19 February 2012

American Style Fails

This morning I went out for breakfast with Favorite Seven Year Old, her sister, and her dad.  They'd found an American Style diner in Hannover, and invited me along for the full experience. And it was awesome and a really fun time, but it got me thinking about what "American Style" in Germany actually means.

I love any and all things branded "American Style," namely because American Style looks so different from what's actually American. It's almost like going to one of the countries in Epcot: a a packaged, plastic version of the country that's so over the top, it goes off the culture charts and into the Land of Make-Believe.  It takes culture and turns it into a commodity, a brandable, marketable, sellable, edible thing.  But American Style is not just any old thing, oh no.  This thing has some very important, very selective qualities, which differentiate it from all other things.  Lucky for you, I've had enough personal experience with such things to break it down for all of you happily cocooned in your American Style lives.

In order for something to qualify as American Style, it must have some particular attributes which set it apart.  It must:

1)  Be Boxed in Pride.


America is an economic and social mess.  Inequality is the new black.  The Confederacy never got over losing the war.  Now take that America-Is-The-Best-Country-On-Earth shit, and wrap your food in it.



Things that are not ironically named:  this.


Don't actually taste like brownies.



Too Much Flaggage For "Marsh"


2)  Contain as Many Images of the Statues of Liberty as it Takes to Get the Point Across, Dammit.


Not only is your product American, it's SO American that even Lady Liberty, patron saint of immigrants, French people, and Fievel, endorses it.  And she does not fuck around.  She wants you to give her your tired, your poor, and your insufferable seekers of authentic microwave pizza.





Oh, "Hawaii" doesn't do it?  Have you considered arbitrarily picking a state not actually known for it's pizza, and using that instead? 


YOU GUYS THINK OF EVERYTHING.


3)  Resemble Actual American Food as Little as Possible.


Now in a jar:

Now the wrong shape:

Now caramel popcorn good:

Now a) referred to as 'french fry cream,' and b) something other than ketchup:
Now in existence:
That you have it.  That's Germany's take on American Style.  It's many things, none of it American.  And breakfast?  Breakfast was...adorably awesome.  The girls loved it!

In other news I decided to go on a really long bike ride, because it was briefly sunny out.  An hour away from my house, it started hailing--really, really, hailing.  Which was actually pretty cool for a couple minutes, until hail bullets starting bouncing off my jacket and into my corneas.  At which point I figured I'd just pull over into a bus hut and wait out the hail, but then I noticed that all the hail my eyes had been spitting out was collecting on my bike seat.  Where it quickly melted, thus giving me the general appearance of one who has recently drunk seven gallons of Red Bull and was too amped up to bother thinking about finding a bathroom other than the one conveniently labeled "My Pants."  So I didn't pull over, I biked like a champion through the hail and laughed about it all the way home.

New favorite song of the day!  Still on a mega Ed Sheeran kick, so here we go:

3 comments:

Sally E, said...

But.......aren't French fries French?

Anonymous said...

Not if you stick a flag on it and claim it in the name of George W. Bush!

--Tina

Anonymous said...

This makes me smile enormously.

<3amy