"This is not the first midcentury, middle-America food craze to find new life online: Jell-O molds, 1970s-era desserts and 1970s-themed dinner parties..."

"... have all made unexpected comebacks. That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s.... For some, the box mixes and cans — triumphs of postwar prosperity — are a rosy portal to an imagined 'simpler time' of family dinners and easy living. 'That is nostalgia for America,' she said. 'That is our national comfort food.'"

From "Watergate Salad Makes a Comeback/The 1970s-era dish made with pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple and mini marshmallows has caught the curious eye of the TikTok generation" (NYT).

It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.

And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today." 

Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:

Winking at Room Rater — with 4 pineapples.

We have 4 count ‘em 4 pineapples for #TeamSchmidt pic.twitter.com/Oit7IvCh3k

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 22, 2020

"[T]wo students jokingly placed a store-bought pineapple on an empty table at an art exhibition this month at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen..."

"When they returned a few days later to the exhibition... they were shocked to discover their pineapple protected by a glass display case, instantly and mysteriously transformed into a work of art."

After one of the students, Lloyd Jack, 22, who studies business, put a photograph of the pineapple on Twitter, along with the words, “I made art,” the image was shared widely on social media, turning the fruit, fairly or not, into a cultural sensation....

Before long, the work, which the two students titled “Pineapple,” had been deconstructed on art blogs and social media worldwide; parsed in Paris, Texas and Tokyo; and even featured on Canadian television. Some on Twitter lauded its “genius,” while others ridiculed it as the latest example of conceptual art’s plodding banality....

There are so many stories like this. I feel as though I've read a hundred of them over the years, 200 if you include the cases of actual art that was regarded as not art and thrown away. Well, maybe that's how the glass case got there. Somebody thought it was part of the artwork and feared that some custodian would throw it out. The case is like a sign saying: "This is art."*

I'm not convinced the whole thing was not a PR stunt. I just need to say that so I'm not roped into being part of someone else's artwork. 
________________________

* Like Duchamp signing the urinal. 

The yellow-duct-tape beam-of-light.

"'Fos' is the name of the first ephemeral installation by Eleni Karpatsi, Susana Piquer and Julio Calvo, a multidisciplinary team based in Madrid and Barcelona. Using yellow duct tape, paint, found furniture and pineapples, the team created a brilliant visual illusion that simulates a beam of light coming from the lamp above the door of a vegan restaurant in Madrid. The name 'Fos' means 'light' in the Greek language, and 'melted' in Catalan."

More here.

"If we could strip away the influences of modern Western culture and media and the high-fructose, high-salt temptations of the junk-food sellers..."

"... would we all be eating like Inuit elders, instinctively gravitating to the most healthful, nutrient-diverse foods? Perhaps. It’s hard to say. There is a famous study from the 1930s involving a group of orphanage babies who, at mealtimes, were presented with a smorgasbord of thirty-four whole, healthy foods. Nothing was processed or prepared beyond mincing or mashing. Among the more standard offerings— fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk, chicken, beef— the researcher, Clara Davis, included liver, kidney, brains, sweetbreads, and bone marrow. The babies shunned liver and kidney (as well as all ten vegetables, haddock, and pineapple), but brains and sweetbreads did not turn up among the low-preference foods she listed. And the most popular item of all? Bone marrow."

Mary Roach, "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal." (pp. 63-64).

"23 songs that use fruit for sexual metaphor."

Before looking, guess which fruit wins:

Pick one.
	Peach
	Cherry
	Lemon
	Banana
	Kiwi
	Pineapple
pollcode.com free polls

"The Pineapple And The Hare: Can You Answer Two Bizarre State Exam Questions?"

"A story and two questions on the New York state English exam taken by eighth-graders this week has stumped many — including Jeopardy! star Ken Jennings."

The story was written by the amusing author Daniel Pinkwater, but he didn't write it for the exam, and he didn't write the exam questions.

The story is funny and absurd on its own, but the questions, asked of poor students who are struggling not to appreciate the absurd but to get the answers right, are truly evil:

1. Why did the animals eat the pineapple?
a. they were annoyed
b. they were amused
c. they were hungry
d. they wanted to

2. Who was the wisest?
a. the hare
b. moose
c. crow
d. owl

No decent educator would torment students this way. It's an abuse of humor. The teachers should not be amusing themselves, and I feel sorry for the kids who may take a hatred of silliness forward into their newly gloomy lives.

With President Obama going to Mumbai — where he will be protected from coconuts — I've started reading the Mumbai Mirror.

Here's "Coconuts removed from trees in preparation for Barack Obama's India trip." But searching for the story — I'd heard Rush Limbaugh exclaim about it — I ended up at a Mumbai Mirror article about the special dishes the local chefs were cooking up in honor of the visit.

O’Barry Pie

This recipe is as rich as Obama’s biography. It uses 44 ingredients in honour of the 44th American president’s life.

There’s nothing quite as American as an American pie.

Maybe people who hear the song or see the movie titled "American Pie" think there's a dessert we call "American pie." Americans say: as American as apple pie.

But this pie combines elements from the various places he’s lived in.

Cocoa and coffee from Kenya, of which Obama’s father was a native, Polynesian fruits like banana and pineapple because he spent his childhood in Hawaii, and a coconut-and-rice pudding from Indonesia, where he lived with his stepfather for a few years.... 

The result is new and unusual. A single bite brings on a rush of many separate elements and, at the same time, has its own overall personality, just like the person it’s named after. The attractive pie is garnished with hazelnuts and rice crispies.

Rice Krispies for the time he spent in Kansas?

So now, I'm really getting into the Mumbai Mirror. What's its explanation of why Obama is coming to town:

Unlike his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton, who came to India and charmed Indians, President Obama will be here physically, but his mind is likely to be on what he can carry back home from this country.

Most notably, his eyes will be set on creating jobs, which he can accomplish to some extent if he can wangle some of the multi-billion-dollar contracts, especially in the defence sector, that US firms are keen to sign. But this would not be easy as India is not yet ready to sign the agreements for ensuring sale of defence ware to New Delhi.

He's not coming here to slather us with love like Bill did. He just wants our money, they're thinking?

Look how the Mumbai Mirror covers our elections:

Americans awoke on Wednesday to a vastly different political landscape, with Republicans retaking the House of Representatives as US voters punished Democrats over high unemployment and a sluggish economic recovery, delivering a divided Congress in Tuesday’s midterm poll.

Resurgent Republicans, led by the ultra-conservative Tea Party insurgency, steamrolled Democrats, taking at least 60 seats and a commanding majority in the House. It was one of the chamber’s largest political swings of the past century.

Ultra-conservative? I've never thought of the Tea Party as ultra-conservative.

Then there's "Indian-American Nikki Haley scripts history in US politics":

Daughter of Punjabi Sikh immigrants from Amritsar, Namrata Nikki Randhawa Haley who has become the first Indian origin woman to become the governor of a US state has been propelled to centre stage of American politics after her baptisation into politics in 2004.

She is the second Indian-American leader after Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana to have caught the attention of the Americans.

I'd never put that together. Two Indian-American governors now. Interesting. Both Republicans, for what it's worth.

It has not all been smooth sailing for the tall Haley, 38, mother of son Nalin, 9, and daughter Rena, 12 as she had to overcome allegations of extra-marital affairs and racial digs  to become the first Asian woman to don a US governorship.

What were the "racial digs"? I don't know, and I don't like Indians thinking we were awful to Haley.

"The need for a cheap apartment in part led Mr. Carroll home to Inwood in the summer of 2008, in spite of his history with the neighborhood."

Link.

In “The Basketball Diaries,” Mr. Carroll used the nosy old ladies on its park benches and the reactionary hard-hats in its bars as a comic foil....

[B]y the summer of 2008, his childhood address at 585 Isham Street in Inwood might have seemed like a peaceful place to write.

The focus of the ground-floor apartment was the desk, a padded cart beneath it to elevate his aching leg.

This part of the story caught my attention, because I have spent the last 4 days — post-toe-op — with my foot elevated on pillows to keep it from throbbing.

There, he plowed through plastic bins of sliced pineapple, a reward for a session of hard work.

The only decorations were a poetry event poster and a photo-triptych of Kurt Cobain. For months, boxes of books remained unpacked and the windows were bare. “He said that sometimes neighbors would smile at him, and he was just sitting there in his underwear,” [his friend Martin] Heinz recalled....

Mr. Carroll was alone the day he died. A neighbor peering into his window apparently saw him slump to the floor and called 911, [his brother Tom] said. (“Classic Inwood,” joked Tara Newman, a friend who also grew up there.)

There is reason to leave the windows bare and to live in a neighborhood of nosy people. You don't have to die alone.

Tiny pineapple, tiny queen.

(The queen is by Evan Izer. Other objects by Izer blogged here.)