We Need to Listen to Mike Judge Before It’s Too Late

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Many of you will recognize the still above as being from Office Space, the excellent movie about the dystopia all too many of us spend our waking lives contending with. But did you know the guy giving Jennifer Aniston a hard time about not having enough “flair” on her uniform is none other than Mike Judge, the creator of the movie, along with Beavis and Butthead and the universally lauded Idiocracy?

Wait, you don’t know about Idiocracy? It’s the movie set in 2505, when generations of, uhm, lesser minded folks, had exponentially way more kids than “smart” people who were waiting for the economy to be on the upswing before deciding to bring another life onto the Earth. Really, hadn’t heard of it?

Well, many others have catalogued how Judge got the shaft from Fox, his distributor. The movie, which I’ve seen on DVD, paints a pretty bleak picture of America, and especially the corporations that essentially run it. From Carl’s Jr. being able to remand children to the state, to the country’s irrigation needs being unsuccessfully attended to by Brawndo sports drink (”It’s what plants need!”), the picture is of dumb-ass people whose few needs (tv, food) are barely attended to by a failing nanny state. Politics, just as now, is essentially a meaningless contest of one-liners, except in more of a pro-wrestling atmosphere, and the president is a porn-star.

What’s crazy about Office Space and Idiocracy is that as much as you’d like to believe the premises aren’t possible, you know people who’ve lived through Office Space (OK, without the Superman III robbery aspect) and Idiocracy, well…

In the movie, Starbucks, has apparently decided coffee is just not cutting it anymore. They decide to offer, as a value add, handjobs. Crazy, right? Well, as Slashfood noted, Seattle, the home of Starbucks after all, is already well on its way. Actual quote:

“Espresso joints. . .have decided to spice up their images with sexy outfits and flirtatious female baristas to try and attract business away from competitors.

“If I’m going to pay $4 for a cup of coffee” said one male customer, “I’m not going to get served by a guy.”

Right on, dude! Just wait and see what your great-great-great-great grandson will get with his lattes! Provided that, you know, he doesn’t get any crazy ideas about how to pay for it.

Am I to blame for EU’s problems?

Stranger than fiction, there's a restaurant called E.U. in my East Village neighborhood that is just unable to stay open. And I swear it's my fault, if you believe in causality. Maybe my girlfriend's. You see, every time we have gone to eat at EU (three times now), they close within 48 hours, only to re-open, still the same visually, but palpably weakened in terms of karma. My study:

Closure the first: After a long, contentious, crazy battle to open, E.U., the European Union, finally started serving in April 2006. Mind you, when we moved to the E.Vil, we had our eyes on EU as a perfect addition to the neighborhood. Yes, my girlfriend and I are hipster gentrifiers. I'm sorry, we'd rather be crunchy, long-time residents, but that wasn't in the cards. We like the East Village for what it once was, not what it is now, but our chances at scoring some $500 a month 3 bedroom suite pretty much went out the window when we weren't born in time to take advantage of living in the drug-ridden, crime infested neighborhood this once was (which may actually be preferrable to the bridge and tunnel infested, street fight, striped shirt douchebaggery carnage inflicted on my neighborhood every weekend night.) 

So, EU opened, after battling like crazy for a liquor license against a community board that stupidly stood idle while a hundred other dumb bars got or renewed their licenses. Yes, the green lantern bar with the awful name (No Malice Palace) on 3rd, which regularly creates a sidewalk queue while the inside of the bar is actually empty, just to drum up some buzz, has a license, but a restaurant serving braised beef cheeks and razor clams does not. Go figure. They opened for three days to give BYO a go, but after they got told they could not operate as BYO, they got closed. But, that one night we got to eat dinner there, the beef cheeks were OUT OF SIGHT.

Closure the second: Brunch. Good burger. Good eggs. Still no booze. They had re-opened in advance of the license, which I gather Giraldi et al. thought was forthcoming. In fact, it was not. Again, le shutter for EU. If the actual EU closed this often, Germany would still be on Weimar currency.

Closure the third: Brunch, again. Good burger (fried egg on top, Aussie style, but I guess Aussies were once Brits, right?) Then comes Eater to tell of the Sunday night meltdown that apparently happened mere hours after the hostess told us we had to sit at a two top right next to another couple because the next table over "had to stay a four." At 1pm. In a restaurant that had six other occupied tables. Out of, like, fifty. Neighborhood brunch place? Uh, if my neighborhood brunch place is empty, you'd think they'd have the courtesy to space out the diners OR just say "anywhere you'd like," when we go to sit down. Perhaps this is why EU advertised for a whole new front house on craigslist.

Finally, according to Eater, a new chef, Akhtar Nawab, the FOURTH attached to this restuarant in less than two years, (Burrell, Ochs, Elliot) has brought some solid experience to the resty, along with hopefully enough of a clue to bully the management for a decent front of the house. And they've re-opened in just four days, the shortest time ever in all the jinxes we've apparently put upon EU by attempting to dine there. I looked forward to seeing what Ned Elliott could do, but now Giraldi and Hennings say he was just a warm body while they went after their man Nawab.

Please, EU, don't give up the good fight just yet. We really want to see what you've got to offer. And may I put a word in for the braised beef cheeks, if Akhtar deigns to serve them? 

The Guy Behind The Guy

 

 

It's been a while, but here's another clip of sorts. Over at Conde Nast Traveler's website, every issue of the magazine should bring with it a monthly online quiz. This month's is written by yours truly, and it's all about that city of sin, that according to Guy Martin in this month's issue, may save us all: Las Vegas. To take the quiz, click here. Sorry, no betting!

The Drink

Somehow this blog has neglected to comment much upon what Homer Simpson called "the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems: alcohol!" I think that's because I originally started it as a repository for clips and failed pitches, but as I've gotten a better feel for what kind of blogging I'd like to do, I've strayed a bit from that formula. So, it's time to talk about drinking.

When I was a sophomore in high school, a teacher advised me that if I ever had writer's block, the best way to unblock myself would be to take a swig of Wild Turkey, or better yet, just keep some by the desk. When I was legal, he added, five minutes later. Great guy.

Now that I'm well into the age of majority, I have to say that one Manhattan is a nice way to get the creative juices flowing. Two Manhattans, however, and while I'm probably charming at a bar, I'm useless on the page. This is all to say that I just discovered NPR : Great American Writers and Their Cocktails, and it's a damn fine compedium of what our great men and women of letters preferred to get soused on. 

Just remember, as F. Scott said, "first you take a drink, then the drink takes you." You've been warned. Now drink up!

Paul Ford is blogging again

I feel like I discovered Ftrain.com years ago, well before I was aware of anything like a blogosphere. There were just blogs back then, little unconnected islands of thought percolating through the phone wires. And because I responded intellectually to Paul Ford's writing on that site, I have always kept a mental note to check it out, every few months, usually late at night or during a slow moment in time, when I feel like I've reached the "end" page on the internet from that stupid commercial.

Usually I was rewarded by some little post or link, but recently, many times I was not. Then, of course, came the majesty of the Gary Benchley serial saga on The Morning News followed by the excellent novel based on those articles, Gary Benchley, Rock Star. We had several months of Ford in full bloom as the book hit the publicity circuit. But lately, again, radio silence. Now I don't spite anyone's need to get away from these glowing screens, but as a reader, I simply missed the site.

Now comes a sudden deluge of posts! Ford has been blogging regularly since 2007 was begat, apparently some sort of New Year's Resolution, get it, get it?  Part of my interest is that Paul is a web geek who writes. After being a web geek for several years, I too am writing, though the first novel is probably at least nine months off and I have happily abandoned the coding part of my brain, except for boutique projects for friends who need websites and of course keeping up this little blog, which is really only hear to call attention to my work as a writer.

Although his posts have been apocryphal so far, I will be reading the blog with great curiosity to see what comes of his efforts. I suggest checking it out sometime.

Neighbors

Put a few million people on a tiny speck of rock in the middle of a whole lot of other people and strange things happen. I'm talking about Manhattan, of course. Ironic Sans: The Astoria Notes actually deals with, der, Astoria, Queens, but that is a whole 'nother speck of rock, just a larger speck than the speck I'm currently living on. If you've ever had issues with neighbors, even if they weren't necessarily horrible The Burbs types of encounters, you'll want to read Ironic Sans' bizarre tale about being told, by his neighbor, that she was pretty much following every move he made in his domicile, sometimes complaining, and sometimes twisting his habits into her own roommate eviction device. Enjoy. 

(This link is from kottke.org but I know I've seen Ironic Sans before…)

A brunch at the Flea Market

Since I'm going to be doing some more food writing in the coming months, I thought I might start an occasional feature on the blog of writing about good meals I've had between reviews. I was lucky enough to be dining with my photographer/girlfriend Wendy Ploger when I ate brunch at Flea Market, which on the surface seems like any number of tiny French bistros that line the streets of Manhattan. 

I don't think anyone goes to a bistro expecting to be introduced to the future of food, a la foams, cooking in plastic bags, Parcojets, or any of the other exotic kitchen devices and techniques that have gained currency in recent years. No, what you expect is to enjoy the original culinary revolution: the techniques, precision and combination of ingredients that brought the French to global preeminence and made the name The French Laundry a perfect one for Thomas Keller's more modern culinary revolution.

 

 

 

What you're seeing in the picture above is what the Flea Market does well. The place has a cute feel, good music, and a slammin' brunch Croque Madame. The Croque ("munch") is nothing more than a good piece of French bread with a slice of ham, some Gruyere cheese and bechamel sauce, heated and grilled so that it gets all gooey and perfectly melted. It's then topped, as shown, with a poached egg. Do you know how easy it is to make a bad one of these?

I've had some real stinkers. Hard (not runny) yolk. Bad cheese. Unmelted cheese. Cold cheese. Icky ham. Stale bread. Old sauce. If it's not all perfect, it's not worth eating. So to make it as good as Flea Market does, and to pair it with a lightly dressed mesclun, as above, that makes use of the sauce and egg yolk as a de facto second dressing, shows that not only can someone in the kitchen make a Croque Madame, they understand the thinking behind it and why the ingredients are prepared the way they are. It shows competency and appreciation for the old ways. It complements the atmosphere of Flea Market, where you feel you might actually be in a bistro somewhere on the Left Bank. It's food that doesn't know how artful it is, even as it outclasses so many other pedestrian meals.

Lichee foams and thyme sorbets are great, but for my money, nothing beats a perfectly poached egg. Flea market, on Avenue A right across from Tompkins Square Park, is a place I'd recommend to those who agree. The service is fine, the wine list works, and the price is right. It probably won't change your world, but then again, if you've never experienced a great duck confit, it just might.

Not piling on, I swear!

Perhaps I shouldn't follow my thoughts on fact-checking with my noticing an error in UrbanEye (ne Urbanist), The New York Times' answer to hip email newsletters everywhere, but this morning Melena Ryzik, editor of the daily newsletter, points readers to The Factory Retooled, her article about 205, a hip new club that looks like Warhol's famous Factory on the inside. She says,

"[Monday]’s killer karaoke night is still more or less under the hipster radar. It has, however, been discovered by celebrities like Ed Norton, Liev Schreiber and Rosie Perez, who — surprise, surprise — can really belt it. If you can, too, stop by."

Mas problema. As New York magazine's Daniel Maurer blogged this morning, 205 was shuttered by the NYPD because of Warholian allegations of coke and other drugs being dealt in its hallowed simalcra-quered halls. So, one can assume, Monday night karaoke, it probably didn't happen.

Doing a daily email like that must be a royal pain, but the last time UrbanEye/Urbanist caught my attention was when Kampuchea was reported as being open for business on a night they had not yet opened. I had called the restaurant, as I was planning to review it for the New York Press, and confirmed that their opening night was indeed postponed.

Of course information posted on the web goes out of date, but a daily email about events in New York should be pretty well vetted before going out, otherwise doesn't it risk sounding like so much marketing spiel? Before using UrbanEye as a guide to go anywhere or do anything, it might be a good idea to pick up the phone and confirm. 

 

Not to nitpick, but…

As someone who is a sometimes freelance fact-checker for a national publication, (Enough qualifiers? Trust me, they're all necessary.) I've done my homework on the history of the field. For example, did you know that in the UK there are no such things as fact checkers at magazines? The fact-checking is handled newspaper style: between the writer and the editor, everything is supposed to be verified as accurate. Facts aren't explicity checked; if the editor reads something that raises an eyebrow, the writer provides backup. If the writer lied about it, and it makes it to print well, they are in deep shit, my friend. There is no system in place to bail them out, like there is in the US.

Here in New York, if a writer fumbles a fact in a story that's made it to press, it's the fact-checker who typically gets interrogated first. And if the erroneous detail cannot be accounted for by said staff member, it's THEIR ass, not the writer's. Sure, the magazine may choose not to work with the freelance writer who submitted the lie anymore, but if they are writing for the glossies, they are probably going to be able to drum up work. The fact-checker, on the other hand, is a magazine staff member, and if they make too many errors in a year (depends on the pub, but some places say 3 is the max), they are fired, out on their ass. And their colleagues and competitors know exactly why, making finding more work in the field a challenging proposition at best.

A major problem is while this system is designed to eliminate publication of erroneous information, it also encourages feature writers to flub and exaggerate their stories. If they slip one past the goalie that makes their story sound much more dramatic, it's to their benefit! If later, the facts are called into question, it's the staffer that gets in trouble, not them! The more cunning or unscrupulous (or just lazy) the writer, the more the fact-checker has to be on guard. And working with my fact checking colleagues, boy have I heard some stories of malfeasance. Entire legs of trips forged (don't forget to check the expense report for a plane ticket where there should've been a car rental). Composite characters created out of scratch. Interviews written to sound intimate, that were a bit more like a keynote address at a conference. The writer inserting himself into events, only to omit key facts or misreport those events (best to find out there was a major power outage in Italy BEFORE talking about how great a time you had there last year. It's comical if sad.

Most writers certainly don't try to exploit the system, but even so, errors slip through. And thus, Adam Gopnik's insightful football piece in The New Yorker (The Unbeautiful Game, not available online) contains two errors, neither serious, certainly neither purposeful, but nontheless a rare  example of mistakes in an article screened by the world's most vaunted fact-checking department (one I'd like to freelance for, if anyone who reads this can drop a dime).

First, Mr. Gopnik paranthetically states that suits are not permitted to be worn by coaches on the sidelines. As the great site Uni Watch mentioned often, and ESPN reported, two NFL coaches, Jack Del Rio and Mike Nolan, were allowed to wear suits this season on the sidelines. For marketing purposes, Reebok wants coaches to wear all branded/logoed usually awful looking gear, but these two won permission to buck the trend and wear suits twice during the season. As late as the start of this season, this was no certainty. Thus, I bet this article was sat on for a while until the timing was right (the playoffs starting, for example), and then run. When, in that timeframe, the article got vetted, who knows, but anyone doing research in the last two months would run into multiple sources stating that these two coaches were permitted to wear suits. So this one appears to have slipped through the cracks.

More questionable would be Gopnik's assertion that Brian Billick, head coach of the Ravens, is defensive-minded. Yes, Billick's Ravens are known for their smashmouth, in your face, defenses. They won the 2000 Super Bowl playing lights-out D and just enough offense. But Billick's history is as an offensive genius. From his bio: "Prior to becoming the Ravens' head coach, Billick spent five years as Minnesota's offensive coordinator, where in 1998, the Vikings' offense scored an NFL single-season record 556 points." So the key here is phrasing. Gopnik's sentence about Billick as the subject of a book described him as: "…a tight-lipped, humorless, defensive-minded coach…" (nothing omitted changes the meaning of that phrase). 

Now maybe I'm being humorless, but as soon as I read that sentence, my jaw dropped. After all, this isn't just an offensive-minded coach, this is a coach who, as coordinator, set the NFL record for points scored in a season. He's in the books as an offensive genius. He came up through the ranks on the offensive side of the ball. Chuck Noll, who Gopnik compares him to in that sentence, was a Pittsburgh coach, a team known for its Steel Curtain Defense. Noll's teams allowest the fewest yards in an NFL season four times in his career! I will soften my own argument by saying that Billick's Ravens allowed the fewest points in league history in 2000. But, one year, even a record setting year, does not undo a career spent as an offensive assistant, especially since Marvin Lewis was running the defense in Baltimore pretty much without interference from Billick, nor does it legitimize the comparison between Noll and Billick.

So, the point of checking facts is to maintain a tone of accuracy in reading. When I came across these two statements within a few paragraphs of each other, I was blown away, and my enjoyment of Gopnik's analysis (and his writing style which I enjoyed in Paris to the Moon was kind of shot. I still think he's a good writer. I still think The New Yorker's fact checking department is beyond compare. But I was, to borrow the football theme and be a bit overdramatic, blindsided by the hit.