a case for reconsidering guy fieri.
If you're not yet drinking the donkey sauce, seven takeaways from the Hollywood Reporter's new interview with the mayor of Flavortown might change your mind.
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It’s hard to think of many universally admired celebrities these days. Yes, Dolly Parton is definitely one. Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman are supposedly others with consistently high “Q scores.” But it’s hard to think of too many other people regularly in the public eye these days with more net-positive fame (ugh, I know) than Guy Fieri.
This is a relatively new phenomenon. It wasn’t too long ago that Fieri was still considered gauche, derided as “a troll figurine come to life.” To some, he probably still is. I remember when I first dressed as the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives host to hand out candy to the neighborhood trick-or-treaters several years ago (in the only Halloween costume I’ve ever repeated), some friends were confused: Isn’t he homophobic? (Since he’s officiated a mass wedding of 101 same-sex couples in tribute to his late lesbian sister, I’m going to say no.) You actually bought that shirt? (Yes, best $18 I’ve ever spent!) Really, what’s gotten into to you? (Well, who’s to say?)
Five years later, Fieri’s reputation has grown, and his bravado is inescapable. He’s on approximately 700 different shows on Food Network at any given time, consistently providing the comforting pandemic television equivalent of a steaming bowl of mac and cheese. He’s stepped up his Twitter game and I’ve stumbled across more than a few Fieri-themed bar crawls and toddler birthday parties. And, shut the front door, he’s also emerged as one of the most prominent philanthropists in the food industry.
A new story in the Hollywood Reporter dives specifically into Fieri’s advocacy around helping the restaurant industry respond to the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and his new three-year “upper-eight figure” deal with Food Network, among many other things. The story is packed with gems, and these were my favorites. If you’re still on the fence about the Mayor of Flavortown, consider these points below.
In the last year alone, according to the story, Fieri raised more than $25 million for restaurant workers including cooks, servers and other professionals who lost their jobs because of the pandemic through a fund he launched in partnership with the National Restaurant Association. The money was distributed between some 43,000 people nationwide.
To help raise funds for his effort, which the story notes he came up with while working out on an elliptical machine, Fieri reached out personally to top-level executives at major corporations. Many (obviously) said yes, but apparently Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of $201 billion+, was a “no.” I have to admire Fieri calling one of the world’s most powerful men out on this.
In the story’s first paragraph, it notes that some of the restaurants featured on Fieri’s most ubiquitous show, the Triple D “have seen sales climb fivefold” as a result. Multiply that by 419 episodes typically featuring at least two or three different restaurants at a time dating back to 2007. In an industry with as tight as margins as hospitality, that is a huge impact. He’s a one-man restaurant accelerator.
Fieri’s other main show, the Supermarket Sweep-esque Guy’s Grocery Games, was apparently such a hit right from the get when it premiered in 2013 that our man managed to negotiate the building of a fully functioning grocery store inside a 15,000-square-foot warehouse in Santa Rosa, as opposed to filming on a set in LA. Because the show only uses products that are real and edible (as opposed to some of those styrofoam meats), the show donates $350,000 worth of unused food to a local charity each year.
One of my other favorite Food Network personalities, Alex Guarnaschelli, compared Fieri to “an altruistic Jay Gatsby,” which is sort of unsettling though she also put it this way: "A lot of people suck the air out of the room. Guy is the opposite. Guy is a human air conditioner for good feelings. Being around him makes you more confident in yourself." If I ever get around to writing Food Network fan fic, these are key personality traits I’ll be factoring in.
Fieri reaches an audience of about 73 million people who watch at least one episode of some show of his quarterly. Just to put that number in perspective, 73 million is larger than the entire populations of nations like Thailand, the United Kingdom and France. It’s also more than the entire populations of the two largest U.S. states, California and Texas, combined.
Fieri is involved with more than 85 restaurants around the world, including a delivery-only Flavortown Kitchen concept that I’m crushed to realize does not deliver to my town. That’s called an empire, my dudes.
I don’t know, is it cheugy of me to stan this hard for this man? Am I even using that term correctly? He could very well deserve a cancelation at a later date. But for now, I’m seriously considering the merits of stealing the Guys and Dollys party idea — where guests must dress as either Fieri or Parton — I saw on TikTok months ago.
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But that’s not all! Here’s this week’s links:
I don’t have any Oscars hot takes, really. I thought the Glenn Close “Da Butt” gag was fun but came too late in the night, the “in memoriam” segment was way too fast and LaKeith Stanfield’s red carpet look was perfection. Everything Youn Yuh-Jung had to say about Brad Pitt and beyond was a delight.
But my biggest disappointment, aside from the ceremony’s anticlimactic ending, was that the musical performances were not included during the actual show. If they had been, I think a lot more people would be talking about this performance of “Húsavík (My Home Town),” the nominated song from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. The performance included a children’s choir from the actual town of Húsavík, Iceland. Notably, this was also the only nominated song that wasn’t just played over its film’s end credits.
Did you know Pete Wentz is “the king of the L.A. tennis scene?” I didn’t either, so this GQ profile was a really jarring read for me. Apparently the pop-punk icon spends most of his time these days, when he’s not filming TikToks with his kids or gardening, hitting balls around with a crowd that includes Donald Faison, Zach Braff, Gavin Rossdale and Steve Carrell.
Dawn Richard (formerly of Danity Kane) just released her sixth(!) solo album, her first with the label Merge Records, most well known for putting out indie artists like Arcade Fire, Caribou and Waxahatchee. The New Orleans-born artist continues to evolve and blend a myriad of different genres and sounds, and this music feels timely perfectly for the arrival of summer weather. Here’s the new video for “Boomerang.”
Anne Heche rated some of her “iconic” (to her) red carpet looks on TikTok last week, and the whole thing was positively unhinged. It’s hard for me to imagine a better use of a minute of your time than watching this video.
Speaking of TikTok, people are having a hard time figuring out if this… gathering is a wedding or a funeral. What’s your vote?
Former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is having this whole thing about birds these days. But she’s not into actual birdwatching — no, she’s mainly into reposting photos of birds that people send her to her Twitter account and pairing them with vaguely inspirational messages. In GQ, Gabriella Paiella got to the bottom of it.
The Philly punk band Mannequin Pussy are coming out with a new EP, and they just dropped the second single from it, “Perfect.” The song is a treat, but the video — a drag Romy and Michele tribute — is even better. “Perfect” is perfect for when you need to blast something ferocious and loud in the car.
Haha I definitely thought wedding on that Tik tok video... initially.. then a hard flip to funeral with a photo on the seat.. and yet another plot twist back to wedding with blue jeaned bridesmaids. We’ll never know. Also excellent read on Guy! When we lived in Roseville he was a well loved there too 💕