Watching television the other day, a commercial appeared advertising The International House of Pancakes new line of "After breakfast" lunches and dinners.
This is a harbinger of the impending apocalypse. Is nothing sacred anymore? I remember when if you needed a piece of hardware you would go to a hardware
store. Now you can go to a pharmacist and check out their wide arrangement of hammers and buzzsaws. Hamburger places sell nothing but chicken
sandwiches, Clothing stores are providing free tax services, Music stores have more videos for sale than CDs, Cadillac manufacturers are building S.U.V.s.
What is the deal? We’ve become so accustomed to business level muti-tasking that we don’t even ask anymore why Radio Shack’s least selling item is radios.
Now we have a pancake place selling pork chops. Now, I understand the whole Belgium waffle thing with the Whip-it whipped cream and the canned
strawberries. This is the natural procession of a breakfast food. One takes a plain grain product, like a waffle or pancake and then one obliterates it with fruits
and creams to the point of unrecognizability. This is nothing more than pure Americanism. Are there Half chicken dishes with a side of sausage and a nice triple
stack? The savvy diner will answer me, "yes". And I agree. Chicken and Waffles brand restaurants are wonderful places but at an establishment called
"Chicken and Waffles" I would expect such a delicacy. I am not looking for barbecue ribs. The International House of Pancakes thinks that I am indeed
looking for ribs. And steaks and turkeys and rotisserie chickens.
What the hell are these people thinking?
Actually, that’s a silly question. They are looking at all that lunch and dinner business simply drive by them on turnpikes and highways across the nation. I
understand the logic behind this addition of the "after breakfast" menu. The issue however raises two deeply thought upon questions. One didn’t someone at
IHOP think about serving lunch and dinner before they created IHOPS in the first place? It is clear that IHOPs became a popular nation wide chain because
they served nothing but pancakes. Someone would walk in the door and ask, "what have ya got?" the waitress would say, "pancakes." End of story. In the
advent of the waffle craze of the 1970s IHOPs were forced to adopt the alternated breakfast disc by slabbing their pancakes on a special imprinting machine
that would masticate the things with hundreds of little squares. In the years to come the whipped creams and the fruits would make themselves known.
But no chickens.
Now we have chickens at IHOPs. Thus the second question. If you’re at a place that serves wall to wall breakfast dishes twenty four hours a day and then you
add an "after breakfast" menu. When is that menu served? Someone would walk in the glass door and ask, "are you serving the lunch stuff I saw on t.v.?" and
the waitress would say, "yeah, just after breakfast is served." The customer would happily sit down and wait until it was time. Here’s the funny part. HE
NEVER GETS SERVED. The poor, starving guy would be sitting there until the Y2K bug ate the computer in his wristwatch before the waitress would serve
him because IT IS NEVER AFTER BREAKFAST at an International House of Pancakes! Perhaps this is the logic the owners of IHOP have thought all
along. They do the ol bait and switch scam. They reel some poor sap in with the thought of pork chops, let them sit there for about a week to marinate in the
strawberries and apples and peaches and whipped creams until he finally cracks, orders the waffle and goes the hell home.
So with all this, let me ask you. Why are we doing this to ourselves? There is no better example of man’s inhumanity to man than the IHOP "after breakfast"
menu. It is just plain cruel. Should we allow this to continue now that the festering scab of this clearly tactical weapon of the food industry has been exposed? If
for no other reason than to keep our IHOPs pure, should we not put an end to this atrocity before it grows to a point of invulnerability?
We looked the other way when chicken McNuggets came into existence at the predominantly cow based food chain of McDonalds. Will we do the same for
pancakes and waffles? Can we sit idly by while the most important meal of the day is slowly being wiped off the face of the earth by lunch and dinner specials
from meatloaf to cheese manicotti?
We must stop this. We need to stand up in a vigilant voice and sing the praises of simple orders of pancakes with maple syrup and a side of hashbrowns. While
we certainly love the occasional rib roast we know its place in the universe. It goes way back to kindergarten when the lunchtime meal trays had those little
border things to keep the potatoes from mixing with the peas. It was a simple lesson then and it is just as simple now. Sometimes, foods just shouldn’t be
mixed. It is against the laws of nature.
Somewhere, right now, there is an oppressed plate of waffles screaming to be set free from the chains of lunch gangs and dinner militias. They have no hero.
They have no one to turn to in the darkness of their uncertain lives. The tears are running down their tiny faces, smearing the syrup. Can’t you see their faces?
Can’t you see them?
I can.
And I’m getting hungrier by the second.