Good morning, Nell.
I stayed up late working on my Brian De Palma review, which is nowhere near done. Perhaps you could a put a word in with Mr. Kinsley … It didn’t help, I admit, that I watched TV last evening. On the Guinness Book of World Records, a man blew soap bubbles with a live tarantula in his mouth. Rachel threw a fit because the baby was watching, so I switched over to Larry King, where Ed Rollins was blowing soap bubbles with a live tarantula in his mouth. He was saying something about the President being permanently hobbled by revelations about his character, an observation belied by Rollins’ own barely dimmed career after volunteering that he gave money to African-American New Jersey clergy in exchange for their preaching the gospel of Republicanism. Sleazeballs were everywhere you turned. Over on ABC, Beau Bridges was romping through the title role of Maximum Bob, a good-ol’-boy judge who couldn’t keep from putting the moves on Liz Vassey’s short-skirted public defender–surely the most cheerful (and, given Ms. Vassey’s sexy aplomb, credible) depiction of sexual harassment to hit the tube in years. Maximum Bob is a summer miniseries produced by Barry Sonnenfeld from an extremely put-downable Elmore Leonard novel that sat in my parents’ bathroom for years. The TV show was a lot more entertaining–and put the president’s impulses in lighthearted perspective.
Short-lived perspective. Here is today’s New York Times editorial page, given over to the sort of pop psychologizing that used to be left to the bestseller lists in the decade after an administration decamps. “Our view,” reads the lead editorial, “is that history will depict [Clinton] as the architect of his situation in a way that illustrates how a President’s inner reality shapes his destiny.” Fair Maureen Dowd suggests that “of all people, [the Clintons] should appreciate how corrosive lying is, how disillusioning it is to twist the White House into a machine that spews out alibis more urgently than policies.” I’m not entirely sold on Maureen’s disillusionment, since her shock at Clinton’s audacity is inevitably mitigated by relish at the prospect of chronicling it, but her point is inarguable.
Today is Wednesday, which means food sections in the papers! I do the cooking in my house, so this is one of my week’s highlights. One thing I can’t help but notice is the impact of Cook’s Illustrated on food writing everywhere. In case you don’t pore over CI as I do, it is a collection of nerdy lab reports in which writers inevitably begin their articles with something like: “For years I’ve wondered if the way I boil water–in a stainless-steel saucepot, over high heat–had an impact on the resulting flavor. How would the water taste if it was boiled in copper? Glass? The microwave? Would varying the temperature change the flavor components? I tried bringing the water to a boil over low flame, medium flame, and high flame … ” and on and on. It’s gripping stuff, actually, and the dishes are often so successful that guests ask for the recipe. (“Oh, I just improvised,” I explain.) One of CI’s writers, Mark Bittman, has a column in the Times, in which the role of each ingredient is explained in scrupulous CI fashion. Today he prepares Italian Sausage On a Bed of Cooked Grapes, a dish of no use to me since for health reasons Rachel won’t eat pork or beef unless it’s in the form of bacon or a McDonalds’ Quarter Pounder with Cheese. An article discusses exotic flavors of ice cream, with recipes for Lemon Buttermilk and Galangal. The oddest flavor I ever consumed was near the beach in San Francisco’s Sunset district, where a Chinese woman made ice cream from the legendarily stinky durian fruit; the confection was kept in a separate, sealed tub, and was handled as gingerly as radioactive isotopes. But it actually tasted pretty good.
Bloodsport continues over on my favorite Web site, rec.music.opera. Forget Placido Domingo’s height, Jane Eaglen’s obesity, and Nazi Elisabeth Schwartzkopf’s dubious dameship. “The time has come to dispossess you of any fantasies you have of your greatness,” writes one participant to another, doubtless over a disagreement on some soprano’s timbre. ” … You are, indeed, a sad pathetic person … You are probably slightly schizophrenic, you probably hear voices (if they can get a bloody word in edgeways) and you are likely not married, with few friends of real note … You are an intransigent, boring, dull, slightly unbalanced, dissembling, spiteful old nobody who has not the good grace or manners to accept that many people on this group–who I have to commend for tolerance–have had more distinguished careers and can call upon greater experience than you and as a result have no interest in what you wish to threap down their throats.” (“Threap” is actually a word, and means to scold or rebuke.)
I think Linda Tripp got off easy.
