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Archive for the ‘Chris Ying’ Category

Chris Ying–The Wurst of Lucky Peach: A treasury of encased meat (2016)

Posted in Ach'ii', Adam Leith Gollner, Amelia Gray, Australia, Chicago, IL, Chicago-style Hot Dogs, Chili, Chris Ying, Corn Dog, currywurst, Food, France, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Huitlacoche, Kanga Bangas, Ketchup, kielbasa, Libya, Lisa Abend, Lucky Peach, Mennonites, Mustard, Nem Nuong, North Korea, Peter Meehan, Pigs in a Blankets, Poo, Pork Roll, Portugal, Sausage Sizzle, Sausages, Scotland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Toad in the Hole, Tunisia, Vietnam, Waffle Hot Dogs, Würst Nürse, white pudding, Yuck! on November 16, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WÜRST NÜRSE-Hot Hot Hot (2018).

I wanted to find a soundtrack that would go with a book about wurst.  I found this fantastic Australian band with a hilariously appropriate name who also happen to be a band that rails against sexism.

In fact, one of the members of the band is in the fantastic feminist band Camp Cope!

Their story:

In 2016, five nurses with a sick-of-your-shit attitude put down their scalpels to pick up their instruments and Würst Nürse was born!  Würst Nürse are ripping out the stitches of the patriarchy with their dominating & satirical lyrics.  The band consists of Georgia McDonald (Camp Cope) as singing nurse, Anna Stein & Stephanie Butigan as guitar nurses, Morgan Sterley as bass nurse & Abbie Laderman as drummer nurse. Since Würst Nürse’s Fürst Rehürsal they have been administrating sludgey fever-inducing riffs & a power pop energy hot enough to send you into heart block.

This EP has four songs and is 13 minutes long.

It is musically brash with catchy melodies and sing-along choruses.  But its the biting lyrics that are so much fun

Like on “Hot Doctor” which is three chords and a sing along chorus of:
Hot Doctor
Hot Doctor
He’s gonna pay my bills
He’s gonna pay my rent
Hot Doctor
Hot Doctor
Gonna quit my job
Never have to work again

Although the verses are a bit more subversive

I give the wrong meds to get your attention
I want your hot beef injection
Hot Doctor
So, it turns out I didn’t even need that bachelor’s degree anyway
When I saw you walking down the hallway
Oh, Hot Doctor are you coming back to my place?
Your blue scrubs they rub up the right way

“Hot Surgeon” is very different from “Hot Doctor.”  There’s no big chanting chorus, but the lyrics are very different:

I wanna drill into your head
You’re such a hot surgeon
I bet you give great head
I know you’ve got your doctorate
Hot Surgeon
Know your way around a woman
I could help you out in theatre
You could help me put in a catheter
You, me and the Hot Doctor could get it on after hours

Okay maybe not that different.  But it turns out that they are connected:

I wanna get with the hot surgeon
Nobody tell the hot doctor
I don’t wanna ruin my chances

“Hot Brown Rain” is very different from the other “hot” songs because it is a hilariously revolting song about, well, being “number 8 on the Bristol stool chart” [The chart only goes up to 7, ew].  “from your underwear, how did it get in my hair?”  The chorus is surprisingly catching or catchy.

“Dedication Doesn’t Pay The Rent” has big stomping verses and much more pointed lyrics:

Knowledge learnt
Is money spent
And I still owe
The government
And they cut
My pay again
Those suit wearing white men

The chorus is very satisfying too:

No dedication don’t pay the rent
If you cut my pay
I’ll cut your oxygen

Of course I don’t want to see Camp Cope end, but I sure hope Würst Nürse releases more music.

[READ: Summer 2019] The Wurst of Lucky Peach

I really enjoyed Lucky Peach magazine.  It was often exhausting to read them since they were so packed with content (not unlike a sausage).  I was bummed when the magazine folded.  But in addition to several great issues, they also left behind some of these really fun and interesting cookbook-type collections.

This book is more than a series of recipes that I will likely never make or eat.  It is a fun history of the sausage that travels from Europe to the Americas to Australia and beyond.

Chris Ying says he loves sausage.  He says he might be in the world’s best lobster restaurant, but if there’s sausage on the menu that’s what he’s getting.  This book is fill of sausage history, sausage based humor (they tried to limit the number of dirty jokes, but failed often and with gusto). (more…)

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Breece D’J Pancake–“Trilobites” (Lucky Peach, No. 12: The Seashore: Summer 2014)

Posted in Breece D'J Pancake, Chris Ying, Food, Lisa Hanawalt, Lucky Peach, Oxford Drama, Robert Sietsma, Sex, Short Story, South, Travel, Violence on September 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

lp12SOUNDTRACK: OXFORD DRAMA-“Asleep/Awake” (2014).

dramaOxford Drama is, unexpectedly, from Poland.  Their lyrics are in English, although their Facebook site is all in Polish.

“Asleep/Awake” is a slow, synthy track with Małgorzata Dryjańska singing in a breathy whispery voice.  Her voice feels delicate even if the lyrics are somewhat empowering (and she has no discernible accent).  The instrumentation (all synth and electronic drums) is by Marcin Mrówka.  I like the way he throws in some occasional bass lines to add more texture to his simple beats.

The song feels very much like a 90s British trip hop sound.  Although on the more mellow side of trip hop. It’s quite pretty and dreamy.  It’s interesting to hear this kind of music coming out of Poland (although why shouldn’t it, honestly?).  I rather hope they break through in the states.

Their 4 song EP is available on bandcamp.

[READ: September 7, 2014] “Trilobites”

Lucky Peach issue 12 is all about “The Seashore.” And thus there are lots of beach-related foods under discussion. Lisa Hanawalt has a wonderful story about hanging out with otters (if she weren’t so hilariously vulgar (she’s wearing a shirt that says “Every day I’m not covered in otters is a piece of shit”) I’d have my kids read it because it is so cute). There’s a brief article explaining the particular smells of the seashore.

Chris Ying has a hilarious article about sea cucumbers (and just how hard it is to make them appetizing). And there’s a wonderful little section that compares the “sea” version of things to their “land” counterparts. Like the Sea Anemone, the Sea Cow and the Sea Horse and how different they are from the land based creatures with the same names.

There’s an amusing tribute to the Goonies (a movie I haven’t seen in 30 years); and a lot of talk about Crayfish. Perhaps the most interesting of these articles was the seaweed farmers—who basically say that any seaweed is edible, so next time you’re in the ocean, chow down.

And then there’s the clams and abalone and whatnot. This includes a brief explanation of the edibleness of 8 different bivalves. There’s also Robert Sietsema’s trip down the Atlantic Seaboard going to as many clam houses as he can.

There’s also an article about sushi—but not the sushi itself, rather the stuff that comes with it. Like Krab, which is not crab at all, but various fish pieces minced up and dyed to look like crab! Or the wasabi that you get, which is not real wasabi (real wasabi is super expensive ($100/lb)). That green paste is actually horseradish, mustard oil, citric acid and yellow and blue dye.

And what beach/resort issue would be complete without s tory about the Harvey Wallbanger (I enjoyed this history quite a bit).

The issue is also chock full of recipes and then it ends with this piece of fiction

“Trilobites” is set on a downtrodden farm in the South. I wonder if the South gets tired of their fiction depicting fathers as brutal drunks. In this case, there’s this instance of the father whipping the narrator: “One time I used an old black snake for a bullwhip, snapped the sucker’s head off, and Pop beat hell out of me with it.”

He is also not too fond of his mom. Once Pop died, his mother was interested in selling the fam. She’d like to move to Akron where she has family. He has no interest in the farm but doesn’t want to leave either. This exchange, in which they laugh at the funny phrases Pop used to say sums up his attitude:

I think back. “Cornflakes were pone-rakes,’ and a chicken was a ‘sick-un.’
We laugh.
“Well,” she says, “he’ll always be a part of us.”
…I think how she could foul up a free lunch.

The trilobites in the story are in Company Hill, a former river bed that is now home to fossils. The narrator has never been able to find a trilobite.

The narrator pines for his love from high school, Ginny. In her yearbook he wrote “We will live on mangoes and love.” But she left for Florida.

Now she’s back in Charleston on break and asked to visit. But as with many stories full of desperation, especially in the South, nothing good can come from anything.

He has to deal with the man who wants to buy the farm. He can’t really communicate with his mother. The girl who is still around (who is super cute) is jailbait. Even his “date” with Ginny is a disaster. She has a boyfriend back in college, she tells him. But she wants to have fun with him while she’s back. They fool around, but it is ugly and ends with Ginny mad. And even the trilobites don’t come out.

I just didn’t really get this story. I know I am out of my depth in a story like this as the boy huntsfor a “turkle” in the water (which I guess is a turtle). His father used to like “turkle in a mulligan” whatever that means. This is just not my kind of story.

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Lucky Peach, No. 8: The Gender Issue (Summer 2013)

Posted in Adventure, Advice, Alice Waters, Amelia Gray, Angie Wang, Anthony Bourdain, Art, Ben Shewry, Calvin Godfrey, Chateaubriand, Chicken Divan, Chris Ying, Cook Book, Coq au vin, Crème brûlée, Crêpe Suzette, Cream Puffs, Culture Shock, Derek Ballard, Edie Fake, Fuchsia Dunlop, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gender, John Birdsall, John Ritter, Johnny Negron, Jonathan Franzen, Joshua Neuman, Kevin Pang, Lucky Peach, Mark Ibold, McSweeney's, Mei Chin, Michael Deforge, Mickey Zacchilli, Mimi Lok, Naomi Duguid, Nhân VĂn, Parenting, Peter Meehan, Pizzle Soup, Quiche Lorraine, Scampi alla Calabrese, Sex, Sexism, Soccer, Three's Company, Typhoon, Vinny Dotolo, Youngmi Mayer, Yuck! on September 17, 2013| 2 Comments »

lp8.1SOUNDTRACK: TYPHOON-“Dreams of Cannibalism” (2013).

typhoonNPR 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: (more…)

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