gastropoda

One of T.C. Boyle’s best stories (which is saying something) is “Top of the Food Chain,” in which cats are dropped onto an island to eat the rats that took it over after the lizards brought in to eradicate an infestation of insects were wiped out. I get something of the same uneasy feeling reading about the brave and noble women who are going to save an island by baking cakes now that their watermen are looking at an increasingly depleted Chesapeake Bay. It’s the feel-good story of the hour, but somehow I doubt switching from perishable crabs to baked perishables is exactly going to work when flour, butter and eggs are getting more expensive by the minute. The only thing more misguided might be rice cakes. With ethanol frosting.

Maybe it’s because I’m not an $8 million-a-year talking head, but I can’t wait for an elitist to take back the White House kitchen. It was bad enough that the Chimp served hot dogs to Father Time; those are what that old fart feeds his friends from the press plane. But to offer Gordon Brown a hamburger? No wonder the Pope passed on dinner.

Speaking of the guy in the dress, this recovering Catholic noticed Molto’s partners certainly did a tap dance in basking in publicity while “protecting papal privacy,” with stories published on both the menus and the family wines. Only hints were given of the former, but they did include a mention of the Istrian chef using “local, seasonal vegetables.” I went to Union Square the day of one dinner and came home thrilled to have bought ramps and spinach. If she found asparagus, favas and baby string beans, that’s a miracle bigger than loaves and fishes.

As for the purloined recipe kerfuffle, it looks to have been good for all concerned. With luck, voters will no longer have to be force-fed bullshit cookies now that a chef who would know has pulled back the curtain on the big lie that any amateur cooks once she gets staff. And the Bud heiress was able to distract attention away from that little junkie episode when she stole drugs from her own charity. If there’s any outrage to be had, it’s why a mega-fortune from ketchup was sold as being somehow effetely un-American but one derived from beer makes the beneficiary jes’ folks. I’m sure a consultant could make up a good answer with arugula and granola and get it played big. . . .

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?

Now that the NYTimes expose on spokesPinocchios has made it sickeningly clear why we’re staying in Iraq — to launder money for GoFuckYourself’s contractor cronies — beef is looking even scarier than ever. The WSJ, whose new owner should be covering up the E. coli, actually ran this headline: Meat Inspectors Can’t Keep Up, Official Says. As the story elaborated, the USDA is “so understaffed that some inspectors are assigned to as many as 24 plants.” And worse. Meanwhile, we have billions and billions to squander far from the land of cheap food. Don’t get me started on the whimpering for the poor children separated from their moms in a wacko religious cult in the Chimp’s wacko state while not a word is heard about the offspring of illegal immigrants rounded up in raids on slaughterhouses and packing plants. When the roll is finally called wherever it’s called, America is going to have some serious ’splaining to do about 99-cent burgers in a drive-through world. But to paraphrase the Language-Mangler in Chief, who cares about hell? We’ll all be dead.

Some weeks I can’t get invited to the opening of an envelope, let alone yet another celebration of yet another bogus set of awards. And then there are stretches of five days where I start out at a downtown soiree that would make Dawn Powell envious and wind up sucking dessert out of a rubber tit, with a little Robuchon tossed in for good measure in between. Fete No. 1 was in honor of our friends Dr. Bugs and his new bride, Lady Bugs, who were married on Easter Island in a Vows experience apparently deemed unworthy of glass cubicle notice — maybe because they were (barely) wearing native garb rather than Marc Jacobs. Their best-selling novelist friend provided the dramatic SoHo venue for a dumplings-to-duck Chinese buffet (I am a total sucker for crab Rangoon), with superb mezze from Sahadi’s (I’d forgotten hummus could have flavor) and Chilean wine in seemingly bottomless bottles. Everyone I talked to was fascinating, whether the crinolined ex of a famous fromagier or the 76-year-old Explorers Club member who instantly recognized the porn star in the room.

After a day off to recover, I suited up and headed over to Atelier for a small press lunch with a hotelier who is opening a Japanese joint with the JR of France. Oddly enough, food insecurity did not come up in conversation, although “elephant polo” did, which made it very hard to worry about the ducks that gave their diseased livers for our starter and our stuffed quail. Babar was not meant to play in rich men’s games.

A book party for a friend who has just published one on “fiber farms” was almost as surreal, at a yarn shop in the West Village (babies and wine always strike me as an unsettling combination). But nothing compared to the festa where I hooked up with a friend and really wished I had wangled an invite for my consort and his camera. This was a design/food thing that started strangely, with all the guests corralled near a tiny bar dispensing Bellinis, and ended downright bizarrely. It was a cross between a scrum and a Jewish wedding, with the hordes swarming the tables once screens were pulled back and the concepts explained. The actual dishes dictated the cooked dishes, so we were treated in one instance to a little metal tube, like one for lipstick, packed with a tuna mixture that was meant to be pushed up as you nibbled. Another was a cold pea soup served in a little cup with a handle for your finger; Russian salad came in a plastic cube for some reason. At one point I looked at the empty containers on our bar table and thought it could be a bad morning at the gynecologist’s. But it got weirder, with the aforementioned dessert packed in a condom-like baggie attached to a rubber breast. The idea was to pump the mousse through the nipple into your mouth. It had its moment, but the image I will need brain bleach to remove is of a roomful of guys of all ages blissfully suckling. I always thought Dennis Kucinich was right in advocating a Department of Peace to replace the warmongering one. Now I know exactly what would make it work — the replacement of MREs with Tits, Ready to Suck.

Sad that the home of the brave is too chickenshit to consider impeachment, let alone war crimes trials. Not while “Top Trash” is on, at any rate. At least I can take consolation in knowing the Chimp would walk away unscathed no matter what. Given his affinity for junk like hot dogs and O’Doul’s, he has the perfect defense for approving torture: The Twinkies made him do it.

I guess I haven’t seen everything in an eating establishment after all. The other day, when I succumbed to a slice at a relatively good but famously grody pizza place, an older guy sitting across from me had a big bottle of bug spray on his table. It could have been more unsettling, though: He could have brought a mousetrap.

Hell is not always other people. Sometimes it’s breaking away in late afternoon on a prime Saturday to get to a performance downtown at 6 o’clock, only to find that the music by a friend of a friend actually starts at 8 and some bullshit cookbook seminar precedes it. Since the tickets were nonrefundable, my consort insisted we at least give the bullshit a chance, so we walked in just as a pedant was droning her way through a presentation on how recipes could actually be read as poetry. Not by her, of course. She stumbled and bumbled through half a dozen as if she had never seen her texts before, even asking for help on pronouncing words both English and Italian. I felt bad when I realized how miserable she looked by the end, but I felt worse for us — if you’re going to engage in performance art, do what performers do: rehearse. Oh, and if there is one occasion when a bra is essential, it’s in a small space in bright lights with a captive audience. I kept getting distracted as the nipples in the clingy top grazed the tabletop. And she was standing at the time.

Of course it went on. And on, with a presentation on a starving-artist cookbook project with a “highlight reel” that ran an hour and 43 minutes. Luckily, the woman who droned that introduction showed only a few segments. And once again I had to say: If you’re going to make videos, could you at least learn to focus? The best piece was on a sculptor of sorts who works with animal carcasses and also makes a Jell-O terrine with a flashlight embedded in it. She switched it on just before unmolding, the camera zoomed in and . . . a bright blur filled the screen. Afterward the moderator suggested everyone in the room share starving-artist stories and volunteered that she had a hundred of them. What I said walking in I really meant as we walked out: Pulling my own teeth would be a less excruciating option. We fled to Lucky Strike, hooked up with our friend by accident and came back for the music. Boozy drinks were handed out afterward, and they even got that wrong. If you want to stage a fiasco festival, at least marinate the guests first.

I misread the blackboard on Union Square announcing a renovation of the north end of the park — I thought it said the Greenmarket had “shitted south.” But it turns out the shift is pretty guano-esque for everyone involved. Now you have to schlep through a maze of nonfood vendors to get to the underselling milk; it’s like a frenetic flea market crossed with the long-gone flower district. Odd that the city would wait to start until the farmers’ business is about to bust out all over, considering the winter was so warm it seemed every other week the same section was closed so they could make snow for commercial shoots. Now the yogurt’s not connected to the bread, the eggs to the bacon. If it isn’t one disruption down there it’s another. But then again, bitching is the only thing  always in season.

I guess I’m just surprised this is not sold by Williams-Sonoma, home of the most ridiculous kitchen accouterments: Rachael Ray has now slapped her name on a “garbage bowl.” It’s a plastic thing the speckled color of a call to Ralph on the big white telephone, and the label says it “saves time.” For starters, what halfway-sentient cook would not be working over a trash can? But how anal would you have to be not to just use a regular bowl (or bag) if your designer didn’t realize how crucial location is when it comes to fast disposal of scraps and trimmings? Mostly, though, I wonder if there is anything she would not cash in on. Many opportunities await at the wrong end of the alimentary canal — who wouldn’t want to squeeze her Charmin?

About the only law that still seems to be in effect in America is the one of unintended consequences. Consider the case of the “homeland security” money showered on Long Island. One of my better sources says it has paid for big new boats and crews to patrol the Sound, and of course Osama and his dialysis machine are not exactly swimming ashore out there, so big new boats and crews have nothing better to do than harass fishermen. Who have their own insecurity with lobster stocks never having recovered from the mysterious die-off a few summers back. Apparently tickets are being handed out for oystering minutes past the 4 o’clock cutoff on a catch that used to be allowed from dawn to dusk. Forget the terrorists. The petty bureaucrats have won.

At the same time your tax dollars are being squandered on paranoid silliness, the entire salmon season is collapsing on the West Coast thanks partly to federal fuckups in managing the Sacramento River. (Global warming is also to blame, but then Al Gore is fat.) What’s almost more depressing is how the disaster is being reported everywhere, as just another price-of-gas story. All I seem to read or hear is that “salmon is going to cost you more this summer” rather than: “Holy shit, humans are going extinct if this keeps up.” And ethanolized Americans have very little to complain about compared with the rest of the world, which is running out of rice and wheat and, in Haiti, dirt to bake into dinner. (Apparently the chilling term for hunger pain there is “grangou klowox” — eating bleach.) But we’re part of the problem with a society built on at least a car per person — and as a friend on that other coast advised me after my last osteo-incident, things are never so bad that they can’t get worse. Into every calamity a little silliness must fall, though. I also see the potato has been declared “the food of the future” in this, “the year of the potato.” Wasn’t that the original Irish Miracle?

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. . . .