Prissy Food Bloggers Hate Food Blogger Movie
Julie Powell blogged her way through cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking; a book deal and movie followed. Are food bloggers thrilled for her? Hardly; Powell is a foodie infidel who must be stopped. Powell's movie is part blogger story and part Julia Child biopic; Meryl Streep plays Child, the famous home-cooking guru. Now in preview screenings, Julie and Julia is already being savaged in food blogger circles. Chef, cookbook author and food blogger Virginia Willis' slam set the tone. While professing "no malice," it took Powell to task for daring to question Child's recipe, once: One day she made a comment implying a recipe being wrong for roast chicken. I honestly don't remember what it was, but it struck me as being so disrespectful, completely without deference to Julia Child, that I stopped. What the hell did she know about food? Had she even heard of poulet au Bresse? Didn't go back. Actually, the term Willis was looking for was poulet de Bresse, but we shouldn't interrupt a master bravely defending Child against a disrespectful (gasp!) acolyte: People who happen to eat and are able to type are now our new food experts... Good grief, people who don't know how to begin to roast a ding dang chicken without following a recipe can be our new, ahem, food experts. The bitter anger of a lone chef-writer? Hardly; other food bloggers quickly agreed. "Thank you, Virginia for... bravely expressing your frustrations," wrote one. Another: "Great post." Another: "A very well written article about something which, despite being an amateur food blogger myself, does frustrate me to no end." One blogger, after watching only a trailer, said Child "deserves more than being the other half to a Nora Ephron-penned romcom about a 'lowly cubicle worker' who blogs and struggles and cries and gets a book deal." Oh, plus also, Child thought Powell was a mere stunt artist! A clown, really! What a gleeful thing, to be able to report. Powell, you see, has made enemies of her obsessive online peers. What infuriated them most was a 2005 New York Times op-ed decrying the "insidious... snobbery of the organic movement" — an all-out assault on the Church of Alice Waters. The reaction was furious: "today's stupidest piece of information;" "gratuitous... a coarse reductionist version of the... organic movement;" "[a] shockingly incoherent thing;" "ill-informed... erroneous." Or this, after Powell panned raw foodism in the Times: "Julie Powell... needs to stop huffing dust from the crypt of Erma Bombeck." The prevailing "Slow Food" ideology of the culinary world is that the process of nourishment should be devolved — from massive centralized farms and feedlots and factories to local growers and aritsans and ultimately home gardens; from nutritionists and other food scientists to cultural and family traditions. And ultimately, we're supposed to replace slapdash restaurants with careful preparation in small, individual kitchens.... MORE >>
John Travolta Is a Scientologist 'Now and Forever'
John Travolta's rep is knocking down reports that he is contemplating leaving Scientology. Of course, Scientology can be a tough habit to kick if you are, say, a closeted gay man who was forced to privately confess in auditing sessions. On Saturday, the Daily Mail speculated at length that Travolta was on the verge of bolting the cult, citing his despodency over the death of his son Jett, whose autism reportedly went untreated on account of how Scientology doesn't believe in autism. The first glimpse of daylight between Travolta, who has reportedly funded the church to the tune of millions, and Scientology came last month when details of a Bahamian police report emerged in which Travolta acknowledged that Jett "suffered from a seizure disorder and was autistic." But yesterday Travolta's rep told E!Online that the Daily Mail report was "totally false": "There's no change in the relationship between the Church of Scientology and John," Paul Bloch told E! News. "He is a member and it's as it was, now and forever." And in Scientology, forever means, like, forever. But, as another E!Online story notes, Scientology has a way of holding sway over some celebrity adherents even after they've decided they don't want to play anymore: The cult's "auditing" process involves extracting confessions of all manner of "deviant" behavior, from financial misdeeds to sexual histories, and storing the data in the church's archives. If a wavering member, say, didn't want anybody to know that he's had sex with men, the church would have a fairly good chance of convincing him not to, in Scientology parlance, "blow." MORE >>
Michael Jackson Asked Katie Couric Out on a Date, Using His Rabbi
On the Late Show With David Letterman last night, Katie Couric told the story of how Michael Jackson asked her out on a date in 2000 (two years after her husband died), using Rabbi Shmuley Boteach as a go-between. Praise be to the lord and all that is holy, Couric turned Jackson down, probably because he was a pedophile and also because he had "weird tape on his nose." If the thought of Couric and Michael Jackson enjoying a romantic evening together isn't nauseating enough for you, you need turn only to this clip of Larry King on Jimmy Kimmel's show from two weeks ago, wherein King recounts his 1981 date with a young Couric in Washington, D.C., and actually utters the following words: "Once, I did Katie Couric." Again with all appropriate praise to the TV gods, King misspoke: He did not "do" Couric, who is 24 years younger than King, because "I thought we were going to go up to the apartment, Katie and I, but she said she had a roommate." Naturally, Kimmel asked why King didn't go for the threesome. Sweet dreams tonight, kids! MORE >>
ABC Family's Greek: Just the (Many) Gay Parts
Who knew ABC Family was chasing the Logo audience. Witness their college frat house soap opera Greek, which, as this clip reel demonstrates, may just be the gayest show on television this side of Bromance. What do you mean you haven't been watching Greek? It's the only teenage soap opera out there about the natural tensions between conformity and individualism in our colleges' Greek system. Some of those individuals are gay! Like Calvin, the spritely young black dude who loves other dudes— dudes like Michael. Michael is also a gay frat boy and Calvin's love interest. They're both openly gay but feel the pressure to be butch and unsexual around their frat brothers. Is it an appropriate gesture for Calvin to send Michael flowers because he didn't introduce Michael to his fraternity brothers? Ah, questions of sexual etiquette plague us all, don't they? So good for ABC Family! It's heartening to see them portray openly gay men as regular folks instead of an insurgent force against marriage or mincing float ornaments! Maybe this puts the popular opinion just another teensy step ahead of our current laws? Maybe just a scosh. From Lindsay Lohan's pregnancy propaganda film to to Greek's homosexual indoctrination, ABC Family has clearly taken a brazen stance on the population control issue. Where can we go for our pro-birth entertainment? Lou Dobbs, a nation tuns to you. Thanks go to video intern Spencer Lund for watching a whole lot of Greek. MORE >>
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