No negatives. Go figure!
But let's live really dangerously and venture into the IKEA cafeteria.
There's something deeply revelatory in how I - and perhaps you - misgauge the food [sic] at Ikea.
Whenever I shop there and feel forced to eat (by sheer famishment), I order meatballs. Because, you know, meatballs. That's the thing. The meatballs! And the meatballs are never good, and I inevitably conclude that Ikea sucks.
This time I did something bewildering. I somehow stifled my meatball urge. And that didn't leave many options, so I got the last thing you'd ever order at IKEA: a fat hunk of grilled salmon, plus mashed potatoes.
It was delicious. A solid "7" from my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating foods (and other things) from 1 to 10.
So why is this "deeply revalatory"?
At the height of Chowhound's success, I got a call from a producer of NPR's Morning Edition. She started off doing her level best to make herself obnoxious:
"We want to add some food content. Me, I'm pretty bored with food content on radio..."
I interrupted, understanding full well that, despite my eager agreement, this was not where she was headed (I'm essentially Bugs-Bunnying her):
"Me, too! Absolutely! Let's not do that! Let's find something amazing we can do instead of the usual fluffy crap!"
She was slightly thrown, but not much, and easily slid back on track.
"Yeah, right, they always say that, don't they? But, look, it's been decided to add some food content [eyeroll more than audible], and we figured we'd check in with you. Understand that we wouldn't use you MUCH. In fact, if it were up to me, we wouldn't do food at all. But this is what they want, so...[aggravated sigh]"
Ah, NPR! But I kept Bugs-Bunnying. It's what I do!
"Here's the weird thing. For all my extreme enthusiasm for other food cultures, and my eagerness to dine like a chameleon, I'm a breakfast jingoist. I like homefries and flapjacks. Strawberry preserves. Bacon. With this one single meal, I become Archie Bunker. Wouldn't it be interesting if..."
I was quick on my feet in those days.
"...I filed reports from breakfast locales - while your listeners are eating breakfast! - well outside my comfort zone? Uber-fishy Japanese breakfasts, stewy Egyptian fava beans, etc etc, and force myself to relate?
She heard me out, mostly due to to sheer confusion. And here was her response:
"Yeah. Well. We were thinking you might stop by like on Thanksgiving and like give us your thoughts on turkey. And on New Years, maybe your five food resolutions."
"But that is EXACTLY the usual fluffy food crap!!!"
"Yeah, well, having you on certainly wasn't MY idea..."
Let's diagram this:
I hate IKEA's meatballs.
Oh, meatballs, please!
Yup, and this is why I hate you.
Rinse and repeat.
Trombone is the Rodney Dangerfield of instruments. Nobody respects it, because while other instrumentalists improvise and delight, trombonists do their tromboney slurpy shtick. Like dancing circus ponies, it's not that they do it well, it's that they do it at all. Good on them for keeping up (sort of) with all that tubing and whatnot!
Me, I actually dug in and at least tried to play music, rather than trombone. Spontaneous! Expressive! Not solving tromboney puzzles, but telling stories which transcended the plumbing. Yet I often had trouble getting hired because I didn't sound like the usual trombonists - the trombonists bandleaders profess to hate.
They wanted those guys.
As with the NPR producer, the aversion is real, but incidental. If your band has an opening for trombone, you'll fill that opening, rationally enough, with a tromboney trombonist. Because that's what a trombone opening opens to!
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