On the 16.

  • College girl #1: So Betsy's having a guest over at the dorm tonight.
  • College girl #2: Who?
  • College girl #1: Da-a-a-a-a-an. Dan the man.
  • College girl #2: Who?
  • College girl #1: Dan. Dan the man.
  • College girl #2: Which one is Dan the man again?
  • College girl #1: He's the man one.
  • College girl #2: Oh.
Comments (View)
A final word on Word Idol.
This image was sent to us by a reader that must remain anonymous due to his or her sensitive position within the community. It was sent with special instructions to note the time on the clock: a quarter past four. What you are seeing, reader, is an image of people about to eat “an afternoon meal taken at 4 o’clock.” It is an image of, as our mystery correspondent puts it, “fourings in action.”
Is this not a pleasing image? Is this not an image that speaks to our most profound longings as a civilized society: the desire for community, for small snack items to enjoy, for the opportunity to sit in a roomful of be-tweeded ladies after work has ended? It does, and for once, we have an opportunity as a society to make a decision to start using a word that can give shape and form and meaning to these longings.
That word is fourings.
That is why I am asking one last time for you to vote for “fourings” in the Word Idol competition. You may do so here.
Reader, I am not as sophisticated as some of my silver-tongued competitors. I am a simple man, a man that resembles the logo for an unpopular regional brand of macaroons. But, as some of my competitors have pointed out, we are not voting for personalities. We are voting for words.
So on this Sunday evening, look one more time at the image above. You may recognize yourself in the long-dead faces in that mess hall. Their hunger is your hunger. You have the power to take those longings that well up within you, deep inside your heart — those longings for midafternoon nutrition, ritual and camaraderie. You have the power now to take control of them, to civilize them, and to assign them a word.
The word: fourings.
Fourings.
Also, vote twenty times or so, because Raynor is running some kind of banana republic shit where you can vote as much as you want. Fair enough — no one said this would be easy.
(On a parenthetical note: Some of you have already made fourings in your homes  — you know who you are. You have my sincere gratitude for your efforts. They prove definitively that the need for fourings was always there, and all that was needed was the word.)

A final word on Word Idol.

This image was sent to us by a reader that must remain anonymous due to his or her sensitive position within the community. It was sent with special instructions to note the time on the clock: a quarter past four. What you are seeing, reader, is an image of people about to eat “an afternoon meal taken at 4 o’clock.” It is an image of, as our mystery correspondent puts it, “fourings in action.”

Is this not a pleasing image? Is this not an image that speaks to our most profound longings as a civilized society: the desire for community, for small snack items to enjoy, for the opportunity to sit in a roomful of be-tweeded ladies after work has ended? It does, and for once, we have an opportunity as a society to make a decision to start using a word that can give shape and form and meaning to these longings.

That word is fourings.

That is why I am asking one last time for you to vote for “fourings” in the Word Idol competition. You may do so here.

Reader, I am not as sophisticated as some of my silver-tongued competitors. I am a simple man, a man that resembles the logo for an unpopular regional brand of macaroons. But, as some of my competitors have pointed out, we are not voting for personalities. We are voting for words.

So on this Sunday evening, look one more time at the image above. You may recognize yourself in the long-dead faces in that mess hall. Their hunger is your hunger. You have the power to take those longings that well up within you, deep inside your heart — those longings for midafternoon nutrition, ritual and camaraderie. You have the power now to take control of them, to civilize them, and to assign them a word.

The word: fourings.

Fourings.

Also, vote twenty times or so, because Raynor is running some kind of banana republic shit where you can vote as much as you want. Fair enough — no one said this would be easy.

(On a parenthetical note: Some of you have already made fourings in your homes  — you know who you are. You have my sincere gratitude for your efforts. They prove definitively that the need for fourings was always there, and all that was needed was the word.)

Comments (View)
What are these chuckleheads talking about? Ryan? Charlie sent this and he says it looks like me.

What are these chuckleheads talking about? Ryan? Charlie sent this and he says it looks like me.

Comments (View)
Tagged as: self-image
Shit just got real.

Shit just got real.

Comments (View)
Tagged as: fourings!
In honor of the increasingly heated Word Idol competition, our reader Alpha Lemon has just sent along this fourings-related image — a glimpse into an incredible future where fourings are served at Denny’s. Look at that plate! Nuts, cheeses, breadstuffs, little tomatoes! A perfect sweet/nutty/meaty/hot combo, as recommended in these very pages by the real/fake fourings expert team of Jim “J.P.” Norton and Sir Tony!
In fact, A. Lemon suggests an incredible afterlife for fourings: once it has been accepted as a culinary fact by people all over the world, and decadent Western moral relativism has kicked in, there is no reason that, like breakfast, fourings cannot enjoyed practically anytime. “FOURINGS SERVED ALL DAY,” diner menus will shout. Someday, even, second-tier screamo bands will be permitted by Denny’s to create their own custom fourings menu selections: FROM AUTUMN TO ASHES’ SUPER VICTORIA SPONGE.
Reader, this is the future we’re fighting for.

In honor of the increasingly heated Word Idol competition, our reader Alpha Lemon has just sent along this fourings-related image — a glimpse into an incredible future where fourings are served at Denny’s. Look at that plate! Nuts, cheeses, breadstuffs, little tomatoes! A perfect sweet/nutty/meaty/hot combo, as recommended in these very pages by the real/fake fourings expert team of Jim “J.P.” Norton and Sir Tony!

In fact, A. Lemon suggests an incredible afterlife for fourings: once it has been accepted as a culinary fact by people all over the world, and decadent Western moral relativism has kicked in, there is no reason that, like breakfast, fourings cannot enjoyed practically anytime. “FOURINGS SERVED ALL DAY,” diner menus will shout. Someday, even, second-tier screamo bands will be permitted by Denny’s to create their own custom fourings menu selections: FROM AUTUMN TO ASHES’ SUPER VICTORIA SPONGE.

Reader, this is the future we’re fighting for.

Comments (View)
Tagged as: fourings! submission
Comments (View)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

72 Plays. Download?

When Nate and I were kids, and we would come to our dad with some minor complaint about television programming or homework or each other’s personal habits, he would often shake his head and chuckle and call us both the “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Oh, that would get us so upset. What is a “nabob”?

It was, of course, many years before we realized he was just throwing around a beloved old Spiro Agnew line that Bill Safire had written. The Vice President made that quip sometime around 1970, when my dad was 20. I imagine him as a young man, laying around a living room in Cincinnati and drinking a Hudepohl, and hearing Agnew deliver that zinger on the radio and chuckling derisively. Agnew and Safire’s political orientation aside, it’s a really good line. Good enough for dad to ironically adapt it for everyday speech, at least, and use through the mid-1980s.

We all do that; these memorable lines from the world of politics make their way into our everyday speech. How many times have you met some minor accomplishment with a sarcastic “yes we can”?

Above I have posted my favorite example from the last ten years. I probably mumble that exact phrase to myself once a day. I mutter it everytime something is not going my way; when I stub my toe, or miss the bus, or read a “Best of the ’00s” list and find Sleater-Kinney nowhere on it. I like it because the rhetoric is so inflammatory. Try it: next time your Reuben comes out and they’ve skimped on the saurkraut, shake your head and shout “Skimping on the saurkraut?” and then deliver the line. 

(Actually, I usually drop the “no, no, no” and the “Not…” at the start, and rephrase the first sentence as a rhetorical question, but still, same idea.)

Jim Norton on fourings.

If I can drop into David Plouffe mode here for a moment, vis a vis Word Idol

You were one of the first few people to own a piece of this fourings campaign.

You helped build this movement when the odds were long and Voting Day was far in the future.

But we’re not there yet.

Etc., etc. God, I hate those emails. And I still get them.

Anyway, regarding fourings, I thought now might be the time to nail down some specifics. To that end, I have consulted with J.R. Norton, the editor-in-chief of the Heavy Table, the Upper Midwest’s premier online food and drink magazine. I asked Mr. Norton what he might suggest in the way of a sample fourings spread, and the intrepid journalist sent the following reply:

Before setting out to offer a sample Fourings spread, I thought I’d do a bit of research into the word itself and its culinary implications. To that end, I emailed Sir Anthony Rao at the Center for Imperial Gastronomy in Chennai, India — he’s known as a world expert in British customs regarding food and drink. He wrote back:

Mr. Norton:

As you probably already are aware, the word Fourings comes to us from a dialect of Arabic once spoken principally on Mediterranean islands with an Arab influence, e.g. Sicily and the like. The original term was “faw’ran” (“small tastes”). The migration into English as “fourings” was one of those happy linguistic accidents that take place from time to time.

There are — again, coincidentally — four traditional tastes associated with a Fourings spread:

  • Sweet.
  • Cured meat.
  • Modified nut.
  • Something “hot” (i.e. spicy hot) or hot (actually physically hot.)

A typical spread (and here I’m going back to the Ottomans) might include dates with honey, a style of cured beef resembling modern “jerky,” honey and cardamom-candied cashews, and thick Turkish coffee or, alternately, lavash rolled with a highly spicy style of hommos.

Your modern American version might look like this: a Kit Kat, a Slim Jim, some Beer Nuts, and a Tabasco Monster Stick Slim Jim.

I am personally partial to a more traditional interpretation of the fourings offering:

Simple butter cookies with jam or marmalade. Prosciutto or the like, served on thinly sliced bread. Assorted nuts tossed with pepper, herbs, and shaved aged parmesan. And, naturally, piping hot tea served with bone china cups and saucers.

At Your Service,

Sir Anthony Rao
Administrator
Center for Imperial Gastronomy
Chennai

P.S.: I am a fictional creation of your own design.

First Oprah, now Jim Norton and Sir Tony Rao. Momentum is building! Four o’clock is only hours away — get those Tabasco Monster Stick Slim Jims or prosciutto ready. We’re building a movement here.

Comments (View)
Tagged as: fourings! Heavy Table
Does anyone know where to get a translation of this? — if I were single I would ask one of the hot Indian guys at the gas station across the street. God he is HOT!!!

YouTube commenter “spookymotion” posts her thoughts on the video for “Jaan Pehechaan Ho,” by Mohammad Rafi (the number at the beginning of Ghost World). There’s either a great post-racial romantic comedy in that anecdote (“they were from two different worlds and Bollywood brought them together”), or a cringe-inducing cross-cultural learning experience for someone (“Gee, I’m sorry, ma’am, not all Indians speak Hindi, and also, I’m Pakistani”). Maybe both!

In the meantime, watch the video again, because it’s incredible. When the next season of Salon Saloon starts up again this year, I am going to make sure we open the first show with a dance number along these lines, bandit masks and everything. Pending Colin and Shanai’s approval, of course.

Comments (View)
In regards to fourings, I forgot to mention: when you bring out the meal at 4 p.m., you have to introduce it by saying the name of the dish in a sort of drawn-out bellow, like:

VIIIIIIICCCCCCTTOOOOOOOOOOORIA SPPPPOOOOOOOONNNNGGGGGE.

No exclamation at the end. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, that’s what you’d say if you were eating Victoria sponge. Like I said, we’re still feeling out what exactly constitutes appropriate fourings fare.
Also, if fourings gets a little manic, it’s a good idea to serve the dish by screaming “YOU GET A SCONE! AND YOU GET A SCONE! AND YOU GET A SCONE!” Everbody at the table screams along, too. Jumping up and down, crying maybe. Fourings is like that sometimes.
Look, I don’t like it anymore than you do. But the fact is, Oprah still rules 4 p.m. There have to be concessions made initially to get our foot in the door if this is going to work.

In regards to fourings, I forgot to mention: when you bring out the meal at 4 p.m., you have to introduce it by saying the name of the dish in a sort of drawn-out bellow, like:

VIIIIIIICCCCCCTTOOOOOOOOOOORIA SPPPPOOOOOOOONNNNGGGGGE.

No exclamation at the end. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, that’s what you’d say if you were eating Victoria sponge. Like I said, we’re still feeling out what exactly constitutes appropriate fourings fare.

Also, if fourings gets a little manic, it’s a good idea to serve the dish by screaming “YOU GET A SCONE! AND YOU GET A SCONE! AND YOU GET A SCONE!” Everbody at the table screams along, too. Jumping up and down, crying maybe. Fourings is like that sometimes.

Look, I don’t like it anymore than you do. But the fact is, Oprah still rules 4 p.m. There have to be concessions made initially to get our foot in the door if this is going to work.

Comments (View)
“Humans were not designed to spend their entire waking lives stumbling through an unending succession of cakehole-stuffing opportunities.”
…And so begins the Ragbag’s epochal Word Idol Week. All week long, Raynor has charged several of his semi-professional acquaintances with taking up the cause of an obsolete F-word and re-introducing it back into the wild.
I am one such acquaintance, and I have chosen ”fourings.” A four o’clock meal. Proletarian high tea. Post-work happy hour chowtime. Eating your feelings about Oprah’s imminent disappearance from daytime TV. Yum.
Stick around, consider carefully what I have written, enjoy the other entries, and then vote for fourings at week’s end. Or, better yet, consider adding fourings to your meal schedule. I will be posting fourings-related content much of this week in an attempt to begin moving my readership in that direction. You eat at 4pm anyway; might as well make a ritual out of it.  

“Humans were not designed to spend their entire waking lives stumbling through an unending succession of cakehole-stuffing opportunities.”

…And so begins the Ragbag’s epochal Word Idol Week. All week long, Raynor has charged several of his semi-professional acquaintances with taking up the cause of an obsolete F-word and re-introducing it back into the wild.

I am one such acquaintance, and I have chosen ”fourings.” A four o’clock meal. Proletarian high tea. Post-work happy hour chowtime. Eating your feelings about Oprah’s imminent disappearance from daytime TV. Yum.

Stick around, consider carefully what I have written, enjoy the other entries, and then vote for fourings at week’s end. Or, better yet, consider adding fourings to your meal schedule. I will be posting fourings-related content much of this week in an attempt to begin moving my readership in that direction. You eat at 4pm anyway; might as well make a ritual out of it.  

Comments (View)