The Park City Irregular

Occasional humor and scathing insight from this guy.

Nowadays, if you know which end of a spatula to grab, you can have a TV cooking show. They are proliferating like Charlie Sheen transgressions: a new one every day, it seems. Herewith, the PCI take on the best … and wurst.

Of course, I start at the bottom. As a disclaimer, I realize that all of these kitchen doyens (and doyennes) can cook better than I. I can also outshoot Shaq at the charity stripe, but that is something else again.

Emeril Lagasse has become a parody of himself. Back when his head was of a normal size, it seemed that he knew what he was doing. He was fresh, brash and full of boundless energy. He introduced the “BAM!” thingie, much to our delight. On the distaff side, he has uttered this onomatopoetic stinger approximately 398,642 times since then. Or so.

Now, he has become more of a ballooned, self-absorbed raconteur, with a live band (why?) and adoring gaggles of Stepford descendants in the crowd. And umpteen wannabe chefs backstage doing the actual cooking.

Speaking of large noggins, look at Giada De Laurentiis. This, of course, is her mother's surname, but when your gramps was a hot-shot movie producer responsible for making Fellini popular, you go with it.

I can't get past the eternal smile. Is she always that happy? Is there a coat hanger stuck in her yap? And must she slip into dialect when pronouncing every Italian term?

I do get a kick out of Alton Brown—who is really more of a comic actor-cum-food scientist than he is a cook. Some of his skits make me titter, while others seem more than little contrivances to keep him out of the kitchen. And I've never heard another highly paid professional (even NBA players) say “uh” more times per sentence.

Speaking of language, TV hashslingers have a new form of the future tense, the “imgonnagoaheadand.”

As in, “I'm gonna go ahead and deglaze that pan.” Just a thought, but howsabout just saying, “I'll...”?

Part Martha Stewart, part Charo amalgam Rachel Ray is just too easy a target. Luckily, a brilliant scribe, my good friend Bucky Hilts, has gone ahead and dished up the ultimate parody, “Every Freaking Day with Rachel Ray,” a biting, hilarious send-up done in magazine format. See my link to the book later on.

I do NOT need to hear from any chef the shopworn, “If you wouldn't drink the wine, don't cook with it.” Enough, already. Who buys wine they can't drink?

Ditto this: Your dishes are not “simple.” This term is as rampant on cooking shows as Gary Glitter is at college hoop games. No, Pierre, when you trot out a mise-en-place of 14 ingredients, including demi-glace (which all of us happen to have kicking around our larders) and a dozen apostles on staff, this is anything but simple.

I admire the techniques and provenance of Jacques Pepin. However, I must watch his offerings using subtitles. In fact, with his francocense-and-myrrh delivery, the captions should be automatic. I've been called every liberal epithet from brie-head to pantywaist, yet I opine that after 52 years in the U. S., M. Pepin could have learned a soupçon of English.

Mark Bittman doesn't do too much TV anymore, but you can catch him on the Times website, doing pithy, easy comestibles. I like his breezy style and endearing self-effacement.

I can also get through “America's Test Kitchen,” if for the reason that the talking heads show mistakes they've made … and how they arrived at the best version of a dish. The downside: Wan, bowtied majordomo Chris Kimball is the “Ascetic, Erect Yankee” from central casting. He's the type of guy who needs to get a suntan, if just once in his life.

I get the feeling that Mario Batali can actually cook. And I don't care about the orange Crocs.

Tony Bourdain cracks me up, the epitome of snarkiness (okay, birds of a feather …). But he rarely cooks. Still, “No Reservations” bites off a slew of megs on my DVR.

I avoid the competitive shows. Except of course, for the original Nippon version of “Iron Chef.” which is corny enough to make me watch occasionally. It only follows that Yanks have taken the show and made it serious, glacier swift and somnambulent with grim, self-important judges and your host, uh, Mr. Alton, uh, Brown.

“Chopped” exists to humiliate contestants. The premise is puerile and unworkable. Would-be winners must execute—quelle rapide—dishes using preselected ingredients that only a Venusian eatery would serve. You get, say, pork belly, macaroons, caviar and kiwi—now make something edible out of them. The judges make R. Lee Ermey look compassionate, ya jackwagons.

My three favorites all happen to be women of size—and rightly so.

“Two Fat Ladies” ran for but 24 shows in the late 90s. Co-host Jennifer Patterson passed in 1998. But she drove a big motorcycle (with pard Clarissa Dickson Wright in the sidecar) and wasn't above ducking out of the kitchen to toke on a Woodbine. Okay, every dish contained clotted cream and bricks of butter, but I love their Anglicisms and down-to-earth style.

Lydia Mattichio Bastianich is my all-time fave. It looks like she is cooking in an actual kitchen. Hey Lagasse, bone a chicken live the way she does. Most of all, her recipes are easily followed and she truly appears to love what she's doing. She's the only chef, I believe, who actually invites viewers into her kitchen. And that is a good thing.

Enough already. I'm getting hungry. Hmmm, duck confit with a side of cornichons and whole-grain mustard? Or ramen?

Bon appétit, Julia.

You reek of cannabis and patchouli. Tie-dye is not retro. You can make a man-skirt out of a pair of jeans. You don't like music. You must be a Grateful Dead fan!

I'm trying hard to think of a band that is more guilty of earslaughter than these drug-addled Bay Area fossils. Yet, I have not met more ardent fans than Deadheads. If the Bay City Rollers had support like this, they'd still be the greatest band in the world.

And there are no other fans who will get more offended if you happen not to like 98-minute, meandering jams; horrendous vocals, and grooves that have as much backbone as Glenn Beck.

I have tried to play it casually with Dead fans. This gets dicey, especially with the death of the juke box. Down at the Sons of Sweden, a local private club that has made the mistake of endowing me with a lifetime membership, the iPod rules, so I get to hear extended Dead mixes, all of them marked by an overwhelming feeling of inertia.

Back when you slipped dimes (!) into the juke, you could evade this ennui. This is because the GD has sold exactly 2,349 albums since they started in 1942, or whenever. Instead, Hophead Harry has a bootleg from the July 27, 1982 show in Mokena, Illinois. Who need records?

Plus, I have the blessing/curse of having made a living in the music business for some years. I'm just a drummer, but at least I get to hang around with musicians. And the more I learned about music—especially theory—the less I liked the Dead. Their idea of music theory is that there is none. Why tune up when your audience is smoking doobs the size of Wiffle Bats? Ask any professional musician what s/he thinks of the GD. Then be prepared to run.

I have two favorite Deadhead jokes:

1. Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton are captured by cannibals one day. Before they are about to be cooked for dinner they are granted one final wish. Jerry says "Hand me my old guitar and let me play Dark Star one last time." Eric says, "Please kill me before he starts".

2 Q: “What did the two Deadheads say when they ran out of pot?”

A: “This band sucks.”

I have often been subjected to subconscious Deading. Once, I was at a bar and “Good Lovin'” came on the jukebox. I groaned and asked the bartender who was butchering this song. Before he could answer three or four Deadiots were reading me my rights. “You just don't know music, man.”

Another time I was on holidays at the Cape with a few buds. After dinner, some of us went our separate ways, and we agreed to meet up at a club our waitress had recommended for live music. I got there just as the band was starting. Or were they? I wasn't sure if they were sound-checking, warming up or just noodling. Then the cacophony finally stopped and people applauded. Next, the group launched into a second warmup. I am not kidding. Of course, I didn't recognize the “music.”

I went up to the barkeep and asked him when the band was going to actually start playing. I got a cold Corona and an icy glare with his comment: “You're listening to the best Dead cover band on the Cape.” There's more than one? Yes, I actually sat there and listened to this garbage for about half an hour.

And people try to dance to it! There's no rhythm, no “one.” So you twirl and sway and throw your hands about like you're a dervish from Kaboulistan or somesuch place. And this is fun?

A local lawyer once threatened to take me to a GD show in upstate New York. He was actually begging me (Deadheads are proselytizers on the scale of televangelists). I said, “Okay, but you have to pay every cent of my fare.” When I mentioned that I don't do drugs, the mouthpiece looked chagrined. Then he sealed the deal by using “Grateful Dead” and “camping” in the same sentence. Give me a root canal and Helen Reddy.

I've lucky enough to have been in some pretty good bands; I've seen many great acts. Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, James Brown, Chicago (when they were still hungry, before they became the Peter Cetera Vapid Balladeers), Squeeze, Poco, The Beach Boys (in their Surf's Up heyday), Tower of Power (umpteen times), Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Hendrix, Joplin, et al.

I once saw Earth Wind & Fire at Fairfield U. on a weeknight. Somehow all fifteen of the black students there convinced the powers that be to book something a little more soulful than A Flock of Seagulls. There were perhaps 400 people in Alumni Hall. The band came out and threw it down: two hours of stoned soul picnicking, the members sweating, grunting and groaning as if they were playing a packed Garden party.

That, to me, is real music.

What bothers me most is how the GD have corrupted people. I saw the younger brother of a good friend ruin his life as a teen by leaving home to follow this band around. The lad isn't with us anymore. Auto crash with drugged up guy at the wheel. Sugar Magnolia, my ass.

To be fair, there are good musicians who get it. A couple of weeks ago, I was treated to a wonderful evening of pickin' and grinnin', from the FairCo-based, Irish-tinged band Once Removed. Fronted by the eminently humorous, Guinness-infused wit and wisdom of Pat Speer, the band has two excellent guitarists: John Hurley and Pete Blossom. With my bud-for-life T-Bone Stone on keys welding it together, this band can bring it—even without a drummer.

After the gig, I met up with some of the guys. I complimented Mr. Hurley on some of the incendiary trade-offs he'd been playing with Blossom. John said, “You know, Ace, some of those tunes were by the Dead.”

I said,: “I couldn't tell. You were playing them in tune.”

Bring it on. This one's gonna get ugly.

BRIEFS AND SHORTS

I discovered the other night that Stars Wars and The Joy of Painting have a connection. You can watch either series, not really knowing whether you've seen that episode before.

How much can we Yanks mangle other languages? I saw a commercial where the voiceover said, “To contact the Le Cordon Bleu school of Cooking ...” This is right up there with “roast beef with au jus sauce.”

You've missed three episodes of “Justified” on FX. It's some of the best drama on the tube, er, plasma. I guess you can't go wrong when you base a series on an Elmore Leonard story.

If you're in Black Rock, consider the chili dog at Matty's Corner. A succulent memory at $2.50.

I was at a Fairfield U. game at The Arena and asked a fan, “When does the varsity start?”

I once met a woman from Fairfield who was very concerned when Bob's Stores opened up where the Grand Union used to be. “I'm worried it's going to attract a bad element.” I told her that they were going to replace Duchess with a Popeye's Chicken and she about swooned in her Weejuns.

More snark next week, I hope, a year older for me and only a smidgen wiser.

Simply put: What is up with this school, its athletic programs and the undying devotion of zillions of unwashed Nutmeggers?

You've got flannel-shirt types cheering on the football team. "We went to a bowl game." [Aside: How nauseating is this first-person-plural addiction when fans refer to teams?]. Yeah UConn—not you—went to the Flushing Bowl or whatever ... and got shellacked by Oklahoma.

The women's basketball team is perhaps one of the best in history. Much of this is due to the fact that there are only about a half-dozen teams that can compete with the Huskyettes. It's chop sides, as we used to say at Ellsworth field. Put Mike Tyson against Steven Colbert in a back alley.

Go up to a blue-haired fan and ask her to name the starting five.

Face it, if Geno went to the WNBA and recruiting fell off, resulting in—heaven forbid!—losses, the XL center would have as many empty seats as a Fitty concert in Darien.

Once I got into the glue with an ardent UConn adherent at—of course—an adult-beverage establishment. UConn v. 'Nova on the tube, and I am avidly boosting the Wildcats.

The guy got in my grill and said, "How come you're rooting for Villanova?"

In such cases, I love to fracture the truth. I said, "Because I hate UConn."

"Oh yeah? Where you live?"

"Bridgeport."

"Then you can't hate UConn!"

"Oh, when it comes to sports, I can hate any team or player I wish. Now, where did you go to school?"

"Duh, I went to Coastal Iowa A&T. But I love UConn."

"Then you should have gone to school there. Look a UConn player just stole a laptop from a beat writer!"

By now Villanova is winning, and I am celebrating, despite glowers from the hoi polloi. My adversary primed for one last parting shot. "So where did you go to school, douchebag?"

"Villanova," I said. The guy had no comeback except to move to another seat on the rail and do three or four quick Jaegers.

When was the last time you ever heard a smidgen of a comment about UConn's academic programs? It's all about sports. That's why so many kids from New Jersey want to go to Storrs. By the by, it seems to be a rule that every September most of Jersey leaves the Shore to go to college elsewhere.

Look, our state university has had some success in sports.

That doesn't mean that "we" are a part of it.

Thanks for reading the first PCI. More uncensored scribbling to come.