A charming glimpse at a more innocent world.A world no less insane than the one we know as the present, but a more innocent kind of insane.
Sea Host appears to have been a chain of seafood restaurants from the late 60s and early 70s. Or not. A chain from the East Coast. Or not. (Details are sketchy and hard to come by.) But it matters not! For regardless of when, where, or why it existed, we are refreshed to see "food" animals presented without even a hint of sex appeal, drunkenness, psychotic rage, or, in fact, anything more alarming than the garden-variety desire to die. Yes, it's come to the point where that is our baseline. We can hardly even remember animals who haven't dedicated themselves to the pursuit of their own deaths, chasing after it like a long-sought treasure.
Sea Host offered up an entire cast of suicidal characters, including these poor souls:
Sylvester (the titular host), Mr. Big, and Smiley—and the rest of the gang—were all too happy to cater to the wishes of their customers. One can imagine Mr. Big's Cockney slang, Smiley's endearing speech impediment, and Sylvester's belief in the hard-won honor of serving himself, boned and filleted, lying beneath a lemon wedge.
It's almost sad to think about them now, their finest days long behind them. Now that they've died, no more do they have death to look forward to. They've been robbed of what they held most dear.
No! Let's remember them as they were. Not dead, but happily, blissfully, eternally about to die.
(Special thanks to the Waffle Whiffer, who doesn't even know that he helped.)
2 comments:
I like it :D :D :D
I agree - by the standards of suicide food, this is charmingly old school. I prefer to think, though, that Mr Big, rather than speaking in Cockney slang, would have a gruff aristocratic mumble, like a British lord in an old movie. These remind me of the 60s-era suicide food painted on the walls of Harry's Seafood Restaurant in Westborough, MA. Since there's nothing in there I could eat, I'd feel weird just going in and snapping pictures of them, but trust me, they are the Sistine Chapel of old school suicide food. Check the website for a small example, and click on 'contact us' to see the clam manically licking an envelope!
http://www.westborough.com/harrys/index.html
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