Normally when I’m typing up the day’s food (or food-adjacent) news, I come up with a bunch of jokes in an attempt to make it less boring. (You guys deserve nothing less than the most riveting of food news, but the world doesn’t always give me A+ material to work with.) But some days the news is so patently ridiculous it doesn’t need me to jazz it up at all, which I sincerely appreciate after a rip-roarin’ Presidents Day weekend spent doing absolutely nothing. Three whole days of bashing my skull against the Pandemic Wall really takes a lot out of a gal, so thank you, Mr. Lenise Martin III, for trying to lick Gorilla Glue off a Solo cup.
In an exclusive interview with CBS affiliate WBKN, Martin—an aspiring rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana—said he wanted to prove that Tessica Brown, who recently became infamous for spraying Gorilla Glue in her hair, was a fraud. His idea was to film himself doing a “Gorilla Glue Challenge” that involved putting some of the ultra-powerful adhesive on the rim of a red Solo cup, taking a drink, and then licking it off. He would record the whole thing for Instagram so that it could be preserved for us, and generations of his descendants, to enjoy.
“I thought it could lick it off kind of to moisten it and pull it right off but that didn’t work,” said Martin. “Everyone is on social media, every day there is a new challenge, but I did not think it would go this far.”
The Solo cup was removed from Martin’s face at a local emergency room, with a medical technique he described as “painful peeling.” Martin added that if his self-inflicted injury doesn’t heal properly, the tip of his lip will need to be surgically removed.
This is not Martin’s first brush with food and beverage-related viral fame; in 2019 he was arrested for licking a tub of Blue Bell ice cream in a Louisiana supermarket and putting it in the freezer, a stunt inspired by a viral video of a Texas teenager doing the same thing and getting famous for it. That arrest led to a 2020 appearance on The Dr. Oz Show; so far there’s no word if Martin will be invited back to the show for Dr. Oz to check out his upper lip.
In response to Martin’s video, Gorilla Glue was forced to issue yet another reminder not to put it on your body in any way, shape, or form.