“Let the tool do the work!”

There are times when people are using a particular implement to do a task, but they think they need to be helping it along. Lots of times we reject the idea that there’s a passive element in what we’re trying to accomplish. When I first used an angle grinder, the guy I was working with had to admonish me several times: “Don’t press on it! That thing’s whirling around at however many thousand RPMs, and you know it’s working because you can see all those sparks! Let the tool do the work!”

Huh.

I’ve heard similar sentiments from Gordon Ramsay, many times over the years as I’ve watched him on this or that cooking show, most of them competition shows featuring cooks who aren’t as experienced. They’re trying to cook this thing or that dish and they get a key component into the pan and then they start futzing with it. Moving it around. Flipping it a lot. Poking it. Prodding it. And Ramsay just says, “Use a hot pan, keep the pan hot, and let the pan do the work.”

Which brings to me to a beloved topic of mine that I haven’t written about much in a while: the ever-amazing, eternally-wonderful pie in the face.

Let the pie do the work, folks!

What on Earth am I talking about now?!

Well, here’s a video. This has been on YouTube for years, and every once in a while the YT algorithm serves it up to me. A woman lost a bet with someone on the Red Sox, and her fate for losing is to get a pie in her face. The pie is a big beautiful thing…but…well, here it is:

So, just from the image that defaults as the video’s cover, you’re probably already thinking that this is a fantastic pieing! Look at all that cream and crust splattering onto her shoulders and neckline. Surely her face is going to be delightfully plastered with a thick layer of whipped cream and (I think) chocolate pudding and chunks of crust. That would be a fair expectation, until you actually watch this guy’s delivery and see his error:

He doesn’t let the pie do the work!

All he has to do is plant the pie in her face, hold it there for a second or two, maybe give it a single partial twist, and then…step away. That’s it! Trust me, folks, a thick cream pie is a sticky affair. For at least the first few seconds, most of that whipped-creamy goodness is going to adhere to the victim’s face. If you need to, you can pull the tin off their face, if it sticks there and you didn’t pull it away when you delivered the pie, thus revealing her in all her pie-faced glory. At least, that’s what this guy should have done.

But…no.

He decides he’s going to help the pie, so he spends like fifteen whole seconds rubbing the tin around her face and, I don’t know, grinding the pie in there or something. I don’t know what he thinks he was accomplishing, but when he finally pulls the tin away, what has happened?

He has literally used the pie to wipe itself off her face!

Yup, by the time he’s done, her face isn’t delightfully covered with whipped cream and custard; instead her face is mainly slimy with some crust chunks on it. It’s terrible. Just terrible.

When you hit someone in the face with a pie, the second the pie’s forward momentum into their face is stopped, so is your job. Your work is done. Step back, admire, laugh, cheer, whatever. Let the pie do the work.

For some other helpful pointers, here’s a bit of instructional help from the old TBS Dinner and a Movie show. Remember that? When they’d show a movie but interspersed throughout was a comedy cooking show based on the movie of the evening? I have no idea what movie might have prompted them to include this, but this is all sage advice. Note that Paul Gilmartin, the male half of this duo (the other is Annabelle Gurwitch, on whom I may have nursed a small crush back in the day), actually says as much: “You don’t gotta knock me into the next kitchen. Just put it on there and let it do its work!”

Yeah, all of that. Let the pie do its work, people. (Unless you’re using a meringue pie, because for this purpose those are useless. Meringue will not stick to the face.)

And now, back to today’s stock report. Ed?