"Steak 'n' Shake... we're very grateful to them for RFKing the fries. They turned me into a verb."

"I tend to think the search for authenticity in a new country is rooted in a desire for something we find missing at home."

"To live almost anywhere in the United States is to be surrounded by brand names. The supposedly authentic foreign experience is perhaps a sense of life untainted by the influence of global brands. Traveling abroad, we may find it only natural to dismiss anything else as less than the 'real' version of whichever country we’re visiting. Yet brands like KFC or McDonald’s are just as ingrained in the fabric of everyday life in Dublin, Paris or Tokyo as a given pub, bistro or noodle shop.... Fast food is indigenous to a world made by capitalism, you could say.... But step inside. Order something. Try speaking with the customers. You might even leave with a better understanding of how they live, what they struggle with and what they hope for themselves. In other words, by going to the most generic restaurant, you can learn what makes a place unique."

Writes Alex C. Park, in "Want an Authentic Travel Experience? Try McDonald’s. It’s a much realer version of the supposed authenticity we so often seek" (NYT).

"Nicola Guess is a dietitian and researcher at the University of Oxford. She also runs a private clinic and has worked as a consultant for food companies, including Beyond Meat."

I'm reading the fine print at the bottom of the New York Times article, "Why Ultraprocessed Foods Aren’t Always Bad," by Nicola Guess. 

The problem is that the category of ultraprocessed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless. It lumps store-bought whole-grain bread and hummus in with cookies, potato chips and soda. While many ultraprocessed foods are associated with poor health, others, like breakfast cereals and yogurt, aren’t.

Processing can also create products suitable for people with food intolerances or ones that have a lower environmental footprint. (Full disclosure: I have consulted for food companies that I feel make beneficial products, including Beyond Meat, which makes ultraprocessed meat alternatives that I believe are better for the planet.)...

So, there is also disclosure in the body of the text of the article.

I love the author's name, Nicola Guess. I have to guess about the usefulness of any of the assertions here.

"He looked like some kind of health food hostage wanting to impress the cool kids by caving to their greasy junk food vices."

"Even for me — someone who unapologetically champions the return of brazen masculinity — the whole thing felt a bit too ‘bro-ish’ for my liking."

That's Jessica Reed Kraus, describing RFK Jr. in that famous photo that shows him eating McDonald's food on a plane with Trump, Musk, and Trump Jr.

Kraus is quoted in "MAGA Women Are Realizing Their Movement Is Sexist" (NY Magazine).

The NY Magazine writer, E.J. Dickson, continues:

"Omnivore, Intermittent Faster, Reformed Twinkie Lover: the R.F.K. Jr. Diet/Mr. Kennedy... could wield considerable influence over the nation’s food supply. Here’s what we know about his own habits."

The NYT asks "What does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eat?" Go down one post to see him feasting on McDonald's things alongside Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But let's check out this article:

In his [2023] interview with [Lex] Fridman, Mr. Kennedy said he ate his first meal around noon and tried not to eat after 6 or 7 p.m.... It is nearly impossible to avoid processed food, a category that is most broadly defined as any food altered from its original state, including chopped vegetables.

Including chewing! 

Some of his podcast interviews suggest that he is using “processed” as shorthand for “ultra-processed,” a term that more narrowly refers to industrially made foods containing hard-to-pronounce additives and ingredients....

Oh, well, then... never mind. 

Bobby surrenders.

Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/LLzr5S9ugf

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 17, 2024

Joe Biden campaign style: He shows up, with fast-food take-out, at this one guy's house.

Yesterday in North Carolina, I stopped by Eric’s house to have lunch with him and his two sons. I brought some Cook Out. They were an impressive family—Eric’s an award-winning educator and his sons are both athletic and academic all stars. We talked about the importance of… pic.twitter.com/UX9JMpWD4z

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 20, 2024

I hope Biden fans don't feel body-shamed. Are your kids athletic? You'd better be "an impressive family" if you want a chance at being the place Joe stops by next. Ease up on that take-out food, for now. Get your kids in shape. Then maybe Joe will come around with a bag of Cook Out.

"Five years ago, the New York State Thruway Authority conducted a survey of more than 2,600 drivers to take measure of the customer experience at the service areas..."

"... lining the 570 miles of road that make up one of the largest toll highways in the country, stretching from the edge of the Bronx up past Buffalo. Whether participants were traveling for work or for pleasure, they had needs that apparently were going unfulfilled. Among those who identified as occasional users of the Thruway, more than half said they would like food halls with 'local artisan' offerings. Some commuters wanted Blue Apron meal kits. The resulting report listed as chief takeaways that leisure travelers complained about unappealing interiors and the lack of 'Instagrammable moments.'"

From "Must We Gentrify the Rest Stop? McDonald’s is gone, and the Manhattanization of the New York State Thruway has begun. Prepare to Instagram your pit stop" by Ginia Bellafante (NYT).

"A ban on 'buy one get one free' deals on unhealthy snacks and a 9pm watershed for junk food advertising have both been ditched..."

"...  as Boris Johnson aims to cut the cost of living and boost growth. The prime minister has delayed the policies for at least a year and may axe them completely as he aims to focus on creating jobs and scrapping 'un-Conservative' ideas. The U-turn was immediately condemned by health campaigners as failing children.... Johnson came to power deriding 'nanny state' measures but underwent a Damascene conversion after his brush with death from Covid, blaming his own weight problem for the virus hitting him so hard."

The London Times reports.

The politics of fat. We got very little of it here in America, despite the Covid connection, because we're ultra-sensitive. About some things. Surely, not all things.

We also rarely say "Damascene conversion," so it struck me. Not enough to change my religion/politics, but enough to make me want to end this post with a graphic depiction of Paul's conversion. There are so many. I'll just pick my favorite:

"You think that you're the man/I think, therefore, I am/I'm not your friend/Or anything, damn."

So sings Billie Eilish in this new video, which I'm reading about in Vanity Fair — "Jimmy Fallon Parodies Billie Eilish's New Video, Angers 30 Rock Staff" — and watched only so I could understand what Jimmy Fallon had done that pissed people off... and because I like Eilish enough to check out the song, especially since she's highlighting Descartes' famous quip:

 

Here are the lyrics — at Genius — where the annotations include the information: "The video is just the way the song feels to me of just kinda like careless and not really trying.... It’s some random, chaotic, don’t care shit." Some of the best videos have been made like that, with the singer randomly walking along someplace mouthing the lyrics and interacting with this and that. (Yeah? Which ones?!)

Here she's in an empty mall at night, but — as in a dream — the food places are lit up and the fresh food items are ready to be taken and eaten. Notably the pretzels. It's a realistic dream for COVID times. Just to go to a mall again and have a stupid pretzel. Wouldn't it be nice?!

Now, I'm up to speed to watch the Jimmy Fallon parody...

 

Ha ha. COVID dream becomes COVID nightmare. I wish I had a "pretzel" tag, but I won't start one because it would be annoying to add retrospectively, given the metaphorical use of the word. I quoted someone in 2012 saying Mitt Romney "twisted himself into a pretzel, speaking vacuously." How boring to sift through such outdated ephemera. Mitt Romney twists himself into a pretzel, therefore he is. 

But there are also tasty crumbs to be found in a search for "pretzel." There's this — "Pretzels and free will" —  from the first half-year of this blog:

"We are very proud of crafting this idea. Mold grows in a very inconsistent way. We had to work for several months, with different samples, to be able to showcase the beauty..."

"...of something which is usually considered undesirable. I never thought I would become a specialist in mold, but that was required to make this one happen."

Said Björn Ståhl, quoted in "Why Burger King Is Proudly Advertising a Moldy, Disgusting Whopper/The chain's anti-preservatives pledge breaks just about every rule in advertising" (AdWeek)("The Moldy Whopper campaign, created through a partnership of three agencies features intriguingly high-resolution photography and video of a Whopper being consumed not by humans but rather by the voracious maw of time itself. In other words, we get to see a Whopper rotting").



Very beautiful, not that you want to eat it, but the point is that you eat it freshly made, and the mold that comes later proves its goodness on Day 1. And Burger King trusts its customers to understand the science and to enjoy the beauty of the artistically photographed food in its post-edible phase...



Snobs will say anyone sophisticated enough to appreciate this approach to advertising would never eat at Burger King anyway.

ADDED: Something you might not know about me is that in the year before I went to law school, I worked at J. Walter Thompson. The biggest client at the time was Burger King, and the big new campaign was "Burger King and I":

"People close to the president say his proclivity to retreat to the residence during work hours has built up over the course of his presidency...."

"Early in this presidency, Trump’s staff tried to nudge him out into the city more often for dinners or to attend events, but the plans always fell apart, said one of the former senior administration officials who called Trump a 'homebody.'...  Now he tends to go to the Oval Office and adjacent private dining room for five to six hours a day for formal meetings, lunches and ceremonial events, current and former administration officials say. But the bulk of his work in the mornings, late afternoons, evenings and weekends happens in his private quarters where Trump can call staff and advisers as early as 6 a.m. and up to midnight.... He also uses it during working hours as a place to watch TV freely, tweet and serve as own his one-man communications director and political strategist. The residence serves like a bunker for his impeachment response and his real-time reaction to testimony, witnesses and public hearings.... Trump also loves to open up parts of the private residence to special guests, personally taking them on tours of the Lincoln Bedroom where he’ll show off a copy of the Gettysburg Address. It’s a party trick he deployed in an attempt to wow German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a move he uses with a wide array of other White House visitors...."

From "Forget the Oval. The real Trump action is in the residence/Fixated on impeachment proceedings against him, Trump is increasingly taking his official business to the White House’s executive residence to escape perceived risks of his formal office space" (Politico).

What a lonely weirdo he is!



ADDED: The article suggests it would be better if he'd go out at night in Washington, go to restaurants, as if he could just go out to a place and it wouldn't shut everything down. He can't really get "out." He's in the bubble wherever he goes and cannot just go be a regular person somewhere. At most, he can try to put on a show of doing something a normal person would do, like go to 5 Guys for a cheeseburger....

"For one thing, Biden's political instincts are hideously out of tune with the times and the electorate."

"Most recently he stirred up a multi-day scandal by speaking fondly about his friendship with the late Senator James Eastland, one of the most violently feral racists ever to sit in Congress (and the bar for that qualification is extremely high)."

From "Are Democrats really going to trust Joe Biden with their 2020 hopes?" by Ryan Cooper (The Week).

Hideously... recently... fondly... violently... extremely... That's a lot of "-ly." There should be a vertiginously high bar for adverbs, with or without all the "-ly"s. Who writes like that? I don't know, but I want to focus eagle-eyedly on "hideous" — with or without the "-ly."

"Hideous" is the word of the moment because of the publication of E. Jean Carroll's "Hideous Men/Donald Trump assaulted me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago. But he’s not alone on the list of awful men in my life" (in New York Magazine). That article is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, but the book is not called "Hideous Men." It's called "What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal." As a book title, it would be bothersomely close to "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and thus dangerously, insouciantly invites comparison to David Foster Wallace.

What did David Foster Wallace think about "-ly" adverbs? From his essay "Twenty-Four Word Notes" (in Both Flesh and Not: Essays):

Impossibly    This is one of those adverbs that’s formed from an adjective and can modify only adjectives, never verbs. Modifying adjectives with these sorts of adverbs—impossibly fast, extraordinarily yummy, irreducibly complex, unbelievably obnoxious—is a hypereducated speech tic that translates well to writing. Not only can the adverbs be as colorful/funny/snarky as you like, but the device is a quick way to up the formality of your prose without sacrificing personality—it makes whoever’s narrating sound like an actual person, albeit a classy one. The big caveat is that you can’t use these special-adv.-with-adj. constructions more than once every few sentences or your prose starts to look like it’s trying too hard.

Anyway... I was naturally and bizarrely wondering if "hideous" was getting inappropriately and tediously overworked in the press in the last few days. There's "I do have values, I swear, I just can’t recall what they are" by Alexandra Petri (WaPo):

I value the family, a theoretical entity against which people are making hideous strides all the time, mainly by being themselves in public or in private but on occasion by the throwing of unwanted parades.

There's "More and more people loathe Renoir. Is it time for a revival?" by Sebastian Smee (again, in WaPo):

Can a great exhibition redeem a less than great artist? I ask this knowing it is the wrong question. It is wrong not just because huge numbers of people think Renoir is, in fact, great, as well as adorable, joyous and life-affirming. But also because, for many of the rest of us, Renoir is not “less than great.” He is awful. Hideous. Beyond the pale. Asked for her take on Renoir, a discerning friend replied that his works provoked “visceral disgust.” His canvases, she said, were “like a painted version of Sweet’N Low.”

From "A Step-by-Step Guide to Detoxing from Your Winter Burrito Diet/Weaning off the winter is not an easy journey. We've got your back" by Kade Krichko (Powder):

Like most things, burritos are healthy in moderation. However, when your food pyramid is actually a cylinder wrapped in tin foil and you just purchased an infomercial blanket that looks like a tortilla, it might be time to face the facts.... In addition to burning that hideous tortilla blanket, take all of your burrito punch cards out of your wallet and put them into a lockbox....

From "Congress flails after Trump’s deportation ultimatum" (Politico):

“This is a response to the most hideous thing we have seen in our country — that people are dying, that children are dying right now at our hands, in our name,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said leaving the roughly 90-minute meeting, visibly upset by the discussion. “There may be changes going into it but the message is we will not tolerate this kind of child abuse that's going on right now.”

From "The Ugliest/Best Chrysler LeBaron of All Time Could Be Yours" (Automobile):

The car has honestly always struck us as being so bad, it’s good, and this re-creation strikes just the right balance of hideous and unique.

From "Starting an Instagram Clique Fixed My Fear of Group Friendships/My friendships with other women were hard-earned, closely guarded one-on-ones, until I accidentally started a thriving Instagram community" by Lauren Menchling (Vice):

I'd been interrogating new acquaintances to wildly mixed results for decades until I finally stumbled upon the real conversational secret to instantaneous platonic intimacy. The magic word is clogs. Bring up clogs, and watch what happens to the person you’ve been struggling to make chit-chat with. Her shoulders will ease, she’ll laugh, and she’ll tell you about the hideous shoes that her great aunt Rose used to stomp around in—or she’ll show you a picture of the exorbitantly priced Rachel Comey pair that she's close to buying. She’ll tell you that her husband hates clogs, but she doesn’t care, or that she refuses to become one of those depressing clog-and–sack dress ladies. Love them or hate them, everybody has feelings about clogs.

From "China forcibly harvesting organs from religions detainees killing many" (The Independent):

Part of the programme is to transform China’s organ transplant as a tourist spot, “where people needing organ transplants will pay huge sums to receive an organ. China has never adequately explained where it is getting these organs from.” The alleged victims include those practicing the spiritual meditative practice known as Falun Gong in addition to Uyghur Muslims, some Tibetan Buddhists and House Church Christians.

“The conclusion shows that very many people (detainees) have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilisations known to modern man,” Sir Geoffrey Nice QC says.

I can't tell if "hideous" has become unusably trite, but I do see that it's deployed in 2 different ways — sometimes to describe something truly horrible (such as murderous organ harvesting) but most commonly in the comically dramatic aversion to relatively trivial ugliness (like clogs, that Chrysler LeBaron, paintings by Renoir, and random Biden gaffes).

Watching your front door security footage after your child has consumed the milkshake the DoorDash guy delivered.

You see the guy drinking the shake.

My question: Why would you accept delivery of a shake with an unwrapped, open straw sticking out of it? It's obviously unsanitary.

I was a little surprised to see this story made the front page of the New York Daily News. It's so piddlingly small. And yet... it is one of the nagging fears of modern life. You're not supervising the preparation and service of your own food. You want other people doing this work, and that means that many hands (and mouths and other body parts) touch or could touch your food. What's going on?
And here's a case where you've got video of what you fear....

Achievements in graphic depiction.

I'm not even sure I understand this meme but I'm retweeting it anyway. https://t.co/PTeGfTbpei

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 12, 2019

"garbage food served by a garbage president. this is not funny, its just pathetic"/"A junk food feast from a junk president. How fitting is that? Talk about a nothing burger."

Highly rated comments on the WaPo article "President Trump’s extravagant, $3,000, 300-sandwich celebration of Clemson University" (by Philip Bump).

Here's Trump talking about the food — which he paid for himself because of the shutdown — just before the champion football team comes in.

Here’s a video I shot of President Trump showing off his 300 hamburgers. pic.twitter.com/P06S6I5w07

— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 14, 2019

ADDED: The Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence declares, "It was awesome... We had McDonalds and everything. It was good!"

Another fan asked Lawrence how many times he plans on returning to the White House -- to which he replied, "Hopefully, a few more!"

"Can you hear that?... Neither can I."

I never noticed this particular YouTube star until a few days ago when I got carried away researching the term "thought experiment" and this video of his turned up. I didn't watch it, but I left it open in a tab while I was reading things in other tabs, for example, "9 Philosophical Thought Experiments That Will Keep You Up at Night" (Gizmodo) and "The impossible barber and other bizarre thought experiments" (New Scientist). I'd opened all those tabs after pondering the difference between "experience" and "experiment" (and had learned that the oldest meaning of "experience" is "experiment"). Anyway, the point is, I'd left that video open in a tab but had not watched it. It was Meade — he'd sat down at my computer to do some comment moderation — who played the video and — like anyone else — became engrossed and fascinated. So if you're wondering what we watch at Meadhouse, this is it.

ADDED: The quote that I made the post title — it reminded me of something. I think it's this, from "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett.

HAMM Open the window.

CLOV What for?

HAMM I want to hear the sea.

CLOV You wouldn’t hear it.

HAMM Even if you opened the window?

CLOV No.

HAMM Then it’s not worthwhile opening it?

CLOV No.

HAMM [violently] Then open it! [Clov gets up on the ladder, opens the window. Pause.] Have you opened it?

CLOV Yes. [Pause.]

HAMM You swear you’ve opened it?

CLOV Yes. [Pause.]

HAMM Well . . . ! [Pause.] It must be very calm. [Pause. Violently.] I’m asking you is it very calm!

What an edgy KFC ad.

KFC is apologizing for running out of chicken (in the UK).

What did Indra Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo, say about "Lady Doritos"?

She was on the Freakonomics podcast, the NYT reports, and she said that women "don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously, and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth." Asked whether her company was planning "a male and female version of chips," she said:

“It’s not a male and female as much as, ‘Are there snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently?’ And yes, we are looking at it, and we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon. For women, low-crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavor stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse.”

When The Sun turned that into a story about a real product, "Lady Doritos," the internet went wild, criticizing, mocking, whatever. You can see some examples at the link and more at #LadyDoritos. It made me wonder if Nooyi is savvy enough to be masterminding virality to launch a new product.

A spokeswoman did say — about whether there's a new product designed to appeal to women — "I can’t yet give any more details beyond what Indra relayed in the podcast. However, I will be able to in a few months."

Anyway, the reaction on Twitter is humorous...

I feel like this is a overly strong reaction to #LadyDoritos pic.twitter.com/VCVAQkOQ7G

— RaPUNzel (@RandilynIsIn) February 5, 2018

... and humorously unhumorous:

I know it sounds stupid to be so pissed off about #LadyDoritos but think about its meaning for just a sec. these chips are literally designed to make women conform to there gender stereotypes. To be less messy and noisy and less distracting.

— Punk Rock Prince (@Doro_Doro) February 5, 2018

Oh my freaking gawd. I am in shock.

The 1 day I put twitter away & focus on work, I come back to #LadyDoritos tending and I am all...

WTF

The first thought that came to mind after reading the story was..

Men. It's time to shut up & listen#HellHathNoFury@libertyveterans pic.twitter.com/7W9fjGFr2T

— Olivia Pope (@OliviaResists) February 6, 2018

"He had maps, he had a certain amount of tools, he had bug repellent, he had wipes, he had Pop-Tarts."

New York Governor Cuomo said about the captured prison escapee David  Sweat.