well, I thought to myself, if you don’t like the burger then I’m going to steal it from you, dickwad.  So I ditched Ivanka, who hates me now, snuck over to his table, snatched the burger and took off faster than Usain Bolt.  The worst part was that once I was safely out of range, I noticed that he (Flay) had taken a couple of bites out of the burger and it grossed me out.  I gave it to some homeless guy. 

EP:  Did he like the chipotle mayo? 

Hamburglar:  He did.  He said it was a “revelation.”

EP:  Have you ever tried to steal someone’s hamburger while you’ve been in prison?

Hamburglar:  No way.  Someone’s liable to stick you for that.  Besides, the crap they serve in here isn’t worth stealing.

EP:  What happens when you get out, will you be able to refrain from stealing hamburgers?

Hamburglar:  Sure.  I’m past those days now, not worth ending up back in the joint.  When I get out, I’m supposed to be in a reality show called “Steal my Heart” where 15 women vie for my affection.  Ryan Seacrest set the whole thing up, mostly to keep me silent because I know what his one sick fetish is.  It was either that or host a game show, which is pretty freaking stupid if you ask me.  Besides, if Snoop Dogg can quit smoking weed, I can surely quit stealing hamburgers.

Follow Ryan to the LA aquarium

I left him at the prison after a few more minutes of conversation.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him Snoop was smoking weed again.  As I watched him led back to his cell, I couldn’t help but feel we as society had discarded him after he outlived his usefulness, as much a victim of corporate malfeasance and globalization as an itinerant farmer in Zambia.  I stopped at In and Out Burger on the way home and realized that none of us are made of stone.  It could have been any one of us who turned into a hamburger plundering criminal.  I hope he gets out without getting a shank in the kidney.  I hope his reality show is a success, and that none of us EVER find out what Ryan Seacrest’s one sick fetish is, I hope he can see his friends again.  I hope…

Don’t you wish you still felt this way about spaghetti?  Is that cowboy-cheeseman about to rope and brand this boy like a steer?  What type of hallucinogenics are in this boy’s dinner milk?

Ugh…as if this wasn’t bad enough, our spies have uncovered another Food Network Movie Project.

Executive Producer Jerry Bruckheimer 

and 

FN Films presents: 

un film de Jean-Pierre Jeunet 

Tom Cruise as Bobby Flay 

and 

Nicole Kidman as Sandra Lee 

in 

Mouths Wide Open 

Are you ready for a couch jumping Throwdown?

Also Starring: 

Jeff Daniels as Alton Brown

Daniel Day-Lewis as Emeril Lagasse

I'm going to teach you to julienne carrots with this knife!!!!

 Courtney Cox as Rachael Ray

Jessica Simpson as Giada De Laurentiis

The Rock as Robert Irvine

Tyler Perry as Paula Deen

Ice Cube as Pat Neely

Regina Hall as Gina Neely

Jason Bateman as Tyler Florence

Bart Simpson as Guy Fieri

That burrito is on point, man.

 

Queen Latifah as Sunny Anderson

Ewan McGregor as Ted Allen

Azrael the Cat as Alex Guarnaschelli 

Azrael the Cat as Alex Guarnaschelli and Gargamel as Aaron Sanchez

Robert DeNiro as Mario Batali

Piper Perabo as Kat Cora 

Piper Perabo as Iron Chef Cora

Samuel L. Jackson as Aaron McCargo Jr.

Tina Fey as Robin Miller

Guy Fieri as Anne Burrell

Zooey Deschanel as Aida Mollenkamp 

500 Days of Aida

With:

Colin Firth as Gordon Ramsay

Seth Rogan as Adam Richman

And

George Clooney as Anthony Bourdain

Editor’s Note:  We have been notified that Bart Simpson has refused to portray Guy Fieri.  Mr. Simpson was quoted as saying “I don’t want to play some lame-ass game show host, man.  I have standards.”  The role of Guy Fieri will now be played by Samuel L. Jackson, who will play multiple roles a la Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove.  

Mmmmm....now that burger is money.

Editor’s Second Note:  Daniel Day-Lewis’ routine of character immersion and method acting has led to his retirement (again) from making movies.  Mr. Day-Lewis now owns and operates his own restaurant, “The Last of the Crustaceans” in Lake Charles, Louisiana where he currently resides.

I abandoned my career!!!

 Editor’s Third (and final) Note:  We have been notified that Samuel L. Jackson has left the project and refuses to portray Guy Fieri.  He was last heard storming off the set while yelling “I want these motherfucking sunglasses, off the back of my motherfucking head!”  The role of Aaron McCargo Jr. will now be played by Curtis (50 Cent) Jackson and the role of Guy Fieri will be played by Corey Feldman.

Corey Feldman as Guy Fieri

Way to go University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill! The following invitation is fantastic:

Come one, come all! 'Learn' about the Ocean Deep and Jungles and um...stuff.

Let me get this straight. The school is putting on a screening of the Ocean Deep and Jungles episodes of Planet Earth, while serving ‘lots of free food’…on 4/20. This is either the brainchild of a former-stoner student activities staffer or the oversight of the century. Either way, well done!  Go Heels!

This week should have been a typical week.  Take my son to kindergarten.  Play with my daughter.  Make dinner for family.  Wrap dead fish in newspaper and mail to Food Network.

Wait, ok, that last part is somewhat atypical.  While, like most people, I do mail the occasional dead fish to someone who has grieved me in some way, this would mark only the second time I have sent one to the Food Network.  I really don’t want to get into the first time, as there was some, shall we say, unpleasantness.  Let me just tell you that if you are going to send a dead fish to Sandra Lee, do not include your return address.  Amateur mistake.

It wasn't me Sandra, I swear. It was Rahm Emmanuel!

You see, every afternoon at 3:30 after I pick my son up from school, I like to turn on FN just to see what Tyler Florence is making.  Sometimes I turn it right off, but every now and then he has a great menu on his show, Tyler’s Ultimate.  One nice thing about FN (and believe me, other than Alton Brown, there probably is only one other nice thing) is that it is age appropriate programming.  The only time FN is inappropriate is for 12-14 year old males during Everyday Italian.

So what did our clueless amigos at FN do?  They moved him to 11am (dead zone time) to occupy Michael Chiarello’s old time slot.  As a side note, I always liked Easy Entertaining, it was like spending part of the morning in Napa, and Mike is a pretty damn good chef. 

You'd be this happy too if you lived in Napa, had a basket of wine and were leaving Food Network

I know what you are saying.  Hardly reason to send a dead fish, right.  True.  Read on…

Guess who is on at 3:30 now?  I won’t keep you in suspense, it is Anne Burrell.  You are either saying who the fuck is that, or throwing up in your mouth.  Who likes her?  Anyone?  Perhaps there is an Anne Burrell fan club out there ready to attack me like the Guy Fieri mafia.  I doubt it.  Her show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef  is, to put it simply, awful.  I know Tyler Florence isn’t exactly Mr. Excitement but at least he was watchable.

It gets better.  What genius thought it was a good idea to put Anne on right after Guy’s Big Bite?  Not only are you cramming two of the worst personalities FN has to offer into the same hour, but are you oblivious to the fact that they look almost exactly alike?  I expect there will be a lot of confused soccer moms.  I’m tired of FN propping up utterly loathsome personalities.  From Guy Fieri, to Anne Burrell, to Alex Guarnaschelli, it just keeps getting worse and worse.

Anne Burrell

Guy Fieri, sans glasses

As it stands now, aside from EPIE research, my FN viewing is down to Good Eats and sometimes Chopped.  The day Alton Brown leaves will be the end of the line for me and Food Network.

So…they get a dead fish.  Oh yeah, and also because the show The Best Thing I Ever Ate is self-indulgent garbage. 

The best part of this story is that I threw in a bottle of ancho chili powder along with the fish, hoping to entice Bobby Flay to be a big show off and try to cook it.  Joke is on him, I let that thing sit in the sun for three days; it has more bacteria in it than all of Tiger Woods’ mistresses combined.

Come to think of it, I just thought of a helpful way to help El Tigre defeat his sex addiction problem.  Carry a picture of Anne Burrell around with you at ALL TIMES.  That’ll keep your driver in the bag.

(OK, that was really mean, even for me.  If I ever meet Anne Burrell she has permission to punch me.)