Lileks Watch

Hmmm:

AND NATALIE, PUT YOUR SOCKS ON, IT’S TIME FOR WENDY’S.

I’d promised a trip to Wendy’s tonight, since Mom was at a law-related gathering at the Guthrie. We had fun; the muzak was all late 70s disco hits, and I mortified Gnat by singing along to all the tunes.

Dad stop it, you’re creeping me out.

I upped the soul-face quotient and sang some more.

DAD STOP.

In general, what with the terrifying Thanksgiving dinner at Holiday Inn in Fargo, the weekly (!) trips to eat the pizza at Chuck E. Cheese's, and the documented love of Uncrustables, I feel that much of James Lileks' general dyspepsia could be cured with the application of some actually good food. I mean, doesn't the laughing about the regrettable foods of days past ring a little hollow otherwise? And doesn't he go to NYC sometimes? Wait, though, I have a vague memory of his claiming that NYC pizza wasn't better than Domino's. Well, I guess when Gnat becomes a sullen, emo vegan at 13 she'll have to learn to cook some things, maybe the eats at Jasperwood will pick up. (I really encourage you to read the Thanksgiving link; it is genuinely disturbing. He describes how he drove a long way to spend one night at the Holiday Inn, sleeps in his clothes on the sofa, gets up without showering or changing, and then eats repulsive food in a holiday buffet. It's interspersed with passive-agressive snipes at his step-mother and wife, and bitter complaints about the incompetent people who work at Wendy's. It makes me sad just to think about it. I think eating cold grits and gravy in the county pen on Thanksgiving would be way less depressing.)                            

Comments

[The Modesto Kid]

You have to make a fair bit of effort to find pizza in NYC which is better than Domino's. Sad but true.

[LizardBreath]

Are you on crack, Kid? There's plenty of only middling pizza in NY, but I've never run into crust as lame as Dominos in the wild.

[The Modesto Kid]

Oh. Been a long time since I had a Domino's -- I was thinking it fell into the same "only middling" category as the vast majority of NYC pizza. Sorry, disregard my above comment then.

[William Baude]

It doesn't actually take effort, just a train to Brooklyn, and a short wait in line at Grimaldi's.

[FS]

Why, exactly, are people still reading Lileks? Like many columnists, he long ago ran out of anything to say, and is now a repetitive self-parody. Every single column contains either:

1. Boy, the minutiae of my day is fascinating (subcategory: my daughter is adorable)
2. Pop culture in the olden days sure was wacky!
3. Everyone who disagrees with my politics is a half-step above Hitler

Thanks, but no thanks.

[Matt Weiner]

You left out the passive-aggressive snipes at his daughter.

[The Modesto Kid]

William -- ever been to DiFara's? It will open your eyes.

[dsquared]

Christ. He's having a nervous breakdown, isn't he? It reads like the first few chapters of "The Ginger Man".

[The New York City Math Teacher]

The guy eats so much microwaved and pre-packaged crap. When I read his bleats four/five years ago (has it been that long?) there were utterly regular references to Thai-in-a-box this and Mexican-in-a-tube that - so much reliance on the soulless food processors and their mechanized minions.

So, my point is that Lileks eats crap and it has been ruining his mind, body, and wrecking his wa for at least half a decade, and since this stuff is usually determined by life trajectory, he's been doing it all his life.

Ah, the midwestern gourmandiserie!

[Helen]

Zhong,
You're square, man.

I remember something about Lileks being involved in some TV cooking show - so I assumed he could cook. Maybe it was just a PR event for the Gallery of Regrettable Food. I do remember a story related to that which made me laugh till I cried, about cooking chicken and being really paranoid about the raw-chicken germs thing - ending with chucking a match into the kitchen and running away, BOOM!

When he's good, etc... when he's bad, he's horrid...

[Doctor Slack]

When he's good, etc... when he's bad, he's horrid...

Most of his brain seems to have melted around early 2004.

[FS]

Mid-September 2001, I'd date it. Along with several other folks I once like to read.

[washerdreyer]

I assert that a random pizza place in any of the five boroughs is better than most pizza one can get in most other cities. In fact, I thought this was just generally accepted and am shocked to see it questioned.

[The Modesto Kid]

I have had so much bad pizza in NYC that I feel like that can't be true. It is of course possible that I've just been away from non-NY-urban-area pizza for a long enough time that the reality would shock me. My memory suggests that random-pizza-place product in the Bay Area compares pretty favorably to NYC. But again, have not had pizza in the Bay Area for many a year.

[Benjamin]

That guy's blog sux. And Totonno's pizza in NYC, probably most all places in NYC that aren't huge chains, will have way better pizza than Dominos. About the only thing Domino's is good for is hearburn, young.