757 Clean up the Kitchen

757 Clean Up The Kitchen

Aside from the Fox and faux Fox right wing hate-fests, the essentially useless other cable news "services" and the shopping channels, the most obnoxious thing on TV today is the cooking show. And it doesn't matter who's cooking show it is, they all share one central flaw that anyone who's ever flipped a burger, overheated an oven, or tried to cram leftovers into a refrigerator knows well. No one shows you the after-cooking cleanup.

Granted, these are "cooking" shows, not clean up shows. But still. Rachael Ray, former babe and present chubboid will show you how to cook a meal in 30 minutes, hence the title of her show "30 Minute Meals." Of course that time does not include gathering all the ingredients, and certainly doesn't count the time it takes to put the kitchen back into usable shape once the meal is done ... or doing the dishes, for that matter. Don't mean to be picking on Rachel, here. But do you think she scrubs out the frying pan after doing the Yummy Garlic Bread act? Someone does. But you can bet it's not Rachel. Or Paula Drone or Emeril LaGassbag.

Some poor slob is there to do the dirty work, you can bet. Since Food Network is a non-union shop, you can figure the clean up crew does not pay dues to IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians and Allied Crafts. So, who does the work? TV-eager interns? Minimum wage broom pushers? Doesn't really matter, it's who DOESN'T do it that counts.

Just once, show us Bobby Flay rinsing plates. Just once, show us Kylie Kwong scrape out the rice cooking machine.

Or maybe they should just forget all that and have a separate channel, or at least a separate set of programs for kitchen cleanup.

"Greetings, friends, I'm Gloria Abruasa and I'm here in the Martha Stewart Kitchens in Connecticut to show you how to remove salmon skin from an improperly greased cast iron frying pan. First, rinse off what you can..." Maybe Emeril has a dumber but equally funny brother or cousin or in law who could do a program following his own. "Welcome to Emeril's dumber but equally funny brother. Today we're going to scrape up the mess he made whipping up that 'easy' Parmigianino Reggiano. You should see all the failed experiments on the floor behind this counter..."

Shrapnel:

--It's September and the political phone calls have started. Two on one recent day, both of them "surveys" without identifying their client. Next, expect the candidates themselves, followed by M. Obama and S. Palin.

--Here in the Great Commonwealth of PA., the state attorney general is the Republican candidate for governor. In our little town hall, his picture is on a poster from his day job, advocating not beating up grandma, a noble sentiment and perfectly appropriate for a sitting attorney general, but it's still a campaign poster and the town hall lady took a citizen complaint and promised the poster would come down. It hasn't.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them. ®

©WJR 2010

756 College Town Life & Book Look

756 College Town Life and a Book Look

News item: MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin police say a street musician apparently upset by criticism of his music bashed a man over the head with his guitar, slammed another person into a wall and wrestled with an officer before being arrested. Ah, life in a college town. The street musician, known as "Bongo Jesus" is 31 years old. A bit old for this kind of thing. But recently shenanigans like this have become age-indifferent.

The other day, pushing a cart out the right-most of two sliding doors, each wide enough for three or four pedestrians at a time, and this ancient guy blocks the way. "This is an entrance, not an exit," he snarls and refuses to move. The automatic door has opened from the inside. The "Entrance" sign is visible only from the outside. It is on Groucho's left. By this time, he's inside and his adversary says "Well, you entered, so what's the problem?" "I guess you can't read," he says. "Yeah," replies his adversary "that's because you were my English professor," which he wasn't. Thought for sure this guy was going to either stroke out or call the cops to report the brash young adversary (age 68, for the record.) Good thing neither of us had our guitars with us!

Book Look: The Grand Design, Stephan Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow

Hawking is the premier cosmologist to tread the earth since Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and Murray Gel-Man wrote and theorized. He is known for his "Brief History of Time," his continued and worsening paralysis and the similarity of his appearance to Alfred E. Newman. Mlodinow is a physicist at Cal-Tech. They are being maligned and brutalized by the religious right for "trying to exile God from Physics" and "banning God from physics," and embracing atheism. None of that is true. Their primary thesis is: God may or may not exist but is not necessary to explain the creation or evolution of the Universe as we know it. You don't need to read Hawking's dense prose to understand what he's getting at. But it's highly recommended, especially for those who are ready to throw God Grenades. What's more important about this work than the work itself is the storm it's raising on the religious right, a great many of whose adherents never have read a physics book -- or at least one that goes beyond Newton, and who can't conceptualize beyond their fairy tale concept of creation.

Richards Readometer Rating: 1. No question.

===Readometer Key:
1 - Buy it.
2 - Wait for the paperback.
3 - Take it out of the Library.
4. Flip through it at the book store.
5. Forget it.

New occasional department, with apologies to the late Earl Wilson for snitching the title:

Wish I'd said that:

"(T)his eve of 9/11... light a Yahrzeit candle, a votive candle, a

taper.. light something to remember those who died so innocently, yet brutally, at the

hands of barbarians." From friend and colleague Ted David, writing on Facebook on 9/10/2010.

755 Part Time New York City Hillbilly

755 Part Time New York City Hillbilly

You don't have to be from the blue grass of Kentucky or the back woods of Tennessee or the ranches of Texas to know and understand what they used to call Hillbilly music. That's no longer politically correct, so now it's "country" or "Americana." Whatever.

Some of us appreciators don't like the twangy nasal singing, but you can still love the melodies and arrangements. As someone said "Four chords and the truth." Probably was Boudleaux Bryant, who wrote almost as many hits as Lennon-MCartney, though we can't locate a legit attribution. But if you think the melody lines are simple or primitive, listen to Mozart for awhile and then see what you think of Hank Williams or Waylon Jennings.

Simple stuff. Clear messages. Tall stories. Mid-sized stories. Outright lies. Put aside trucks and trains for the moment and what you find here is a warm hearted but coldly rational look at the human condition. Cheating spouses, alcohol, lost love, found love, poverty. It's all part of all of our lives in some form and to some degree.

Country radio has never really been a hit in New York, and probably never will be. There just aren't enough appreciation. And too much twang. At WYNY, we once scored a 3.5 in the ratings. That's not great. But for Country 103.5, that was a break-out-the-bubbly occasion. Good thing we did, because it never happened again. And today's country is kind of ruralized rock. Not the Buddy Holly or Everly Brothers kind of rock which might be more appealing if we didn't have a built in wall against "old stuff."

So the city-billies that want real country listen to Pandora or their iPods or their CDs or even the old 45s. On a good night, the Mother Church, WSM, Nashville comes in like a local. That's good enough. The dance music crowd, the pop standards crowd, the serious jazz-o-philes had to learn to make do. It's not that tough.

Shrapnel:

--Remember Stewie Parnell, who hid behind the Fifth Amendment after his killer Peanut Corp. of America came down in a shower of filth, salmonella, nine deaths and hundreds of stomach aches? You'll be happy to know he has found a new job despite the recession -- consulting for other peanut companies, while the case against him remains unresolved. No doubt he can teach his former competitors plenty -- the guy knows how to dish the dirt, alright.

--Breakfast at a restaurant on a recent morning and we brought along a ping pong net, ball and two paddles and left them in plain sight. "Why?" asked the waitress? Answer: "so when you come back and ask us if you can 'take the plates out of your way,' they'll really BE in the way -- and we'll set up this net and start playing."

--Okay, okay, purists. It's table tennis not ping pong. Well maybe when YOU play it is -- just not so for most of the rest of us.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010

754 Burger King Flip Flop

754 Burger King Flip Flop

It's not just flipping burgers at Burger King. Since the fast food burger joint was founded in the early 1950s, it has gone through more ownership changes than we can count, and despite all the headquarters hullabaloo it has managed to keep putting out pretty consistent -- and in some opinions -- the best of the breed in its fare. BK started as a private company. Somewhere in there it went public, got bought, got sold, went private again, went public again and now is going private again.

The first private equity outfit that took control didn't do what private equity companies often do, which is break the acquisition into pieces and sell each off separately. Kind of unusual. Now, there's a second group of private investors, and who knows what they're planning to do. Maybe separate the restaurants into Burger King, Fry King, Salad King, and then sell them off? Close up restaurants (can they really call those places restaurants?) Open new ones?

Whatever they do with expanding and contracting, there are a couple of things they should also do. First is make the places look clean. They aren't dirty, but there's a kind of grunge atmosphere, whether in Texas City, Taipei or Timbuktu. It's uninviting. Thing two, get a decent advertising agency. The latest series of ads, featuring a plastic-looking "king" stealing McDonald's breakfast recipes just doesn't make it. Back to something funny, like "It takes two hands to handle a whopper." Or "have it your way." Or even the almost classical America Loves Burgers one of the best institutional ads ever, sung by Florence Warner, the finest singer you never heard of.

Argue the health deficits of this kind of place all you want. You're right. The stuff's going to shorten your lifespan, raise your cholesterol, raise your blood pressure and your weight. But that's not going to stop many people from eating there. Something's going to kill you, and you might as well die happily full of the flesh of dead animals, served up in a sauce of cheese and mayo. Let's hope the owners of the moment know what they're doing.

But there's this question: how much flipping can a burger joint do before it flops?

Shrapnel:

--A Jewish gay guy from New Jersey who can't be President but should be has been serving in Congress since The Flood and is under primary challenge from a Lyndon LaRouche nutcase, so this is an appeal for contributions. The Jewish gay guy's name is Representative Barney Frank (D-MA.) The Massachusetts morons got rid of Ted Kennedy's heir apparent. Don't let them do it again.

--Speaking of which, the Associated Press has declared politics a "recession proof industry." The agency reports that house and senate candidates have amassed record cash for the current campaign season. No hard times in that business, apparently.

--The Homer Simpson picture on the desk has been covered up by the picture of another chubby bald guy. It's Buddha holding a guitar. The interloper(s) are giving your correspondent a complex.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010

753 September Eleventh

753 September Eleventh

Years ago, it could be said with authority that the farther from ground zero or the pentagon or Shanksville PA you were the less the attacks of 9/11/01 affected you. This no longer is quite as true as it was. Even to many of us who were there, 9/11 has been reduced to a cliche, a bunch of stupid slogans and platitudes. The forces of entropy have engulfed the events and their implications and have squeezed the life out of them, turned them into mindless fodder for talk shows and parasite politicians and parasite publicists for this cause and that.

Meantime, cops and firefighters and EMS workers who were at Ground Zero or the other points of attack are dying before their time. So, with people fighting about the so-called war on terror and its meaning and fighting about building or not building mosques nearby and about what the replacement structures should look like and who should own them and who should pay for them and how much. But there isn't enough said about why, cops and firefighters and EMS workers are adding to the statistical death toll of that Tuesday. We do this. And we do it with many a major event and many a catastrophe, plasticize it. The judge looking at the city's paltry settlement with the living victims found it wanting and added to it. But this is not about some judge's view of who should be paid what. This is about lives. Men and women and children and their dogs and cats and goldfish, and who did right by all of us, only to be told "your lung disease is worth "x dollars," and we'll be happy to let you have it or give it to your spouse or kids or dogs or cats or goldfish some year when we get around to it and you're dead.

We will build that mosque -- somewhere, and we will build that replacement building. And the residents and the tourists will pass by it or through it and feel sad. But what about NYFD fire captain Ed Placencio or police academy recruit Jerry O'Rourke, who are roommates at Mt. Sinai's lung ward, now, nine years after the fact? Anyone going to drop by like tourists at that ugly hole in the ground? Not likely.

Shrapnel:

--Someone has scotch taped a picture of Homer Simpson to the telephone on this desk. It's a comment about the increasing size of my forehead and midsection. There are no suspects, but we are looking at a "person of interest."

--Facebook is using its ad space on your home page to sell social networking ads. Is this the new Craig's List, which has just "self censored" its "adult" content? Or is it just a pitch for money?

--Since last may, we've been using electronic bill paying for most of our accounts. Some web systems work smoothly, others not so much and some don't work at all. First on the "not at all" list is the electric company, which suddenly doesn't know who we are, but will remember us quickly if the money doesn't appear.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010

752 Labor Day 2010

752 Labor Day 2010

Here's what happens when you screw around with holidays. Historically, Labor Day is the first Monday in September. It's been an official holiday since 1884, but the first Labor Day parade was held in New York City two years earlier. New York goes its own way. Always. Somewhere along the line we got all those Monday holidays, but Labor Day weekend always has been Saturday-Sunday-Monday. Pioneers! The parade itself doesn't always land on the holiday itself, though it should. Recently, it's taken place on the Saturday FOLLOWING the holiday.

In 2010, the Saturday following the holiday is September 11th. So this year, there will be no parade by fiat of whomever is the current New York City Commissioner of Whacky Edicts. Granted, 9/11 is a bad day for a celebration. So what about doing something like re-positioning the parade on the Saturday of the holiday weekend, 9/4? Or, to be really radical, how about holding it on the actual holiday, 9/6?

The holiday is a salute to the American worker, to the men and women who built this country, to the men and women who fought for their rights as human beings in an era when they were considered farm animals or machines, who organized and then told capital "you can't do this to us. We're doing the work. We want our share, no more, but no less."

Rudy Giuliani was the public face of the trade center aftermath. But Rudy Giuliani was not the guy who raced into a soon-to-collapse building in hopes of saving lives. That was the job of first responders -- cops and firefighters and EMS people. Rudy Giuliani does not know what to do with a burn victim or someone who's been knocked unconscious by an office desk that has just fallen through a ceiling and landed on the guy's head. And he doesn't have to. But let's not forget who did the work. Around the clock work for how long? And let's not forget who's building whatever it is they're building down there. It's not Mike Bloomberg. It's people named Joe and Jose and Jamal and Ellen and Maria and Kaneesha.

At the height of union membership, it took forever for the parade to pass by. Lately, not so much. Publicity glutton politicians remained the warts on the line of march. But not so many electrical workers, carpenters, boiler operators, steel workers, retail clerks, truck drivers, subway motormen, railroad engineers, pilots, performing artists, teachers and nurses, postal workers, toll collectors, as once.

Maybe for 2011, they can get some disbarred lawyers, banned stock brokers, defrocked clergy sentenced to community service to march as ringers.

Shrapnel:

--Now he tells us! Bank bailout king and fed chairman Bernanke says "too big to fail" has to be -- as Don Rumsfeld would say -- recalibrated and bad banks closed down before they drag the whole system down with it. Ben, babes, also is the king of near-zero percent financing -- for everyone except us laboring peasants who need it most.

--Here's a list of the members of the Big Ten Football Conference: Illinois-Urbana, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Wisconsin-Madison. No math majors in the big ten, or is it that no one in college football can count to 12?

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010

751 Cafeteria Capitalists

751 Cafeteria Capitalists

Today's righties seem not to get what a government does and how it does it. Their first mistake is to lump every agency, every function, every program, every bureaucrat into on amorphous blob or boulder that acts monolithically. Not so. "The Government" may be a monolith to some ideologues, but it's more like a bank of elevators on a bad mix of Quaalude and the kind of diet pills you take just before pulling an all-nighter before a final exam.

It's people and it's infrastructure. It is not a business. It's a self-designed mechanism for keeping us from breaking each others' heads or bank accounts. Yes, sure. Police, courts, armed forces, national policies all rolled into some relatively simple documents that imply humanity, compromise, sanity and rationality. Imperfect, yes. A cafeteria? No.

So while Congressman "X" thinks that truck load of money going to his district to build a road is an important civic project, Congressman "Y" across the hall thinks it's pork. It evens out. X is on line in the cafeteria, picks a road project. Rejects a similar road project for Y.

Senator "Z" goes up to the counter and chooses to "protect your future and those of your children" by privatizing Social Security.

One day he may want to have the Fed for dessert, the next day he rejects the Fed and instead has no dessert at all, saying "the government has no business in the dessert business."

Bureaucrat "A" processes your drivers license or passport in a matter of minutes. Bureaucrat "B" takes forever. Conclusion: either get rid of the passport or drivers license bureaucrats entirely or make them all behave like A. But they're people. Just like you. And they do things differently.

On the cafeteria line, one official chooses "freedom," except for your freedom to have an abortion in peace. Another chooses "Invade Iraq." A tasty dish, but inconsistent with American isolationism that he also chooses.

Pick privatized health care. Oh, except for the VA and senior citizens.

It's not a business. It's not a cafeteria. And it's neither an amorphous blob nor a monolith. It only seems that way when you want to use it for your whim of the moment, but no one else's.

Shrapnel:

--Not worth a book look or reading, let along buying: "Inventing Great Neck (Jewish Identity and the American Dream)" By Judith Goldstein, which reads like a Hadassah tour brochure. Here's the whole book in one sentence: Times were tough but got better; people of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds sometimes didn't get on all that well, but in this case managed to overcome most of their differences most of the time.

--The U.S. open day one is over. Can we contain our excitement? Memo to both pro tennis and pro golf: go away.

--Iraq: Mission Accomplished? Again? The President sent out e-mails to his list of 40-million fans and subscribers reminding us that we're finished with out combat role over there just in case we fellow foreign born Muslim socialists missed the story on Al Jazeera or in Pravda.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010