As you probably know, the Chef is currently in the process of making tenuous plans regarding matrimony. If you didn’t know, then you’re probably thinking “Big fucking whoop – some guy on the internet that I don’t know is getting hitched. Now where’s the porn?”
Sadly, there is no porn here, as the Maitre d’ won’t allow such things on the Buffet. It’s just as well, since the health inspector frowns on mixing sex with food, as you usually end up with more protein and sausage than you bargained for. And of course, the Maitre d’ will be happy that I neglected to mention his addiction to porn. The kind of porn with tentacles. He likes tentacle porn. But I didn’t mention that.
The Maitre d’s taste in porn aside, the Chef and his future Queen of Darkness (I suppose she wouldn’t mind me using that title for her) have begun to make some plans. While we were discussing it, the question of the worst way possible of having a wedding came up.
As you may or may not have realized by now, the Chef and his scaly cohorts live in the eastern chunk of Tennessee. Around here, we have what is known as “The White Trash Las Vegas”, otherwise known as the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area of Sevier County. Proof that you can indeed turn a couple of hillbilly towns in the middle of the wilderness into a tourist trap, Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are home to, among other things, shops selling cheap imported Chinese-made knives with lead paint, bakeries with purportedly “homemade” fudge coming from factories someplace in Kansas, the Ripley’s museum and freak show, the trailer park Mecca of Dollywood, and of course the subject of this entire article, a drive-thru wedding chapel.
Let me put this picture in your head: a young couple eloping, leaving their parents out of the loop, and getting married at a drive-thru wedding chapel in the middle of the hills and tourist attractions. The only way this could scream “white trash” any louder is if the minister was also an Elvis impersonator (which is a must).
Actually, wait. Let’s see if we can ramp up the “white trash” factor a little bit…in order to have the most white trash wedding in the history of mankind, we have to do better than a mere pompadoured white-sequined minister standing beside the drive-thru asking “Would you like fries with your matrimony?”. In the first place, I’d have to get one of those t-shirts with the tuxedo front printed on it. You know the kind; they went out in the 80s, but mark my words, they will return one day in all their hideous screen-printed glory. I’d also have to leave off shaving for a couple of days, which isn’t really too much of a problem since I usually have some none-too-reputable-looking stubble anyway. I’d also have to grow a mullet (which yes, I did have at one time), or better yet, a skullet. Skullets rule the roost of white-trash hairstyles, at least as far as men go. Topping off the entire ensemble would be a pair of ripped jeans and genuine snakeskin cowboy boots. A Red Man baseball cap is optional.
Then there would of course be the question of the bride’s attire. The future Bride of the Chef would, in good trailer park style, be required to wear a tube top, preferably in black with some witty phrase like “Got Milk?” on it. For her hair, there’s no topping the eminent beehive made famous by Priscilla Presley (before her horrible face-lift accident involving pressing her cheeks on a hot skillet).
The one hitch is that, were this a real honest-for-true white trash wedding, she should be my sister and/or cousin. As the future Mrs. Chef will no dout tell you, she is neither of those, which somewhat puts a damper on my backwoods enthusiasm for this whole affair. After all, if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right. You just can’t have a true white trash wedding without siblings getting hitched.
Oh, well. And I already had my t-shirt picked out.
The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.
When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.
Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".
His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.
When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.
After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.
Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).
Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.
Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.
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