Worthwhile Read on Foodie Culture

I'm still working on the Vegas recap, with particular attention to the meal at E.  In the interim, anyone who's interested in Ferran Adria, El Bulli, molecular gastronomy, or foodie culture in general might enjoy this article in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

A sample:

The rush to assess Ferran Adrià’s place in culinary history started long before El Bulli closed. There is no question of his influence, which is broad and, in some facets, sure to last. The dishes and techniques originating at El Bulli are a major part of how he will be remembered. The books, films, and multilingual website cataloguing his work provide a remarkable record of a long, fertile period. Their impact is already apparent in kitchens everywhere, sometimes in a gratifying way and sometimes with a bit too much enthusiasm. Michael Laiskonis, the former Le Bernardin pastry chef, remembers first encountering Adrià’s books as a young chef and having to “put them away” due to the threat of getting too swept up in them.

More significant than the artifacts themselves is the spirit of openness behind sharing them. If early reports are any indication, El Bulli’s next incarnation will extend this still further, with daily reports on work at the taller posted to the website. It seems appropriate that this news brings to mind a former El Bulli stagiaire. René Redzepi went on to become chef and co-owner of Noma in Copenhagen, now generally regarded, in the wake of El Bulli’s closing, as the world’s finest restaurant. Redzepi holds weekly developmental sessions with his kitchen staff and shares the results of their work in real time, via Twitter. As for Adrià’s work, and largely thanks to his General Catalogue, chefs all over have unprecedented access to his ideas, and the effect has been galvanizing. A sense of possibility, of permission to attempt the improbable (and fail at times) has swept kitchens worldwide. Even chefs with firmly established reputations, like Terrance Brennan, whose Picholine in New York has held two Michelin stars, view this changed climate with admiration, calling this the most exciting time he can remember for young chefs. And despite the fact that he is a decorated chef, firmly in mid-career, Brennan has quietly adopted techniques from Adrià that fit his own personal style. 

But as with a seismic shift in any creative discipline, Adrià has his detractors. The Spanish chef Santi Santamaria, who held three Michelin stars of his own, criticized Adrià as part of “a gang of charlatans who work to distract snobs,” and questioned the use of what he called “emulsifiers and chemical agents,” suggesting they place diners’ health in danger. A similar concern with additives comes from food writer Jörg Zipprick, who has called Adrià’s food artificial. Curiously, Lisa Abend notes that a number of the stagiaires she followed at El Bulli tell her they want to cook “real food” in the future, despite their admiration for Adrià and their desire to learn from him. Misgivings or not, Adrià’s influence will not be undone at this point. Neither will chefs who refuse to embrace these new ways end up deemed Luddites; there’s always an audience for those espousing purity and simplicity, whatever the field.  

Upcoming Teaser

I am working on a long-ish post about our recent trip to Vegas.  I would also like to write something about the Republican Primaries, except that they sadden and weary me so much that it's hard to talk about them without becoming, uhm, sad.  And weary.  But let me say that I predict not only an Obama victory but a crushing and overwhelming one.  In a way, I think that's what the party needs.  It's time for a come to Jesus moment--a real serious stock-taking, on the part of party elders, about where they are going.  They need to wander in the desert.  And there, in the desert, they should leave Rick Santorum.  And Newt.  And Sarah Palin.  And Rush.  And all the many, many knuckleheads who have made the party the sad spectacle that it is today.

But, Vegas was great, and grand, and food-orific.  I made friends with some blackjack pit bosses, embarrassed my wife by my good-natured boisterous vodka-tonic-y-ness, and somehow managed to win money playing poker AND--miracle of miracles--blackjack.  And I got to eat fried nuggets made of bone marrow.  So.  That's something, right?

The Golden Ticket Has Arrived

Next weekend the wife and I are heading to Vegas for a weekend vacation.  While there, we will eat dinner at E, a foodie mecca created by the international superchef, Jose Andres.  (The e, by the way, has an accent aigu on it--as does the 'e' in 'Andres.'  I can't make the accent appear on this interface, however).

Because I want the experience to be a surprise, I have purposefully tried to keep myself from learning too much about the food they serve at E.  I know its inspiration is essentially Spanish, and I know that it's a redoubt of molecular gastronomy.  Other than that, I'm a blank.

Still, I know its reputation (otherwise, why plan a trip to Vegas to eat there?) E is discussed on food websites in the same tone I imagine Spanish conquistadors must have once used when talking about Cibola.  E, in fact, is not even really a "restaurant"; it's really a single room hidden inside another restaurant (Jaleo, a tapas place in the Cosmopolitan).  It only has room for eight people in it, so it only has two servings per night.  A meal lasts about three hours; it's mostly single bites (as I understand it) and comprises about 15-20 courses.  Obviously the food is said to be sublime.   Andres trained under Ferran Adria, the genius madman behind El Bulli, the restaurant most foodies consider to be the best in the world.  (Considered, I should say: El Bulli closed for good last fall.  Apparently now the best restaurant in the world is in Norway.  Or Denmark?  But I digress).

To get a reservation at E, I had to stay up till midnight on the day exactly one month before the night we wanted to go, and send an email requesting a reservation.  Once we got the reservations we were sent, in the mail, our golden ticket.  So, next Saturday, the 25th, I'll hand our ticket to the hostess at Jaleo and be invited into one of the inner sanctums of American eatery.  It should be quite something.  Any damn restaurant that sends you a golden ticket in the mail--that's one I support.

Michael Jackson's Immortal

This is the letter I just sent to Cirque du Soleil.

Dear Sir or Madam

I’m writing to tell you about my recent experience at Immortal, the Michael Jackson Cirque du Soleil, which I saw last weekend at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.  Let me say first that this is eighth Cirque du Soleil-related performance that I’ve seen.  I’ve seen, and enjoyed, O (three times), Ka (twice), Love, and…a touring one that had a loose South American theme (Samba?  This was many years ago).   I have recommended—proselytized, you might even say—your shows to family and friends on numerous occasions.  I essentially compelled my parents to see O against their will (they’re not big ‘show’ people).  I am, in other words, a fan.

Which made watching Immortal all the more painful.  I have no interest in insulting you or your staff.  Putting together a full-length musical performance can’t be easy, and certainly you’ve done it well in the past.  Immortal, however, was offensively bad.  It was beyond disaster.  The choreography was lame and uninspired.  The circus aspects of the show, such as there were, felt random and disconnected; my wife suggested that the show’s director had pulled out-of-work performers from other Cirque du Soleil shows and told them to do whatever tricks came easiest.  I couldn’t even close my eyes and listen to the music; the audio quality made it impossible.  It sounded as if someone had hooked up a dozen loudspeakers to a cheap stereo, shut the whole thing inside a high school gym, jacked up the volume and left it alone.  And the routines!  The dancing chimp!  The life-sized white glove, which evoked nothing so strongly as the Hamburger Helper spokesman.  The creepy insistence on foregrounding the Neverland ranch.  The shot of Macaulay Culkin in the video montage.  You couldn’t even say that the taste level of the questionable; it was only bad—irrevocably bad.

Beyond all the many passing failures, the show suffered from a failure of conception.  Michael Jackson was not a prophet.  He was not a social visionary.  His ideas, such as they were, were banal and unexceptional (peace is better than war, love is better than hate, the environment is important, eetc.)  And yet for reasons I can’t begin to understand, Immortal focused not on the early Michael Jackson, the singer and dancer whose work inspired us all with feelings of freedom and joy, but on the later freaked-out Jackson, the one who inspired only pity—or something worse.  Why anyone attempting to produce a show that ostensibly paid tribute to Michael Jackson would decide to take away minutes from  “Beat It”, “Billie Jean” or “Smooth Criminal” and give them to eight-minute renditions of “They Don’t Give A Damn About Us” or to a seemingly endless array of synth-drenched laments for the sorrow of the Earth’s future is more than I can understand.   At the very minimum, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the legacy and significance of Jackson’s work.

Having said I didn’t intend to be insulting, I’ve just reeled off a list of what I guess might seem like insults.  Unfortunately, there’s no other way I can describe what it was like to experience Immortal.  And frankly, however insulted you may feel reading this, is nothing compared to how my wife and I felt by the time we left the show.  We felt as if we’d been victimized, as if we’d been conned.  Because Immortal was an insult; it was an insult to Jackson’s fans; it was an insult to Jackson’s legacy; and it was an insult to the thousands of audience members who paid out hefty sums to watch this debacle.

Included in this letter are my tickets, as well as the receipt showing the amount of purchase.  I mail these in order to help your staff process my refund.  Yes, refund.  I have never before asked for a refunded ticket price for a live show.  (I’ve never even walked out of a bad movie!)  But in the case of Immortal, I have no choice.  When I pay to see entertainment, I hope for brilliance—but I expect only competence.

Immortal did not come close to meeting that expectation.   It was a tacky, cynical, slapdash affair in no way worthy of Michael Jackson’s name—or your own.  

Just A Heads-Up

I can't discuss it in any detail without feeling sad and ill, but if any of you out there are considering, even casually, attending the touring company version of Immortal (Cirque du Soleil's celebration of the music of Michael Jackson) DO NOT DO SO.  Take your money, set it on fire, and then poke yourself in the thigh with a fork for an hour.  You'll have a better time.

And this is from someone who likes Cirque du Soleil (usually) and love Michael Jackson.

The Guru Said Keep Walking

So my question about this is... well. What do you make of it?

I found it on a poker site, of all places. A blog by a fairly serious player; he talked about how he watched it every day to motivate him to train and prepare for poker tournaments.

So then I watched it and the first time I saw it I thought: YES. ROCK ON. And I decided to submit my name to the NFL combine.

By the way, the voiceover is from some guy who styles himself The Hip Hop Preacher. He has quite a Facebook page if you're interested. The video, on the other hand, is from a East Carolina running back named Giavanni Ruffin. He has a twitter feed (I looked into all this on YouTube) that is sort of dispriting and inspring at the same time.  Apparently he's trying to impress scouts in February and make the NFL.

Okay.

My point here is: I don't know, really.  I don't know if this is genuinely inspiring or just kind of...over-manipulated rubbish. I do like the way it builds, though.  And the long pauses in the audio track.  So that you really do want to know what happens to the young man who goes out to the beach.

"Most of you people would rather sleep than be successful" That's funny. And true.

And I like the way he cites Fifty Cent, as if that sort of is the ultimate trump.  If Fifty adheres to this philosophy, what more is there to say?

I don't know. I don't usually watch stuff like this--stuff with so few Muppets, I mean. But this kind of stayed with me.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

Probably worth watching in full screen.

I Am Not Issuing Another Post

Until at least five people respond to the Muppet Video below. At least watch it. And say you have.

Because I know that I, for example, rarely watch videos that are on blogs. And that I've been a bit lazy, putting up lots of non-original material.

But this is non-negotiable. Five people must post some post that indicates that they've seen it, that comments on some aspect of the video that they couldn't otherwise comment on, without having seen it. ("Mama??")

I'm through playing. Word.

I Was In A Funk Today

And then I saw this.

It gave me hope.  I wish Beaker were a friend.  I would want to spend as much time with him as I possibly could.

Tuesday, January 24

This comes from Book I of The Histories, by Herodotus:

[Persians] are accustomed to deliberating on the most serious business while they are drunk, and whatever decision they reach in these sessions, it is proposed to them again the next day by the host in whose house they had deliberated the night before.  Then, if the decision still please them when they are sober, they actd on it; if not, they give it up.  Conversely, whatever provisional decisions they consider while sober, they reconsider when they are drunk.

The first part, I can believe.  The second I doubt.

Ernest Givens Lives

For an old Houston Oiler's fan, this article on the team's notorious "Run and Shoot" offense is irresistible. It name-checks Haywood Jeffries, for God's sakes. How can it not be worth your time?

A sample:

The run-and-shoot was supposed to be dead, at least in the NFL. The offense (at least one form of it) was conceived by Glenn "Tiger" Ellison back in the 1950s, while Darrel "Mouse" Davis developed its modern form throughout a four-decade coaching career that has touched nearly every level of football imaginable. The offense had its moment of glory in the NFL in the early 1990s. Back then, the Detroit Lions, Atlanta Falcons, and Houston Oilers (and the Seattle Seahawks, extremely briefly) ran the 'shoot, which featured four wide receivers and one running back on every snap. The offense used no fullbacks and no tight ends.1 These teams had mixed success. The Lions won 12 games in 1991; the Falcons won 10 and made the playoffs twice during their 'shoot days. But the NFL team that most exemplified the run-and-shoot, in both its glory and its shame, was the Houston Oilers. The Oilers made the playoffs in seven straight years with the run-and-shoot (and fielded a top-10 offense in each season), and quarterback Warren Moon blitzkrieged defenses with his four-receiver aerial assault. But the Oilers never reached the Super Bowl, and they managed to be on the wrong end of the greatest playoff comeback in NFL history. Against the Buffalo Bills in the 1993 wild-card round, Moon threw four first-half touchdowns, but he wasn't able to burn the clock and the defense collapsed in the second half of a 41-38 loss. The Oilers became part of an even more ignominious moment the following year, when Buddy Ryan, Houston's defensive coordinator, punched the team's offensive coordinator in the face.  Ryan was no fan of the run-and-shoot, which he called the "chuck-and-duck." 

Eventually, a consensus formed around the league that a team couldn't win championships with the run-and-shoot, and teams abandoned the offense. Without a tight end or fullback, they said, the 'shoot was "finesse only" and lacked the physical element necessary to win.3 But not everyone agreed. When Hall of Fame safety Rod Woodson heard Houston had given up on the offense, he said: "Tell the owner thank you, and tell the front office thank you. The run-and-shoot got the Oilers where they are, and I think defenses all over the league are going to be very relieved when they hear about it." 

But the run-and-shoot went out of fashion for a reason. In a modern NFL full of tight ends and multiple formations, an offense that limits itself to one personnel grouping — whether it's four receivers and one running back or two running backs and a tight end — can't be successful. The run-and-shoot forced the Oilers, Lions, and Falcons to protect their quarterback with six players; without multiple looks, today's defenses would develop schemes to destroy those protections. Indeed, what killed the run-and-shoot wasn't the playoff failures or the perceived lack of physicality, but rather the zone blitz, which was designed to defuse the kind of six-man protection schemes that run-and-shoot teams used on every down. For a while, at least, everyone around football seemed to agree that the run-and-shoot had died and would never come back. 

But the run-and-shoot never left.

For My Wife

Who will love this.  So do I.  I laughed out loud watching it.  It took me a few seconds, after it started, to figure out what was going on.  But then I got it.  And it's pretty damn brilliant. Recommended in full screen.