Monday, November 3, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Waffle House Wedding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3HcaIiTmDc
DACULA - As the famous twang of Hank Williams Jr. blasted from an SUV stereo Friday afternoon, about 30 folks socialized, sipped soda and puffed on cigarettes. No, this wasn't a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. It was the run-up to a wedding. In a Waffle House parking lot. The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way. For years, the couple tried to marry on their Independence Day anniversary. But the bride was always scheduled to work. Instead of waiting any longer - she got the day off at the last minute; Mathis had to report for the morning shift - the couple of nine years decided to seal the deal at work. The result was what a NASCAR tailgate might be like if Hank Jr. himself stopped by with all his rowdy friends: Loud and proud - country music, storytelling and plenty of Dale Earnhardt paraphernalia - and not an iota of pretentiousness. "It's been crazy, madness," the bride said. "Finally, everything worked out.""I think it's pretty redneck myself," he said, laughing. "But I'm a redneck anyway, so." The couple plans to honeymoon Monday and Tuesday, but then it's back to work.
DACULA - As the famous twang of Hank Williams Jr. blasted from an SUV stereo Friday afternoon, about 30 folks socialized, sipped soda and puffed on cigarettes. No, this wasn't a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. It was the run-up to a wedding. In a Waffle House parking lot. The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way. For years, the couple tried to marry on their Independence Day anniversary. But the bride was always scheduled to work. Instead of waiting any longer - she got the day off at the last minute; Mathis had to report for the morning shift - the couple of nine years decided to seal the deal at work. The result was what a NASCAR tailgate might be like if Hank Jr. himself stopped by with all his rowdy friends: Loud and proud - country music, storytelling and plenty of Dale Earnhardt paraphernalia - and not an iota of pretentiousness. "It's been crazy, madness," the bride said. "Finally, everything worked out.""I think it's pretty redneck myself," he said, laughing. "But I'm a redneck anyway, so." The couple plans to honeymoon Monday and Tuesday, but then it's back to work.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Let the Games Begin
The Summer Olympics are about to start in Beijing, China and I could not be more excited (well, I could be more excited if these were the Winter Olympics - I lived in Lake Placid and attended the 1980 Winter Olympics, so I am biased). I am a big fan of the Olympics, and I am definitely one of those people who is glued to the tv for the two weeks of coverage. They have lost a little something for me since the Cold War ended (there doesn't seem to be the same us vs. them, democracy vs. communism, good vs. evil mentality that gave the Olympics of my youth so much cache, but since I'm a bigger fan of world peace than I am the Olympics, we'll chalk that up as a sacrifice worth making). And they have also lost a little something since professional athletes are permitted to compete (we'll never have another Miracle on Ice moment again, no matter how much NBC wants to shove the possibility down our throats every four years).
But, all in all, I am still a big fan - I enjoy learning about the host city and the athlete stories, which are always compelling. But to truly enjoy the Olympic watching experience, I need three things: 1) a sport I have barely heard of and know next to nothing about; 2) subjective judging; and 3) a useless, hopelessly misguided opinion about said sport. because there is no better way to spend two weeks every four years than pontificating about sports I know nothing about. Come on, don't you love that? That is easily the best part of the Olympics - watching say, diving, and becoming an instant critic/commentator/judge. During the three years and 50 weeks between Olympic competitions I know three things about diving: it involves a diving board (or platform if you want to get technical), you land in water, and you try not to make a splash. That's what I know. On top of that, I am a particularly lousy diver - I can't do a twist, a flip, or a backward dive - hell, I can barely pull off a reasonable cannonball - but during the two weeks of the Olympics, this is a fair assessment of my reaction during the Olympic diving competition: "Oh my God what a lousy pike, she'll lose points for that for sure! And that inward one and a half - pathetic." Isn't that the best?! And I know I'm far from alone - if it is a subjective competition, everyone who watches is going to have an (useless) opinion. Watching the running or swimming sports is too easy, the guy who runs or swims the fastest wins - where's the fun in that for the viewer? No sir, give me the 40 pound fourteen year old on the balance beam, or the Chinese diver who can spin and flip 812 times before hitting the water like a raindrop, because then i get to be a judge too.
The one trend I am not liking with Olympics is the invasion of sports I actually follow (or have at least heard of). Where is the fun in that? The Olympic experience is not about tennis, softball, baseball, and soccer. These are sports with professional leagues, they do not need the Olympics to survive. And we watch them all the time - what in the world is the difference between U.S. Open tennis and Olympic tennis? Nothing. To be a true Olympic sport, it has to be one of two things A) obscure to the point of ridiculousness (is that a word?), or B) a 'lon sport.
Sports that qualify under the former include any activity where your reaction the first time it was described to you was - "What?! That's a sport?? You're kidding?" Examples of which include synchronized swimming, synchronized diving (synchronized anything really), rhythmic gymnastics, bobsled, luge, and ice dancing. these are the sports that depend on the Olympics for their existence because no one is going to pay attention to them otherwise. And it also gives obscure champions of said sports a paycheck for two weeks every four years because who the heck else is going to accurately describe what just happened? "Good evening, and welcome to NBC's continuing Olympic coverage of synchronized swimming. I'm your host, Chet Hardguy, and I'm joined by three-time National Synchronized Swimming Champion Sally Loser, who is on leave from her job as a Duluth YMCA swimming director to explain just what the hell is going on here."
Sports that qualify under the latter need no introduction because they are the heart and soul of any Olympics - your 'lon sports: decathlon, heptathlon, biathlon, pentathlon. What could possibly be better than combining random sports into the same competition and watching the results. "have an idea, let's go cross-country ski twenty miles and fire guns at targets!" "No wait, let's throw a cannonball, jump over hurdles, try to leap over a big bar, see who can jump the farthest, and run a half marathon!" "You guys are idiots! Let's do all that, but also throw a giant spear and take a stick as long as a bus and hurl ourselves over a really, really high bar!" "Well, you guys can do what you want, but I am going to do ten really obscure things, I am going to do none of them very well, and when I'm done, I will declare myself the greatest athlete alive!!"
Man, I love the Olympics!
But, all in all, I am still a big fan - I enjoy learning about the host city and the athlete stories, which are always compelling. But to truly enjoy the Olympic watching experience, I need three things: 1) a sport I have barely heard of and know next to nothing about; 2) subjective judging; and 3) a useless, hopelessly misguided opinion about said sport. because there is no better way to spend two weeks every four years than pontificating about sports I know nothing about. Come on, don't you love that? That is easily the best part of the Olympics - watching say, diving, and becoming an instant critic/commentator/judge. During the three years and 50 weeks between Olympic competitions I know three things about diving: it involves a diving board (or platform if you want to get technical), you land in water, and you try not to make a splash. That's what I know. On top of that, I am a particularly lousy diver - I can't do a twist, a flip, or a backward dive - hell, I can barely pull off a reasonable cannonball - but during the two weeks of the Olympics, this is a fair assessment of my reaction during the Olympic diving competition: "Oh my God what a lousy pike, she'll lose points for that for sure! And that inward one and a half - pathetic." Isn't that the best?! And I know I'm far from alone - if it is a subjective competition, everyone who watches is going to have an (useless) opinion. Watching the running or swimming sports is too easy, the guy who runs or swims the fastest wins - where's the fun in that for the viewer? No sir, give me the 40 pound fourteen year old on the balance beam, or the Chinese diver who can spin and flip 812 times before hitting the water like a raindrop, because then i get to be a judge too.
The one trend I am not liking with Olympics is the invasion of sports I actually follow (or have at least heard of). Where is the fun in that? The Olympic experience is not about tennis, softball, baseball, and soccer. These are sports with professional leagues, they do not need the Olympics to survive. And we watch them all the time - what in the world is the difference between U.S. Open tennis and Olympic tennis? Nothing. To be a true Olympic sport, it has to be one of two things A) obscure to the point of ridiculousness (is that a word?), or B) a 'lon sport.
Sports that qualify under the former include any activity where your reaction the first time it was described to you was - "What?! That's a sport?? You're kidding?" Examples of which include synchronized swimming, synchronized diving (synchronized anything really), rhythmic gymnastics, bobsled, luge, and ice dancing. these are the sports that depend on the Olympics for their existence because no one is going to pay attention to them otherwise. And it also gives obscure champions of said sports a paycheck for two weeks every four years because who the heck else is going to accurately describe what just happened? "Good evening, and welcome to NBC's continuing Olympic coverage of synchronized swimming. I'm your host, Chet Hardguy, and I'm joined by three-time National Synchronized Swimming Champion Sally Loser, who is on leave from her job as a Duluth YMCA swimming director to explain just what the hell is going on here."
Sports that qualify under the latter need no introduction because they are the heart and soul of any Olympics - your 'lon sports: decathlon, heptathlon, biathlon, pentathlon. What could possibly be better than combining random sports into the same competition and watching the results. "have an idea, let's go cross-country ski twenty miles and fire guns at targets!" "No wait, let's throw a cannonball, jump over hurdles, try to leap over a big bar, see who can jump the farthest, and run a half marathon!" "You guys are idiots! Let's do all that, but also throw a giant spear and take a stick as long as a bus and hurl ourselves over a really, really high bar!" "Well, you guys can do what you want, but I am going to do ten really obscure things, I am going to do none of them very well, and when I'm done, I will declare myself the greatest athlete alive!!"
Man, I love the Olympics!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Just Wondering...
...if you and one other person order Chinese food (delivery) and they deliver the food and include four sets of chopsticks, you've ordered too much food, right?
...why there are no bouncy seats for adults - they look ridiculously comfortable, and all babies seem to love them - I know I would put a giant one in my living room and never leave the house.
...if you are disgruntled when you are upset, are you gruntled when you are happy?
...and while I'm on the subject, if something is disjointed when it is incoherent, is it jointed when it makes sense?
...why news people always say court of law when they are referring to the location of legal proceedings. Do we really need the 'of law' part? Are there other types of courts where people bring legal proceedings?
...why some adults insist on responding to a question on age, "I'm 35, but I'll be 36 next March." Really? You're 35, but you won't be 47 next year?? If you are speaking to anyone over the age of 3, I think we can drop the whole "I'm gonna be..." tag line and leave it up to the listener to do the heavy math there Einstein.
...whether I should be insulted that chambermaids fold the end of my toilet paper into a downward-facing arrow? I mean sure, we've all experienced the frustration of being unable to locate the end of the roll, so we end up spinning the roll at 40 times the speed of light hoping to dislodge the offending end piece. And yet, the whole folded arrow is a bit 'cut-off-the-crust-of-your-sandwich' kind of patronizing, no?
...how one can be 'more than happy' to do something for me? If you are more than happy to say, refill my water glass, what is your approximate level of happiness? Elated? Euphoric? Orgasmic? And why does that give you so much pleasure? I feel like I'm missing out on a really fun experience.
...how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Cause I can chuck wood and I do it quite rarely. Its not as fun as it might seem, but then again, I'm not a woodchuck. Maybe they sit quietly in a forest and stare wistfully as a lumberjack chucks piece after piece of wood. And maybe they have a single tear coming down their cheeks like the 'don't pollute' native american.
...whether native american should be capitalized?
...whether, if you capitalize a word or a city, why do you capitolize a building?
...why you raze a building you want to destroy and raise a building you want to erect?
...why 'erect' still makes me giggle? I am almost 40 for God's sake.
...why every actor does Shakespeare with a British accent, even the plays that took place outside of Britain? I'm quite sure Caesar (Roman), Hamlet (Dutch), Othello (North African), Lear (Greek) did not speak the Queen's English, so why not give a performance in an accent of their character's country?
...whether polar bears have given names to areas of land in their neighborhood or paths they regularly follow, such that they realize their world is melting into the ocean? Polar Bear #1: "Hey, how about the fishing this year down on Polar Bear Way?" (well, no one said they were going to be real original - they are polar bears after all) Polar Bear #2: Oh, you didn't hear? Polar Bear Way just fell into the ocean!" Polar Bear #1: "You are shitting me! Man, (or 'Bear') this whole freaking neighborhood is going downhill." Polar Bear #2: "You're not kidding - just last week Big Polar Bear Path just broke off and floated away."
...whether anyone else thinks about this stuff?
...or is it just me?
...why there are no bouncy seats for adults - they look ridiculously comfortable, and all babies seem to love them - I know I would put a giant one in my living room and never leave the house.
...if you are disgruntled when you are upset, are you gruntled when you are happy?
...and while I'm on the subject, if something is disjointed when it is incoherent, is it jointed when it makes sense?
...why news people always say court of law when they are referring to the location of legal proceedings. Do we really need the 'of law' part? Are there other types of courts where people bring legal proceedings?
...why some adults insist on responding to a question on age, "I'm 35, but I'll be 36 next March." Really? You're 35, but you won't be 47 next year?? If you are speaking to anyone over the age of 3, I think we can drop the whole "I'm gonna be..." tag line and leave it up to the listener to do the heavy math there Einstein.
...whether I should be insulted that chambermaids fold the end of my toilet paper into a downward-facing arrow? I mean sure, we've all experienced the frustration of being unable to locate the end of the roll, so we end up spinning the roll at 40 times the speed of light hoping to dislodge the offending end piece. And yet, the whole folded arrow is a bit 'cut-off-the-crust-of-your-sandwich' kind of patronizing, no?
...how one can be 'more than happy' to do something for me? If you are more than happy to say, refill my water glass, what is your approximate level of happiness? Elated? Euphoric? Orgasmic? And why does that give you so much pleasure? I feel like I'm missing out on a really fun experience.
...how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Cause I can chuck wood and I do it quite rarely. Its not as fun as it might seem, but then again, I'm not a woodchuck. Maybe they sit quietly in a forest and stare wistfully as a lumberjack chucks piece after piece of wood. And maybe they have a single tear coming down their cheeks like the 'don't pollute' native american.
...whether native american should be capitalized?
...whether, if you capitalize a word or a city, why do you capitolize a building?
...why you raze a building you want to destroy and raise a building you want to erect?
...why 'erect' still makes me giggle? I am almost 40 for God's sake.
...why every actor does Shakespeare with a British accent, even the plays that took place outside of Britain? I'm quite sure Caesar (Roman), Hamlet (Dutch), Othello (North African), Lear (Greek) did not speak the Queen's English, so why not give a performance in an accent of their character's country?
...whether polar bears have given names to areas of land in their neighborhood or paths they regularly follow, such that they realize their world is melting into the ocean? Polar Bear #1: "Hey, how about the fishing this year down on Polar Bear Way?" (well, no one said they were going to be real original - they are polar bears after all) Polar Bear #2: Oh, you didn't hear? Polar Bear Way just fell into the ocean!" Polar Bear #1: "You are shitting me! Man, (or 'Bear') this whole freaking neighborhood is going downhill." Polar Bear #2: "You're not kidding - just last week Big Polar Bear Path just broke off and floated away."
...whether anyone else thinks about this stuff?
...or is it just me?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Soft Generation?
I am not yet 40, but I really think I am officially old. I don't feel old. I don't look (too) old, save for a few grey hairs creeping in. And I definitely don't want to act old too often (as my wife can attest). But, I am afraid that I am inescapably old due to the fact that I keep uttering one of the the Old People Pledges of Allegiance: "Kids today are soft." "They have no idea how good they have it." And the classic, "When I was their age [insert rambling discourse on how difficult your life was in the mid '80s compared to how easy kids have it today]..." You can't claim to be young and still insist on carrying on a conversation that begins with an Old People Pledge. If you are volleying a complaint about a generation below you, you are officially old.
Now, there are varying degrees of olditude, so the mere fact that you are acknowledging that you are old doesn't put you immediately into God's Waiting Room, but it does make you old. Never once in my 20s did I utter an Old People Pledge, because I was too busy having fun and starting a career to be concerned with the teenagers coming up behind me. And in my young to mid thirties, I was frankly too sleep deprived from starting a family to care what was going on in the generations below me. No, it wasn't until my late thirties that I started to even notice the generations below me, and a few more years after that to utter an Old People Pledge. But now that I'm here, well, you have to jump in with both feet, right? So I'll go ahead and say it: I can't freaking believe that many colleges are not requiring SAT scores of their applicants. Are you kidding me?? One of the most nerve-racking, nausea-inducing, your-whole-future-may-hang-in-the-balance-if-you-blow-this-test moments of my youth will now be a tape deck, or VCR to these kids - something they know existed a while ago, but they can't quite remember why. I mean, when I was there age (Pledge!) we spent the better part of two years taking the PSATs, preparation courses, pre-tests, and then took the SATs, usually multiple times. It was a right of passage to completely bomb one of the exams to such an extent that you convinced yourself you'd never get into college and you'd be digging ditches for the rest of your life. And the Rolodex of excuses you created for discussions with your friends, parents, teachers, and college admission directors was a work of art that you carefully honed and edited, and memorized: "Well, I really concentrated on Verbal this time, so my Math should really come up big time when I take it again." Or, "I'm not very good at standardized tests." Or, "I was absolutely killing it, and I ran out of time." And then there were the horror stories of the kid that so and so knew who screwed up the answer key and all of his answers were off by one line. Terrifying for a 17 year old with college ambitions. And so what if it was biased and didn't really accurately test how smart you were! that's not the point! the point is, it was a rite of passage that everyone had to go through and it either broke you or made you stronger. And now? Nada.
It is bad enough that there is no dodge ball in gym class anymore, no jungle gyms on the playground, and every organized sport up until junior high ends in a freaking tie, so none of the kids will ever have to lose at anything (God forbid!), now we'll soon have an entire generation who doesn't know the pressure of the SATs. Now wonder we are getting our butts kicked by economies all over the world! Plus, where else except an SAT prep course will you learn cool words that sound great, but you can never pull off in normal conversation? Words like ennui (melancholy), eschewed (abstained), and cadre (basic unit). If the next generation is happy at another friend's misfortune, they will never know they are experiencing schadenfreude, and a great story-teller will be just that, he will not be a raconteur. Yes, the SAT will slide off into history like so much detritus. And me? Well, I'll be on a train that leaves New York at 3:00pm traveling 50 m.p.h., arriving in Chicago at a time no teenager will be able to figure out.
Now, there are varying degrees of olditude, so the mere fact that you are acknowledging that you are old doesn't put you immediately into God's Waiting Room, but it does make you old. Never once in my 20s did I utter an Old People Pledge, because I was too busy having fun and starting a career to be concerned with the teenagers coming up behind me. And in my young to mid thirties, I was frankly too sleep deprived from starting a family to care what was going on in the generations below me. No, it wasn't until my late thirties that I started to even notice the generations below me, and a few more years after that to utter an Old People Pledge. But now that I'm here, well, you have to jump in with both feet, right? So I'll go ahead and say it: I can't freaking believe that many colleges are not requiring SAT scores of their applicants. Are you kidding me?? One of the most nerve-racking, nausea-inducing, your-whole-future-may-hang-in-the-balance-if-you-blow-this-test moments of my youth will now be a tape deck, or VCR to these kids - something they know existed a while ago, but they can't quite remember why. I mean, when I was there age (Pledge!) we spent the better part of two years taking the PSATs, preparation courses, pre-tests, and then took the SATs, usually multiple times. It was a right of passage to completely bomb one of the exams to such an extent that you convinced yourself you'd never get into college and you'd be digging ditches for the rest of your life. And the Rolodex of excuses you created for discussions with your friends, parents, teachers, and college admission directors was a work of art that you carefully honed and edited, and memorized: "Well, I really concentrated on Verbal this time, so my Math should really come up big time when I take it again." Or, "I'm not very good at standardized tests." Or, "I was absolutely killing it, and I ran out of time." And then there were the horror stories of the kid that so and so knew who screwed up the answer key and all of his answers were off by one line. Terrifying for a 17 year old with college ambitions. And so what if it was biased and didn't really accurately test how smart you were! that's not the point! the point is, it was a rite of passage that everyone had to go through and it either broke you or made you stronger. And now? Nada.
It is bad enough that there is no dodge ball in gym class anymore, no jungle gyms on the playground, and every organized sport up until junior high ends in a freaking tie, so none of the kids will ever have to lose at anything (God forbid!), now we'll soon have an entire generation who doesn't know the pressure of the SATs. Now wonder we are getting our butts kicked by economies all over the world! Plus, where else except an SAT prep course will you learn cool words that sound great, but you can never pull off in normal conversation? Words like ennui (melancholy), eschewed (abstained), and cadre (basic unit). If the next generation is happy at another friend's misfortune, they will never know they are experiencing schadenfreude, and a great story-teller will be just that, he will not be a raconteur. Yes, the SAT will slide off into history like so much detritus. And me? Well, I'll be on a train that leaves New York at 3:00pm traveling 50 m.p.h., arriving in Chicago at a time no teenager will be able to figure out.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Parental Guilt
So our youngest daughter came home from nursery school the other day with one of those handprint/poem thingys that they love to spring on you every year. Now, the kids have each had fantastic teachers over the years, so I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it is a wee bit presumptuous of a teacher to send home parenting advice in the form of a four-year old's art project, don't you think? Like I need any more people in my life laying a guilt trip on me. All of a sudden I am being told what I can be upset at my kids about? I have an idea - maybe my three kids can go over to their house for a month and coat their bathroom in a healthy layer of toothpaste, and spill milk, chocolate milk, lemonade, water, juice box, maple syrup, and three unknown, random, but incredibly sticky liquids on every piece of furniture they own. Then they can find melted candy bar, gummy worms, potato chip crumbs, half eaten lollipops, and chewing gum in their car. Then, my kids can ruin their $3000 paint jobs by creating Sharpie marker 'murals' on their walls. Then my kids can each run through a field covered in dog doo and goose crap and drag that mess onto every rug and carpet in their house until the whole place smells like the backroom of a kennel in August. Then, when they are absolutely about to go ballistic, I will hand them a laminated handprint and pithy poem that says "please don't be mad at me because I'm little and I'll be big soon", and see who they try to strangle first - the kids or the idiot who handed them this freaking poem!
I love the idea that being four years old is some kind of get out of jail free card. What, being four is suddenly a license to trash my house? At what age am I allowed to be upset with them oh Ye of Infinite Patience? Does there come a point where denting my car with a tennis racket becomes a punishable offense? Or am I to look the other way for all eternity because someday they will be older and ticking me off about more important things? So kindly save the guilt trip for someone else and just send home the egg carton caterpillars. Or so help me, I'll send my four year old to your house on a 95 degree August day eating the biggest Popsicle you have ever seen in your life.
I love the idea that being four years old is some kind of get out of jail free card. What, being four is suddenly a license to trash my house? At what age am I allowed to be upset with them oh Ye of Infinite Patience? Does there come a point where denting my car with a tennis racket becomes a punishable offense? Or am I to look the other way for all eternity because someday they will be older and ticking me off about more important things? So kindly save the guilt trip for someone else and just send home the egg carton caterpillars. Or so help me, I'll send my four year old to your house on a 95 degree August day eating the biggest Popsicle you have ever seen in your life.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Requiem For a King
Well, its official, Chips and Salsa are dead. Now, for the record, I'm not talking about nachos, because nachos will be with us until the end of time due to the MCF - melted cheese factor. The MCF is a scientific theory I have developed that postulates that human beings will eat 83% of the substances on the planet if you pour melted cheese on top of them. When you throw in the BC - the bacon corollary, that percentage skyrockets to 99% - only excrement and "things found stuck to a subway platform" were eliminated. You can read all about my findings in the June issue of The Journal of Angioplasty and Coronary Disease.
But chips and salsa (sans cheese) are over as a primary food source. I don't know when it happened but I have noticed it for quite some time, yet I didn't say anything for fear of declaring a premature death (kind of like those news stories you occasionally hear about a hospital or nursing home sending some poor person off to the morgue while they were still breathing. For God's sake, how hard is it to stick a mirror under some one's nose - you don't even need medical training! But I digress.) I went to two parties this past weekend, both incredibly fun affairs (a Kentucky Derby party and a Cinco de Mayo party if you must know) and both served copious amounts of food, including (the dearly departed) chips and salsa. And, as I suspected, the chips and salsa were routinely ignored in favor of new flashier appetizers like those cheese/spinach puff things, spring rolls and dim sum, or old standbys like pigs in a blanket, chicken skewers and the cheese and cracker platter. And chips and salsa can't even hold their own against other dips, routinely getting their asses kicked by artichoke dips, sour cream and onion, crab, and its own cousin - the Mexican cheese dip (MCF at work in two of the three dips of course). Did I mention that one of the parties we went to this weekend had a Mexican theme? If you are chips and salsa and you can't even defend your home turf, what chance do you have in a non-Latino setting? Where did it all end? One minute chips and salsa were the talk of the town - a must have if you were throwing a cocktail party. Now, they sit lonely and ignored until the chips are so stale and chewy, you can blow bubbles with them, and the salsa gets that crusty green film on top from sitting untouched for so long.
I can't tell you how many times we have hosted a party and as I am cleaning up afterward (or is it afterword, I can never get that straight), I empty an entire bowl of salsa back into its container. And it goes into the back of the refrigerator with the other seven partially-full salsas until two years later when you end up cleaning out the refrigerator and you come face to face with six to ten dead salsa containers. Where have you gone Jose' DiMaggio? A nation turns its hungry eyes away from you. But the chips and salsa industry doesn't seem to mind because until now, no one has had the guts to declare them dead. So people will still keep buying them and putting them out, and stuffing them in the backs of their pantries and refrigerators, refusing to acknowledge they are gone. But I will. I will stand up and publicly mourn this first ballot Appetizer Hall of Fame inductee. Take your place in the Pantheon with the retired appetizers like Potato Skins, Pickled Eggs, and Cru-de-te (other than the carrots and broccoli). Enjoy the hereafter.
But chips and salsa (sans cheese) are over as a primary food source. I don't know when it happened but I have noticed it for quite some time, yet I didn't say anything for fear of declaring a premature death (kind of like those news stories you occasionally hear about a hospital or nursing home sending some poor person off to the morgue while they were still breathing. For God's sake, how hard is it to stick a mirror under some one's nose - you don't even need medical training! But I digress.) I went to two parties this past weekend, both incredibly fun affairs (a Kentucky Derby party and a Cinco de Mayo party if you must know) and both served copious amounts of food, including (the dearly departed) chips and salsa. And, as I suspected, the chips and salsa were routinely ignored in favor of new flashier appetizers like those cheese/spinach puff things, spring rolls and dim sum, or old standbys like pigs in a blanket, chicken skewers and the cheese and cracker platter. And chips and salsa can't even hold their own against other dips, routinely getting their asses kicked by artichoke dips, sour cream and onion, crab, and its own cousin - the Mexican cheese dip (MCF at work in two of the three dips of course). Did I mention that one of the parties we went to this weekend had a Mexican theme? If you are chips and salsa and you can't even defend your home turf, what chance do you have in a non-Latino setting? Where did it all end? One minute chips and salsa were the talk of the town - a must have if you were throwing a cocktail party. Now, they sit lonely and ignored until the chips are so stale and chewy, you can blow bubbles with them, and the salsa gets that crusty green film on top from sitting untouched for so long.
I can't tell you how many times we have hosted a party and as I am cleaning up afterward (or is it afterword, I can never get that straight), I empty an entire bowl of salsa back into its container. And it goes into the back of the refrigerator with the other seven partially-full salsas until two years later when you end up cleaning out the refrigerator and you come face to face with six to ten dead salsa containers. Where have you gone Jose' DiMaggio? A nation turns its hungry eyes away from you. But the chips and salsa industry doesn't seem to mind because until now, no one has had the guts to declare them dead. So people will still keep buying them and putting them out, and stuffing them in the backs of their pantries and refrigerators, refusing to acknowledge they are gone. But I will. I will stand up and publicly mourn this first ballot Appetizer Hall of Fame inductee. Take your place in the Pantheon with the retired appetizers like Potato Skins, Pickled Eggs, and Cru-de-te (other than the carrots and broccoli). Enjoy the hereafter.
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