Guy Fieri & Operation BBQ Relief Feed Thousands in California and People are Actually Complaining About It
By: (Link: http://www.jeffhillyard.com) Jeff Hillyard
Credit: Operation BBQ Relief, https://www.facebook.com/OperationBBQRelief/
Yep, you heard that correctly; straight from the “People will literally complain about anything” file. Let’s back up here for a second while I explain the backstory.
What is Operation BBQ Relief?
(Link: https://operationbbqrelief.org/) Operation BBQ Relief (OBR) was formed in 2011 after a catastrophic tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri killing 158 people, injuring another 1,150, and causing over $2B in damages. Competition BBQ teams came together to feed survivors and emergency personnel, ultimately serving over 120,000 meals in 11 days.
Since then OBR has responded to more than 40 disasters in 24 states ultimately serving over 1,700,000 meals.
2017 California Wild Fires
Over the last week scores of wildfires have broken out in California. According to (Link: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/16/us/california-fires-updates/index.html) CNN over 200,000 acres of land has been scorched resulting in over 5,700 structures being destroyed. Over 75,000 people have had to evacuate their homes, and over 11,000 Firefighters are on the ground.
Many of these people left their homes with little more than the shirts on their backs. Some not even that lucky with at least 40 people confirmed dead. Needless to say, these people do not have easy access to food, let alone hot food, and especially not delicious barbecue.
Help is on the way!
Just over a week ago, Operation BBQ Relief announced they would be deploying their resources to Santa Rosa and Napa in California. They’ve also been joined by the Mayor of Flavortown himself: Guy Fieri, who has brought much of his own equipment and his own employees to the party. He’s also personally been volunteering with OBR.
Listen, I get it, everyone likes to clown on Guy Fieri, but as the comedian (Link: https://www.avclub.com/what-did-guy-fieri-ever-do-to-you-1800012986) Shane Torres so poignantly asks: what the fuck has Guy Fieri ever done to you? Shane goes on to correctly state that as far as he’s concerned, Guy Fieri is just a guy who’s followed his dreams while at the same time constantly giving back to his community, but because he has flames on his shirt, has spikey hair, and wears his sunglasses on the back of his head everybody shits all over him.
Anyway, I digress. Since last week Guy and the team from OBR have made well over 20,000 meals to feed to the evacuees and to the first responders in California. Pretty amazing, right? There’s no way people could have anything bad to say about this, right?
Wrong. This is 2017, and no matter what you do someone is going to have a problem with it:
Sweet. Zombie. Jesus.
People are mad at Guy Fieri and Operation BBQ Relief because they have the audacity to USE FIRE TO COOK FOOD?!?
I honestly… just… holy fuck; I really don’t know what to say to these people. I mean, as far as I can tell none of these commenters are from California or have been directly affected by these wildfires.
In other words, they have no reason to be offended so much as they’re worried that other people might be offended.
Likewise I’m not in California (I’m actually probably as far away from California as physically possible while still being in North America), nor do I know what it is like to wake up in the middle of the night and only have enough time to be evacuated with just the shirt on my back, nor do I know what it is like to be a first responder putting in 20 hour days fighting a fucking forest fire.
One thing I do know though is that if I was in one of those scenarios and I’d gone a couple of days without anything substantial to eat and someone handed me a styrofoam tray of delicious smoked meat, I’d probably have tears in my eyes while I thanked them.
How Can I Help?
Are you in California and want to help? OBR can always use more volunteers. You can text “OBR” to 51555, or go to their website (Link: https://operationbbqrelief.org/apis/volunteer/home/registration) here.
Do you want to donate to OBR? You can text “OBR” to 41444, or go to their website (Link: https://operationbbqrelief.org/apis/volunteer/donation) here.
In closing let me just say this. If you're the kind of person who feels it necessary to complain about something so ridiculous as a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization using propane fuelled smokers to cook thousands of meals for people desperately in need. You're, well, you're a miserable excuse for a human being.
It’s just that simple.
