I can halfway understand why publishers would never think to challenge signed writers who set out to produce a memoir and wind up resorting to what seventh-graders and wingnuts so often must: Just making shit up. But can someone please explain to me how a whole cookbook devoted to steak could reach bookstores without anyone noticing “hanger” is misspelled, repeatedly? It’s plane stupid.
The morphing of food blogs into food glossies is continuing apace, which I guess should not be surprising given the stranglehold advertising has over both. But I was still amazed to see that just about every cyber-outlet in town picked up a “story” from the NYPost about a kosher cheeseburger without ever noticing that an essential detail was dead wrong. The “popular” steakhouse in the piece was located on the wrong side of the park. Considering I walk past it at least every other day and have never seen it full, I guess I shouldn’t wonder that the repeat offenders also didn’t realize the shill potential of the original piece was at terrorist alert level. Wait till you hear the echo chamber on chefs with charitable hearts. No shit, Forelock.
Consider yourself lucky Joe Nocera is merely wanking rather than flipping omelets at brunchtime in some super-busy restaurant. His take on the downer cows that were ground up and distributed to who-knows-which school lunch or Hot Pocket: One mad cow won’t spoil the whole batch. I am no admirer of animal rights activists who muck around with the food chain, but only someone who has eaten way too many “tacos, Mexican style” in a company cafeteria could seriously think an expose of an undeniable health threat was a simple publicity stunt. Long after Americans are going down with BSE, Nocera and his ilk will be quoting the inevitable Bushism: “No one could have anticipated. . . .” If you think an animal waterboarded to stand upright to pass inspection is going to make good eating, I have a Paula Deen ham to sell you.
In other idiocy, please tell me there is not really an award category of “best new farm-forward restaurant.” The sheep shit is getting hip-high these days. May I also suggest licensing for flacks? If you cannot spell complement, you should not be allowed to shill — beers, let’s face it, never have a nice thing to say about cheeses. Another New Rule is that any interviewer who does not know The Food Section should be automatically disqualified from covering the Internets. Give that nitwit food.alltop.com.
Now that the flour has hit the media fan, it’s fascinating to see NYC pizzerias are not bitching about the price of mozzarella as they jack the cost of a slice to gallon-of-gas level — I noticed they substituted mystery slime for even the most base processed cheese long ago. But the disconnect between front page and Metro was weird, with the latter following the exact script laid out in the home of the Human Scratch N Match. The big picture made it clear that, thanks to Chimp rule, we are eight years behind in dealing with both climate change and overpopulation (don’t tell Africa, but abstinence = trouble — my mom had two books on the rhythm method and seven kids in 8 1/2 years). And the whole move toward biofuels is going about as well as everything else he’s pushed. What kind of switchgrassed society would think fueling an SUV was a higher priority than feeding human beings? I guess one with people too fat to walk. You know we’re doomed when a restaurant offers a shuttle bus that will clog traffic and spew fumes just to ferry patrons from the East Village to the near West Village. I could limp faster than a rolling drunk tank.
And now we’re learning the awful truth that endless marketing of bottled water cannot drown out. All the overpriced, largely unneeded products of Big Pharma don’t stop with us. They flush right into the water supply. And we drink everyone else’s Viagra/Valium milkshake. A boom business would be selling one-way tickets at funeral homes. Who would want to come back to a planet this befouled?
What is the sound of one tit typing? A dining room is flourished, single orders of gnocchi compete with entire restaurants, a lobster loses its nerve. I’m starting to think the flop sweat is shorting out the laptop.
Turns out the Chimp and I have something almost in common. He had no idea gas prices had hit latte levels. And until I saw a news item on pizza inflation, I didn’t realize how expensive flour had gotten. Now I see the Food Shitty flier has it at $2.49 for five pounds, which is exactly two and a half times what I last remember paying on sale. I don’t have an MBA for Harvard to revoke, but I can at least enjoy the fact that the Skank Twin’s wedding cake will eat up a little more of the ill-gotten oil gains than it would have if she were getting married under that guy who inspired “Love Story.” The one you wouldn’t want to have a beer with.
Off and on over the last horrific seven years I have been trying to come up with a spoof on How to Cook a Shrub. Now the exemplary Tom Engelhardt has done something far more impressive with his commander-in-chef recipes. Nothing says disaster accomplished like an edible flower garnish.
The Starbucks shutdown for retraining was covered like it was Y2K all over again — WCBS spent the day hysterically warning listeners to run out and get their caffeine or the sky was surely going to fall; CNN ran a poll wondering how viewers would survive three hours without spending too much. And of course the newspapers all dutifully sent stenographers to cover the biggest non-news since Taco Bell let the rats out. My consort must really be working too hard lately, because he actually asked me why I thought the company would do it. Can you say more coverage than the wingnuts’ nemesis got for buying $1,200 worth of doughnuts? What was most laughable was the bill of goods that a problem allegedly so serious could be solved in 180 minutes. I feel as if I’ve waited that long to get an overpriced iced tea.
One of the most bizarre ads I’ve spotted in some time shows a seriously depressed-looking guy decked out in chef’s hat and jacket plus knee waders, sitting with chin in hand on rocks at the edge of the ocean. The display type reads, “Been thinking about how to make that lower sodium dinner taste good?” Given that the recipe it offers is for chicken casserole made with canned soup, it should be: Been thinking life is still worth living after shilling for this shit? The only marvel is that a “real” chef was not hired. Rocco must have been busy buffing his can opener.
And I see there’s a new snack for cretins (or, as they prefer to spell it, creationists). If the ad didn’t have a Big Food name in it, you would swear it’s a spoof. The brand is Flat Earth. The bag is held up by flying pigs. And the copy promises half a serving of vegetables in an ounce of chips. That is a lot of disbelief to suspend. Even the trademark sounds straight out of the Onion: “impossibly good.” They paid lawyers actual money to register that? It must have tested really well with the lumbering throngs down at Dinosaur Adventure Land, riding the Leap of Faith swing.
I shouldn’t expect much from a paper that actually printed the phrase “he road on his motorway,” but describing absinthe as a cocktail is a little like saying bourbon is a highball. Good thing they had the inevitable ad to set readers straight. And I guess it would have been a downer for the liquor store to give it the usual side-by-side play, so they moved it a section away from the bogus trend story. (Anyone who thinks bingeing-and-purging with booze is new has never spent a night in a girls’ dorm.) Still, expect to be reading a lot more about the green “cocktail.” I recently got an email wanting me to write a “paid review” of one brand, which may be a sign that blogola is the next hot trend. A friend emailed me the other day and mentioned he made all of $2.97 off his blog last month, which is almost $3 more than I ever have. I can see why “kids” with no background in journalism before it became more about buying than thinking would happily take a little under the table when ads are not all they’re inflated to be. Personally, I have no faith in the afterlife, let alone the possibility that there might be shopping malls in hell.
One of those Style copy editors must be moonlighting up the avenue at the “gourmet grill” where my consort was reduced to eating while teaching a media workshop. He thoughtfully brought the menu home and it’s a typo collector’s slop dream: Pasta faggioli. Spachetti. Mazzarella. “On a bed spinach from the grill.” (At least it was consistent: Pannini was used throughout.) But the best part was the copy on the cover: “Walk up & enjoy your favorite foods, prepaired as the day arrives . . . yours taste buds will sore & bring you back time after time.” Sounds like the herpes of Italianesque cooking.
The McDonald’s translation of feng shui must be “piss into wind.” A franchiser whose mainstay is beef right now is going to need a lot more than Asian touches to keep bad luck at bay. You’ve got the USDA insisting it will not ban downers that might carry mad cow, new cases being diagnosed across the northern border and spinmeisters pinning the problem on the Humane Society, not on a national epidemic of greed. And all this is happening as more news oozes out about where the recalled beef might still be lurking. Anyone who has eaten Progresso Italian wedding soup lately, or those truly scary Hot Pockets, might want to go into denial very soon. Considering that South Korea (and Japan) have long banned American beef, a headline in the WSJ said it all: “Rice and U.S. Beef Lobbyist Offer Reassurance in Seoul.” I don’t know about the professional prevaricator, but I can already hear Kindaliesalot’s defense down the line: “No one could have anticipated. . . .” At least until Jan. 20, 2009, it will always be 8/6 in America.