Post Category → father time

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.

But the Hanoi Hilton had no Food Network!

I guess the wingnuts are right. We are now living in a world where up is down and recession is prosperity. How else to explain the realities that the Thai prime minister was ordered to resign for having a cooking show and one candidate for the leader of the Land of the Free is appearing on a cooking show? Maybe he realizes his soulmate is going to fire the White House chef and he’ll need some yummo recipes. The ones his junkie wife passed off as her own. Shouldn’t a wannabe war president have bigger ribs to grill?

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?

Looked good from the tire swing

The POW who would serve the Chimp’s third term seems to be having trouble staying on POW-of-the-people message. First he makes a foray to an Olive Garden in Florida, then he goes out for coffee in a cardboard cup in my old stomping grounds in Arizona. But he drops slightly more than the price of his shoes ($540) at the first stop and takes a nine-car motorcade to Starbucks on the second. My little brother, who still lives out there, was saying he hoped the entourage would buy a sandwich or two to help the local economy, but I kinda doubt this is what he had in mind. Given that McLame and his sugar mama shell out $270,000 a year on servants, you would think someone could fetch him a cappuccino at home. To his credit, he does seem to have documented that he cooks his own ribs. But why do I suspect grilling is just the brush-clearing of 2008?

Poke for snoots

Considering she was stealing from the bottom of the Rachael/Food Network barrel, the Bud heiress clearly needs help with her recipes. And here’s her chance, certainly one not many non-beer heiresses could afford: a two-hour private cooking lesson with J-G as part of a dilettante’s package in a hotel for a mere $8,999. Remind me why arugula is elitist?

And Wall Street has been drinking . . .

Reading about the Great Black Hope’s celebratory martini after his Berlin speech only brought home yet again how derelict Panchito and his ilk were in the selling of the Chimp in 2000. A failed oilman one drink away from starting a war was passed off as a good ol’ boy who gave up booze for an imaginary friend. I’m only amazed the media drumbeat hasn’t started to portray vodka as elitist. Real candidates drink Belgian Bud. 

Mit sprinkles

And speaking of the Bud heiress’s old man, you almost had to feel sorry for him as he bungled his way through food photo op after food photo op; he almost would have been better off touting offshore drilling alongside that oil spill in the Mississippi. The last candidate who looked so disoriented in a supermarket was the Chimp’s dad, and even he didn’t have to read the price of milk off a cue card or send applesauce jars tumbling. Far more humiliating was the appearance at a “fudge haus.” I can’t even imagine what the Berliners made of that bastardization of their cuisine. If he only knew how to get online, he might have realized he did not have to look so pathetically out of touch. Columbus has some pretty cool restaurants; there was no need to go for the wurst. (Sorry.) Judging by the cult following for Jeni’s ice cream, say, he could almost have drawn 200,000 to North Market. But maybe he can redeem himself with a tour of the Iowa State Fair next month. I’ve certainly never seen anyone in a flak jacket eat a corn dog out of both sides of his mouth. 

Spiked tea

Bad enough the Brits wined and dined the Chimp as if he were human and not a war criminal. But now they’ve gone and denied sweet old Martha Stewart a visa (never mind that she did her time, unlike so many Scooters). And that could make it awkward if the Mrs. Chimp Wannabe ever needs an audience with the Queen. After all, she steals not only recipes but drugs and husbands, too.

C what he says

I forget whose original thought I’m stealing here, but the great food shortage is really less about quantity and more about greed — there’s plenty to eat if you can afford to pay whatever the extortionists ask. Already it’s becoming clear that the capitalist fools are going to take every advantage of a bad season for the poor, and nowhere was that reality starker than in the Guardian story on Britain’s plans to go back to feeding cheap pork byproducts to chickens, a disgusting practice that was stopped once scientists started connecting the dots between unnatural-food-in and mad-cow-disease-out. I stay as far away from chicken as I can, having been raised with them in the backyard in Arizona, where their filthy habits were impossible to ignore. But I wonder at a world that still believes nature is going to roll over and do whatever avarice wants. Which is why I read the WSJ story on protests in South Korea against American beef with special fascination. Consumers there are informed enough to know our suspect supply is potentially tainting even things like sanitary napkins. No details were provided, but I don’t even want know how they put the cow in the Kotex. And would that lead to Mad Cindy Disease?

O’Doul’s in sippy cups

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.

Cookin’ don’t last, cussin’ do

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. . . .

Scrapple it

Higher up the print chain, all you need to know about why we have a good ol’ fuckup in the White House was on full display in an NYT blog post by a “reporter” on the trail with the Big O in Pennsylvania who was shocked, shocked to encounter that local oddity cheese fries — something sold less than a block from his workplace the last time I worked there, at the Nathan’s straight out of Coney Island. Candidates are expected to be totally in touch with every level of this very complex society. “Journalists” with six-figure incomes, 401Ks and stock plans can afford to be appalled by what the other nine-tenths eat. No wonder the Budweiser heir-by-marriage fed them Costco barbecue — he knew they would roll over and wet themselves.

Mustard gas

The only thing more appalling than seeing the war president prance around as if he had finally found his organ grinder was hearing what he ate for lunch afterward. Hot dogs. On White House china. Worse, the war president wannabe agreed to have whatever the First Child was having. He is McLame.

Lie down with hot dogs

Just like the outgoing unevolved Chimp, though, the incoming Father Time knows how to massage the hell out of the pack media on the campaign trail. Just by treating reporters to a barbecue at his log mansion very near where I grew up (not Sedona) he got no end of Tiger Beat-worthy coverage. They even ran his rib recipe, for Costco’s sake (nothing but the best for “my friends”). For once I’m glad Panchito is safely confined to the chewing-and-typing beat. Imagine the damage he could inflict with a manly man in an apron rather than a cowboy hat doing the jive-talking. America would be convinced this is not the Gordon Ramsay of candidates but the guy to have a comforting plate of macaroni and cheese with.