Fatty BoomBatty

The picture at right is just the September issue of Vogue. I was going to take a picture of all the September mags but they wouldn't fit in frame. And I don't even really go in for the Elles and Marie Claires and Vanity Fairs of the world, but even Real Simple and T Style (that's the New York Times adver-tacular, yo) and the two-week, food-focused (and still adver-tacular) New Yorker made for a big fat offering, perfect for stying inside with and flipping through on a steamy Labor Day weekend. Actually, Vogue is the one I haven't gotten to yet--it's too goddamn big to take with me on planes and trains.

I don't know that any of them are particularly revelatory (though I thought The New Yorker's article on counterfeit antique wines was awesome, but then, I would), but I just never get tired of patent leather mary janes and heather grey sweaters. Every year they bust them out like it's the new new thing, and it's so great, because there's nothing new about it; it's all in my closet anyway.

There are always new fun things though. I'm coveting a nice pencil skirt



and also a classy, Hepburn-esque short, swingy jacket

and just for the hell of it, something sparkly. I don't even know where I'd where it--except maybe Vegas, and lord knows I'm always looking for an excuse to go--but it just looks so slick and cool.

Yup, I love me some fall. Now if the temp would just drop below 80. . .

It is awesome being engaged.

If You Can't Stand the Heat. . .

How much longer can the celebrity chef craze last? When is one more celebrity chef one too many?

I'm undecided as to whether the chef-cum-tour guide phenomenon or amateur-cum-chef is worse. Neither one is really food-focused; both are entirely personality-driven, chef-in-your-face orgy of self-indulgence. I will admit to a certain soft spot for Anthony Bourdain, with his dry wit, fondness for smoking and drinking a lot, but still, his advice is hardly practical. But I think the whole genre took a step down with that Andrew Zimmern guy, who's basically just eating raw fish on TV, and it feels like reruns of "You Can't Do That On Television" in more exotic locales.

The flurry of amateur chef shows is perhaps more disturbing, in the same way that all "reality" TV shows are: if there are this many morons running around on TV, how many more must there be in real life? Layer upon layer of obnoxious personalities, uncalled-for weeping, complete unwillingness to take responsibility or make a decision. For sheer guilty pleasure, Hell's Kitchen is the best (worst?), but there's something intriguing about watching other celebrity chefs handicap the next one to join their ranks. I have little use for Top Chef's somewhat random celebrity panel.

Like the "cupcakes with publicists" phenomenon, reality-food-TV seems like another way to unnecessarily complicate what should be simple. Everybody loves food, and you'd love to think you'd cook it for yourself. But instead, you zap a SmartOnes in the microwave so you have time to watch Hell's Kitchen, and dream about cooking--and lots of other people make a whole lot more money in the process.

No Place Like Komi

Yes, that is indeed DC's own Johnny Monis' cute button nose on the cover of Food and Wine's Best New Chefs issue. The accolade is well deserved--Komi's cuisine is some of the most satisfying and inventive I've had in recent months. I can think of no better way to spend an evening and a couple hundred bucks in DC than experiencing the Komi tasting menu that manages to be both comforting and exotic. The chef isn't the only talent in the house, either--the service is impeccable, and sommelier Derek Brown's pairings were spot on and adventurous. I never would have thought to pair the sardines with a superbly dry sherry, but I'm sure glad he did.

F&W features Komi's signature dish of homemade pappardelle with milk-roasted baby goat ragu, but I would highly recommend placing yourselves in the hands of the master.

"News" in the loosest sense of the word

Two articles in The New York Times over the last few days caught my eye. I love the great Gray Lady, but sometimes even she occasionally provides fodder for the argument that newspapers are just outmoded and hopelessly withering in the face of New Media.

Sunday's article about the drop in online sales doesn't seem all that newsworthy as stalwarts of the virtual mall like Gloss or--sniff, sniff--my beloved Girlshop (now replaced by the hopelessly haughty Net-a-Porter) have announced they're biting the dust. Getting their e-mail was news; but Times article about the drop in online buying doesn't mention them, and seems a little out of the loop. I thought the dot-com bubble had already burst, and the industry had rebounded, perhaps not quite as robustly--but then nothing about this economy is as robust as the halcyon days of the Clinton administration, right?

The only interesting thing about Sunday's NYT article was that it fed into my own paranoia. I was a pretty hard-core online fashion addict, but quit more or less cold turkey once I had maxed out a couple of credit cards--and that, my friends, was when the dot-com bubble burst, leaving me to wonder, psychotically, if there never was any bubble, just me, Girlshop, and my AmEx. Some years later, I re-engaged in online shopping, more responsibly, more gradually, but still. So then when the summer went by and I'd bought nothing except some skinny jeans that I sent back, and then I hear they're going out of business, it raised the dot-com paranoia all over again. How many of us are really buying from these sites? The merch was always seemed expensive enough; I just assumed someone, somewhere was making money, and Girlshop was around long enough--and really so was Gloss--that it seemed like it had whethered the storm of online shopping fads (Pets.com, anyone?) and had become an institution replete with offline, real-time anchor to complement its online offerings.

So today, the NYT tops itself with this authoritative discourse on OpenTable.com. I don't know about you buy I've been using OpenTable for about a hundred years and presumably, so have the restaurants at which I have made reservations using its services. The little tidbits about the way restaurants use it to log info about their patrons--ok, that was interesting--but news? No.

No news, I guess, is good news, right?

Engagious

We're engaged now. The event I have regarded as an inevitability for the last three years is finally here and I am completely surprised. So now, like everyone else in my family, I have the opportunity to get all nuts about Wedding Planning, and marvel at how the heart grows. It's news that people take with almost uniform giddyness and cheer. The instinct to send cards and gives is more instantaneous than any announcement I've ever made. The response has been far more powerful than my moving and new job announcements of recent years--and I moved to some pretty freakin' faraway places.

It's wonderful. I don't even have words for it.

"They're cupcakes with publicists. . ."

There is, actually, some part of me that wants to quit and bake cupcakes--and what the hell, muffins, moon pies and oatmeal carmelitas--and sell them to the starved for food and time who will pay $4 each for them. But jesus--people are doing it for free, for other people:

Kirk Rossberg, who owns the 23-year-old Torrance Bakery in the South Bay area of Los
Angeles County, said he’s swamped with intern applicants. 'Until last year, I never had people
asking to work for free,” said Mr. Rossberg, who is also president of the California Retail Bakers
Association. He estimated that of the 30 interns he used this year, 90 percent were leaving
professional careers to pursue a dream of opening a bakery.'

Surely there must be a middleground, right? You don't have to take the Ivy League degree and Fortune 500 job and chuck them whole hog to bake cupcakes and build a bakery, surely? Why not just part-time it? Why not--radical idea--just bake cupcakes recreationally instead of trying to sell them or turn them into the hottest hipper-than-thou manna?

It's pastry, people.