Did someone forget to turn out the lights?

I was walking through this abandoned gallery of food sentiment, kicking around some plastic wrapping and crumbled up lists of Must Eats and Need To's, and felt a little nostalgic. It's not like I don't eat anymore. I eat as much if not more than I used to.

I think I stopped writing about food because I started competing with myself to eat as much as I could experience, and write about the experience as much as I could. I always enjoy eating, but the enjoyment was diminished by the technical obligation of archiving every dining experience. Between frantic note taking, smuggling tripods in my sock, and taking one frustrating underexposed and blurry picture after another, I stopped.

Blog is such a marginalizing word, it has become a demotivating factor. Not that any writer needs excuses to not write that day. When the word blogger became synonymous with "bullshit" and "amateur" I wanted as hard as I could to separate myself from that title. That, and 'Foodie'.

So I've been concentrating on writing commentaries for Off-Ramp, where I've been dubbed the first Noir Food Commentator. I agree with the basic sentiment of the title, although Culinary Renegade describes me more accurately and succinctly.

Finally, Vindication

I was reading something Sarah wrote over at The Delicious Life. She wrote it a while ago, but the irony of reading an article about Food Blogging Burnout (one of the signs is not reading food blogs with regularity), made me chuckle then nod affirmitively. So she was addressing me telepathically.

Dan and I decided to shelve Gastrologica, The Podcast, for now. Our reasons are well-documented, all revolving around conflicting schedules. I think the run of audio Gastro was a good one, and now I have an anthology with a beginning and an end...unlike U2, who just won't go away.

That doesn't mean I've been idle. I have been working to develop a direction to take Gastrologica, and it would seem that video is the next evolutionary step. In other words, I'm going to take more traditional routes to build an audience.

Podcasting is a great technology that allows widespread distribution of free speech. Vox populi finally has a viable soapbox, but the arena is oversaturated. Like most speculative content, a podcast is developed at the expense of the producer and is difficult to monetize in a way that would support an active lifestyle.

I made a conscious decision earlier this year that I wouldn't contribute to other commercial outlets without getting compensated. I stopped posting restaurant reviews on other sites, and unintentionally ignored Gastrologica, the Online Magazine.

As it turns out, posting to other sites wasn't a complete waste of time. A lovely woman was reading my review of The Fisherman's Outlet while waiting at that very place for a friend. The friend happened to work for KPCC.

Because of her introduction, I was able to land a gig writing food commentaries for a show called Off-Ramp. It airs on NPR Radio, 89.3, Saturdays at noon.

Keeping with my standard policy and style, I've already received a few complaints.

http://gastrologica.com/complaints.mp3 <-----this is my first audio trophy.

I finally get paid to write things people will complain about. I've made it!

That's Not Yo Gazpacho

This isn't your grandmother's gazpacho, especially if you're not Andalusian.

I love gazpacho made with heirloom tomatoes. Heirlooms are colorful and charismatic, each one having its own vivid personality. Some are sprightly red, and have a good disposition and like to jump rope. Some look like a mad scientist injected squid ink before mating them with a pumpkin. Others are swirled purple, borderline pornographic, but friendly. Finally, some of the larger cultivars look downright cantankerous.

As such, they are widely considered to be horrifically ugly, scaring the more fragile consumers. Many people probably think they're from stockpiles that have been sitting around Chernobyl for the last 30 years. But they would be wrong.

Don't be fooled by their unkempt appearance. Heirlooms may look like prime candidates for the Tomato Special Olympics but they are intelligent fruits, with blue-blood heritages. Ok, I'm overstating the case.

The idea behind heirlooms is to preserve the unadulterated look and taste of the cultivar, or family line for that particular tomato. They are not hybrids, and rely on open pollentation to be considered true heirlooms. In contrast, mainstream tomatoes like Romas, Hothouse or Beefsteak are bred for the purposes of looking appealing to the consumer's eye, not the greatest advancement of unique flavor.

We all know what happens when you do that. You get a middle-of-the-bell-curve product that neither sucks, nor excels. Remember how weird you felt when you first learned the tomato is a fruit? How about Rock Hudson?

Had you eaten an heirloom, you would have quickly accepted them as fruit. Many heirlooms have a rich and tangy sweetness, similar to grape tomatoes. That sweetness has been bred out of mainstream tomatoes, for the most part.

So, that's why I prefer the heirlooms if they are available. If they are not, use the Hothouse or vine ripened tomato. I avoid Romas and Beefsteaks, as I find them rather meaty, and are more appropriate for a salsa, rather than a gazpacho.

By the lengthy setup I devoted to exotic tomatoes, you probably think the rest of the ingredients will be some eclectic carnival of textures and flavors. Sort of. I like a bright gazpacho, nothing too complex. I want the central flavor to be the tomatoes, and everything else should augment it, not obscure it. The key to working with a vegetable based dish is to not overshoot the goal by incorporating too many flavors.

For example, I never order a pizza with everything. The intent gets lost under the vast pile of junk that suffocates the pizza. If you do it right, you'll have several beautifully orchestrated flavors that would harmonize like the Three Tenors. If you botch the proportions, it will be like the Galludet Choir.

So, I use a proportion of six medium sized heirlooms to two cucumbers. Once you've covered those two, you are free to go ape shit. Just keep it to a controlled ape shit.

Traditionally, gazpacho is for lazy goons. It has only about seven ingredients and they didn't even bother cooking it. It is still coveted for that reason. The remaining ingredients would be onion, garlic, vinegar, olive oil, and pepper of some kind.

How you can get creative with that is mix up the cultivars. There are dozens of onion and pepper varieties that will allow for varying levels of spice and sweetness. Just remember balance. You don't want it tasting like sherbet.

Texture is another subjective quality. You can make a fine dice out of everything, like a pico de gallo. You can blend it smooth like a vichyssoise.

Or you can do both, as I did.

For this, I used:

6 different heirloom cultivars

2 cucumbers, seeded

1 yellow bell pepper

1 red bell pepper

1 shotglass of chopped parsley

1 large shallot

sea salt

Blend the tomatoes, shallots and cucumbers for a long time until you get a smooth puree. It should have a lot of air incorporated to it, evidenced by the blanching of the original color of the vegetables. Salt to taste while it is blending, and if you're technique is bad, watch your ceiling turn into a Jackson Pollock painting.

Meanwhile, fine dice the yellow pepper, red pepper and parsley, this is what people will use to garnish. Hard boiled egg is also traditional, but I didn't serve it.

Frankly, this gazpacho base is solid enough to carry many diced vegetables or garnishes, as long as the garnish doesn't overpower the soup. You could even crisp up chanterells or shittakes (I love how Google spell check suggested "shit takes" as a correction), for a nice texture contrast.

Go insane, I don't care.

Throw diced beets in there with raw ahi. Swizzle truffle oil on it.

Most people are weirded out by a chilled soup, without ever considering the refreshing benefits on a hot day. By mixing in some surprise elements, it just might convert a few die-hards to try a few spoonfulls. Perhaps they will like it enough to give sushi a try.

One step at a time.

Thinkin' 'bout Food

Well, you would assume a foodwriter would be thinking about food, but you can figure out for yourself I haven't put much effort into writing -let alone thinking- about food.

Until I found my new passion, and my new audience for culinary art. I'm not talking about my radio gig, I'm talking about many of the new friends I've met over the last few months who have become almost as close as family...and they're polite enough to tell me my cooking is superlative.

I'm truly humbled. So, I've actually been doing quite a lot of cooking. And a fair amount of writing, just not for Gastrologica.

Now it's time to blow off the keyboard and oil the spacebar, because I'm going to start posting with more regularity. I'm not shooting for daily posts. I want to reserve what I share with Gastro readers to significant thoughts about food and cooking...or at least something funny.

Daily posting would water down the quality and frankly burn me out before I got out of the gate. Writing about food inherently makes work out of eating, as well as preparing, meals. So, food becomes labor, which is a certified labor of love.

Some of the things I've been working on lately have been: osso buco (4 stars)
fried Old Amsterdam cheese crisps (19 stars)
grilled lamb with mushroom cream truffle sauce (4 stars)
macaroni and cheese (4 stars, for the kids)
vanilla cream crab on fried wonton crisps with sauteed Bartlett pears (34 stars).

For the first time, I will also pass along a wine recommendation. If you can afford it, pick up some Lindemans Cask 45 Cab Sav 2005. The 2006 is good, but the 2005 has a rich, buttery flavor with a mellow bite at the end. It costs as much as the GDP of Tanzania, about five dollars and fifty cents.

Go Meaten!

I realize when I say Go Meaten you may likely view me as a beer-guzzling cornpone blurting the contrarian position of embracing poor health, and eating meat solely for pleasure’s sake. Meaties -excuse me- Meataunds are viewed as consumptive libertines grinding our way through a limitless battlefield of dead animals and rended carcasses.

It is no secret that vegetarians and their vacuous cult brethren vegans shudder when a person asserts their love of meat or animal products. Chances are this is not you. If you are enjoying this site or any other food media outlet, then I’m most likely preaching to the choir.

Yet, someone besides Larry the Cable Guy has to counterbalance the discordant shriek of the Veggie mob. Everyone expects a Meataund to carry a shotgun and speak like Ted Nugent. This is because the Veggie contingent has done its best to politicize Meataunds.

They want to characterize us as gun-toting, truck driving NRA cowboys that vote for whatever Republican statue is running for office. Which is why it is so important for a moderate voice to champion our cause.

And that moderate voice is me. I’m addressing the Veggies and I want you Go Meaten.

It is vital to have a moderate voice because reasonable people rarely sound an alarmist note, pick up a sign, take to the streets, or get in someone’s face while they’re trying to get to work. Fringe elements like Veggies are eternally shoving pamphlets in our hands, scowling when we order a hamburger, and otherwise carry on a nauseatingly relentless campaign to convert the entire world to Veggies.

How many times have I sat with a Veggie friend (that I met in college, and yet still tolerate their intolerance), ordered eggs benedict only to watch their face contort with disgust as they self-righteously proclaim “I would never eat anything with a face. I would not use anything that exploits an animal,” or some similar quote they memorized off a bumper sticker.

Of course they aren't content to broadcast what they would do. The conversation inevitably becomes how I should give up meat, or try an alternative protein substitute.

That’s when I lose it. Friend or no, its bad enough to listen to someone proselytize how I should change my beliefs so I can enjoy salvation after I die. Now I have to listen to someone lecture me on how I should live before I die. If they had their way. Fundamentalists and Veggies would successfully vacuum every last atom of enjoyment out of life.

I’ve heard all the aruments before. Don't bother revving up your propaganda machine. I know you will frame your arguments in the most dishonest terms, like the hemp crowd...and don't think there isn't widespread crossover between the two.

Just as the hemp crowd uses the overriding cultural necessity of making rope as the foundation for legalizing marijuana, the Veggie cult is forever broadcasting the false argument that vegetarianism is the singular healthy lifestyle. The hidden message is that animals should be held in higher esteem than humans.

So Veggies, we have endured your shameful finger wagging for long enough. It’s time to sit back in your bean bag, take a hit of whatever it is you’re smoking, and listen to why a Meaten World is better.

1. If we relied solely on meat, we would cut illegal immigration to a fraction of what it is today. The amount of migrant workers it takes to harvest crops for US consumption is exponentially greater than the amount of hands it takes to man a ranch or slaughterhouse. With no vegetables, there would be no fields of illegal immigrants, taking jobs away from Americans who don’t want the jobs.

2. It would immediately reduce obesity by cutting out most all of the naturally occurring carbohydrates found laden in unhealthy vegetables, fruits and grains.

3. I don’t love this idea, but it would eradicate alcoholism. Without starches and grains, alcohol production would be negligible. Until they breed a cat that can be used in the fermentation process.

4. It would immediately handle the overpopulation of many wild game animals such as White Tail Deer. While many of you cringe at thought of eating Bambi (thank you, Walt Disney, for tainting venison for all time), left unchecked, White Tail breed faster than rabbits on infertility drugs. Their population can explode so rapidly that within two seasons there is not enough foliage to sustain them. Bucks fight each other for territory, and the scratching of bark with their antlers kills the trees. Your precious trees. Disease spreads throughout the scavengers who eat the meat.

5. Why target and brutalize an entire race of plant life? Veggies are complicit in genocide, as they singularly target their chlorolust on defenseless plants. At least animals can defend themselves.

6. Vegetables are treated in the cruelest manner. Stuck in the ground, enduring inhospitable weather during long winters with no shelter. Tortured in hothouses, many plants nearly suffocate in the tropical moisture and heat. As children, we played into this sick ideas as we were given mini-vegetable concentration camps, euphemistically called terrariums, so we could grow poor sprouts in captivity, only to watch them wither from lack of growing room.

No, a Meaten Planet is a vastly more desirable place to live. And you know why? Because it would never happen. Anyone who is predisposed to being a Meaten has such a passion for eating that they would never consider removing an entire food group from their menu. Meatens are reasonable enough, and secure enough to acknowledge their steak would be nothing without a potato, chicken without asparagus, or quail without a side of Harry Whittington.

Meatens recognize the radical incredulity of removing a vital source of nutrition. They realize that Veggies are not skinny because they are healthy, they are bony because of malnutrition. They remember the last time they had to nurse a Veggie co-worker for a half hour after getting a paper cut, because they were anaemic from lack of vitamin K.

On the contrary, Veggies would be content shipping all the animals to another planet where they would be safe…and useless.

Red Robin, and Others Like It

Red Robin is yet another institution that celebrates the banality of Average Desires.

Shakes.

Infinite Fries.

Several Cliche Burgers.

Wraps, for the dietarily unconscious who believe a wrap is healthier because the burger is wrapped in na'an bread.

Random shit nailed to a wall. It's true. If you nail random shit to a wall, like a 1963 sepia of five jubilant lesbians embracing after a marathon, or the high speed shot of a sailor reeling in a lungfish, rednecks and corporate drones will eat there. I have the paperwork to prove it.

RR ain't bad, it's just cut from the oily bowels of the same mountain that Applebee's, Bennigan's, Ruby Tuesday and T.G.I. Friday's were extracted from.

The food will technically sustain life, and on rare occasions might even deliver a couple milligrams of diversion from our sucky lives.

I'm writing about it because I've been condemned to eat there at least once a week, and I long for the release that death will bring.

The Genesis of Modern Gluttony

At this point in time, we are confronted with the Claim Jumperization of American restaurant portioning. It is then no wonder that people make fun of the miniscule portions of haute cuisine, not realizing they are getting six three-ounce portions of varied creations, instead of one 48 foot obelisk of ribs, served on a plate that could be mistaken for the Arecibo telescope.

For those who aren't familiar with the mastodonic portions of Claim Jumper, they are the new barometer for Huge Food. Average plates weigh in at a scale-shattering 3-4 pounds, and that's just the appetizer.


This is called, appropriately enough, The Widowmaker.

This is one thing I will call uniquely American. Like the internet, phone, and everything else in God's field of omniscience, we are the supreme leader in innovation, and Huge Food is here to conquer the world, or at least the industrial world. While in other parts of the world people are scampering around in the arid climate, scraping their hands and knees on dead ground for a dung beetle or poisonous weed to chew on, we complain if the side bucket of ranch dressing wasn't filled to the rim.

Behold vast arrays of Infinite Justice Whole Fried Onion with distilled La Brea Tar-Honey dipping sauce. Marvel at Capt'n Pike's Whole Boneless Buffalo Chicken with side troughs of Roquefort bleu cheese bowling balls. These are the things we've come to expect from our dining out experience.

Gradient Approximation is a physical theory dealing with the angular spin, and its correlation of magnetic fields on the atomic level. I also use the term Theory of Gradient Approximation to describe attitude shift, such that if you have an agreed upon Truth that you want to change, you can slowly pull people over by nudging the absurd conclusion further away from the accepted norm. For instance, if people are used to paying 99 cents for a gallon of gas, the best way to get them to accept paying $1.50 is to make the gas $2.50 for the summer. Then, when 'peak driving season' comes to an end, the price goes back down to $1.50, people forget they used to pay 99 cents, and gladly accept the new, lower-threshold of gas prices. Sounds familiar, right? It's also the same principle governing the economics behind budgeting $50 for a pair of jeans, then seeing all the incremental upgrades at Bloomingdales. With each successive jean you see a slightly higher price, until you talk yourself into buying the $350 pair of Chip and Pepper's because the riveting and stiching are so ginchy.

The same is true for almost everything else in life. In this case, Gradient Approximation has reversed itself. People demand more bang (or lard, trans-fat, lad na, urchin) for their dollar, or in this case, the 99 cent menu at fast food restaurants. 99 cents can get you a whole baked potato with all the free toppings you can balance on top. 99 cents can get you a junior version of the fully-loaded gargantuan burger. The only thing 99 cents cannot get you is a gallon of gas or movie ticket.

This viscious circle started in the early 80's, given the respectless and accurate title 'Decade of Greed.' Product tie-ins with movie promotions, product placement, fierce competition and bad blood, bred an all-out war between fast food companies that trickled over to restaurant chains.

It may, indeed, have its genesis in the Coke-Pepsi battle, where the only other hostility rivaling that long standing feud would have been between the US and USSR. Their version of the Cuban Missile Crisis manifested itself in two ways: first, both released clothing lines and second, Pepsi snatched up fast food restaurants like they were playing jacks, on five-sees.

Whether or not you think Coke Clothes or Pepsi Apparel was a dumb idea or not, it was the singular earmark of the mid-eighties until the rumor that wearing a Coke shirt meant you were looking for gay sex killed the fad almost overnight. It was most likely started by a Pepsi employee. On the second note, by Pepsi funding Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, allowed those chains to offer more food at less cost. McDonalds, which has always had a long-standing affair with Coke, retaliated by lowering the cost of its already human-inedible industrial grade beef by-product to lows that even an unemployed Somali could afford.

Then the expansion began. The Soviet Union Crumbled and, like the AIDS virus, with no defenses to fend it off, both McDonalds and Pizza Hut infected Moskba. For 600 rubles you could wait hours for a Big Mac. Expedient, by Russian standards.

Back here in the States, it was clear the only way to win the hearts and minds of the consuming public wasn't to offer better food, just gobs more of it. 2 for $2 Tuesdays came in vogue, and that's not referring to the local Irish-Mexican cantina that leverages its name to attract St. Patrick's day and Cinco de Mayo crowds, that's talking about McDonald's cheeseburgers and Egg McMuffins. Slowly, and some say insidiously, fast food joints with an undeniable lower-income family in its crosshairs, started to market Huge Food at low prices to that very audience.

Not that college educated people don't eat at fast food places. In fact, the majority of college students recovering from a weekend bender of Sports-Bar hopping, Strip Jointing, Face-Down-in-the-Quad-From-Ice-Shot-Vodka-Bonging and Pretending-To-Be-Refined-Wine-Tasting, need some sort of fatty bulk to absorb the alcoholic poison racing around their cardiovascular system faster than a tricked-out Lancer Evolution from Fast and the Furious IV, Tokyo Drift II: Tokyo Drifter (filmed at the same time as Fast and the Furious V: Bangkok Rickshaw Jam)

Whether or not fast food destroys the fat lives of rednecks and their loved ones is beyond the scope of this article. It merely serves as the example of how that marketing mentality overflowed into the mainstream mall-restaurants the rest of us enjoy (and middle class rednecks, as well).

Pre-1980s, restaurant chains were few and far between, having started from one-off local restaurants that enjoyed the dubious expansion of culinary manifest destiny, spurred on by a symbiotic relationship with the eating public wanting more varied and tasty meals of greater quantity at Depression-Era prices. This had a positive, and simultaneously pernicious effect. Applying what I said above about reverse Gradient Approximation, the more we ate out, the more we wanted, the more they shoveled our way...like fueling a coal fired steam engine.

A basket of bread and a couple pats of butter were no longer adequate, we now demand three types of bread: banana, poppy seed cumin rolls, parmesan crisp, pats of real butter, semi-soft room temperature butter, unsalted tin, cup of margarine, honey butter and apple-mango chutney. Now bread products don't even cut it as middle tier amuse bouche. The latest wave of altered breadbasket items are bite sized samosas, riblets, Navajo fry-bread, saltlick statuettes of Lot's wife, the list is endless.

And who can finish all that food? Andre the Giant? He's dead. The days of heroes and giants have dissolved into the mist of failed memory. The only one capable of this pointless feat is Takeru Kobayashi. As we demand larger portions for less money, we invariably assist in the evolution to the absurd natural conclusion of our mislaid wishes: Claim Jumper.

All other concerns aside, methamphetamine...Jihadist terrorism...gout, there is a very real residual erosion of our health due to overconsumption. Not erosion in terms of weight -that skyrockets- but erosion in overall wellness of the population. Claim Jumper has come to represent the silly implications of unfettered demands to be fed enormous quantities of food.

I'm scapegoating Claim Jumper because of the complete absurdity of their portion size. Bennigan's, Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden [ed note: blech], Buca di Beppo, Maggiano's are all guilty of overfeeding us. A single plate of Six Pound Meatloaf Taco Salad Pasta Party could feed an African village of 1000...which I think happened last year in a well orchestrated press junket.

Mons Olympus of Hot Wings Saves Senegalese Population - The National Republican Shrill Voice.

Bucket of Ahi Ginger Burritos the Size of Ayres Rock lands on African Village in Senegal, Saves 1000 From Starvation, Kills 1,000,000 From Impact. - World Village Democatic Screamer.

American Conspiracy to Inflict Destructive Influence on Defenseless Starving Blacks in a Racist Plot to Destroy and Possibly Fatten Poor Africans Confirmed - Federal Guardian Independent Foreign Press

Ok, so a million people will have a million different stories, I can't control them all. The fact is, while starvation inflicts its ugly fangs on the rest of the developing world, we enjoy unrestrained access to every consumable good on the planet.

If the trend doesn't stave itself, we will soon be confronted with a public health crisis of immeasurable consequences. The mere fact that a person's waistline couldn't be gauged with a standard tape measure for starters. If you don't care about the fattening of Middle America, think about the financial burden with which it will saddle us. Childhood obiesety immediately sets up that person for a lifetime of health problems, and since Huge Food is targeted at lower-income earners, guess who will be supplementing that bill when Dad loses his job at the marital prosthetics warehouse and subsequently his insurance. Fat dad, two fat boys and their fat daughter will all be sucking -a lot- off of welfare and foodstamps. Fat mom has already been doing that since the divorce, and her tax supplemented rehab at the methadone clinic has already cost each taxpayer so much, they could have had their own heroin addiction for years if they had wanted. At least she was thin while she was using.

"Aww, but Steve, it's not the restaurant industry's fault. It's the people's fault for not being able to control their uncontrollable desires." True, true. But I didn't ask for Huge Food, and when confronted with a pile of fries the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro, my guilty Jewish upbringing comes into play, and I feel compelled to finish what is put before me, or at least take it in a doggy bag (hereafter referred to as horsie bag).

You see, it is because there are starving people in Africa dodging huge bags of fatal food falling from the sky that I -and many others- force ourselves to eat much more than we otherwise would have. Food that can be seen, must be eaten.

There are also cultural influences at play here. In many cultures, it is vilely offensive to leave food on the plate, it means you either didn't like the food, or you are dying of cancer. They would rather eat until their stomachs explode all over the rest of the table rather than suffer the shame of wasting food. Even then, if your stomach explodes all over your guests, you've just wasted your food, but it might be interpreted as a very generous act.

What does this all mean? Nothing. The trend is irreversible. We will get fatter as a nation and revert back to obiesety becoming a status symbol. The tribal King being the largest, because he has the most. All parts of America are being crushed by the epidemic of obiesety (myself included). As portion size continues to grow unchecked, and we lead increasingly sedintary lifestyles stuck in front of a TV or behind a joystick (or for some other outcasts, on top of one), there will be nothing to combat the assimilation of the new attitude that fat is acceptable.

Never trust our government to do anything except maintain a military and levy taxes, so there is no reason another nutritional guideline or federal sponsored program will help us in the least. Pamphlets the fed publishes are as interesting as congressional budget reports: they are unintelligible and excrutiatingly dull. Public service announcements have as much effect on changing someone's mind as a religious bumper sticker.

But advertising, slick, well produced advertising soundtracked with hip-hop and big boobs will sell burgers. Lots of burgers. The general public cannot compete with the onslaught of images of chipper cooks tapping away with their stainless steel tongs like a barbershop quartet: "I want my babyback babyback babyback" while some big-assed ho is swinging her crack in the camera. Or near hardcore-lesbian hot tub commercials that make even Coors look appealing.

It has to start in the home. It can only be combated by parents who give a damn, raising their children with healthy food and shunning fast food and chain restaurants. Believe me, I'm right there in the madness, but I've oft heard tales that once people geek out and drink only diet Coke, regular Coke seems oversweetened and intolerable to drink. Would I suffer this sort of deprivation? It's hard to say. Like a drug addict, they never see the harmful effects until they've been off the crank for a while. During the binge, everything seems great, colorful, they couldn't imagine everyone not shooting up bliss into their armpit. Not until they stand back and get clean, does the stark horror of what they were doing to their body come into focus.

So yes, while I am a Coke addict, I can project myself into a future where Diet Coke is preferable, and through the fog of unreason I can see where knocking out 160 calories at a time would do me some good. I don't go to places like Claim Jumper right now, and when I do end up at a Cape Disappointment Booze 'n' Food McStravaganza, I get the chicken sandwich and tell them to hold the hickory-honey sauce, chipotle remuloude, extra crispy fried avocado, thick cut butter sauteed bacon, four slices of imported processed cheese, and Crisco dipping sauce. I ask for a side salad instead of fried yucca wedges with triple-cream ranch spread. I never eat dessert, just not my thing.

For now, listen to the reports of American Obiesety and despair. Huge Food is here, and its here to stay. It will be very interesting to see to what brink it takes us.

Tiki Ti

It was established in 1961, just as America was transitioning from the innocent 50's to the turbulent 60's. I guess you could have figured that out for yourself, but I thought I'd be obvious by emphasizing that 1961 is just one year after the transition. It would be another nine years before the Age of Polyester would be ushered in, smothering tie dyed hippes under its synthetic fabric.

Tiki Ti has over 85 drinks, which is more variety than Baskin Robins, with the added advantage that you'll NEVER get laid at a Baskin Robins unless you order the Everclear Peanut Butter swirled Dolce de Leche. That makes Tiki Ti 57...things...better than Baskin Robins.

Their smoking policy will either elate you or disgust you. LA city ordinance allows for owner operated bars under a certain patron limit to choose thier smoking policy, and they enourage smoking of everything except weed, crack, crystal meth, coke and Newport Menthols.

You might have to wait a bit outside, the space is smaller than Carney's, but once you enter, you are swept back to Bikini Atoll before nuclear testing destroyed the island and all surrounding life within 20 miles.

Drinks aren't cheap, but they are more than generous. If you want to get hammered more than Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Richard Burton, Dean Martin, WC fields, Andy Capp, Otis, Arthur, and Captain Jack Sparrow combined, order the Blood and Sand, their signature drink. Funny enough it's the Dresen's signature dirnk, not two miles away. Dresen's are totally faggy girl drinks, and save your emails -you know what I mean.

Tiki Ti's Blood and Sand is a hardcore double fisted drink that even Lindsay Lohan would find potent. Two of these would find her panties around her ankles as she was doing cartwheels across the bar.

If you order a B&S, the wide mouth schooner will be topped off with tequila, and Mike will lead the whole bar in a howl of "Toroooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"

...the entire time pouring tequila into the drink. It will be the best drug you've ever bought for $12 outside of fake Ecstasy.

Tiki is owned by Michael and his son Mike. The tiny confessional is crammed with Polynesian junk and nostalgic paraphenalia. It truly sweeps you away to a remote island, while you're really partying in the shadow of KCRW and Circuit City.

It is colorful and neighborly. There is no way to hang without meeting someone, downing a few Zombies or sharing a table or bar space. Just like a Russian hospital.