The Tin Lizard

Tempest In A Teacup

In the annals (or is that anals?) of the trivial,* surely this column about preventing your teabag tag from falling in your cup merits some sort of award.

The writer, John Kelly, wrote an earlier column about some of life's very minor annoyances, mentioning this among them:

"I hate it when I’m making tea and I pour hot water into my mug and the force of the water disrupts the tea bag so much that the little paper tag at the end of the string — which I have carefully positioned outside the rim —  is yanked into the mug and ends up floating there like a man overboard."

So OK, a little whimsy now and then isn't a bad thing.  And I magnanimously assume Kelly, who seems ot have a functioning brain capable of getting him to work every day and holding down a job as a newspaper columnist, is referring only to those very occasional times when he forgets to do the obvious, i.e. to hold onto the tag while he's pouring the water.  (Mars to humans: Alternate solution: put the teabag in after you pour?)

But maybe not, because apparently, many readers wrote in to share their ingenious (or is that ungenius?) ways of dealing with this "problem."  

My question:  Seriously?

My other question:  Are any of these folks thinking of running for Congress? Maybe as tea party candidates?

 

*Disclaimer:  Fear not, loyal readers, the irony of critiquing triviality, when "The Tin Lizard" itself thrives on the trivial, is not lost on the Liz.  Read this as commentary on the futility of the human condition, but not on the futility of trivia itself (themselves). 

 

The Catcher's Calls

I'm not by any means a big sports fan, and of all games I might occasionally watch, baseball is probably near the bottom of the list.  But occasionally, some sports news comes along, even in baseball, that is absolutely fascinating.  This one about the role of the catcher in "calling" the game, and the immense difference it can make, is one such.

Food You Can't Eat, And Other Cockamamie Peculinarities

Dagwood became a household name not just because he was Blondie's husband (note that she got the billing in the title of the strip) but because of the eponymous skyscraper-stack sandwiches he purports to enjoy.  Well, that was a comic, so nobody every really thought Dagwood's dagwoods could be eaten - how could anybody possibly wrap their mouth around them?

But get a load of the "people's burger" dreamed up by some gang of idle food writers at the Washington Post:  They took an idiotic concept (selecting the most-popular element from each of a dozen burgers from different restaurants and combining them into one burger) and made it sillier still by stacking the thing a foot high and making it impossible to eat.  (They claim they did; I remain unconvinced.)  Well, all in fun, I guess.  At least I didn't pay for it.

Many restaurants, though, have also got into the game of impractically large, difficult-if-not-impossible-to-eat sandwiches.  And then I do mind, because I'm paying for something I'm not getting -- an edible meal.   Burger, defined: bun, meat, maybe a bit of lettuce or onion, a condiment or two, and no higher than 2.5 inches. 

I'm also highly suspicious of those gargantuan preparations you occassionally see prepared for some commemorative event:  The 50,000-egg omelette, for example, or the cherry pie that's a half-mile across.  Granted, these aren't meant to be eaten as a single serving, but the problem here, I feel sure, is that something that huge is surely very bad food - a cheesecake that's raw in the middle, or a cake that's pieced together from thousands of individual, separately cooked pieces of cake.  No thanks. 

Upgrading Snakeheadhood

I thought this column by John Kelly about the invasive snakehead fish getting a PR makeover was very amusing.

There are some grains of truth here, too: 

The snakehead invasion seems to be centered on the mid-Atlantic coast, but what part of the country these days ISN'T threatened by some new invasive fish or shellfish?  Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, sea urchins on the west coast, and Asian carp making their way up the Mississippi into the Great lakes.

It's been suggested that if we all learn to relish snakehead as an edible fish (and after all, it's here because the Chinese consider it so), mankind could quickly reduce its numbers and bring it close to extinction, as we have so many other breeds.  (BTW, I've heard that enterprising folks in the midwest are doing exactly that with the Asian carp, catching them, freezing them, and selling them back to Asia!).

It's quintessentially American to suppose that a makeover and a renaming can turn a bad reputation around.  And it may be true:  think of that firm that was providing (or not providing) security for diplomatic posts overseas - Blackwater something? - they changed their name and no one bothers them any longer.  Florida Air, after that terrible crash.  Maybe you don't even have to have a checkered past; maybe you just want a fresh start.  Do you ever wonder where that "new" insurance company, Elephant, came from, full blown and rich enough to saturate television with commercials?  I personally suspect a name change, though I haven't looked into it.  So why can't a snakehead dream of a better future?

Upscaling Ethnic Food

It used to be that certain cuisines were usually considered expensive, or special. and such places commanded premium prices.  Among the "fancy" places were American steak houses, French restaurants, Japanese, and many Italian locales (though not the pizza joints). 

Until very recently, however, many other cuisines, including those of most of Asia and Africa, as well as eastern Europe and Slavic, were generally bargain places, serving traditional food at moderate prices. 

Some of the older "ethnic" family places that we knew 30 years ago have melted away like the world's glaciers - slowly but inexorably - as their chefs, owners and operators graduated from immigrant status and their kids moved on to higher callings.  Thus, for example, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, or Slovak places have all pretty much disappeared from our Washington area streets, although they used to be well represented.

There is a Serbian place, though, and it perfectly illustrates a growing trend toward upscaling the formerly humble ethnic fare.  Beyond Europe, there remain lots of bargain-priced Asian, Middle Eastern, and African restaurants, but they are increasingly being joined by pricier, more "refined" versions of themselves.  If you want expensive Greek, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Thai, or certain others, there are places around the area for you (try Nostos, Me Jana, Present, or the excessively precious Little Serow).

We've tried most of them but they share a few characteristics we aren't wild about (besides the higher prices):  Generally they offer only a reduced selection of dishes from the home cuisine, the food is rarely any better than what can be had at half the price, and portions tend to be smaller.

No doubt the upside of the trend is that restaurateurs find it much easier to make a reasonable profit (and why indeed, shouldn't they?).  We diners, in major urban areas at least, have been spoiled by the lower prices.  Yet if the food itself isn't much better, I'll continue to look for the low-cost alternative.

 

Fixing Monuments

Rachel Manteuffel, a Washington Post staffer who some months ago broke the story about the Washington DC monument to Martin Luther King with the bowdlerized quote, tried for a follow-up hit this week, searching out several other monuments that she thought needed to be fixed. 

The ones she places in that category, however, while interesting to read about, just don't measure up on the error scale to the MLK case.   Mostly, these choices are just quirky, or look odd from a certain angle, or have fallen afoul of changing societal norms -- nothing to raise eyebrows a hundred years ago when they were conceived and erected, but a bit shocking to modern-day viewers when we are confronted with how things used to be.  

But they don't need "fixing."  The MLK monument did, because it was factually incorrect.

In the monument business, as in others, it seems to me that it's a waste of time and money to fix something that "ain't broke."  Luckily, most of these B-list monuments will ultimately disappear without ever needing expensive corrections.  They'll be removed over time to moulder in some used-monument yard in Alabama or Colorado, with no one the wiser.

Manteuffel's story does raise one interesting point:  Several of these monuments appear to have been proposed/ordered/designed/erected not by any civic authority, but simply by some private individual or business, probably on the basis that they offered to pay for it.  (The "Temperance Fountain" which I've never seen, is a notable case.)   Accepting gifts from private patrons is probably not, in my view, the best way to decide who or what gets memorialized. 

 

Amusing Verbal And Other Blunders

I've always been a fan of the little missteps we make in the use of language.  They can be amusingly nonsensical.  A few recent ones I noted:

Local news reporter:  "In a tragic accident during the storms yesterday, a man was killed by a fallen tree." (Morning Fog says, just because they're down, don't assume they're out.)

On-the-spot interview:  "Next thing I knew, I woke up in an ambulance, having a heart attack!"   (Morning Fog says this just proves that ambulances can be dangerous - stay out of them if you're not having a medical emergency.)

National Geographic Society Museum promotional ad:  "Kids are just $5 on Mondays."  (Morning Fog doesn't want one even at that price, but many people will consider this a bargain.)

It's not just language that can trip us up.  Last week on a map intended to locate Waynesville, Missouri for its viewers, ABC News showed Oklahoma directly west of Missouri - where Kansas used to be!  (Morning Fog assumes that the flooding must have floated the entire state of Oklahoma into its new location.)