Cliffsnotes 2.0

As I was saying . . .

And I am so glad I sprang for the best of the lot on Alibris a couple of years ago. That wonderful old saying, "Drinks at 5, dinner at 6 and to be immortal you have to be dead," really rings true for Dad O'Martin, whose spawn became the second-best chronicler of the hangover. Dominique is right, though: Hitchens almost redeems the new book -- and himself -- with his "booze as muse" intro, no cutting and pasting required.

Balls will be balls

Throwaway line of the day, for Fleet Enema Week:

"Maybe the name Benoit gave them the wrong idea about the place."

The one title still available as a URL

Having gone to the Evelyn Wood School of Cooking, with absolutely no regrets, I have a total appreciation of book reviews as CliffsNotes: Skim them and you can skip slogging through the real deal. But a supremely smart review will send you straight to Borders with 30 percent-off coupon in hand. I used to think "The Woman Who Mistook a Dinner Party for a Career" was a memoir to be written. Now I know a party acquaintance has gone and done it.

Sunlight, held together by water

Thanks to the only wine writer whose wine writing is a must-read three times a week, I now know I have something in common with the evil one -- and it's not toilet paper in a crocheted doll in my bathroom.* We're both Tolerant tasters, according to the bud test. Considering I remember uncorking a Georgia peach "wine" with friends in a rental house in the Outer Banks when that was the last bottle standing at the end of the getaway, that's probably no surprise. Bottled poetry, limericks -- they're all good.

*Funny what you get when you search Youtube for Mondovino Robert Parker:

Twain, meet Mencken

"Leave it to Democrats to bring a flounder to a gunfight."

Good to the last bon mot. Bonus points for Dunkin the appeasers.

Off the rails

The front-page story on grease thefts from restaurants started out like a spoof but wound up evoking a literary nightmare. Even for a country unabashedly addicted to oil, this is junkie behavior. At least no one today can mock the Peruvians for reaping the guano rewards. Their dirty work produces food rather than sustaining the illusion we can keep driving until the Apocalypse. And their resource happens to be renewable -- it's been piling up really high at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Original wide stance

And in Germany, dump it down the drain. Not sure stockpiling dairy products is such a smart idea, though.

4,086 a gallon

Given that I am relying more and more on mnemonic devices to cover for my cranial sieve, it's astonishing what I remember so clearly about the bitter cold day in early 2003 when my consort and I put on 15 layers, took the train to Columbus Circle and followed the Bread and Puppets Theater contingent far across Midtown to spend bitterly cold hours penned up by the NYPD while impassioned speakers including Desmond Tutu railed against the war we probably all knew was inevitable. We met equally frostbitten friends afterward for a late lunch of mostly frites in a booth at the Brasserie, convinced the protest had been a bust because all we knew was what we could see from our pen. Logging onto the Guardian that night gave a whole different perspective; the entire world had been out in droves with one message: No Blood for Oil.

So pardon me if I don't nod sympathetically every time I hear a high-profile, job-secure "journalist" bleating mea culpas in the wake of Slimy Scotty's attempted image-laundering. You don't need to be a molecular gastronomist to read a recipe for disaster. . . .

A star crossed

My astropal may have the ultimate take on why the wingnuts won a victory that is already looking literally hollow, considering how appeasement can be a bitch in a country where a staggering 77 percent have turned against the conservative in chief. Next up, I hope, is a read on why an anchor baby would be so rabid about everything else that might be perceived as less than American. But at least I suppose we'll be spared breakfast burritos with sprinkles on top anytime soon.

And here's to you, Mr. T. Bourdain

Heaven holds a place for those who snark.

(HT Gawker, as they say. Banshee's busy sleeping.)

Hole in the head

Okay. Symbols have been thoroughly dunked. We can now safely go back to worrying about diabetes. And whether the Chimp Wannabe will now reach out to the lunatic-iest fringe. Maybe they get 72 EVOs in heaven?

Green at last, green at last

I never had this capability at the base camp, but I feel compelled to share the latest happy harbinger of summer cooking, after the return of Blue Moon fish to the Greenmarket: Keith is back for the season this Saturday and next Wednesday, on Union Square but up where the performance artists usually are. When I got the postcard I realized how much I give up garlic for winter because nothing is as good as the rocambole he grows (and I have tried everything Fairway imports, including the smoked stuff). Be there or eat acrid.

More evidence you become what you eat

Scott McClellan would now have us believe he was the original mushroom, kept in the dark and fed manure. And of course a particular pundit has the only reaction you need to read.

Truth in billboarding

Sympathy for the geese.

(Filched from Bartcop, sourced via Google image search.)

Why newspapers are illin'

They bury the lede. How can someone who has developed butt calluses and a mouseball-curved forefinger from an obsession with the internets only recently have discovered Dick Cavett's blogging? Here he's saying so much better what I've been ranting about for years now: Familiarity breeds complacency. In extreme cases, one day a girlfriend refuses to exit the bathroom and two years later the toilet seat embedded in her flesh looks perfectly normal. More routinely, one fat kid gets cast in a commercial and before you know it Husky is the new Size 2.

The eyes have it

Now if she could only turn a dog into a cake. . . .

This makes the coulibiac in "Decline of the American Empire" look like Poppin' Fresh. Neutered.

(Filched from Slashfood. Which also unearthed a bacon tuxedo.)

Now that the BBQs are over

It's too late for two more of them, but we can dream. As long as Big Dick's getting richer, though, it's gonna be MREs forever.

Cairo on $8 a day

Car no longer included.

And I thought a garlic roaster was ridiculous

I'm not saying where, but we used to say editing the progenitor of this craze was like playing Whac-a-Mole. Clearly, we lost.

Grey Poupon? Really?

Judging by the Guardian’s piece on chefs’ larder essentials, I’m in the wrong line of work. At least three of them mentioned Maldon salt, but those lucky Brits pay only two pounds for a box. We get socked for eight bucks. I wanna be the middleman with the 100 percent markup. Do they fly it over first class?

One nation, under the bed

If wingnuts weren’t so easily freaked, they themselves would be scary. Apparently all we have to fear is Dunkin Donuts itself. Or at least Rachael Ray’s attempted French accent.

But he gave up golf

I saw this photo and almost puked myself. But I would never be as articulate in my total disgust. The eating analogy is perfect.

"We lack knowledge more than tools"

As I said over at the base camp, I have a new addiction. He’s a little too enamored of the Egotist and Molto Culo, but no one’s perfect. Funny how trawling through his blog turns up better diversions in my business than I find on most of the ones dedicated to all food, all the time (well, except for their detours into Ko lemmingism). Like this.

Is it stock yet?

For all its carving of the carcass, one of the reasons the LATimes still kicks ass is that it still maintains a test kitchen and shoots the actual outcomes. You’d be surprised at what gets into print elsewhere on faith, hope and denial.

The only reason to get the Daily News on Sunday

As an antidote to the increasingly grim news emanating from NPR on my consort’s clock radio too early every morning, I start my days with a few serious laughs: Tony Auth, Jeff Danziger, Mike Luckovich, Pat Oliphant, Ben Sargent and Ann Telnaes (and half a dozen others if I am in total procrastination mode). Food figures into their wit surprisingly often, but not usually as brilliantly as this.

Traveling without flying

Not long ago I wrote about chefs blogging and of course missed mere millions — the revolution is not being indexed. Since then this has crossed my radar (okay, full disclosure: I found it while engaging in what Pepper . . . and Salt in the WSJ called ego surfing: looking up my name on several search engines). Talk about pictures being worth pages of blather!