gastropoda

In showing his smirk in New Orleans, the Chimp was like a dog eating its own vomit. No true human with a scintilla of shame would ever have foisted himself off on an octogenarian restaurateur who has not been able to reopen for real after two whole years. What’s saddest is that the cheery photo op worked, yet again, for mainstream media — the world saw the smiling faces at Dooky Chase and not the devastation just outside. Potemkin was a piker compared with this sociopath.

The maddest kitchen scientist on the planet has to be “Hungry Girl,” whose diet “recipes” are regurgitated in a certain daily pooper-scooper. I read them for the exercise. You could scratch your head for hours trying to figure out what “sugar-free maple syrup” might be, let alone “no-calorie butter spray” and “Gerber Mini Fruits” (of which one-quarter cup is to be mixed with fat-free vanilla yogurt and Fiber One bran cereal; let your digestive tract wonder where the natural went). The measurements are even more entertaining, like “24 sprays.” Apparently when you’re doling out no calories, you must be precise.

Speaking of selling out, the New Yorker’s food issue felt, for the very first time, like the food ad issue. Half the copy seemed to have been trudgingly generated solely to break up the paid pages; the usually brilliant Anthony Lane’s in particular was like listening to teeth being cleaned. My consort noted that earlier issues used one photographer for seamless impact; the latest was a salmagundi. Which is sad, because no publication does food on a regular basis like this most unlikely of publications. The recent Burkhard Bilger noodling on matsutake hunters in the Pacific Northwest was “Beautiful Swimmers” in a nutshell, while the short stories excerpted from “Absurdistan” long ago turned me on to one of the most entertaining food books ever written. But I guess any excuse to commission a Wayne Thiebaud cover is worth toasting, and we’ll always have Roz Chast with her kitchen anxiety cartoons. Maybe the Conde Nast pimps should consider a Bon Appetit fashion issue.

Oh. Right.

The Grand Old Hypocrites must have taken Ray Sokolov at his word when he said the eating is getting better at airports. And was that sad sack the first guy ever to be destroyed for not getting a blow job?

Unlike dead men, ghostwriters do tell tales. And a couple of very big chefs in this huge city should be a teensy bit chagrined. Forget the coffee stain on one. Considering how many candidates tried to channel a charisma-free legend, I suspect a whole MA group could be formed tomorrow. (“My name is Regretful. I am a Cashaholic.”)

For a magpie of typos, this is harvest season on the series of tubes. The other day I spotted “Chinatown Brassiere” on one site and “terrior” on another. And then there was the commenter who insisted a restaurant reviewer should possess both an ability to write and “a good palette.” Actually, when you’re painting word pictures, the latter should be enough.

Back in those halcyon days when I was writing food columns for a protectively brilliant editor at the NYT magazine, a literary agent made an overture and I reluctantly agreed to go meet her in her office/apartment. It was like the worst kind of bad date: I thought she was interested in my unique voice; she thought I was in it for the Lotto. And I will never forget the rumpled legal pad she produced with all her brilliant ideas for books — she actually wanted me to write something off tired lists she had been flogging for years. I thought of her every time the Egotist came to town with his tattered yellow pages and pitched, yet again, a column on “shrimp shell stock.” We always said yeah, sure, and somehow it never materialized. Well, now that’s out of the way. And at least it seems a little fresher than the Juiceator. You know, that bullshit gadget Sunday Business hyped a year and a half ago?

In the middle of contemplating this, I went out to do errands and an elegant old woman stopped me on Columbus to ask timidly: “Is today Saturday, or Sunday?” I told her, then walked off thinking: Don’t feel bad, lady — you could be moving copy. (Ratafias, though? Convulsively better than shrubs.)

Is it too much to ask to be allowed to put away our whites after Labor Day before huge mounds of Halloween crap start showing up at the grocery store? I’m a sucker for candy corn, but not a full month before the leaves even begin to turn below my windows. And with summer squash still dominating the Greenmarket, is it not far too early for a “pumpkin frost latte” at a crapola chain near Union Square? Compared with seasonal greed anymore, global warming looks to be happening at glacial speed. It almost makes you pray the Chimp’s drown-the-government-in-a-bathtub approach helps the Chinese steal Christmas. Lead in the fruitcakes would slow them down.

I was so flattered to be invited to a tyro gourmand’s book party that I feel compelled to warn him he is heading for trouble. You know that old adage about success? Judging by what I had to listen to, he could wind up with a million mothers. It’s way too late, but failure would have meant only the one.