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?

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?

I should have the tautest jaw in town for all the dropping it does. I just read an interview with a very charming celebrity who was asked if she was “suffering from writer’s block”  because she has not had a cookbook out in a while. This is a person who I doubt has ever written more than her name on the back of a check, but she swears she’s “working on one right now.” Yeah, she and seven hired pens. Then again, my cynicism barometer might need recharging, because it took a far out-of-towner to get me wondering what the hell is really up with that My Little Pony enterprise. Richard Thompson wrote a great song asking the crucial question, with the operative verbs starting with the letters J or P. There must be a segueway in there somewhere. . . .

Both my parents were WWII Marines who knew from KP, and I still cannot conceive of anyone ever using the word “spud” in actual conversation. But not one of the countless regurgitations of the press release I read failed to shuffle “potato” out in favor of “spud” by the second graf. What, “brown tuber” was taken as a synonym? Even worse than the idiotic flack-talk transcribed into print on- and off-line was the easy bait of a ridiculously overpriced item — if the Pentagon were so transparent with $55 baked potatoes, or $81 burgers, we could halve the $12 billion wasted every single day. And somehow I don’t think it’s truffles pushing up that tab.

Maybe I’m a natural-born cynic, but my hype-ola antenna went up immediately on skimming an ode to the Cheddarhead state as the new artisanal wonderland. Over the years I have turned down more free trips there than the Schnorrer has taken best new restaurant jaunts. But even I was surprised to open my door a few days later and find a big box on the mat from the hip new purveyor whose arrival made the story Twaddle-worthy. I always wonder why subjects think anyone wants to write about them because they have just been written about in one of the most-read newspapers in the country. And here’s how “cutting-wedge” the story was: The sliver of exemplary cheese in that big box has been winning awards since 2001. Hit me with your swimming suit. . . .

“To be immortal you have to be dead” is one of my favorite sayings (the third clause in “drinks at 5, dinner at 6 and . . .”) But immortality is being granted for lesser and lesser achievements lately. The founder of Popeyes at least led a life worth reading about. But national obits for the guy who invented the EggaMuffin? WTF? They all dutifully regurgitated his inspiration as eggs Benedict, but how do you get from a freshly poached egg with hollandaise to scarifying yellow rubber with fake cheese? The attention paid would be annoying if not for another great saying: “Success has a million fathers, failure but one.” Dude, you got it.

It figures that I let our WSJ subscription lapse for one week and missed an apparently good story on how chefs are economizing as the economy goes to hell but re-upped in time to read a piece that had me asking that eternal “what happy hour were the editors patronizing” question. I could see covering a woman chef at the South Pole. Letting said chef write it herself tilts the axis toward promotional, but factoring in the fact that she was touting a cookbook for which she tested the recipes spins the whole thing off toward the galaxy unethical (the Murky Way). And let’s not even get into the reality that many of the recipes in that book do not work. I got no problem with “citizen journalism.” But at a time when even the pros are ready to throw standards overboard, someone really needs to draw a bottom line against penguin shit.

Even before the Chimp took the concept of democracy and drove it into the global ditch, there was Zagat. And anyone halfway-sentient who did not realize you cannot assess quality by “voting” deserves to eat America’s favorite hot dogs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with McLame. All of which is by way of wondering: How in the hell did the OAD “survey” ever get published? You put a questionnaire up online and really think the responses will come only from people who have actually eaten in the restaurants being judged, and not from flacks and shills and wannabes, not to mention the impressionable who tried Da Fiore on their honeymoons back when James Beard was a pup? Call the damn thing “100 Great Restaurants.” You can’t say they’re the “Best” unless you have put down your feces and stopped flinging long enough to try them all. Pretty bad when the press release challenges its own subject . . .

Just like the outgoing unevolved Chimp, though, the incoming Father Time knows how to massage the hell out of the pack media on the campaign trail. Just by treating reporters to a barbecue at his log mansion very near where I grew up (not Sedona) he got no end of Tiger Beat-worthy coverage. They even ran his rib recipe, for Costco’s sake (nothing but the best for “my friends”). For once I’m glad Panchito is safely confined to the chewing-and-typing beat. Imagine the damage he could inflict with a manly man in an apron rather than a cowboy hat doing the jive-talking. America would be convinced this is not the Gordon Ramsay of candidates but the guy to have a comforting plate of macaroni and cheese with.

I am never at my best in the morning, especially Sunday morning, but I still could not quite grasp what my consort was waving under my face in a certain supplement. He was saying something about patently crude Photoshopping — “Look how sharply her dress cuts in right here; that’s gotta be fake” — and I was trying to figure out why he would be outraged by a diet ad. Then it sank in, and so did I, right into the jaw-dropping editorial copy. A cookbook author who was once obese is now merely fat, and she’s got a diet book to promote. I’m sorry, when you are 5 feet, 4 inches tall (even 5/5 if you want to add in that alleged half-inch) you are not exactly a role model at 150 pounds. Once upon a time, before publishers routinely swallowed tales of cornbread and black-eyed peas as gangland veracity, an author would have been required to shrink at least to “normal” size (for a woman, 5 pounds for every inch over 5 feet). Maybe this inspiring tale with recipes will give some 400-pounder hope, but if I thought running and restricting would only get me down to the last notch on a regular airplane seat belt, I’d head straight for Dunkin’ Donuts. After all, I now know a new trick: Instead of stepping into your old fat pants for the before/after photo, you can stand behind them and keep the avoirdupois to yourself. As Stephen Colbert might say, “I am size 8, and so can you.” Except 8 is the new 14.

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.

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.

Random phrases stuck in my cranial sieve: Ghostwriters in the meat. If you feed them, they will blog. The Freaking section. Shafer for sheriff. And, in honor of the report finding the underfinanced, overextended FDA could not find shit in spinach if you handed it to it in a bag: Take the sushi. Leave the Chinese dumplings.

If I were the cynical type, I would wonder about the latest flavor of an overly packaged breath mint. In “Juno,” the thoroughly repugnant accidental sperm donor is addicted to the orange, and now the beneficiary of the product placement comes in “Cherry Passion.” This is all teenage virgins need when the only government-sanctioned birth control is denial. Next thing you know SunnyD will be advertising on Clearblue Easy.