a blog by Ian Kennedy
I recognized the font of the “Howl” on the front of his baseball cap. We struck up a conversation about City Lights bookstore, Ferlinghetti, the Beats and old San Francisco. Eric was his name.
Turns out he was an agent for some of Allen Ginsberg’s art and hung out at his apartment on the Lower East Side. “What was Ginsberg like, as a person?” I asked.
“He reminded me of a Jewish grandmother. He would lean over the front seat and give the cabbie very specific directions.”
Let us remember the giants of American Cuisine.
Betty Crocker isn’t actually a real person. She is the brainchild of an advertising campaign developed by the Washburn-Crosby Company, a flour milling company started in the late 1800s that eventually became General Mills.
Who was Betty Crocker?
Ironically, Colonel Harland Sanders cannot stand what his franchisees have done to his recipes. This from a 1970 New Yorker piece when KFC was still just getting started in NYC,
During his travels on company business, he will occasionally pay an unexpected visit to a K.F.C. outlet in order to inspect the kitchen and sample the gravy. If the gravy meets his low expectations, he delivers one of his withering gravy critiques, sometimes emphasizing his points by banging his cane on whatever furniture is handy. Months or even years after these ordeals, franchisees wince at the memory of such a gravy judgment from the Colonel as “How do you serve this God-damned slop? With a straw?”
Kentucky-Fried
Duncan Hines was, objectively speaking, a big deal: one of the country’s first food celebrities, beloved by millions. “Americans regarded his every word with the highest esteem,” but. . . Duncan Hines sounds like—how to put this?—a domineering, narcissistic jerk.
Duncan Hines was a real guy
Chef Boiardi’s Restaurant in Cleveland was a success, and customers expressed interest in learning how to make Italian dishes at home. So the Boiardis started sending people home with pasta, sauce and cheese and teaching them how to cook, heat and assemble the dishes themselves.
The Man, The Can: Recipes Of The Real Chef Boyardee
Aunt Jemima’s appearance has evolved over time. The brand’s origin and logo is based off the song “Old Aunt Jemima” from a minstrel show performer and reportedly sung by slaves. The company’s website said the logo started in 1890 and was based on Nancy Green, a “storyteller, cook and missionary worker.” However, the website fails to mention Green was born into slavery.
The Aunt Jemima brand, acknowledging its racist past, will be retired
Uncle Ben’s was founded as Converted Brand Rice by co-founders Erich Huzenlaub and Gordon Harwell. The name “Uncle Ben’s” began being used in the 1940s after Harwell and his business partner discussed a famed Texas farmer, referred to as Uncle Ben, known for his rice. The image of the Black man on the box was modeled after Frank Brown, a waiter at the Chicago restaurant where Harwell had the idea.
Uncle Ben’s to change brand as part of parent company’s stance against racism
Honorable mention goes to La Choy that introduced Middle America to horrible-tasting frozen Chinese food with their earworm jingle, “La Choy makes Chinese food, swing American!”
I wanted to share something which I think is lost on today’s web, the art of the hyperlink. The decision to link to something using the web should be more than just informational. There are the basic points of style such as collapsing the sentence and using the verb as the link to more information
You can find out more about the Roosevelt Island insane asylum by clicking this link here.
to:
You can find out more about the Roosevelt Island insane asylum.
But using the link to make a point, tell an inside joke you don’t get until you click the link, is a lost art. The masters of the form were the crew behind the late-90s site, suck.com.
The site is no longer online but (now replaced by an embarrassingly childish domain squatter) but I managed to pull down this passage which describes their “tertiary link” policy and what made it so engaging.
HotWired had this crazy policy where they didn’t allow tertiary links, is what they called it. A tertiary link was when you linked to something that wasn’t explicitly referred to in the text. If I said, ‘Proctor & Gamble have a policy against suffocating infants,’ and I linked on ‘suffocating infants’ to the policy page on Proctor & Gamble, and it said, ‘All our products are tested for the risk of infant suffocation, and we have a strict policy,’ that’s a primary link. If I linked ‘suffocating infants’ to Dave Winer’s column, that would be a tertiary link. That was, by policy, not allowed at HotWired.” It was absurd, with a medium so new and unexplored, to establish such rules regarding what was and was not allowed. The lack of established rules was what made the web fun.
Shit makes great fertilizer, but it takes a farmer to turn it into a meal. With that thought in mind, we present Suck, an experiment in provocation, mordant deconstructionism, and buzz-saw journalism. Cathode-addled netsurfers flock to shallow waters—Suck is the dirty syringe, hidden in the sand. You wanted feedback? Cover your ears and watch your back … it wants you too. But Suck is more than a media prank. Much more. At Suck, we abide by the principle which dictates that somebody will always position himself or herself to systematically harvest anything of value in this world for the sake of money, power and/or ego-fulfillment. We aim to be that somebody.
In the absence of HotWired strictures, they turned “tertiary links” into signature stylistic components. “It’s important to understand that up until then, to the best of my knowledge, people had just used hyperlinks in a strictly informational sense, simply as online footnotes,” says Mark Dery, author of Escape Velocity. “With Suck, you wouldn’t get the joke until you punched through on the link. Then you found out that it set the keyword to which this new source was linked in an ironic light.” Writing for Suck, Steadman and Anuff were free to link “suffocating infants” to Dave Winer’s column, or “wet dream” or “negative energy”. “Whereas every other Web site conceived hypertext as a way of augmenting the reading experience,” wrote Steven Johnson in Interface Culture, “Suck saw it as an opportunity to withhold information, to keep the reader at bay.”
The Big Fish
Somewhat related: Here’s a suck.com column retrieved from the Wayback Machine where they linked to an earlier version of my Celebrity Sellouts site.
My high school was a small boarding school in New England. David Sheldon was the headmaster during my years there. He recently passed away but I wanted to share this scrap I unearthed from an old notebook.
I think it’s a snippet from a letter sent out when he was announcing his retirement. I was too young and restless to appreciate his wisdom and graciousness fully but this stuck with me enough to save it.
I have felt always that a headmaster required those traits identified as necessary for a successful Congressman:
Those characteristics come more readily at age forty and fifty than at sixty-one and lead me to believe the School needs a fresh eye and new energy.
David F. Sheldon
Mr. Sheldon passed away at age 93 last June.
After catching an epic Phish concert at MSG on 12/29, I took the MetroNorth from Grand Central to meet my cousin to see Dark Star Orchestra at the famed Capitol Theater in Port Chester. I’ve never been to the Cap but have heard numerous tapes of legendary shows from this venue so I was looking forward to seeing it in person.
The concert did not disappoint, the sound was amazing and the band played some of the songs even better than when I heard them played by the Grateful Dead. (DSO played a setlist from 12/27/78 from San Diego)
The Capitol Theater is just a block or two away from the Port Chester train station but, after 11pm, the train only comes once/hour so a bunch of us were keeping our eye on our watch just to make sure I got out in time to catch the 12:15am train.
I stuck around to see what the encore would be and once I heard the open notes of US Blues, I figured it’s better to try and make the 12:15 rather than risk waiting around on a freezing platform for an hour so made my way outside and down to the station. Turns out I didn’t really miss the encore because you can hear it from the train platform!
Anyway, there were about 20 people on the platform that did the same thing as I and were waiting for the 12:15 train. There was an electronic sign on the platform but it only listed the 1:15am train, no 12:15. Amidst much murmuring, I took out my phone to check the MTA TrainTime app to settle the debate.
This is what I saw.
We all couldn’t believe it so others downloaded the app to check for sure and debates started to break out, do you believe the sign on the platform, do you think the app is just flaky or is something else wrong? Groups formed into the believers and non-believers. Tempers flared a bit and one guy from Austria suggested that I stop refreshing the screen and turn off my phone when it shows a 12:15am train because, maybe my app had the power to summon the train itself.
It came down to faith. Did you have faith in something you couldn’t see, classic epistemology, how do you know you know? One guy on the non-believer side was hedging his bets and noisily making alternative plans, asking his buddy with a car not to leave just in case the train didn’t show up. I joked with him for not believing and chastised him gently as a doubter and others joined me, “that’s right, you’re scaring the train away. . .” He gave us a look that said, “Yeah, whatever buddy, I don’t believe in that mumbo jumbo. I’m going to take care of me and my wife and get my ass home regardless.” He was firmly in the not believe category but when his wife leaned over to see if she could see the light of the train in the distance, he told her to get back away from the edge of the platform in case the train comes. “So you DO believe!” someone said and all of us had a laugh.
The the train did show up. Right on schedule at 12:15am and we all hopped on to the warm train and we sank into our seats. I rolled into Grand Central about an hour later at 1:15am and popped out the side to walk up 43rd to my apartment but not before stopping by for a slice of pizza where the friendly proprietor wished me Happy New Year and gave me a cola at the “Happy New Year price”
Satiated after two incredible nights of live music, I ambled home to a warm night’s slumber. Ready for a quiet New Year’s Eve, the way I like it.
In honor of tonight’s Dark Star Orchestra concert at the famous Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY (which I’ll be visiting for the first time), here’s a list of Robert Hunter lyrics that I found in an old notebook.
If you’ve listened to the Grateful Dead, you’ve heard these lines over and over again, embedded into their songs but taken out of context, can you guess which songs each of these lines are from?
Comes a time when the blind man takes your hand, says “Don’t you see?”
Without love in a dream, it will never come true.
Sometimes the cards ain’t worth a dime if you don’t lay ’em down.
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet, is passing by.
The trouble with you is the trouble with me
Must be getting early, clocks are running late
Honest to the point of recklessness
Thinking a lot about less and less
You can’t close the door when the walls caved in
Small wheel turning by the fire and rod, big wheel turning by the grace of God
The grass ain’t greener, the wine ain’t sweeter, either side of the hill
Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
If all you have to live for, is what you left behind, get yourself a powder charge and seal that silver mine
New Yorkers face all sorts of hassles that come with living in the big city. Whether it’s the daily breakdown of the subway or a parade blocking your crosstown taxi, these is always some minor inconvenience that comes with living in a vibrant city. The day-in-and-day-out of millions of people rubbing shoulders, fulfilling their dreams is bound to result in some rough edges from time to time. We all know it happens, it’s a fact of life, we just roll with it and keep on, keeping on.
But an injustice that New Yorkers will not tolerate is when a corporate or political bureaucracy picks on the individual. New Yorkers are quick to smell bullshit and will unify and rise up if they sense injustice thrown down from above. An attack on one is an attack on all.
This played itself out during the recent holiday travel disaster that played out in airports across the country with Southwest Airlines cancelling over 2,500 flights in a single day. When flights get cancelled, airlines need volunteers to give up their seats on overbooked flights. Usually the airlines can get people to give up their spot but in NYC, the people collectively came together to resist.
99% of the time the chaos breaks people at the airport. 1% of the time the chaos creates an impromptu game show.
At JFK. Guy behind the counter asks for a volunteer to give up a seat for $500. Nothing. “$550.” The crowd suddenly coalesces to shout “HIGHER!” like it was a game show. “$750” “HIGHER! “800!” “NOT IN NEW YORK! GO HIGHER!” They applauded the elderly woman who took it at $1100.
I love New York City because it’s a place where a diverse group of people of different ages, beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences can come together as one if it means fucking with somebody else making them wait in line.
@Mike Drucker
Don’t mess with a New Yorker.
Going through some old boxes during the holidays I came across this old press pass which has a funny story behind it which I’ll share for posterity.
In 1996, the then New Jersey Nets came to Tokyo to play against the Orlando Magic. The NBA was reaching to Japan to expand awareness of the sport and this was the fourth time two NBA teams traveled to Japan to play a regular season game in front of a Japanese crowd. Shaq had recently decamped for the Los Angeles Lakers but the Magic was still the team to watch with Penny Hardaway as the man to watch.
My friend Kimiaki Tanaka was a reporter for China Television and called me in the morning to ask if I wanted to join her at the game and tag along as her “cameraman.” I didn’t have a proper camera beyond a small Olympus Mju so there I was, down under the basket, at the Tokyo Dome, with all the other international press and their 400 mm zoom lenses.
Here are a couple of photos from that I found from that roll of film. I don’t think I’ll ever get that close to a professional game again.
Flash forward 26 years and my son Tyler is working at what is now the Brooklyn Nets and seeing many games (one of the benefits in working for the team). He did make it courtside recently and caught these photos of, you guessed it, the Nets going up against the Magic.
New York City has a rat problem. If you don’t think so, just watch the video below. It’s OK, I’ll wait.
It’s not surprising really. Leave bags of hot, steaming food out all night on the sidewalk and pretty soon the critters will come out for a meal – and have babies.
In response, the city has listed a job opening for a cabinet level post. The Director of Rodent Mitigation, a Rat Czar.
What’s so amusing about this is that the Mayor is having a bit of fun within the confines of big city politics and had the Job Posting written up with a bit of flair designed to get a bit of media attention. And it worked.
Here are my favorite bits (bolding is my own).
The About This Job section opens with a bang:
Do you have what it takes to do the impossible? A virulent vehemence for vermin?
They then lean into the job title, full well knowing it’s not the most sexy but, hey, go with it.
If so, your dream job awaits: New York’s Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation.
I think the PR folks that helped write the job description are still hurting from all the earned media from the Pizza Rat. I was in San Francisco and even I heard about the Pizza Rat.
Despite their successful public engagement strategy and cheeky social media presence, rats are not our friends. . . Cunning, voracious, and prolific, New York City’s rats are legendary for their survival skills, but they don’t run this city – we do.
That final line echos Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s October 17th speech in which she famously declared “but the rats don’t run the city, we do” which was spotted on signs at the NYC marathon and instantly became a TikTok meme and is even being monetized by the sanitation department.
But back to the JD. Yadda, yadda, yadda, then they show they mean business.
The ideal candidate is highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty, determined to look at all solutions from various angles, including improving operational efficiency, data collection, technology innovation, trash management, and wholesale slaughter.
Then on to the qualifications. New York City resident, Bachelor’s Degree, experience in policy and urban planning, strong organizational skills and attention to detail, proficiency with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, team player, adapts well to change, then:
Swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor, and general aura of badassery
This was it. Only in NYC would you see this line in a government job posting. It’s not just be a bad ass, no – they spiffed it up a bit and wrote a “general aura of badassery” Damn – this is a city that will talk straight to you.
Here you go, read it for yourself.