No March Madness, Chicken Wings Up The...
The world is a wacky place of wild interconnections. For instance, a bunch of college kids tossing a ball into a hoop directly affects how many chicken arms get chopped off and eaten. If the college kids can't toss the ball due to, say, a global viral pandemic, then a lot of chickens lose their arms for nothing and our national stockpile of dismembered limbs piles higher and higher as it goes unsold and uneaten. That's why we're in the midst of a national chicken wing surplus.
What November is for turkeys and McRib month is for pig taint, is what the time between March and early April is for chicken wings. The NCAA March Madness basketball tournament makes the average Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings put in a war-like effort to shovel wings into people's yearning mouths like they're trying to power a ship to ramming speed. They plan their whole years around this. They set their chicken de-limber machines to overdrive for this. This is the time of year when the chicken wing industry psyches itself up in the mirror with affirmations that they've "got this" because they're "magnificent chicken-slaughtering bastards" while applying chicken skull face paint.
The past five weeks are usually the chicken wing industry's time to shine, as they usually sell an average of 1.24 million pounds of wings. Instead, as of the final week of what would have been March Madness, they only sold 433,000 pounds. At the same time, the CEO of Smithfield foods said that the U.S. is "perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply" since the pandemic has shut down or drastically scaled backed their butchering and packing operations.
If we're about to start scraping the fetid bottom of the meat barrel, then chicken wings are our savior. Go forth, yee all, and purchase wings instead of the ribeyes and sausages you'd normally burn anyway. Do your part. Don't let this garish over-abundance of wings go to waste. Cry "Fowl!" and let slip the dogs of hunger. Make the next chicken wing news to you hear be about a global buffalo wing and lemon-pepper wet shortage.
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. And now you can listen to the first episode on Youtube!
