I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TYPHOON-“Dreams of Cannibalism” (2013).

NPR was steaming this album for a while.  Now they’re giving away this song.

Typhoon is yet another band that has a crazy amount of people in it (between 12 and fourteen) and they have a vast array of instruments in play at any one time (Horns, violins, xylophones, electric guitars and mandolins for example).

At the same time, Singer Kyle Morton’s vocals are distinctive enough and are used like an instrument as well as to deliver lyrics.  This gives them quite a unique sound.

The song opens with an array of horns slowly building to a simple guitar melody.  The verses are somewhat quiet with occasional punctuations of band (and great backing vocals).  But as the song progresses, more instruments kick in (horns adding a melody line).  I really like the way the end of the song shifts direction totally, bringing in a complex instrumental section with interesting time shifts and even better backing vocals..

I enjoyed the whole album while it was streaming.  And while I can’t say that this song stands out more than the other songs, (I think “Artificial Light” is probably the best,) it represents the sound of the band pretty well.

[READ: September 2013] Lucky Peach Issue 8

I haven’t been reviewing Lucky Peach issues in their entirety because they are mostly about food and cooking and recipes and I don’t really have anything to say about that (I enjoy the articles a lot, but I don’t need to comment on them).

But I wanted to bring special attention to this issue because of the way it is presented.  This is the Gender Issue.  It has two covers (see the “female” cover tomorrow) and the magazine must be flipped over to read the different genders.

It’s not often that I think of food and gender as being connected, but there are some really interesting articles in here that talk about not only food itself, but about the people who prepare it.  Like the fact that most big name chefs are men even though cooking has traditionally been “women’s work.”

The women’s side of the magazine has these interesting articles:

ALICE WATERS-As Alice Sees It (as told to David Prior)
How Alice Waters fell in love with food.

NAOMI DUGUID-“Great Chefs Around the World”
A look at female chefs in unexpected places: Burma, Senegal Laos and India, and just how hard these women work to cook for their families.

YOUNGMI MAYER-“Jeju Island and the Haenyo Divers”
Haenyo Divers are women in Korea who dive to great depths to catch fish and abalone and other sea creatures.  They are incredibly hard workers (who keep going even when they reach 70 years old) and they are always women.

KEVIN PANG-“Pussy Rules”
An interview with Poochie, hostess of Wiener’s Circle, a fun place where Poochie and her crew heap abuse on the guests.  Not my scene, but she seems to be having fun.

FUCHSIA DUNLOP-“Dick Soup”
In which Dunlop makes a soup with the pizzles of stags.

AMELIA GRAY-“Four Meals at the Toughest Strip Club in Downtown Los Angeles”
Gray and her friends make friends with the strippers at Sam’s Hof Brau and they sample the food as well.

VINNY DOTOLO_”The Breast Giveth”
Dairy Recipes

MEI CHIN-“Make Yourself Useful”
This was a rather disturbing article (and I have to wonder what bird lover Jonathan Franzen would think of it).  Several men (and Chin) go to South America in a quest for certain uncharted birds.  They find them, kill them, paint them and eat them.  In their defense they are seeking new species and don’t kill more than one bird of each, but the eating part seems rather uncool.

CALVIN GODFREY & NHÂN VĂN-“Meat Maids”
Interviews with women who work at Binh Tay Meat Market in Ho Chi Min City.

The center section has a beefcake of the month with meatloaf recipes and a recipe that involves turtle penis.  There’s also a series of food and sex illustrations (definitely NSFW) from Johnny Negron, Angie Wang, Derek Ballard, Michael Deforge. Mickey Zacchilli and Edie Fake.

There’s also some talk of reproduction and hermaphrodism from HAROLD McGEE and JONATHAN HEINDEMAUSE who talks about creatures under the sea who can change sex (cue Monty Python skit about The Whelk)

The Men’s side includes

ANTHONY BOURDAIN-“The Ten Manliest Meals in America”
This is fiction but it sounds like a real experience of having to write about “manly” food, no matter how dumb an idea that is.

CHRIS YING-“#1 Dad”
A lengthy interview with Australian chef Ben Shewry who puts his family first–it’s a great, and inspiring article about being a good dad.

JOHN BIRDSALL-“America, Your Food is So Gay”
From a personal experience of growing up near gay men and loving the food they prepared, Birdsall talks about how especially in the 70s, the gay lifestyle was all about hedonism.  This explained why their burgers were so decadent and so much better.  Foodies have developed from that hedonistic joy of pleasure.  It’s a persuasive argument.

PETER MEEHAN-“In Bloom:
A brief look at the difference between male and female fruits (hint, there really isn’t one).

JOSHUA NEUMAN-“Wow, This Guy Really Cooks!”
This was my favorite article in the magazine because it was so unexpected.  This article looks at the way Jack Tripper (John Ritter) of Three’s Company laid the groundwork in mainstream culture for men being good cooks.  Although the show was primarily farce, the cooking aspect was always taken very seriously–Jack could do it and the women couldn’t.  More impressively, Jack made some very delicious meals: crème brûlée, Chateaubriand, Quiche Lorraine, coq au vin, Crêpe Suzette, brain, scampi alla Calabrese, Chicken Divan, cream puffs and more.  He also grew fresh oregano and rallied against garlic powder.  The chef part was more than “just a job” for his character.  The ending of the article says it all: “It’s probably a stretch to claim that John Ritter qua Jack Tripper engineered the cultural transformation of the public perception of a man cooking from dainty to desirable, but there is likely no single icon in American popular culture whose emergence predicted it quite so well.”  Makes me rethink a show that seemed so stale just minutes before.

MARK IBOLD-“Horseradish: A Gentleman’s Condiment”
A quick look at the old-fashioned process of making Long’s Horseradish, based in Lancaster, PA.

MIMI LOK-“Deliverance: Interviews with Chinese Food Delivery Guys”
These guys (they are mostly guys) brave all kinds of dangers, from temperature to theft to bodily harm to bring you food. Give them more than $1 tip.

IAN HARRIS-“Hieronymus Beef a l’Orange, Christmas Pudding, and the Supernal Food of Bachelor Mountain Ascents”
What do you eat if you want to eat well when you are climbing very tall mountains?

PETER MEEHAN-“The First Cut is the Deepest”
Castrating chickens, boar taint and the difference between roosters, chicken and capon.  (And a recipe for rooster testicles).

~~~~~

So this issue shows how transgressive Lucky Peach can be.  The magazine has fun pushing boundaries and pushing buttons.  While there are gender arguments in the issue, for the most part the content doesn’t really diverge that much from a typical Lucky Peach production.  Nevertheless, just the fact that the magazine is addressing these issues is important.  Lucky Peach tends to have a very boy’s club kind of feel (which is certainly why I like it), and it’s important that they are at least aware of that.  I also think it’s interesting that they had to go to Asia to find all of these hard-working women, when I’m sure there are plenty right here at home.

For ease of searching, I include: Nhan Van, creme brulee, Crepes Suzette.