Chez Panisse Is Not the Answer to the Egg McMuffin Problem

choire:

This Maira Kalman meditation on Thanksgiving is a profoundly irritating and class-unconscious thing (even though, to her credit, she notes that rich people have the opportunity to eat better). And I do actually enjoy me some Maira Kalman. (And also her hat-making sister! You can buy her truly adorable hats at Moss, starting at just $200!) Basically, you are all getting fat from eating fast food and from having BAD PRIORITIES, so you should go eat at one of the most expensive restaurants in the United States, and maybe you should go back to the land in your spare time and raise chickens when you are not working at WalMart, so that you will be a better person, also happy Thanksgiving, and PS be more like Adams, Jefferson and Madison. (You mean I should ban U.S. trade with all other countries, or…?) Also, there is a reason that the U.S. looks “naturally agrarian” when you are flying across the country, which is because much of it is! If by naturally, or agrarian, you mean massive corporate soy, wheat and corn-growing operations. Lest we forget, it really was a lot easier for those fuckers in Ye Olde Times to be a farmer and run a country and write books because they had dozens of slaves and maids and valets to do everything for them.

I completely agree with this, and also: 1) I think Maira Kalman is almost always on thin ice when she gets away from her always charming illustrations and replaces them with her surprisingly inelegant photography, which (i.e., the illustrations, not the photos) make her deceptively conventional prose/ideas somehow more forgivable, and 2) I’m still mad at her for making no allusion whatsoever to Abe Lincoln’s likely non-heterosexuality — and the door was WIDE OPEN — which would have been a lot more interesting/transgressive/artistic than some of the cutesy bullshit she DID write about. (Ok, I know I’m living in a sad dream world, forgive me.)

2 years ago 17 notes

17 Notes

  1. zanopticon reblogged this from choire and added:
    big conversation with my co-workers at slow food usa a couple of summers ago about alice waters & carlo petrini, what...
  2. matthewgallaway reblogged this from choire and added:
    I completely agree with this, and also: 1) I think...almost always on thin ice when
  3. choire posted this