OUR WORLD:
I want to be friends with Guy Fieri. He’s Queen meets Limp Bizkit meets the best cheeseburger you had when you were 13. His bleached blonde spikes and thin goatee WORK, and if you don’t smirk while nodding your head whenever he talks about a dish being “out of bounds”, then maybe you’re the reason you and your father haven’t spoken in years. I would like to formally welcome you to jimmyschair Reality TV Show Hall of Fame Introduction for Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”.
It’s really fun to fall in love with someone who is easily made fun of, but has enough self-confidence to turn the joke around; like putting the sun in front of a mirror. How can a guy wearing pant-shorts, sunglasses with flames on the sides and gaudy bracelets make an old lady in a Nebraska diner blush? My favorite grandmother (we all have one, right?) would have been play-dough in Guy’s hand. I can almost hear her denying that she thought he was cute…when she TOTALLY did. What hipster can do that? I’ll wait…(I’m seriously trying to think of a counterpoint, and all I’ve got is Jeff Goldblum? Maybe? Nah.) No hipster can do that because Guy is the good-times party boy we all secretly want to be friends with.
Not everything is as ironic as we’d like to make it out to be in hindsight. Sometimes, a greasy cheeseburger at a place with torn booths just tastes fucking good. Much the way that sometimes a bowling shirt featuring bedazzled skulls is just fucking badass. Ignoring the cool-kid crowd and talking about the unimpressive things we love is what this show is about, and Guy is the embodiment of an unimpressive thing we love. What’s revolutionary about some dude in a muscle car throwing up the “rock on” sign? NOTHING! But you like it because how do you hate a guy who just wants to show you a ROCKIN’ good time?
How much do you love trying to decipher Guy’s facial expressions? Like, he’s never going to come out and said to a chef “Bro, that sandwich sucked!” But, when he doesn’t shoot the camera one of those “you cannot be serious with how good this is”-stares, you know he kinda’ doesn’t like it that much. He’s too nice of a dude to spit something out, so he’ll normally kinda nod his head while darting his eyes in a panic of trying to invent something nice to say about the shitty bite in his mouth. Normally, he’ll bail and go with the all-too-obvious “that’s very interesting” copout. (In Guy-talk, “that’s very interesting” means that you should shut your dump down because that bite was GARB!)
On the other hand, when he REALLY likes a bite, he is so expressive that you feel like you’re getting to enjoy it through your TV. This face, the “you cannot be serious how good this is”-stare, is what makes the show:
Full disclosure, I have absolutely stolen this face in my life. Whenever I take a bite of something awesome, I make this face now. Restaurant owners should keep an eye on their customers, and if they’re not seeing any of these faces being made, then maybe it’s time to find a new chef.
How excited do you get when you see him take a bite and drop this face, though? MOM! HE REALLY LIKES THIS PLACE THAT WE’VE NEVER BEEN TO AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL GO TO BUT IF WE DO WE’RE PROBABLY GONNA LIKE IT CUZ HE MADE THE FACE! If you run a restaurant that Guy has been to and made this face in, you need to immediately change the name of your place to “Guy Made This Face Here” with that picture next to it. Tell me you’re driving past that restaurant without stopping and I’ll tell you that you’re a goddamn stupid idiot who makes poor decisions in every aspect of your goddamn stupid idiot life! DAMNIT!
I bet he does cocaine too and, earmuffs kids, but that makes me think he’s even cooler. Like, you know those episodes when he’s really vibing with the chef? They’re fist-bumping, and throwing food puns back and forth, and Guy keeps slapping him on the back and saying how everything is “out of bounds”? You know that when the film crew takes five, Guy is nudging that chef to look down at his open palm featuring a tiny bag of white. Guy’s producers know what’s about to happen, but they pretend like they don’t see Guy direct his new best friend to the bathroom. Cut to 3 minutes later and all EVERYONE in the entire restaurant can hear is Guy and the chef alternating between giggling, snorting and high-fiving. The best part has to be when they emerge from the bathroom, a little too close to one another, sniffling and asking everyone around them “What?!”
After he parties with the chef in back, comes the part of the show where Guy turns into a journalist and interviews actual customers. ALL of the customers say pretty much the same thing “it’s just so fresh!” but it’s okay because it allows you to focus on your fantasy about what a Guy Fieri cologne would smell like. There’s always some foodie trying too hard to sound like an impressed critic, and you can feel Guy having to restrain himself from stuffing him in a locker. Then there’s the fat dude at the bar that Guy is super excited to watch eat and exchange face-stuffing tips with. Hey! He loves all shapes except skinny and that makes me feel great about myself! Take notice: they never show a super hot customer in these restaurants. It’s only the Betty-Ann’s and Larry’s of the world. Guts and bad haircuts.
By the time “Triple D” is over you have no idea what you just watched, but you’re super hungry and contemplating whether you could pull off flame sunglasses (not as a joke!) “Triple D” is a half-hour of Guy getting to be himself; takin’ big boy bites, throwin’ bones with his bros, not being snarky, and doing cocaine with new friends in rooms without cameras. There are no bad-guys in Guy’s world, just people he hasn’t met yet.
Loyal readers, please welcome the second show to the jimmyschair Reality TV Show Hall of Fame: “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”.
MY WORLD:
I caught myself doing something extraordinarily lazy last night, and it got me thinking about the little lazy “cheat-codes” that I employ on a regular basis. Here’s what I’ve got:
-Leaving the fork I just used for my dinner on top of the leftovers I put in the fridge. This is the move I did last night. It’s an effort to put off washing said fork, but how ridiculous is that move when you have a dishwasher in your place?!?! I have a dishwasher in my place! Not only that, but we also have like a gajillion forks between all the silverware we got for wedding gifts (how about just a lifetime supply of plasticware next time?) But I still persist in trying to save myself the 3.6 seconds it would take for me to open the dishwasher, and put the dirty fork in the silverware compartment.
-Not throwing out socks or underwear with holes in them. No joke, over 30% of the underwear and socks I own, have a hole in them. I remember Jerry Seinfeld talking about how men don’t throw out underwear until they completely disintegrate and HE WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! Why? Because if I throw them out, then that means I’ll have to DO SOMETHING…as in, I’ll have to go shopping for underwear and socks. Could you think of anything more boring than that? I actually did go underwear shopping at Target (the place you can’t not spend $100) a few weeks back. But I went alone, and just stared at the 97 different brands of underwear hoping that The VP would magically show up to tell me what to buy. It’s a minor miracle I didn’t just end up buying a hammer and calling it a day.
-Wearing the same pants for months at a time. I legitimately don’t know how often, if ever, I’m supposed to wash my jeans. I used to do it like once every two weeks when I’d do laundry, but then a friend told me that you’re not supposed to wash your jeans. (Ever get so happy over a seemingly-innocuous comment that you get kinda flush? That was me when I heard this. I needed a tissue.) Top 5 adult revelations definitely includes the time my friend told me you’re not supposed to wash your jeans. That means, I’m not being lazy, I’m just preserving the integrity of my denim. SCORE! Right?
-Turning my driver’s side car-door storage compartment into a garbage can that only gets emptied when I open my door on a windy day. Do I need to explain that? If you smash wrappers on top of wrappers, you can fit at least 10 thousand in that compartment.
-Leaving junk mail in my mailbox instead of taking it upstairs and throwing it in the garbage. I repeat this routine until that day I open my mailbox and the letters are so smashed that they’re getting stuck in the neighboring box. I’ll get annoyed in my head with the mailman, like “hey dude, take a hint, I’m not taking the loan-consolidation letters upstairs.” Don’t tell me that you’ve never opened your mailbox, looked through a bunch of lame credit card offers and bills you have on autopay, and then just closed your mailbox hoping those would…just go away on their own.
LETS LIKE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
Even the spoof-version of Guy is a dude I wanna be friends with.
LETS HATE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
This is Jeff “The Sandwich King” Mauro. Another Food Network star who doesn’t belong on the same planet as Guy Fieri. This dude makes me angry with how big of a DOOF he is. Go away forever and never come back.
MY BOVADA PICK OF THE DAY THAT I AM GENUINELY CONFIDENT IN BECAUSE I DESERVE GOOD THINGS TO HAPPEN TO ME AFTER GETTING REAR-ENDED BY A GUY WITHOUT A LICENSE:
Well, the Celtics got pounded so I’m going to need to make another fucking deposit. Here’s the thing: I was feeling really sorry for myself watching that Celtics debacle. BUT! If I had won that, then I definitely wouldn’t have won any of my Masters bets because the gambling gods would’ve been like “well, you just won.” Now, since I’ve been a massive LOSER since football season ended, the gambling gods have got to be thinking about rewarding my patience. Hey, Gambling Gods, time to throw me a frickin’ bone here. My Masters picks (for now): Tiger Woods, Justin Rose, Alex Noren, Thomas Pieters, Charl Schwartzel.
(My account currently at $1.02)
K bye.
Jimmy's Chair 