In an Unsurprising Development, GarfieldEats Proprietor Nathen Mazri Has Lost What's Left of his Goddamn Mind

As readers of this website are aware, I am perversely fascinated by Nathen Mazri, the Canadian eccentic behind GarfieldEats, a short-lived pizza chain that served food in the shape of everyone’s favorite Monday-hating, lasagna-loving feline misanthrope.

Mazri embodies an archetype that I find endlessly fascinating and love to write about. He is a crazed narcissist, utterly out of touch with reality, who fatally lacks the self-awareneness and self-consciousness to understand that the world sees him much differently than how he sees himself. 

GarfieldEats sold Mazri’s delusional sense of himself as a lovable rebel pioneer and, to a much lesser extent, pizza in fanciful shapes. The public wasn’t buying Mazri or his novelty pizzas. 

Mazri made himself the core of GarfieldEats’ branding rather than the internationally beloved comic strip icon who gives the cult chain its name. People LOVE Garfield. They don’t seem to mind its lazy sub-mediocrity. People barely tolerate Mazri but he has an insatiable need for attention that wouldn’t allow him to be the CEO behind the scenes when he could shove Garfield to the side and sieze the spotlight for himself. 

The surreal, darkly comic disconnect between Mazri’s impossibly inflated self-image and the grim reality of his career is more glaring and hilarious in a reality show pilot he made to promote himself, the concept of “entergagement” and fancifully shaped Italian food titled Love Me, Feed Me, Don’t Leave Me. 

Love Me, Feed Me, Don’t Leave Me catered to Mazri’s conception of himself as a lovable underdog passionately pursuing a dream with the help of one of the world’s  famous and uniqitous pop icons. 

That’s how Mazri wants to be seen: as an eccentric, quirky rebel of the business world. The reality, as illustrated by Love Me, Feed Me, Don’t Leave Me, was much different. GarfieldEats was perpetually empty. Mazri’s employees clearly despised him. They barely tolerate him. For them, working at GarfieldEats is just another shitty job with a boss who is crappier than most. 

Mazri took the loss of GarfieldEats hard. With great bitterness and loathing, he publicly mourned the end of his dream and the evil corporate bastards standing in the way of him becoming the Steve Jobs of comic strip-based Italian eateries. 

The poster boy for Narcissistic Personality Disorder turned self-pity into performance art. In Youtube videos he alternates between sadness and apoplectic rage. 

I regret to inform you that since the end of GarfieldEats Mazri has lost his goddamn mind. 

As the smug face and grating voice of GarfieldEats, Mazri aggressively marketed the Nathen Mazri brand and, to a much lesser extent, tried to sell pizzas. 

Without GarfieldEats, Mazri is lost. He’s bitter. The end of GarfieldEats, and the gleeful mockery of people perversely obsessed with its creator seems to have broken Mazri. 

Mazri continues to beg for attention. He started a vanity podcast about a messiah-like cross between himself called The Nathfield that is updated infrequently due to the public’s complete lack of interest in it. 

The relentless self-promoter found a natural home on Elon Musk’s X, where he tweets compulsively under his own as well as accounts for Nathfield and GarfieldEats. If I were Nickelodeon I would do everything in my power to separate myself from Mazri but they’ve apparently chosen to ignore him. They clearly see him as the professional equivalent of a crazy ex you can’t believe you ever had the terrible judgment to ask out, let alone date. 

A core component of Mazri’s surprisingly elaborate self-mythology posits Garfield creator Jim Davis as a loving, supportive father to Mazri who encouraged him to follow his dreams and believed in GarfieldEats with the zeal of a true believer. 

Mazri has deluded himself into thinking that Davis was onboard 100 percent with GarfieldEats but evil corporate monsters forced him to rescind the merchandising rights to the iconic fat cat.

Davis isn’t exactly selective when it comes to Garfield merchandising. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were officially licensed Garfield sex toys in Asia.  

Mazri has turned the spectacular failure of a uniquely idiotic into a right-wing grift. Like many desperate opportunists, Mazri flamed out professionally in an exceedingly public way, then decided that an evil establishment is responsible for everything wrong in the world and his life. 

The shitty shit-poster fills Musk’s digital toxic waste dump with hateful invective. Mazri is the Canadian equivalent of a MAGA cultist. Unsurprisingly, Mazri reveres Trump and is running for office as part of the  People’s Party of Canada, a far-right populist organization. 

Mazri’s motto, “Bring Canada identity back stronger” is essentially “Make American Great Again” with a more pronounced xenophobic spin.

As with Trump, Mazri is fueled by personal resentment. He sees his business failures, which include an ill-fated Scooby Doo-themed foray into the frozen-food market, as clear-cut indications that the business world is hopelessly corrupt and that powerful people are conspiring against him. 

Mazri adorably imagines that online detractors are paid tens of thousands of dollars to sully his good name. That’s not true. We do this shit for free because it amuses us, not because we’re being amply compensated. 

I’d like to think that Mazri doesn’t stand a chance of getting elected to public office but if Trump’s rise has taught us anything, it’s that a jaded public sometimes prefers a garish, entertaining freak show to boring competency. 

Mazri’s shit was once funny. It’s not funny anymore, just ugly and hateful. He wants desperately to be loved but is full of bitterness and hate.