Cakes are better than pies

Wayne Shaw, a 280-pound reserve goalkeeper for Sutton United, who ate a pie during the broadcast of their match against Arsenal, was just asked to resign for his actions. Apparently they had been motivated by his connection with Sun Bets, a gambling company. It seemed an innocent moment but was quickly revealed to be anything but.

There’s a lot to unpack here. For one, there’s the close and uncomfortable relationship that the sporting world has with the betting world. There’s also the hypocrisy of allowing teams to be in bed with these companies but punishing players for working with them.

But it’s hard to feel too bad for Shaw for one big reason: pies are terrible. Had he been eating cake, then I would be first to defend his name and honor, but pies are trash and eating them over cakes is an unforgivable act.

Now, if there was no cake available and he absolutely had to eat a pie to stave off starvation, then fine. That’s an understandable situation, though it still leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. Pies should be a last resort in a desperate situation. They’re what you eat when you can no longer sleep off the hunger.

That might be a bit hyperbolic, but that’s how awful pies look when compared to cakes. When they’re held up to closer inspection, when compared to the light that is the cake, pies don’t cool off, they crumble. They’re shown to be nothing more than a distasteful and crude collage of ingredients, packed and packaged as something better than it really is. Used as the title of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan —who definitely should have not won that Nobel Prize— Don Mclean, The Beatles, and James Taylor.

All to no avail because no amount of propaganda can change the nature of pies. They’re bad.

Now cakes, cakes are good. Cakes are delicious. Cakes are celebratory. Cakes are used to mark festivities, happy moments in life, birthdays and weddings, beautiful mornings and romantic nights, love, because cakes are the best. They don’t need to sit in a window sill, away from you, they sit in the fridge, a place that is also synonymous with happiness.

You can tell that cakes are much better than pies by their uses in language. A pie, as insinuated by The Rock during his time in the WWF/WWE, referenced the female genitalia. Crude and distasteful once again. “As American as Apple pie” refers to things that are typically American, which should be a good thing, until you see that blue jeans, the most boring of jeans, is another example. In trying to be nationalistic, it reveals itself to be boring. There’s “eat humble pie” which is spiteful, “easy as pie” which is arrogant, “cutie pie” which is demeaning, and “pie in the sky” which is discouraging. Pie is usually reserved for bad things.

Cakes are much better. Cakes can refer to a well-figured butt. It also refers to a wealth of other great things. When you’re “caked up,” that can either refer to being engaged in romantic endeavors with someone or having a lot of money. “Can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” is a deep philosophical idiom. When things “go out like hotcakes” it means that it’s successful. Something being the “frosting on the cake” implies that a good situation just became better. When you tell someone “If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” it signifies delight at their arrival.

It’s no coincidence that everything associated with cakes seems to be good, and the ones with pies bad, it’s just representative of the nature of the foods. If you can even call pie a food.

There are of course, varieties of cakes and pies, and the deliciousness of both does depend on the person who makes it. But it takes some Frankenstein level of demented thinking to ruin a cake. You have to actively work against all things good and natural to make a bad cake. Yet, it’s the opposite for pies.

There are good pies, just as every rule has an exception. They’re a bit like the ideal of the American Dream, since nothing is as American as apple pie. That is, that they use the exceptions to sell a delusion. From what we know about reality, it is almost impossible to pull one’s self from his/her bootstraps. There are far too many external factors working against such a dream. The ideal though, still persists, because of things like the championing of one individual who does succeed as a guidelines to those who are trying, and as an admonishment to the ones that fail to rise up.

Similarly, one good pie seems to override the common sense that pies in general are trash. It’s a deception to posture otherwise. They don’t taste good. There’s too much going on with them. They’re messy. And even worse, they look bad. They look like the Lord of the Rings: Battle of the Five Armies dwarves of pastry foods.

It’s redundant but important to repeat this: cakes are delicious. Just thinking of them now fills me with joy. They are the epitome of what a dessert should be. The shining example to the imposters. Everything, every food, event or injury, is made better or is healed when a cake is part of the equation.

They are simply the best.

When Bobby Valastro was arrested back in 2014, he didn’t try to argue his way out by referencing his community work or by apologizing. He said “You can’t arrest me! I’m the Cake Boss.” Because cakes mean something in this world.