gastropoda

“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.

With the economy in a low-flow toilet, it’s a little scary to realize advertising is the new housing. Everything seems to be premised on ad dollars anymore, but if there’s no money, who is going to buy what they’re selling? And what does this have to do with the price of food? Things have gotten so bad that twice in two days I spotted huge ads on the tops of pizza boxes — for H&R Block at Freddie & Pepper’s during an emergency refueling and for Tekserve on a delivery on its way up in our elevator. A real Madison Avenue genius would be coming up with apple ads, and not for the computer stuff but to be emblazoned on the fruit soon to be sold on every corner. . . .

My consort and I once ate dinner at a Lower East Side restaurant where the chef was huge, the main courses were gargantuan and the salad was ridiculously dainty. When I spotted the perpetrator, I understood instantly: She had no idea what a normal appetite might be. And guess where she’s consulting today? For a newish service that delivers “diet” meals. I suppose the One Fat Lady was otherwise occupied.

Here’s a budding trend ripe for nipping: The tip jar at Amy’s Bread in the Village is now labeled the “karma cup.” If there are countinghouses in the afterlife, I’m taking another look at reincarnation. But even that Bush-era innovation is not as fucked up as the Chowhound “reviews” posted a couple of doors away on the Murray’s Cheese window. Not only can any establishment cherry-pick favorable ones, but the potential for fraud is unprecedented (check out the first alleged everyman’s swoon over at menupages for a new place with an unfortunate name off Columbus). The one venue where autofellation is actually possible, after all, is the internets. But I guess the faux touts could be dumber: They could have come from Zagat.

Far-flung corners of the food blogosphere have been in a tizzy over the revelation that Jed Huckabee chose the Olive Garden as his dining destination in America’s premier food city. (It says everything that the reporter refused him his first choice, T.G.I.Friday’s — who says the media are not a class apart?) I see it as the most entertaining sign yet that “I Didn’t Inhale Oxford” is gaining traction. After all, a dry drunk was elected as the guy America most wanted to share a beer with. A former fatty who doesn’t know from Per Se may be just the ticket for the cretin crowd.

Literary agents always natter on about wannabe authors needing a “platform” to sell a book proposal. And the shakiest one I’ve come across in a long while is a husband who reviews cookbooks for one of the last newspaper sections standing. The premise is ridiculous, that “home cooks dismiss (steak) as ‘eating out’ food” — someone has to be buying all those scary-cheap slabs of beef in the Food Shitty near me. But the more revealing evidence of how bogus this project looks is the photo in the catalog of what appears to be flank steak (because brisket isn’t a steak, no?) cut straight down like a loaf of bread. My teeth got tired just thinking of chewing a slice. And those exotic lotus roots in another photo definitely send the message that steak, as an entree, is the other cheap meat. I’ve never heard of an author being asked, “Who’s your hubby?” but maybe he actually has the power to make other editors fall in line online. Didn’t it work for Shirley Lord?