gastropoda

It’s not surprising to see Panchito generating more buzz by ambling off to the magazine than he ever did with his chewing and typing. Once upon a time the speculation over his replacement might have mattered, but he did manage to make a big job very small (sort of the opposite of what he did with his coverage of the Chimp), and now the more amusing debate among bloggers is whether the position is being downsized. Filling that small hole in one section is rather expensive, and this would be a fine time to reinvent it altogether rather than rummage through clips looking for a correspondent who’s lunched overseas with Saint Alice. My newish friend down at the Casa de Slim has the best idea ever for saving newspapers: charge for comments, not for content. So why not dispense with the critical middleman, let restaurateurs post their own reviews and watch the feces fly?

The same friend and I had a long discussion of which came first, dying newspapers or newspapers committing hara-kiri by canning half the worker bees and churning out pap. I wondered the same thing about food magazines after opening the latest issue of one where the already stretched phyllo-thin staff has apparently just been trimmed. Turning at random to one article, I see the President’s first name misspelled and a statement that a DC soup kitchen was founded “exactly 20 years before to recycle the leftovers of the Clinton Inaugural balls.” I know Bill and Hill killed Vince Foster and stole money in Arkansas, among other nefarious deeds, but did they really crash GW the Elder’s parties? Some days outsourcing copy-editing to India doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. 

I know I’m not the only one whose head explodes at least once a day while skimming the hometown paper. One morning that bitter bitch who never got over Bill is talking about Michelle O’s “flare,” and she doesn’t mean the rockets’ red. Or an essayist is undercutting his bathos by describing a “grizzly” reenactment of a murder, and he doesn’t mean the Werner Herzog documentary. Or the blogosphere is inundated with purloined images of a graph whose caption mentions “deductables.” And, no, fixing the fuckups online doesn’t make the newsprint go away (but maybe that’s why it’s happening). I’ve given up on anyone ever getting potpie or poundcake or wineglass right. But even my jaded jaw dropped a bit on reading about the affordable option near Carnegie Hall that offers a “prefix” menu. I guess that means all the introductory syllables you can eat.

Amid all the doomsaying on the economy lately, a graph in the paper that runs Turd Blossom columns as its funny pages was rather revealing: Americans are cutting back on poultry, beef, cereals, sugar, pet food and alcoholic beverages but spending more on eggs, fresh vegetables and fresh milk and cream. No wonder the catapulters of Spam propaganda have had no success boosting that scary product. Shoppers are skipping Alpo and flipping omelets.

I’m spleen-deep in copy editor blowback right now (at the very least, the “fixes” should not have to include correcting your own byline), but I still think a certain cookbook publisher might want to go back to the grammar pool. No fewer than three of its books I have flipped through lately have had screw-ups. A collaborator’s name here, a famous chef’s name there, and pretty soon you’re talking real embarrassment.

Did the paper of Al Siegel really use “froo froo” in a story on the Emerald Inn? Did a blogger really describe a muffuletta as a “cold cut and tapenade juggernaut”? And why would a restaurant boast that it’s considered “a surefire closer” for “Romeos?” Eat, drink and get laid is a weird come-on, even for V.D.

And speaking of the most hubristic name in print journalism, the only thing that gets me through my WTF mornings perusing the paper is imagining Al’s head exploding somewhere in Retirementland. The misspellings, the subject-verb disagreements, the general and pervasive sloppiness make the mind reel. A webcam in the kitchen would have been very valuable the day “Momma” should have been circled and greened.

Speaking of flacks, the one who sent out the e-release touting the “Union City Greenmarket” might want to offer a refund for her/his services. Sounds more like a John Sayles title than the biggest farmers’ market in the country’s biggest city. And I can only assume he/she is moonlighting for whoever decided to start a magazine and name it after Crisco’s poor relation. Spry? I guess it’s the perfect title for lardasses.

For all the WSJournal gets right these days, though, I had to wonder if it was skimping on the copy desk with ITT (the Imitation of T for Twaddle it just launched). The thing had less content than even the FT’s shameless How to Spend It, but the display type must have been gone over as carefully as teh average wingnut blog. Eric Ripert is at Le Bernadin, you see. And could a sentient human actually generate a phrase like “pique the gourmet’s palate”? Or a headline as trite as “Magic Mushrooms”? If the goal was to make lying ads like the one for a new “prewar” apartment house look sharp, though, mission accomplished.

The funniest no-shit clarification I’ve seen lately was the WSJournal’s, which noted helpfully that halibut cheeks are “taken from the fish’s head.” Of course they are. The butt is what you normally eat.

I also was taken with the restaurant ad I spotted in the Village Voice: “Free soda can for every $10 spent.” Talk about nickeling and nickeling. Eat there nine more times and you’ll collect enough to get a dollar back.

Then there were the signs I spotted on 14th Street: “Real burning wood” on a new fast food joint. (No Yule log on the teevee there.) And, at the door of a bar: “Everyone here brings happiness. Some by arriving. Some by leaving.” It’s Jamaican for “don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

I am clearly a magnet for all things mistyped. I got one from a travel story on Mainz, Germany, that advised: “Stroll along the romantic Christmas market and soak up the scent of mulled wine and roast, sweet pastries and hot morons.” (Would that be a few Mr. Olives?) I got another from a frustrated editor: “One of the customers’ favorites, the New England roll, combines shrimp tempura and spicy tuna tempura flacks with crispy soft shell crap, plum sauce and eel sauce.” (Truth in typing — unhappy free meal, you think?) And I got a third allegedly from the NYTimes, although I was not about to trawl around the Drivelist to verify it: “Gently simmered in a rich garlic-flecked tomato sauce until soft and velvety but not the least mushy, I had seconds, then thirds. . . .” (First, you braise the writer.) At least they all understand the main rule of sloppy keyboarding: If you have to get it wrong, get it silly.

What’s even funnier is that one of those sackcloth-and-ashes sites leading the grief parade just touted the opening of a Qdoba. (Manhattan is now a mini-mall.) And on another I learned there apparently is a supermarket chain called Roach Bros. Vermin Ltd. would be more reassuring.

And of course it is not only the copy-edited who disseminate shit. Consider just a few gleanings from my writeme inbox. I got an e-release touting a restaurant with its address omitted but the flack’s bold-faced, not to mention a misspelling of ragu (the six-letter word goes not on pasta but into a French oven). I got another talking about a restaurant having a “modern flare” and saying classic Italian specialties can be “transformed into gastronomical creations” (which came first, the birth or the makeover?) I am also not sure I would want a meatball that has been roasted for six hours unless I were a golfer, although I do love the idea that you can “heat up, serve and impress” the thing (dinner is always what I want to dazzle). And if you are going to make French fries to seduce kids, why in the hell call them pommes frites? Finally, when you want to promote cupcakes in LA, I think you mean “begone.” Use two words after  “hot dog carts” and it sounds like ghetto English. And they ain’t be coming back. 

Thanks to the new nest with all the upturned beaks looking to be fed constantly, I just came across a train wreck north of the border. Here was a reviewer setting out to round up and trash a bunch of memoirs without knowing it’s Hazan with an A, let alone that James preceded Julia on the flickering gray screen by at least a decade. As Yogi would say, if he were being quoted today: “You could Wiki it up.”

Metro must be already outsourcing its reporting to Bangalore, judging by the story on the shutdown of construction on the restaurant pavilion in Union Square. Could an actual New Yorker (reporter or editor, even one from Montclair) have let into print the understatement “where a popular greenmarket has been situated for several years”? Forget the fact that the G word should be capitalized, and overlook the peculiar need to explain the obvious. But since when does 32 years qualify as “several”? Kumar, get me rewrite.