Why, we ask, do wingnuts travel to foreign countries?

Two words: Perillo Tours.

I like the leisurely lunch as much as any journalist, of course. But not with my kids. …

Actually, TinTin, I might be with her on this one. Ever try to keep a hyperactive impolite little American brat who is descended from a smarmy condesecnding right wing “journalist” sitting still and quiet in a chair for two hours? Without a Wii?

I’m sure the other patrons around her were wishing she didn’t have to sit there with them either.

The French love children.

Just not yours.

When did Republicans start feeding their kids? I thought hunger was a great motivator? Also, nice to be in the single digit comments for once.

Now I’m hungry.

To be charitable, I will point out that adjusting to foreign eating schedules is tough getting used to. I’ve experience the same problems in Spain. Eating on a foreign schedule is fine when you’re living a foreign lifestyle, but it doesn’t always fit well with touristing. You can’t leave the Louvre for a quick bite then come back.

The ‘corner bar’ isn’t really an option. Who takes their kids to bars? And bar food is usually atrocious, overseas as well as in the States.

There’s a reason McDonalds is hugely popular in Europe for families. It’s cheap, open at all hours, and serves food quickly. Those are qualities in demand, not just symbols of American cultural decadence.

All that’s not to defend Lisa, who should have done her homework and understood that traveling overseas involves some difficult adjustments. It’s not like going to Epcot center.

wow, that gurdon article is pretty impressive too. i know that if my children’s dentist was named dr. mongelos, i too would frequently call him dr. mengele by mistake, and would certainly take advantage of the national reach of my column to make a huge freaking deal about it.

Where are my snails? My frog legs? My cheese? My quarter-pounder with cheese?

It’s not like going to Epcot center.

Being a fan of Epcot Center, let me just say that this woman would probably walk up to the first shop/eatery within the park and stand on line for hours behind every other tourist who did the same thing.

Meanwhile, smart folk go to the second eatery in the park, where nobody is standing at all, and be done with it.

My quarter-pounder with cheese?

Le Royale with cheese, you mean…

Le Royale with cheese, you mean…

My 113-Gram With Cheese™ in metric, you mean.

eddress my pust, leebs! Bork Bork Bork!

Le Royal du Fromage, isn’t it?

Paging Marie Antoinette!

Royal frottage needed.

There are something like 10 places to eat in the Louvre, running the gamut from fancy sit-down to take-away sammiches, including a Starbucks, for Christ’s sake, and all over town there are cafes, bistros, pastry shops, food stands etc. selling at all hours. If you can’t find decent food to eat in Paris, you aren’t fucking trying.

I… haven’t a clue what to say about this. Someone didn’t do her research, that’s for damn sure.

You’ll be shocked to learn that the best restaurants in NYC aren’t across the street from MTV studios in Times Square. Crazy right?

Jesus, it’s not hard to find whatever you want at a restaurant in Paris at ANY time of day; it’s just that the *dinner* places aren’t the places to look earlier in the afternoon. Like most big cities, “earlier” usually means between 5 and 7 pm or so. People eat dinner later and have lunch earlier. If you don’t like it, you can always join the Yanks at Burger King just like here.*

*Nothing against Burger King; sometimes you have to get a late lunch and BK sometimes works in a pinch.

“The French do not much like children.”

That is not true! At any corner bar in Paris you will find them on the menu, prepared in countless ways, all tasty, and served most anytime!

If you can’t find decent food to eat in Paris, you aren’t fucking trying.

I think it’s more a case of “If you can’t find decent food in Paris, UR DOIN IT RONG!”

Thank goodness I have Lisa to consult – in ten days I will be in Paris.

It’s shocking to learn that the food sucks there.

Wow, her article just reeks of pissy discontent. She hates the food, she hates the kids. She’s standing in line to see the Mona Lisa, but she hates everybody else who is doing exactly the same thing she is.

Christ, what a wretched person.

And how come I can’t even get any freedom fries there?! I thought we were insulting them, but it turns out they don’t even have the product!

This is worse news for McCain than the time I asked a Belgian about waffles and he had no idea what I was talking about.

I fully expect some of the more prolific trolls to start telling us that the food is bad in Paris because no one can afford good food due to health care rationing. Or something.

I found all kinds of food in France, any time of day (the French do love to eat, after all), both in Paris and in the contryside. Sure, the family restaurants have limited hours, but there was a bistro that served food at all hours on damn near every corner of the arrondissement I was staying in, and the boulangerie across the street from my hotel in Belfort served sandwiches and salads all day long.

And wow, she went to big toursit attractions and found nourriture merde and prix ridicules. Heck, that’s not like the good ol USofA at all!

I have some friend who are hardcore far-right-wingers who took their kids to Paris (they were on their way to Africa to kill stuff) and came back raving about how fantastic the French food was.

Thing about them is, they aren’t lazy.

And how come I can’t even get any freedom fries there?! I thought we were insulting them, but it turns out they don’t even have the product!

You have to go to Belgium.

Frankly, I’m shocked she didn’t throw in a snark about how small the portions are in France.

After all, they have all that obesity over there and so people must pile their plates to the rafters with deep fried Coke syrup and greasy barbecue.

Oh wait. That’s here…

Crazy!

Nothing like a burger in Paris, washed down with a little vin Americain, aka Coca Cola. If you can’t find good food in Paris, there is no hope for you. None.

Restaurants are very expensive. There is a range, of course, but it starts high.

I blame the Bush recession and the collapse of the dollar. After all, when Clinton was in office, the dollar was actually more valuable than the euro, but now, the euro trades around $1.40.

Frankly, I’m shocked she didn’t throw in a snark about how small the portions are in France.

The food was terrible, and in such small portions!

So check this out. Last summer- the last time I went on any vacation that wasn’t prefixed with “stay”- wife and I went to Puerto Rico. Now, that’s technically American, but to the usual suspects at America’s Shittiest(TM), ain’t no way it is. So my example does work.

Amazingly, San Juan is much like Paris! You can’t find a nice restaurant selling lunch at 4 anywhere within a few feet of the main attractions! Who knew, right? And some of the street vendors might look a little icky! So check this out…and stay with me, here, I know your mind will be blown…when my wife and I got into town, the first thing we did after checking into the hotel was go to the corner store and buy shit to carry around and eat in lieu of going to a restaurant. For like, ten bucks. No way, right?

It’s been a long time since I was in Paris, but when I was, you could also get some really tasty crepes from streetcart vendors pretty much anytime.

I think the issue there would be that crepes aren’t hotdogs.

Also, I was pretty meh about Paris when I was there. Food included, even. Same goes for NYC. Wife and I have too much of a Waldorf-and-Statler thing about stuff people like, I guess.

And how come I can’t even get any freedom fries there?! I thought we were insulting them, but it turns out they don’t even have the product!

Not so! I had my first dinner in France at a lovely family restaurant in Belfort, and along with the Pot au feu and Blanquette de veau they served up Poulet au pon frites which was, to my utter amazement, chicken with plain ol’ french fries. Presentation was in a deep cup with the fries sticking out like blades of grass.

Americans love to travel and when they do all they ever want to do is find other Americans and complain about how hard it is to find a good hamburger.

The French do not much like children.

Yes, that’s why they provide universal day care services to all parents, rated as one of the best in the world.

Museum restaurants are awful everywhere; the worst eating experience I ever had was at our own National Gallery in DC, but that’s probably the liberals’ fault.

The last time I was in Paris (admittedly a while ago) most bistro cafés served Le Hot Dog (translatable even for a blockhead like Schiffren) consisting of two sliced franfurter-style sausages on a toasted baguette smothered in melted Gruyére. How could you go wrong?

The world’s second-largest market for McDonald’s.

Hehindeedy!

C’est l’Hexagone pour l’amour de dieu.

This blog needs a recount!

[Tintin adds: Oops. That’s what I get for blogging before coffee. Fixed. Thanks!]

Oh, and. Also.

In most European cities it’s fairly easy to find both excellent small food shops offering anything you could want and open-air food markets this time of year. My routine was to go down to the market, buy a few fruits, veggies, cheese, bread, and yogurt, and carry it with me until I was ready to eat. Cheaper, more nutritious, and convenient in terms of having food when you’re ready to eat…even though you had to do some minimal prep to make it work. I suspect this is why it didn’t occur to Lisa to try this solution to her food crisis.

I was in Paris 2 weeks ago with my family.

It’s a fantastic city for kids. (Just don’t try taking a 6-year-old to a museum. Even the Pompidou)

But the food was disappointing this trip. (My fifth time.) The food, on the whole, is much better in NYC. They try harder here. Period. Yes, you can find amazing food in Paris. It’s just not as plentiful as in New York.

Note to TinTin:

Next time you put up a post about food, could you do it later in the afternoon, please?

R. Porrofatto’s post about the French version of Le Hot Dog just set off my empty stomach warning…

I’m the only one who thinks Lisa Schiffren looks exactly like Princess Fiona from Shrek?

I want wunna them le hot dogs.

How could you go wrong?

Well, I’m not entirely clear on what a Gruyere is. So, possibly could go wrong there.

So I’ve been absent from this site for months, and as I drop back in I realize —

— damn, it’s boring. I’ve missed nothing.

Ah, well. I do remember going into an absolutely empty Madrid restaurant at 9 PM – the moment the doors opened, and as my wife and I finished our meals, by about 10:30 PM, the place filled up. On a weekday. That was a great vacation.

Take care, liberals.

So I’ve been absent from this site for months

Right.

And Leon Trotsky, Exile-in-Mexico has been missing for *months*, it feels like. Wonder where he went.

There’s a guy in my building that’s just like Schiffrin. That is, he bitches about things. Anything. Everything. When he doesn’t have anything to complain about, he complains about not having anything about which to bitch.

The cafe at the Guggenheim in Venice, btw, is excellent! Also, don’t use the main entrance – go around to the side street and waltz right in, no waiting.

One can also go in the exit door at Notre Dame in Paris thusly avoiding the long wait at the entrance.

Oh brother.

So I’ve been absent from this site for months

Ooh, who wants to remind the class why this is?

Anyone?

Try for endless output, as well as making personal threats. Resorts now to various lobotomized sockpuppets.

We have a bill here for someone named “The Truth”. Is this his address?

Nuh-uh! Mr GOP, Conservative American, The Truth Will Set You Free, Youknowho, and various politicians’ names and inanimate objects are SO not me!

Is this an old SNL skit from the Not-Ready-For-Prime Players – The Schizophrenic Critic?

She’s bitchin’ about bad food: “there is a lot of bad food in France — especially around tourist sites, including the great museums. I will not say what I paid for two sandwiches and two salads — all premade so unwanted ingredients could not be removed in advance …”
Complainin’ about good food:“There is much excellent food, of course. But who wants really excellent food every day? Sometimes you just want to get everyone fed and get on with your activities.
Blessin’ MediocrityFast food exists because a mediocre, entirely predictable burger from McDonald’s is no worse than what you would get a certain percentage of the time at individual places that might not be as clean and certainly won’t be as quick.”
Mumblin’ ’bout them Tourists,i>”…and a few soft drinks at the Louvre, after braving the crowds to see the Mona Lisa (which attracts tour buses full of people eager to take group pictures of themselves in front of the picture).”

She concludes by characterizing McDonald’s as a restaurant that …”provides reasonably healthy food in a clean setting” and then summarizing that the French are unhealthy.

Her kids have no chance.

Pretty ironic name I’ve chosen for myself.

Museum restaurants are awful everywhere

They certainly can be, but they don’t have to be.

The one in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is terrific.

I think the issue there would be that crepes aren’t hotdogs.

Or possibly the fact that Lisa Lisa saw that they were selling “craps” and was so disgusted she had to resort to Mique’Ds. She probably also fretted over the fact that she couldn’t find a Wal-Mart or a Family Christian Center to shop at.

The more I read from teh troofus, the more I am convinced that he is an obese 15-year-old with bad skin and an overbite hiding from bullies in some junior high library.

More to be pitied than despised, really.

I do remember going into an absolutely empty Madrid restaurant at 9 PM – the moment the doors opened, and as my wife and I finished our meals, by about 10:30 PM, the place filled up. On a weekday.

Which you would have known if you’d even bothered to read the first few pages of any tourist book on Madrid. The Spanish don’t eat dinner, they eat supper, which commences around 9pm. I think a lot has to do with the dry heat of a typical Madrid summer, which is an appetite-killer during the hot mid-day, so that it’s much more pleasant to eat outdoors after dark (if it was like the places I ate at in Madrid, “doors opened” means the staff came out to set up the sidewalk tables, not the customers came in.)

Tapas served at a sidewalk table in Madrid at 22:00, washed down with the bottomless pitchers of sangria… mmmm, good…

at individual places that might not be as clean

jesus christ, she really thinks Paris is some primitive hell-hole, doesn’t she? Convinced they’re cooking baguettes over dung fires or some such.

Admittedly the farthest I’ve personally been out of the country is Toronto, but cripes already.

There’s a great bit towards the end of Elmer Gantry where he and his wife are vacationing in Europe and complain endlessly about the insitence of the locals on being all foreign and stuff. Plus ca change and all that.

Oh, please, Lisa… The Bumfuzzles did it years ago and did it better than you.

Bumfuzzles FTW!!!

Museum restaurants are awful everywhere

They certainly can be, but they don’t have to be.

The one in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is terrific.

The cafe in the British Museum wasn’t half bad either. And in England!

complain endlessly about the insitence of the locals

or even the insistence already.

FYWP

Why, we ask, do wingnuts travel to foreign countries?

So they can take pictures and show them around a few years later saying “See, I was there before we nuked it into glass!”

Which you would have known if you’d even bothered to read the first few pages of any tourist book on Madrid. The Spanish don’t eat dinner, they eat supper, which commences around 9pm.

It’s the same in Italy, except the further south you go, the later the hour most people get started with dining. Makes complete sense for a dinner hour to start around 10 pm in countries with warm summer temps, considering that the sun doesn’t go down until after 9 pm and you would roast in a kitchen trying to prepare food earlier in the day. People tend to forget that wide swaths of Europe are un-air-conditioned, for the simple reason that it rarely gets hot enough there to make it a necessity – unlike the heat and humidity we deal with in large parts of the country here. (And before you argue that it’s not a “necessity” even in our country, I invite you to Little Rock in July. It’s either air-condition, or lay around listlessly in the shade in a pool of your own sweat all day every day.)

The Spanish don’t eat dinner, they eat supper, which commences around 9pm.

It astounds me, the ignorance of people like Troofie.

The Spanish workday is verrrrrrry long, lasting from 9 AM to 8 PM, but includes a two hour lunch (the “siesta”).

But of course, it took until 9 o’clock at night for Troofie to notice that something was wrong. Nevermind that at lunch, there was nobody in any of the restraurants (they usually eat at home). Nevermind that at 5, traffic was light.

Nope. It wasn’t until he and his porcine wife, deciding they couldn’t wait any longer, stood outside the doors of an eatery like teenagers trying to get tickets to a Hannah Montana concert at Ticketmaster in the mall, pawing at the door, drooling in large pools on the sidewalk, that suddenly it occured to him that maybe the Spanish don’t work American hours…

And boo-ya, Miqu’e Ds is going to sell a $4 hamburger.

Which will probably be just as taste-less as the other plastic crap they sell.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches.aspx?post=1179882&_blg=1,1179882

They wander about Rome complaining that they can’t find a Starbucks or Caribou Coffee anywhere.

Personally, I saw that as a feature rather than a bug. When I was there in 2001, a cappuccino at the coffee and pastry shop on the same block as my hotel cost all of seventy-five cents. That might buy you an empty cup at Starbucks, but it certainly wouldn’t buy you any coffee.

It was better coffee than Starbucks, too.

It’s the same in the PeeJ/Tink9+ household. We rarely dine before nine. The in-laws, who sup at four pm, go gaga over my cooking but hate that I am completely incapable of getting a table together before 6:30 or 7:00. Fuck ’em.

This is teh awesome. Shorter American IdiotTM:

I’m in France and can’t find decent chow. It’s obviously not my fault. Stupid French children-haters.

Nevermind that at lunch, there was nobody in any of the restraurants (they usually eat at home)

Never been to Madrid, but I can say that in Mendoza, Argentina you’re lucky to find a restaurant that’s open between 12 and 3 in the afternoon.

“you’re not just limited to beer and ice cream.”

WELL THAT IS THE PROBLEM THEN ISN’T IT

Dinner tonight is at a restaurant named “The Paris Commune.” I look forward to under-sized portions of pigeon, house pet, and recently-deceased communard.

I look forward to under-sized portions of pigeon, house pet, and recently-deceased communard.

And a fine wine pressed from the bodies of capitalist-entrepreneurs?

The cafeteria at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC is . . . amazing. There’s no other word for it. I can still remember my lunch. Fondly.

No, it’s not fine dining, nor is it meant to be (see above: cafeteria). But it’s above and beyond anything I’ve ever had in a museum café, and then some.

And a fine wine pressed from the bodies of capitalist-entrepreneurs?

Depending on where the pressure is applied, it may be biere.

The Spanish don’t eat dinner, they eat supper, which commences around 9pm.

I think at 9pm they’re just starting to think about where they’re eventually going to eat.

I am tremendously amused by the stimulation my actual appearance here has excited. This is my third post here today, and my third in about four months.

But go chase what you think are my sockpuppets. I’ve got you liberals spinning – somehow, and I’m not sure why – and the wheels are still going round and round months later.

I’ll check back in and spin the wheel again later – let’s say, October.

I am tremendously amused by the stimulation my actual appearance here has excited.

That makes one of us.

Promises, promises, Twoofie.

You know, when my wife and I were in Paris a couple years ago, we had some great, quick lunches. Crepes, obviously. Croques monsieur (Lisa’s grilled cheese sandwich with ZOMG HAM). Assorted prepared meat-pie-thingies from any number of markets. Couscous (which, admittedly, Lisa would not eat because it comes from brown people). Reasonably quick steak frites at any of about a billion freaking bistros (but which involves sitting down rather than gobble-snarf-c’mon-kids). Picnics consisting of wine, cheese, bread, fruits, and meats bought from the patisseries, fromageries, etc., that they have on every damn block, and which you can eat outside in any of the countless-ridiculous-parks-that-would-be-crowning-jewels-in-most-other-cities. We were delighted by how easy it is to eat well there.

But oh no, not our Lisa. If she can’t get something mechanically deboned to cram in her piehole within 30 seconds, that’s a serious failing of the culture. I bet she also bitched because she wanted a Denny’s Grand Slam rather than some brioche and a cafe au lait for breakfast, too.

Applebee’s might not have your fancy tartar but they have a rockin’ salad bar.

oh DAMN. remind me not to cross you guys.

No, Mister Motel Six Night Manager! Don’t take my wireless connection away from me!

When your kids eat nothing but chicken nuggets and Easy Mac & Cheese, everything looks like escargot.

Actually, according to noted pretentious twit Corby Kummer, food writer for Atlantic Magazine, Paris is overrated because it doesn’t have enough Starbuck’s.

http://food.theatlantic.com/corbys-fresh-feeds/take-that-paris-cafe.php

So many places in Paris sell savory or sweet tarts and they’re so good. All times of the day.

Like some others have said, the key is not to be lazy. When I worked in Midtown Manhattan, tourists would ask me where they should have lunch. I’d point them to a hundred places (9th and 10th Aves, etc.) — all good quality and reasonably priced. Since that meant walking three or four blocks or a 5 minute taxi ride, they’d usually just say thanks and walk into TGI Friday’s.

It’s the same in Italy, except the further south you go, the later the hour most people get started with dining. Makes complete sense for a dinner hour to start around 10 pm in countries with warm summer temps, considering that the sun doesn’t go down until after 9 pm and you would roast in a kitchen trying to prepare food earlier in the day. People tend to forget that wide swaths of Europe are un-air-conditioned, for the simple reason that it rarely gets hot enough there to make it a necessity – unlike the heat and humidity we deal with in large parts of the country here.

It’s the same in Italy, except the further south you go, the later the hour most people get started with dining. Makes complete sense for a dinner hour to start around 10 pm in countries with warm summer temps, considering that the sun doesn’t go down until after 9 pm and you would roast in a kitchen trying to prepare food earlier in the day. People tend to forget that wide swaths of Europe are un-air-conditioned, for the simple reason that it rarely gets hot enough there to make it a necessity – unlike the heat and humidity we deal with in large parts of the country here.

So it’s too hot to actually prepare and eat food, but AC isn’t a necessity? Sorry, one of the advantages of the States over Europe is better climate control (heating as well as cooling).

I think it’s a cultural thing, not a climate thing. After all, dinner starts at 10 pm even if there’s a foot of snow on the ground.

We’ve got Paris set up that way, stupid people are led to believe there’s no good food so they go home, then the more intelligent ones with better taste come more often and we get to enjoy them.

It’s like a big intelligence test. If you can’t find a flippin corner bistro that will serve you salads of all kinds, sandwiches, and yes even hamburgers at all hours of the day or evening then you shouldn’t be allowed to fly anyway because you’ll very likely open the wrong door and fall out.

I took my then ten year old to Paris a number of years ago and I found that 1) there was plenty of kid friendly food –Croque Monsieur anyone; and 2) that wait staff everywhere was very kind to him, despite the fact that I couldn’t muster a decent word of French if my life depended on it.

There is also a huge variety of things to eat — we stayed in the Marais district and ate excellent falafel on the go on those days when we didn’t want a sit-down lunch. There is also, of course, an abundance of cafes with exquisite coffee and pastries, the afore-mentioned crepes, etc.

Schiffren doesn’t say how old her kids are, but I wouldn’t go to Paris (or any other big foreign city) with kids who were much younger than mine was at the time. Visiting museums, churches, cafes and bars isn’t really ideal with very young children and adjusting to the late dining hours can be tricky. On the other hand, I went to Barcelona last year with the kid and he was totally in synch with the 9:00 dining hour.

[The food at the Museum of the American Indian is in fact really good — it’s too bad the museum kind of sucks.]

Oddly enough I actually ate brunch with Schiffren (in a large group) about 20 years ago. She was a right wing nut then too and spent a good deal of time denouncing overpaid auto workers. Plus ca change indeed.

Someone appears to be protesting just a tad too much. Offensive troll has gone on the offensive.

On topic, I bet Lisa also complained about the French being rude to Americans and didn’t see the irony.

The author of that story sounds kind of stupid to me, like she can’t figure out how to feed herself and her kids when she travels. That’s just dumb. Mrs DBK and I are foodies and we didn’t have a bad meal the entire time we were in France, including four days in Paris. We had great pizzas in local joints and good meals everywhere. It isn’t like she was traveling in some exotic local. It’s FRANCE for crying out loud. She thinks the food is bad in France? Stupid. Just stupid.

“reasonably healthy food” I guess it helps if your brain is also made out of sugar and fat.

So it’s too hot to actually prepare and eat food, but AC isn’t a necessity?

Nah, it’s just warm and people prefer to wait until later to enjoy the cooler evening.

Anywhere East of about Colorado in the US is so humid it feels unbearable to me, but most of Europe is pretty much dry heat. Makes a big difference.

“Actually, according to noted pretentious twit Corby Kummer, food writer for Atlantic Magazine, Paris is overrated because it doesn’t have enough Starbuck’s.”

The only thing anyone ever has to know about The Atlantic is that they actually paid Ross Douthat to “write” a “column.”

I forgot to mention the sandwiches in little local joints. We could grab delicious sandwiches everywhere and anywhere, touristy or not.

Try something new, kid. It’s good for ya.

There is much excellent food, of course. But who wants really excellent food every day?

I’m sure this is somehow central to her point. My favorite part, though, is this:

And as for the health claim — I don’t personally buy it.

It takes 5 minutes in any European country to realize that their diet is healthier; the global warming denial makes much more sense now. In her defense, Manhattan does this to people – it’s essentially built on a hundreds of bodegas that serve cheap-price/cheap-quality sandwiches that’ll get you fed 24 hours a day.

Never been to Madrid, but I can say that in Mendoza, Argentina you’re lucky to find a restaurant that’s open between 12 and 3 in the afternoon.

Same in Buenos Aires, at least in the summer (November) when I was there. Night time dining like in Spain. But a lot more raucous – much more wild drinking going on with the eating.

B.A. fuckin’ rocks, man.

most of Europe is pretty much dry heat. Makes a big difference.

So’s an oven.

I kept waiting for the Lunch Lady to show up. Thanks, Lunch Lady!

The only thing anyone ever has to know about The Atlantic is that they actually paid Ross Douthat to “write” a “column.”

Um.

Lisa should go to Nederlands – she’d LOVE Febo.

For those not in the know, here is a great description: For prices ranging from €1.20 up to €1.50, you can choose an item that has been deep-fried beyond recognition.

Come to think of it, she’d have so much to bitch about in Amsterdam, she should go there post haste. Since she clearly loves complaining more than anything else in the world.

B.A. fuckin’ rocks, man.

That’s what Mark Sanford said.

She went to Paris and couldn’t find any decent food. Poor bastards, they get one thing right in their whole country and she can’t even find that!

For prices ranging from €1.20 up to €1.50, you can choose an item that has been deep-fried beyond recognition.

Wow, sounds just like the South except for that weird “e” thing.

Yes, the American South – land of the deep-fried Krispy Kreme cheeseburger. At least it keeps me busy filling prescriptions for Zocor and Crestor.

Oh man, I got the best AND worst food ever in Amsterdam; the Indonesian food was phenomenal, the Dutch food I had was pretty ew.

“Museum restaurants are awful everywhere

They certainly can be, but they don’t have to be.

The one in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is terrific.

The cafe in the British Museum wasn’t half bad either. And in England!”

You should go to the rooftop restaurant in the Tate Modern. Fantastic, and with a decent view which is bleedin’ rare for London.

The French don’t have any problems with children. It’s just that:

1) They expect children to eat the SAME FOOD as adults. I know it’s fucking crazy, but most of the world over, children don’t have their own special pre-digested food to feed their corn syrup and MSG fixes. (Why is it that people feed the shittiest, least nutritious food to children? I don’t get it).

2) They expect children to behave like civilized human beings, not hyperactive monkeys. Sorry they don’t have video games and ball pits at every charming corner bistro, but as they say, c’est la vie.

Next time, just go to Branson. I hear they have 30 or 40 lovely Taco Bells there if you’re looking for exotic food.

Gruyere = good

Museum restaurants throughout Scandinavia are excellent, reasonably priced, and reflect the local cusine. But you’d better like some form of croquette and pickled herring.

It is ARTISANAL not artisinal.

Next time, just go to Branson. I hear they have 30 or 40 lovely Taco Bells there if you’re looking for exotic food.

i went to Branson once, no joke – we were on a road trip and it was perfect timing for lunch on a Sunday. We thought it would be amusing.

We actually found the streets crawling with tourists, but none of the restaurants in the main tourist part of town was open. It was unbelievable. We ended up at a McD’s on the outskirts of town.

I still can’t believe no restaurants were open – was it because of Sunday Blue Laws? but all the tschoke shops were open.

But you’d better like some form of croquette and pickled herring.

Oh, those weird little chopped-meat kotlets with brown gravy we were served in Oslo!

They expect children to behave like civilized human beings, not hyperactive monkeys. Sorry they don’t have video games and ball pits at every charming corner bistro

Ahem. Let me repeat myself.

I am the second biggest McDonald’s market in the friggin world. Run by the French. For French customers. McDonald’s.

You know what has ball pits? Full of screaming kids?

I do!

So, while the Authentic tries to continue convincing us that really, he was “away” all these months, or traveled to Madrid with his “wife”, isn’t it just a mite suspicious that he only arrives after what’shisgit with the Unemployment scare just poofs into thin air.

You couldn’t be any more transparent than if you wrapped your head in Saran Wrap.

Sorry, I was, um, out running. Anyway, where were we. Oh, right, BILL AYERS

Give me a big, juicy triple thick burger from Hardees/Carls Jr. With some large fries and a cole any day of the week!

pass the lipitor

and a cole

Some friends and I awhile back, while working in a deli, came to the conclusion that there was a distinct linkage between eating cole slaw and idiocy.

You’re not doing much to disprove that, you know.

I find that when going abroad, trying local food is often one of the most rewarding experiences.

I was in Beijing about a year ago, and we decided to go get Beijing Duck. After getting some suggestions and hints from a chinese co-worker, we (though we)were ready.

Anyway, long story short, we ended up in a restaurant where none of the staff spoke english, ordering the food and drinks from menu written completely in chinese (luckily they had pictures of the duck). After our feeble attempts (and remember, they didn’t speak english), one of the waitresses took a extra plate on the table, and showed us how to wrap the duck into a small bundle with two sticks and a spoon, and started feeding it to one of us. Had the best night ever, lots of laughs, good food, great experince. I think the waitress was about to die from embarassment when we were laughing to ourselves, so we tipped her a lot in the end.
We also learned that 2 ducks for three people is too much, even two of us were really big.

As for Lisa here, I quote my old saying:
“She is so dumb, she couldn’t find porn in the internet.”

Give me a big, juicy triple thick burger from Hardees/Carls Jr. With some large fries and a cole any day of the week!

pass the lipitor

I meant to say coke. A LARGE coke, just cause the food nannies wouldn’t like it.

just cause the food nannies wouldn’t like it.

And here we have it folks. Does anyone remember the discussion a while back about how everything, and I mean everything, these people do is motivated by what they think will make liberals mad?

For people claiming the mantle of individualism, they sure allow others to define their existence.

I meant to say coke.

Oh, I’m suuuuure you enjoy your “coke”, sir.

Too bad you have to go into THAT part of town to get it, though.

Give me a big, juicy triple thick burger…

Hell, have one for each meal, ya pussy! As a lib food nanny, I ain’t impressed by this occasional gluttony. You gotta do better than that, tubby!

I used to travel on business a lot – like 70% on the road – and about half of that was out of the country. Business travel sucks in many ways.

“Oh what’s Warsaw like?”
“Um, the airport isn’t crowded and the Sheraton is super. Clients had nice offices. Cab was cheap.”

“Oh what’s Istanbul like?”
“Um, the airport is a pain but our hotel was great for the six hours I was there. The office was a nasty hellhole. At least they had a driver for us.”

You get the idea. What really sucked though, was things like going to the hot new MEXICAN restaurant in Warsaw. In Istanbul (it’s not Constantinople) we ordered in for a working lunch. From Pizza Hut. In Sao Paolo, we went for Italian. And so on. *sigh* I had to strong-arm my local colleagues to take me, whenever possible, for some local cuisine.

Why is the complaining pop tart in France? Did someone force her to go?

You know, I still like the LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL version of Troofie best.

Dance for us, Troofie-boy! DANCE!

That article reminded me of the time in Italy I saw an American mother, in front of her kids, throw trash out of the window of a train, then argue with the conductor that she didnt do it to avoid a ticket.

It pissed me off in so many ways I didnt know what to say.

At least she got the ticket.

I was in France a while back, doing the backpacker thing. One of my discoveries was a French chain restaurant called “Flunch,” which is pretty much all over the country. Flunch has quite good food for ridiculously low prices, and they cater to French families with kids. So there’s something else Lisa missed. Of course the dollar is worth half of what the Euro is now, so its not so economical for Americans.

http://www.flunch.fr/Traiteur/Traiteur_Carte.aspx?codCategorie=17

You know what has ball pits? Full of screaming kids?

What up, France? You can’t convince me that the popularity of McD’s is solely due to its “family friendly atmosphere” and not clever marketing and the declining economy, but then again, I am a childfree food snob who likes kids but hates asshole parents and is prone to generalizations now and again…

I still can’t believe no restaurants were open – was it because of Sunday Blue Laws? but all the tschoke shops were open.

Hm. I don’t know. I live in Missouri and restaurants are allowed to be open on Sundays; even my homestate of KS, which has some pretty restrictive blue laws allows restaurants to be open. Sunday just might be considered a slow day and it’s cheaper to staff a gift shop than a restaurant.

I’ve been to Branson more times than I can count. Silver Dollar City is the shit, man.

At least she got the ticket.

Well done on the conductor, then! One thing I like about Italy is that the clerks and security folks and all do not take bullshit at all. It’s very satisfying to see the Ugly Americans try to pull stuff on them.

I used to deploy to various places when I was in the Air National Guard. No matter where we went, there was always somebody that had to have a Budweiser, or Coors Light or whatever watery swill they were used to drinking back home.

If all I wanted was to eat cheeseburgers and drink Budweiser I see no real reason to leave Ohio.

If all I wanted was to eat cheeseburgers and drink Budweiser I see no real reason to leave Ohio.

This is central to Lisa Lisa’s point, I believe.

I was (honestly) looking over stuiff about George Ritzer’s “McDonaldization Thesis” earlier today. It’s pretty much central to wingnuttery, for whatever reason, that the rest of the world should be like McDonald’s – standardized to a proper American’s expectations, easy, convenient, and if taste and quality suffer, who cares? Other than the people elsewhere in the world, that is.

I’ll be in Europe in two weeks’ time and expect to spend the entire trip grumbling about the inability of the French & Spanish & Portuguese to brew decent beer.

Lbrls rlly dsps thr fllw mrcns, s.

I find that when going abroad, trying local food is often one of the most rewarding experiences.

See, this is the thing. When you go somewhere new, why would you decide to eat at places you can eat at back home? You’re SOMEWHERE NEW.

And it’s not like it’s hard to find places. Just.. ask someone. Really. Be polite, that’s all it takes.

This just seems like Traveling 101 to me.

I will not say what I paid for two sandwiches and two salads

<cough>Bullshit</cough> Unless you can get Cheetos salad with lard dressing in Paris.

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah – what the hell is it with these foreign places. All their customs are different than ours! What a fucking insult! When I travel to faraway lands, I expect them to be exactly the same as whatever shithole I’m flying out of. I ain’t travelling for cultural experience, I’m looking for anonymous sex with people I’ll never see again undying gratitude from those fuckers who would all be SPEAKING GERMAN if it weren’t for good ol’ Uncle Sam. USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

Liberals laugh at people who ignorantly piss and moan about trifles, conservatives actively wish for Americans’ fiery deaths.

Liberals laugh at people who ignorantly piss and moan about trifles,

MMMMM trifles OM NOM NOM

Lt m gss–f Frnch prsn trvlng n th S trshd McDnlds nd btchd bt hw h clsnt fnd plc tht srvd Crps, y gys wld lgh wth hm t “stpd mrcns” nd tll hm hw cltrd h s?

I’d buy a lottery ticket fucking PRONTO.

Sorry, one of the advantages of the States over Europe is better climate control (heating as well as cooling).

I think it’s a cultural thing, not a climate thing. After all, dinner starts at 10 pm even if there’s a foot of snow on the ground.

The climate control thing is one of the reasons why we use a lot more energy than they do. And while I’d be very unhappy without a certain level of warmth in the winter, having been in central Italy for 6 weeks in June – July, air conditioning there is not a necessity – I don’t recall a single day over the mid-80s. Not like here, with heat indexes of 110. FWIW, I typically don’t turn on the AC until after the first of June, unless we get an early heat wave in the mid-90s or higher. I find that until then, I can keep the house comfortable with an attic fan in the evening and morning, and shut it against the heat for midday. So maybe I’m a bit more tolerant of temps above the air-conditioned norm here. But I also don’t cook in the house until it’s cool enough to turn on the attic fan, which generally means, right about the time the sun starts going down. It’s pretty much the same reason why big homes of the 19th century (and earlier) had what they referred to as “the summer kitchen”, a detached structure for cooking in hot weather, so the heat of the kitchen wouldn’t heat up the house. Simplistic though it may sound, people do a lot of things for very practical reasons.

As to when they eat in the wintertime, I’ve never been there then so have no personal experience with that, but I’ll take your word for it. But as for being cultural vs climate, that’s kind of a silly distinction, seeing how so much of culture is directly derived from local climate.

I know it’s a typo (or more likely Trollspell). However the more I look at the word “Stupoid”, the more it appeals to me as an apt troll descriptor.

It has nothing to do with culture. It’s about being semi-informed about the places you’re traveling to and not whining that it ain’t like back home.

Liberals really despise their fellow Americans, I see.

I too am so concerned that I think I may not vote for Kerry after all.

See, this is the thing. When you go somewhere new, why would you decide to eat at places you can eat at back home? You’re SOMEWHERE NEW.

And over the past 20 years, it’s gotten so the food is about the only thing you can get that is still locally made. The last time I went to London 15 years ago, it was in December so I did gift shopping while I was there…and was very discouraged to find that the great majority of what was for sale was imported from China. Just like here.

S Jcb, f Frnch prsn btchs tht h cn’t fnd Crps n rlnd, nd cmplns bt McDnlds, s h n gnrnt “gly Frnchmn”?

A new pseud! Ha ha, suckers! Good luck calling me a racist now!

Troofie – anyone who goes to another country and acts like an asshole is an asshole, whichever country they started in and whichever one they’re standing in. Sorry, no gotcha-liberals-hate-America. PIEFILTER!

I win! Yay, me!

Crepes in Orlando:

http://allears.net/menu/menu_crp.htm

Some friends and I awhile back, while working in a deli, came to the conclusion that there was a distinct linkage between eating cole slaw and idiocy.

You’re not doing much to disprove that, you know.

Given that you misread a typo for “coke” when someone was mocking a burger joint that doesn’t even serve cole slaw, you come off as the guy who made 3 typos in a sentence he wrote correcting someone else’s grammar.

But I am currently in a region where every farmers’ market, farm stand, and café sells foie gras, duck confit, and excellent high-fat cheeses, and what passes for a vegetable in restaurants is potatoes sautéed in duck fat. A few carrot sticks and an apple and Mickey D wins that one

With apologies to our gracious overlords.
Sadly, No!

France: 80.87 years, ranked 8th in the world.
USA: 78.06 years, ranked 45th in the world, three spots after Bosnia.

The French exchange students I met went out repeatedly for burgers, chicken fingers and beer while studying in the United States.

Comment faites-vous pour dire le “Disemvoweller” en francais?

Liberals really despise their fellow Americans, I see.

Coming from people who created the whole Real America/Real Virginia malarky during the 2008 campaign, that’s really funny.

Nevermind. It’s merely hypocritical and boring.

And here I was figuring conservatives thought all French were “ugly” to begin with.

I mean, after all, isn’t that why we had to call them “Freedom Fries” for several years? Because the French etc. etc. yadda yadda central to my point send Statue of Liberty back ungrateful frogs and all that?

I watched an American couple send their steak back for the third time the other night and finally instructed them to order it a point or bien cuit if they want it medium to well-done.

I myself happen to like my steak with the possibility of being resuscitated.

Twoofy must go through cases of Preparation H hoping he can somehow make his gaping, distended asshole tight enough for us again.

The next time a thread degenerates into a collective conniption fit abou the issue of weightism and th impropriety of photoshopping sammiches, I have dibs on the phrase pate du folie gras.

Liberals really despise their fellow Americans, I see.

I dunno. I don’t actively hate my fellow citizens, though some of them wallow in a stupidity I despise, given that it’s all too clear that it’s born of resentment and selfishness. For example, the person who insists that a worker who is making a living wage is being “selfish” because he doesn’t want to work for the same $8 an hour some wage slave in a southern factory is making. Ok, so dude is making more money than you, resentful right winger. Isn’t the answer to that helping you to make a better wage, not to tear his down to the level of yours? Unless, of course, the basis for your argument is that you agree that you’re not worth more than $8 an hour so he couldn’t possibly be worth any more, and who am I to argue that point? You know yourself better than I do.

Cmpr wht mrcn lf xpctncy t Frnch lf xpctncy. Tk t th blcks nd llgls, nd t gs p.

We hate loud stupid assholes, troll, but not enough to wish for them to die by the hundreds of thousands so they would “wake up.”

Troofie’s gonna love my nuts.

f crs ll mrcns r stpd nd gnrnt, whl ll th Frnch trvlrs r plt nd nlghtnd. Tht’s th vb gt frm ths thrd.

Far be for me to point out that it doesn’t look like Lisa misses too many meals

DKW: That’s not exactly fair. Life expectancy has a fairly large genetic component, and the range in countries which aren’t wracked by disease, war, or other mass killers is fairly small. The United States does have fairly high infant and under-5 mortality rates (which is a matter of poor access to health care, not diet), which might interfere with the ranking.

A better comparison if we’re looking for the effects of diet would be life expectancy at adulthood, but that’s harder to find, and we’d still have to adjust for genetics.

Suffice it to say that the distinction between French and American food has little to do with fat and much more to do with level of processing and portion size, and that poor American diet tends to affect quality of life and health care expenditures more than lifespan.

I’d be interested to see a study done measuring average length of incapacitation, senility, or dementia before death, but that’d be difficult to measure.

blacks and illegals

Is this the shortest timespan between first post and blatant racism for a Pravda sockpuppet? I think it is.

Hey, Pravda, if you take out women and non-members of the house of Saud, Saudi Arabia is the freest nation in the world.

Take out the blacks and illegals, and it goes up.

In wingnutese, this means “kill (take out) all the black people and Mexican immigrants, and I get a boner.”

Synchronicity! More Lisa FAIL.

[…]
Yannis Athenes, a 24-year-old computer engineer, is one of the people Rossi was talking about. Athenes handed over about $5 one recent day for a grilled salmon sandwich prepared at a little stand outside the Benjamin Cafe on Rivoli Street, in a busy shopping district just north of the Seine. Athenes said he sits down for a full lunch whenever he can but frequently resorts to sandwiches because of a lack of time.

f Frnc s s grt, nd yr fllw mrcns r sch ft dts y cld mv t rp y knw.

YOU NOT LIKE AMERCA. GO AWAY TO OUT OF AMERCA BECAUSE YOUR DUMB AND STUPID. THESE COLERS DONT RUN!!!!

If France is so great, and your fellow Americans are such fat idiots you could move to Europe you know.

Only Real Americans (by Sarah Palin’s definition) are fat idiots. There’s so few of them we don’t need to move.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

DKW: That’s not exactly fair.
Who cares what’s fair? Let’s look at the numbers:
First, consider the rates of obesity in France. While 31 percent of Americans are so severely overweight that they are technically obese, only 11 percent of the French are obese.

It’s just plain wrong for Lisa Schiffren to claim that there is any country with more unhealthy eating habits than the US. When it comes to putting garbage into mouths, USA is still #1.

Y’r syng y D lk mrc N.C.? thght w’r jst ft stpd dts wth bd hlth cr nd n cltr?

Th slf-htrd hr s strng.

Geez. This troll could get schooled by ELIZA.

Wait, I thought eevul Francy France was okay with teh conservatives since they elected Sarkozy, bestest conservative leader since St. Ronnie. Would someone go and edit the conservative talking points, please?

HAHA YOU SAY YOU LIKE THE FRANCES BUT THEN YOU SAY YOU LIKE AN AMERCA TOO. HAHA SO STUPID LIB!! NO SPIN ZONE.

If France is so great, and your fellow Americans are such fat idiots you could move to Europe you know.

Seriously considering it actually. My company is opening a pilot domicile in Paris this year.

BTW, Djur.

Portion Size. I missed that you said those magic words. Portion size is everything. Even if you’re only eating trans-fat free potato chips and the frenchie is chewing on a stick of butter (avec le extra plus de sel!!!) – the fact that he stops after two bites while you’re opening the fifth jumbo family-sized bag is the real difference maker.

you come off as the guy who made 3 typos in a sentence he wrote correcting someone else’s grammar

ooooooh exsqueeze me First Lady of the Linguistics. I in my infinite ignorance thought “cole” was slang for “cole slaw”, considering I live in the South where said substance is considered a fifth food group. I shall sit here in the back of the class now with my hand folded and be quiet.

Or maybe not.

If France is so great, and your fellow Americans are such fat idiots you could move to Europe you know.

Logically then, if France is not so great, OR Americans are not such fat idiots, we could not move to Europe.

Modus ponens is not one of troofie’s strong suits.

Gd, lv nd tk bm, Bdn, Pls, Frnk, nd Ddd wth y!

Hell, the fat idiots are the ones I’m making my money off of, who get prescriptions for cholesterol meds, diabetic meds and heart meds.

Eat up, Red Staters! The pharmaceutical industry is depending on you!

I might stay for the sole purpose of pissing you off Troofy.

considering I live in the South where said substance is considered a fifth food group

I thought gravy was the fifth Southern food group?

Besides, I thought all the wingnuts were going to have to leave when Obama McStalin declared the People’s Revolution.

h yh, bl sttrs lk Ddd, Frnk, Mr, nd wnnb Bl Sttrs lk Gr nd Bll Clntn r s ft nd hlthy!

nd bl sttrs r nvr stpd. N sr. Ptr Grffn sn’t bsd n wht ppl frm Rhd slnd r lk t ll!

considering I live in the South where said substance is considered a fifth food group

I thought gravy was the fifth Southern food group?

I thought it was sweet tea.

And now for our long distance dedication. A listener on the Internets writes: ‘Dear Casey, a few months ago the blog I frequent welcomed a new visitor in our midst. He called himself “The Truth” and he proceeded to win his way into our hearts with his erudite witticisms, rational analysis and spot-on predictions.

Sadly, it was not to last. A week before election day, he made a prediction that proved to be more wrong than anything Criswell ever spoke. It was something that an ordinary person would have felt sheepish about, but not our “Troofie”. He continues to post on our blog, day after day, taking on new guises, making even more blatantly racist pronouncements, and denying that his prediction carries any weight to it. God bless him.

So Casey, just to make the point that he’s an assclown of the second-highest order, could you please play that prediction, so we don’t forget? Thanks! Billy in Columbus’

Billy, it would be a pleasure. Here’s “The Truth” with his only hit, “Bookmark This, Liberals”:

Here is how it will go down next week. First, the results from Virginia and North Carolina will come in, and they’ll be declared for McCain. You’ll be disappointed, but “no big deal, change can’t come overnight” will be your comment. Florida will go red, and a little nervousness will creep in. The usual suspects will fall into the usual categories. As the night drags on, Ohio, Colorado, and (much to your horror) Pennsylvania will be too close to call.

My advice at this point to you will be to go to bed. You will wake up to a McCain presidency and the Great Liberal Freakout will be on.

Bookmark this, liberals, as this is exactly how it is going to go down. You will be wonder how the hell I was able to call this.

I thought gravy was the fifth Southern food group?

I dunno, maybe Sout’ Ca’lina’s different. I don’t see so much gravy here as cole slaw and mustard. Mustard on everything. Oh, and eggs on Greek salads. FAIL

Peter Griffin isn’t based on what people from Rhode Island are like at all!

Please repeat last transmission. You’re coming in broken and stupid.

ls, whn thnk “mld mnnrd nd plt” thnk “Nw Jrsy”.

Peter Griffin isn’t based on what people from Rhode Island are like at all!

Boy, that’d be a cutting remark if I knew or gave a rat’s ass who the hell Peter Griffin was.

Fatty map.

Vote map.

Fatty map.

Vote map.

Holy freaking cow.

Also, when I think “mild mannered and polite” I think “New Jersey”.

Yo! You got a problem with dat?

Also, when I think “mild mannered and polite” I think “New Jersey”.

Hey, our state motto ain’t “No, fuck YOU!” for nothin’.

wndr f y cmprd th ftty mp t th mp f whr blck ppl r?

And blue staters are never stupid. No sir. Peter Griffin isn’t based on what people from Rhode Island are like at all!

That may be the dumbest fucking thing I have ever read in my life. Like… just…mindblowingly dumb.

a pilot domicile

More veiled PENIS references. Will the madness never end?

And, now that I look at it, “domicile” sounds suspiciously French. I doubt you’ll be able to eat a burger there.

“Domicile” to an airline pilot means “The airport I fly my trips out of. Which may or may not be where I actually happen to live”.

I wonder if you compared the fatty map to the map of where black people are?

No, but we did find that the heaviest concentration of fat people coincided where your mamma’s at!

Ah. Suspiciously logical rather than suspiciously French.

Fatty map.

Vote map.

Poverty map.

I love how approximately 13% of the population is supposed to account for everything bad that ever happens. Also, the obesity rate among white people is at zero percent. Uh huh.

Teh stupoid, it burnz!

(I think we need to pull old Billy Madison line: we’re all now dumber for having read the troll’s posts today. Also.)

I love how approximately 13% of the population is supposed to account for everything bad that ever happens.

Since I work for a rather conservative, southern-based company I can tell you that the appropriate right-wing code for that is “inner city”.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that little phrase parroted by somebody.

Also, when I think “mild mannered and polite” I think “New Jersey”.

Personally I think at times I’d gladly give up “polite” for a decent Greek diner and a respite from fucking idiotic blue laws.

Please repeat last transmission. You’re coming in broken and stupid.

Your last transmission garbled.
Finally watched ‘Rescue Dawn’ the other night.

“inner city”.

It’s like the cleaned up version of “ghetto.” Gross.

considering I live in the South where said substance is considered a fifth food group
…
I thought gravy was the fifth Southern food group?
…
I thought it was sweet tea.

Pan-fried coleslaw fritters with sweet tea gravy. TAKE THAT, FRENCHIES!

Leave me outta this, you frickin’ moron.

Personally I think at times I’d gladly give up “polite” for a decent Greek diner and a respite from fucking idiotic blue laws.

Don’t move to Bergen County, then. It’s the last bastion of ridiculous blue laws left in the Northeast.

I can tell you that the appropriate right-wing code for that is “inner city”

I thought the proper word was “urban”.

I don’t see so much gravy here as cole slaw and mustard. Mustard on everything. Oh, and eggs on Greek salads. FAIL

All of those things are awesome, and I have no idea what the hell is wrong with you. Cole slaw is pretty uninteresting by itself, though. There’s a place around here that sells po’ boys dressed with slaw and remoulade, and that’s basically like a delicious nuke dropped on your cardiovascular system.

Eggs on Greek salads is kind of silly, but I don’t really see how anything is hurt by adding eggs.

I thought the proper word was “urban”.

No, “turban.” As in “I piss myself when I see a turban.”

Pere Ubu: it’s “at risk,” I believe. Someone dig up that This Modern World strip. I’m at work.

All of those things are awesome, and I have no idea what the hell is wrong with you.

Oh, I’m not criticizing mustard at all. Mustard based BBQ is excellent. I just have a bias against cole slaw.

Well, whaddaya expect? Paris is in France, one of them there Socialist European Countries. Lisa Schiffren was only reacting as a true American.

And I want Le Hot Dog, even with that there Gruyére.

Lisa apparently doesn’t realize that “The Innocents Abroad” was not intended as a travel guide.

You clearly know nothing of my work, troll.

She hasn’t mentioned the way that all them froggies talk in frog language. What are they sayin’????????????

I’m way too lazy to check and see if any other commenter already said this, but the food in the Louvre’s food court is actually really good, and not overly expensive.

But I think Lisa was complaining not so much about the quality, as about the pre-made, plastic-sealed nature of the salad, which in its Euro-Fascist Nanny State way made it impossible for her to exercise her free Murkan choice to not have arugula on it.

Lisa Schifferbrains is the anti-Rick Steeves. I strongly suspect she was on a DaVinci Code tour.

I find it hilarious that she couldn’t find a decent lunch in the land of charcuterie et boulangerie.

She hasn’t mentioned the way that all them froggies talk in frog language. What are they sayin’????????????

I don’t know for sure, but if I were a dairyman I would be alarmed. Apparently their word for “to die” is “moo rear”. Sodomizing farm animals to death — typical loony lib behavior.

her free Murkan choice to not have arugula on it

Evidently she was afraid she might catch liberal cooties from the awful green non-meat substance.

Personally I think at times I’d gladly give up “polite” for a decent Greek diner and a respite from fucking idiotic blue laws.

We’ve got ’em. The absolute best is to be standing at the Costco cash registers at 11:59 on Sunday morning awaiting the stampede of booze buyers one terrifying minute in the future. Dude, you don’t do that twice.

Wll, gng t th bch nw n my cnvrtbl nd blw sm crbn n th mthr ntrs fc. B bck nxt wk. Hppy ndpndnc Dy, lbs, thgh ts bvs y wsh th thr sd hd wn.

Of course, not all idiot Americans are from the south. I know one from Cali who threw a fit in France because she couldn’t get iceberg lettuce (gag) or ranch dressing (throw up in mouth).

She was from rural northern Cali, though, which — now that I think about it — might as well be the south. The SF Chron had a great article this week about Modoc County, another rural enclave. It’s California’s most conservative county, but per capita, gets more state taxpayer dollars than all but one of the state’s other 58 counties.

But, I digress.

Happy Independence Day, libs, though its obvious you wish the other side had won.

If only they had planned for Jeff Goldblum and his iBook.

Happy Independence Day, libs, though its obvious you wish the other side had won.

First dictionary definition for “conservatism” (via Marxist answers.com):

The inclination, especially in politics, to maintain the existing or traditional order.

The SF Chron had a great article this week about Modoc County, another rural enclave.

Shit, the Enclave is in Modoc? And all this time I thought it was off the coast of San Francisco…

Djur:

Frankly, I just want information on where the Deathclaws is at.

Trotsky: Well, there’s one in Modoc, but if you let it out without killing it it decimates the town. Obviously.

Wow said,
July 2, 2009 at 22:44

Compare white American life expectancy to French life expectancy. Take out the blacks and illegals, and it goes up.

“Wow” is appropriately named. Wow, just wow!

So these nefarious dark-complected people you hate so much are conspiring to bring America down by…dying young? Is that really what you’re saying? Care to elaborate on how that works, or how that says anything negative about them? Shit, I thought I’d seen some brain-damaged fucks on the intert00bz, but Troofus/Authentic/Mr. GOP/Wow/etc. absolutely breaks new ground!

Oh, by the way, Troofus, just because the name of their ancestral language is “Illegal Alien” according to G. Gordon Liddy, doesn’t mean most Hispanic people are here illegally. Quite the reverse in fact.

And while we’re at it, take back that attribution of the “Million Mogadishus” quote from Columbia Assistant Professor Nicholas De Genova to Michael Moore, Mmmm-kay?

In the past few minutes, this comment thread suddenly got more intelligent.

Lost some vowels, gained a load of IQ points.

Funny that.

…though its obvious you wish the other side had won.

Protectionism for the wealthy upper classes has always been a feature of Toryism/Royalism. Methinks thou art a shithead.

There really is no reason to visit Frankfurt if you’re not being paid to do so, other than to transfer at the airport, but Holbein’s — the restaurant at the Städel (FfM’s very modest answer to the Louvre or Prado) — is gobsmackingly excellent (but not, alas, gobsmackingly cheap). But then, it is an actual restaurant, not a mere cafe.

Schiffren writes about confit, foie gras and duck fat as though these were bad things. What better way of telling her to go eat a big bag of dicks, then, than this simple recipe:

Cook and eat a duck, or several. The important thing is to have a good big handful of leftover duck meat.

Also. Arrange to have some duck fat, either because you’ve rendered it yourself or bought it in a jar from your duckmonger. Heat it up in a big frying-pan.

Boil potatoes, the mealy- rather than firm- cooking sort. Mash them up, mix in some flour and milk and an egg to make a firmish dough. Mince a shallot fine and blend it into the dough. Chop up the leftover duck meat and blend that in too. Add salt, grind pepper, grate nutmeg. Form into pseudo-sausages the size of Troofie’s penis (fully erect, extended with weights and pumped full of V1agra from Rush’s own personal Dominican Republic Emergency Stash) — that is, about the size of a decently-proportioned index finger.

Fry them till just golden and crisp in the hot duck fat. Serve at once.

Even children will devour them greedily, though Schiffren would be better advised to stick with a Big Mac — as they say in these parts, wos dr Bauer net kennt, des frisst er aa net. Or with those carrot sticks she mentioned — to judge by her photo, the Sadlynauts would catch no end of politically-correct holy heck if they ‘shopped a Giant Sammich between her paws.

What I remember of Paris from 2004 is that you can get fresh bread everywhere, the coffee is spectacular and pastries are always fresh.

Good old wingnuts, somehow manage to find shitty food in Paris. Next on her agenda, she’ll manage to have flat surf in Hawaii, terrible beer in Germany, overpay for things in Eastern Europe, fail to find drugs in Amsterdam and finish with a 10 day jaunt through Italy and Greece where she manages to not see any ancient sites of historical significance as she completes her failcation.

Oh and am I the only one who wishes NRO allowed comments, the ones to this piece would be a sight to behold.

It’s true, if you don’t count all the people in America who are treated like shit after having their forefathers held in bondage, America’s average goes way up. Now I’m sure the rich people will be ok with cleaning all the toilets and emptying all the trashbins once all the underclass is removed.

Michael Ledeen advises you to kick the upper class’s asses.

Can’t speak for Paris, since I’ve never been there, but hasn’t Missy Pissy ever heard of Lonely Planet? Bloody hell, I travel so rarely that each trip is a major treat, and poring over a Lonely Planet in the months beforehand helps to (a) prolong the enjoyment “I want to see that! I want to eat there! Can we go to that town?”) and (b) make me better prepared to get the most out of the trip while I’m there.

Perhaps that’s because I’m a sad git, but at least I’m a sad git who clearly enjoys my travels much more than Lisa ‘I’ve got a mouthful of vinegar’ Schiffren.

Museum restaurants are awful everywhere

We had a pretty nice meal at the one in Adelaide, when we took the mother out for mother’s day. But then Adelaide, while lovely to live in, is a bit of a Tiny Town, so the museum isn’t a world-famous landmark full of world-famous attractions.

Holy crap, just like any place in the US, you miss brekkers at McD’s by a minute and you gotta eat lunch. Sheesh! The something something of those americans!

Tho it is annoying when you want lunch and you missed it, gosh darn it, all the sandwiches have been sold by 2, but since I’ve never left the USofA ‘cept to go to Expo ’86, I wouldn’t know that, would I?

Or wait, I do know that. Darn cheapskates.

the Städel (FfM’s very modest answer to the Louvre or Prado)

Oi. Teh Städel has a couple of Hans Baldung Grien paintings, and also this piece by Hans Holbein d.Ä which is weirder than all get-out.
One thing it doesn’t have is a decent searchable website.

I don’t know, I was generally able to score a baguette sandwich at all times of day in Paris without much trouble. They sold them in corner stores and on the street. I favored the (damn good) goat cheese and tomato ones, though I also had a curry chicken one. They were cheap, too.

Our resident sockpuppet troll isn’t even trying any more, is he? Just parroting the stupidest RW talking-points he can find, just so they’ll fit on a bumpersticker.

I think we should start calling him “Loyal-to-the-Group-of-Seventeen”. In fact, since all the wingnuts lately can only articulate canned slogans, maybe we should call them all that.

(Prompted by Smut and B^4’s fuligin reference on the last thread, but I’ve been thinking about the Wingnut/Ascian parallel for a while now.)

One thing it doesn’t have is a decent searchable website.
I take that back. The Städel has improved its website since last I went looking there, so now I can link to Madonna with Albino Alien Christ-baby.

???? I thought this was the definitive Madonna with Albino Alien Christ-baby.

Madonna with Albino Alien Christ-baby.

He’s not albino, he’s radioactive. He might be purple or orange, but really really bright.

She reminds me of a friend of mine I knew back in the 90’s. She was a great person and very liberal minded but her palate was very conservative. I visit her once and saw a perfectly good loaf of bread in the garbage and asked her about it. She said it was bad, the food shelf had given her sour bread and she blamed them for that. I looked at it and it was ordinary sourdough bread, perfectly fine.

I explained to her that this bread was supposed to be like that, she looked at me like I was insane and could not understand why anyone would such a foolish thing. For her, getting adventurous in bread meant serving whole wheat instead of her usual Wonder Bread.

She was from the Iron Range (Minn), which explains a lot if you’re from around here. These are people who think serving canned peas with you meat and potatoes is a well balanced diet. It says a lot when Lutefisk is a holiday treat.

Back to Lisa Lisa, You just know what a nightmare that whole trip was like for her children. They were there to “get some culture”. “The Mona Lisa? Check, Next?” I wonder how she kept her kids from seeing all the naked women, the breasts and penises are everywhere, in paintings, on sculptures even on the Frenchy TV. I’m sure she was horrified every single day she was there by the lewdness and low moral standards of French culture.

I’d even hazard a guess that’s why she didn’t like the food. I bet that in her mind all the constant openly sexual imagery she saw everyday in the back of her mind it got into the food somehow. Going to Micky D’s was her way of insulating herself, and probably her children too, from those wicked Frenchies all around her.

Ah, but Jennifer’s Madonna with Albino Alien Christ-baby icon does not have what appears to be a giant fox-tail running across the top half of the painting.

At least my parents have the courtesy to refuse to go to Europe. (They have a season pass to Disneyworld, so “we don’t have to go to Europe because we have Epcot”.)

Why is Schiffrin in Paris? Will her next column be all about how ghastly the restrooms are? And after we saved their derrières in two wars, even.

He’s not albino, he’s radioactive. He might be purple or orange, but really really bright.

RB has it. The painting in question is actually a deleted scene from Repo Man.

He’s not albino, he’s radioactive. He might be purple or orange, but really really bright.

He’s a ghoul, having been exposed to a mixture of hard radiation and Forced Evolutionary Virus. Duh.

And the Blessed Disemvoweler comes down, and comes down hard! Happy Independence Day, Troofie! Suck it.

(Prompted by Smut and B^4’s fuligin reference on the last thread, but I’ve been thinking about the Wingnut/Ascian parallel for a while now.)

It came up in a thread a few months ago.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/18356.html

He’s not albino, he’s radioactive. He might be purple or orange, but really really bright.

I was going with the “bioluminescent bacteria symbionts” explanation.

Maybe it’s a deeep-sea Jeesus (Seasus?).

Noen, that “sour bread” story reminds me of a guy in a California restaurant who sent his salad back because the leaves were all dark and rotten. I sympathize, because I grew up knowing only iceberg lettuce, served in a chunk with fluorescent “international orange” French dressing, and had to come to California to see red leaf lettuce, romaine, butter, oakleaf, lettuce after wonderful lettuce, and we’re not even near the arugula yet.

snowmentality said,

I don’t know, I was generally able to score a baguette sandwich at all times of day in Paris without much trouble. They sold them in corner stores and on the street. I favored the (damn good) goat cheese and tomato ones, though I also had a curry chicken one. They were cheap, too.

See, these would completely alien foods to someone like Lisa here. There is only one kind of French bread and it’s long and soft, not hard, and the only use for it is to make garlic toast for your Dommino’s Pizza. “Goats” are NOT food and curry is that icky yellow spice that is way too hot and NOT like ketchup AT ALL! Yes, that’s right, she would put ketchup on her Chicken Curry.

I don’t know, I was generally able to score a baguette sandwich at all times of day in Paris without much trouble.

She couldn’t find sausages in Germany.

…though its obvious you wish the other side had won.”

Other side of what? Does he mean McCain? Or the English back in the Revolutionary War? At least we’d have Public Health Care.

Most of the museums I’ve visited have good cafes’ when they are run by the museum. And nice cutlery, too. If the museum contracts out to a vendor, one tends to get stale sandwitches & stewed coffee.

My mind boggles at the suggestion there are of no good restaurants in Paris! Or, they’re too good for children? If the idiot woman is dragging her poor kids around to museums she *deserves* to have a rotten time. But I pity the children. Ask the concierge to find a babysitter! Not many kids want to see the Mona Lisa.

The gallery leading to the Mona Lisa’s gallery had LOTS of Leonardo paintings, wonderful ones I could stand quite close to and examine. The Louvre had plenty of cafes’ and restaurants, from fast food to really really good. And, even the Tourist areas there were bistros, cafes’ and restaurants galore, almost ALL with outdoor seating. I have a -gamy- leg (it the string I think) so I had to “rest and put my leg up” every half hour or so. So we’d have wonderful coffee, or nice wine, and peruse the menu. Once we ordered fried potatoes and were served a *huge* plate of crispy potato wedges. More than 2 American woman could eat, but it would have been great if we’d had a couple of kids along. But I’d hired a woman to take my daughter to parks and kid-places (including McDonalds) and she had lots of fun, too. Expensive, but then, I mean…it’s Paris!

Larkspur — here in Minnesota we put mayonnaise on our french fries. Not me of course and not here in Dirty Fucking Hippy central (also known as Minneapolis) but in outstate places yeah, they do that. You get those little paper cups and empty a mayonnaise packet into it and dip your fries in it.

Now you understand Michelle Bachmann’s base.

PS: at the park my girl was taken to they had carousels -free- lots of slides swings and so on. There was also the hotel (indoor) pool. Small, but Jess loved it.

Everything in moderation. Even mayonnaise on french fries. Ooh, speaking of mayonnaise: if I’d been Lisa Schiffrin in France getting my first taste of actual mayonnaise, I’d have been bewildered and grumpy, because my taste buds were honed clobbered by Miracle Whip and I thought mayonnaise tasted icky. Same with butter. It tasted funny. My “butter” was margarine, darn it.

What really truly pisses me off is that the good-tasting stuff I discovered in adulthood – real-vine ripened tomatoes, for example – are so hard for poorer city folk to find, much less afford. I am very very lucky.

The first time I had real French butter, I was in love.

Noen,

in most of the world, people put mayo on pommes frites. That includes Belgium (whence they originate). No need to feel defensive about it!

Popular in many parts of Germany are Pommes rot-weiss, i.e., with ketchup and mayonnaise. (They go down a treat with Currywurst.) But I will confess that what I really like, when dining in one of our many fine crappy fake Irish or fake English pubs — which happens a lot more than you’d think when the Lions are touring SA — is to douse my chips with vinegar and put gobs of ketchup and mayo on the side for dipping, allowing me to enjoy a truly multi-culti transnational-progressivist fried-potato-eatin’ experience.

Standing barefoot in the dirt in your own garden and biting into ripe tomato you just picked off the vine is my definition of heaven.

Next best is doing what I do. Go down to the farmer’s market by the Basilica and buy one from there. Bring it home, slice it up and sprinkle a little olive oil, some pepper. It’s great.

Mayonnaise traditionally accompanies fries in Belgium, but it’s real mayonnaise, not the bland commercial goo that passes for it here.

I usually shake a tiny amount of malt vinegar on my fried praties.

‘Scuse mah vin-gahs!

Mrs. Tilton
in most of the world, people put mayo on pommes frites.

Lalallalalala I can’t hear you. Don’t confuse me with your alien customs. Everyone knows that my my tribe’s idiosyncrasies are normative.

There’s a difference between fries with mayonnaise and fries with “mayo.” Although I really like jojos with ranch dressing so I can’t really give myself the hairs of the highbrow.

However, I will say with authority that except from a health standpoint, mayo on fries is always better than ketchup on fries, which is an abomination. Although fry sauce is even better on fries.. (Fry sauce is a Western hick thing — it’s basically Russian/Thousand Island dressing.)

It depends on which ranch dressing. Something real or the fake Kraft kind that looks and tastes like plastic. A real ranch dressing would be good, so would a real mayonnaise. Just please not Miracle Whip. It doesn’t belong in any kitchen.

Is using “jojos” for wedge fries peculiar to Pacific Northwesterners or is it common to all savages? It seems peerlessly silly to me.

Mayo and fries are a suboptimal combination, though – even the shittiest ranch dressing works better with any kind of fries. As well as steak, pasta, the odd ice cream, and God knows what else.

According to some site I have no particular reason to trust,

Where did they come from? Jo jos probably originated, along with other dishes like pommes frites and scalloped potatoes, in the French speaking regions of Europe. Maine farmers of Acadian descent, who migrated from Nova Scotia and other French-speaking areas of Canada, call big, seasoned potato wedges by the same name: jo jos. This explains why jo jos are served on many Cajun menus in the French Quarter of New Orleans, also a destination for many Acadian migrants. But why, then, are jo jos also popular in Ohio and Iowa? The American love of fried foods, it would appear, has no boundaries, and the people who populated the West brought the jo jo with them.

Incidentally, Schiffren’s bitching about premade sandwiches and salads is common to American tourists especially and Anglo tourists more generally, who expect to name the contents of casual dishes even though they know nothing about cooking. You are not paying for the sandwich, because the ingredients cost a fraction of the cost and the labor is trivial. You are paying for the service of eating a sandwich made by someone who knows why the ingredients they’ve handed you go together.

Schiffren is, of course, ignorant of this – she seems to just write it off as poor customer service – but no doubt she’d get all smug about it if she found out, because we are a doughty people whose customers are always right, God bless the free market, etc.

But, but, taxes are for your own good! The Crown only wants the best for us! Trust your government.

Whoops – wrong Stephen Bond article. This is the one I was looking for. The point:

I no longer want to go to a restaurant to get my own bad taste thrown back at me. Rather, I go there to experience someone else’s good taste. Let loose in a kitchen, I would throw all sorts of unpalatable combinations together, so when it comes to a restaurant menu, I should really have no say in the matter. When you give a man a choice, he usually chooses wrong; a civilised society should point him in the direction of what is right. Like schools, museums, and concert halls, eating-houses are cultural venues. Their role is to educate their customers in what is tasteful, to gently uphold and pass on the practice of civilisation. Not to encourage us to act like pigs in a trough.

But what about consumer freedom? On the one hand, it’s irrelevant. The freedom you lose by being denied the possibility of ketchup with your salad is not worth anything. There’s an Italian restaurant nearby which has no a la carte menu: instead there’s a choice of three dishes based on fish, meat or vegetables, which for most customers is not even a choice. But the lack of a choice absolutely does not diminish the experience of eating there. If anything, I’m usually grateful to be spared those irritating few minutes when I want everything on the menu and can’t decide.

And on the other hand, consumer freedom is an illusion. In food, as in art and politics, our economic system works to ensure a certain homogenisation — between franchises and within them. The more products the consumer can choose from, the less actual choice exists between those products. Who cares if Subway offers you 2^12 sandwich combinations? Every single one of them tastes like polyurethane.

Mrs Tilton, I just read your duck, shallot, and potato recipe. Oh god do I want that nooooowww! It sounds frickin’ wonderful!

What do you know, anyway? You’re just fat, stupid, “Ugly Colonials”. The British are more cultured and civilized.

My favorite part about the troll is when he thinks he’s being wry. He imagines P.J. O’Rourke stumbling by, a bravely uninflated tire gone flat, and realizing that the Kingdom of Konservative Komedy is in safe hands. There is saluting, and the audience laughs when he points out that Michael Moore and Carlos Marx are both fat.

They laugh, but they go home thinking, you know? God bless this little guy.

These are not the Tories you’re looking for.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Kings are appointed by God and it is our duty as white Christians to show all lesser people the proper way of doing things.

You know what the real problem with Paris is? There’s a great big replica of the Statue of Liberty there. Which reminds me that we owe our independence to the French. And I hate being reminded of that, because American women often seem to prefer those effete European bastards to hot examples of big lardy NASCAR loving American’s like me. People who hate negros and their big, big dicks that American women go for too. Fucking niggers. Women, they’re bitches! Both are leading to our national impotence! Have you seen that video from the 1950s “The Truthful Problem With Women” that I, an unemployed, 40 year old sad sack of a failing mail have as a favourite on my YouTube account I stupidly posted my weak, obsessive compulsive parodies of SadlyNo on? That’s the truth, and we’d all be much happier back in the 1950s… no wait! Back in the 1770s when we could bullwhip or lynch those negros who were going to rape our white women… they don’t really want them you know… but those big, big dicks… I’m not gay! … but I am ANGRY! AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE YOU FUCKING LIBERALS FREEDOM OF SPEECH ANY MORE!

DiE AMEriCa DIE DIE BLOW UP OSAMA KILL AMERICANS ARRGHGHGHH!

*2 self medicated hours later*

Surprise Liberals, here I am under a “witty” new name again, here’s a funny ooops badly told joke! And a little slurry logic. And … wait… there in the shadows. Can you see that? It’s the color black…. Is it Obama’s preacher?

Who knew that in 233 years, around 30% of our posterity would be complete fucking motards?

It’s kind of rich to hear the troll try to paint his tired fucking political puppet show with 1776 characters, when it wasn’t but a few months ago that the conservatives were fucking aghast at the slight Obama dealt to the Queen of England.

It’s kind of rich to hear the troll try to paint his tired fucking political puppet show with 1776 characters,

JESUS CHRIST HE’S GLENN BECK

GET IN THE CAR

tired fucking political puppet show with 1776 characters
Also they all have similar names which makes it even harder to keep track.

The Städel has improved its website since last I went looking there, so now I can link to Madonna with Albino Alien Christ-baby.

I love the guy in the background with his hand to his forehead saying “Fuck, this hasn’t gone well”

The angel in the foreground is definitely not impressed with the nappy situation.

For further Baldung Grien goodness, here’s his Portrait of Dame Edna Everage from the Gemaeldegalerie.

And speaking of fucked-up Virgin Mary art, Epiphany is a favorite of mine, likely because I am a big slobbery liberal fascist.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said,
July 3, 2009 at 1:43

(Prompted by Smut and B^4’s fuligin reference on the last thread, but I’ve been thinking about the Wingnut/Ascian parallel for a while now.)

It came up in a thread a few months ago.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/18356.html

Sorry, BBBB, late to the party as always.

I’ve got to agree with alec’s quote above about consumer choice. And since the end of the quote mentioned Subway, they’re the worst offenders.

I was in there a while ago, and it’s the same as always: some teenage girl who can’t talk above a whisper (and what little sound does get out of her mouth disappears into the high ceiling) going through a whole list of ingredients and asking if you want them. I ordered a particular kind of sandwich. If you don’t know what’s on it, why am I paying you?

You can’t hear what she’s saying, and they’ve got stickers all over the glass, so you can’t see what she’s talking about without ridiculous gyrations or floating ten feet off the floor…I got home with the damn sandwich, took a bite, and said: “What the Hell is this?” Never again! “Choice” should be in deciding where to go to eat. If you don’t like what they make, go somewhere else next time.

The angel in the foreground is definitely not impressed with the nappy situation.
Even the mommy is unimpressed by that, but see how the bubbly wants to get ’em off and start painting the walls.
It is in no way a littl shinin’ man and I said nothing about that.

That’s also not Dame Edna, more like Eric Idle. So it is still an entertainer who likes to “dress up”.

The biggest problem with Subway is that the meat, and the cheese, and the bread, and the veggies all taste the same. Might as well be eating cardboard.

The biggest problem with Subway is that the meat, and the cheese, and the bread, and the veggies all taste the same. Might as well be eating cardboard.

You could say the same about most fast-food chains. The biggest problem with Subway is that they keep trotting out that annoying nerd who lost a lot of weight back in oughty-ought. They’re in a no-Jared period now, but mark my words, he’ll be back. One of the advertising trades even did a piece on how Subway keeps trying to get rid of him but the franchisees keep forcing them to bring him back again and again.

in re. Subway, the worrying thing is that the typical choice offered to children as food consumers (which has, since the end of food as a materially scarce commodity in the West, been kind of like capitalist training wheels) is between Subway or something like it a la carte or McDonalds or something like it fixed. Captain Crunch is the most important part of your day, Black Angus is culinary perfection. Gatorade is health, iPhone is civilization, Army makes you strong.

American children have always been fed remarkably terrible crap, but these days they’re acculturated on it. Plasticine forcemeat being treated like good eatin’ isn’t a bug but a feature.

American children have always been fed remarkably terrible crap, but these days they’re acculturated on it.

Makes you wonder why someone doesn’t try to make money offering nutritious food for children. Maybe because the parents who can tell the difference are already providing it.

And the lovely Lisa would be what month on the ’08 glamour Rep. women calendar? Oh, she didn’t make the cut? There’s always ’10 to aspire to.

Maybe because the parents who can tell the difference can actually afford it are already providing it.

fzz0rd

in re. Jared: Chris Onstad spent a while murdering the poor shilling bastard, and there is something of an appeal to a mascot whose purpose is to be horribly slaughtered in commercials.

What I want to know is: when did the right-wingers start hating everything French? I wrote my MA thesis on American conservatives of the 1940s, 50s and early 60s, and they were all about dropping French words, talking about French music and literature, and eating French foods. What gives?

P.S. I like iceberg lettuce. There, I said it.

A LARGE coke, just cause the food nannies wouldn’t like it.

Isn’t he precious? He’s jeopardizing his own health, just to piss us off. Bless his heart.

I really hate it when people staple bologna to their faces and stick their heads in deep-fat fryers.

Well, since some of the preceding comments are old man-style grumblings about restaurant service, I thought I’d add my own gripe: Quizno’s. What is up with the ordering system there? You verbally tell one guy at one end of the counter what you want, then you go down and repeat it verbatim to the cashier, who for some reason has no way of knowing what you just ordered.

Why would a restaurant require you to order twice? Seems like a major flaw in their system. Though I must admit, I like their sandwiches. Very generous helpings.

Just came back from spending Happy Hour at a Santa Monica restaurant that pretends to be a French Brasserie (rehearsing for my trip).

we had rillettes de porc. for some reason, I expected it to be something like carnitas. It was more like Underwood deviled ham in a can.

But it was pretty good, even so.

Iceberg lettuce has a delightful crunch to it. I don’t like it in a wedge dressed with orange stuff, but I like it chopped up and put on stuff, or mixed with stuff. And as far as what Americans eat, let’s not forget most of us are only talking about what we, or possibly our parents, remember. I read a wonderful book not long ago called Little Heathens by Mildred Kalish. It’s her memoir, subtitled “Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression”. There’s nothing bland or sentimental about it. Times were hard, but they worked the farm and ate real food. (She mentions that once Best Foods – Hellman’s on the East Coast – started selling prepared mayonnaise, she never bothered making it from scratch again. I like her.) It’s really kind of an amazing book.

Little Heathens

“What I want to know is: when did the right-wingers start hating everything French?”

France didn’t support us going into Iraq to seize their oil give them democracy. Why? Because those frenchy Frenchies already had oil contracts with Iraq and us invading would negate them. So of course they didn’t support us.

“I wrote my MA thesis on American conservatives of the 1940s, 50s and early 60s, and they were all about dropping French words, talking about French music and literature, and eating French foods. What gives?”

Before ’68 the French were brave freedom fighters resisting teh evil Nazis. So if you’re a fascist pig American neoNazi you want to glom onto them as a way of saying “Me? I ain’t no stinkin’ Nazi. I packed my SS uniform away long ago.” But after ’68 they became stinking commie liberal fascists so it was ok to hate them again.

Wingnut goes to Paris, can’t find any good food, eats at McDonalds. That says it all.

BTW, Paris has the best metro system in the world. Went all over town on it for a month, never got lost and I’d never been out of West Virginia before that and spoke all of the fluent French I’d learned at Magnolia High School.

The food was great, but you have to be polite, and sort of try to speak French to get it. Hence Lisa’s problem.

when did the right-wingers start hating everything French?”

I witnessed a peculiar incident of Road Rage back in 2004 or so – I was driving my 2-lane country road at 6:00 a.m. going to a swimming class, and was behind a guy in a green pickup who was tailgating a car in front of him in a really menacing fashion. All 6 miles down to the intersection. At the intersection of our road and the next main highway, the road split into 4 lanes, and I pulled alongside the first car, and saw the green pickup from the side.

The pickup driver was yelling, “Where are you from, FRANCE?? Go back to FRANCE!” to the driver of the first car – it was a Toyota or something, no bumper stickers to indicate either national origin or political position.

It was the weirdest fucking thing.

wingnuts: The French have bad food and hate children. And Obama is not very intelligent because he uses a teleprompter.

Honus, is the Paris metro relatively clean? And if it is, is it because people behave themselves, as opposed to having lots of cleaning persons running around? (See, I only know about Paris from Epcot, and at Epcot you can’t drop a wrapper without a young worker scampering over to grab it out of mid-air. Oh, also once a long time ago I was in Moscow, when it was all Soviet, and there was 100% full employment of the entire populace, yis it’s true, and grannies in bandannas swept snow off of Red Square, at night, with twig brooms. That’ll keep a square neat.)

I really am curious, because I think there’s a point at which things work because most of us agree to make it work, and when someone breaks the agreement (but the atmosphere hasn’t yet gone to hell) someone else can give him a look, or say, “Dude, pick it up”, and he does. And they hardly ever start shooting at each other.

So speaking of road rage, I’ve always heard that it’s worth your life to be caught driving in France with white headlights (instead of French yellow) because they’ll think you’re a German and run you off the road. Is that an urban legend?

This reminds me of when I moved to Texas from NYC and this guy was telling me all about how much he hated the food when he went there…of course, the only place he went were places like the Olive Garden in Times Square.

Many European countries do have limited eating hours, but what is awesome, especially in France, is that you can go down and buy an amazing baguette, some great cheeses, and some meat/sausages, and go find a nice place to sit down and taste some incredible foods pretty cheaply.

Is that an urban legend?

Don’t know about the headlights, but I once tried to hitchhike in France (this was a long time ago), and got a bunch of really dirty looks in return. I later learned, of course, that hitchhiking in rural France was the very worst thing you could ever do, since it meant you were a serial killer Nazi or something. I was only 18 at the time, so I count myself fortunate that I survived.

I really think that Lisa Schiffren didn’t bother to read the guidebooks before going. Stupid bint.

why the fuck did she go to France in the first place?

Did she even mention the wine? My gawd, they act like they invented it but they stuff little pieces of bark in the bottle. Hullo 20th century! Screwcap- no special tool required frogs. And I guess “White Zinfadel” sounds like the punchline to some French joke ‘cuz they just laugh in their sneaky French way when I ask for a nice Gallo…

I WENT TO A DINER IN BOZEMAN THAT SERVES BELGIAN WAFFLES AND BAGLES SO I PRETTY MUCH KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT FRENCH FOOD!!!

“I wrote my MA thesis on American conservatives of the 1940s, 50s and early 60s, and they were all about dropping French words, talking about French music and literature, and eating French foods. What gives?”

Charles DeGaulle. DeGaulle was a nationalist and an imperialist, he opposed interventionism in Europe by the USA, and believed in nuclear deterrence. DeGaulle was a fellow traveller to the W.F. Buckley Jr. generation of conservatives.

The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge said,
July 3, 2009 at 6:11 · Edit

So speaking of road rage, I’ve always heard that it’s worth your life to be caught driving in France with white headlights (instead of French yellow) because they’ll think you’re a German and run you off the road. Is that an urban legend?

Yellow headlights stopped being put on new French cars in 1993-94, so you rarely, if ever, see them in France anymore. The running off the road stuff is almost certainly an urban legend and one that I’ve never heard. It’s probably related to the supposed origin of the yellow headlights which were introduced in the late 30s allegedly to differentiate the French from the hoardes of invading Huns.

Lisa? Honey?

Fuck you.

Plasticine forcemeat is my new “next band name.”

DeGaulle was a fellow traveller to the W.F. Buckley Jr. generation of conservatives.

The rise of the Religious Right does a lot to explain the shift. Now Republicans try to pander to a poorer, less educated demographic. British aristocrats have been pretending to be French since they were French, and American snobs have typically copied the Brits. The old apologia for wealth was aristocratic: the better sort of people had been bred to lead for hundreds of generations.

A more effective way of getting poor people to vote for you, however, is to promise them money and flatter their preconceptions. Now rich people are rich because God has blessed them, which means that anyone who has enough faith and votes for tax cuts can be rich too.

Ironically, you still see wingnuts call swearing and wearing slutty clothes “low class.” They think of class as a behavior, still largely molded according to Victorian standards. They don’t realize that A) the point was always to differentiate poor from rich, not to accept well-behaved poor people, and B) the values of the elites have evolved since then.

is the Paris metro relatively clean?

I haven’t used the Metro, but I’ve rode the RER (commuter) trains there and they were very clean.

And remember kids, let’s be safe out there this weekend.

Moan-sewer.

Is that part of a shit-moat’s drainage system?

Popular in many parts of Germany are Pommes rot-weiss, i.e., with ketchup and mayonnaise. (They go down a treat with Currywurst.) But I will confess that what I really like, when dining in one of our many fine crappy fake Irish or fake English pubs

Here in The Netherlands, the choice extends past mayonnaise and ketchup to curry sauce, a strange spicy ketchup, oorlog (a sweet barbecue sauce) to my personal favorite, sate sauce. You havn’t eaten “patat’s” until you’ve dipped them into a thick sate sauce that you could use for mortar in other circumstances.

As I recall, the Metro was relatively for a major urban subway. There was a whole lot less graffiti than in New York. The main thing was that the routes and trains were easy to figure out from the maps and displays.

Oh, and the whole thing about rude French people was myth. I remember being surprised (after all the warnings I received before the trip about the legendary rudeness of the French) The French in Paris were universally nice to me. Of course, I at least tried to speak French (by which they were greatly amused) and ate croque-monsiuer instead of demanding hamburgers.

relativley clean, that’s what the Metro was. My english isn’t a whole lot better than my french.

The French in Paris were universally nice to me. Of course, I at least tried to speak French (by which they were greatly amused) and ate croque-monsiuer instead of demanding hamburgers.

I love Parisians. All the ones I met were nice people. But then, I love New Yorkers too, so…

It’s just that, like New Yorkers, Parisians have little tolerance for idiots.

It’s just that, like New Yorkers, Parisians have little tolerance for idiots.

Please to be explaining with the Bloomberg and Guiliani.

DKW:

Please to be explaining with the Bloomberg and Guiliani.

Simple: Queens; Staten Island; the southeastern part of Brooklyn.

If only.
In the end, Giuliani won 59 percent of the vote to Messinger’s 41 percent, and became the first Republican to win a second term as mayor since Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1941.

And then

Bloomberg was re-elected mayor in November 2005 by a margin of 20%, the widest margin ever for a Republican mayor of New York.

Those are re-election numbers. That’s the rate of “yes please, more of this shitbag.”

I travel so rarely that each trip is a major treat, and poring over a Lonely Planet in the months beforehand helps to (a) prolong the enjoyment “I want to see that! I want to eat there! Can we go to that town?”) and (b) make me better prepared to get the most out of the trip while I’m there.

Oh yes, likewise. The LP guides also tend to be good about local etiquette so that you can avoid making an ass of yourself, as well as the regional tricks that get played on gullible tourists – all knowledge the wingnuts would be better off to have, but stodgily won’t bother with.

Popular in many parts of Germany are Pommes rot-weiss, i.e., with ketchup and mayonnaise.

Interestingly, the same is true in Utah, but we don’t give them some faggy Euro multi-culti like that.

I still can’t believe no restaurants were open – was it because of Sunday Blue Laws? but all the tschoke shops were open.

It wasn’t because of Blue Laws, which would have prevented the shops from selling much of anything, but didn’t prohibit restaurants from serving food and drink.

When my family moved to Missouri in ’64, the supermarkets all had cloth panels that pulled down over the shelves with stuff like kitchenware or stationery on Sundays. Stores were only allowed to sell food and drink, no sundries or miscellaneous stuff. But restaurants could even sell booze on Sunday as long as food sales made up the majority of their business.

Nah, I’d say the reason all the restaurants were closed was probably because most of the locals are church-goers who want Sunday off for religious purposes. In a place like Kansas City or Saint Louis, it’s easier to find non-Christians willing to work on the Sabbath. In Branson, not so much.

“The French don’t much like children”??? LOLOL, that would be quite a stretch for any, uh, CATHOLIC country.

BTW I have been to Paris and Ms. Schiffren seems to have been quite unimaginative in her choices of venue. Personally I avoided Parisian restaurants for the most part, since they seemed inordinately expensive and rather tourist-trappy. Alternatively, there was a wonderful fresh-air market that set up shop every morning outside my hotel, where one could have one’s pick of fresh fruits and veggies, cheeses, bakery items, meats and anything else the heart desired. ( Not to mention the free Continental breakfast I got at the hotel.) P.S> I had an AWESOME time in Paris. All that claptrap about how “the French hate Americans” is just more right wing b.s. If you make even a rudimentary attempt to speak their language they are unfailingly courteous and helpful.

What’s so terrible about Bloomberg? Granted, the man makes Calvin Coolidge look like Robin Williams, but isn’t he considered a competent mayor?

Every single non-chain place I have eaten at around the Empire State Building (midtown Manhattan) has been mediocre to bad. Yes, even the pizza joints next to the ESB that say “NYC’s best pizza!” Are they really lying to me? Is it really true that people run shitty restaurants next to tourist traps? I thought that was just a French thing…