Date Archives → November 2012

Hide the returns in the underwear

Now that the lies have settled, I can’t get the meatloaf out of my cranial sieve. Of all W2’s well-documented mega-mendacities, this little one bugged me the most. Why would a guy worth a quarter of a billion (a fraction of what our mayor is worth, BTW) want to pretend he eats poor food? Did he really think anyone would really believe Anntoinette was really bringing home the fecal material from Costco in one of her Cadillacs? Come on — the little people don’t want to imagine rich guys settling for what a convicted murderer would order as his last meal. The least he could have done was drop a few adjectives from the menu from his first dinner out after losing big. But I guess that would involve the truth.

“If clowns had a cuisine . . .”

After taking a month off here, I’m finding everyone everywhere else has apparently said everything that needed to be said about the big issues. Hostess really was Bained. Junk food chains threatening to screw their employees on Obamacare really are risking both loogies hocked onto the pepperoni pizza and Typhoid Mary infecting the Caesar salad. And going after a tiny roach with a tank really was overkill designed to bump up traffic to a site in math-wizard withdrawal. But I will add two thoughts on the public flogging of the Furry Anus, which admittedly was entertaining but also turned Tarantinoesque as it continued, and continued, kicking a cripple: He would have been so much smarter if he had had the foresight to open in SoPo, where every restaurateur is automatically now a hero. And my, how Times have changed. I remember when just the notion of linking reviews to restaurant websites was roundly rejected as undignified if not a corrosion of integrity. Now actual linkbaiting is “service journalism at its finest.” Somehow I’m sure that plays in Grand Forks.

Bubba Lobster Garden

By comparison, this is the late Seymour Britchky on the unlamented Mamma Leone’s, aiming at the real problem: “The food is decent, the service automatic, the customers contented and unliberated cows with bulls and broods in tow.” “The waiters take the orders because the captains are busy snapping family group photos with the customers’ own Instamatics.” “To satisfy out-of-town people, the overcooked Italian sausage has as much taste as a drugstore hamburger — neither hot nor sweet.” Etc. In short: If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot ’em?

Also, too: Dirty-water fowl

File under Reading the Slingers: At least now I see why so many of those crap food chains have been expanding into supermarkets — better to pour your own pancake syrup, or nuke your own frozen lasagne, than risk pissiness and germs from the uninsured help. Also, too, global warming must officially be here if Dunkin’ Donuts is touting 99-cent iced tea on the cusp of Thanksgiving. And, as always, the most entertaining part of going through the Saturday WSJournal is thinking someone assumed readers being sold $500 blouses might be interested in a dollar off on Grey Poupon.

RR to the ASPCA rescue

Also on my hiatus, I kept seeing new sand kicked in Martha’s face constantly. Whatever its intent, all it achieved was reminding me and probably many more that she was one of the only ones to go to prison for financial chicanery in that whole era of excess and deception. No wonder she had to be bleeped on “Wait, Wait.” Where she also rubbed their presumptuous noses in both Spam and Velveeta.

RT/MT

Saw a woman at a neighborhood market studying the long label on an acorn squash and wanted to go over and give her the short version: Buy. Any. Other. Kind. // One of my favorite parts of eating on the Upper East Side is watching women try to fit food into their overfixed pie holes. // This would be a good week to revive the eclair. //Pretty clear there are more cheeses on the planet than clichés to use in headlines about them. // And I don’t want to sound weightist, but Walgreens staff “happy healthy” T-shirts should not come in XXXXL . . .