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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Lobsters Have 10 Feet

July 14, 2021July 14, 2021

What I really want to write about is how we might make a wealth tax work.  But in the meantime: lobsters.

I serve 175 lobsters every July 4th and have for about 30 years, so about 5,000 of them.  When people hear this — 175 lobsters??? — and ask how on earth I’m able to cook so many, I joke that we take the safety off the hot tub, which can then get up to around 130 degrees (coincidentally, the temperature in California last week) . . . wait a couple of hours . . . then pass around pitchforks.

“There’s just a tiny hint of chlorine,” I say, if they’re still buying it, eyes wide, “but that taste is more than drowned out by the melted butter.”

In fact, of course, none of this is true.  (Not least because the second summer we were together — needlessly worried about how I might use the hot tub during the week when he wasn’t around — Charles filled the hot tub with soil and turned it into a planter.)

What really happens is that a family comes over each year with all the pots and propane needed to put on a proper clam bake.  I love our country and I love my friends, so it’s worth the splurge.

But what about the lobsters?

(“Cockroaches of the sea,” as Dave Barry once famously profiled them.*)

Trying to put myself in their 10 shoes (flip flops?), it seems to me that being crammed together in coolers for long periods would be worse than the infamous moment when they die all but instantly as they’re dropped into the boil.

But that can’t be fun either, so I do wonder whether it’s time — if not 5,000 lobsters past time — to change the menu.

Which is what the British Parliament has been wondering as well.

And not just for lobsters.

A fascinating report in the Washington Post.

Let me know your thoughts.


*So to summarize: If you’re looking for a hearty entree that (1) is related to spiders; (2) is descended from a worm; and (3) has mutant baby-poopers walking around on its lips; then you definitely want a lobster.  I myself plan to continue avoiding them, just as I avoid oysters, which are clearly — scientists should look into this next — members of the phlegm family. . . .



Soon: A consideration of the wealth tax.

 

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