I missed the Chimp hosting “Fear Factor” on the teevee while I was off at some amazing friends’ very glamorous birthday party (terrace, jazz band, great caterer, winking waiters), but I do hope the myriad manufacturers of antacids seized the opportunity to run commercials for antidotes to the fresh yellowcake. Given that his stooges are rolling over yet again, I can’t wait for the dinner skit where he goes laughingly looking for those weapons of financial destruction he managed to sell. If only an infamous pretzel had been one small chocolate mint. . . .
Post Category → can’t we secede?
The Romans had a word for it, starting with V
I also enjoyed how the Chimp Wannabe helped seal the deal in DC, by going out for a lavish dinner while the actual negotiators negotiated the Wall Street “stuff” he admits he does not understand. (They got Cosi takeout.) What is most remarkable about that is where he spent the evening. Until his party’s culture of corruption corroded the capital, there was no Mandarin Oriental in that stuffy town. Scumbags who wanted to suck hookers’ toes had to do the deed at venerable joints like the Jefferson. Once again, I marvel at how such a looongtime resident could have written a gushing ode to the new booming restaurant scene and never followed the trail of crumbs from all those kitchens to K Street criminals. And now they’re handing us the $700 billion tab.
Freshly brewed from civet cat dung
And speaking of the Chimp Wannabe, it’s sort of amazing that Obama has been branded an elitist for just talking about arugula, and you hardly ever see the old white guy or his sugar mama without a Starbucks cup in their hands. They even take a motorcade to fetch him his cappuccino, that very blue-collar beverage. Wouldn’t a man of the people be drinking Dunkin’ Donuts at least? Or is that too keffiyeh?
Lost with no Clark Wolf to quote
I made my first trip to Washington in the mid-Seventies, when my older sister was working on Capitol Hill and I was naively ensconced in the Midwest, and I have to say it never seemed to change demonstrably until the early 2000s. Even under the Clinton boom, it was a mysteriously sleepy backwater with the same hotels and restaurants every time I would go down to meet my consort while he was navigating the Geographic shoals. Something happened after the first election by Supreme Court, though, and I never understood it even though DI/DO did a big piece in 2003 on a neighborhood that had become restaurant central for reasons never even hinted at. Only now, thanks to Thomas Frank’s “Wrecking Crew,” and the series of tubes, is it clear why the dark-booze-drinking city on the swamp is busting out all over with boutique hotels and trendy restaurants and Holy Foodses and gentrification. The Chimp crew would call it privatization. Cynics know it is raping and pillaging.
The money being raked in in a time of bogus war is obscene, to the point where the teevee shows a lobbyist in her mega-mansion wrapping gifts using sheets of dollar bills as paper. In a video, Frank drives around pointing out the huge sleek office buildings erected out in the suburbs for companies like KBR (formerly Halliburton, Go-Fuck-Yourself’s evil empire). Campaign ads this season will be rife with allusions to how the restaurant world has benefited (I still remember a New York restaurateur saying, just after opening his steakhouse there, that he would never disclose his party; “capitalist” would be the belief system to draw both sides). I don’t blame anyone, but I do buy into the theory that the Villagers have done the country a terrible disservice by their insularity. The frog in the pot slowly comes to a boil, and the rest of America never perceives how absolutely absolute profits can corrupt. In retrospect I wonder what the impact would have been from having an outlander fly into DC to look into it the way they do other corrupt capitals. Personally, I always find stories on New York restaurants more fascinating when they are written by wide-eyed reporters rather than our own Villagers. Even when you want to spoof them, the kernels are generally of truth.
Sweet Georgia wine
As indicated over at the satellite operation, the Chimp was apparently on a mission to bring home the gold in the wastrel-son division of hammering. Maybe his dream is to finally succeed at something, like brand ambassador for Bud once the heiress and her Manchurian mate shuffle back to the Mississippi of the Southwest (I can say that — I’m from there). A better career choice would be to volunteer to be sent around to schools to provide stumbling proof of what a little brain looks like on booze. Unless the Skank Twins beat him to it.
Less qualified, more gagging
The craziest notions sometimes turn up in my writeme inbox. The weirdest lately was the email promoting cheeses to eat while indulging in the Olympics. Which got me wondering if there has ever been a bigger gap between object and affection. Does anyone really sit in front of the teevee watching the beach volleyball competition and nibbling on taleggio in between schmears of Brie de Nangis? Look at the Fan in Chief, for war crimes’ sake. We’re talking Velveeta on a pretzel at best.
Waders by Ferragamo
As this campaign threatens to turn into a feces-flinging extravaganza to rival the early days of eRectum, it’s too bad more reporters are not highlighting the main ingredient in a recipe for certain disaster: a private fishing hole. The Chimp has always had his own lake stocked with bass for him at his “ranch,” and now the Old Wannabe also turns out to have a shooting barrel at his ranchette, which is on a creek that actually had fish in it when I was a kid. Guys who want the game rigged should not be the boss of us. When it comes to elitism, worrying about the price of arugula pales in comparison.
The Old Guy? Eats apple pie
Apparently McLame is not the only cyber-ignoramus. MoDo should have done a quick spin through the series of tubes before regurgitating the food flimflammery the Wall Street Post ran on a candidate deemed too fit to be president. (Yes, you read that right. Apparently Monica Goodling has infiltrated the Murdoch ranks to oversee the hiring of only the party faithful in the newsroom, too.) I am still puzzling, though, over the comparison of the Great Black Hope to an Alice Waters-worthy organic chicken: “sleek, elegant . . . too cool.” A fascinating thing about food is that the shit so often looks like the Shinola. Fry a supermarket chicken and it will be indistinguishable from the high-priced bird. Or would that be playing the watermelon card?
From toasters to toast
In a week that started with depositors panicking outside a failed bank, you would think the Chimp could show just a hint of sensitivity at the table. But that would be misunderestimating his soullessness. Dinner for 245 after his silly ballgame was a full five courses, including crab salad and rib-eye steak, when for once hot dogs would have been more appropriate. But here’s a “fun fact” from the White House web site: Parties during the Hoover reign were big events, too, with 4,000 invitations routinely delivered around town. And how’d that work out again?
This Stella Artois is for you
I also felt slightly queasy reading the Journal — apparently the last American newspaper with an absurd travel budget — on where the two candidates eat out when they eat out. I guess it made more sense than comparing arugula and orange juice, but it had a decided taint of stalking to it. (Or maybe I’m just worried some restaurateur will give up the goods on my second glass of wine at lunch.) Overall, the Great Black Hope comes off as the more sophisticated diner, even if he does — as the father of two young kids — succumb to a funky pizza place way too often. The Old Guy at least knows his Arizona-Mex even if the critic didn’t (I would kill for those enchiladas), but I was floored by his driving all the way to Jerome from Cornville for a BLT. The millionaires’ cuisine, after all, is right there in Sedona. Note to this campaign’s Panchito: Check the ZIP Code on the BBQ’d ribs you love so much.
“Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter”
The latest proof that there is no justice in this world: The Chimp has done more than enough to be convicted of war crimes. But considering the hot dogs he has inflicted on guests in the White House, he would not suffer a second on a prison diet. Maybe he could be force-fed foie gras?
They serve fugu, don’t they?
Leave it to the Chimp to make the Bud Heiress look like the pettiest of thieves. She only swiped a few recipes (well, and a lot of drugs, too). He stole the whole cookbook on Chinese torture. Are false confessions as good as mock apple pie?
21 grams
I know people from America are very different from us, here at the center of the universe, but really, what would possess a grown man to travel to New York and parade around in a T-shirt reading: “Instant idiot — just add beer”? And how did I know he was not from around here? The shirt was size XXXL and still too small.
Peeing white, smelling red
As always when the Chimp goes jackassing overseas, there’s a depressingly ridiculous moment, and this one came when he started blathering about German asparagus. It’s not surprising he would be taken with it considering it lives the way he does, head buried in the sand. I just cringe to think what his reaction was when it arrived, not green but ghostly, as if his grandfather had underwritten it.
Weed in the wineglasses
Seeing Mrs. Chimp roboting around the land of the un-routed Taliban in her inappropriate ’Lil Kim outfit (all those ill-gotten gains and she can’t afford a tailor?) was a sickening reminder that we have a week of international embarrassment ahead with her lame fuck in Eutopia. All those state dinners and so few table manners. . . .