Those are the kids' toasts heard at the end of "What Happens When Second Graders Are Treated to a Seven-Course, $220 Tasting Meal":
[EMBEDDED VIDEO REMOVED]
The incredibly charming video is made by Jeffrey Blitz, who did "Spellbound."
ADDED: I want to analyze that the delightful toast "To Justice and All!" The ultra-casual "and all" after the grand beginning "to justice" makes funny contrast, but we're intrigued by what seems to be a mutation of the end of the familiar Pledge of Allegiance phrase "With Liberty and Justice for All." Assuming that's the source, we wonder how "for all" became "and all." We might think that the kids say "and all" frequently and that caused them to substitute "and" for "for."
But I think something subtler happened. These kids knew about toasting. Look how the stemmed glasses and the dinner setting seem to have motivated them to engage in toasting behavior. So I think they knew that a toast begins with "to." Having put "to" rather than "and" before "justice" in the familiar Pledge phrase, the sense of the missing "and" affected their flexible minds, and having begun with the preposition "to," the next preposition, "for," seemed excessive, and that's where the "and" moved.
October 11, 2014
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38 comments:
Babette's Feast redux..
It is wonderful to see the joy of the survivors of The Great Abortion Holocaust.
Time to sell your stocks
A similar experiment: A four year old reviews the French Laundry
Can't help but wonder how French children from Nina's restaurant blog in some French village a few days ago would have behaved.
You're never too young to learn that cocktails are the best part of a meal.
And now all the parents of the kids have something to brag about at parties.
Well done.
"It tastes like soap! Why am I eating soap?"
My Mom made an effort to get us kids to learn how to eat different kinds of foods. By the time I was in high school, I could eat squash, lima beans, brussels sprouts, spinach, okra, artichokes, avocados, and even peas if they are not overcooked. I still have a problem with liver, though, unless it is in a pâté.
I don't think Michelle Obama was wrong for taking an interest in schoolkid nutrition. Yet her experience underscored that most good ideas can't be implemented through government programs.
Oh, the video was charming. And the 15 second ad preceding it was tacky.
Charming! They handled themselves better than an awful lot of adults would in the same situation.
***
Of course, always interesting are the comments that to spend $220/plate for food is obscene and that that money should have been donated to a soup kitchen.
The meal was clearly worth the price, especially considering the overhead in NYC.
Great ad for the restaurant! I want to eat there.
I love the small plates "tasting menu" presentation.
And I'm a person with no taste (literally). I greatly appreciate the attention to the visuals and the textures.
And I love all the kids. It's great to hear the kid's point of view and efforts at putting it into words.
My favorite thing was the "And Justice and All" toast.
I wonder how those 6 kids were chosen, whether they had a practice session or perhaps more than one filming.
I wonder what they were told about how to act and speak. Probably something like: Behave, but not too much. Or: Don't try to act like an adult. Be a kid. A good kid. Be yourself. At your best… or reasonably close to your best. Have fun. Be honest!
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I'm curious where they got that expression "To Justice and All"?
They seemed to be remarkably on the same page with that deviation from the Pledge of Allegiance's "With liberty and justice for all."
Particularly with the retreat of the Pledge in schools, I'm just wondering whether the concept of "Justice" has gone from a focus on the individual's right and equality before the law and is now being taught as a collective, social justice.
The two things being celebrated sound like (1) a "Justice" disconnected from the individual and (2) the "All", the collective itself -- not a justice based on an equality of application to each individual that one infers from "And justice for all".
"Ann Althouse said...
I wonder how those 6 kids were chosen"
The same way UW depicts students in their promotional material...except they didn't have to photoshop the black kids.
It's not so mysterious!
Any kid behaves better in their Sunday clothes.
A tasting menu kept them from getting bored.
There is a peace-inducing quality to elegant table settings at a fine restaurant.
Yeah, I want to know how scripted/unscripted these videos are.
That chef has appeared in top master chef and other similar shows on Bravo and elsewhere.
God made man to enjoy a great communal meal feast given in abundance. It's a Garden of Eden thing. The curse of losing the Garden was toil, shortage and hunger.
Jesus was at a feast that was finishing off the wine...so he arranged for them another 60 gallons of wine and said enjoy.
These kids crack me up. So funny, so natural.
Vicki from Pasadena
It's quite cinematic. If there was a single camera they made edits that look like multiple cameras.
I liked the kid who said that the best part of the meal was the (nonalcoholic) cocktails.
He's a kid after my own heart.
The kids attend PS 295 in Brooklyn, which "was designated The Studio School of Arts and Culture—a Magnet School—in 2001 as an empowerment school dedicated to the arts". So it's very likely we're watching some cute, somewhat-trained little actors in that video.
EDH - it's the way kids hear things. Example When I was their age I thought people getting married were awfully wedded, not lawfully. So when I married my neighbor when I was 5 I vowed to be his awfully wedded wife.
This made me happy.
I watched it with my kids and they were mesmerized. They are not too picky, but I don't think I could have gotten them to eat the caviar. They were definitely interested in the steak.
My kids still say the pledge every morning.
"when I married my neighbor when I was 5 I vowed to be his awfully wedded wife."
Works fine for the original meaning of awful.
Catherine - That is sweet! Similar, but far less romantic, was the talking to I got from a teacher in High School about "For All Intensive Purposes."
You people are such simpletons and flyover.
tits.
Let us now welcome North Carolina to gay marriage!
Welcome NC. Mass, the ground breaker, did this 10 years ago, and you will be fine!
Over 65% of the country is now able to be fag married!
Suck on that old, dried up, farts who are unable to drop a load.
tits.
I love kids.
Those kids seem to have come from backgrounds where they've been exposed to a variety of foods.
"You people are such simpletons and flyover."
You sound like a man who is compensating for his lack of children. If you are childless, own it. Don't act like you don't understand the love of children. It's too obvious.
I still have a problem with liver
I knew a woman who grew up in old New Mexico. When she was a child, and very sick, her father went out, killed a sheep, and brought her the raw liver. How's that for love?
I went right to OT to see about getting a reservation.
I can see Mrs. T there.
Little kids are the best. Well, mine were.
I've been to Bar Baloud in London, but never Daniel. I loved the vibe of his place. Very casual special. The food was good, but the wine list was better.
I am starting to agree that forcing social norms onto gays that lead to them actually reproducing is a bad idea.
In a couple of hundred years the gene pool is going to be a different place. The voluntarily childless will be far less represented.
The future belongs to those who show up.
Just trolling you Titus, I don't care what you do with your body, I just like to think things through. Of my friends and acquaintances, the ones having children are the religious ones mostly.
"To Justice and All"--One kid came up with it, and the rest repeated it. I agree it was just an attempt to say something that sounded toast-like and "adult".
Nice to see them before they turn into insufferable adults.
Pretty sure Art Linkletter did this 50 years ago.
Reminds me of when, in 1977, I took my 3rd grade and 9th grade sisters to Bookbinders while vacationing in Philadelphia. World class seafood place and the 3rd grader ordered a hamburger and the 9th grader insisted on fried chicken.
Little NYC elites are not my cup of tea. I'm surprised they didn't tell us to eat cake.
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