PETA hates this vegetarian

I was initially much more excited when I walked into the newsroom yesterday and heard that PETA had written a letter to the editor attacking my lobster game story as a harsh joke on all of lobster kind. I thought maybe they were coming after me for glorifying this bar-based blood sport in print, or our video for the cruel and unusual use of the B-52s. Sadly, they were actually just issuing what reads like a form letter they send off to any time this particular item of offensiveness surfaces around the country:

It seems silly to have to point this out, but the Lobster Game that is turning up at local bars is needlessly cruel ("Love lobster? Here's a game that lets you grab one for yourself," May 24).

City officials in Key West, Fla., pulled the plug on a Lobster Zone game (similar to the Lobster Game) at a restaurant there, and police officers shut down the game at a restaurant in Irvine, Calif. As Officer Dennis Ruvolo explained, these games subject lobsters "to unnecessary, inhumane treatment."

PETA urges readers to stick to stuffed animals, not live ones, in their crane games. Turning an animal's death into a game has no place in a compassionate society.

Paula Moore

People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals
Norfolk, Va.

It is still mildly ironic that the only vegetarian on the news staff here would generate a letter of chastisement from the nation's biggest animal rights group. Oh PETA, if only you know it was your muckraking, thoroughly gross videos that drove me into life as an herbivore in the first place eight years ago. In fact, it was eight years ago this month that ate my last bits of meat (on purpose, at least). Scallops, at the Ground Round in Toms River, N.J. They were gross, and that was about it. But that's what I get for eating at the Ground Round I suppose.

Rock lobsters

Posting this video here, as it will probably get more plays than at our newspaper's Web site, where it is hidden deeper than the cup of Christ.



I felt kinda terrible the whole time playing this game. But I couldn't suppress a tiny nugget of excitement that brought me back to the days snagging stuffed marios and garfields in Sonny and Ricky's on the Seaside Boardwalk.

Rest of the story (which began the night of the below lobster post) here.

The new pot at the end of the rainbow

If you're like me (which you must be, because I'm the only one who reads this) then you often think: hey, what could be worse than being one of those lobsters in a tank at a restaurant, having slobbering seafood addicts hover over and choose your fate like fatted kings of old? Well, how about having those same slobbering carnivores pay money for the chance to hook your doomed crustacean ass out of a crane game, as if you were some wretched stuffed Pokemon toy coveted by spoiled children from Long Island, their faces smudged with an ice-cream waffle, at the Jersey Shore?


Indeed, that is the fate of many lobsters these days, thanks to this new trend of seafood-based crane games that now grace some of the classier restaurants of the world. I walked into Remy's on Hilton Head today to find the first one of these Kafka-esque amusements I've ever seen, and, sure enough, there were some inebriated young fellas pumping their caddying tips (I assume) into it trying to pull home dinner. Neither of them succeeded, much to the lobsters' delight, though if you're a lobster in a crane game in a seafood restaurant, you probably listen to a lot of Dashboard Confessional and think about which part of you is soft enough to slice open without taking off your rubber bands.

The bartender told me there's like three more of these machines on the island already, and I plan to investigate this shortly. To recap: we have four games where you can win a live creature to devour with your mouth, yet no pinball or Time Crisis. Not even a tired old House of the Dead machine.

I googled it and there's a Florida (figures)-based company called "Lobster Zone" that makes these things. They're quite exuberantly excited about their growth possibilities in the marketplace. The name "Lobster Zone" is pretty damned misleading, as it sounds like it would be a place of joy and happiness for lobsters, where they can go play lobster skee-ball, splash around in the underwater ball pit and make out with their crawfish girlfriends under the boardwalk so their parents will never find out about their forbidden love. It'd be like calling a chicken-fighting ring "Clucky Cheese."

Here's the Lobster Zone's enthusiastic defense of their industry, from their Web site (coloring and capitalization is theirs):

The Lobster Zone product is extremely appealing to a broad target audience in a multitude of settings, and has the potential to be adapted to feature other high priced “rewards”. The psychological attraction to gaming appeals to a variety of interests including competition, sport, challenge, uniqueness of the game, and the “pot at the end of the rainbow”. Our society has become increasingly focused on impulse buying and immediate gratification. Today, vending machines meet those needs by selling virtually every product available in a store environment. Clothing, cameras, phones, food, hygienic products, fishing bait, pizzas, you name it, and you can find it in a vending machine in most parts of the world. The industry is booming and industry experts see a sustained growth rate for the future. Annual sales figures for the vending machine industry world wide total over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS .


To summarize, lobsters have replaced candy bars and tabloid magazines as impulse purchases. At least Miley Cyrus will be happy. If she weren't a vegetarian.