forget it, Jake. It's flavor town.

Southern Ring Nebula because would you rather see that or another photo of Guy Fieri?

I've mentioned it before, but I have a couple of funny things I go to whenever I need a laugh. With the internet, things don't (typically) go away. Sure they're pushed back by an ever-growing timeline and buried under years and years of noise, but if your brain can remember something, you can usually find it when you seek it out. One such old – ancient by internet standards – nugget of pleasure is a restaurant review by The New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells. It's titled "As Not Seen on TV".

Stop me if you've already heard this one...

In the review from 2012, the critic presents a series of caustic questions for the perpetually frosty-tipped Guy Fieri, who opened Guy's American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square like a decade and a half ago. Seriously, the review consists of roughly 50 questions and 1 one-word sentence. It starts with this to set the stage: "GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square?" And pretty much every question after that gets me to laugh. Here are some of my favorites:

When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute?

What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?

When you hung that sign by the entrance that says, WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN!, were you just messing with our heads?

Somewhere within the yawning, three-level interior of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, is there a long refrigerated tunnel that servers have to pass through to make sure that the French fries, already limp and oil-sogged, are also served cold?

And when we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?

Is the entire restaurant a very expensive piece of conceptual art?

(Spoiler Alert: Sadly, Guy's American Kitchen & Bar closed after 5 or so years back in 2017. I know some of you may be distraught by that fact, so I dropped the wheel of emotions below. Let me know when you locate yourself. I'm somewhere near "happy" --> "playful" --> "cheeky" after remembering and rereading this review.)

Even though the restaurant closed, and the restaurant critic has since retired, the laughs live on.

indoor animal is curated by a human: Tim Papciak. On Mondays, he shares one link to one music video to help spark creativity in himself and in other creative types. On Thursdays, he recommends a book, movie, show, art piece, or link to some dusty corner of the internet that he believes either 1.) adds to the human experience, or 2.) serves as a coping mechanism in the year 2025. Note: this is not, and never will be, self-help content.