Guy Fieri has become a laughingstock of sorts for his panned NYC restaurant, over-the-top personality, and overall Guy Fieri-ness, but the celebrity chef ascended to temporary cult status this week thanks to a video that's gone viral. Mayor Wertz, whose website says he makes "hip-hop about sweet things," has put together a compilation of clips showing Fieri on his Food Network hit Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, cramming food into his maw as Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" plays.
Almost as amazing as the video itself, which has already garnered nearly 450,000 views since it was posted June 3, are the reviews. Some gems:
- "The result is one artist's statement away from being a brilliant senior art-school project; it's bewildering, strangely beautiful, and mesmerizing all at once," notes Time. It also calls the video "unexpectedly emotional," pointing out that "it's almost moving to watch as Fieri chugs hot sauce straight from the bottle, Cash's gravel-smooth voice crooning sadly, 'I hurt myself today.'"
- The AV Club gets biographical, saying the video "shows what is clearly the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching reality of … Fieri's life." It laments that "for 24 seasons, this poor man has always had a hamburger, burrito, or some sort of deep-fried meal thrust upon him for entertainment purposes. Will it ever end?"
- Vice calls the compilation "extremely important" and goes to an even darker place. "Look at this video and tell me this isn't death," it notes. "That Guy Fieri isn't dead, here, emotionally at least if not in body. Guy Fieri—cursed … in some way by every single god, the god of wearing wraparound shades on the back of your head, the god of frosted tips, the god of looking like a rejected character sketch for pre-concept Shrek. Guy Fieri condemned to live a life as some sort of bar snack Sisyphus, pushing battered shrimp after battered shrimp into his creaking, aching body until he dies and is reborn, and does it all again with a burrito."
- But viewer beware: Some are noting the video's potentially life-altering effects. The Daily Dot calls it "spiritually devastating," while the National Post says it "will drain your soul."
(Fieri's menus have been
compared to poetry.)
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