Am I getting it wrong? After all this time posting about food since the veritable dawn of the Internet (1994) I have come to realise that "foodies" -- they come in many guises and respectability ploys -- are quite the people I just don't want to have anything to do with. I've come to realise that these people (I wish I could categorise them in a neat little package, but then I'd be one of them) are quite the most elitist, controlling, holier-than-thou, obsessive-compulsive "money is no longer an object" people on this planet.
Who knew, all those years ago, when I was trying to search out a decent restaurant review by anyone who could spell, that this would burgeon into a large, balefully yellow bubble just waiting to be pricked? Here is how chatter about food has changed in the past decade or so:
Behold! I place you: Chowhound. From a tiny opinion site it has morphed into a teeteringly top-heavy bloated Frankenschtein's Münster. All the food pundits desperately thumbing their asses in order to keep foie gras on the menus.
eGullet: if there was ever a pretension someone finally abandoned, eGullet snapped it up. They wrap themselves in terms almost reminiscent of the Knights of Columbus. They're a Society! Their name ends in ".org" How fucking pretentious is that? They require you to write an essay in order to swing from the same clubhouse ropes they do.
If it weren't so annoying I'd have a large laugh.
Is this what food, and everything to do with food, has come to? What the fuck, "Locavore?" Words actually being made up to describe foodisms? "The 100-mile experiment." Julie and Julia.
What the fuck has happened to people? Well, I'll tell you. They've gone off the fucking rails. In a world where Anthony Bourdain (don't worry, I rested his soul a long time ago) prances around extending his fifteen accidental minutes into fifteen years and food writers of tiny-town newspapers are suddenly the darling of the papparazzi, where "foodie columns" become a major part of media, where SEVERAL television channels now just exist for programs EXTREMELY LOOSELY based on actual food, well, it's quite all come undone, hasn't it?
That is why montrealfood has been on hiatus (and in remission) for so long.
It used to be fun wearing a black T-shirt with a fake tie printed on it just to stand out. Now that there are 60,000,000 people wearing a black shirt with a fake tie just to stand out, I kind of want to go back to wearing my dad's suit.
Warning: Chowhound: You're assholes who had a lot further to fall than eGullet, who started off at the bottom of the pretentious heap, but only managed to go down.
Warning: food pretenders with cameras and high expectations will be distant laughs in a decade from now.
Warning: newspaper food critics, your days are numbered. You; like the overinflated chefs you love to cover, will be a footnote in "Those Crazy 10s -- what happened to Humanity at the Turn of the Century?" in about 50 years.
I know for sure that my son will be skipping that chapter.
No comments:
Post a Comment