THINGS YOU HEARD US TALK ABOUT

It’s that time of year again, when you move the kitchen outdoors and get tanked with your friends in the yard while you eat in folding chairs and reminisce about a time when you got drunk and ate food in folding chairs and then puked in a potted plant.  God, that was a fun weekend.

Anyway, it’s inevitable that when you get all your friends together for a barbecue and everyone brings a dish, someone’s going to bring a pot full of ass you have no desire t eat and it’ll be the same pot of ass they brought last time.

To help future BBQs go off without a hitch, here’s a list of the staple items you don’t need to bring to your next BBQ because no one wants it.  No one.

Potato Salad

We’ll start with the most controversial first.  Why?  Because there’s a good chance you like potato salad and why shouldn’t you, it can be delicious.  Everything hinges on the word “can” in that sentence.  A lion in the wild can pass you by instead of eating you.  A hobo can choose not to poop in front of you.  You can live with herpes.

You may have 99 great potato salads in a row and this entry will mean nothing to you, but if you’ve had to endure that one awful potato salad debacle then you know exactly why you never want to eat it again.  When someone mixes undercooked potatoes with skanky may, rough chopped onions and some mystery spice that makes the whole thing smell and taste like a sweat sock, you’ll know the horror of allowing a completely oblivious asshole into the kitchen.

If people haven’t told you your potato salad is awesome, then stop it.  Stop it right now.  Bring a bag of chips to the barbecue or, even better, a case of beer.  Bring me beer.  I will totally make out with you.  But if you bring me rancid potato salad so help me I will hold your hand on the grill until you apologize in a way that makes me believe you’re sincere.

A Watermelon

Are you shitting not just me but everyone you know?  A watermelon?  Do you know who else brought watermelon?  The watermelon patch, you lazy shit.  Nature makes them.  You just put a seed in dirt and wait.  Why not bring a jug of water and a sack of cool, breathable air?  You’ve done no one any favors today, you’ve just made everyone think you hate them.

If people are taking the time to get together, cook some food and share with friends, it’s not that a watermelon is a bad idea to be there, it’s just not the only thing you should bring because up yours.  Everyone else made something, you carried something.  You know what else can carry things?  Everything that’s alive but not broken.  Your pack mule skills are admirable but add nothing to the event.  Go make us some taco salad.

Bean salad

This is similar to the potato salad problem with one key difference – even if you made bean salad correctly, no one wants it.  Come on.  It’s bean salad.

Cheese or Veggie Tray

Just a smidge beyond bringing a watermelon is this poor man’s effort at providing sustenance to a group.  A cheese tray is delightful if you’re entertaining the foreign press or another group of people you don’t really know and don’t give a shit about, but it presents two clear problems at a friendly barbecue.  One is the lazy factor and 2 is the fact that the cheese will inevitable become rubbery and sweaty well before it’s all eaten, making it look like a tray of sliced up Ron Jeremy on a table, disgusting to everyone in every way as the day progresses.

Vegetable trays seem like a great idea, especially if you have that inexplicable vegan friend who makes every barbecue awkward, but even vegans show disdain for that wedge of the tray that’s filled to the brim with celery sticks and carrots covered in shady, white God knows what like so much orange dog shit on the lawn.  The only reason celery exists is to give kids an excuse to say they’re eating healthy when they slather it with Cheese Whiz or peanut butter.

Ambrosia Salad

If you’re not familiar, an ambrosia salad is basically a fruit salad encased in whipped cream.  People serve it during meals and pretend it’s not sugar wrapped in more sugar.  Presumably it was invented by Paula Deen or some other down South hooligan who thinks butter is a beverage.

Whipped cream is not a substitute for any real kind of salad dressing.  It might sound potentially delicious, but it’s mostly shameful when you just sit down and take stock about what it means for you and the life you’re leading – you’ve taken to calling fluffy fat and sugar with chunks of fruit in it a salad.  You’re basically a human trash can.  You’re despicable, just like this goddamn salad.

(Holy Taco)