Great sign: Lots of quirky notes and tips around a fairly compact recipe
Good sign: A fairly compact recipe
Bad sign: A long, complex recipe (with no quirky tips) for something that seems like it shouldn't necessarily require many steps.
If you're tackling some terribly ambitious classical French recipe, or a Chinese dish requiring fastidious mise en place, or a Thai curry with myriad labor-intensive moving parts, then fine. Strap in to the multipage recipe and get to work. But for something like meatloaf, or Neapolitan pork chops with hot peppers, or some fun spuddy nacho throw-together, or really 95% of things you'd be likely to ever actually eat, a long, complicated recipe means the author is tap-dancing. Baffling with bullshit in lieu of dazzling with brilliance.
Understand this: unless you have a kitchen full of skilled prep cooks and 10,000 iterations of each dish under your belt, you're just not going to produce much in the way of seriously refined flavor layering. You might work with a long list of ingredients, and perform lots of terribly slick moves, but the result will lie somewhere on the spectrum between "muddled-but-edible" and "good, but way simpler than you'd expect considering what went into it." When it comes to complexity, the curve of declining results is no friend to home cooks - even great ones.
There's a world of difference between home and restaurant cooking, and in many ways I prefer the former. It's healthier, and it can be "deeper", in the sense of not resorting to cheap touches like massive fat or sodium infusions or in-your-face seasoning blasts serving as stand-ins for love, care, and patience. Home cooks needn't take shortcuts - a huge advantage. But those 10,000 iterations allow certain well-orchestrated complexities home cooks will never match.
My cooking is fast and incisive. You can expect a couple of flavor themes playing well with each other, and overall deliciousness. I average about an 8 even though I never treat every ingredient as an ambitious separate project. For instance, I prefer kale to spinach for certain panini, and I will simply chop and steam the greens. No sauté, no seasoning. If I were to coddle them, they'd certainly be more flavorful, but I don't need flavorful kale in this context; it's there to provide texture and health. The panini flavors come from the meats, the spreads, the sauces, the extras. If I made the kale a separate work of art, the result would taste muddled.
A professional kitchen can fit many highly-refined pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle because of those 10,000 iterations, but my tolerances must be looser, because I don't want to eat the same damned thing every day. So I have a general idea of how much flavor must be packed in, overall, for the sandwich to accommodate simple kale without its flavor diluting, and this allows me to serve reliably delicious panini in 10 minutes, rather than more technically meticulous - and flavor-muddled - panini in 30.
I've tried recipes where every ingredient's pampered like a princess. It takes an hour for the meal to come into even distant focus, and I very rarely taste the extra work. It gets lost, and I'm left feeling like little Mr. Star Chef wannabe. Complicated recipes for not-particularly-complicated dishes are almost always a sucker proposition. I just won't fall for them anymore.
Obviously, I'm generalizing. I'll bet you have that one recipe that's an exception. And perhaps it truly is, but in most cases I bet I could strip away 40% without harming the result.
So, cookbook authors: spare me your 23 ingredient, 90 minute pork fajita extravaganza. What I can use, however, are devilishly simple and balanced roadmaps for transcending the sum of the parts (this requires an enormous amount of consideration and distillation that few authors are willing to apply), ideally with interesting tips and pointers. The alternative is to make me to run to the ends of the earth to conjure up and mollycoddle a shimmering dollop of elk fat that may alter the final result by some homeopathic iota. But greatness is about the sum, not the parts, so the more part-obsessive your recipe is, the less greatness I'll expect. Simple recipes require courage, confidence, and grueling work on your end.
John Thorne's recipes are like granite. Tight, honed, thoughtful, monolithic, they whisk you directly to the fruits of weeks/months/years of consideration invested in evoking the dish's heart and soul.
Monday, February 26, 2018
"Cornered Rat" Report #12
Monday, February 26, 2018: The phrase "cornered rat" finds 97,900 google search results, up 9% from last week's 90,100.
All "Cornered Rat" postings in reverse chronological order
All "Cornered Rat" postings in reverse chronological order
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Steven Pinker Dismantles Political Correctness
If you believe the Left is the sane side while the Right's gone off the deep end, watch this extraordinarily sensible and well-reasoned short talk by Stephen Pinker on how political correctness triggers the antithesis of the tolerance it intends, and bear in mind that leftists (especially academics) have gone absolutely out of their mind stridently condemning him for it:
The Far-Left is just as apeshit crazy as the MAGAs and Alt-Righters. Enough radicalization already. I've had it.
America has had it, too, I believe. We're quite obviously primed for Centrism. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to see competent, rational, reasonable, and non-idealogical leadership, even if their pet splinter issues get muddled in the process. Obama largely fit that centrist bill, and I believe he'd have been far more popular and effective running in 2020. He was ahead of his time.
My fascinations very frequently become trendy as time unfolds, and I've been advocating for centrist politics and bipartisan conciliation here on this Slog since 2008. Mark my words: this country is turning profoundly centrist. At a time when everyone else sees utter partisan bifurcation, I see myriad - perhaps even most - moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats - plus vast hordes of the politically disengaged - eager to let go of (or at least compromise on) their pet issues issues and embrace competent, rational, reasonable, and non-idealogical leadership. America is as tired of left-wing craziness as right=wing.
I'm not describing a ditzy kumbaya of "why can't we work together?" Rather, a pragmatic, realpolitik push to transcend cable news issues and concentrate on the actual process of governance. Not creating a zillion new gov programs, nor smashing it all in some Randian furor. Just calming the F down and getting all Michael Bloomberg up in this thing.
My only worry is whether an appropriate candidate can/will appear (I expect the Democratic establishment to nominate a hard leftist ala Sanders or Harris, those guys being unable to rise to an occasion if a rocket were strapped to its collective ass).
Third parties are always tough; the worry will be that it'll split the anti-Trump vote, facilitating reelection. But maybe this time it can work. Please, Lord, give us a Schiff/Yates ticket in 2020....
The Far-Left is just as apeshit crazy as the MAGAs and Alt-Righters. Enough radicalization already. I've had it.
America has had it, too, I believe. We're quite obviously primed for Centrism. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to see competent, rational, reasonable, and non-idealogical leadership, even if their pet splinter issues get muddled in the process. Obama largely fit that centrist bill, and I believe he'd have been far more popular and effective running in 2020. He was ahead of his time.
My fascinations very frequently become trendy as time unfolds, and I've been advocating for centrist politics and bipartisan conciliation here on this Slog since 2008. Mark my words: this country is turning profoundly centrist. At a time when everyone else sees utter partisan bifurcation, I see myriad - perhaps even most - moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats - plus vast hordes of the politically disengaged - eager to let go of (or at least compromise on) their pet issues issues and embrace competent, rational, reasonable, and non-idealogical leadership. America is as tired of left-wing craziness as right=wing.
I'm not describing a ditzy kumbaya of "why can't we work together?" Rather, a pragmatic, realpolitik push to transcend cable news issues and concentrate on the actual process of governance. Not creating a zillion new gov programs, nor smashing it all in some Randian furor. Just calming the F down and getting all Michael Bloomberg up in this thing.
My only worry is whether an appropriate candidate can/will appear (I expect the Democratic establishment to nominate a hard leftist ala Sanders or Harris, those guys being unable to rise to an occasion if a rocket were strapped to its collective ass).
Third parties are always tough; the worry will be that it'll split the anti-Trump vote, facilitating reelection. But maybe this time it can work. Please, Lord, give us a Schiff/Yates ticket in 2020....
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Name and Shame
The @forexposure_txt Twitter account is a well-curated look into the lives of creative workers and what they put up with. Nobody wants to pay. Nobody. And people always give the same lame pitch: do this for free for me and you'll get exposure!". My standard retort has always been "People die of exposure, you know!"
Here's an example (brace yourself, it's unpleasant):
Here's an example (brace yourself, it's unpleasant):
— For Exposure (@forexposure_txt) February 16, 2018All the posts on this Twitter account are anonymous, with the names of the offending parties obscured. So every day, many times per day, people ask the account's proprietor, Ryan Estrada, why he doesn't "name and shame" the assholes who do this sort of thing. I love his answer (see link below) so much. If you'd care to soak up some perfectly-formulated anti-venom for most of the ills of early 21st century America, give it a read. See if you don't even find yourself getting a little emotional (who knew sanity was cathartic?).
Should You Go to Cooking School?
Every once in a while, someone asks me if I'd advise them to go to culinary school. I'm obviously not a chef (though I'm a good cook), but I can offer a helpful answer because culinary school is exactly like music school, so I know what's what. I'll post this here so I can point to it for future reference.
First and foremost: understand the economic proposition: Pay us $$$$$ and we'll turn even the whiniest, most rudderless and talentless kid into a competent entry-level pro. These schools aren't about giving talented students the extra boost and inspiration to bloom into greatness. There's very little greatness in such places. Hang around a culinary school, and you'll eat some decent, fair, and lousy food, but nothing fantastic. And nary a note in a music conservatory is going to move anyone. That's not what they're aiming for. It's about turning every mopey slob into an uninspired pro who can get the job done. It's an economic instrument, not a creative one. It's frickin' trade school.
In fact, if you enter with talent and momentum, the institution will do everything possible to snuff all that. The craggy, emotional, opinionated, unique creative qualities that make your pasta so wonderful will only get in the way of the process, which is not to foster your uniqueness but to make the most miserable slob competent. When you're in the business of elevating slobs to competency, you've got no choice but to crush the inspired. Welcome to the slob-molding machine!
You may already make superb lasagna. That's irrelevant. You're there to learn to make conventional, uninspiring lasagna, because that's the syllabus. Your quirky brainstorms will amuse and delight no one. You're being trained to throw down boring, unexciting, conventional lasagna, because the mission is to teach you to throw down boring, unexciting, conventional everything, because that's what chef robots do, and the school turns out chef robots. Your preexisting notions, your personal touch, your creativity are like sand in this soufflé. You must be leveled and conformed into a standardized, predictable product. Because if it was about delicate creativity and fickle inspiration, only a few students, touched by the Muse, would graduate ready to roll, and the families of all those other students would be demanding their money back. This is vocational school, not an arty Shangri-La.
School administrators would point out that training for any trade involves learning the standard ways first, and then, once you've mastered it all, you are free to apply your creativity, your touch, your spark. Sure, they produce standardized cook-robots, but they're equipped with skills and knowledge, free to go off and pursue their dreams.
Bullshit. Submitting to a standardized, institutional training process for years is dream-killing and soul-snuffing. Truly creative talented people cannot possibly emerge with spark fully intact.
Deliciousness and competence are very different things. In any given moment, mountains of competent food are being cooked - much of it by culinary school grads - that you or I would never want to eat. That drab hotel breakfast buffet is competent. That mediocre fund-raiser chicken dinner is competent. The expensive "gourmet" catering store where everything's precious but nothing has a lick of flavor? Competent! All the grim non-deliciousness out there, comprising 98% of food service, is prepared by competent robo-chefs who literally can't remember what deliciousness is. They believe they're nailing it, because they're doing the moves they were taught, and they're doing it all correctly.
All these hacky, uninspired chefs cook drab, spiritually neutral food that is, from a technical perspective, right on the money. It's hard to stock that breakfast buffet with ninety zillion individual items! It requires the logistical and execution skills of a small army, and the chefs can be rightfully proud of pulling it off day after day. But they may never register the fact that no customer has ever clenched eyes shut, pounded table with fist, and hollered "Holy CRAP that's great!". Such an outcome is not even on their radar.
Only the kookiest plumber would try to leave customers' pipes delightful, rather than merely functional. Same for the second horn player in your regional symphony or the bassist on some pop recording. There's skill and pride, and the tasks may be challenging. But the mission is to 1. not fuck up, and 2. serve competently as a widget in some machine. Nothing wrong with that, but you absolutely must understand what you're working towards! Never climb a ladder without a clear-eyed notion of where it leads! (I myself made that mistake twice, in both music and writing).
Just like culinary schools, music schools turn out competent musicians, not inspired ones. And the former is not the larval stage for the latter. Competent musicians do not hatch into grandeur. Greatness is a separate track. Talented people are difficult, spotty, opinionated, and inherently non-uniform. They are a poor fit in institutions. Imagine if Tom Waits had spent four years studying opera and bel canto with some pompous prof at Julliard. Would he have packed anywhere near the same power and emotional intimacy after such sustained trauma? Would he still have been, like, Tom Waits?
If you're genuinely talented or creative, and want to do something genuinely good, you must not submit to the assembly line. It's not for you. It will wring all the character and inspiration out of you, and replace it with mere competence.
But if you're from a disadvantaged background, mildly enjoy working with food, and the notion of working 13 hour days in a hot, angry kitchen for pennies appeals to you, by all means, learn to make humdrum risotto in a consistent and efficient way. Use your diploma to get a job cooking on the banquet staff of some hotel, or peeling turnips for the Ecuadorian top chef in a fine dining restaurant fronted by some name dude who spends his days with image consultants. Just don't imagine that you're on a track to become the dude with the media fluffers. You'll never exceed the commitment and visceral drive of the Ecuadorian hero blocking your way...and even he will never, ever get proper credit (much less stardom), though he's to thank for every drop of quality.
If you want to fit into a pre-existing slot - e.g. play third trumpet with a symphony, or be salad bar manager for a shiny midtown cafe - go to the best school that will have you. But if you want to be a musician capable of playing a note that will make people’s hearts flutter, or a chef who can make customers moan like porn stars, that’s not teachable. To the contrary, any natural proclivity for such result will be wrung out of you.
The very fact that you're even considering culinary school is a bad sign. It shows a lack of ingenuity and drive. It's possible to learn stuff without pricy teacher-servants pushing it all at you. What sort of spoiled, passive person resorts to institutions to learn to do creative stuff? It demonstrates a lack of....creativity!
If you're not creative enough to figure out how to learn cooking technique under your own initiative, then you're not creative enough to cook anything personal, or to make any impact with that cooking. You probably ought to be turned into a robot! It’s the same with music school. If you dutifully shlep into “Swing Feel” class every Wednesday morning, three things are for certain: 1. you’re probably never going to really swing, 2. you don’t really love swinging, and 3. you don’t possess the ballsiness to get done any of the things you’re eventually going to need to get done to be great.
The problem is that our education system is so damned linear. Kids are led down a track - via punishment and empty reward - for so many years that they fall into a stupor, failing to recognize that there's no pot of gold at the end. If you remain tenaciously on the educational track to the bitter end, and head off to culinary school, you might, if you're lucky, make a decent living helping run the juicing operation at some spa for rich ladies in Minneapolis. But this isn't North Korea. You're promised nothing. At some point, you'll need to step off the treadmill, ready to apply some heavy self-propulsion. Don't look to school for that. School is non-propulsive!
If you want to do something real, something good, get eager to kiss the educational track goodbye, and maybe scorch the bejesus out of it with your exit burn, to boot. Go forth and grow and boldly make stuff happen. Shake off the educational/institutional stupor and grow some balls! Concentrate on these four things:
1. Get Good
However good you are now, get way way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it. Don't wait for an authority figure to goad you into improvement. Make it happen as a matter of survival.
Not that this requires further clarification, but don’t stop improving when people around you start telling you you’re awesome. That happens at the beginning of this cycle. When friends and family start gasping in admiration, that means you’re like one single notch above completely sucking.
2. Actively Acquire Knowledge/Experience
Schools will drill all the necessary skills, to instill versatility. On your own, you'll need to work hard to develop that versatility, but you don't necessarily need it. Tom Waits can't sing Mozart, and that's okay. But don't risk ever being hampered by lack of knowledge, skill, or experience. Read books, ask around, take a class or two here or there. Apprentice somewhere, or befriend someone talented and retired. Be thirsty for knowledge, and pull it toward you, rather than passively waiting for Mama Bird to regurgitate it down your throat. Take charge of your own development! Hustle for it and then practice like crazy (see #1)!
3. Scheme
I used to play in a band with a singer who baked pies in her apartment each week, which she sold wholesale to high-end restaurants. She earned good money from this, and made connections. Finally, she opened Magnolia Bakery, and is now a multimillionaire. That all required a self-starting, creative attitude, and nobody at any point asked to see her culinary diploma. She taught herself how to bake, and didn’t stop relentlessly improving until she was so awesome no one could deny it. She had her own touch, and her own ideas, and she made it happen. Eye on the prize!
4. Network
One advantage of a school is the support system you'd develop among fellow students. You can make connections on your own out in the world, but you'll need to hustle. If you're an introvert, learn to pretend you're not. Shyness is not an affordable indulgence. Remember that 90% of all pursuits is politics - unless you just want to keep your head down and peel turnips!
First and foremost: understand the economic proposition: Pay us $$$$$ and we'll turn even the whiniest, most rudderless and talentless kid into a competent entry-level pro. These schools aren't about giving talented students the extra boost and inspiration to bloom into greatness. There's very little greatness in such places. Hang around a culinary school, and you'll eat some decent, fair, and lousy food, but nothing fantastic. And nary a note in a music conservatory is going to move anyone. That's not what they're aiming for. It's about turning every mopey slob into an uninspired pro who can get the job done. It's an economic instrument, not a creative one. It's frickin' trade school.
In fact, if you enter with talent and momentum, the institution will do everything possible to snuff all that. The craggy, emotional, opinionated, unique creative qualities that make your pasta so wonderful will only get in the way of the process, which is not to foster your uniqueness but to make the most miserable slob competent. When you're in the business of elevating slobs to competency, you've got no choice but to crush the inspired. Welcome to the slob-molding machine!
You may already make superb lasagna. That's irrelevant. You're there to learn to make conventional, uninspiring lasagna, because that's the syllabus. Your quirky brainstorms will amuse and delight no one. You're being trained to throw down boring, unexciting, conventional lasagna, because the mission is to teach you to throw down boring, unexciting, conventional everything, because that's what chef robots do, and the school turns out chef robots. Your preexisting notions, your personal touch, your creativity are like sand in this soufflé. You must be leveled and conformed into a standardized, predictable product. Because if it was about delicate creativity and fickle inspiration, only a few students, touched by the Muse, would graduate ready to roll, and the families of all those other students would be demanding their money back. This is vocational school, not an arty Shangri-La.
School administrators would point out that training for any trade involves learning the standard ways first, and then, once you've mastered it all, you are free to apply your creativity, your touch, your spark. Sure, they produce standardized cook-robots, but they're equipped with skills and knowledge, free to go off and pursue their dreams.
Bullshit. Submitting to a standardized, institutional training process for years is dream-killing and soul-snuffing. Truly creative talented people cannot possibly emerge with spark fully intact.
Deliciousness and competence are very different things. In any given moment, mountains of competent food are being cooked - much of it by culinary school grads - that you or I would never want to eat. That drab hotel breakfast buffet is competent. That mediocre fund-raiser chicken dinner is competent. The expensive "gourmet" catering store where everything's precious but nothing has a lick of flavor? Competent! All the grim non-deliciousness out there, comprising 98% of food service, is prepared by competent robo-chefs who literally can't remember what deliciousness is. They believe they're nailing it, because they're doing the moves they were taught, and they're doing it all correctly.
All these hacky, uninspired chefs cook drab, spiritually neutral food that is, from a technical perspective, right on the money. It's hard to stock that breakfast buffet with ninety zillion individual items! It requires the logistical and execution skills of a small army, and the chefs can be rightfully proud of pulling it off day after day. But they may never register the fact that no customer has ever clenched eyes shut, pounded table with fist, and hollered "Holy CRAP that's great!". Such an outcome is not even on their radar.
Only the kookiest plumber would try to leave customers' pipes delightful, rather than merely functional. Same for the second horn player in your regional symphony or the bassist on some pop recording. There's skill and pride, and the tasks may be challenging. But the mission is to 1. not fuck up, and 2. serve competently as a widget in some machine. Nothing wrong with that, but you absolutely must understand what you're working towards! Never climb a ladder without a clear-eyed notion of where it leads! (I myself made that mistake twice, in both music and writing).
Just like culinary schools, music schools turn out competent musicians, not inspired ones. And the former is not the larval stage for the latter. Competent musicians do not hatch into grandeur. Greatness is a separate track. Talented people are difficult, spotty, opinionated, and inherently non-uniform. They are a poor fit in institutions. Imagine if Tom Waits had spent four years studying opera and bel canto with some pompous prof at Julliard. Would he have packed anywhere near the same power and emotional intimacy after such sustained trauma? Would he still have been, like, Tom Waits?
If you're genuinely talented or creative, and want to do something genuinely good, you must not submit to the assembly line. It's not for you. It will wring all the character and inspiration out of you, and replace it with mere competence.
But if you're from a disadvantaged background, mildly enjoy working with food, and the notion of working 13 hour days in a hot, angry kitchen for pennies appeals to you, by all means, learn to make humdrum risotto in a consistent and efficient way. Use your diploma to get a job cooking on the banquet staff of some hotel, or peeling turnips for the Ecuadorian top chef in a fine dining restaurant fronted by some name dude who spends his days with image consultants. Just don't imagine that you're on a track to become the dude with the media fluffers. You'll never exceed the commitment and visceral drive of the Ecuadorian hero blocking your way...and even he will never, ever get proper credit (much less stardom), though he's to thank for every drop of quality.
If you want to fit into a pre-existing slot - e.g. play third trumpet with a symphony, or be salad bar manager for a shiny midtown cafe - go to the best school that will have you. But if you want to be a musician capable of playing a note that will make people’s hearts flutter, or a chef who can make customers moan like porn stars, that’s not teachable. To the contrary, any natural proclivity for such result will be wrung out of you.
The very fact that you're even considering culinary school is a bad sign. It shows a lack of ingenuity and drive. It's possible to learn stuff without pricy teacher-servants pushing it all at you. What sort of spoiled, passive person resorts to institutions to learn to do creative stuff? It demonstrates a lack of....creativity!
If you're not creative enough to figure out how to learn cooking technique under your own initiative, then you're not creative enough to cook anything personal, or to make any impact with that cooking. You probably ought to be turned into a robot! It’s the same with music school. If you dutifully shlep into “Swing Feel” class every Wednesday morning, three things are for certain: 1. you’re probably never going to really swing, 2. you don’t really love swinging, and 3. you don’t possess the ballsiness to get done any of the things you’re eventually going to need to get done to be great.
The problem is that our education system is so damned linear. Kids are led down a track - via punishment and empty reward - for so many years that they fall into a stupor, failing to recognize that there's no pot of gold at the end. If you remain tenaciously on the educational track to the bitter end, and head off to culinary school, you might, if you're lucky, make a decent living helping run the juicing operation at some spa for rich ladies in Minneapolis. But this isn't North Korea. You're promised nothing. At some point, you'll need to step off the treadmill, ready to apply some heavy self-propulsion. Don't look to school for that. School is non-propulsive!
If you want to do something real, something good, get eager to kiss the educational track goodbye, and maybe scorch the bejesus out of it with your exit burn, to boot. Go forth and grow and boldly make stuff happen. Shake off the educational/institutional stupor and grow some balls! Concentrate on these four things:
1. Get Good
However good you are now, get way way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it. Don't wait for an authority figure to goad you into improvement. Make it happen as a matter of survival.
Not that this requires further clarification, but don’t stop improving when people around you start telling you you’re awesome. That happens at the beginning of this cycle. When friends and family start gasping in admiration, that means you’re like one single notch above completely sucking.
2. Actively Acquire Knowledge/Experience
Schools will drill all the necessary skills, to instill versatility. On your own, you'll need to work hard to develop that versatility, but you don't necessarily need it. Tom Waits can't sing Mozart, and that's okay. But don't risk ever being hampered by lack of knowledge, skill, or experience. Read books, ask around, take a class or two here or there. Apprentice somewhere, or befriend someone talented and retired. Be thirsty for knowledge, and pull it toward you, rather than passively waiting for Mama Bird to regurgitate it down your throat. Take charge of your own development! Hustle for it and then practice like crazy (see #1)!
3. Scheme
I used to play in a band with a singer who baked pies in her apartment each week, which she sold wholesale to high-end restaurants. She earned good money from this, and made connections. Finally, she opened Magnolia Bakery, and is now a multimillionaire. That all required a self-starting, creative attitude, and nobody at any point asked to see her culinary diploma. She taught herself how to bake, and didn’t stop relentlessly improving until she was so awesome no one could deny it. She had her own touch, and her own ideas, and she made it happen. Eye on the prize!
4. Network
One advantage of a school is the support system you'd develop among fellow students. You can make connections on your own out in the world, but you'll need to hustle. If you're an introvert, learn to pretend you're not. Shyness is not an affordable indulgence. Remember that 90% of all pursuits is politics - unless you just want to keep your head down and peel turnips!
Ever-Undulating Comment Security
Every year or so, a critical mass of Slog readers complains that they'd like to leave comments, but it's too much of a hassle. I ease security restrictions, and tell them to go for it. And nobody comments, but I have to deal with spam comments and anonymous trolling, so I increase security again. Back and forth; back and forth. There's something telling about the human condition here, but I can't quite articulate it. So I'll just note that I'm raising comment security again today.
I always figured this sort of blog would lend itself to a thoughtful, active commenting community. Oh well!
I always figured this sort of blog would lend itself to a thoughtful, active commenting community. Oh well!
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
"Cornered Rat" Report #11
Tuesday, February 20, 2018: The phrase "cornered rat" finds 90,100 google search results, down a bit from last week's 101,000.
All "Cornered Rat" postings in reverse chronological order
All "Cornered Rat" postings in reverse chronological order
Saturday, February 17, 2018
What is Tai Chi?
I went to a screening of "The Professor", the Tai Chi film I wrote about here, and there was an appearance by Ed Young, one of the practice's most illustrious teachers. Young said, interestingly, that he used to be able to explain what Tai Chi is, but no longer can (it reminds me of the old line, usually misattributed to Oscar Wilde, that "I am not young enough to know everything").
I've been mulling it over for a couple of days, and came up with something:
All postings labeled "definitions"
I've been mulling it over for a couple of days, and came up with something:
Tai chi is the practice of embodying the natural flow one normally pretends not to be a part of.
All postings labeled "definitions"
Weird Fandom Stuff
I once wrote a posting about Fans which described the various types of weirdness that crop up between admirers and the objects of their admiration. I described one such category this way:
How many music fans know anything about Indian music, and are in any position to judge Shankar's playing? How many are the least bit aware of his place in the Indian classical music hierarchy? How many could name even a single other Indian sitarist?
Answer: virtually zero. But Shankar's incredible, right? Not because we've spent hours listening to him play and our well-attuned ears have placed him above his peers, but because he's, like, Ravi Shankar! You know...Ravi Shankar, man! That dude! With the sitar! From, like, George Harrison or whatever!
If someone asked you for your favorite Indian musician, you'd probably call out his name. Even if you've never heard more than a few minutes of his playing. Even if you don't know what a raga is. Same thing, I'll bet, for the guy who wrote the trailer deeming him "incredible".
I can't tell you how many times times people back in the day would corner me at parties - having been told my background and vaguely recognizing my name - to discuss trendy restaurants, or places where they can "see and be seen," or to ask what Andrew Zimmer's really like. They'd ask me these things with eager expectation, expecting to hear the real deal, because I was, you know, one of those guys!
...as you talk to them, it becomes eerily clear that they know almost nothing about you - haven't read a word you've written or listened to a note you've sung. They just recognize your name, and that you're well-known in a field they think is cool.People have trouble believing that this really happens. It seems counterintuitive that a "fan" could know nothing about the person's work. But I spotted an example the other day. I was watching the trailer for a film about pop music in the 60s. The narrator mentioned some of the artists appearing, and the list ended with "....and the incredible Ravi Shankar!"
If it seems crazy that such people would consider themselves fans, take mental stock, yourself. Have you actually read every writer, heard every singer, and viewed the work of every filmmaker for whom you have a fond feeling? I'd bet good money that more than one person has approached Ann Coulter to tell her what fans they are, and to encourage her to keep giving hell to those damned conservatives.
How many music fans know anything about Indian music, and are in any position to judge Shankar's playing? How many are the least bit aware of his place in the Indian classical music hierarchy? How many could name even a single other Indian sitarist?
Answer: virtually zero. But Shankar's incredible, right? Not because we've spent hours listening to him play and our well-attuned ears have placed him above his peers, but because he's, like, Ravi Shankar! You know...Ravi Shankar, man! That dude! With the sitar! From, like, George Harrison or whatever!
If someone asked you for your favorite Indian musician, you'd probably call out his name. Even if you've never heard more than a few minutes of his playing. Even if you don't know what a raga is. Same thing, I'll bet, for the guy who wrote the trailer deeming him "incredible".
I can't tell you how many times times people back in the day would corner me at parties - having been told my background and vaguely recognizing my name - to discuss trendy restaurants, or places where they can "see and be seen," or to ask what Andrew Zimmer's really like. They'd ask me these things with eager expectation, expecting to hear the real deal, because I was, you know, one of those guys!
Friday, February 16, 2018
More on that Facebook Scam
The latest random Facebook "like" of the obscure posting I'd chosen to "boost" was by one Rajesh Thute, who
1. is apparently not in the United States (Facebook had promised to limit its boosting to this country, but he goes to school in Maharashtra), and
2. recently reported that he's "Started New Job at wark at Facebook V.I.P Account [sic]." And I'd guess from his grammar and spelling that he's not doing particularly high level work. Probably stuff like, oh, say, clicking "like" buttons for a few cents a pop.
1. is apparently not in the United States (Facebook had promised to limit its boosting to this country, but he goes to school in Maharashtra), and
2. recently reported that he's "Started New Job at wark at Facebook V.I.P Account [sic]." And I'd guess from his grammar and spelling that he's not doing particularly high level work. Probably stuff like, oh, say, clicking "like" buttons for a few cents a pop.
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