@ Home in the World

Thoughts at One in the Morning

Would someone please give Craig Ferguson a show at an earlier hour?

Thank you.

Dollars to Donuts

Why? Why? Why?

A couple of months ago, I realized that the guy doing the voice-over for the latest Dunkin Donuts commercials was John Goodman. I started to wonder why on earth they would choose a large, fat man to push their product. You never saw him on the ads, but it was clear who he was. Probably what they were trying to do was borrow from his image as working class hero on the Rosanne show and play up the differences in their clientle, vs. say, the designer coffee set. The message I got was "eat this stuff, and you'll look like him."

Now New England based Dunkin has gone completely the other way. They have chosen perky, peppy, Rachel Ray as a spokesperson. Now, I understand that she might appeal to those busy moms on the go, you can just see her driving that minivan with the five kids all needing to get to different places (and those kids rolling their eyes at her incessant chatter). But I wonder why she chose to do this.

I don't hate Rachel Ray. There are people who do, and I wonder why they just don't shut the TV off. I see her as riding a wave of her own popularity, milking it for all it's worth before her 15 minutes are up. As a business woman, I can see the merits of doing that. When she retires (or is retired) she will have enough money to do whatever the hell she wants for the rest of her life. We should all be so lucky. 

Ray, to me, is like Oprah's book club. As a reader and writer, it's frustrating to me that the public taste in "literature" is so heavily influenced by  a pop-culture icon, but as a librarian friend once told me, "at least she's getting people to read."  And in a culture surrounded by very unhealthy pre-processed food, at least Rachel Ray is energetically encouraging fans by the thousands to cook for themselves.

But in taking on the Dunkin mantle, she is wrecking that image. Maybe I'll feel differently when I see the ads, but I hate to see her go from fresh to fattening overnight. Like it or not, Rachel Ray has a lot of power. In doing this, she stops using it only for good.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'm writing this in a bookstore and the section closest to the cafe is Cooking. Looking up to see how many of Ray's books I can spot, I find, instead, Anthony Bourdain staring at me from the cover of his book The Nasty Bits. Bourdain caused a bit of a stir with a guest blog post at Ruhlman few weeks ago; chewing up and spitting out many of the current shows on the Food Network.  Gotta wonder what he'd say about this.

Comcast, Take Me Away!

Since becoming parents, we have been grounded, so to speak. And while I refuse to believe that our travelling days are over, they have been rather limited since our last trip to Russia, almost two years ago.

So we have taken up armchair travelling, courtesty of whatever interesting travel/cultural programs we can find on TV. We've watched every season of The Amazing Race. We catch Globe Trekker whenever we can, old episodes of Rick Steves, and other things that we have found on different channels. We have mostly been disappointed by the Travel Channel, every time we turned it on we'd find ourselves presented with shows on places like Las Vegas, Carribean resorts, and Extreme McMansions of the California Coast. Or at least that's what it should have been called.

But that seems to be changing. I think we were watching Top Chef when we saw an advertisement for Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. This is our kind of show. Bourdain, a New Yorker, really seems familiar to me, and not just because I read his book Kitchen Confidential a few years ago. He goes to interesting places and his show is adventurous with a healthy side of cynical. Part chef, part writer, and part traveler, he is like M.F.K. Fisher with a badass attitude. He is also not afraid to eat anything (better him than me). It is in many ways a weird food tour of the world. Food being an essential part of culture, Bourdain showcases local eateries, but also traditions, rituals, and secret clubs where food is at the center of the gathering. At some point this season, he will have a show based in Moscow and I am anxious to see his take on it.

The only problem here is that his show is on at 10 PM here. Both this and ER, which I have tried unsuccessfully to give up, keep me awake past my bedtime. Trying to balance both a consulting job and two children, one of whom wakes me at least once every night, has made a decent bedtime important again. And so maybe, just maybe, it is time for the DVR. Keep in mind, I didn't have so much as a television before my husband and I moved in together. Of course, I actually went out of the house a lot more in the evenings back then, so there was little need for a TV. I wonder how much Comcast is going to charge me for this service so that I can record the two or three programs I actually look forward to watching, as opposed to whatever happens to be on when my husband turns on the TV. This is why I could never get into LOST or 24; I can't make appointment TV. I have a family and a career, I need flexibility, people!