American Fez

Whistlin' Colonel Bogey

A young woman walked by me this morning, stringy headphone wires dangling down from beneath her shiny, still shower-wet hair, thumbing glumly through the contents of an iPod. She nearly walked into a tree and just about managed to side-step a parking meter before one of her unsupervised feet finally stumbled off the sidewalk, losing its filthy flip-flop in the process. Without looking up from her iPod, she wriggled and stamped her toes back either side of the sandal band and continued staggering blindly down the street.

Later, no doubt, she would board a city bus, absently waving her monthly pass at the driver and slumping into a seat beside some other zombiefied commuter. Would she have found a song to listen to by then? It seems unlikely. After all, there is no music made that can possibly withstand the rigors of the daily grind. 

Believe me, on my way to work I've listened to both Strauss(es), Rimsky-Korsakov and various versions of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries on repeat play. I've tried Kraftwerk, Sidney Bechet, Astor Piazzolla, Dagmar Krause, Camille Saint-Saens, Shahram Nazeri and Slim Gaillard. I've tried the Splendour of the Baroque and even a Treasury of Medieval Song. I've tried Aphex Twin, Amon Duul, John Barry and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. In the spirit of "it's all about the journey, not the destination," I've tried Alice Coltrane's Journey In Satchidananda. But none of these has ever brightened up the long march to the office. 

Where's The Outrage?

Inspired by the popular children's books, Where's Waldo?, I have created my own socio-political version called Where's The Outrage?

Confronted with a mob of faces featuring emotional states ranging from total apathy to apoplectic anger, readers are invited to locate the face exhibiting the outrage. 

I've even included a red herring by having the most docile face wear a Che Guevara t-shirt, multicolored wooly hat and a lip piercing.

Is this docile face a typical left-wing student, and if so why aren't they outraged? Or perhaps he or she is just high on drugs and therefore too spaced-out for self-righteous indignation? I feel such pictorial conundrums will test the cognitive abilities of most children to the limit. 

After all, I have enough difficulty reading the expressions of the Free Tibet demonstrators who take up so much of the sidewalk in the city squares. I can never be sure whether they are profoundly smug or merely experiencing gastric problems caused by drinking too much butter tea.

Anyway, remember to order a copy of Where's The Outrage? for the small person in your life today. Ask for it by name at your local bookstore. Although, of course, you probably don't have a local bookstore these days, do you? Now that's where the true outrage lies. 

Nomenclature And Its Discontents

Charged with making a dessert for a friend's dinner party this past weekend, and unable to decide between a simple flan or its more elaborate cousin, the crème brûlée, I compromised and slapped together a melange of both. I unwisely called this new, compound pudding a flème brûlée. 

I wrote the name down on a menu card, obviously, since saying "I've brought individual flème brûlées!" out loud doesn't sound particularly appetizing. In my experience, diners will always decline what they think is mucus after a meal, even if it is covered with burnt sugar, in favor of more conventional sweetmeats.

Nevertheless, despite the menu cards, much of my cocktail hour small talk was spent explaining to bemused fellow guests the crucial difference between flème and phlegm; a task somewhat complicated by the fact that these two vastly different substances can, admittedly, be quite the same color.

You should have just told people it was a crème caramel, my host said. Better yet, you shouldn't have called it anything at all. This flème business really complicates everything. I thought you were just supposed to be bringing a blueberry pie, anyway. 

That would have been nice, his wife added. Most of us are lactose intolerant.

Avoiding their reproving eyes, I stared shamefully at my desserts. Somehow all the individual flème brûlées had splodged themselves together into one big pile of wobbly custard and brown stuff during the journey over. The ugly, mostly yellow mess looked as though a giant troll with pneumonia had sneezed into a cake tin. 

Hide it in the fridge for now, my host said. We're not sitting down for another half hour or so, so there's plenty of time to run around the corner and get a non-dairy, fruit-laden sponge something from Whole Foods to appease Stacy. You and I can ladle out the flème later when everybody's gone. How much booze is in there?

None, I replied.

None? His face fell. What's the point of custard if you're not going to drown it in brandy? It's kind of gross, like swallowing oysters without first slathering them in horseradish or mignonette sauces.

It never occurred to me, I conceded. I had the two recipes for the flan and the crème brûlée. I combined them to create the flème brûlée and left it at that. Had I included the brandy it would have to be called a flème brandûlée, which is probably a dessert too far, don't you think?

While I was watching his eyes roll, Stacy returned with two martini glasses. This is my version of the classic Negroni cocktail, she said. Gin and vermouth mixed with bourbon instead of Campari.

Not bad, I said. What do you call it?

I just call it my version of a Negroni, she replied. It's easier for everyone that way.

Dinner was nice: a simple, nameless chicken dish. But as I ate I thought of Chicken Cordon Bleu; of Chicken Piccata and General Gau's chicken; of Chicken Kiev, Chicken Versuvio, Chicken Chettinad, Chicken Tikka Masala and of all the chicken recipes with names that came to mind; and I decided to call the one that I was eating The Unknown Chicken.

Late, Late Lunch

It was the eighteenth-century celebrity chef Samuel Johnson who claimed that when a man is tired of lardons then he is tired of leafy salad. Similarly, the offbeat Irish gourmand James Joyce remarked upon the inedible mutability of the vegetable in Useless, his great compendium of unappetizing ingredients. 

In fact, all the Penguin classic authors agree: a decent late lunch requires protein, otherwise the average office worker might begin to feel lightheaded after a morning and afternoon of staring at his computer screen. Even a small, fried penguin can suffice for most office-workers.

Carrot, pea pod, Ranch dressing, ginseng, hummus, flax seed, Serbian truffle, satsuma segment, whey powder and the so-called "broad" bean: such worthless additions to any respectable dish are the last refuge of the scullery scoundrel. 

Alternative acceptable garnishes include T-bone and porterhouse steaks, raw kidney, fish mash, Dodo scalp, eye of newt, wing of bat and pretty much all parts of toad. Protein, protein, protein.

Bon appetit. 

Soap Box

It is a sad indictment of this country that indictors are forever issuing sad indictments of this country, and these perennial indictors are not even sad about it. In fact, most of them could be described as absolutely gleeful. That's what I find so sadly indictable about this whole indictmentapalooza.

So, if we are to move forward as a people, we must retrace our steps back to a time when being a people meant a neighbor did not indict his neighbor for building a house next door to him. But at the same time we must refuse to be saddened by an indictment just because it was made. After all, some folks just have indictable looking faces, if you know what I mean. That's what's really sad.