I take it all back. Nice guys don’t have such colossal egos that they actually use the “Ratatouille” Rayner as their Twitter avatars. Can they please just fast-forward and give the JGold wannabe the Pulitzer now to spare us five years of this tortured cleverness and overwrought writing? I hear the other Ivy Leaguers are attaboying away down there, but I could not get past the jump for all the straining at stool. When I pleaded for the Bruni Digester to come back, she Tweeted that it was like your laid-off Uncle Mark taking a stab at writing a press release in his spare time. I think it’s worse: It was as if Michael Steele tried to “what up” on eating out.
Post Category → panchito
And the nomination goes to: Jamie & profiler
Speaking of premature exultation, though, the Nobel committee had nothing on whoever it was who designated Panchito’s successor as the next Bill Keller. I mean, he’s a nice guy and everything, but he hasn’t even fucking started the gig. But I guess his anointment sends a clear message to any women and minorities and bootstrappers aspiring to move up the ladder: Connected white guys win! (And I can’t even get too worked up about that, given what a bitch Jill Abramson comes off as, trashing Adam Moss’s feature work as meaningless when she herself only rose to prominence with a dog blog.) What really makes me laugh is thinking about how the Chimp’s enabler must be roundly eaten with envy as he watches the new guy on the beat being showered in roses before filing his first review. As their mustachioed colleague would say: Suck. On. This.
If a log is rolled in the forest . . .
A friend out in Santa Barbara did not know how lucky she was when she emailed to wonder: “Who is this Frank Bruni? I never heard of him.” For the rest of us he’s as annoying as those incessant cicadas this summer. As one of my (famous) Twitter followers noted: “Dude’s had a longer goodbye than the last season of ER.” On this Katrina anniversary weekend, and just after finishing Dave Eggers’s incredible “Zeitoun,” I just have to say I wish Panchito had devoted one-tenth as much energy to exposing the Chimp as dangerously incompetent as he has to hustling his silly book. Look at all the history we could have been spared having the sumbitch amble through, from 9/11 to illegal war to a near-Depression. Beyond that, we got it: You were fat. You have a weird obsession with Saint Danny. But it’s really time to shut your pie hole and move on.
But no “Photoshop your bio photo”?
I do wonder, though, if the reason my Writeme inbox is jammed with “colon cleanse” spam, especially for men, might not be related to that relentless self-promotion. Each message seems to mirror his on bingeing and purging: Eat more and shit the pounds away.
Brunimia, the noun for Bruni the verb
Funny how the worst body in Foodland since Prudhomme has been able to strut around in shorts for years with only adulation ensuing. Let a firm-and-taut woman who has already done an incalculable amount of good for the cause of eating right step out in Arizona-appropriate attire, though, and the both Villagers and the KKKrazies go even crazier. I used to wonder where Panchito was when the news first surfaced that a prospective FLOTUS had a Lady Macbeth streak. Really sad that he was off bingeing and purging. No wonder he couldn’t report straight.
Did someone say Obamafoodarama?
I wish I could say I will be sorry not to have Panchito to kick around anymore, but of course he is off to the magazine to join the human Cute Overload and retrovirus recipes and other crimes against readers. The bar is set pretty low there, so he should be able to retch in peace. And while my first reaction to the choice of his successor was rather harsh — expect reviews pounded out with penis, judging by the self-consciously imitative prose in his past and present — I will say that at least the guy has to know food at this point in his career, which is a big step up from being chosen because you’ve eaten at the pasta place next to the McDonald’s at the Spanish Steps. He did, after all, once quote me approvingly at NYP (could anyone ever have imagined that as a breeding ground for NYT talent?) Which of course makes it all the more mystifying that the new Mimi/Bryan/Ruth cannot just step into the job immediately now that his overlords have gotten the “lift” they wanted by naming him (P.T. Barnum would be so proud). First he has to do some eating on the tab while fill-ins kick restaurateurs to the curb in the interim. Can you imagine if Sonia Sotomayor were confirmed to the Supreme Court and then had to rush off to bone up on the law? WTF? Then again, that points to a more fascinating flaw. Even with food, it’s still a white, white, white man’s world.
Splitting from the Sourdough
A friend in publishing who is obviously not a follower emailed me to wonder what I made of the Panchito upchuck. As part of our back-and-forth, she said she found the confessions a little too unsavory for someone you read for food reasons and called it “the gross-out factor,” which would actually be a good reality show if the Japanese had not already mastered swallowing squid through pantyhose as competition. But when she added that “the prose will defeat all but the stoutest of heart,” I had a happier thought: This is a job for William Shatner. With bongos.
3 stars for the stalls
The Chimp’s old lapdog Panchito, meanwhile, may have done a Craig on himself with the TMI that gave new meaning to “put your fingers together and blow” (chunks). We’re now digesting bloggorhea about skid marks and the acid effect on his palate, all lovely thoughts when you contemplate food and restaurants. I guess it’s better than bedding down with Dad. But the funniest result is that his name has now become a verb: Amazing Obamafoodarama saw something sickening and Twittered about immediately wanting “to go and Bruni.” Reviewers, you have your punch line.
Speaking of (mental) Munchkins
My faith in the world and the internets was totally restored when I Googled Panchito by surname after the first Tweet popped up on pub day of his huge disgorgement of TMI. Aside from one reference to his silliness over Blue Hill being too predictable for Obama date night, the first 10 pages of blog results were all on Mme Sarkozy. Forget the peephole into his throne room. No one cared if his crust was limp, either.
Did someone say Nougatine?
When editors are away, all kinds of shit gets put into play. My consort could not even find a certain section of the paper on its big day because the design was so easily confused with an advertorial. Then, moving over to the dust on the unicorn horn, the Imperial I was in particularly absurd overdrive. And don’t even get me started on the flat-out idiocy of “loose lasagna.” WTF? But the most inexcusable sin was letting Panchito go lick up dried vomit. Reminding sentient readers of the unsavory circumstances in which he found himself the Chimp of restaurant reviewers might not have been the wisest move. No amount of stars could get it right at this point. And somewhere I hear Yogi Berra saying nobody goes there anymore. . . .
Pet Goat: It’s what’s for dinner
Distillation is not good for intellectual flyweights. Panchito comes off as even more of a mental gnat when summarized in The Week I just caught up to, a reprise of his mockery of the Big O for not choosing a more manly, more gutsy restaurant for date night. Is it really incomprehensible to a guy who has had years of on-the-job eating that Blue Hill serves food that is not just cerebral? That’s as unintentionally revealing as a theater critic admitting he thought no one could possibly enjoy August Wilson. He really is the Chimp of restaurant reviewers, and thank Claiborne’s ghost he can soon stick a pretzel in it and be done.
Flush up to 20 lbs. from your colon
Also funny to watch Panchito get his expandable knickers in a knot over the Big O’s choice of a date-night destination. Anyone with a quarter of a brain understood any restaurant would be the wrong restaurant to some idiot or other. So his rant reeked of the same link-craving desperation as the silly attack on Mrs. O for being honest about her feelings about cooking. Worse, it reminded some of us of what a truly lousy judge of presidential character he is. Didn’t he cover the Chimp eating cheese sandwiches at the “ranch” right up to the 8/6 warning of 9/11? Inadvertently more amusing was Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum, who got his wedgie over the audacity of a couple even heading to Manhattan for a night out. His prescription for a good time is to stay home and fuck your turtle.
“Unmistakeable” “Polenzo”
It’s not surprising to see Panchito generating more buzz by ambling off to the magazine than he ever did with his chewing and typing. Once upon a time the speculation over his replacement might have mattered, but he did manage to make a big job very small (sort of the opposite of what he did with his coverage of the Chimp), and now the more amusing debate among bloggers is whether the position is being downsized. Filling that small hole in one section is rather expensive, and this would be a fine time to reinvent it altogether rather than rummage through clips looking for a correspondent who’s lunched overseas with Saint Alice. My newish friend down at the Casa de Slim has the best idea ever for saving newspapers: charge for comments, not for content. So why not dispense with the critical middleman, let restaurateurs post their own reviews and watch the feces fly?
Ass toot
I see “The Accidental Critic” is heading toward bookstores like swine flu in airplanes. My only curiosity is whether Panchito will devote at least a chapter to all the horseshit he swallowed and dutifully regurgitated in service to the Chimp. Considering the carnage that ensued, fucking Elvis looks like a noble deed.
Forty stars for an Asian bistro
Given all the brouhaha over a code of ethics for food bloggers, though, it’s probably worth remembering how the gullible guy with a taste for towel-snapping wound up in such a position of ostensible power: Panic. MSM fill-in had fucked up as restaurant critic while the paper, still in that KK-induced Nigella fog, floundered around trying to replace the author of such unforgettable lines as “give me pesticides and flavor.” And don’t get me started on all the times I tried to point out that the family retainer was stealing the silver. . . The Wild West of cyberspace needs no stinking code. Those who do the dirty are gonna get exposed. While the old world of media continues to deny it has some ’splaining to do.