THE GURGLING COD

Nathan Myhrvold: "I can haz Mussoliniburger?"

Coming up, the story of a much beloved young chef who makes a bold move out of his bohemian neigborhood and opens up a fancy place in a big downtown hotel. But first! I spent a little unplugged catching up on last week's DI/DO. I saw where a 48 lb, $625 cookbook has been delayed. It's by a Microsoft guy, and it's all up on the molecular cuisine tip. But those of you not sated by Ferran Adria's fifty-dollar thirty two dollar, seven pound valentine to himself will have to be patient, because they are doing a little bit more quality control on the text. (Not to mention the Spinal Tap-esque "custom designed box within a box" case it comes in, which evidently keeps breaking.) 

But if you ask the Cod, if you buy only one cookbook this year (or maybe next) that costs more than a decent commuter bike, it should not be this one. The book is called "Modernist Cuisine." If "Dr. Myhrvold, who amassed hundreds of millions of dollars at Microsoft, wields vacuum sealers, colloid mills and rotary evaporators, and ingredients like agar and methylcellulose," one imagines the cookbook is concerned with hi-tech, state-of-the-art, 21st century type cooking. Unfortunately, the name implies something rather different. Like the Dogmatics said, look it up in the dictionary. "Modernist" can refer to "modernism," which can in turn refer to "modern," which is kinda sorta what Dr. Whatchamacalit is after, but among educated people, "modernist" generally refers to works of literary or visual art from the first part of the century, often the kind popular with Mussolini. So, "Modernist Cuisine" is an unfortunate, but not indefensible, title for this book. But it does seem unfortunate to spend more than six bills for a cookbook this imprecise in its use of a language, and still more unfortunate to undertake a cookbook project that involves a crew of more than a dozen people, and not hire anyone with a better grasp of English.

One XL Pizza, Xtra Sizzurp

So, (MaryKate & Ashley) + szzurp = this:

 

If you were wondering, yes, chopped n screwed MK&A sounds like that long last sophomore jawn from Afroman, and yes, it is most definitely a Guiteau Monday. 

Add chicken wars.

I saw on the internet where Chick-fil-A was opening in Chicago. 

  At left, a picture of some Soviet paratroopers rolling into Kabul in 1979. Over there, a picture of some mujahideen.

Are you starting to see a pattern? The mujahideen did not have the resources, but they were entrenched, and they had better hats. Indeed, Harold's is perhaps as powerful as the Soviets and the mujahideen put together, because Harold's has mastered the trick, a la posters of Lenin in Mongolia, of having a racially mutable icon: 

 

But seriously, Chick-fil-a. It is on, and you don't even know how it's on. 

Springtime for Colonel Sanders and Germany?

So posting around here has been thinner than something that's not very thick, because the Cod has been busier than a one-armed paperhanger who works in an inexpensive brothel for an obsessive madam who insists on fresh wallpaper for every trick. Looks like Sifton Soundtracks is still in the grips of a possibly lethal obsession, but Mr. Sunshine just blasted the Cod out of the Anchower zone with an alarming tidbit from the colonel:

GLUTEUS AD MAXIMUS: KFC PLACES DOUBLE DOWN ADS ON THE BACKSIDES OF SWEAT PANTS WORN BY COLLEGE CO-EDS

Kentucky Fried Chicken Enlists Female Undergrads as Human Billboards to Tempt Fellow Students with Advertising for KFC's First-Ever Bun-less Sandwich

First of all, here is a handy guide for using "co-ed": Ask yourself the following questions:

1) Is Dwight Eisenhower dead?

2) Are diaphragms legal?

3) Are you reading this on a computer?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," then IT'S NOT 1953, SO FOR FUCK'S SAKE DON'T CALL FEMALE UNDERGRADUATES  "CO-EDS."

The pants with writing on the ass thing is one puzzling aspect of the collegiate wardrobe It  flatters neither wearer nor text. This campaign is sexist, and makes the idea of eating a Double Down even more unappealing. Look no further than the image above. It's a bad campaign in a gushing cornucopia of ways. And yet, NOW Prez is on the blower w/ Huffpo saying it's lame. NYDN picks it up, cause, like, look! Ass! (They ran the pic at left, credited to KFC.com.) The DD was a bad idea that had been consigned to the dustbin of fastfood history, along with the Whaler. Iron the logo on a few sweatpants, and throw a few bucks at a few kids at a college the Cod is not familiar with, and Zang! Quel Scandale! Hard on the heels of Mexican drug violence being covered in terms of its impact on spring break, as illustrated by shots of kids in bikinis. Ass (or tits) + college + girls + indignation = media catnip (see also books on "hookup culture"). The folks at KFC twigged this, and it seems to be a shot of adrenaline in the hear of a nasty old sandwich. It's a bad idea like a musical about Hitler is a bad idea.

So, sarcastic slow clap, but if you must eat fast chicken, there are alternatives.

Sling it in the Melph for the fools that's looking

Sporty T: Sporty Talkin Sporty '93

For his day job, the Cod heard a pretty compelling talk this summer by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, on the subject of geographies of primitive accumulation.* Long story, but basically the West Indian sugar plantation is the primal scene of capitalism as we know it. Anyway, this bounce classic, which comes to me by way of a Cocaine Blunts post Katrina benefit compilation, reminded me of Dillon's talk. The opening 40 seconds or so offer a neat account of the buying, producing, and distributing crack, mapped onto a landscape of housing projects that don't exist any more, and jails that do. Click the map for details. FYI, headphones might be advisable if listening in public.

*Reprised today, if you happen to be in the greater Ithaca area.

Tony Bourdain is like a chocoholic, except for, uh, culture?

 (Yes, late to the party here, I know.) Props to Tony Bourdain for 100 episodes of No Reservations. If I had better food on TV skills, it's one of the few I'd watch on purpose.* I did notice something a bit strange in the print ad for the show. It's TB leaning against a knife - of WORDS! Sure, 100 
  episodes, 100 words, and maybe the copy folks run out of gas somewhere in the middle of the knife, but one of the choices towards the top seemed curious. (See detail at right.) But "culture junkie" seems like a curious choice for someone who documented his own career as and actual, you know, heroin junkie in his breakout book.** Not quite ready to break out the life imitates Onion category yet, but it is eerily reminiscent of the Onion's "I'm like a chocoholic, except for booze." 

  *The corollary to this is The Gurgling Cod's own version of the Bechdel Test: if you see Guy Fieri on your TV, throw wrenches at it until the image subsides. For a plasma screen, an open ended 1/2" does the trick, but if you have a CRT, keep some 9/16" and 5/8" by the TV. 

That said, it's impressive that TB not only managed to kick the smack, but also mostly kick talking about smack. 

Add Ivy League Sausage Fest and Aristocrats Contest update

Erstwhite Cantabridgian and current lady the cinetrix pointed out w/r/t the Ivy League Sausage Fest that the absence of talented and female chefs within an easy bike ride of Harvard Square likely explains the bro-ed out nature of the hang at Harvard. Perhaps at least Harold McGee can explain the science behind why ladies can't emulsify if they are menstruating. 

Understandably, very few of you were willing to conjure up the spectacle of a maelstrom of incest and scatology presided over by Chris Kimball. Except for The Starter Wife's gesture in the direction of imagining The Aristocrats as told in the style of that annoying letter at the start of each issue:

 

Please send your snailmail, Ms. Wife! 

Ivy League Sausage Fest?

So  Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is getting on the whole food bandwagon:

Science & Cooking Public Lectures / Public talks by world-class chefs

 The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (“SEAS”) and the Alícia Foundation have developed a new General Education science course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter,” debuting in the Fall of 2010. The course will use food and cooking to explicate fundamental principles in applied physics and engineering.

 Limited to currently enrolled Harvard undergraduates, the class will bring together eminent Harvard researchers and world-class chefs, including Wylie Dufresne of wd-50 and Dan Barber of Blue Hill, as well as food scholar and writer Harold McGee, one of the leading authorities on kitchen science.

  Science & Cooking Lecture Series

Members of the extended Harvard community and the general public will have an opportunity to attend topic-related public lectures given by the guest chefs and faculty affiliated with the course.

 The whole thing is a bit of a headscratcher. 1) The Cod did his fingerling bid in the 02138, and had never realized that Harvard had a School of Engineering, and wonders why bother, when there is a solid one right down the street. 2) For an engineering dept, the whole enterprise has a slightly desperate feel to it -- what with the crisis in higher education, and whacks to Harvard's endowment, it was either putting on the battle of the Food Network Stars in the Science Center, or a calendar featuring members of the department a la the Rylestone Women's Institute. 3) Finally, and I realize that it is "Science and Cooking" and not "Quotidian, Nurturing, Backbreaking Cooking," and thus you gotta have Wylie, and Ferran, and Grant, etc, but still, only one chick and nine dudes on the roster? Is this not what Mr. Adria might call a fiesta del chorizo?

Before there was Cee-Lo

There was The Violent Femmes:

The Aristocrats, Cooks Illustrated style -- a contest

I threw this out on Twitter, but I would like to expand it as a productivity-sucker for saps like me stuck at their desks on Labor Day. How would telling The Aristocrats joke unfold as an article in Cooks Illustrated? The best attempt to simulate gets a jar of tasty artisanal pickles from a prominent New York pickling concern.* Deadline is 9 am, 7 September, when the work starts for everyone else. As a refresher, here is Cartman's take:

*Which may prefer not to be associated with this contest.