Good Grief!

Have I mentioned lately how great it is that the Lititz Record Express is online (and RSS-ified) after all these years? Some recent commentary:

While walking home from the linear park this week I nearly collided headlong with a discarded, individually wrapped pat of butter. This innocent little representative of dairy grandeur had been violently slammed against the cold and unforgiving concrete sidewalk that borders Lititz United Methodist Church…Apparently, someone was very angry, and as a result, a promising pat’s life was snuffed out in brutal fashion.

According Good Grief’s sophisticated user preference tracking algorithm, readers who enjoy fake art reviews will also enjoy Phreaking Philly’s review of Cart, a popular BYO in Old City:

Cart is a charming, unassuming BYO that offers little in the way of interior design, but bags of potato chips clipped to its industrial-nuevo structure provide a splash of color. The menu features many comfort food standards, such as a meatball sub and a meatball sub with cheese. American cheese is .25 cents more than its parmesan cousin, but it’s worth the expenditure

Behold, yet another reason to boycott all things French. French fries and French toast? Dangerous, artery-clogging cuisine. French wine? Too confusing, what with the labels written in French. But this. This so-called coffee making device is an appalling example of a country in decline. Observe the shoddy workmanship and lack of precision. Not only is this product defective, it is a consumer hazard.

And consider the larger picture. Perhaps this broken apparatus is not merely a simple defect. Perhaps it is part of a larger French plot to eliminate the enemy via glass shards and a lack of caffeine. So be vigilant: check your coffee, chuck your wine, and comb through your camembert. We cannot let them win!

Last weekend was the annual ritual. We meet at the eagle, that is, in the Grand Court of the old Wanamaker’s department store, grab a seat on the floor, and watch the Christmas light show.

The Wanamaker’s light show has evolved from state-of-the-art to retro and kitschy to sadly neglected. Over the past few years, key elements of the display have degraded into potential safety hazards and disappeared. The train and the fountains were big losses, but for me the turning point was the year the light show lost the beautifully gaudy and mesmerizing magic Christmas tree. What a tree. It stood half the height of the light board and turned every color imaginable, providing the focal point of each number, from the Nutcracker to Frosty to Rudi on drums.

The other part of the annual ritual is a trip to nearby Ludwig’s Garden, where we drink beer, eat heavy German food, and complain about the light show. And even though we complain about the light show, we’ll keep going. And when the light show finally dies, we’ll keep going. Because however fun the glitz is, the tradition is ultimately about the laughing and the friends and the holiday.

Poor Moon Pappy. All he wants for Christmas is a fruitcake, but they’re getting damn hard to find. All the stores have these fancy, high-falutin’ Italian holiday desserts like Panettone and Pandoro. Whatever those are, and don’t bother to tell me what those are because they sound like weapons in the War on Christmas.

Do stores no longer stock the classic and unfairly maligned delicacy that is fruitcake? Actually, some do.

Me: You don’t happen to have any fruitcake in here?
Williams Sonoma Guy: We do indeed, and it’s the best fruitcake ever!
Me: A bold statement.
WSG: It’s the only fruitcake I’ll eat.
WSG: But it’s not cheap.
Me: How much?
WSG:$46.50
Me: No thanks.
WSG (looks around and lowers his voice): My recommendation is to buy a really cheap drugstore fruitcake and douse it in alcohol.

Excellent plan, WSG. Moon Pappy, I love ya, but you are not getting a $46 fruitcake for Christmas. Also, the fruitcake was large (as a $46 fruitcake should be), and Mrs. Moon Pappy has banned large fruitcakes.

PS – It is tempting to ask if anyone has a fruitcake from last year that I can regift to Moon Pappy. However, thanks to the Internet, this story has a happy ending.

Last week, the Humus Reform Committee* appeared on this site, accusing me of taking bribes from Bobbi in exchange for promoting her most excellent hummus.

Sadly, I have received no free hummus from Bobbi. Which isn’t to say that I’m not open to the idea of pay-to-play blogging. After all, Good Grief! is a Philadelphia website. So send me your bribes, payments, and kickbacks, and I will write a nice haiku about your product.

*The Hummus Reform Committee is a bit unnerving. A note sent to its gmail account (hummusatune at gmail.com) resulted in the following reply:

We are in every middle-eastern restaurant, every hummus-serving bar and every supermarket. And now, we are also online.
p.s. We heard you consumed peanut-butter hummus. This action is still under review.

Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if you were at a Thanksgiving celebration with smart and cultured people like college professors and opera singers and writers and astronomers, all of whom are connected to the best friends of the parents of someone you’re dating, and you accidentally sent a huge hunk of New Zealand cheddar flying across the living room, where it landed at the feet of a Department of Homeland Security employee who is probably adding you to a list of very dangerous people even as we speak?

It hardly seems like Thanksgiving without visiting Superwoman’s house, getting tipsy on Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck, and making pies, but there’s a lot to be thankful for nonetheless.

• The end of my probationary period at work. I don’t think that Jekyll and Hyde will fire me, unless they’re waiting until after the holiday.
• Bobbi’s hummus, which makes the list every year.
• Working across the street from a Wawa, even if it is the shittiest Wawa in all the land.
• No longer living in the apartment with $300 gas bills. Pity the fool who took that place.
• Discovering that I am not the only person in the office with Queen of my Double Wide Trailer on iTunes.

The list is long this year, so I’ll stop before it gets cheesy. Have a great weekend!

It’s time to discuss family values and how they’ve disintegrated during the past fifty years. Take, for example, the matter of secret family recipes. There was a time when people respected secret family recipes and waited until marriage—a sacred institution that unites the culinary heritage of two families—to give them away.

But in these immoral times, anything goes. I know someone who shacked up with her significant other and gave his family her grandmother’s secret gingersnap recipe. Gave it away. Just like that, like it was nothing. The relationship eventually ended, and she’s probably roaming the streets even as I type this, handing out the gingersnap recipe to sketchy men.

Am I too old-fashioned? Is there a “three date rule” for secret family recipes? In an attempt to be more modern, I shall now reveal the S secret family recipe:

1. Cook a hotdog and slice it vertically.
2. Make some mashed potatoes and put them in the hotdog.

3. Melt a slice of American cheese on top of the potatoes.

To get the full effect, use instant mashed potatoes. Also, soy dogs can be substituted for regular hotdogs. And stop making faces; this recipe is better than it sounds, and your kids will love it.

One more thing: a hypothetical question. How long do you have to date someone before you get his secret chili recipe?

Very busy on super-secret skunk works project! In summary:

• 2005 Animation Show: not as good as the 2004 version. Don Hertzfeldt is possibly losing his mind and should return to the days of Billy’s Balloon. My favorite piece was Jonathan Nix’s Hello, It’s online, and it’s worth 10 minutes of your time.
• Complain about cooking, and the bloggers deliver. After following the link to Estelle’s food weblog, Luna made the vanilla cake recipe and delivered half of it to the office for Scott and me to sample. Delicious!
• Clumsy Lovers: best show I’ve seen in a long time, even though it was at the Tin Angel. The Clumsy Lovers are a Canadian countryish rockish band with a lot of energy and funny shirts (see above).
• Boss-across-the-hall is coming to campus this week, and we are having lunch. No doubt he will tell me how the soulless office park has fallen to pieces since I left and will beg me to return.
• Still working on a half bushel of Stayman Winesap picked at Linvalla Orchards: apple bread, apple pancakes, apple and sweet potato casserole, baked apple. What else?
• Type E reports that the celebratory Ben Franklin special ale is now on draft at the Yards tasting room. His verdict: “interesting, but I wouldn’t pay for it.”

Lastly, thanks to people who have e-mailed because they saw Lititz in the news. Lititz, where shoe man sits and the fire department rescues ducks from the sewer and the big crime is vandalizing a lion’s head carved into the park wall. Not so anymore, if it ever was.