Terror in the Skies, Culinary Edition

20,000 miles above the Atlantic a few days ago, I was asked "Beef and Potatoes or Lasagna?" A Sophie's Choice for some people, but not for me! I love airplane food. I love how compartmentalized it is. Unless they ever actually drop those yellow breathing cups from the ceiling, it is the only thing about air travel that really makes me feel like an astronaut. "I have to eat this glutamine-and-salt-ration, it's the only thing I'll get for hours." I also like limited choices. I hate the BLT-restaurant concept of choosing your own sauce and sides for a dish. Isn't that the expert's job? I don't go into the Mercedes factory and tell them where to put the aluminum. I'm ranting. This has nothing to do with the story.

"Lasagna, please," I said to the stewardess. I get my lasagna. It's awesome. It's so fake. Teddy Ruxbin could digest it. I enjoy picking at my plastic blanket of cheese for a few minutes-- a good 5 minutes-- and suddenly I begin to hear raised voices.

"Chicken!"
"Are you sure this is beef?"
"Funny kind of beef!"

The lady behind me is a real loudmouth, she's been yucking it up with the stewardess the whole flight, so when the stewardess realizes something is up with dinner, she goes to the yucker-upper behind me to check in. The yucker-upper, by virtue of being obnoxious and possibly drunk, has become the passengers' representative. She is our congresswoman.

"What's going on here?" the stewardness asks Congresswoman Vodka-Breakfast. The Congresswoman alerts her that the beef "seems a lot like" chicken.

At this point people have been eating for 5 minutes. I don't know who started it but someone cleared the whole thing up by shouting "It's chicken-beef!"

The stewardess picked up on this as a plausible solution. "Haven't you heard? It's a new thing invented by the French! CHICKEN-BEEF!"

The Congresswoman and her aides love this. This is a huge hit.

"Chicken-beef!"
"CHICKEN-BEEF!"
"BEEFY CHICKEN"
"BEEFEN"
"CHEEF"
"BEEFEN-CHEEF"

The stewardess then leans in to the Congresswoman and says, very loud, opening her body out slightly to the others across the aisle and around her to announce that this is a Shakespearean aside, "HEY MA'AM, HOW'S THE FISH??"

"THE FISH!"
"HOW'S THE FISH!"
"HAHAHAHAHAHA [deep smoker's hack] AAAAAAHAHAHAHA"
"FISH-CHICKEN-BEEF"
"BEEF-CHICKEN-FISH"
"FICHEEFEN"
"CHIFEEF"
"WAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHA [frontier-style whooping cough] HA! HA!"

At this point I was cowering in my seat. I wanted desperately to know what this slab of protein looked like, such that it might take 5 minutes of dining for a passenger to realize it was masquerading as a different meat. Maybe everyone realized right away but did not care. What would they do, send it back and demand the beef they'd so tantalizingly been promised? "You got me all worked up for a rib-eye. This is just really disappointing." I get the feeling that airplane food is all basically made out of old tennis shoes, that there is a side wing of the Nike factory where they stamp out American Airlines broccoli; that maybe there's not much difference between air beef, air chicken, and Air Jordan.

The fact that the meat was fake and undecipherable was not surprising, nor scary.

The scary part about this was the cabal, the camaraderie that immediately emerged around the chibeef. There was a hearty, mocking laugh at the French: "Haven't you heard? They invented a new meat!" There was the general, bonding insouciance over the fact that the meat was indistinct. "HAHA. CHICKEN-BEEF. WHO CARES. WE ARE LAUGHING. VODKA BREAKFAST. LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH. COVERS THE SADNESS. SADNESS OF MY LIFE THAT I AM RETURNING TO. HAHAHAHAHAHA BEEF-CHICKEN. WE ARE BEST FRIENDS, ALL OF US WHO LAUGH AT MEAT VAGUENESS TOGETHER. IF ONE OF US WERE FRENCH, WE WOULD KILL HIM NOW WITH OUR PLASTIC KNIVES. HAHA. WHO ORDERED THE FISH?? WHO ORDERED THE FISH?? THE STEWARDESS KNOWS US DEEPLY. NOTHING MATTERS EXCEPT THE DEEPNESS OF OUR INTIMACY OVER THE NOT CARING ABOUT MEAT SPECIFICITY!!!!!"

I huddled in my seat, covered in my blanket, pretending to sleep. I was not one of them. I did not want them to kill me because I was not of the beef-chicken crew. I watched a Nicholas Cage movie called National Treasure. I liked it. It was cheap and shitty and dumb, but I was scared to laugh out loud. I thought the Congresswoman might hear me, and want to bond.

And honorable mention goes to...

Noony Woman Awards

I was in Dominick's the other day-- you know, the big, cheap grocery store where you have a zero percent chance of finding kefta but Cap'n Crunch is $2.99 for 3 boxes roped together with film strip from the newest Pixar infant acid trip-- and I did a doubletake when passing this book, sitting on a shelf next to puppy stickers and greeting cards:



I emailed my friend Lang immediately. "The crimson velour shirt!" I pointed out. "The HUGE smile! The 75-lb basket of fruit atop her Eastern-European Female Member of Parliament hair!" Books that are simultaneously about COOKING, LIVING, and LOVING belong in any noony library, to say nothing of the woman's name: Crescent Dragonwagon. She's awesome. Go read her web page.

"Welcome to your future, Langbein," Lang wrote back. My point exactly. A woman comfortable with her extreme nooniness. Thumbs up. Let's go buy Nestle's Symphony bars and write some prose poetry outside in celebration.

But Lang continued. "This is my future," she wrote and linked to this video of model/actress Brenda Dickson giving some barbituates-addled fashion and beauty advice from her $2,200 Hollywood home:



So far we have a handful of amazing ladies here: Crescent Dragonwagon (enough said), my mind-reading bestie Lang, this frosted tart of a beauty queen; time to rent Prince of Tides and have a noony lady love-in.

But WAIT. THEN, I clicked on a sidebar YouTube link to a PARODY of Brenda Dickson, and I found my TRUE hero. Lady, whoever you are that narrated this parody, my Hanes Her Way cotton support bra salutes you.



This might be the best thing I've ever seen on YouTube. Do you need to watch it again? I do.

This concludes a very special apex in my life as a noonypants-in-training.

Announcement: My Trash Is On Your Dashboard

Hey homies.

I've decided to start posting my idiotic notebook scrabbles for your enjoyment, and by your I mean almost nobody's. As of posting my first one 5 seconds ago, I realize that my handwriting makes words look like math problems and will try to rectify this in future, maybe with the aid of a fourth grader or a ruler or mood stabilizers.

Buon apetito, and keep your pants on,
Jules

Imaginary Friends: Meet Alessandro!

Is There an Opening on the Nobel Committee?

A few days ago in his blog, Diner's Journal, Frank Bruni wrote about restaurant names. Sometimes ridiculous, he says, but sometimes satisfyingly clever, as in the case of a newly opened New York restaurant specializing in small plates and bar food, called BARFRY. Or, to be fair, BarFry.

I agree that there are names that make zero sense or piss me off. To the Wicker Park restaurateurs who named their restaurant Ear Wax Cafe, I can only say, What, Diarrhea Central was taken? What are you thinking?

But of all the restaurants in New York, to come out and praise BarFry was amazing for the following reasons:

1) It literally contains the word "barf," and looks like "Barfy."

Thanks, Internet. I KNEW you'd find something creepy and disgusting!

2) It is a pun on the term "bar fly." Hence, it evokes both


an infectious pest, the fly


and the subject of the metaphorical term, a lazy dirty drunk

3) The specific way it puns on "bar fly" with "Bar Fry" makes it sound like someone making fun of a Japanese person speaking Engrish. As someone who has never EVER EVER answered her cell phone "Euuuuh-- HERRRROOOO???" I find this totally offensive. Just kidding! But I find it brazenly, cluelessly impolitic for Bruni to give it the Clever Name Award, especially when the place apparently does have a menu slant toward Japanese. What's next, Frank, Most Tasteful Placement of Shar-Pei Puppies Award to David Hasselhoff?

(I'm fairly certain this is not photoshopped, either. Just pure, glorious, well-lubricated documentary.)

In short, WELL PLAYED, Frank. The best-named restaurant in NY is Barfry, but only because Throw-Up Rat Chink hasn't opened yet.

One more time:

Ughhhhh

Don't worry, you don't need special training

Bye, everyone.

I am leaving to go become a scientist. I know what you're thinking. "What kind of scientist, Jules? The cancer kind? The AIDS kind?"

No, friend. I am going to be the kind that gets in a pair of goggles and slowly makes friends with a baby rhesus monkey.

Forgive me

I know I am really late on this tip. I made this joke in my head months ago. But this seems like as an appropriate moment as any.

DINING BRIEFS??? The New York Times decided to call its short reviews DINING BRIEFS??

A BRIEF, singular, is a letter, a short missive. But when you pluralize it, it means:

Tight man-panties.

I'm not sayin' there's anything wrong with manties. How else would one funnel one's kibbles into a tight pair of white denim shorts? But I am saying that the term "DINING BRIEFS" is one of the world's most hilarious accidents.

Right up there with the time Coco ate a milkshake and made a twosie on the sofa.

Give me a Fucking Break

Imaginary conversation between a devil and an angel on each side of Iron Chef Cat Cora's head:

Angel (crunching into a raw broccoli floret): I just feel like we don't get the respect the other Iron Chefs do.

Devil (Spreading mayo on a deep-fried Charleston Chew): Word. I mean, Flay and Molto have these sick reputations and achievements and we just seem like the Equal Opportunity hire. We have to do something about it.

Angel (moving into Flowering Shinto Lotus yoga position): Maybe if we just hold our own in the challenges, behave with dignity, and do some really great food, we'll make our own reputation over time! At least we'll stand out behaviorally from Flay, who's manners are less than...

Devil (scratching balls): Oh Flay's retarded. Yeah, he was raised by boxcar children. No doubt. But we'll never get by on performance alone. Even if we outclass these guys, we'll always get our jockstrap hiked up our ass in the locker-room after the battles by the chanting circle of big-guy chefs. No no. We've got to do something drastic.

Angel (drinking green tea): You mean like shave our vagina?

Devil (swilling Beam): Yes and no. I've got an idea...Who's the classiest person alive?

Angel: Nelson Mandella?

Devil: That asshole? Gimme a break. RACHEL RAY.

Angel: (visibly uncomfortable)

Devil: We'll follow in Ray's footsteps and make some skanky nudie photos. Plus, we got better jugs than Ray.

Angel: Well that's certain.

Devil: Done. Trust me on this. We'll have the respect of the Iron Chef locker room in NO TIME. Bite THIS pepper, Chairman!

Nothing says "I deserve respect" like jamming a can of spam in your canola-oiled cleavage!

Let's just hope Batali doesn't follow suit.