Easter before VD. Or, 2023.

Even before Muskmelon came in to blow up the Twitter, I’d been getting so many “what would you take for gastropoda.com?” emails from Nigerian princes and others that I (and my consort) decided I should dust this cranky old joint off and start posting like it’s the birdsite, where words also go for nothing. Waking up every morning since I last updated Bites and realizing the orange one was not dead yet defeated me. But I’m gonna to give it a shot. Everything is still broken. Might as well say it. 

Halloween senza white sheets, too

So the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is reduced to slightly less than zero because the con man in chief bungled the #trumpandemic response. Wait till it sinks in that there will be no Thanksgiving dinners this year, either — all these months on, it is still not safe to gather around a table cuz you can’t eat or drink while wearing a mask. Get ready for sheet pan turkey and trimmings. And sadness. Whatever you do, don’t think about Christmas…

Panchito & the Spanish Steps

I spent nearly the entire Bushwhacking on here trying to crack wise as the situation got direr and direr and the bodies stacked up higher and higher and corporate media still pretended the dangerous dry drunk was just a harmless good ol’ boy you could have a beer with. Now my advice under “hashtag we’re all gonna die” is: “Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left to you.” Too many Americans seem to forget what it was like to travel in Italy and be asked “Americana?” and have to respond, trying to save face: “No, New Yorkese!” Now the orange national nightmare has made that designation humiliating, too.

Burgers over borscht

Breaking away from the Twitter to marvel that so few real journalists have connected the absence of stool samples to the opioid epidemic. I think it was two or three years ago I first saw a billboard, in Flushing, advertising an Rx copay cure for the issue Louis Armstrong proudly dealt with via Swiss Kriss (but the Tweeter in chief does not — not American enough?) Then the other day I saw a Tweet noting that most ads on cable are for constipation solutions. And that’s because Vicodin/oxycodone et al will shut you down. Big Pharma now has you coming. And not going.

Swamp water in Riedel glasses

The orange feces flies so fast these days you can’t keep up, but I do have to note how pathetic it was that he chose Le Cirque for his $250K-a-couple fundraiser (because of course Hillary is pure evil for raking in the bucks). I mean, really. Donors have that kind of cash and you feed ‘em bankrupt chicken? But the story got even sadder — as with everything he reverse-Midas touches, the resto is ruint. It’s closing after New Year’s Eve. And probably without even collecting what he owes. The whole sad debacle gives new meaning to the term “celebrity haunt.”

A chicken (part) in every wok

More and more, it’s becoming obvious that the guano is getting real with all the foxes in charge of the Orange Henhouse. A report in the unlinkable Murdoch Crier detailed how the chicken industry is carping the diem to demand rollback of yet another rule imposed by the successful black prez, the one that limited poultry factories to whacking up a mere 140 birds a minute. A minute would now have 175 carcasses flying by, sort of Lucy-on-the-chocolates-line pace but now with more salmonella. The LOL, however, may be last on the greedsters. Their racist hero and his brownshirts at ICE are guaranteeing there will be no one available to do the work. Unless, of course, he succeeds in doing away with disability and Social Security. Guys on oxygen tanks and grandmas in wheelchairs will surely flock to feather their mitts with that sweet, sweet unliving wage.

Diet Coke and “spaghetti lobster”

Whenever I see a photo these days of the Big O living it up in a restaurant somewhere around the world, I sadly realize again how much the presidency has been diminished. We officially now have a giant peach-colored toddler banging his fork on the table for an overcooked steak with ketchup. America is no longer leader of the food world.

Cubano, well-done, with ketchup

If I could ever get it together to update my Trails page, I could make a very persuasive case for places like Bodega 88, which opened a few blocks from us not so long ago. In these T’ing times, a sports bar is the rare refuge from the all-orange-chaos-all-the-time insanity. You can be surrounded by 12 teevees, one on ice, and realize: Puck it, we’re tuning it out.

Swiss Kriss on a golden throne?

With luck, my slovenly posting will pay off and this will be outdated as soon as I hit publish: Of all the arguments for destroying the racist GOP nominee, the biggest has to be that he is a teetotaler. He blames his abstemiousness on his older brother’s having drunk himself to death, although “some would say” he just shifted his insatiable craving away from the bottle and into the spotlight. Whatever the reason, I think we all saw what happens when you put a guy who bruises after one O’Doul’s in charge of the nation’s premier wine cellar. One summer you’re getting distracted by sharks and the next glorious September day the world comes crashing down. The job description, for allah’s sake, involves state dinners and toasts.

Stapled stomach, messy nachos & 187 ice cream cones

Everyone freaking out over the Orange Menace hasn’t even stopped to envision the real disaster he would be as president. If there’s one thing we learned from the Bushwhacking, it’s that a White House wine cellar and social calendar should never have been entrusted to a teetotaler. Lust in your liver for white zinfandel & next thing you know you’re bombing booze-free Meccas. . . .

Dusted. Off.

The Murdoch Crier was also guilty of reprinting a press release on the early opening of the TrumpTravesty of a hotel makeover of the old Post Office Building in Washington, but all it did was make me appreciate Jose Andres’s cojones even more for bailing on the deal. Other marquee chefs may have to lie back and think of the balance sheet. He walked the walk. But the real pussyspeak was the story’s careful explanation of why: “remarks that Mr. Trump made that Mr. Andres said disparaged Mexicans.” What part of “rapists and drug runners” do those copy editors not get? Also, too: Unmentioned in the piece was who stepped up to the stove. So I’ll just put it this way:  This country is not always kind to immigrants even from France.