This Week in Our Dumb World
Gangster vs. Nazis
Look, if I need to explain why I was (or you should be) interested in the story of how the jewish mafia took down nazi sympathizers then I don’t know what you’re doing here or how we would even know each other.
In his memoir, Cohen tells what then happened. The two Nazis tried to move away but Cohen grabbed them before they could. “I started bouncing their heads together,” he recalled. “With the two of them, you’d think they’d put up a fight, but they didn’t do nothing. So I’m going over them pretty good. The windup is that they’re climbing up on the bars, both of them, and I’m trying to pull them down. Now they’re screaming and hollering so much everybody thinks it’s a riot,” said Cohen.
The noise and tumult brought the police on the run. By this time Mickey had moved back to his seat and was nonchalantly reading a newspaper. The officer in charge went over to Cohen and demanded to know what happened. “What are you asking me for,” said Cohen. “I’m sitting here reading the newspaper. Them two guys got into a fight with each other. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t want to mix in with them.” After he was released, Cohen enjoyed telling his friends how good he felt about beating up anti-Semites.
As news of the incident spread, Cohen began getting calls from Jewish organizations and leaders asking him to help them oppose the Nazis. One of his callers was a Jewish judge who informed Mickey about a Nazi Bund meeting. “I told him all right, don’t worry about it,” said Cohen. Cohen gathered together some of his Jewish mobster friends and raided the Nazi meeting. “We went over there and grabbed everything in sight—all their bullshit signs—and smacked the shit out of them, broke them up as best we could,” said Cohen.” Nobody could pay me for this work. It was my patriotic duty. There ain’t no amount of money to buy them kind of things,” he said.
The Thanksgiving Assault On The South
I realize that I missed thanksgiving, but let me assure you that I’ve been busy and I’m not sorry.
I AM Sorry that I didn’t get to share this with you in time for you to appreciate that Thanksgiving is an act of Northern Aggression agains the Confederacy.
Pumpkin Pie is an act of Northern Aggression.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Hale was not the only one to associate pumpkin pie with Thanksgiving and Northern tradition. Two pumpkin pie recipes appear in American Cookery, alongside other Thanksgiving favorites such as cranberry sauce and turkey. Considered the first “American” cookbook, American Cookery is known as an example of traditional New England fare. Plus, pumpkin pie calls for Northern ingredients such as squash and molasses. As more states—mainly in the North—recognized Thanksgiving, the pie became closely associated with Northern tradition.
Hale’s cheerful, relentless, and decades-long campaign spread Thanksgiving to 29 states by the early 1850s. But simultaneously, tension was growing over the strengthening abolitionist sentiment in the North. Soon enough, this ignited Hale’s goal of a nationwide (or even trans-national) Thanksgiving.
Southern leaders attacked Thanksgiving as the North’s attempt to impart Yankee values on the South. Virginians, especially, retaliated against Hale’s campaign. In 1856, the Richmond Whig published a scathing editorial on the District of Columbia’s “repugnant” declaration of thanksgiving, arguing that the holiday did nothing but rob men of a day’s wages and encourage drunkenness. As for the Northerners who started the celebration: “They have crazy society within New England’s limits, where they have been productive of little but mischief—of unadulterated and unmistakable injuries to sound religion, morals, and patriotism.”
The Egg McMuffin And The Best America
I’m sorry to do bullets twice in a newsletter, but it’s a useful (lazy) writing device and as I said, I’m quite tired. I don’t know if even said that. Well… I am.
The Egg McMuffin really does serve as the perfect example of American innovation. For its time, it’s a wild innovation. It seems impossible to imagine, but pre-McMuffin*, the idea of to-go breakfast was basically unheard of. But once it exists, it makes all the sense in the world.
If you’d like to read a much longer and more thorough piece about the decline in American innovation, you can find it here. It’s worth your while. But I love Egg McMuffins, so this is my headliner.
The idea that there is a decline of innovation is hotly contested both in terms of why it is happening and whether or not it exists. For my money, it does exist. I spend my time on both the entrepreneur and the money side of start up world and the number of people who are pursuing new ideas and the number of people willing to fund actual new ideas is very very small. Far too many people with money are worried about losing it and people with actual new ideas need money too much to take real risks.
I would also add that the spiraling cost of living also depresses innovation because it narrows the boundaries of who can be an entrepreneur. If you’ll pardon my oldness, but there was a time when a person might be able to get a small loan with a modest deposit and open a business. We have made that punishingly hard these days in economic and regulatory terms and that process does a lot of work to put a velvet rope on innovation. Among the reasons I am so staunchly in favor of some universal health insurance program is because it will remove on of the most pernicious barriers to people being able to absorb the risk of being an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship is one of the best things about America, but, like all good things about America, if we do not shepherd and protect that thing, it will turn on us and become grotesque.
Egg McMuffins are delicious.
It’s hard to imagine America changing that dramatically again, partly because the success that companies like McDonald’s found through local entrepreneurs like Peterson left less room for later innovation and imagination. We may fancy our own moment as the golden age of entrepreneurship, but outside the (already suspect) Silicon Valley garage start-up mythos, Americans have been taking fewer chances on big ideas for decades. As David Sax, author of “The Soul of an Entrepreneur,” notes, the number of Americans who are self-employed and starting businesses has fallen by half over the past 40 years. Meanwhile, the share of employees working for new businesses in the United States has dropped from 14 percent in 1982 to 9 percent in 2018, the most recent year for which data is available. This lack of fresh enterprises disproportionately translates into fewer new jobs, less economic growth and productivity, limited innovation and less creativity.
The innovation lag can be seen everywhere, from the seeming sameness of online brands to the concentration of industry in a few big cities. It’s also visible in the same world that spawned creations such as the Egg McMuffin 50 years ago. Today, many of the prevailing trends in fast food appear to be driven less by empowered tinkerers like Peterson and more by nostalgia, influencers and partnerships with other giants. While Burger King, for example, is giving away cryptocurrency to win new customers, McDonald’s has tapped Mariah Carey for its latest celebrity campaign, which draws more on repackaging existing items than creating new ones. Even as popular chains find ways to deploy new technology, they’ve grown too big and centralized to be able to change easily or stray beyond a core set of ingredients. Ghost kitchens, one of the biggest culinary trends to emerge in the pandemic, are an innovation, albeit one designed mainly to be built on top of existing businesses, making food that is exceedingly familiar to consumers to be delivered by workers with no benefits. And despite the savory magic inherent in the past two years of fried-chicken-sandwich wars, at the end of lunch, they’re still just chicken sandwiches.
The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever
I’m generally not that interested in bad reviews.
Scratch that.
I love bad reviews, but that love often makes me feel bad.
This is not because of “don’t yuck someone else yum” because whatever. You can like something and I can hate it and my hating it doesn’t impact you’re liking it. By the same token, people who love to yuck someone else’s yum should also have the spine to handle it when they are called jerks. If you want to say “that thing you love sucks” then you should probably be prepared to hear “well, maybe you suck”
I’m off track.
I feel bad about bad reviews because so often things that are reviewed are the result of the passionate work of hundreds of people who absolutely tried their best and even if the result is shit, I still feel bad for all those people.
The exception for me is high pretentious bullshit.
So I absolutely devoured this vicious poison pen review of a bullshit molecular gastronomy restaurant.
It’s as though someone had read about food and restaurants, but had never experienced either, and this was their attempt to recreate it.
What followed was a 27-course meal (note that “course” and “meal” and “27” are being used liberally here) which spanned 4.5 hours and made me feel like I was a character in a Dickensian novel. Because – I cannot impart this enough – there was nothing even close to an actual meal served. Some “courses” were slivers of edible paper. Some shots were glasses of vinegar. Everything tasted like fish, even the non-fish courses. And nearly everything, including these noodles, which was by far the most substantial dish we had, was served cold.
Amassing two-dozen of them together amounted to a meal the same way amassing two-dozen toddlers together amounts to one middle-aged adult.
2013 Wikipedia Star Trek Into Darkness controversy
Please donate to wikipedia so they we might continue to preserve important human knowledge. Like this article about an elaborate fight over how to title the wikipedia article for a start trek movie.
But seriously, Wikipedia is one of the last best parts of the internet and we should all support it. If you’re on the fence, please imagine how awful it would be is Disney bought wikipedia.
Over 40,000 words were written on the article's talk page before a consensus was reached to capitalize the "I"
Lol, Nope.
This Week in Our Dumb World
Who Poisoned Joe Gilliam Twice?
I do not use the phrase “Shakespearean” lightly, but it absolutely applies to this incredibly complex story of politics, friendship, family, and revenge. YES ALL FOUR OF THOSE THINGS ARE HEAVILY INVOLVED.
Joe Gilliam, one of the most influential voices in Oregon politics, has been silenced.
For more than two decades, Gilliam, 59, served as president of the Northwest Grocery Association, which counts Fred Meyer, Safeway and Costco among its members. He represented their interests in Salem, battled competitors and earned a reputation as a punishing opponent and loyal friend.
But for the past nine months, WW recently learned, Gilliam has been lying in a vegetative state at an undisclosed care facility in Clark County, Wash. Vigorous and athletic as recently as May 2020, he can now neither move nor speak.
It wasn’t COVID-19 that laid him low.
Nor was it heart disease or a car crash.
It was poison.
Two criminal investigations are pending into Gilliam’s attempted murder, one in Lake Oswego and another in Arizona. Police in both jurisdictions declined to comment.
Both agencies believe, however, that someone close to Gilliam tried to kill him last year with a toxic metal called thallium. And they did so not once, but twice.
His guardian and the judge overseeing his custody are concerned enough that someone will try again that they will not reveal his exact location.
Gilliam’s plight has not previously been reported. A review of documents and interviews with Gilliam’s family, friends and associates yield a tale of a prominent Oregon family beset by tragedy, secrets, broken trust, financial manipulation—and on, two occasions, attempts to kill its most prominent member.
The story would be extraordinary under any circumstances, but the attack on Gilliam comes at a pivotal time—when his organization is trying to pry open Oregon’s tightly controlled market for alcoholic beverages. It’s a crusade Gilliam hoped would be the crowning achievement of his career, and that public employee unions, governments dependent on liquor revenue, and beer and wine distributors all vehemently oppose.
There Is One Man Behind All This Horror
I am absolutely fascinated by these horrifying food videos. Part of it is the presentation because these people are just so goddamn excited about the gastric nightmare they are smearing on the counter (or in the toilet). Part of it is that it’s fun to watch the process of making anything. But part of it is that they’re absolutely perfectly awful. BUT, they’re hideous in a way that just skirts plausibility. They exist in a culinary uncanny valley where you can’t tell people would eat that or not. Watching some smear nacho cheese and taco fixings on their country and then scoop it into a tortilla cone is so gross, but also is it?
Yes.
But also I will watch it and whatever happens next.
So, with that in mind. It’s incredible that all these things essentially come from one source with a story that speaks to a lot of the ways that people interact with the internet and the challenges of creating content that then gets repackeged in all sorts of unintended ways. It’s an unexpected story of art on the internet.
Now, while you read this I’m going to go watch chippy people make maybe the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
In January, a photographer from Minnesota named Janelle Flom posted a three-minute video titled “EASIEST DINNER HACK EVER!!” It shows Flom dumping multiple cans of Spaghetti-O’s into a piecrust. “Make sure the chunks are all spread equally,” she says to the camera as she mushes the Spaghetti-O’s around.
She then covers buttered slices of bread in garlic powder and flattens them with her forearms. She dumps skim milk and more garlic powder onto the piecrust with the Spaghetti-O’s. Finally she bakes the pie, removes it from the oven, and tells the camera with a straight face that this is her “best one yet.”
The video went viral, prompting a Vice writer to ask, “Why Is My Feed Full of Gross Cooking ‘Hacks’?” and inspiring The Atlantic to explore “The Absurd Logic of Internet Recipe Hacks.” Both pieces make good points about the commodification of online food content and the viral catnip of process videos: There is something innately compelling about watching someone execute a recipe, no matter how deranged it is. And this absurd “pie” wasn’t a one-off for Flom. Her account is full of pranks and gross food. A few weeks before the Spaghetti-O pie, she posted a video about melting down candy canes and serving Chinese food on top of them.
But what was left out of the Spaghetti-O pie discourse is that Flom is the sister of Justin Flom, a magician who has appeared on TV programs like James Cordon’s Late Late Show. And Justin Flom, Janelle, and dozens more are part of a viral Facebook content network run by another magician named Rick Lax.
All My Family’s Undignified Deaths
I cannot imagine finding out that one’s family history is littered with ridiculous deaths.
Take, for example, Thomas Strickland, my great,-great,-great-grandfather, who after barely leaving rural Norfolk, emigrated to New Zealand in 1851 at the age of 17 on one of the first few settler boats. After months at sea on a wooden coffin, travelling across the face of the planet to a radically different eco-system and culture, his diary for the day he arrived is almost vertiginously banal: “Beautiful evening and fine sunset, nice and warm, such a difference to the cold evenings we have been accustomed to.”
The next generation of Australians, the Dibdins, fared little better, living lives that were profoundly altered by their refusal to conform to even the most basic of gun safety measures. In 1889, my great-uncle, Tom Dibdin, accidentally shot himself. Tom was riding in a horse-drawn buggy in rural Australia, a rifle perched between his legs, its barrel resting on his shoulder. When the buggy hit a bump in the road, the rifle fired. He survived, but his arm was probably amputated.
Incredibly, Tom was not the only member of the Dibdin family to accidentally shoot himself that year. A few months after this incident, Tom’s father (and my great,-great-grandfather) Robert Dibdin fired a bullet into his chest while cleaning a gun in his shed. According to a newspaper report, Thomas had a charming habit of firing guns alone in his garden during his downtime, meaning that his family thought nothing of hearing ambient gunfire outside. It was only after some time had passed and “some deep groans were heard” coming from the shed that they found him lying in a pool of blood. Miraculously, Robert also survived.
Jeffrey Catherine Jones’ Unkown Muse
I am always interested in the forgotten people that stand just outside the frame in history. Naturally this makes me a sucker for things like the story of a unknown art model who helped define genre art for decades.
Zinaman wasn’t public about her modeling, but she didn’t hide it either. Her husband, Dan Green, was also a painter and an artist for DC and Marvel Comics and had used her in his own work. But, as Jones’ muse, Zinaman shows up in the work that would carry the artist from cartoonist and fantasy paperback illustrator to a revered painter in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition.
“Sandi stood the test of time, because of the untold number of photographs,” says Zaloom. “Sandi had a languid beauty...she was graceful without trying.”
From 1974-1976, Jones took hundreds of reference photos of Zinaman. This overlapped with Jones’ time as a member of The Studio (1976-1979), the fabled New York City space in the Chelsea district that she shared with Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta and Barry Windsor-Smith. Famed artist Frank Frazetta called Jones “the greatest living painter,” and fellow illustrator Roy G. Krenkel called Jones the “master of the meaningless gesture,” a commentary on the unposed, natural composition of Jones’ figures, often personified in the artist’s work with Zinaman.
“Some of these poses are definitely Sandi,” says Zaloom. “Sandi was so archetypal.”
Cardinal-Nephew
I had no idea that Pope’s used to always name family members as cardinals to the point where it had an official name.
I had no idea that “Cardinal Nephew” is where the term “nepotism” comes from.
Papal corruption always has the best stories
BRING BACK THE CARDINAL-NEPHEW
I had a good day on Halloween. It was strange and wonderful to get to the end of the day and realize that it was a good one.
Losing my dad has left a hole in my heart. I couldn't begin to explain it here. At least, I couldn't begin to explain as I stayed up late writing this on Wednesday night. He was an immense presence in my life. I will share a small thing both because I can't quite go into the whole thing but also because I don't have time to write it and then run it through the grammar checker to correct all the typos.
And I don't feel like crying more than I already am.
So, the small thing.
I generally keep a running conversation/argument in my head at all times. It's how I process things. I do not believe that anyone will be surprised to discover that I exist in a perpetual state of meditative argument, but it really does help. I find that I think more clearly when I have to explain myself to someone, even if it's just a voice in my head. That voice has always been relentless and challenging in ways that sometimes hurt but almost always help. It has always helped me to facedown that challenge and to know that I have genuinely considered any idea that I was going to shape my choices or my opinions. This process has, over time, made me a more considered and thoughtful person as I have always sought to expand my perspective to better engage in this internal dialogue.
I don't think I realized until my father passed that I was always talking to him. That I was always preparing to explain myself and my ideas to him.
On the one hand, I appreciate how he'll always be with me, but on the other hand, it just breaks my heart to know that, on some level, I'm preparing for a conversation that I'll never get to have again.
It's really hard.
But Sunday was a good day. It was Halloween, and our new house is right in the middle of a serious trick-or-treating hot spot. I have never been in a trick-or-treating hot spot before, and holy shit, it is terrific. We had something like 350 people come to the house for candy. Apparently, that's a pretty slow year. Pre-pandemic, it would be up around 500, which is an insane number.
The kids were dressed up to go out. I put on a Superman costume to hand out candy. There was so much candy and so many kids, and the entire experience just filled me with joy. It was joyful to see all these kids our trick or treating like the world is normal and good. It was joyful to see high school kids put on a lousy costume and go out to get free candy because they're still kids. It was so fun that I’m probably going to turn our house into one of THOSE Halloween houses next year just to get even more into it. I loved every minute of it.
It was impossible to be sad in the face of an ocean of joy.
My dad could not have given less of a shit about Halloween generally. But he would have loved to see all those kids in all those costumes too. I wish I could talk to him about it. I feel like I know what he would say.
There are more bad days to come, but it's really nice to know that there are good days too. I will see more of them soon.
Our Dumb World
Since I wrote something sad, there are only fun things from here on out.
WELCOME TO THE CAR CULT
I’m honestly too big for most sports cars. Too tall and broad of shoulder to have an interest in sliding down into some fancy European speed machine that looks like a snakes head. HOWEVER, there is one sports car that, if I were prepared to waste a shit ton of money, that I would buy and happily drive at dangerous speeds throughout greater King County and surrounding environs. Everyone should have a stupid car they love and this is mine.
I have driven one truly high end sports car in my life. It was my dads car. I was allowed to drive for approximately 4 minutes and then never ever allowed to drive it again.
Worth it.
Even at extralegal speeds, I realized I didn't really have to brake for corners. I boggled as the Corvette shot out of turns without so much as a stutter. When I had to brake, the Brembos held every corner in a headlock. Without even really trying, I dropped my friend in the Type R twice. The C8 ripped so hard, it shook loose lunatics from the rocks and boulders as it blew past. The only thing slowing me on the way down the hollers came out of the woods like a brightly colored hallucination.
A side-by-side apparated from the trees. I knew four-by-fours climb rocks all over those hills, but honestly, I didn't even see it drive onto the road in front of me. It was just there, rigged with neon and steered by a local giant in Realtree camo. I thought I'd have to slam on the brakes, but he knew the road well. The side-by-side leaned and rocked hard around each corner. I envisioned the phrasing of the police report I'd have to fill out: A huge man in camo cut off my Corvette, then leaned his entire massive body like an Olympic sailor from side to side until even that didn't help. The crater containing his body and the remains of the flossiest overgrown golf cart I have ever seen may be found a mile and a half below us.
Despite every law of physics, he didn't crater. When I finally found a safe stretch of road to pass him, he pumped his fist as we zipped by down the hill and out of the kind of giddy automotive wormhole only spaceships like the C8 can navigate. I heard him say "Hell yeah, brother," as we left, even if I didn't.
THE COOGEE BAY POO MYSTERY
First of all, I cannot describe how quickly and excitedly I clicked on the link titled “Coogee Bay Poo Mystery”. Second of all, As I was reading this I was absolutely infuriated that I had never heard about this story before. It’s absolutely amazing because it happened and because apparently this caused a years long media firestorm. If anything, it clearly wasn’t broadcast enough because how on earth did I miss out on these incredible headlines and articles?!?
Also, this incident has not rocketed up the list of global events that I wish we had all been on twitter for. I’m sad that the amateur detectives of reddit didn’t get a chance at this before the trail went cold.
The events of that day are still not entirely clear, but what is known is this: At some point in the evening, the Whytes complained about the price of an adult serve of gelato ($19) from the hotel’s new restaurant. In order to keep the customers happy, the hotel’s manager hand-delivered a complimentary bowl to the table.
At 6.39pm, Jessica Whyte took a bite and quickly spat it out before wiping her mouth on a serviette. There’s no other way to say it: The “chocolate” gelato wasn’t chocolate at all. It was shit. Human shit.
“There were four scoops including vanilla, chocolate and hazelnut. At the bottom, there appeared to be chocolate,” Whyte told the Sydney Morning Heraldat the time. “Greedily, I went for it ahead of the kids. Thank heavens I did. The stench, the taste … I spat the food into a napkin and immediately I was sick.”
THE PROFOUND DISRESPECT OF BLADE 2
H/T Rob Hebert
I won’t preview much of this absolutely fantastic article except to say that Blade 2 is one of the five best super hero movies of all time and I am prepared to fight people over this claim.
Oh Shit! Suuuuupeeeer ki– gawt daaaamn– Y’alll see that kick?!
Blade kicked dude so hard he Fruit Roll up’d himself.
How you kick a man so hard he lands Tony Hawk’s 900?
Fam went over the rail like a spilled drink.
Listen, if you ever get Superkicked so hard that it makes you Simone Biles in the air,
you need a new line of work. Security is not for you.
THE MACHINE OF ALABAMA
My trip into super local Alabama politics began with this amazing article detailing the electoral shenanigans associated with this years homecoming queen election. About which..
The amount of electoral rules around the homecoming election is staggering. To even have financial disclosures is kind of incredible
It was so scandalous that the winner GOT BOOED AT THE HOMECOMING GAME. That’s some really outstanding scandal.
And my trip continued with learning about The Machine. The collection of fraternities and sororities that kind of controls Alabama politics. Yes, it’s as amazing as it sounds.
Side note: I would watch the shit out of a movie detailing the first time a candidate beet The Machine for student office.
The Machine, the former Alpha Rho chapter of Theta Nu Epsilon at the University of Alabama, is a coalition of Panhellenic sororities and IFC and NPHC fraternities which formed a secret society with some degree of influence over campus and Alabama state politics. The group, which has operated in varying degrees of secrecy since 1914 (though its roots run deeper into the 19th century), is credited with selecting and ensuring the election of candidates for Student Government Association, Homecoming Queen, and other influential on-campus and off-campus offices, including the Student Government Association Senate. It was evidently first publicly noted as "a political machine" in 1928 by Alabama's campus newspaper, The Crimson White. Then in a 1945 article in the newspaper, it was referred to as "the machine", and the name has stuck ever since. It is alleged that The Machine plays a real role in both the politics of the student community and in the political careers of numerous Alabama Politicians.
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