gastropoda

If there’s any consolation for the degradation of the news business, it has to be the fact that flacks are debasing themselves even faster. How much did the one who sent this out get for her soul? Within hours of Ted Kennedy’s receiving his death sentence, she actually offered a cancer expert available for an interview. It was like Ghouls Gone Wild. But what does this have to do with food, you may ask? I had the same question. These people must get paid by the inappropriate overture.

The award for worst “Are You Shitting Me?” e-release has to go to the one touting a Father’s Day booze-and-golf package priced at a mere $118,000. But I know just who should spring for it. The lying Sacrificer in Chief must have enough ill-gotten gains from his insane war by now to buy 4,080 of them for the dads who won’t get to have a beer with their kids this June. To him and his blood-sucking overlord, that’s just Chimp change.

One thing I have abandoned all hope on is a vaccine against the Stupid. And so the future will inevitably bring more people who are paid to write about food not knowing that you don’t spell it “pallet,” that the shoes are not Minolos, that there is no way to carve a steak off a catfish (even one recalled for bacterial contamination). Chefs will always be doing “seasonal” menus with Brussels sprouts in springtime; big food companies will always invent garbage like a dressing called — seriously — Tuscan Romano. (As opposed to Venetian Reggiano?) But the true proof that there is no stopping idiocy was the layout in the magazine of the newspaper that simultaneously ran a big story on Americans wasting food. Showcasing stylish kitchens, the shoot squandered enough fresh vegetables to feed 17 Ethiopian villages. And the irony is that those are the kinds of kitchens that once installed will never make contact with fresh favas and fennel again. I guess it could have been more ridiculous, though: The prop stylists could have used Chicago foie gras.

Is it just me, or has hostility become longhand for host? My consort and I stopped at Q Bar on a whim early one evening and the suit at the front mumbled: “We have no availability.” What? That’s more verbosely ridiculous than “fully committed.” And a “sorry” wouldn’t have killed him. Then there was the teeth-clenching woman manning the door at Bouchon who looked to be one Uzi away from a postal incident. Separating the paying customers from the rigidly arranged tables in a mall can’t be any more fun than getting dressed up in a suit to stand at a silly podium and mumble all night. But if you’re that miserable-to-condescending, there are better jobs out there. Flack with spelling deficiencies, say (I got an e-release touting 10 questions for “Rachel”) or with fusion confusion (tortilla chips topped with crab, avocado and salsa are not “taco bites” — they’re nachos, for crap’s sake). And just as I was typing this, an e-mess landed that inspired a whole new verb: dracking, for catapulting the propaganda after a little too much vodka. What else would explain “fresh hunky potato salad.” Do you fork it or fuck it?

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. . . .

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.

My writeme box is always overflowing with gaffe riots from the flack circus, whether straight from the source or passed along by my e-pals who are equally amazed at what people paid to promote actually churn out. Most recently a new variation on the most abused term in the restaurant business turned up (“pre-fixed” menu), but the funniest had to be the release touting a new place and its chef, who hails from TOWN, Italy. Someone must have been too busy writing an invoice and checking it twice to go back and proofread. Then again, she did promise “a menage a trois never tasted this good.” Is the human Scratch N Match moonlighting?

At lunch the other day with a food editor friend in from far, far out of town, the conversation naturally turned to mohels (something to do with a rabbi much in demand for his Thanksgiving turkey-carving skills). I had never heard that word but said I was thrilled to learn it because I had been thinking about a little flack who fancies himself a prick but is really only a bris bit. And, wonder of wonders, she immediately knew who I was talking about. If only the memorability quotient were as high with his clients.

Heading out to a promotional event a friend with a cookbook on the line enticed me to attend, I rode the elevator down with my next-door neighbor who was regaling her friend with the tale of how the two of us had each broken ourselves right around the same time in freaky falls in Eutopia, she in Paris, I in Piedmont. I don’t know about her, but I remember mine every morning when the pain wakes me before the alarm can. Talking about how instantly your life can change put me in a strange frame of mind, so maybe I made too much of what the unexpected flack at the door said as he handed me my name tag: “Just don’t get drunk and get hit by a car.” I laughed it off by responding, “Don’t trust me not to do either.” But the longer I thought about it the more I wondered why a guy with social Tourette’s would choose to make a career of ass-kissing. And I really wondered whether T’dum advised another invitee, one of his pals: “Just don’t get greedy and fuck over your partner.” Except that is how that ugliness actually unfolded.

Cost of a ridiculous and ridiculously flacked sundae? $25,000. Health Department shutdown immediately after the media blitz? Priceless.

In other hype-wire stunts, the silliness of a food blogger hiring help in spreading his “news” was kicked up a notch with the announcement that mentioned “Rum” DMC. Would they be anything like Lillet Kim?

And could they all please give us a break between the unconscionable rush from pagan Halloween straight to unholy Xmas before sending out the Valentine’s releases? My head is about to explode at the thought of six weeks of carols and consumer craziness and misguided advice on how to avoid ballooning on eggnog and gingerbread. I cannot even begin to deal with saccharine VD.

Also, that cooing cuddling between handler and overgrown teddy bear in the Observer’s takeout on Panchito’s nemesis almost made the good old days of Christyne and Rudy seem honestly romantic. You could only think, “Get a room,” and hope it was very, very dark.

My prediction that flacks are facing extinction in the age of viral marketing turns out to be a bit premature. A food blog has actually gone out and hired one (which tells you much about the vapidity of the content). Worse, a press release can still get blasted all over the internets even when the big announcement has been routinely referred to in print for weeks. (Stop the Wordpresses: Laurent is opening in Vegas.) And someone clearly had to run interference with the NYPost for Rachael when her minions went whining that she neglects “her” magazine. Apparently it worked; the column baldly stated that “she writes the editor’s notes and recipes.” Yeah, and Martha Stewart scrubs her own staff toilets.

A chain of strip clubs has sent out an e-release touting its Halloween cocktail, and the garnish is candy corn. I don’t know what’s scarier, the fact that even topless bars have flacks, or the prospect of so many Technicolor yawns ensuing from that combination of triple booze and oily sugar. No wonder they don’t let the “girls” drink at clip joints. The laps would be too sloppy to dance in.

The CorridorCo might want to take a lesson from Jean-Georges, whose fete promoting his latest cookbook was easily the Qualcomm Stadium of food parties. It was downstairs at Spice Market, and civilized would be an understatement. Seriously good beef/pork/lobster apps were dispensed at a fair clip, servers were constantly materializing with trays of drinks and the vibe was the friendliest I’ve experienced in many a party — to the point that just as I was hearing that one old pal now despises me for something I wrote (and can’t remember) a current nemesis was nodding cordially to me. Usually when you have to pass dueling clipboards at the door the gang-bang is not going to be pleasant. But this was good enough to bring me back for more. It didn’t even look so Pier One-ish anymore, although that could be the Trimbach talking.

A going-straight-to-hell friend out in America sent me an unintentionally funny obit, about a guy who “died suddenly” at 45. No cause was given, but I think I can guess from the name on both his sandwich shop and his carnival concession: Tubbie’s. It’s almost as bad as the smoking-in-bed writer of books on “home entertaining” who died in a fire and was “known as a recluse.” And while I’m kicking corpses, it’s amazing that the singularly nasty Frugal Gourmet has been able to rehabilitate his image from the great beyond. Chow’s lament for no more Mr. Nice Guy says he was charged with mere sexual harassment. His many obits, however, used the proper term for what brought him to his knees: sexual abuse. Of at least seven boys. In other words, he was what he was — a priest in chef’s clothing.