Five for 5: Lobsters

Lucky Lobster on Kids in the Hall – This sketch from the fourth season was one of my favourites. I couldn’t find a clip online, but basically, Dave licks a lobster for luck. I guess I'm not the only one who likes this sketch, as the pre-sale gift for the fourth season DVDs was a lucky lobster. I have no idea why I find it so funny, but I think lobsters are just inherently funny. Would licking a penguin be as funny? Perhaps, but I choose to believe it would pale in comparison.

Mr. Pinchy from The Simpsons – Homer’s pet lobster who was kind of a pussy (“You don’t have to take that from some punk-ass crab!”). I frickin’ love this episode. The A-story is Lisa-centric (not necessarily a bad thing), the B-story is Homer & his lobster. Plus, it had that list of ice cream names (Candy Warhol, Xavier Nougat, Desmond Tutti Frutti). While I wouldn’t touch a lobster with a 10-foot pole, this almost made me want to go out and adopt my own bird-chasing, risotto-eating free-range lobster.

Red Lobster – Yes, the restaurant chain. Growing up in a middle class, midwestern family, this was looked at a “nice” restaurant for many years. Then, I turned 12 and realized, um, not so much. I’m still dragged there once in a while for a family dinner, but spend the meal picking at a plate of something that’s not shellfish and making jokes about the white trashiness of it all. So, why is it on this list? On Project Runway’s second season the recurring “Tim Gunn & Andrae go to Red Lobster joke” is what saved the season for me. One of the few true facts of life: Red Lobster jokes are never not funny.

Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama – Jewish doctor lobster alien thing. On a show where all of the characters were deficient in some manner, he was easily the worst. He was a doctor who didn’t know anything about human physiology (aside from stuff he learned from TV commercials), and was miserably poor and pathetically desperate for attention. His attempts at acting, stand-up comedy, mating, and even suicide were spectacular failures. When he met his parallel universe double, he was still the bitch. He was always entertaining, in a schadenfreude sort of way.

Cooking Lobsters – I was originally going to use the clip of the Swedish Chef cooking a lobster, when my YouTube search turned up the Giant Lobster Battle from Iron Chef. Are lobster puppets with guns better than live lobsters used in an over-the-top Japanese cooking show? On the one hand, there’s something to be said for Japanese actors calmly watching as a recently-butchered lobster tail wiggles out of its own shell. On the other, lobster muppets with guns. Watch and decide.





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