against brunch: a polemic

it's approaching mid-march and with the onset of mid-march comes the much-anticipated vernal equinox. the vernal equinox traditionally signifies the start of the spring season. spring brings with it many pleasant things. warmer temperatures. love, i.e. intensified libidos. the vivid colors of nature. the ncaa basketball tournament. crawfish season.

all of these are things that i like.

for these reasons, i like spring. if forced to choose a favorite season of the year, i would probably pick spring. there's something very inspiring and uplifting about it.

there is one particular downside to the coming of spring that i abhor with an unrelenting vigor that is so deep and so complex that i'm not truly sure that i can articulate it accurately right now. even on a day of unparalleled verbal excellence, which today is not mind you, i doubt that i could fully express how much i truly loathe this aforementioned downside, which is one that i'm already beginning to see early signs of.

brunch.

i dislike brunch. spring is unfortunately the peak of the brunch season in new york city, which seems to be the epicenter of the brunch universe. the number of phone calls, text messages, emails, and myspace messages inviting me to brunch increases exponentially in the spring.

since i moved here 4 years ago i've been invited to brunch hundreds of times. i've accepted roughly a dozen of those invites, all of them during the early stages of my evolving into a manhattanite. i don't think i've been to a brunch in the last two years.

maybe brunch is just a new york city thing. i don't ever remember getting asked to go to brunch by anyone when i lived in louisiana. it was lunch or breakfast. i certainly never asked any of my friends out to brunch. i suspect that i would have gotten my ass kicked had i been out with some of my boys on a saturday night and threw out a "let's all do some brunch tomorrow" as we departed at the end of the night.

i find it excruciatingly difficult to even say the word brunch. phonetically it just doesn't sound right as it rolls off of my lips on those few occasions when i can even bring myself to say it, which is usually in the context of some sort of diatribe designed to skewer it. brunch is simply not a word that a heterosexual man was meant to say. there's something missing in the mental and physiological makeup of a straight man that prevents the word "brunch" from being easily uttered.

let me make clear that i don't harbor any ill-will towards the foods that generally constitute a brunch menu. to the contrary, i LOVE eggs and french toast and bacon and fruit and pastries, etc. i just hate the word "brunch" and all that i believe that it has come to represent.

there's a ring of pretentiousness to it. for the most part it's evolved into an urban social event that has become a hallmark of being cool. people seem to enjoy saying that they went to brunch or are going to brunch in the near future because going to brunch seems like the hip thing to do.

i like to refer to the brunch-loving public as "brunchsters". here are a few of commonly held characteristics of the modern brunchster that i have taken note of...

-the brunchster is usually female, homosexual, or european. i blame "sex and the city" for the popularization of brunch among women and gays. i have no explanation for the euro brunchster. i have no explanation for the euro period for that matter.

-any straight man who attends brunch is either doing so against his will, usually haplessly henpecked and cajoled into attendance by his wife or girlfriend while he secretly yearns to be splayed out on his sofa with a bag of doritos and a six-pack watching a sporting event, or is there solely for the cool points that he believes brunch attendance will help him to accumulate.

-the topic of brunchster conversations invariably revolves around how fucked up the brunchsters got the night before, in which an epic game of oneupsmanship will usually ensue with each brunchster regaling the others with tales of how it was he or she that was truly more fucked up than the others. the second favorite topic of brunchster conversations involve the salacious details of the preceding night. brunchsters will discuss the hookups that they participated in but not with the same passion and enthusiasm that they discuss the hookups they witnessed or believed took place involving those not in brunch attendance.

-brunchsters do not believe in cleaning up before attending brunch. conversely, the grungier, dirtier and smellier that the brunchster can present itself the better. the coolest brunchster is apparently the one that emits the most prolific and sustained assault on the olfactory senses of the other brunchsters, usually achieved by reeking a lethal combination of stale booze and sweaty sex.

-the brunchster attire will often consist of either the same clothes that the brunchster wore out the night before or the clothes that it slept in. the really cool brunchster will adorn a pair of sunglasses throughout the course of the brunch session, regardless of whether or not the setting for brunch involves being subjected to unfiltered, direct sunlight.

-the coolest of the cool brunchsters will hold court in downtown brunch venues that feature long waits, overpriced food of poor quality, watered-down bloody marys and bellinis and epic levels of shiteous service. felix on west broadway is probably the epitome of all of this, thus it is considered to be perhaps the hottest brunch spot in all of manhattan.

for all you brunchsters reading this, please don't take this personally. i'm just making some observations and expressing my own personal disdain for the brunch epidemic. and if you're a friend who was thinking of inviting me to brunch, save it. if my attendance is passionately yearned for, disguise the invite as an invite to breakfast or lunch instead and i can be more easily coaxed.

the cajun boy doesn't do brunch.