Mishmash is my favorite dish

-Woody Allen's Nietzsche Diet:

In a scene cut from the "Ring" cycle, Siegfried decides to dine out with the Rhine maidens and in heroic fashion consumes an ox, two dozen fowl, several wheels of cheese, and fifteen kegs of beer. Then the check comes and he's short. The point here is that in life one is entitled to a side dish of either coleslaw or potato salad, and the choice must be made in terror, with the knowledge that not only is our time on earth limited but most kitchens close at ten.

Woody writes now exactly as he did more than thirty years ago. Is that good or bad?

Also, Woody claims that Scarlett Johansson is wittier than he is (and that she is "sexually overwhelming" and how's that for a one-two punch).

-TNR: The Stultifying Blandness of Conservative Cuisine. Among the various tidbits we find that, apparently, Republicans don't like fish. Or rather, they make a show of not liking fish because it might make them seem all effete and liberal. Warning: includes a description of the Veep's Chicken Florentine.

-Russ Parsons on cooking with smoke:

Smoke tastes like smoke and that is the dominant flavoring. If you're expecting dramatic differences from one variety [of wood] to the next, you may be disappointed. It's not a mustard and ketchup thing, but more like the differences between different types of mustard.

But there are differences, even if they are nuanced, and they do affect the way the smoke flavors the meat.

If the different woods are only nuances, I take this as license not to care. But I did keep reading because I will read anything Parsons writes.

-An appreciation of Aaron Spelling z"l, America's Trashmaster Flash.