gastropoda

One great thing about the stop-time, eerily silent weekend in Manhattan was that we woke up on Sunday morning to neither of our usual hometown papers on our doormat. No deliveries were getting through; even Famous Famiglia was closed for the first time I’ve ever noticed. Which meant I was spared having to see whatever blithering Panchito engaged in and could instead just watch him get eviscerated all over Twitter and the blogs all day. Happiest part: Finally, after nearly 10 years of me getting ragged on for using that nickname, people have caught on to the idiot who was responsible for bestowing it. Next hurricane, though, should start on Friday so we’re spared 6,000 ways to eat your lobster. How does that fit with sustainable/local/who-will-feed-the-poors?

And I guess I have to wade into the melted butter even though my biggest fan (not in the Loudon sense) has defended himself well, and one of the best food bloggers out there crafted a verbal-Astaire response as well. I’ll just say what I did all those years ago when a guy whose strongest credential was having eaten at the McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps was first anointed to pass judgment on an art form that probably means more to the city’s bottom line than even theater: WTF were the bosses thinking? Eric Alterman had a good warning that the worst Chimp enabler ever should “stay the heck away from politics,” but letting him back anywhere near food has just been proven equally embarrassing. What the AA is selling is not cuisine for the noble heartlanders. It’s processed crap, tarted up. (Whored down?) I got an email within hours from a friend in Philadelphia who is not even in the food world saying he spotted at least four egregious overstatements, and of course anyone sentient is still waiting for the correction on whether Les Halles is a very busy bestselling writer/television star’s restaurant 10 years on. Mostly, though, the drivel illustrated how far removed your average op-ed writer is from the red states they all claim to celebrate. The rubes aren’t rubes eating from Applebee’s salad bars. They must understand Liberace is not Fannie Farmer.

But why do all silly roads lead back to Panchito these days, I ask facetiously? How could readers have survived all those years of his droning about the cliché that is tuna tartare only to be informed that you can put pickles up yourself? Jeebus. Maybe out in “flyover country” — or in the birthplace of Ste Alice’s 40-year-old — they don’t know from crudo. But come on. This is New York. We have sushi in Duane Reades. And the cure for it one aisle over.

Just back from Parma and Milan, I’m obviously having a slow time processing where I was and where I am. But I do know Panchito should be lambasted, not lauded, for his nonfood debut — he had his head so far up the Chimp’s ambling ass he apparently didn’t notice equal rights were being held back a decade along with everything else in this country (all chaps, no saddle?) And I do know it was nice to be among people demoralized about their own leader for a change (as the Economist put it, he screwed an entire country). For once, the only jokes I heard about the occupants of the White House were lame ones, about Mrs. O and her ortus. I guess they’d be happier if she were growing wars? Mowing down boyfriends?

Panchito’s new gig, with which the NYTimes adds insult to the readers’ injury of losing Frank Rich on Sundays, escaped my cranial sieve when I finally got around to posting this week. But I could not have had a more blistering reaction than Eric Alterman did. Who could ever care what the useful idiot had to say about restaurants or booze after he happily sold a dangerous dunce as a good ol’ boy in fuck-me boots? (Even if he did know the McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps so well.) It’s the old gray shuffle, and it will put Ambien out of business.

This was not a great week for reviewer/book match-ups down at the hometown powerhouse. The Forelock prolly shoulda walked away from the competition, for any number of reasons, and his assigning editor shoulda brought in the G that starts with D. Plus Panchito was clearly sulking after reading the “inevitable memoir” after seeing it, by all accounts, reviewed so much better than his own. I didn’t think I could get one more laugh out of his lack of self-awareness, but I have to say reading a guy who was criticized for TMI now bitching about another memoirist not laying out TMI was pretty fucking rich. So, Ms. Prune: Two fingers or three?

I actually roused myself from my Twitter-facing Aeron to go take in a panel on “post-gender food writing” and am only glad I had the good sense to check out the revivifying bar at Fedora afterward (it’s transporting). Otherwise, this was one of the dumbest  “debates” I think I’ve ever sat through. The concept was confused, given how many men who have written authoritatively on food through the decades were never mentioned besides A.J. Liebling (for starters: Roy Andries de Groot, Richard Olney, John Hess, Evan Jones, James Villas, Seymour Britchky, even Johnny Rotten) or how many are having such an impact right now (can you say Michael Pollan, or that other guy who ate everything?) Bloggers were (not surprisingly, given the moderator) dissed as “girlie-girls” when the most readable ones I read all have literal cojones. But mostly I was amazed at how many cheap jokes were made at the easy expense of Panchito. I’m the last one to defend that Chimp enabler. But the next forum should be on “post-S.O. food writing” for sure.

And I also am now in possession of what I guess is the first Twitter cookbook. Shove it back somewhere constricted, and not just because the foreword is by Panchito. The only laugh is his overwriting: Two adjectives alone would nearly eat up a single Tweet. Twitter is not meant for the mainstream; I often find myself deleting emails I want to send to friends who are not in the cult because I realize they will never be able to wade through, let alone translate the abbreviations and symbols. A link to a good recipe database would be the best Tweet of all. I didn’t waste much time with it, but the guacamole recipe is indexed on the wrong page and also sounds like one only an Irishwoman could love. Nice stunt, but even Strand ain’t buying.

Now for a bigger question: Was the cat away for the Thanksgiving Eve edition of the section formerly known as DI/DO? The lede story was was so tedious I couldn’t even read it to count errors (although I did detect a punctuation glitch in the caption). The off-lede was so painfully overwritten I wanted to scald my own eyes. And the hoariest cliché ever was actually pressed into crude service for the hed on the review. Or should I call it the turd that finally plunked into the punch bowl? What other restaurant has had so long to get its act together before the starry hammer dropped? From there it was on to the outsized narcissism of a restaurant critic ordaining himself the expert on home cooking, and then the clunky verbiage on alleged restaurant openings. How absurd is “ingredient-driven food” when your lede story is on . . . beyond-esoteric ingredients? And WTFF does “pushes the sports bar envelope” mean? Pigs in a jockstrap blanket?

Who could be surprised no one wants to ask Panchito about the Chimp, only about restaurants? It’s awkward for everyone to bring up that epic fail. But I was actually on the side of the Section Formerly Known as DI/DO when it came to the nonsense about covering cheaper restaurants. The embarrassing new public editor is really embarrassing, and not just for comparing the food pages to a moribund design magazine. Smart people without money are probably reading the Village Voice (online) rather than wasting $2 a day on a publication that still thinks $25 and Under has meaning 16 years on. Democracy is no mission for a paper with $4,900 bags to sell.

Turns out the soulless Chimp looks to have plagiarized much of his shameless book, but I suspect what @rudepundit is calling the “Ball jar Bush baby” tale is original. It’s just weird enough that the literal son of a bitch would have been warped by a canned fetus. What I want to know is how Panchito missed such a juicy tidbit. Scratch that. I already know. He was sucking and blowing. Or vice versa.

I know we’re not supposed to blame the Chimp for anything anymore in the United States of Amnesia, but I do want to note, one more time, that I was not the one who nicknamed Panchito Panchito. But if the diminution fits, why not run with it? I kinda like “Malto,” though. Misspell the second half as Eggo and you’d have a very Boehner-colored frozen waffle to accessorize the Crocs.

Keith McNally went even higher in my estimation the second I saw Mr. Calamitous Judge of Character has deemed him a horrible person. I’d reserve that adjective for the affable fool who destroyed the economy and dragged the country into endless wars after lying to a very gullible guy. Heckuva job, Panchito.

Maybe there is a god. While the Chimp is safely holed up with his Old Grand-Dad, Panchito his enabler is sentenced to hang with the sort who, to paraphrase a very angry man on Bleecker Street one night who had had about enough of the “Sex and the City”  tours, promise: Buy me drinks and you can micturate where the sun don’t shine. Somewhere Johnny Rotten is laughing.

I might not be the only one convinced the hometown paper is killing itself with a 24/365 approach to publishing with no copy editors on board. I read the garbled take on two iPad apps for recipes and went straight to the Google to see if the byline might not be on the take. Instead I saw he had posted that word salad online more than a month before the paper went on sale for $2 a copy. Remind me why I spring for a subscription? (Oh, I know. I like to see the ratio of house ads to paid placements.) But given how stretched everyone appears to be down Señor Slim way, I’m almost saddened to see both the JGold Wannabe and Panchito having to produce even more poorly vetted copy. The former should be able to handle it, fresh as he is to the marathon/megaphone, but the latter is going to be talking to Ralph on the big white telephone on a regular basis. Back to Round One. . .