Borsch Discusses Food... Again

Outta Leftfield: Asparagus rules — or not — on the Rubber Chicken Circuit
Published: Thursday, March 01, 2012
By Mike Morsch
Executive Editor

I actually missed this one when it was first released (to overwhelming critical acclaim, no doubt) due to a bad link on Borsch's Twitter. Thankfully, reader "Anonymous" put me back on the trail. Right off the bat, I'm going to predict at least one "smelly urine" joke in this column.

Apparently I am in the minority when it comes to asparagus. In technical terms, I consider it “blechie,” a view not shared by the majority of my friends.

See, where I come from, we don’t have a lot of banquets. It’s not that we don’t honor extraordinary people in the Midwest with a banquet.

Ooh, a reference to his Midwestern upbringing! If there's one thing that people in the Philadelphia suburbs love, it's Midwestern humor.

We do. It’s called a chili supper at the American Legion hall. And if the honoree is lucky, there will be a yee-haw band there and quite possibly a “stomp” dance contest where the winner can take home that most valuable of prizes: a $10-off coupon from the Tastee Freez.

(It should come as no surprise to know that I actually won a “stomp” dance contest at an American Legion hall in southern Iowa in 1983, although I did pull a hamstring and break three toes on my partner’s left foot in the process.)

He mentions this contest in an October 5, 2010 column:"As an adult, I did once win an American Legion dance hall contest with my first wife... We were living in a remote rural area of southern Iowa at the time..." Amazingly, he doesn't repeat the same "pull a hamstring" joke.

The name of the Tastee Freez can change from town to town in the heartland. In Peru, Ill., it’s called “The Gloo” — hickspeak for “The Igloo” — which in addition to ice cream, serves the messiest, greasiest and most wonderful cheeseburgers and tenderloin sammiches on the planet. I wonder if the greater Philadelphia region is in its delivery area?

What does this have to do with anything??? We've wandered so far down this rabbit trail that we've almost reached Watership Down.

But out here in the Northeast,

I would argue that "up here" works better than "out here" when describing the Northeast.

the Rubber Chicken Circuit is alive and well. I end up going to a lot of banquets, the most recent of which was last week and honored the retirement of Abington’s Oscar Vance, who is hanging it up after what was described in the speechifying as 112 years as Montgomery County chief of detectives. I must admit, Oscar looks to be in pretty good shape for a man of 140.

Note how Borsch attempts to steal that "Vance is old" joke from whoever originally made it at the banquet. Also, "I end up" through "detectives" is one really long, really bad sentence.

Now I know not to get my expectations up too high when it comes to banquet food. I’ve been to banquets with as many as 800 attendees (the Philadelphia Sports Writers). There were only 400 people at Oscar’s banquet. And I know it’s difficult to prepare and serve several hundred meals at a time.

We'll be getting to the funny part any second now. I can feel it.

But man, the vegetables at a banquet seem to me to be the most insufferable part of the meal. Most of the time, the meat and taters/rice are decent to relatively good (the portions are never big enough for a guy like me, but that’s another story).

Ooh, ooh, can we analyze every part of the meal in agonizingly tedious detail? We CAN? Oh joy! I like the extremely original "I'm fat" joke, too.

Carrots and string beans seem to be the most popular vegetable choices for banquets. And, I guess, asparagus falls into that category, because that’s what we were served at Oscar’s banquet.

What category? The carrots and string beans category? And because asparagus was served at one banquet it becomes one of "the most popular choices"? Note what an awkward and clumsy way that was to introduce asparagus - you know, the topic of his column that we're only getting to a third of the way in.

Asparagus — or Asparagus officinalis as it would be called in a Roadrunner cartoon —

Um... no. You see, in a Roadrunner cartoon, they make up funny fake Latin names for things. "Asparagus officinalis" is the actual Latin name for asparagus. I suspect that he obtained this information from his old friend Wikipedia.

doesn’t even sound good. But it is good for you. It’s low in calories and sodium, is a good source of vitamin B6, calcium, magnesium and zinc and serves as a dandy dietary fiber. And everybody knows just how important dandy dietary fibers are to one’s disposition.

Yep! Per Wikipedia: "Asparagus is low in calories and is very low in sodium. It is a good source of vitamin B6, calcium, magnesium and zinc, and a very good source of dietary fiber." Come on, Borsch. That was a blatant one.

I should probably eat more asparagus, but I just can’t stomach it. I feel the same way about asparagus that President George H.W. Bush feels about broccoli and first lady Michelle Obama feels about beets. Yuck. Patooey.

He used the term "can't stomach it" and passed up another opportunity to make a fat joke about himself? I'm shocked.

But I assumed I was in the majority opinion about asparagus. Taking the issue to experts on Facebook, I commented that I thought three out of every four people didn’t like asparagus. I based my opinion on that most scientific theory: The Yuck Factor.

His four Facebook friends are an unending source of inspiration.

Turns out many of my friends are asparagus eaters. One called it “the Rolls Royce choice for green vegetables at a banquet.” And I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the words “Rolls Royce” and “asparagus” in the same sentence. A cousin suggested that possibly asparagus would be more appealing to me if it were prepared differently: “Maybe balsamic marinated as a salad-like side dish would fit your fancy better.”

Uh, no thanks, cuz.

"Cuz"? Is he an Italian sports radio host now?

My informal and limited poll

"Informal and limited" could basically sum up his entire career.

generated six asparagus supporters and two who sided with me. That certainly blew my three-out-of-every-four-people-hate-asparagus theory, but it did prove once and for all that Facebook is a valuable social tool when discussing the important issues of the day.

He used this same "important issues of the day" joke about Oreos, too.

I can only imagine how much social engagement I could muster on Facebook if I started a thread about rubber chickens.

Do you really "start a thread" on Facebook?

What a good ending! I would point out that "rubber chicken circuit" is more a comment on the consistency of the chicken than a reference to actual rubber chickens, but I'm not a nit-picker like that.

This was a really bad column (does that go without saying, at this point?). We start out with an awkward side-story about dance contests in Iowa, blunder into how he doesn't like asparagus but other people do, and end with a "joke" about rubber chickens that makes little-to-no sense. Never mind the fact that Borsch is never funny - he's not even coherent!