Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice

And We'll Split the Strawberry Parfait in a Craftsman Tool Chest

Mr. Irresponsible was forced to spend some time in San Diego, CA this weekend, a town that experienced travel writers have dubbed "Paterson with hills." While there I heard about a mid-priced seafood restaurant called "Rockin' Baja Lobster," a name that so clearly bears the stamp of overzealous focus-group testing that the place might as well have been called "This Restaurant Was Named By a Focus Group." The trademark of Rockin' Baja Lobster -- well, besides the apostrophe that says "This Baja lobster's fun, it's now, it's got zazz, baby!" -- is, and I am not making this up, a selection of seafood entrees that are served in buckets. Yes, buckets. Like you mix paint in. I don't know precisely how the gimmick is effected, because I was too busy rubbing my eyes in disbelief; I mean, do they ceremoniously bear the bucket to your table and dump the contents in your lap, or do they give you a small hand shovel and instruct you to dig for your supper or what?

This may be overbranding at its silliest, which is saying something. At that, though, the people-pleasing folks behind Rockin' Baja Lobster (whom I imagine to be a faceless multinational with ties to the Saudis and a name like "EvilCo LLC") are only riding the latest wave in food service, which is to deliver you your entrees in something approximating the shape of Oddjob's hat. Denny's has just started promoting an appalling variety of bowl-based offerings (you can see them here, but don't say you weren't warned -- the Ham & Swiss Bowl looks like something your puppy did), and KFC has been all over the NBA playoffs promoting a glutinous construction of mashed potatoes, corn, fried chicken bits, gravy and cheese, served in -- yes! say it with me! -- a bowl. As far as Mr. Irresponsible can see, this is one more bit of proof that America's laziness is reaching near-pandemic levels. When did eating food off plates become too much trouble? Did somebody say "You know, using a knife and fork to push my food together into a series of mouth-sized portions... darn it, it's too much work! If only there were some sort of conveyance in which my food would just sort of slide together by gravity"? Have we all lost our minds? Or are we just too shiftless to live?

Either way, I know what my next move is. I'm having all my food served to me on plates, beautiful china plates that are as unbendingly flat across the middle as America herself, and that includes soups and coffee. I may end up with lunch in my lap, but I'll still have my pride.

And We've Got Luckies on Draft

Mr. Irresponsible isn't in the habit of doling out compliments, as I believe they tend to make us logy and complacent. Still, there are exceptions. For example, I would very much like to shake the hand of the person who coined the word "logy." Man, that's a great word. And I'd give anything to meet the fine folks at Germany's impressively-named Nautilus GmbH Laboratoriumsbedar, the marketing geniuses behind nicotine-infused beer. The press release is a little hard to decipher, either because it wasn't drafted by English speakers or because the writer had been ducking into the test lab. But as far I can figure, the company and its US partners seem to be positioning NicoShot, each sixer of which contains the nicotine load of about two packs of filtered cigarettes, as "the world's first smoking-cessation beer." (This places it on a par with Lone Star, which I believe to be the first beer engineered to get people to stop drinking beer.)  There's a nice euphony to the phrase "world's first smoking-cessation beer," but it pales next to the magnificence of what follows: "NicoShot is cigarette satisfaction in a beer without the smoke." Can't you see that on a billboard?

Even taking into account the awe-inspiring inventiveness of the idea that you can wean yourself off smokes by drinking beer, the release isn't all gold. It has the usual weaselly, lawyer-parsed quibbling:

While NicoShot can lessen cravings, it is not a 'cure' for smoking. But it can help you make changes in your lifestyle without having to walk out of the bar for a quick smoke to deal with sudden withdrawal symptoms. Over time, when you are more comfortable being a nonsmoker, the use of nicotine beer can be reduced and then stopped.

"Stopped"? Are they nuts? Or, as they say around the break room at Nautilus GmbH Laboratoriumsbedar, verrückt? NicoShot is rich with malty greatness, if only for the time it promises to save us all. Think of it: How many precious seconds have you wasted fumbling for a smoke when you could have been drinking? Or, conversely, hoisting a beer mug when you could have been smoking? My own research indicates that for the average barfly, the figure is upwards of eleven hours per year -- hours that could potentially be devoted to the brisk, time-efficient practice of what we will now call "smoke-drinking," or simply "sminking™." And with the time thus saved, one might conceivably volunteer in one's community, brush up on a foreign language, whittle away at those pesky household chores, or simply better oneself by reading or studying the arts. I'm telling you, NicoShot is an absolute boon to mankind. The only potential wrinkle: Anybody who actually drinks the stuff seems likely to end up in a beer-and-nicotine haze so profound as to make the late Hunter S. Thompson look like Barney Fife.  But can't I dream? Shouldn't I dream? And when I awake, as we all must, somebody do me a favor: Get me a NicoShot. I've got me some sminking™ to do.