The Annals of Rock Snobbery

ROCK SNOB RELEASE OF THE YEAR: DENNIS WILSON’S “PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE”

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:21:08 -0500

As noted in The Rock Snob*s Dictionary, under the entry WILSON, DENNIS: “Long suspected of being a marginally talented surfer-stoner dude who was merely along for the ride with genius older brother Brian Wilson... Dennis surprised fans when, as a novice songwriter in the late Sixties, he ably crafted emotionally fraught ballads; his out-of-print 1977 solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, is a major cause-célèbre among Snobs.”

Hard to believe in this relentlessly archival, reissue-mad age, but until this week, Pacific Ocean Blue was still out of print–it never had even a half-assed CD version released (legally) in the 1990s. Over at Snob HQ, we’ve long had to rely on out vintage vinyl version (pictured above), whose sleeve is fun to fold out so you can pretend to be passing the hours with Dennis at his most bearded and wharf-rat sozzled.

But you can now buy an authorized version of Pacific Ocean Blue, which comes with an extra disc devoted to material from Wilson’s aborted follow-up, Bambu. For the more militant of Rock Snobs, this is a sad week, since one of their most cherished out-of-print trophies has lost its obscurity value. But for the more benign Snob, this is a good time to revel anew as Dennis rasps his way through “River Song.”

“YACHT ROCK 11” LIVE AT LAST

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:04:46 -0500

Courtesy of low-budget soft-rockumentary auteur JD Ryznar comes the long-awaited Footloose episode of Yacht Rock, the show that put the “biz” in “Webisode.” It’s surprising enough to see Jason Lee guest-starring, but is that Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton as James Ingram? (No, it isn’t, but for a second...)

“JUNO” OFFERS AN ALL-TOO-FAKE TAKE ON FILM SNOBBERY

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:13:58 -0500

Like last year’s indie sleeper hit, Little Miss Sunshine, this year’s model, Juno, combines affecting adorableness with flagrant implausibility. Unlike The Savages, which takes a realistically jaundiced view of the type of person who becomes a Film Snob, Juno includes a tender bonding scene in which Jason Bateman's 40-ish yuppie character communes with young Juno (Ellen Page) by playfully arguing over the merits of Herschell Gordon Lewis versus those of Dario Argento. The concept isn’t bad, but the scene is about as believable as the name Diablo Cody.

ALT-PIZZA GENIUS IS DEAD

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 09:29:49 -0500

Shed a tear for Ed LaDou, the unsung hero of the rise of nontraditional pizza, who died of cancer at the all-too-young age of 52 right after Christmas. LaDou, a San Franciscan who loosed pizza from the Northeastern strictures of pepperoni, onions, and anchovies by experimenting with toppings like raw tuna, pâté, and duck sausage, was the guy who Wolfgang Puck tapped in 1982, when he opened Spago in L.A. The obit for LaDou in the Los Angeles Times tells the full story.

LaDou’s death also brings up another regrettable omission from The Food Snob’s Dictionary: Chris Bianco, the Phoenix-based pizza master whose steadfast refusal to franchise or go national has only enhanced his Snob status.

“LOCAVORE”: WORD OF THE BLEEDIN’ YEAR?

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:26:10 -0500

At the outset of the release of The Food Snob’s Dictionary, we were kicking ourselves for not having included the word “locavore” in the book. But now we have an excuse for this omission: The New Oxford American Dictionary has declared “locavore” to be its Word of the Year. And if a word is getting that kind of big-time national recognition, it is no longer the province of Food Snobs after all. Hoi polloi, it’s all yours.

KOSHER “RED BULL” AND OTHER “DELIGHTS”

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:09:07 -0500

Marion Rosenfeld, co-author of The Food Snob’s Dictionary, recently visited the Kosherfest food expo in Manhattan and wrote it up for Nextbook, the excellent online magazine devoted to Jewish culture. Among Marion’s discoveries: even in the Kosher world, there’s now a big emphasis on organic, sustainable, etc. Still, there’s plenty of silliness about, too, as in the case of the Exit Energy drink, which Marion describes as “a Red Bull analog for the Talmudic set.” The Exit Energy booth, writes Marion, “offered up cognitive dissonance: pounding techno music and Hassidim.”

“THE SAVAGES” OFFERS AN ALL-TOO-REAL TAKE ON FILM SNOBBERY

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:04:20 -0500

There’s a brilliant scene in Tamara Jenkins’s fantastic new movie The Savages in which Laura Linney, as a fastidious aspiring playwright, is bickering with her older lover, a married man named Larry (Peter Friedman). Larry declares that their relationship reminds him of The Blue Angel, and he condescendingly explains, “You know–Marlene Dietrich? Von Stroheim?” Linney’s character scowls viciously and says, “Von Sternberg!”

If only poor Larry had read The Snob Cheat Sheet for Confusing Similarities (pp. 30-34 of The Film Snob’s Dictionary), he wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess.

FOOD SNOB RADIO

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:33:00 -0500

Marion Rosenfeld and David Kamp have hit the proverbial hustings to talk up The Food Snob’s Dictionary. To hear them on KCRW’s Good Food show with Evan Kleiman, click here. To hear David on Mike Colameco’s WOR program Food Talk, click here. David will also be returning soon to Lynn Rossetto Kasper’s public-radio program The Splendid Table. Precise broadcast time and date to come.

ROTTEN HATES HIS JUICER

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:18:39 -0500

It would appear that John Lydon, the former Johnny Rotten, will not be venturing into chefhood like Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos anytime soon. Jeff Gordinier of Details magazine has a delightful new interview with Lydon online, which includes this wonderful exchange:

LYDON: I bought this stupid juicer. Oh God, the mess I made.

GORDINIER: So, um, you make juice?

LYDON: Yeah, well, I have to now, because I bought the damn thing. Sixty dollars’ worth of bleedin’ nonsense! It’s impossible to keep clean. I’ll tell you what it is—it’s a harbinger of mold and fungus.

JEW TUBE

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:06:42 -0500

Another formerly obscure gem now readily available on YouTube: Bob Dylan’s late-1980s appearance on the Chabad Telethon, in which Zimmy plays a mean mouth organ while his son-in-law, singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman, and Harry Dean Stanton (!!!) play “Hava Nagila.” Yarmulkes are stylishly worn by all.

VOICES OF FOOD SNOBBERY ACROSS AMERICA

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:22:07 -0500

A site called Apartment Therapy is running a charming contest in which, in exchange for a chance to win a copy of The Food Snob’s Dictionary, readers are invited to “tell us the [food-related] thing you are most snobby about.” The readers’ responses are thoughtful and heartfelt. And to think, we thought Food Snobbery was just a phony construct worth building a novelty book around!

MEAT CITY

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:43:46 -0500

Well, it’s more like a meat forest, or, even more bizarrely, a meat winter wonderland: the latest ad campaign(s) for Negroni, an Italian salumi company. (Look up the definition of salumi in The Food Snob’s Dictionary.)

FIVE SONGS THAT SOUND LIKE THEY OUGHT TO BE SUNG BY THE MUPPETS

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:29:40 -0500

Pursuant to the previous entry in Rock Snobbery:

“I Zimbra,” Talking Heads
“The Guns of Brixton,” the Clash
“Bury Me With It,” Modest Mouse
“Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker),” Parliament
“Telegram Sam,” T. Rex*

* Actually, all T. Rex songs are Muppet-friendly.

ROCK SNOB MUPPETRY

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:16:07 -0500

How could we have missed out on Muppets Tonight, Brian Henson’s short-lived attempt (1996-97) to revive his dad’s Muppet Show magic on American prime time? The fragments (fraggles?) left behind on YouTube reveal an adventurous program of Rock Snobbish bent, with Kermit “doing” David Byrne, and “Nine Inch Snails” performing some woozily convincing industrial rock.

WHAT A LOVELY BUNCH OF BOOK EVENTS YOU HAVE, SIR

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:33:19 -0500

Lots of upcoming bookchat events and signings related to The Food Snob’s Dictionary and the paperback release of The United States of Arugula. Such as...

October 10, New York Public Library, NYC, 7 p.m.
David Kamp sits on a panel called “Julia Child in America” with Child biographer Laura Shapiro, longtime New York Times-woman Molly O’Neill, and Blue Hill chef-activist and young-Richard Manuel-lookalike Dan Barber.

October 13, Strand Bookstore, NYC, 3-4 p.m.
David Kamp signs copies of The United States of Arugula as part of the Strand Literary & Arts Festival, which marks the ornery 12th Street bookseller’s 80th birthday.

October 18, Gourmet Garage, NYC 6-8 p.m.
David Kamp and Marion Rosenfeld sign copies of The Food Snob’s Dictionary at the Greenwich Village location (117 Seventh Avenue South) of this lovely mini-chain of comestible emporiums.

November 10, Miami Book Festival, Miami, FL, 1:30 pm.
David Kamp sits on a food-talk panel with Laura Shapiro and Molly O’Neill–again!–but this time the panel is moderated by Marcel Escoffier, the actual great-grand-nephew of Auguste Escoffier (click on link and scroll down).