November 21, 2021
Sorry I'm running behind on these posts. I found myself in the Valley of the Sun last week on business last week and did not even watch the November 14th episode until late last week.
I told myself I was going to finish the Halloween post in my downtime. Assuming you can accomplish anything in your downtime on a trip, be it for business or pleasure, is an idiotic notion unless the purpose of your trip is to accomplish said thing - in which case it's not downtime, it's just regular time. Maybe I just need more time. I was trying to work out some kind of relativistic time dilation scheme, but methiniks that only works if I stay put while everyone else who watches Sunday Morning and/or reads this blog between is moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light between Sunday 10:30 Eastern between airings. Make sense? No? Maybe this will help and maybe it won't.
I also maybe got a little bogged down with sorting out my holiday plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I also went to see Dune on the big screen. Brief review: It's good and I think worthy of a trip to the movies. Although as someone whose read the book, I'm unsure of how it plays for those unfamiliar with the source material. I think the highest praise I can give it is that for a movie that is two and half hours long, it did not feel overly long. If anything I felt disappointment that only half the book is covered meaning there is no real climactic moment or catharsis. You have to shell out another $10-$20 sometime in the future for that. Does the full story really need five hours to be told. Perhaps, but if it's just because the producers are wanted a sequel, do they not realize there are four more books in the series? (Not that we're clamoring for Dune to become yet another franchise.
Anyway, my goal this week (along with not eating too much and to catch up on chores during my time off) is to clear out the backlog of rankings. That's right. I'm talking an unprecedented three entries this week. Sound's crazy, no? But here in our little village of Anatevka... I gotta stop it with the random tangents or I'll never get through this.
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS: THE FOOD ISSUE
This monster of an episode had a whopping 14 segments packed into 90 minutes (including commercials)! So jam packed that you cannot even find some of the stories on the Sunday Morning website. (At least not easily. I had to resort to using the search bar to find some of the links...) Like most of us will be come Thursday night, this episode was overstuffed. Neither I, nor the rankings committee can be expected to provide an in depth breakdown of every segment for an episode so wide ranging. So loosen your belt a notch or two as we run down the episode quick hit style, ranking the segments roughly in the order of how hungry they made us.
Ben Tracy has is not a high volume contributor, but he has kicked around the lower half the power rankings. Apparently The Food Issue is his time to shine though. Or at the very least, I'd like to thank him for introducing me to the charismatic
I honestly thought, that's for white people. Particularly, white women who do yoga and maybe they're in a cult...
- Tabitha Brown
There's an old joke about vegans, which you've probably heard: How do you know someone is vegan? They tell you.
I could go on about my various comfort foods, but trying to limit the length. Besides this episode is essentially all about food porn, so here's the money shot:
Also shout out to the delicious looking Shouk Burger:
2) Mo Rocca
I was glad to see story from Mo. I was wondering if his off Broadway turn would keep him from presenting on Sunday Morning. Glad to know he'll still be around to cover all things nostalgic Americana. A lot of people can (and do) take their fondness for "better times in America" let it become problematic. I think Mo gets away with it because he doesn't really make the case that, "Boy, things used to be better!" (Ok, maybe sometimes he does.) He's more just a history buff who is fascinated by people, places, and things that were de rigueur once upon a time and got left behind by the zeitgeist. He sort of an amateur anthropologist except interesting. Mo's aesthetic certainly does seem more at home in the Nifty Fifties or Swingin' Sixties though.
His story on The Automat is essentially a short Mobituary and easily could have been fleshed out into a long form podcast, but you'd really lose something not having the visuals of a nickel operated Art Deco cafeteria to accompany the words. This one's less about the food than the history.
Also
This is Lilia's first appearance in power rankings. She would have made it previously if I had had time to write an entry for last week. I don't know if she's going to start being a regular, but I approve of her segments thus far. I approve of everyone on Sunday Morning so maybe it's not the highest of bars.
Anyway, if I had to rank food genre's Mexican food (or even it's bastard cousin, TexMex) might come in around 5. Not my absolute favorite, but I do like it and occasionally crave it. Mitla's Cafe seems like my kind of spot. The sort of spot that locals know and love. When a friend of mine briefly lived in Tampa, he took me to a small hole in the wall place that specialized in Cuban sandwiches. Apparently, Obama had one there during the 2008 campaign. Anyway, possibly the best sandwich I ever had. It's not just the taste, however excellent it may be. It's also the experience of eating something that feels authentic and hasn't been co-opted by Applebee's or something (more on that later).
I think if I went to Mitla's, I could very well be intimidated - a bunch of regulars who don't know me and I don't know them. Once I start eating, I'm sure I'd feel at home though.
4)
Serena gets knocked bumped up a few rungs for having two segments instead of one. The first is on food delivery service Goodbelly's. The second is the new popup industry of "ugly" produce. I don't have much to say about either.
I want to say maybe I read a think piece about the "ugly" produce business not being as altruistic as it sounds (The answer to all your questions is money.) I forget why though. I guess if it gets more money to the farmer who can complain. I honestly though that most irregular fruits and vegetables were destined for juices, cans, or other types of food processing. I think it may have had something to do with inflating the overall cost of food by finding a market among the hipsters for food that would either be given away or sold even cheaper. In other words, bad for poor people. Not sure I buy it, or maybe I am just conflating this segment with something else from fragments of memory.
I know you're just here for money shots of food though. So courtesy of the Goodbelly's story:
5) Turkeys of Ohio, Jane Pauley (tie)
Moment of nature is wild turkeys near Toledo, Ohio. I'm on the other side of the state from Toldeo, but I've seen a turkey or two along the Little Miami Bike Trail. Nature can be exciting. Also birds, Audubon Florida, etc. You know the drill. You didn't think I'd forget, did you?
The show was so jam packed, Jane was almost at risk of getting squeezed out of the rankings, so she ends up sharing a spot with the turkeys because she's what keeps this train running on time.
6) Seth Doane
Going back to what foods I like the best - 1 and 1a for me are Italian and Greek. As Seth's story points out, and as I am very much aware, Italian encompasses a lot. I pretty much like it all though. A dream vacation for me would be to bike through from the southern end of Italy to the Alps, eating and eating along the way. If I every make it happen, do you think I can crash at Seth's well appointed villa? (From his diary about COVID, I'm pretty sure he just has an apartment with his partner that probably can't fit me as a guest, but it's fun to assume everyone in Italy owns a well appointed villa.)
It sure would be nice to leisurely eat my way through Italy like one of The Trip films with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. I think they are brilliant. It may be reductive to say it's the same thing done four times, but there are diminishing returns. The Trip to Italy comes second so it hadn't worn out it's welcome yet. Of course the expense of traveling and eating like they do in the film without having "space travel" money is something of a pipe dream. But, oh what a lovely dream it is. I've never had the ear shaped pasta, but I now consider it my life's mission to do so. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever had fresh pasta before, much less
T-Pain and booze. Kelefa's segment is fun if nothing else.
From the man that brought you this:
comes this:
A bit decadent, no?
Oh Applebee's.
Look, I have nothing against Applebee's. When I had cancer, people wanted to give gift cards to restaurants as a get well gift. It's hard for out of town people to give gift cards to the local haunts you like, so I got a few gift cards to Applebee's which was actually the closest, most convenient restaurant to where I lived. Applebee's is fine. It can even be good. Every restaurant, even a chain restaurant is a local restaurant to someone as we were taught by Anthony Bourdain and Marilyn Hagerty. If I had to rank the great chain restaurants of America, it's go O'Charley's, TGIF, Applebee's, then I don't know... Ruby Tuesday, etc. etc. etc. They all very similar which is why a truly local place is usually more fun, more interesting. But let's not disparage what can be a perfectly good experience.
I was a college kid without a lot of cash at one time. And who didn't go to the Applebee's or O'Charley's to feel a little bit, as the song says, "fancy", while hanging out with friends.
As for the song, country crossover is not necessarily my thing, but Walker Hayes seems like a cool down to earth dude, so bully for him. The dance. Again, TikTok is not my thing, but it is genuinely sweet that it was his daughter that came up with it.
I don't drink coffee, so this is where the episode starts to lose me. I'll have to take Axelrod's rhapsodic reaction to sips of Yemeni coffee as evidence it is the one true coffee. It was also quite a coincidence that I recently watched Generation 9/11, which as it would have it makes mention of Yemeni coffee. It's one of those things - I had never heard about coffee's history and how it relates to Yemen before and then... twice in one weekend.
10) , Luke Burbank (tie)
We're going to bang these out as quickly as possibly as to why these 4 segments came in at 10.
Saberi - Electronic tasters? This seems like the first step towards being in the Matrix. But we're probably already there, right? Also the constant spitting of brown liquid made me just slightly queasy, but that might have been left over Burbank's story...
Vigliotti - Nice try but, water is not food. I drink a lot of it though. Unlike other segments, this one did not make my mouth "water". (See what I did there?)
Tracy Smith - A movie is not food. But I do find Beanie Feldstein entertaining in almost anything and she's not wrong about gravy. I kind of like it, but once you learn what gravy really is, it's kind of gross.
Amy Schumer's constant cracking of jokes was a bit exhausting, but I'm willing to give her a lot of leeway because this is the one of the top five comedy sketches of all time.
Luke Burbank - I hate ranch dressing. I almost threw up during Luke's segment. I was fine until they showed the TikTok videos. And then I died a little on the inside as I tried to hold down my breakfast. The saving grace the segment (and ranch dressing in general) is that Hidden Valley is genesis of one of my favorite Arrested Development bits:
Honorable Mention: Martha Teichner
It would simply be unethical to Teichnerize someone in an episode that runs 14 segments deep. But my favorite Sunday Morning food segment of recent memory has to be Teichner goes to Ireland.
Comments
Post a Comment