Food: A Love Story (35 page)

Take the picture so we can eat the cake.

If there was any doubt about the importance of cake, we need look no further than the milestones of our life. Cake is how life is celebrated. Birthdays, weddings, and retirements are honored with cake. Cake is a symbol for celebration. There is no replacement for cake at these events. Especially not pie. Pie, while delightful in its own way, can’t compete with cake. If you see candles in a cake, it’s someone’s birthday. If you see candles in a pie, someone is drunk in the kitchen. You never hear of a showgirl jumping out of a pie announcing, “Happy Birthday!” Jumping out of a pie would only make the showgirl look like she’s re-created the prom scene from the movie
Carrie
. “Take a shower, showgirl.” If someone is getting married, there is a wedding cake. If someone dies, you bring over a pie, because bringing a cake would be inappropriate. Cake is too celebratory. Cake is way more important than pie. There is a popular band named after cake.
Cake
is a term used for wealth. A sad song was even written about a cake that was left out in the rain. Pies, on the other hand, just seem disposable. Pies are thrown in clowns’ faces.

There are innumerable types of cake. Here I analyze some of the more important ones.

Birthday Cake:
Cake’s strongest association is with birthdays. Whether you are celebrating someone’s first or hundredth year alive, a birthday cake is usually presented to the honoree. Yet whenever you hear the “Happy Birthday” song, all you are really thinking is
Hey, I’m about to get some free cake!
While you sing the song you are mostly wondering what kind of cake it is. “Happy birthday to you.
Hope it’s chocolate for me!
” Birthday cakes typically have candles and writing on them, which is strange, because cake is the one food that needs no decoration or fanfare. A loaf of sugar bread smothered with a quart of icing has an appeal all on its own. How spoiled was the recipient of the first birthday cake?

MOM:
Happy birthday, son! Mommy made you a cake.

SON:
NOT GOOD ENOUGH! I WANT FIRE! I WANT MY NAME WRITTEN ON THERE! AND I WANT EVERYONE SINGING!

If I hold the kid, I get the first piece, right?

Rum Cake:
I guess rum cake makes sense. Who hasn’t been eating cake and thought,
You know what this needs? Booze. A shot of liquor. I don’t have time to eat cake and drink alcohol at the same time. I only have two hands and one of them is holding a cigarette.

Funnel Cake:
Just a giant French fry covered in powdered sugar.

Cupcakes:
It’s always been a mystery to me how I could simultaneously love cupcakes and hate cupcake shops. The prices are too high in cupcake shops. A cupcake at a cupcake shop is roughly the same price as an entire sheet cake in a grocery store. I guess I just hate what the cupcake shop represents. Cupcakes are designed for people who love cake but are not fans of sharing. “I want my
own
cake!” Cupcake shops are just clubhouses for selfish people. Okay, I guess I kind of like cupcake shops.

Cake Pops:
I understand there are plenty of fans of these stale-cake-balls-on-a-stick, but I’m convinced cake pops are an indication that the wheels have come off the bus of our culture. I’ll never forget the moment I first became aware of cake pops. I was standing in line at Starbucks and saw them. My first thought wasn’t
Oh cool, cake pops
. All I could think was
Wait, now we’re eating cake on a stick? Maybe we
are
the infidels!

Would you like a delicious reindeer?

Ice Cream Cakes:
I never really understood the appeal of an ice cream cake. They are so temporary. They just end up stressing me out. “Hurry up, we have to eat this thing before it melts.”

Cheesecake:
Did you ever encounter a day with perfect weather? You know, it’s not too hot, not too cold, but it has that perfect feeling? I feel that way about cheesecake. Cheese plus cake? Perfect. Cheesecake is a double positive. Cheesecake is like a food all-star. With cheesecake, you
can
have your cake and eat cheese too. There’s never a strike at the Cheesecake Factory.

Pound Cake:
It’s pretty impressive that a baker was confident enough to name a cake after one of the side effects of eating cake. “Should I have the pound cake or the seat belt extender cake?”

Flower Cake:
At some point those weirdos over at 1-800-Flowers created the “flower cake,” which is made completely of flowers. No, not frosting flowers. Real, live, inedible flowers. I’ve never received a flower cake, but I can only imagine the awkwardness that the flower cake has created for some relationships. How is receiving a flower cake supposed to be interpreted? “I got you a flower cake. You know, you could stand to lose some weight.”

Carrot Cake:
Cake is so powerful it can even make carrots appealing. This is accomplished in the form of carrot cake covered with cream cheese frosting. The best part of all? It doesn’t taste like carrots. That’s why instead of a salad, I normally just order a carrot cake.

Fruitcake:
The most disappointing “real” cake has to be fruitcake, which is rated one step above a urinal cake.
You’d think fruitcake would be better. It doesn’t add up. Fruit, good. Cake, great. Fruitcake, nasty crap. I don’t even think fruitcake is made with fruit. Whenever I’ve made the mistake of tasting fruitcake I always think,
Did I just bite into a Skittle? Or was it a thimble?
It seems the recipe for fruitcake is “anything but fruit.” It’s like the baker was cleaning off his counter: “Put all this crap in there.” I’m convinced nobody eats fruitcake. They just mail it to their relatives around Christmas. Rumor has it that there are only ten fruitcakes that keep getting regifted every December.

AIRPORTS: MY HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Being a stand-up comedian, I travel a lot. As a result I spend an enormous amount of time in airports. I could provide some details and specifics, but I don’t like to think about it too much. It’s depressing. Let’s just say I’m on a first-name basis with some TSA screeners at LaGuardia. If your job involves traveling, you understand. It’s too exhausting. If you are a businessperson who travels out of town even once a month, it’s too much. If you don’t travel for a living, you probably think I’m being a baby. “Oh, poor Jim! He has to take a two-hour flight from New York to Chicago. Let’s build him a statue where he’s holding a rattle.” The mistake in this logic is that the length of a flight is usually how we measure the time of air travel. “It’s only a two-hour flight! That’s not bad.” This doesn’t factor in the time it takes to get to and from the airport. For example, the Denver Airport, for some reason, is in Missouri. Additionally, the airlines want you at the airport hours before your flight. “Your flight is in two days? You should go to the airport now.” Add in packing, going through security, flight delays, and picking
up checked luggage—a flight from New York to Chicago takes a week. I’m not exaggerating. Okay, maybe a little. It’s actually more efficient to take a six-hour flight. You’re killing the whole day anyway, might as well get across the country.

Initially when you start to do extensive amounts of air travel, you look for a silver lining. “Well, at least I’m getting all those frequent-flyer miles.” Then you quickly realize that what you earn for doing all this air travel is
more
air travel. “So if I travel by plane on your airline for a hundred thousand miles, I can earn an opportunity to travel some more on your airline?” This is equivalent to eating a hundred cans of beans so you can earn a free can of beans. At that point you don’t want beans. “I don’t want beans. Can I get a hot dog instead of beans?” “No, but if you buy a hot dog on this beans credit card, you can get some beans.” “I can’t stress to you enough how much I don’t want beans!”

Air travel is amazing, but no one enjoys it. You are being transported thousands of miles in a couple of hours. It’s really an unbelievable feat, yet on the plane everyone is grumpy and complaining. Even when the trip is over, a deep-seated paranoia sets in around baggage claim, like someone is really going to steal your ugly luggage filled with clothes that only fit you. I think I’ve figured out why we find air travel so annoying. Air travel is a direct simulation of spending time with your parents. Think about it. The pilot is your dad, and the flight attendant is your mom. You get on the plane and the flight-attendant-slash-mom instantly starts in with the nagging. “You need to fasten your seat belt.” “Okay, Mom.” “You need to turn off your phone.” “Okay, Mom!” “Would you like some juice?” “Okay, Mom.” When the plane takes off, the pilot-slash-dad bores you with one of his stories. “I just want to let you know how we are going to get there blah blah blah … you know, if you look out to the left, you’ll see the blah blah blah …” “We don’t care, Dad! Just fly!”

Because I’m
getting to the airport early and enjoying all those flight delays, I spend a lot of time in airports. I spend lots and lots of time in airports. To me airports are like museums of boredom. The Austin airport sometimes has musicians, but generally you are just left sitting in a seat at a gate, hating humanity. Sometimes I’ll play mental games to entertain myself. One is to try to find the person at the airport who doesn’t look suicidal. Unfortunately, this game takes longer than Risk, and nobody is a winner, because you are at the airport. Everyone is stumbling around miserable. We should rename airports “
Walking Dead
Reenactment Centers.” Another game I play is Imagine Excuses to Wake Up People Who Are Sleeping at the Airport. “Are you sleeping?” “Are you tired?” or “Why aren’t there more movies with strong female leads?” are some of my favorites.

Often I’m at airports early in the morning, when humanity is at its worst. I’m usually less surprised that I’m at the airport at five in the morning and more mystified by other people’s behavior at that ungodly hour. I’m not a morning person (is anyone?), so when people are outgoing and happy before noon, I’m stunned. Once I had a sweet woman at Boston’s Logan Airport ask me, “Do you have an early flight?” I responded as anyone would, “No, I just like hanging out at the airport at six in the morning.”