Thursday, May 04, 2006
Allow me to stand up and say that not everything David Blaine does is automatically, inherently, diabolically lame. It’s almost as if there’s no other language to address him in, so everybody reverts to this stock idea of him that’s been planted and allowed to fester with no real examination of its roots, for good or ill. Thought about this lots when I went to the Whitney Biennial, which has been roundly lambasted but which features an awful lot of good work among the bad. It’s a big show of modern art, though, right—so it’s (drum roll…) unfocused, impotent, vacuous, etc. It’s downright laughable how often this line gets recycled in common conversation without being challenged or at least questioned.
Another thing: food-writing is where it’s at. I went with a food-writer friend of mine (Bret Thorn) to a dinner tonight and scored not only a three-course meal with matched wines but also a $50 Calphalon knife, gratis. Much of the food was excellent and/or interesting, including slices of quite literally clear meat that I was very excited to see served but which wound up tasting, disappointingly, like clear meat.
Another thing: food-writing is where it’s at. I went with a food-writer friend of mine (Bret Thorn) to a dinner tonight and scored not only a three-course meal with matched wines but also a $50 Calphalon knife, gratis. Much of the food was excellent and/or interesting, including slices of quite literally clear meat that I was very excited to see served but which wound up tasting, disappointingly, like clear meat.
