quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

which town btw?
Rome, IA -- I linked to the restaurant above.

Yeah, that story is great.

I guess, but ny state is basically 'the midwest'

you are A.O. Sulzberger and I claim my $5

I don't carry bills under $100, sorry

(oh whoops)

Future dispatches from A.G. Sulzberger
"Public transit is not that good in the suburbs"
"Maids are hard to afford on minimum wage"
"This religion thing is really big in the south"

I imagine he got in a big fight with dad and got sent to the US equivalent of siberia

haha:

In truth, it is less satisfying to be a vegetarian here. Those on the coasts have it better.

ALL RIGHT I'M GONNA COME OUT AND SAY IT, IDGAF

(as a vegetarian from hawaii tho i can confirm that people are The Worst about this sometimes -- turn down spam and some people immediately get hostile and defensive cuz they're afraid you Think You're Better Than Them -- but whatever, yeah, learn to cook)

tbf I don't think a traveling reporter gets much in the way of a portable kitchen

pretty sure he has access to a heated surface and at least two things to put ingredients in

Spam! I just learned from a friend that grew up there that Spam is a p big thing in HI. I never knew. She was also telling me about some sort of "plate" where you have a meat and a side or something but it's called a __________ plate.

(i mean maybe he does not, idk! if he's eating out for literally every meal though then this really is thread-appropriate)

oh the life of the traveling reporter, riding the rails from town to town, his ipad and blackberry in a bindle tied to a stick, walking five miles to the nearest telegraph office to file his latest inane trend story

kindle in a bindle

lol @ this juxtaposition

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/ag-sulzberger-writes-note-to-dad.html
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/senator-tester-lugs-around-a-suitcase-of-meat.html

i know, i know, it's serious
xpost

enbb -- just a "plate lunch" maybe? which is one of our weirder special hawaii-specific phrases because i mean it is a lunch on a plate, i think even mainlanders eat lunch on plates.

we do love our spam tho. god knows why. i really miss it in fried rice. little cubes. or in musubi.

I heard it was cause of world war ii

lol I think it was a plate lunch, yes! Woah - Spam sushi. That's awesome.

xp yeah but even the english stopped eating everything out of tins eventually didn't they? whereas we have kept right on w/ the spam.

my theory is that spam closely resembles other cured/pickled/preserved foods that asian people like.

Spam musubi is awesome. My friend has grandparents in Hawaii and he and his wife came back from a trip with one of the little tools that are sold for easily assembly!

spam fried rice sounds pretty good. though i've never had spam.

there is a chinese lunch place in the west loop whose signature dish is hot dog fried rice.

You've never had Spam? I think you'd like it, all joking aside.

I think you're right. But I was raised quasi-kosher and Spam has always seemed as horrifying as potted meat in my mind. Maybe I'll get me a little Spam tonight.

Oh god, it's not even in the same League of Grossness as potted meat.

corned beef hash > spam

I love corned beef hash.

Last night after reading the are you a foodie? thread I just had to have DUMPLINGS!, and tonight I might have to have some corned beef hash and/or Spam fried rice.

Corned beef hash is > than about 9/10ths of the other foods in the world.

Plate lunches are fascinating - there are enough Hawaiian students around here in WA that there are a couple of plate lunch places. I'd never heard of them as a thing until I moved to the NW.

but... what is it?

you eat a plate for lunch

General rule seems to be rice, stir fried noodles, or macaroni salad, and some sort of meat - teriyaki, hamburger with gravy, chicken or pork katsu, kalbi, etc.

I think my friend said something about there always being macaroni salad and meat but it's a special kind of macaroni salad that's diff because it's Hawaiian. Or something.

no--its a plate. you eat it. at lunch

GIS of "macaroni salad" just makes me v sad. So much wasted potential.

iirc it usually has tuna in it

We call that "tuna salad." It also has shredded carrots, shredded cheddar cheese, and halved grapes in it iirc.

base is rice+macsalad+meat. i dunno if the macsalad is special cuz plate lunches are the only context i've had it in. sometimes there's tuna or crab in it but usually not.

whenever I've had it it's been just a v lil bit of tuna xp

that's funny because it all sounds like what my grandma would make if you asked her to make asian food in 1955

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XKD3a-oVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

the real hawaiian jackpot is the loco moco, which for some reason always goes for like $8 on the mainland instead of the $1.99 it should be. (admittedly even hilo, hawaii's venerable cafe 100 has broken the $2 barrier in recent years, but i'm just gonna pretend everything is always as it was when i was putting away one of these every day in high school.)

Perhaps already noted upthread and more of a general vent than a quiddity report but worst paranthetical ever:

(Remember them? Remember albums?)

I don't know whether that belongs in this thread or not, but I'm happy to talk about anything besides hawaiian spam delicacies right now

Risks for G.O.P. in Attacks With Racial Themes
By JIM RUTENBERG
Recent comments by Newt Gingrich lay bare the risks for his party when it comes to invoking arguments perceived to carry value-laden attack lines.

this is such a weird perspective to occupy, writing about dog whistling

"invoking arguments perceived to carry"

would prompt an expletive thought to convey "for fuck's sake"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/education/early-admission-applications-rise-as-do-rejections.html

You do not need a perfect score on the math SAT to know that if more people are applying — many top-tier colleges say the number has doubled or tripled over the last five years — competition is stiffer. So in certain precincts of Manhattan, parents of those who were deferred or rejected in December have been swapping stories ever since about the seemingly perfect senior at the Spence School who did not make the cut (“If not her, who?” lamented one parent) and the six Brearley School girls who were deferred from Yale (“I thought Yale loved Brearley,” cried another, pointing out that 20 Brearley graduates have gone to Yale in the last five years, more than any other university).

Was it the international students who pay full freight? The public schools who do more for diversity? Occupy Wall Street fomenting anger at the 1 percent?

“Maybe it’s that they are tired of New York City private school kids,” worried the mother of a senior who was deferred from Yale, echoing a common refrain. “The juniors,” she added, “are flipping out.”