Fried Chicken Wednesday: The Royal Wedding

When I went down South for college &*$# years ago, I was introduced to the concept of having specific foods on certain days of the week.  Actually, that is not entirely true--I was well acquainted with the notion that certain meals were served on certain days or for certain occasions, like black-eyed peas and chitterlings on New Year's Day (unforgettable stench, yuck); fish on Fridays during Lent and Good Friday; ham or lamb in the Spring for Easter; and turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And I knew that some families had a pizza, pasta or taco night at least once a week.  But Lord help me, I went off to college and Wednesdays was the day they served fried chicken in the cafeteria!

As someone who lurves fried chicken, this was an almost perfect development.  Almost, because it being the middle of the week meant that there were more people on campus, and in turn, the cafeteria was extra crowded.  And because it is next to impossible to mess up fried chicken, Wednesday became the one day each week we were assured an edible meal.  But it also meant that everybody--and I mean errybody--had the itis for the rest of the day. 

Did we care?  No...because it was sooooo damn good!  But now that I am an older, wiser BBW, I look back on those carefree days of golden-fried gluttony in horror.  Now that I have to worry about things like high cholesterol, a slower metabolism, and maintaining my dress size, I cannot eat fried chicken like I used to.  Even the the occasional indulgence in a 2-piece meal is fraught with all kinds of Catholic guilt.

The point of all of this is to introduce a periodic segment for the blog called Fried Chicken Wednesdays, which will essentially feature my confession of some random guilty pleasure from my youth that I cannot justify in any rational way.

This week's Fried Chicken Combo is the Royal Wedding on Friday.  And before you judge me, I am willing to bet that I will hardly be the only person awake at 5am on Friday morning, dressed in a proper Sunday hat, sipping on Earl Grey tea!




I will concede that the build up to all of this has bordered on hysteria...and if I were one of those people, then perhaps you would be rightfully concerned for the husband's well-being.  However, I am pleased to report that no, I have not been watching the extra special wall-to-wall coverage on BBC America; no, I will not go out of my way to read any supermarket tabloids about the royal relationship; no, I will not be purchasing any of the commemorative crap that is being sold for $19.99 on those TV infomercials; no, I do not wish I was in London right now; and yes, I am still black...

Blame it on all those PBS miniseries and Catholic school English classes, but I just can't resist the British monarchy.  The historical royals were spicy on a silver platter; the modern royals have been extra crispy served in a jewel-encrusted golden bucket.  It started with the over-the-top drama of the wedding of Prince William's parents...I still remember that Prince Charles had three middle names (Philip, Arthur and George), and that Lady Diana stumbled in trying to recite them all in the proper order.  The years after that wedding produced an endless supply of chicken nuggets--mistresses, toe-sucking, assorted dogs and ponies, lots of big hats, and feminine hygeine products as sex toys.  And above it all floats Queen Elizabeth II, who is so badass that all she has to do is wave and smile and half the world bows at her feet.

Of course, this wedding is the epitome of deep-fried ostentatiousness, especially when there are more important things happening in the world and the British economy is just as crappy as ours.  But just like a good piece of fried chicken is useless without the skin, we would be disappointed if this wedding was anything less than a total spectacle.  After all, if weddings are nothing more than unnecesary extravagant parties thrown to impress 300 of your parents' closest acquaintances, why not invite a billion more people to watch the show?

And once it is all over, and a world-wide itis sets in, I'll decide what I want for lunch.