Local tomatoes are in season here in New England.  Summer, of course, is the time to enjoy fresh, local produce of all sorts wherever you may be.  Except in Hidden Valley.

The folks at HV Food Products, makers of Hidden Valley Ranch dressings, say (in a barrage of TV commercials on the Food Network) that your vegetables aren’t “delectable” unless you slather them with sugar, MSG, and a raft a flavor enhancers and oily fats.

The company’s new campaign has the actress Jenny Garth explaining why fresh, in-season vegetables need all this, and healthy dose of calcium disodium EDTA preservative to keep them that way for — months.

Time was when an internet meme was an oddity that somehow spoke to a narrow but deep segment of like-minded people.  Those who perpetuated the meme knew that those who would appreciate it most had something wonderfully undefinable in common.  The meme was vox clamantis in deserto — for readers not in the Latin know here, a voice crying out in the wilderness — only those who understood the cry knew how to respond, or appreciate it.

Remember AYBAB2U?   This internet meme was single badly translated line of dialog from an obscure video game (Zero Wing, by equally obscure Japanese game developer Toaplan).  In the game the standard evil-lord charatacter, who here appeared to be half-machine and half-human declares forcefully (to the player) “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.”

It was right after the Y2K scare. In-the-know techies who had watched the world hold its breath in collective (and now-amusing) terror as the century-clock hit midnight gravitated toward this comical image of the dated, half-machine character threatening, wth his clumsy confidence, “all your base”.

Why open source programmers, role-playing game characters, and the internet-connected assemblage of like-minded nerds so adored, and propogated the phrase in its many forms was an inside joke, and a statement:  We are in control — clumsy and nerdy as we may be.  We somehow are going to come out on top.  All your base are belong to us, you just don’t know it yet.  By 2002, the phrase was a shibboleth for this clique, and poked into popular culture in only the most subtle and insider way.

Ah, the good old days.  Internet memes now speak to everyone, and speak the same language as mass media: reality.  The memes spread now because they are so mildly appealing to so many, not because they are so viscerally comforting to so few.

Where before the meme said “this is us” to its identity-strong propagators, the meme now says “this is what others will like” to its friend-seeking, identity-weak propagators.  Memes of real significance or meaning are drowned out with a monoculture of short-lived YouTube clips.  Maybe its just becoming to easy to pass information around — and the wrong sort of people are doing it.

Mainstream media itself, of course, has become a monoculture of reality shows.  Odd how slices of every part of reality have a stunning sameness when produced for a television network.  Baking cakes is somehow identical to driving trucks through the arctic is the same as singing Whitney Houston songs.  Like Polaroid color, reality TV casts everything it sees in an eerie same-tone.

Susan Boyle, a chubby, unassuming, and unattractive person with little charisma got on a reality-show stage to snickers — and , famously (for the moment) belted out songs with confidence and some talent.  Then transforms back into a frog when done singing.  The oddity stands out in a monotony of Idol-singing, and so becomes wildly popular.

And, as is the case these days, existing popularity drives the internet memes of the moment.  Enter Lin Yu Chun, a chubby, unassuming, and unattractive person with little charisma who belts out songs (karaoke standards really) on a reality show with some talent.  He’s rather weird looking, and from Taiwan.  And he is dressed suspiciously like Susan Boyle — just add a bow tie.  As if it were necessary, he is usually called “The Taiwanese Susan Boyle”, and became known to American audiences as a nascent internet meme via YouTube.

But the mainstream US media can’t let well enough (or bad enough) alone.  Its not enough that Comcast and other US media companies want to control both the speed and the content of the internet, they also want to control the personality of the internet by drowning interesting would-be memes with manufactured junk-memes.  Like having this Lin-Yu-Chun-the-Taiwanese-Susan-Boyle sing a duet of “I Will Always Love You” with William Shatner on America’s “Lopez Tonight” show.  In the style of Whitney Houston.  With odd looks tender looks at one another that seem designed to entice bloggers to suggest a gay element to the duet. Seriously.  (Lin’s Wikipedia entry, suspected of being a shill written by media interests, is under consideration for deletion.  It may still be here.)

Of course the Lin-Shatner video being posted and reposted, sweeping through social networks and the internet itself like the virus it is, killing any evolving items that would have naturally moved to the top in due time.  There no floating to the top anymore, no natural evolution of odd and compelling ideas.  Just intentionally-created junk-meme catnip (crack?) like this.

If you haven’t seen it, unfortunately, here it is.

His writing is something to savor and enjoy, paragraph by paragraph, as you move from the subject he is ostensibly writing about, to all manner of related history, personal asides, and truths of life and culture.

Aldo Buzzi (pronounced “Boot-see”) is an urbane raconteur whose slim, brilliant volumes are mostly available only in Italian.  His books are sometimes classified — as booksellers and marketers are wont to do — as “food writing” or “travel writing”, but the brilliance of the prose — witty, arch, breezily erudite, and very funny — winds up transcending these genres.

Three have been translated into English: The Perfect Egg in 2005, (L’uovo alla kok, 1979), Journey to the Land of the Flies in 1996 (Viaggio in Terra de mosche e altri viaggi, 1994), and A Weakness for Almost Everything in 2006 (Un debole per quasi tutto, 2006) .

Oddly, and inspirationally, Buzzi’s wrote his first book, Quando la pantera rugge, at age 62.  He was first published in English when the New Yorker magazine ran his (long) short story Chekov in Sondrio in 1992.  Buzzi was then 82.

For the first 60 years of his life, Buzzi was set designer, costume designer, and, occasionally, on the scriptwriting team for various movies, mostly with director Alberto Latuada, and, early on, with Federico Fellini.  Trying to find the rather obscure films on which he has writing credit, most notably (if you are an Italian film buff) L’imprevisto (The Unexpected, 1961), is impossible in the US.

The reportedly quirky documentary he directed and co-wrote, America Pagana (1995) promises “a mystical journey to the land of the feathered serpent” — Mayan Mexico.  [If any reader has access to a copy of this documentary, please e-mail me.]

Aldo Buzzi passed away last October (2009) at age 99.  In Parliamo d’Altro he wrote:

“Quello che si prova a 95 anni è quello che si provava anni fa a 85. E quello che si proverà, fra un po’ d’anni, a 105″

“What we try to do at age 95, is what we tried to do at age 85, and what we will be trying to do, a few years later, at age 105.”

Along with a body of marvelous writing, a memorable lesson:  Success is no impediment to trying again.

In Boston, its the Term Sheet

I’ve never been a fan of posts that are largely repost of writing done elsewhere, but in this case …

A post by Roman Stanek, on TechCrunch.  He’s talking about Europe, but in so many cases its about start-ups anywhere (including certainly Boston) where the desire to score big financially is the overriding — and often only — goal.  A real desire to deliver a great product or service usually has a better result.

“My problem with the European startup ecosystem is somewhere else. I actually believe that it bears some signs of a Cargo Cult. Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors.

The best known examples of Cargo Cults come from some Pacific islands during World War II. The American airfields and their personnel brought relative prosperity and modernity to the island people, but once the war was over the Americans took their planes and equipment and left. The local people wanted to bring the prosperity back but they did not understand the substance of why the Americans came there. They only saw the form. And so the locals crafted wooden headphones, lit fires to light up runways and tried to attract back the planes with canned food and other useful goods by emulating airfield traffic.

Something similar happens in the startup community in Europe these days. People start companies, write business plans, meet with investors, talk about term sheets and exits. But in reality most Europeans don’t actually understand the substance of the system—the business plans are wooden headphones and term sheets are fabricated control towers. Repeating the form of US-based startups without a real understanding of how much the deep and complex ecosystem of Silicon Valley contributes to the success of VC-funded US startups won’t bring prosperity to companies coming from Europe.”

This Friday night, the day after Michael Jackson died, I was waiting in front of Back Bay station for about a half hour. Enough cars passed playing Michael Jackson’s music — I can probably just call him “Michael” for the remainder of the article — that the survey of his music was uninterrupted. Many Boston radio stations were playing nothing else. At the park in front of the Copley mall, there is a loud and enthusiastic sing-along to to the sound-snippets driving by: Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, The Girl Is Mine, Billie Jean, Beat It, and Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin, and Thriller. People are moonwalking and doing that vampire dance.

I’m waiting for Wesley Morris, a writer for the Boston Globe who has been at work very late writing a piece about Michael’s relationship to race for the Sunday paper. A lot of writers at the Globe are writing a lot of articles prompted by Michael death. There’s a lot to write. As we walk down Dartmouth street, we’re talking about his article. How does his transformation reflect his and others attitudes toward race? And some other issues I didn’t quite get.

From behind us, a young woman, who is white, has overheard part of our conversation and confronts us. “Well, it doesn’t matter if he’s black or white. That shouldn’t come into it.” I don’t know exactly what she’s responding to (because I’ve also been listening to I Want you Back playing from a passing car) but she’s upset. And she looking at us. And approaching. And continuing, “That’s all people want to talk about, is plastic surgery, and kids sleepover, and all that. And its just not right because he gave us so much.” Her date, it may even be a first date, is plainly embarrassed.

I’m struck — and so is Wesley — by how very wrong it is to think we are doing anything but celebrating Michael tonight. “It made me really mad how all the news clips are of child molestation case and all that.” Wesley is quickly commiserating. “I heard the news channels couldn’t get the rights to play music clips. So they keep playing those old child molestation court case clips.” “Oh yes, fair use, they can only play 12 seconds of the video,” I offer. I need to say something.

Her face becomes more incredulous and irritated. Now she’s glaring at me. “Are you a lawyer?” A lawyer who is disrespecting Michael Jackson — is there anything worse. “No,” I may be stammering at this point, “we work for … a media company.” “Oh really?!” This is really too much for her. Did we spend all day running child molestation clips? I continue, “the Boston Globe,” as in, not-the-tv-news. She softens a bit. “It such a tragedy,” I offer. And I mean it.

So many of us spent our adult years distancing ourselves from the man who was the soundtrack to our childhood and adolescence. He gave us our MTV after school, our summer vacations, our prom, our times with our lifelong friends, our weddings, our nostalgia, and still most Saturday nights. And we questioned him, we mocked him, we laughed meanly when the New York Post shouted “Wacko-Jacko”. All at once, we all somehow know this is our time to sing along stand up for him. Even her date felt the need to step up. “They’ll never be another talent like him.” She looked up at him, and away from us. I think he’ll do alright tonight.

I’m feeling — I think we all are — the power to forgive, to absolve, to celebrate.

Pho Republique was not playing Michael Jackson music. They were playing Bob Marley. Our waiter apologized almost immediately. “We’ve been playing Michael Jackson music all night, and I just started getting so sad because … well its so terrible what happened. This seemed like the right thing to play now.” Maybe we came in at just the right time, but as I was scanning the menu, it became clear our waiter is a prophet. Bob Marley is explaining:

In the Back Bay, we’ve been singing them all night.

There’s a bit less smiling going on these days, and it seems our taste for cuteness has also gone sour.

Fluffy and playful, the internet’s LOLCats spent the holidays posing for staged photos on the living room floor, mangling toilet paper rolls and the English language. Now copies of the doe-eyed holiday book “I Can Haz Cheeseburger“ fills Borders bargain-bin at $1.98 begging you to it home.

Stocks are down, and we’re taking it out on the kitty. Enter “Fuck You, Penguin“. A site that unleashes accusatory vitriol on animals we used to think were cute.

Gazelles are “desperate for affection”, the endangered booby a “blue-footed sleaze”, and “overhyped” cranes are “the mortgage-backed securities of the animal world”. In general these animals all conspire to use mindless cuteness to annoy and endanger humans “hop by excruciating hop.”

The creator of the site, a Boston writer who goes by the name of bza, tells me he is under contract to Random House to produce a “F*** You, Penguin” book, using mostly material from the web site, for publication in Fall 2009. If two points make a line, then Cute Overload makes it a trend. Cute Overload tries to be sick of fluffy kitties, F-U-P succeeds — and is much funnier.

Both sites are becoming hugely popular. As of today, F-U Penguin has 11,700 fans on Facebook, about 5000 Twitter followers, and shows strong page visit growth in Alexa.

Look for the book to be a recession best-seller this Christmas.

The most popular children’s show in Gaza has a bouncy xylophone-driven soundtrack, but bunnies and other fluffy-fun lead-characters are dying more gruesomely and frequently than on the Sopranos.

The latest casualty is Assud the Bunny, a six-foot-tall smiling pink rabbit with big ears and a dancy gait who wants to “finish off the Jews and eat them“. After a year of teaching numbers, the alphabet, and a bit of debatable Middle East history, Assud the Bunny threw himself in front of an Israeli missile in his final episode yesterday. On his deathbed he invited a little girl in a headscarf to “remember him as a martyr.”

Assud the Bunny is no stranger to tragedy. He took over as host of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” from his cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who was martyred in February 2008 by starving himself to death in front of millions of adoring viewers and his improbably human on-screen family.

Nahoul the Bee hosted the show for seven months, teaching children, among other things, how to annoy cats by swinging them around by the tail and letting go, and how to rile lions in the Gaza zoo by pelting them with stones.

The first host of the show was Farfour the Mouse, who encouraged children to drink milk and listen to their parents. Farfour also led youngsters on the show in songs about the AK-47 and led in an accompanying dance that included shouldering and firing motions with imaginary rifles.

In his final episode (June 2007), Farfour the Mouse was quite graphically punched/stabbed by actors playing Israeli officials. A young teenage girl appears afterwards and gives a martyr’s eulogy that is part teen-fan and part peer-encouragement.

But its not all fun and games at Gaza children’s television.

After “Tommorrow’s Pioneers,” a stark panel discussion is on. The “panel” is of children ages 9 to 13, and the show is hosted by a calm and smiling adult questioner. He asks questions of the children:

Host: “Do you think its natural to … blow your self up?”
Sabrine (age 17, by phone): “Yes! It’s our right!”

Host: “Martyrdom. Do you think it’s a beautiful thing?”
Walla (age 11, at table): “Yes it’s a beautiful thing. Who wouldn’t yearn for paradise?”

Host: “Would you agree with that?”
Yussra (age 11, at table): “Palestinian youth are not like other youth … they choose martyrdom.”

The children respond in a uniformly excited smiling manner, eager to please the questioner.

Even Fatah (the Palestinian party that control the West Bank of Palestine) has condemned these programs — especially the latter talk show (if parroting dogma can be called talking) that is so obviously and explicitly designed to cause children to believe life is simply an opportunity for a useful death.

Useful to Hamas, that is.

Samian is a popular (if you are in Québec) Algonquin-language rapper, who blends the themes of “first nations” (indiginous peoples) issues into his music.

The music is great, his message is important and unique. His music videos have often been, well, terrible. Finally, a very good video worthy of his music and message.

link: Samian’s bio from Voir Québec (French)

Each year, for Christmas, my mother makes rosettes. Rosettes have only 5 ingredients, yet they are nearly impossible to make. The recipe (if there were a standard one) is different for each particular oven. Timing when combining and mixing the ingredients is so critical that a single minute in either direction before cooking can result in collapsed, inedible discs after cooking.

Even if you manage them to bake the rosettes correctly (congratulations), frosting the cookies is another gauntlet. Frost too early, and the hot cookie will ruinously liquify the frosting. Frost too late, and the cold, hardened frosting will rip the cookie apart as you spread. About 30 seconds separates these two states, so make sure to frost each cookie as it comes out of the oven individually. What fun!

Additionally, the process often fails, partially or completely, for no discernible reason. Witness my 10-year-old niece (the assistant cook) crying over a suddenly and inexplicably gluified mass that cannot be extracted from the mixing bowl.

In short, rosettes are the perfect holiday cookie.

Growing up in our small Italian-immigrant community, I had always believed the traditional set of holiday cookies (wand, pizzelle, dischi, rosettes, taralle …) were the pinnacle of taste and artistry in Italian baking. It seemed that, as such, these marvels of taste-as-pleasure should be enjoyed at most once a year (imagine you are Catholic and this might make sense).

Now I know the truth. The rosettes, for example, are good but are simply one cookie-type. There are certainly many easier-to-make, better-tasting, and festive Italian cookies that come out wonderfully for the first-time maker. Why make rosettes, wand, dischi, and the other half-dozen Italian-American Christmas traditionals?

Making rosettes is a yearly trial for even the most experienced cook. It took my mother (a rosette expert) two discarded batches this Christmas to produce an acceptable third batch of rosettes. The first was destroyed by the Northeastern ice storm that cut her electricity in mid-bake. A few days later, the second batch was flattened by a forced substitution of butter for margarine due to closed roads between her and the supermarket. (butter can collapse the rosettes)

Ok. Why even try? Isn’t there a toll house recipe somewhere on the Food Network web site?

Each Italian woman in my family (or naturalized-Italian wife) has a specific cookie she makes every year. In most cases the same cookie her mother (or mother-in-law) made. The arcane subtlety of preparation that results in an acceptable cookie is passed down from mother to daughter through years of pre-adolescent cookie-bonding in the kitchen.

The tradition is the desired result, the cookie is a side-effect.

With this in mind, I give you a full year to try to master the rosette. My mother’s recipe is below, with her quite valuable but certainly incomplete advice unedited in parentheses.

Ironically, the most colossal failures provide the best memories. Who can forget the 2001 rosettes when she accidentally added salt instead of sugar. Miraculously the right shape, a few rosettes were grabbed by 6-year-old Sarah before anyone else could taste them. Every year, we do an impressions of little Sarah’s shocked face: “Aaack! They don’t taste right!”

Brave readers, let us know how you do.

Rosettes

3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tbsp vanilla (some people use anise)
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine (don’t use butter)

mix to medium softness
shape into balls (use a spoon and flour your hands)
place on a greased sheet pan
bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes

frosting
mix confectioners sugar and milk. keep a fairly stiff consistency. dip or spread (and add sprinkles immediately or frosting will harden).

Since the election of Barak Obama, a new dividing point in the ever-shortening “eras” we have in our lifetime has been placed. We now have “pre-Obama” and “post-Obama” social eras. The last era-marker , of course, was 9/11. The world at that moment became divided into “pre-9/11″ and “post-9/11″ eras.

Yet some people are remarkably immune to changing eras or “change” or any kind (Obaman or otherwise).

I flew to Philadelphia for the Thanksgiving holiday last week. The airport is a marvelous place to see living history. The fat, white, suit-clad, upper-management men, moving through the airport with a multitude of large suitcases in wheeled tow (somewhat like a planetoid moving through space with orbiting satellites) hearkens back to our pre-9/11 period.

Once they were a sign of prestige: the Pierre Cardin suitcases, the ballooning 3-piece suit, the bloated rosy face, the emaciated wife, the financial industry position, the third home. In this era, they are grossly tacky.

But not everyone can change, so they remain, and they continue through the airport, too fat, too white, and with far too much baggage.