And speaking of crazy cookbooks, I guess I’d better lasso my tongue about one on its way out that is shockingly bad — esthetically, factually and every other which way from bogus. Thanks to the addiction that ate my life, Twitter, I hear I am in deep merde for dissing Julia’s opus No. 1. But I’m not losing any sleep because my chances of crossing path$ there are as slim as my coming back as a Frenchwoman. I’ll save my energy for biting back my WTFs on some truly insane recipes overseen by someone with new-age clout. And I’ll do that while sadly acknowledging why food bloggers are not, as my Tweeting connection put it, challenging the establishment rather than acting like wide-eyed groupies. The gravy train takes on the compliant.
Post Category → silliness
Smoke on a Lincoln bedspread
Somehow I doubt it has yet sunk in just how big a disaster this country dodged last November, but I got a reminder the other day when I saw the loser’s daughter was tweeting about her dinner plans. Instead of Sam Kass cooking, we would have had a Skankette porking out on Subway, with motorcades in each direction. Even her mom’s eating Vicodin would be preferable. Really, wealth is wasted on the rich.
Calling Robbie Robertson
Out of the mouths of guests: Someone at our table last weekend asked a funny question — was the champagne glass modeled on Queen Victoria’s tit? Afflicted with CRS, I couldn’t remember it was actually Marie Antoinette’s and just mumbled something about a famous woman. To which she responded: “Did she have an udder?” And once again I realized what a gap has opened up in just the last 10 or 15 years. A new generation has no idea what a coupe is. Of course danglers would need a flute.
Ice Cube, Curveball, what’s the diff?
Speaking of the French, I know they have no word for entrepreneur, as the Chimp contended. But Americans are learning it big time lately. The latest example is the lemonade stand three little boys in our co-op have set up on the sidewalk in the last week. They charge 50 cents a cup, and of course who isn’t going to give them a buck and tell them to keep the change? One of those boys will be president one day, too. The second time I stopped, the littlest brother was energetically shilling to passers-by, the biggest was pouring out the drinks and the sign read “B&L lemonade,” for Ben and Lucas. And where was the middle one while B and uncredited brother were slaving away in the heat? “He’s upstairs practicing his music.” Buy that L a bunker.
How’s that Nova driving?
Things I wish I didn’t know: a Belgian chain is opening a Mexican joint. With a name that roughly translates to Epago — eat, pay and get out. Really. Vamos?
Sad to say, I will probably try it — one day I will find a real enchilada in this town. But I will still wonder: What, Chinga tu Madre was taken?
Unadorned quenapas
In other paper sins against New York, you really gotta wonder where the slot was when the story on kids’ cooking classes slid into print with all Latino and Caribbean references in quotes. No New Yorkers, and probably very few Americans at all, need punctuation around arroz con pollo, for mofongo’s sake.
A blight on all your houses
File heirloom tomatoes under “no new rants, only new writers.” If anyone can find really great tomatoes of any stripe this year, please alert all the food pages and sites blithely running gazpacho and salsa and tart recipes. We had three pretty decent ones from Ray Bradley, but even they were better as metaphor. . .
In the footsteps of the junkyard ho
Similarly, the first thought that sprang into my cranial sieve when I heard Saint Alice was mystified at being told she had won the French Legion of Honor: She wasn’t punked by those pranksters from Quebec who scammed Sarah Palin with the call from Sarkozy, was she?
Creusets for clunkers
And speaking of dancing on a grave while waving a movie poster, I had to wonder how a revered editor felt after dissing a “flimsy” when her own house started a contest to “Be Like Julie, Cook From Julia.” You could never make up the shit happening in real life anymore.
Rooster soup by another name
Also turning up constantly in my email are those Evian babies doing whatever they’re doing with potentially loaded diapers. But there is something creepier. And it’s that brand Tastybaby, which I see is still around. Do not want, even braised. Jonathan Swift just wasn’t imaginative enough.
A tango between whiskey and foxtrot
Here’s an idea for a reality show: Top Republican. Miscreants compete to see which one can cook his/her own goose most outlandishly. Winner’s mistress gets a hundred grand. Moose murderer gets gagged with a salmon (I wish). Biggest loser has to go to dinner with Sunday Styles nincompoop. While Ferran Adria laughs his ass off.
Kicking dinosaurs
One reason print will never die: Obscure comics with good lines will always need promo material so that audience members who want to credit them can whip out a card and type that name later. The guy at the post-”Tear Down This Myth” “Laughing Liberally” in the Theater District the other night should have invested because I have to quote him anonymously: He compared health insurance companies to restaurants that refuse to serve anyone who’s hungry — they will only take you on if you don’t need to eat.
Circle, meet jerk
I understand there was some discussion elsewhere about how expense accounts have also skewed food coverage at a certain outlet since the heyday of the most legendary manly women’s editor. And I was half-sorry to have missed that forum, to the point that I was tempted by a followup a couple of nights later. Which I was very glad to have missed when this report was filed in my email: One panelist “delivered hagiographic memories,” another “slightly less saccharine memories.” But “That asshole David Kamp came absolutely primed with chipper observations about how Claiborne helped prepare a land of oafs to become a nation of people discerning enough to . . . well, to sit at the feet of the David Kamps.” And people call me bitchy? I would have redacted the offending name to forestall a repeat of an unpleasantness my poor consort had to witness, but unfortunately the brand matters. Somewhere John and Karen Hess are chortling. . . .
It’s a big country. No one can eat it all.
More proof that you can polish a turd long enough to make a zircon: Every time the latest pizza silliness came up, the number of awards from Enron on 12th Street was trotted out as evidence of the seriousness of the authority tackling the impossible. Consider the source. Friends do let friends self-delude.
Maybe leave the tip in quarters?
New rule: Bartenders must wash shorts before bending over at work. Not much detergent got between the one in Dumbo and his Calvin Kleins. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d only been pouring wine and uncapping beer, but the hands that touched those skivvies were also muddling the mint.