Paula Deen Off of the Food Network? That's Worth Another Look! NOW!

Hello Fellow Travelers!


Am I the only person thrilled to discover Paula Deen refreshingly removed from the Food Network?  I have had the repeated misfortune of cruising the Food Network and found one or more of Ms. Deen's buttery presentations. For a picky, old foody like me it was like looking at great houses in a nice neighborhood but stepping over doggy-do over and over to get to your house.  Her apologies are worse.  She actually insists we throw rocks at her!  I didn't know if I should laugh or pick up some nice, big, rocks.  I was sorely tempted to delve deeply into stones but I overcame my baser instincts and kept my response to cracking up.

I'm glad she's gone.  You know why?  Let's all say it together, "Because her food blows - hard!"  Paula Deen cooks and eats like it's her last meal.  She has never met a stick of butter she didn't like and most of her dishes are fattening and uninspired.  She looks (and cooks) like she stepped right out of 1955.  She used racial slurs?  Nobody would care if her food was great.  Her empire wouldn't be falling faster than a jiggled souffle if her food wasn't suspect.  What can I say?  The woman seems to think that mayonnaise is a food group.  She seems like a nice enough person but I don't want to look like her and I certainly don't wan't to cook like her.


Paula Deen is also inordinately proud of being in the South cooking in the South having a southern accent, well, you get the idea.  Some of our best chefs and our most exciting food comes from the South.  Ms. Deen might be representative of the South if the South was filled with boring food and bland people.  It is filled with neither.    Even their fast food is great..I mean have you ever had a beignet?  A muffaletta?  Both are fantastic and both are Southern staples.  I don't need a female representation to crystallize every bad thing we've heard about the South (old fashioned/poorly informed/overweight/poorly educated).

Watching her trying to apologize her way out of trouble is like how I saw drawings when I was little of the great dinosaurs that were trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits.  They thrashed and bellowed but the more they struggled the more ensnared they became.  We have dinosaurs of pop culture, and they are promoted or dethroned at breakneck speed there are so many places, people and things that demand our attention quickly.  Bill Maher observed that he had no idea who Paula Deen was.  He thought Tammy Faye Baker was back!  Talk about dinosaurs! ( I know I'm dating myself here but her "apologies" remind me of televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart.  Remember him?  "I have sinned against you!", accompanied by lots of tears)

CNN says Ms. Deen's fans have her back and are making a lot of noise for her.  God Bless and Godspeed to them!  Maybe she needs to stay in the South, with her own kind.  Diabetics who throw butter at every cooking situation.  Or bacon. Lots of bacon.  I'm down with the hostess that has to serve pigs-in-a-blanket because it's all her husband or brother-in-law recognize.  What I'm not down with is calling the piggies with blankets something they are not - like food.  I'm glad I'll no longer need to figuratively step over Ms. Deen's TV Food on the Food Network.  If I want pointless, tasteless, boring "fixin's" that might make me larger but will not satisfy me gastronomically or any other way - I will pick up my poison at Krispy Kreme or Hostess, I hear they're bringing back Twinkies!

My point is I can purchase plenty of empty calories quickly I don't need some southern fried hack telling me how to make a white trash version of the empty calories.  I've spent a lot of time researching and writing about Paula Deen and why I'm glad she is no longer stinking up the Food Network.  I have undoubtedly spent more time on Paula Deen than Target, Smithfield Hams and JCPenneys' spent discussing how they were going to figuratively jump over her.  These sponsors didn't think twice before bailing.  The speed and totallity with which they all bailed should teach us all something.  The world and everything in it is moving faster and faster.  Anybody who regularly uses a computer is faced with dozens of yes/no decisions on an hourly basis.  I need my distractions fast and unsullied.  I may never cook again but I still enjoy others cooking and not bland crap either.  Her food bites - hard!   That's all you need to know.   Really it's all anyone needs to know.  The new twist on it is for the few kids who even know who Paula Deen is, they wrote her off like the dinosaur she is without so much as an inward shrug because that's how fast our children disseminate and process information.  Maybe my nephew was right - you don't need to read.

However, I am a reader more than an eater, I only eat things that fulfill my needs but I'll read anything.  Everything.  So watching a slow-moving chubby, cook (she doesn't call herself a chef) meander around a Southern (presumably) kitchen is not my idea of time well spent.  When I want to know how to make something I know who to ask. My patient spouse even goes to Ina Garten to get recipes.  The Barefoot Contessa makes food I want to eat, she's in the East someplace and has an authenticity to her food and tablescapes I want to watch and execute. Her shortbread is awesome her granola divine!   At the end of the day all that matters is the food, not the racist serving it!

Johannes Vermeer Could Have Sold Some Advertising! That Chick with the Pearl Earring Could Have Sold Something! Beer? Mattresses? Diapers? Something!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

One of my daily routines  is going to a gym and putting to use some or many of the exercises I learn in Physical Therapy.  I'm still spending two or three hours at the gym every day and I've never been in better shape.  The idea in neuroplasticity is for the brain to build new connections around the damaged part.  In my case the part that received the most damage was the cerebral cortex where the tumor was removed.  Patient Spouse is getting impatient for me to heal like yesterday.  I don't know what the holdup is, I seem to be stuck in a place where I am assaulted 24/7 with the sensation of the earth falling away under my feet and at the same time my head is completely and utterly dizzy and I feel minute to minute like Dorothy when her house is spinning around.   Nothing I've tried or undergone so far has improved my symptoms one whit.  If Dracula went through "oceans of time" I'm going through "oceans of pain" most of the time it's no big deal except when anything additional happens.  Dental drilling, additional falls, any additional physical trauma I can't handle!  I am tapped out and juggling the three running chainsaws as fast as I can.  If someone tosses me a ball, I'm afraid I'll drop everything, so I really hope nobody tosses me anything.

I work out every day in an effort to facilitate neuroplasticity.  I don't know if that's working or not but since I fall so often and so fast I've learned that being able to snap onto my feet instead of landing on my head is very useful.  I still fall but never on my head.  So, I'll keep peddling and walking to nowhere as long as I can. What nobody in our Politically Correct world won't or don't tell you (but I, of course, will) is that working out is boring.  Sure it's mildly entertaining for the first twenty minutes (it's all new and you're full of energy) and the last twenty (You're a sweaty pig but who cares?  You're an in shape sweaty pig!  You're a sweat ball that's worked out! ) but there is no escaping the middle.   The middle can be twenty minutes or an hour there's just no getting around it, and it's boring!

Everyone has a different coping mechanism to power through the boring part.  I probably use the most obvious technique available-I stare vacantly out whatever window the machine I am on is parked in front of for the duration of time I'm on that apparatus.  When I'm on the treadmill for instance, I try to focus on the lovely view in front of me.  Flowers/Japanese Elm/Pool/Fake Lake/Fountain/Duck Family/Fat Bald Dude in Speedo?  Way too small Speedo?  Really?  Really. How did that old Sesame Street song go?  "One
of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong."  When I was positively steeping myself in TV I saw some advertisement for-who knows-what? featuring a chubby, hairy, dude wearing swim trunks that are way too small strolling down some beach carrying a rocks glass.  I don't care what he's selling, I'm not buying it!  I'm an American!  I want to be sold cars and liquor by really attractive people who look like they've never seen a problem more significant than getting their spray tans double booked with their Pilates.

Sixty minutes later:  Flowers/Japanese Oak/Pool/Fake Lake/Fountain/Duck Family/ Fat, Bald, Dude in Really Small Speedo.  I am confused.  Why is he still there?   I don't expect Vermeer or Monet all the time but if I have to spend hours of my life staring at particular points in space is it too much to ask that the points remain pleasant? Congruent?  I guess it is!  Since my lifechanging brain surgery in 2011, seeing beautiful things on occasion is essential to my recovery.  I have seen sculpture by Rodin, and paintings by the old masters.  Most recently I went to see the travelling Vermeer exhibition and saw "The Girl with a Pearl Earring"(and, unlike most things, it is as great as everyone says.  Greater.)

That dude at the health club has every right to lie his corpulent carcass wherever he likes.  His money is as good as mine.  It isn't him personally that I have a problem with.  He just spoils the composition of all the treadmillers' ( and I do mean all like, 20) view.  And the picture windows are tinted.  So, unless someone tells him (doubtful) or he works out on the treadmills himself (really doubtful), this poor schmuck will never know that there are ten people unhappily watching (and making lots of snarky comments about) his every slow movement (Bad French Accent:"The slow-moving manatee lumbers around the Sea bottom" followed by many snickers. For anyone who cares I did a spit-take I was laughing so hard when the guy next to me whipped that one out!  The guy with the terrible French accent was doing a hilarious impression of Dana Carvey doing an impression of Philippe Cousteau doing a voiceover for the manatee on the blink-and-you-missed-it Dana Carvey Show!  Well, you get the idea.)  I am silent.  I wordlessly beg the physical fitness gods to remove Mr. Speedo from my line of vision or finish blinding me (Remember I see two of everything) completely!

This prayer, like all selfish/convenient/spur-of-the-moment-requests, goes unanswered.  So I resign myself again to the comic situation that confronts me again, and hope that the view will corrected tomorrow.  In the meantime I'll watch some old Giants' highlights.  That's kind of the deal when you can't walk.  You kind of stay wherever you're put.  I stay on the bike-to-nowhere for 60+ minutes and the treadmill-with-a-view for 90+ minutes.  I forget a few things.   I will probably never forget the circumstances around that gym experience - sometimes when the early bird catches the worm,  the handicapped bird gets to stare at the worm for the duration of her workout.  In other words:  "So much for going early!"  

One Activity I Neither Miss Or Look Forward To Doing: Figure It Out Yet? I'll Give You A Hint: "Love Exciting And New, Come Aboard, We're Expecting You!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

Recently, my best friend since high school was prevailed upon to go on a cruise for nine days.   She didn't ask for my opinion.  She knew she wouldn't have to.  Once I get started on making fun of something I'm hard to stop!   There are many past times (calling this an activity is too much of a stretch) both great and small I feel left out of.  There are some leisure past times I rarely consider, never pine for or lose a moment's sleep lamenting I haven't been on enough of them:  Cruises.  Cruises tout many features I try to avoid in every day life.Eating is, at best, a dodgy activity for me.  Now that eating is so difficult being on a boat with unlimited food doesn't sound great to me.Putting on a bib and eating your way through  the high seas sounds less than idyllic too.

The other concern all the cruises raise is space or lack of space.  If you have ever been on a cruise you know what I'm talking about if you have never been just replay any old episode of "The Love Boat".  It's just as useful and is a lot cheaper. What they don't tell you is that boat real estate is a lot like Japanese hotel real estate (or so I've been told) really cramped and expensive.  Your'e not even going to get a window unless you pay more.  How much more?  A lot more.  (A halfway decent cruise can set you back two large at least for two people without a window!).Cruises are not designed for claustrophobic like myself.  I get the creeps  just thinking about a stateroom without a window.

I also don't care how many "Royals" you put in front of the name; a floating casino/buffet is a floating buffet/hotel with tiny rooms.  Or as demonstrated by The Carnival Cruise Line, a floating toilet.  The Real Poop-deck (As it came to be known), was full of affluent Americans and when the media came calling they were outside and trying to get away  but their kids were hilarious!  The kids were only too happy to tell Wolf (Blitzer) and the Silver Fox (Anderson Cooper) the state of the ship - it was like the Super Dome after Katrina - powerless and full of raw sewage.

It wasn't a tragedy.  The Titanic, The Lusitania; those were tragedies!  Hurricane Katrina was a disaster. The Carnival Ship was just stinky.  Really stinky but not sinking. The teens described a scene out of The Shining only with poop splashing instead of blood on the walls.  When those intrepid adventurers on the Good Ship Stank were talking to CNN they weren't patriots or survivors.  They were embarrassed!  Their teens were too happy to describe the disgusting conditions  aboard the boat but their parents couldn't get off that boat fast enough.  I did a little research on maritime law and watched a special about the dangers of cruise ships to US citizens on CNN.  And it just confirmed what I have always suspected:  I'm not surprised that the cruise vessel broke down I'm just surprised it doesn't happen more.You want to know why?  I know you do.  The ships are all registered in far-flung. some  countries on the other side of the world. Many of these countries are tiny and 3rd world status.  The cruise ships answer to nobody but themselves. The standards are all set by the cruise lines themselves.  And good luck bringing a lawsuit against them!  Fires happen which in turn, knock out the power, and that shuts down everything else. No matter how many "Vikings" are in the logo, cruise ships can and do break down and sink we just don't hear about it.

We heard about "The Ship O' Stench" because it was highly visible and full of unhappy Americans, listing around the Gulf of Mexico.  Embarrassed.  Not kidnapped not dead or shot.  Some of these mid-westerners had already booked their cruises for the following year!  Oh please.  I saw "Fargo", I get how month after month of the same frigid weather could drive a person nuts but a cruise?  A Carnival Cruise?  Carnival is known as the Motel 6 of cruises.  One place you should not try to save a buck is on a cruise. Going on an off-season Alaskan cruise means being cold and damp.   You're just asking for trouble.  Hotels that float and hotels that float that are also casinos get booked and slept in a lot.  This means that a lot to me, because it's  all I think  about when I'm in  any hotel are all the bodies that have been  there before me.

Even considering such an ill-advised  journey gave me the willies!   The only cruise ship I've ever seen a stateroom I’d  like to stay in was the stateroom  Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell had in “Gentlemen Prefer  Blondes” and that wasn't even real.  So I'm not the best person to tell that you're going  on a cruise.  But I am still the best person to tell if you're wanting an argument against going!

PS - Before you ask,of course, my friend did not go.  She was probably never going.  She just knows how starved for fun I am and "threw me a friggin' bone" to chew on.  Those are most of my thoughts on the subject, if you have been on a great cruise (and who hasn't) don't feel like you have to tell me.  You don't.  If, however you had a less-than-blissful boat experience, tell me all about it.  I only want stories that bolster my snarky assertion.  CNN calling that particular Carnival Cruise the "Poop Cruise" is all the bolstering I require.