Okay, I've been proper lately, so allow me to go off track and rant a bit...
ONE
It is gratifying when sometime you get reinforced in your personal
thoughts by an “authority” on a subject.
I am quite fond of Tom Sietsema and his restaurant reviews published weekly in the
Washington Post magazine. Sunday’s edition
contained a review of “Etto”, to which he gave an unusual three stars. It is a new venture but started by some very respected long time DC chefs. But what I really liked was his introduction
to the review where he was talking about new, aspiring chefs and “stardom”. “I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to be a
success; what bothers me is that celebrity has become the end goal, the brass
ring. What happened to putting out
consistently great food and making patrons happy? When did that become secondary to fame for
celebrity’s sake?”
Right on.. I couldn’t agree more.
All those idiot TV shows that use cooking as a thinly veiled grab at
ratings and are now just another “reality” show, like Big Brother, Survivors,
and the ilk. Close ups of pained faces
upon learning that that have not “won”.
Good grief. Like pizza and
Chinese food, there seems to be a insatiable public appetite for this drivel. The more popular food magazines like Food and Wine and Bon Appetit contain multiple page ads for events in someplace like
Aspen, featuring pretty much the same lineup of “chefs” like Mario and his
buddies. When do these people have time
for sautéing something? I have never
been and never will attend, but I can only imagine how superficial and silly
those things are. And, for the record, I
am still personally wounded after seeing Thomas Keller in an Avis ad.
And while I’m at it, I have a confession to make. In an effort to try to stay at least even (a
battle I’m losing) with social media, I have signed up and now have a Twitter
account. Like facebook, I try to use it
to find out what’s going on, so to speak. These days most newsworthy stuff in the food
and sports world find their way to the public through those outlets. So, in
order to hear stuff you kind of need to scan them once in a while. I don’t much
participate except when on travel and internet when time is valuable and hard to come by, and then
as you know I sometimes resort to facebook to share (not in their sense) pictures
and stuff. Mostly I lurk. I am still not sure how to post on Twitter.
Anyway, both of those media things bring me to another
thought. Somehow, a lot of people seem
to think they can divorce themselves between their “real life” and their social
media life. Don’t they realize you can’t
separate the two? You are the sum of
what you are. Yes, you may hold a responsible job or own a business, but some
don’t seem to think that what goes on facebook will reflect on their “other”
life. A case in point that got me going
the other day was that Jason Dufner who won the PGA golf tournament, personally
published on Twitter a photo of himself congratulating his wife by patting her
on the…. ummm, aahhh, “back”, along with a comment I won’t pass along
here. I always thought of him in another
light. Not now. I know there are public and private personas,
I just don’t care to see behind the curtain sometimes. Cheapens them.
And lastly another sports related rant. And in reality, it is kind of like my
occasional rants on Notre Dame (Hi, Domer!) it is in reality the media hype of
the subject that I don't like more than the object. Notre
Dame is really a good school, it’s just the mystique that bugs me. And Tiger Woods is somewhat in that category,
although his reality is still a bit tarnished.
But the “media” apparently think that’s all the public cares about. Last weekend was the first of the television
contrived “Playoffs” for the FEDEX cup, a lame effort by networks to feed the
public’s perceived notion that there has to be a “best” or one winner. I’ve
dealt with that crap before. Anyway, a
radio spot (like sportscenter) was relating scores, and they concluded with
“and in golf, Tiger Woods is four off the pace in the Barclay’s playoff”. Like the only thing anybody cares about is
what the heck T is doing. Not who’s
first, but where’s Tiger. Sigh...
Okay, enough.
DFD
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