gastropoda

Now might not be the smartest time for a relative of the Chimp to be publicizing a food-related enterprise, given how his li’l brother’s latest scam has been proven to be just like all the others: not simply a scam but a bilk-the-taxpayers-big-time scam. (Would you buy a used curriculum from that family?) But I see the vacuous niece is grandstanding again with $30 grocery bags allegedly designed partly to raise money for what the simpering simian has dubbed “food insecurity” among children around the world. Why do I suspect it’s all a sneaky way of figuring out how to get school lunch subsidies here down to 30 cents a day, too?

Of course, the Feds could just switch to Tastybaby. “Malibu moms” using every overworked buzzword from gluten-free to “printed with vegetable ink” dreamed it up to beat back Gerber’s, but you gotta wonder what the organic matter is with that brand name. Maybe it’s because I spent three years in the home base of a tasty baker, but I read it as Stem Cell Soylent Green.

Whatever you do, do not click on any link breathlessly “reporting” on anything related to the Julia mashup being filmed by someone who really should feel bad about her dreck. You’re guaranteed to feel like a contestant on that new “Hurl” reality show. This gives new meaning to the term circle-jerk. Or the Barney theme song for old people. What most amazes me is that when I worked at the Paper of Highest Integrity, reporters were not even allowed to slap political bumper stickers on their cars for fear of being perceived as biased. Yet culture critics can just take roles — however ridiculous or small — in movies that will be covered in their sections. Breathlessly, I might add. And if you want to start taking bets on the suckability quotient of this project, just consider this: When in the history of tortillas has anyone gone shopping for salsa at the temple of elitism? You know all those earthquakes shaking Reno? It’s a 6-foot-tall icon thrashing in her grave.

The biggest Epago on the Upper West Side has the funniest “contest” going to commemorate 20 years in a space that previously did in big stars from both California and Cajun country: Submit a favorite memory and get a whack at a gift certificate worth up to $500. (Insert your own W.C. Fields joke on the second prize here.) Most of my recollections involve waiting for the toilets in the grody basement, and I suspect those would be disqualified. I do remember dragging my brother from the Bay Area, his wife and his younger son there one long-ago summer, just because there were tables outside, and I think he has never taken me seriously on food since. If people actually celebrated wedding anniversaries in the joint, this neighborhood was in worse shape than Panchito knew. All that said, though, I heard an interesting story from a friend who just tried to eat at the hottest thing off the avenue (according to everyone but the Mighty Cuozzo) and was actually turned away from his 6:45 confirmed reservation by a maitre d’hostility who said someone had called to change it to 9:45. Where did he wind up? Epago’s upscale sister. I guess that’s why I have so little interest in the really swankola places opening up here. Assholery should require a train ride.

Maybe I finally have to agree foie gras should be banned. No duck or goose should ever have to give up its bloated liver for a promotional stunt like the one Burger Pretender was briefly reported to be running. Thanks to my new addiction, I heard marketing geniuses had cooked up a fecal patty topped with foie gras plus blue cheese (activists should shut the chain down for that dairy offense against taste alone). The too-perfectly named European blog of People for the Harassment of Carnivores (Fish & Chimps) extracted a strange denial, but not before the Wonker-Outer noted that pricing the thing at 85 pounds was brilliant because it sent a quality message so strong not a single one ever needed to be sold. And now that the behavioral economists’ reasoning has been exposed, can we please declare a total media blackout on $1,000 omelets and other gold-plated bullshit?

My new word for what I’m looking for at press events is blodder: Anything to feed the series of tubes. And so I found myself at the kids’ table at a very lavishly underwritten event where two of my seatmates were genuinely mystified at how a relatively high-profile columnist of sorts for a holier-than-thou outlet can live on what are now described as “food media trips,” those little skid-greasers that old-timers like us would call junkets. Sinking stocks must drag down all standards. As always, though, it was a lot of gavage for a little gossip. My payoff came afterward, when I swung by Union Square for milk, eggs and asparagus and saw a bunch of half-nekkid, very buff guys in cowboy hats holding up signs promoting whatever that silly show is about marrying a farmer. Coincidentally, a pouter pigeon from the soiree passed by and I overheard him saying with great outrage: “Those are so not farmers.” Takes a Village Person to know one, I guess.

I forget whose original thought I’m stealing here, but the great food shortage is really less about quantity and more about greed — there’s plenty to eat if you can afford to pay whatever the extortionists ask. Already it’s becoming clear that the capitalist fools are going to take every advantage of a bad season for the poor, and nowhere was that reality starker than in the Guardian story on Britain’s plans to go back to feeding cheap pork byproducts to chickens, a disgusting practice that was stopped once scientists started connecting the dots between unnatural-food-in and mad-cow-disease-out. I stay as far away from chicken as I can, having been raised with them in the backyard in Arizona, where their filthy habits were impossible to ignore. But I wonder at a world that still believes nature is going to roll over and do whatever avarice wants. Which is why I read the WSJ story on protests in South Korea against American beef with special fascination. Consumers there are informed enough to know our suspect supply is potentially tainting even things like sanitary napkins. No details were provided, but I don’t even want know how they put the cow in the Kotex. And would that lead to Mad Cindy Disease?

So much for the debunking of the idiocy that wives of Presidents actually cook. Mrs. Chimp, pimping the Skankier Twin’s wedding and flogging “their” book, actually took to the teevee to fix some food. I can’t imagine how it went over in Mother’s home, but I’m sure everyone panic-buying rice at Costco appreciated the message: Let ’em eat oyster po’ boys.

Speaking of the most magical city in America, something about the place brings out the most craven impulses in Republicans. The Chimp is like a dog with its own vomit, going back to the mess he caused over and over. And now his Wannabe has the gall to strut around bombasting away about how he would have come right to the aid of a drowning city — ignoring all the images of what exactly he and his pal were doing on the disastrous day: posing with a birthday cake. His message to the media seems to be let ’em eat shit.

And speaking of rice rationing, call me cynical, but I’m starting to wonder if all the food shortages are not being pumped up by Big Food just to make genetically modified crops more inevitable. None of this happened overnight, but it’s being covered like a hurricane. And so that ridiculousness of People for the Harassment of Carnivores’ offering a reward for the development of in vitro beef got way more press than it warranted. I remember the international media ejaculation over the first test tube baby and suspect that if they manage to replicate the “miracle” with meat they’ll give it a name. Which of course will bring everything full circle, judging by the cute-animal brochure a vegan handed me at the Greenmarket. One quote: “If I knew you, I wouldn’t eat you.” I guess that’s why cannibals have no friends. And MoDo is bitter.

Groffoto down Philadelphia way tipped me off to a little item on his teevee about condoms for restaurant pagers — apparently some people actually worry about germs on them, and where there’s no need there’s a huckster to fill it. I always laugh when I see the covers or disinfectants for handles on shopping carts in the grocery store. For some reason the freaked and fastidious never worry about the filth on their lucre. From a bum’s fecal pocket to your Purelled hands. . . .

Metro must be already outsourcing its reporting to Bangalore, judging by the story on the shutdown of construction on the restaurant pavilion in Union Square. Could an actual New Yorker (reporter or editor, even one from Montclair) have let into print the understatement “where a popular greenmarket has been situated for several years”? Forget the fact that the G word should be capitalized, and overlook the peculiar need to explain the obvious. But since when does 32 years qualify as “several”? Kumar, get me rewrite.

One of my sources says fixes are being downsized as part of the purge at the Taj Sulzberger, which may explain why half the stories I slog through have at least one glitch (more and more on the front page). First I read about the “complementary” treats for dogs at a cafe in the park, then there was an op-ed reference to the “complementary” potato chips HIllary served supporters. Eons ago I remember filing a freelance story in which I mentioned complimentary appetizers at a restaurant in Virginia. I opened my paper to find it changed to complementary and complained to Big Al. Who wrote back to say the best solution was to use the shorter, less pretentious word: free. He’s gone, everyone’s taking buyouts or being purged and the lesson was clearly never learned. Last copy editor out, please turn on the Spell Check.

(And you would think, with the country overrun with Mexicans no border can keep out, high-paid reporters could learn a little bit about the food. In a piece on calorie counts at Chipotle, a diner is described as “dipping his nacho into his burrito.” Would that be a tortilla chip, by chance?)

This year Enron on 12th Street should dole out a special award, for most shameless self-promotion in catering to the papal piehole. The spirit-moved one might win for sheer volume; every day the self-congratulation masked as “Benny loves me, this I know” was ramped up worse. But the “devoted”  guy down in DC may have beat her by placing his own piece in the Post recounting all the ways he had brought Prada-red coals to Newcastle — plates specially made in Italy, food just the way the Vatican chef does it. Not only was it silly, it was unseemly. The Pope is not exactly Britney (although, as Bill Maher pointed out, they both have underwear issues). I just wonder which restaurateur got the autographed head shot to hang in the window.

I owe my grocer friend with the unfortunate wingnut tendencies a big favor for steering me to the most brilliant food piece in donkeys’ years: Nathanael Johnson’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized” in Harper’s. Whatever you think you know about raw milk, this will take you to about 14 higher levels. We spend all our time treating bacteria as WMD when they clearly exist for a good reason. Two great quotes from fully drawn characters: “Cheap food makes for expensive health care.” And: “Nature is dangerous, yes. But I can’t control it, and I can’t escape from it. I can only learn the best way to live with it.” Suffice it to say, that doesn’t mean with “probiotic” yogurt. Herd cows away from the grass they are intelligently designed to eat and before you know it humans are ballooning on corn converted into syrup. . . .