KFC

123 Everywhere Street
Everywhere, USA
1-800- KFC-SUXS

I have never understood Kentucky Fried Chicken. That’s because I could never understand why ANYONE would go there, given the existence of POPEYE’S. Let me tell you something about fried chicken: KFC sucks. Popeye’s rules the world with a spicy crispy iron fist. In fact, Popeye’s doesn’t just rule; its dominance of fried chicken and everything else in the world goes far beyond that. No, fuck that. Fuck what I just said about Popeye’s ruling everything in the world: Popeye’s rules everything in the UNIVERSE. This universe and EVERY OTHER UNIVERSE.

A funny thing about the universe: cosmologists think the universe is donut shaped (some of them, anyway. They can’t agree on the shape of the universe because cosmologists love to argue about shit because they’re a bunch of persnickety autistic tardos). So if the universe is donut- shaped, then what’s in its hole? No, it’s not God’s cock. Even better than that: it’s POPEYE’S. Popeye’s is clearly the best chicken in the known universe. It’s not just a fast food restaurant; it’s the axis upon which all of existence rotates.

Popeye’s dominance is, of course, why KFC is giving away chicken. Popeye’s doesn’t give away chicken because they don’t have to. KFC, on the other hand, is giving away free dinners featuring its new GRILLED CHICKEN. On the surface it seems like a great deal: 2 pieces of chicken, a biscuit, and 2 sides for FREE. Yet as we all know, things aren’t always what they seem: the “free IQ test” the guy in Los Angeles offered me was really a Scientology indoctrination seminar, and the “midget” hooker I called was really just a crackhead who put a pair of shoes on her knees and crawled around a la Tim Conway.

Still, I’m a sucker for free stuff so I dutifully printed my free Oprah coupon (more on Oprah later- don’t you worry about her) and headed down to my local KFC. Like I said, the coupon entitled you to two sides. There were two of us, and I had two coupons, so we chose 4 sides: fries, baked beans, and 2 copies of mac & cheese. We wanted a mashed potato, but there was a mix up in the drive- thru and so we ended up with double mac & cheese. Would that substitution be good luck? Stay tuned and find out!

Ah, fuck it. I hate keeping people in suspense, so I’ll just tell you now that the mac & cheese sucked. It was a violent orange color, and the macaroni had the waxy plastic texture of one of those PVC kiddie pools you can buy from Rite- Aid in the summertime that come with their own patch kit. It smelled vaguely metallic, and those of us brave enough to actually EAT the shit were rewarded with a hollow aluminum aftertaste. Basically, the mac & cheese was an insult to ALL the senses. It even SOUNDED gross: chewing it made the disturbing slurpy smacking sounds that a foley artist could use to simulate the sounds of two obese people 69’ing.

The fries, by contrast, weren’t actually that bad. They were of the “jo-jo” variety, thick cut wedges big enough to paddle a canoe with. The batter coating the jo-jo’s was light and crisp, and the potato flesh beneath was quite fluffy. Of course, I would expect no less from a place that has “Fried” in its very title! If they can’t at least make an okay French fry, then God help them. God help them, my friends.

The baked beans weren’t that great, but they weren’t terrible: too syrupy and cloying for sure, with no vinegar or mustard or ANY sour note to counter the treacly morass. The beans were mealy but otherwise inoffensive, I guess. These were the kind of baked beans grade- school cafeterias buy in gigantic cans, beans that slop all over the place everywhere and have no panache. The juice was slimy enough to use as some kind of lube, but that’s about it.

The biscuit was similarly lame. The main problem with the biscuit was that it threw into harsh relief the relative shitiness of KFC compared to Popeye’s. Popeye’s biscuits are the very Platonic ideal of pure biscuity perfection: light, flaky pastries that drip butter (or at least artificial butter flavoring) from every crumb. Popeye’s biscuits are the biscuits of Heaven’s very angels! Popeye’s biscuits are the food of the gods (and my dogs, when I’m not watching the counter). The KFC biscuit, by contrast, was dry, flavorless, and basically seemed like the kind of thing Irish immigrants eat while they’re waiting in line at Ellis Island.

I’ve put off describing the chicken itself both because I’m building up to it and because I don’t want to have to uncover the repressed memories. In fact, I’d rather be gang- raped by Satanists than eat KFC’s grilled chicken again. Did I really type “gang- raped by Satanists?” Sure I did; that’s just a normal Tuesday night. But KFC is an abomination. We got 2 thighs and 2 drumsticks. I would normally consider this to be a good omen because I love the dark meat. But of course KFC proved me wrong once again. The chicken had a glistening orange- brown skin complete with three perfectly sculpted “grill marks” that looked like they’d been designed by Roy Lichtenstein or Jasper Johns. In fact, the grill marks were so eerily precise, they could’ve been scored by a laser. Because this is what we as a society have developed lasers for: removing hair and tattoos, trying unsuccessfully to burn the paint job on a car that’s been recently treated with wax you can buy from an infomercial, and carving industrially manicured grill marks into shitty chicken.

But trust me, the grill marks weren’t the worst aspect of this meal. The skin was too thin and fibrous and tore into gummy threads like Saran Wrap that’s been microwaved too long. The meat was bland (unlike the mighty Popeye’s, KFC has no “spicy” option), and so greasy that Haliburton has a no- bid contract to mine it. And in case you think it’s odd that I’d make such a boring attempt at dated humor, then you can blame the chicken on that too: all the cholesterol in that chicken just gave me a stroke and so now all I can do is make jokes like a Jay Leno staff writer. That, and the stroke let me smell sounds, too. Somehow the “healthy” grilled chicken had more grease in it than ANY fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. How the hell is it possible?

Anyway, as usual the marketplace will undoubtedly refute my assessment of KFC’s piss- poor chicken. That’s because KFC now has the backing of OPRAH, the Hierophant of Mediocrity. I understand Oprah’s appeal even less than KFC’s. Before you complain about how I must hate Oprah because I fear powerful women, you should know that I would let Martha Stewart do whatever the fuck she wanted to do to me, provided that afterwards she could tell me how to get wine stains out of a rug and make a quick pie crust. Martha Stewart at least has an aesthetic. My problem with Oprah is that she has NO aesthetic: she seems to arbitrarily pick random things to fixate her retarded schmaltzy vision upon. Like KFC. Or Ezell’s, her local fave. I’ve got news for you, Oprah Winfrey: in my ancient homeland of Louisiana you can walk into any convenience store (south of Interstate 10, of course: only Protestant douchetards with no Joie de vivre live up north) and get chicken that’s effortlessly just as good as Ezell’s. Her book club is also suspect, in my eyes: how can you group a masterpiece of black despair like Night with the boring barroom tall tales in A Million Little Pieces? The very POINT of choosing things for dumb people to enjoy is that you’ll choose GOOD stuff. If you’re polluting your own choices with crap like The Secret, then what good are you? You may as well flip a coin when deciding which aspect of pop culture you’ll choose to enjoy! I can’t stand the whims of pure chance!

If Oprah wants to buy everyone in the USA free food, might I suggest something that tastes AWESOME, instead of ANAL RAPE CHICKEN?

Rating: 1 arbitrarily selected recipient of largess out of 10

PS I don’t usually post photos of food but here’s one I took of my meal. Please note that the meal DIDN’T actually come with a salad of arugula and shaved Reggiano with a balsamic vinaigrette and finished with Fleur de Sel de Camargue; I prepared that myself because my aorta threatened to tear itself out of my heart and squeeze itself out of my asshole if I didn’t eat something green. Note the perfectly parallel artificial grill marks on the thigh.





UPDATE 5/12/09: Complaining about Oprah, continued.

I wasn't done complaining about Oprah when I finally got too tired to keep writing last night, so here's another thing that makes Oprah Winfrey super dumb: her use of the term "Va- Jay- Jay." We grownups call it a "cunt," Oprah. "Va- Jay- Jay" is the worst thing that's happened to female genitalia since those self- loathing homosexual African fucks became so terrified of pussy that they decided to start cutting off their daughters' clits. Do you want to keep the company of uncivilized hacks, Oprah Winfrey? I think not.