Snob

A pesares de que ir pasar o día e comer nun restaurante no norte de Portugal e moi común, aínda hai xente que non foi ao supermercado alí, quedando sen descobrir moita cousa rica. Eu ía moito a Ponte da Lima ou a Braga a pasar o día, comprar panos e toallas, comer e ir ao super. Os meus pais son moi fans de Portugal, e estando en Ourense é moi doado. Se estades en Ferrol ou en Ribadeo non tanto, pero paga a pena ir un par ou tres de días e coñecer o Peneda-Gerês, ou ir ata Porto, cidade sempre recomendable.

Dende que hai euros o ticket da compra non sae barato coma antes, pero aínda así presta probar cousas distintas que non se dan atopado no Froiz ou no Gadis. Velaiquí a lista das miñas favoritas, das que probei, claro:

Leite chocolatado Agros

O mellor batido de chocolate EVER. Só se distribúe no norte, se vos gustan os batidos e dades con el, comprade varios paquetes porque é moi adictivo.

Zumes Compal

Outro clásico. Custan un euro e son moito mellores que todas as marcas españolas que venden a ese prezo. Os meus favoritos son o de pexego, manga e o de pera da Rocha (ambrosía!) pero hai moitos sabores donde escoller.

Manteiga das Açores

É unha manteiga salgada e moi cremosa. Eu tomoa soa con pan, estña riquísima, pero tamén vai ben para botarlle a masas e biscoitos.

Bolinhos de arroz

Estos é mellor compralos na pastelería, magdalenas feitas de fariña de arroz, cunha textura un pouco seca que as fai ideais para mollar. Recomendable tomalas con leite Agros, fan un tremendo combo.

Queixos variados

Aquí non vos podo dicir marcas porque hai moitas, os da foto probeinos e están moi bos. O tamaño é ideal para dúas racións (unha se tedes moita ansia) e así non hai risco de que queden resesos no frigorífico. Que tomen nota outros fabricantes!

Paté de sardiña

A min gustame moito PERO é unha desas cousas cun sabor tan intenso que non hai termo medio: ou che encanta, ou quedas aborrecido. Imprescindible un bo pan para acompañar.

Molho piri-piri

Os portugueses levaron o invento de Mozambique e agora o prebe é un indispensable nas casas portuguesas. Piri piri quere dicir pementa en Swahili, o ingrediente principal son grans secos de pementa caiena, con pel de limón, allo, cebola, ourego e máis especias. Vai moi ben para adobar gambas ou polo ao forno, coma nesta receita

Vinho de Porto

Outro clásico das compras, as botellas que duran anos e anos na casa porque só se utiliza como viño de postre de cando en vez. Eu aínda non probei a facelas, pero hai receitas de carnes e postres que o usan, como esta de peras bébedas. A marca de abaixo no a probei porque é moi cara, pero hai para escoller vinhos de moitos prezos.

Salame de chocolate

Mención especial para esta gran recomendación de Xabier Rolán que por algún motivo eu non descubrira, e son de dente doce Véndese na sección de refrixerados e leva anacos de galleta. Sabe parecido ás tortas de cumpreanos de galleta e chocolate, e ten unha textura densa. As 199 calorías son por roda, e no paquete veñen 9 ou 10…

E vós, que comprades? Sabedes de máis produtos? Dade aviso nos comentarios, no Facebook ou no Twitter!

Actualización: Esquecera o máis coñecido! Se ides a pastelería a polos bolinhos de arroz, non podedes marchar sen levar pasteis de nata, ou como lle chamaba eu antes: os queimadiños.

Para os frikis amantes da escala de Scoville, os Chiles Serranos oscilan entre 10000-23000, que non é moito comparado cun Habanero que saca 100000–350000 ou mesmo un Chile Manzano que anda por 100000-200000. Pero deixando aparte os números, coma comentei antes, o do serrano foi inesperadamente terrible. Non quero pensar coma poden ser outros (teño na casa uns Chiles Manzanos, así que xa vos contarei: ven tendo 10 veces máis forza)

No tomes los pimientos tal como vienen crudos. Los abres, les sacas el interior y la semilla, y los dejas unos cuantos días encurtiendose en vinagre o limón. Esto los suaviza.

Una vez leído el final de ‘The Boys‘ el temor a que Ennis no supiera rematar la serie se ve disipado al momento. Muchos aficionados piensan que ese es el punto flaco del guionista irlandés, las últimas entregas de las colecciones que escribe suelen palidecer bastante en comparación con el resto de capítulos. Sin embargo con The Boys ha sabido capear todos los problemas con los que se ha ido encontrando por el camino y su reencuentro con una colección de largo recorrido no ha podido ser más satisfactorio.

Lo que empezara hace ya algunos años como uno de los anhelos de Ennis, una colección en la que los súper héroes se vieran ridiculizados, ha ido mutando casi sin darnos cuenta desde una macarrada inicial hasta una trama oscura y llena de conspiraciones en la que nada es lo que parece y las sorpresas que podemos ir descubriendo dejará a más de uno con la mandíbula colgando.

El final del anterior volumen dejaba finiquitada la mayoría de las tramas que se habían ido sembrando a lo largo de los más de setenta números de los que consta la serie y muchos nos preguntábamos que dejaría Ennis para este ‘Las putas puertas abajo‘. Mientras que la épica y los actos heroicos que tanto gustan al guionista se pudieron leer precisamente en ‘Más allá de la colina con las espadas de mil hombres‘, para esta última entrega ha dejado todo lo relacionado con Vought American, la CIA y el devenir de The Boys.

El cambio de registro es evidente desde la primera página ya que las escenas de diálogos se suceden una tras otra despejando cualquier incógnita que se hubiese quedado sin resolver y, como siempre, atando cualquier cabo suelto aunque sin faltar ni escasear algunas de las viñetas más impactantes de toda la colección. Iremos descubriendo las respuestas a la misma vez que Hughie y sentiremos la misma rabia que el entrañable personaje al ver algunas cosas que parecían inimaginables hasta hace algunos números.

El encargado de ilustrar el final de fiesta ha sido el que se convirtió en dibujante regular de la serie tras la marcha de Darick Robertson, Russ Braun, pero también se ha tenido el detalle de contar con el propio Robertson para los lápices del último número, cerrando la que podría ser la segunda mejor serie de Ennis en su top particular, superada tan solo por ese coloso que es ‘Predicador‘ y dejando un sabor de boca un tanto agridulce, algo que también es marca de la casa y a lo que nos estamos acostumbrando con cada nuevo trabajo del irlandés.

No la conocíamos, pero acabamos de descubrirla y nos ha parecido interesante dedicarle un post a esta jovenzuela. Nova T.Apocalypse trabajó en un puñado de películas, la mayoría de estética punk para Burning Angel, la productora de Joanna Angel, entre 2009 y 2011. Tenía unas tetas estupendas, era bastante simpática y no le hacía nunca ascos a una sesión anal, pero su particularidad era otra: debido a una intervención quirúrgica había perdido la visión en el ojo derecho y lucía un parche con el mismo estilo punk y desenfadado de sus tatuajes y sus perforaciones.

  

 
In 1984, the same year that Stop Making Sense was released, another meticulously crafted Talking Heads concert movie made its debut as well. I refer to Once in a Lifetime, a 69-minute piece of experimental television that surely startled the great piebald tapestry of viewers tuning in to Britain’s Channel 4 that night.

From the perspective of today, Once in a Lifetime (some sources call it Talking Heads vs. the Television or Talking Heads vs. Television) is very much a document of its moment, as filtered through the cheerfully experimental sensibility of David Byrne (although Geoff Dunlop was the director). It elevates quick-cutting montage using heterogenous sources to the non plus ultra of confrontational video art. This was 1984, the high-water mark of MTV; other directions were not considered. It would have been obscurely baffling and disappointing if a movie like this had not used aggressively random splicing.

Once in a Lifetime opens with barrage of video content and a few voiceover musings by Byrne before getting to the footage of a Talking Heads show at Wembley, which is amusingly described in an early scroll as a place where a “Horse of the Year Show” might occur—this might be the last foray into actual humor in the movie.

As far as I can tell, the Wembley footage was shot in 1982—anybody know? Did anybody reading this attend?

What makes the movie remarkable is the band’s willingness to have its performances messed with. None of the songs are presented straight—all feature some form of montage or visual comment. The strategies for each song are largely dictated by the song’s content. For instance, “Life During Wartime” is puncutated with footage of urban strife, in the form of police sirens, drug use, and automated weaponry. “Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)” features an unwitting ancitipation of “Road to Nowhere” in the form of a lengthy take of a dusty southwestern horizon receding from the camera. “Once in a Lifetime” weaves in ample footage of American evangelists; it struck me for the first time that Byrne’s famous forehead-slapping gesture is an obvious reference to evangelical ritual (I know, I’m an idiot). Testament to the Heads’ commitment to experimentation, the live rendition of “Once in a Lifetime” gives way to perhaps 20 seconds of the music video (you’ve surely seen that before).

Implicit in this mode of presentation is an imperative of showing UK audiences what vulgar America is “really” like, so a premium is placed on material not available overseas, such as the evangelical footage, the TV commercials, the news coverage, and so on. For “Mind,” the chorus of which is, let’s recall, “I need something to change your mind,” the accopanying montage is all about good old American hucksterism, particularly billboard advertisements and the patter of late-night TV commericals. While listening to “Big Business,” the viewer sees images evoking technology, industrialization, and the assembly line.
 

 
The boldest stroke is probably “Psycho Killer,” an ingenious montage folding together perhaps twenty different versions of the song, each with its specific venue, camera quality, sound quality, outfits, and so on. They seldom stay with any version for more than about a line, but the result is not unpleasurable. For “My Big Hands (Fall Though the Cracks),” Byrne busts out a megaphone. “Swamp” features a series of stills of Byrne’s face, often distorted through video or computerized effects, and ends with a freeze frame of Byrne’s singing, hot red visage—a clear reference to nuclear annihilation. 

The video is a must-see for any Talking Heads fan—I’ve emphasized the experimentation but you also hear a dozen songs (nine Talking Heads numbers, three from Byrne’s The Catherine Wheel score), and that’s always a good thing. But the emphasis on the avant-garde nature of the proceedings tends to undermine the “concert” aspect of the movie. Early on Byrne says in a voiceover, “When the performance is successful, something sort of transcendent happens that has to do with the audience and the musicians losing their egos and immersing themselves in sort of one identity or whatnot. It need only happen in a performance for maybe thirty seconds or so, and that justifies the whole thing.”

I take Byrne at his word, but to judge solely from Once in a Lifetime, it’s sheer poppycock.

Song list:
“Life During Wartime”
“Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)”
“Once in A Lifetime”
“Mind”
“Big Business”
“I Zimbra”
“Slippery People”
“Psycho Killer”
“My Big Hands (Fall Though the Cracks)”
“Swamp”
“What A Day That Was”
“Crosseyed And Painless”
 

Els Masturbadors Mongòlics (All archive images courtesy of Xavi Cot and Munster Records)

Barcelona's Masturbadors Mongòlics are Spanish punk's lost boys. The band were together for just a year, right around the time that democracy was making its first baby steps on the Iberian Peninsula after the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. The foursome liked alcohol, they liked amphetamines and they liked getting in fights; they only lasted a year and you can count their gigs on one hand, but the legacy of their antics still reverberates today.

When Franco died in 1975, Spain was sent into a state of commotion. After four decades of the dictator's iron rod making its way into every sphere of Spanish life, it was hardly surprising that, with freedom came huge social, political, and cultural upheavals. Many people had been slightly brainwashed by his regime and the dictatorship still had a bit of bite—five political dissidents were executed in 1975, two ETA militants and three from the antifascist group FRAP—but everyone knew it was on its last legs.

This allowed for the emergence of a nascent counterculture: a belated, disoriented version of what had happened in England and America during the previous decade—prog-rock, hippies, Mao's "little red book", Robert Crumb, weed and, if you were lucky, LSD. It probably felt progressive to the Spanish, but it showed Spain for exactly what it was during the mid-70s: a country at least a decade behind the rest of Western Europe.

Xavi Cot in his studio. (Photo by Alejandra Nunez)

Star, a zine set up in Barcelona in 1974, was probably the first publication to really start examining what was going on outside of Spain. It was consumed by a public that consisted of more than just your standard ban-the-bomb stoners, bringing its readers a generous array of overseas culture—stuff like the Freak Brothers, Ginsberg, Michael Moorcock, Lou Reed, the Stooges, Philippe Garrel, Harlan Ellison, S&M and, a little later (more or less at the same time the phenomenon popped up in England) punk.

Painter, photographer, filmmaker, and walking archive of 70s and 80s ephemera Xavi Cot was in the right place at a turbulent time. "Nowadays, everyone knows what punk is, but at that time hardly anyone read the little that was written about it, which was often about how silly it seemed," he told me. “I remember an article saying punks were fascists! Eventually, everyone got their head around the fact it was the total opposite—it was anarchism, and that piece got amended."

As part of the Cuc Sonat collective, Cot put on a few punk nights in Barcelona, some of the first in the whole of Spain. "I'd already put on a few prog-rock nights and was travelling to London quite often, too," says Xavi. "I lived there for a year and a half at one point." This all fed into the 1977 Festival Punk de l’Aliança del Poble Nou; "I don’t know if it was the first [punk festival] in Spain, but definitely the first to use the actual word 'punk'," Xavi recounted.

Artwork by Lluis Miracle (1976).

One of the groups that was meant to be involved in the festival—though they couldn't in the end because they didn't have enough songs—had recently formed and given themselves the wilfully provocative moniker Els Masturbadors Mongòlics (The Mongol Masturbators). Their founder and singer knew all about provocation; Lluis Miracle, according to everyone who knew him at the time, was all hormones and aggression.

He worked mainly as a comic strip artist, and everything he did was hyperbolic and distorted. He'd come to prominence working for Star, and it was one of his comic strips that got them shut down for a year in 1976, a late victim of the dictatorship's censorship. Xavi remembers Miracle being "brutal", "savage" and "over the top", saying, "Things always ended badly. He struggled getting his work published. Editors wouldn't touch him with a bargepole."

In hindsight, the censorship is easy to understand; in the story in question, which starts out as a parody of A Clockwork Orange, ultra-violence, drugs, fascism, and homosexuality are all mashed together, totally deadpan. And to top it off, there's a bit of father-son incest thrown into the mix. In the Spain of that era, "scandalous" doesn't come close to describing what Miracle dreamt up.

"Miracle was nothing if not an agent provocateur," says Xavi, "and, as such, went where he was most needed. Which is why punk pulled him in. He was one of the first to wear leather and chains in the street, and as soon as everyone else started doing it, he stopped. At Masturbadors Mongòlics' last concert, he came out in a white blouse, red stockings and underwear."

Els Masturbadors Mongòlics outside La Orquídea, with Miracle standing the third from the left.

The fledgling punk scene was a place where Lluis Miracle could go off the rails in public. He could channel his aggression and his love of provocation, and he could do it live on stage. None of the strictures that limited his cartoon-making applied; he could get in people's faces and he quite often got into fights with the crowd and other bands. "It wasn't that Miracle was dangerous—in some ways he was actually really timid," says Xavi. "If he had to have it out with someone, fine, but it wasn't like he went around looking for trouble. The same happened with him as with a lot of people when they get up on stage—especially if you're wasted, you're something else once you get up there."

At the end of 1977, Masturbadors Mongòlics installed themselves in their local rehearsal space, the legendary (and now derelict) La Orquídea, a disco bar in Barcelona's Gràcia barrio. A lot of the local gangs used the bar as a meeting point, and when someone got shot, it was shut down. But on January 21, 1978, Masturbadors Mongòlics played at the reopening night and counted it as their first "official" gig. Apart from "a fair amount of chaos and noise," it was nothing out of the ordinary.

A review of a Masturbadors Mongòlics' show in Party.

The same couldn't be said for their next gig, also at La Orquídea, a few months later. Miracle came out on stage completely naked with a German shepherd on a leash. The band managed to get through a few songs before he ended up on the floor after some kind of ruckus with someone in the audience. No one knows what started it. Party, Spain's first ever gay zine (homosexuality was still very much a crime under the gloriously named Social Dangerousness Act), ran a review entitled "Masturbadors Mongòlics sing with their willies out". 

Their next gig, on the outskirts of Barcelona, turned into a full-on battle—they only got through two songs before everything descended into carnage. Paco Martínez, the band's guitarist, explains: "It was your average local bar—music to dance to with your chick and lots of macho dickheads making sure you didn't touch their chicks. Not exactly our kind of crowd. But the DJ finished and we were up next. We started playing, it was pretty tense and, before our second song, Miracle said there was a girl giving him funny looks and he was going to have her. When I started on the solo, he jumped down off the stage, went over, and put a cigarette out on her cheek. It was nothing really, but then it kicked off."

Xavi Cot remembers the moment too: "The girl's boyfriend hit Miracle, his friend's piled in, then the band. Miracle ended up in the Modelo prison that night."

The band's next gig was at a campsite just outside Barcelona. Miracle, clearly keen on keeping up appearances, showed up at the last moment covered in blood. He'd been fighting in a bar around the corner.

By this point, there was a lot of tension within the band—enough that they were close to splitting. Only Miracle and Martínez were left, but they decided to hold out on parting ways when they were invited to play at Canet Rock, which was Catalonia's largest festival in those days. Unable to resist putting on one of their trademark shows on such a huge stage, they organized a press conference that—if it had turned out as planned—would surely have seen them both put in jail. 

One of Miracle's cartoons, published in Star in 1976.

The idea was that they would invite a select group of journalists to a rehearsal space in the Chinese barrio, a dank cellar you could only access through a trapdoor. They would play a couple of songs and then leave, locking the journalists in for 24 hours with a spread of black pudding and vodka served on silver trays. "But none of the journalists showed up," says Martínez. "Blondie and Ultravox were having a press conference at the same time." At the festival itself, as Martínez remembers, "Alcohol and a lot of other stuff were in plentiful supply. It was a long night and a lot went on. I had a fight with Ultravox because they were hogging the rider. Security had to separate us."

Masturbadors Mongòlics weren't around much longer after their brawl with Midge Ure's new wave act. They had a few sessions in EMI's studios, then they split up and Miracle was called up for military service, which was still obligatory at the time. When he came back, he'd given up on punk. He dressed in robes and went on about the Mediterranean empire and the cradle of civilization. "So obviously people stopped paying attention to him," says Xavi. "No one else gave a shit about punk any more, and then Lluis Miracle shows up wearing robes and spouting a load of crap about the structure of Roman society."

After a not very fruitful attempt at getting a new band, Olor a Tigre (Smell of the Tiger), going, Miracle put music aside for good to concentrate on being a cartoonist. He worked for a number of different magazines, including the Spanish Hustler, and died in 2006 of hepatitis.

The Masturbadors Mongòlics' vinyl—made up of recordings taken from the EMI studio sessions—was put out recently by Munster Records, and it's actually pretty good for a bunch of people who seemed more concerned with causing trouble than making music. Nevertheless, while they go down as pioneers in Iberian punk's prehistory, it’s not because of their songs. The Mongòlics' true legacy is that they epitomized the euphoric outpouring of emotion—the massive release of tension—in post-Franco Spain. As Xavi says, "Masturbadors Mongòlics were right on time."

Translation by Thom Bunstead.

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Beyond the Call: A Memory of Lou Reed

It was my second day on Soylent and my stomach felt like a coil of knotty old rope, slowly tightening. I wasn’t hungry, but something was off. I was tired, light-headed, low-energy, but my heart was racing. My eyes glazed over as I stared out the window of our rental SUV as we drove over the fog-shrouded Bay Bridge to Oakland. Some of this was nerves, sure. I had 28 days left of my month-long all-Soylent diet—I was attempting to live on the food replacement longer than anyone besides its inventor—and I felt woozy already.

We were en route to Soylent HQ, where the 25-year-old Rob Rhinehart and his crew were whipping up the internet famous hacker meal—the macro-nutritious shake they think will soon replace the bulk of our meals. It’s just one of many visions currently vying for the future food crown. The world’s population is still burgeoning, after all, 600 to 800 million people are going hungry every year, and the specter of food riots is perpetually percolating—the demand for cheap, nutritious food is greater than ever.

So Googlers are investing in vitro meat, biotech firms are genetically modifying crops that promise increasingly robust yields, and Silicon Valley is nurturing a bevy of future-forward alt-food companies. Then there’s Rob, who came along and claimed that nobody had to eat food ever again.

Rob’s idea for a sci-fi-inspired nutrient shake sprouted from living the life of a hyperactive, science-obsessed bachelor. As a recent software engineering graduate and aspiring entrepreneur, he was too broke to eat out and too time-strapped to cook. But instead of stocking his pantry with plastic-wrapped ramen like everyone else, he tried to retool the act of eating itself, to make it cheaper and more efficient. He studied government food standards and nutrition textbooks—Berg’s Biochemistry was like his bible—and divined a set of basic ingredients that provided the calories and nutrients the human body needed to run.

Then, in what would soon prove irresistible fodder for Silicon Valley founder mythology, Rob lived on the yellow-grey stuff for 30 days, subjecting himself to lab tests and blogging the results. The concluding post, “How I Stopped Eating Food”, became an online sensation.

Continue reading over at Motherboard.

La TDT se prometía como un paraíso para todos los públicos. Nos lo vendieron como algo que revolucionaría nuestras vídas por su diversidad de canales y contenidos. No quedaba más remedio que ‘antenizarse’ para asistir a la nueva era televisiva. Pero, al final, no fue para tanto.

Las grandes cadenas se comieron a las otras recién nacidas. Y las videntes telefónicas sobrevivieron. Suponemos que gracias a su poderes paranormales. Y, claro, entre tanto canal, hay programas con mirada propia que pasan desapercibidos. Algunos son interesantes, otros simplemente peculiares. Hoy repasamos ocho formatos ocultos en el mando a distancia: valiosos, curiosos, pringosos o escurridizos.

1. VALIOSOS

• Cachitos de hierro y cromo 

Hay un nuevo programa de música en La 2. Es irónico, corrosivo, imaginativo, nostálgico y algo petardo. De James Brown a Camela. De Perales a REM.  Un rítmico viaje por los últimos cincuenta años gracias a las entrañas del archivo de TVE, que aún está por descubrir. Y es que, hasta ahora, siempre se recuperaban las mismas imágenes de las cloacas de la tele. Sin embargo, hay cientos de brillantes momentos que están escondidos en el valioso fondo documental de los Estudios de Prado del Rey.

Y Cachitos rescata la televisión que jugaba con la música para sorprender al espectador. Cada semana, una temática diferente ocupa este talentoso formato: desde música de gasolineras hasta éxitos terroríficos. Desde Michael Jackson hasta Tip y Coll disfrazados de la familia Drácula… Un programa adictivo y emocionante que bucea en la creatividad televisiva sin complejos. Un programa que farda de nuestra magnética y, en ocasiones, surrealista historia catódica. Los domingos, a las 22.00 h.

• Imprescindibles

Al filo de la media noche dominical, Imprescindibles se instala sigiloso en la parrilla de La 2. Se trata de un contenedor de documentales en los que TVE realiza una radiografía a fondo de grandes figuras españolas del ámbito de nuestra cultura y ciencia.

Silvio Rodríguez, Carmen Amaya, Lola Flores, Plácido Domingo, José Luis Sampedro, Albert Boadella, César Manrique son algunos de los protagonistas de la presente temporada. Porque no todos los buenos documentales los ejecuta la BBC Exclusive.

2. CURIOSOS

• Los ochenta

Los comecocos Pac-Man, los walkmans de Sony o los hipervitaminados VHS de aerobic de Jane Fonda. Los ochenta fueron una década que marcó. Mucho. Y, desde hace unas semanas, en el canal Xplora analizan lo mejor y lo peor de esta década a través de la visión de los norteamericanos.

Mitos del deporte, modas delirantes, Madonna perpetrando Like a Virgin en la primera edición de los premios MTV…. La década de las hombreras vuelve a nuestra televisión de forma recurrente. Ahora regresa con esta serie de especiales que retrata a las estrellas y estrellados de esta época tan mitificada e idolatrada. Otro espacio peligroso para adictos a la nostalgia.

•   Escapar del infierno con Bear Grylls 

Bear Grylls es el aventurero que logra, una y otra vez, salir ileso de incontables situaciones de peligro. Un ex militar que vive en su propia piel las situaciones límite a las que un grupo de ciudadanos anónimos ha conseguido sobrevivir para contarlo.

Discovery Max emite los sábados, a las 22.30 horas, esta serie de seis episodios, de una hora de duración, en la que el aventurero trata de demostrar cómo el coraje y el instinto de supervivencia del ser humano pueden ser claves a la hora de escapar de una muerte segura. Consciente de que, a veces, las palabras no son suficientes para describir ciertas experiencias traumáticas, Bear Grylls se ha ofrecido a reproducirlas en primera persona para, según él, “celebrar el ingenio del instinto de supervivencia del ser humano“. Aprensivos, abstenerse de ver este programa.

3. PRINGOSOS

• Guerra de cupcakes

MasterChef nos ha dejado una contraindicación: nuestras televisiones se están llenado de programas cimentados en la excusa de la cocina. Aunque luego las recetas sean lo que menos importe. También en Divity, donde existe una particular Guerra de cupcakes con el ‘dulce premio’ de 10.000 dólares. Una batalla que enfrenta, cada día a las 19. 00 horas, a cuatro expertos reposteros en busca de la magdalena más excéntrica.

Y, claro, no falta el jurado. Esta vez formado por Candance Nelson, propietaria de la famosa tienda ‘Sprinkles Cupcakes’ de Beverly Hills, y Florian Bellanger, chef francés y copropietario de la firma pastelera MadMac, entre otros. Un ring entre pasteleros con ganas de asombrar a la audiencia a base de azúcar. Y todo a la hora de la merienda…

• 30 minutos con Jamie Olivier

13TV ha traído en abierto al chef Jamie Olivier cada tarde, a las 15. 30 horas. Olivier con este programa demuestra que la rapidez entre fogones no está reñida con comer platos deliciosos y nutritivos. De hecho, el espacio enseña cómo preparar un menú en tan sólo 30 minutos. De ahí su nombre.

El cocinero británico prepara todos los platos en tiempo real, un menú completo que no olvida las ensaladas, los postres e incluso las bebidas. Y lo consigue en cada edición. ¿Hará alguna trampa televisiva?

4. ESCURRIDIZOS

• Friends 

Friends ha regresado sin avisar. Factoria de Ficción abre el piso de Mónica a las ocho y media de cada mañana. Los más madrugadores pueden revivir, así, una ficción magistral, en continente y contenido. No importa que nos sepamos sus escenas una y otra vez, y hasta recitemos los guiones casi al mismo tiempo que los actores. Sus brillantes diálogos, sus giros impredecibles y, sobre todo, sus tramas siempre en el punto exacto de comicidad han marcado época. Ni sus propios creadores, Marta Kauffman y David Crane, han sabido repetir la fórmula.

Y es que, a pesar de sus diez temporadas en antena, Friends nunca conoció la palabra desgaste, sus guiones fueron creciendo con una creativa espontaneidad durante los años y hasta el final se mantuvo la emoción en alto. En eso mismo, en mantener la emoción, la ternura, la sonrisa, la carcajada y la complicidad, eran expertos. Pocas veces han pasado tantas cosas en sólo 22 minutos de televisión, que es lo que duraba cada episodio. La sitcom perfecta siempre encuentra su hueco, por sorpresa, en alguna cadena televisiva. Ya no avisa, aparece escurridiza, pero está.

• Torres y Reyes

Es uno de los programas de mayor calidad de la etapa actual de TVE, aunque sólo araña datos de audiencia mínimos. No ayuda que no empiece a una hora redonda.Y es que se emite los jueves sobre las diez y cuarenta de la noche en La 2. Así que el espectador debe consumar una pirueta en la memoria para no perderse esta corriente alterna en uno de los horarios más competitivos.

Porque Torres y Reyes es la corriente alterna de nuestra pequeña pantalla: una televisión sosegada, visualmente mimada y con un puntito de comedia crítica. Desde un plató casi desnudo, Mara Torres y Joaquín Reyes han recuperado a Enjuto Mojamuto como aliado para dar sensatez a un espacio que analiza la vida después de internet. Esa es la excusa para hablar y escuchar en un programa que es consciente de su tiempo y quiere creer en un futuro enriquecedor y plural.

Y ADEMÁS…

¿Sería una buena idea realizar una secuela de ‘Friends’?

‘Torres y Reyes’, ¿un nuevo programa de culto?

6 programas que TVE no emitiría hoy

As historias de ciencia ficción, fantasía, steampunk e demais xéneros do mundo fantástico, teñen unha nova rampla de lanzamento: a libraría-taller O Fogar das Palabras en Santiago de Compostela. Ramón Mariño fala cos seus responsables: Fernando Cimadevila e David Cortizo.

 
It’s time Manchester did the decent thing and honored its most celebrated son. If their Merseyside rivals can honor John Lennon by renaming their international airport after the sarky mop top, then Manchester should do something similar and at least rename its bus station after Mark E. Smith. 

But let’s not stop there. A local holiday should be adopted on his birthday, with street parties and free beer, with a statue erected in his birthplace of Broughton. Not much to ask for the man whose band The Fall have been essential listening over the past thirty-odd years.

Thirty odd years indeed, with Smith the only constant in The Fall’s ever-changing line-up through a long, difficult, but productive, and brilliant career. How the great Mancunian has survived the bitter fights, spiked drinks, broken bones and riots says it all about Smith’s ambition and touched-by-genius talents.

Yea, let us rejoice, for we are alive in the days of Mark E. Smith.

This little gem is from Grenwich Sound Radio in 1983, when Smith gave his “guide to writing guide.” Not the kind of toss you’ll get from those writing-by-numbers courses, no, but something far more oblique and entertaining.

Here’s how it goes:

“Hello, I’m Mark E. Smith, and this is the ‘Mark E. Smith Guide to Writing Guide.’

Day by Day Breakdown.

Day One: Hang around house all day writing bits of useless information on bits of paper.

Day Two: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternization. Go to pub. Have drinks.

Day Three: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there as style is on its way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.

Day Four: By now people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beer mats.

Day Five: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own as by now guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you’re one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation. To write out of sheer vexation.

Day Six: If possible, stay home. And write. If not, go to pub.”

I must remember this the next time I have writer’s block…
 

While no movie is perfect, the first two (and only two, in my world) Home Alone movies are as close as they come. Yes, my love is strong, but that doesn’t blind me to some of the weird and bizarre things that happened during the movie. Here are 15 things that always bothered me in Home Alone 2.

1. Uncle Frank Suggests That His Penis is Huge to Kevin.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

I understand why I didn’t get this joke as a kid, but this was just weird. Kevin is told by his parents to go get his tie out of the bathroom. He explains to them that he can’t because Uncle Frank said if he sees him naked, he’ll grow up never feeling like a real man. I know Uncle Frank is a creepy guy, but bragging about your penis size to a child is over the line.

2. Buzz Deserved to be Severely Punished.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

How on earth did Buzz not get grounded for months for this? First of all, did the crowd really erupt with laughter as Buzz pretended to play the drums on Kevin’s head with fake candles? Buzz not only ruined the entire production, but he humiliated his brother during his solo. He gets to say “I’m sorry, Kevin.” and all is forgiven? No Buzz, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that your parents allow you to behave like an animal.

3. Marv and Harry’s Plan Is Beyond Insane.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

So Marv and Harry have broken out of prison and they’re looking for a big score. That makes sense, right? It does, until you really think about how ludicrous it really is. They were in prison in Chicago for nine months, broke out of jail, hid in the back of a fish truck all the way to New York in order to rob a toy store and then fly off to an island where no one would ever find them. I’m sorry, what?

4. Marv is a Pervert.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

On the first Home Alone he insists that they be called The Wet Bandits. This time around, he wants to be known as The Sticky Bandits. That sounds like the backup singers at a D’Angelo concert. I’m assuming his next run would be with The Moist Bandits or maybe The Fingering Boys.

5. What Was Tim Curry’s Plan When Sneaking Into Kevin’s Suite?

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

For some reason Curry’s character has a huge vendetta against Kevin, which cumulates to this moment where he sneaks into Kevin’s suite in the middle of the night. What exactly was he going to do if Kevin was in there alone? Kevin’s dad could still be at work, but there’s no excuse you can give for being a grown man who just creeped into a child’s room at night.  I would have sued the Plaza Hotel so hard.

6. Kevin Isn’t THAT Good.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

I know Kevin impressed us all when he simulated a house party in Home Alone using a train set and a Michael Jordan cardboard cutout, but was just ridiculous. As Tim Curry opens the door, Kevin has maybe 90 seconds before Curry enters the bathroom. During that time he took that clown out of the packaging, inflated it, rigged it up with strings, and basically became a very impressive puppeteer. I can get behind most of Kevin’s feats, but this one is absurd.

7. No Way Peter McCallister Stays in That Kind of Hotel

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Kevin is in New York with his dad’s credit cards and cash staying in a stunning hotel, but the McCallisters stay at this dump? I’m sure Kate McCallister has a card in her name you guys could use, but there is no way the high rolling Peter McCallister stays at a hotel that rents out rooms by the hour. This is a guy who, a few days later, flies the ENTIRE family to New York to find Kevin. Maybe take some of that first class money and use it to upgrade your hotel. Have you never heard of bed bugs?

8. Fruit Stripe Gum Lasts About 14 Seconds

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

The first time Rob Schneider helps Kevin with his bags, Kevin tips him with Fruit Stripe gum. The second time Schneider assists him, he tells Kevin that he doesn’t need another tip, as he still has some left over. I don’t know how familiar you are with Fruit Stripe gum, but if you’ve ever had a piece you know that stuff crumbles into pieces the minute you put it into your mouth. You have to chew the entire pack at once to get any sort of longevity out of it. There’s no way he had been chewing on that piece of gum for that long.

9. I’m Sorry, But Duncan’s Toy Chest Sucked

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

As a kid, I thought it was the coolest place ever. There are lights everywhere and things are flying through the air! However, upon a closer inspection, this place is a glorified Cracker Barrel gift shop. There aren’t any actual toys, just a bunch of junk your grandma would put on her fireplace for the holidays. What kid wants an oversized nutcracker for Christmas?

10. The Plaza Hotel is Way Too Casual With Terrorism.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Once Kevin’s card has been discovered as stolen, the entire staff decides to confront him. He plays a clip from a gangster movie to make them think they’re about to be shot by a psychopath. After yelling to hotel guests to stay in their rooms because there’s a mad man with a gun, it’s never mentioned again. No one reports that to the police? I know this is a pre 9/11 world you’re in, but seriously, as far as you know, a murderer is on the loose in your building and it’s never reported or investigated.

11. Did Those Prostitutes Really Solicit a Child?

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Maybe I’m assuming incorrectly about the moral lines of prostitutes, but when that smoky voice asks, “Do you need someone to read you a bedtime story?” I get grossed out. What if Kevin said yes? This movie would have taken a horrible, new direction.

12. The Pigeon Lady Was Insanely Creepy.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Just like Old Man Marley in Home Alone, this movie’s lovable cretin did nothing to shed the image of being terrifying. When she comes upon Kevin with his foot stuck between two rocks, she doesn’t say “Oh let me help you with this.” or “Hey I’m not a murderer, just assisting you with removing your foot from this snare.” Instead, she silently, and without expression, reaches down and takes his foot out. Just say something, Pigeon Lady!

13. How Did The Pigeon Lady Know Marv & Harry Were Covered in Tar?

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

After Kevin had hit Marv and Harry with all of his traps, they chased him into the park. There, he’s saved by the Pigeon Lady who throws bird seed on them, which causes them to be swarmed by pigeons. Here’s the thing though; there’s no way she would have know that they were covered in tar and, as a result, their gun wouldn’t work. Harry does everything he can to try and shoot her, which would have been another horribly unsettling twist, but he fails. Why did she assume her bucket of bird seed would win against their guns? Quite a big gamble, isn’t it?

14. Kevin Gave The Pigeon Lady What??

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

She just saved his life and his ridiculously rich family just showed up in New York to spend Christmas in an incredible suite. On top of that, Mr. Duncan has just delivered a ridiculous amount of presents for Kevin’s family. Obviously, he introduces the Pigeon Lady to his family and they give her a place to stay, right? Oh, so he takes her some cash to buy clothes and get a room? Did he take her some food? No, he took her a cheap Christmas ornament to represent their friendship! Are you kidding me? What is she supposed to hang it on, her sadness?

15. Kevin’s Dad Really Freaks Out That Much Over a Room Service Bill?

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

The movie ends with Kevin’s dad freaking out so loudly over a room service bill that he’s audible down the street from the hotel. Kevin spent less than a thousand dollars while he was abandoned in a giant, strange city and you’re going to have a meltdown about it? How about you just be appreciative he’s alive and stop freaking out over a room service bill. Didn’t you just fly 14 people across the country TWICE? You need to rethink a lot of things in your life, Peter. 

O último número da revista publica unha reportaxe que denuncia graves irregularidades supostamente cometidas polo Goberno municipal na adxudicación da festas deste verán. A denuncia céntrase nun empresario amigo do rexedor Rey Varela e beneficiado pola concesión dos festexos.

Falso, astuto, malvado… Existen bastantes termos no noso idioma para referírmonos a cualidades negativas das persoas. Porén, a continuación falaremos dun vocablo xenuinamente galego: moina.

A Real Academia Galega define moina como unha persoa que , baixo unha aparencia inxenua ou humilde, disimula a súa astucia ou malicia.

Anda con ollo porque cando menos o esperes vaite traizoar, é un moina.

A RAG soamente o inclúe como un substantivo. Non obstante, algúns galegofalantes empregan adxectivada esta palabra como moino para o masculino e moina para o feminino. Non sabemos se se trata dunha distorsión lingüística ou dun uso correcto que a Real Academia decidiu non recoller no seu dicionario. Sexa como sexa, velaquí unha oración onde se pode comprobar o uso adxectivado deste termo:

El era moi moiniño con ela porque lle conviña que fose ela quen lle fixese o traballo.

At a performance at the New York Comedy Festival over the weekend, Anthony Jeselnik told the crowd that The Jeselnik Offensive has been canceled by Comedy Central. According to The Laugh Button, the comic said the show had already been canceled and wouldn't be returning for a third season, adding that he no particular future plans with Comedy Central.

Ratings for the weekly topical show had been slipping over the course its 18 episodes, and as the title suggests, the series was no stranger to controversy. It was also a great place to see comedians tell silly jokes about bears and legal rulings, and also for Eric Andre to set off fireworks and expose himself.

Comedy Central had been pretty lenient in letting the famously shocking comic do his own thing; back in July, he told Splitsider:

Oh yeah. They’ve given me almost total freedom. The only time they’ve ever said you can’t do anything was right after the Boston Marathon. No Viacom show could mention it, not even make fun of it, just mention it or bring it up, and that was our last episode. I was kind of annoyed about it because that’s what the show is for and so we did a bit called “Top Three Things We’re Not Allowed to Talk About” and that was kind of our way of getting around that. Now on this season, I make Boston jokes every chance I get.

Update: A representative for Comedy Central confirms that The Jeselnik Offensive will not be renewed.

Gil Mihaely, editor of Causeur magazine (Photo by Hannah) 

Last week, the French magazine Causeur stood up for the newest victims of France's sex trade: the paying male customers. The French government is currently considering making it illegal to pay for sex, stopping short of actually outlawing prostitution itself. The news hasn't sat well with Causeur and the long list of johns who presumably make up the majority of its subscribers.

Realizing that men who like to pay to have sex with trafficked women would be dejected if the law were passed, the magazine has started a campaign to defend their right to do whatever the hell they want. Tastefully, they've decided to name that campaign: "Manifesto of the 343 Scumbags: Hands Off My Bitch!"  

But don't worry—it's ironic; the name is an appropriation of Simone de Beauvoir's famous feminist pro-body-autonomy, pro-abortion "Manifesto of the 343," because the guys at Causeur are saying that prohibiting men from having sex with prostitutes is somehow a feminist issue. Feminists, however, appear to have disagreed pretty much across the board. Socialist MP Anne-Yvonne Le Dain put it bluntly: "Shame on these horny morons [and their] pitiful manifesto."

I decided to call up the magazine’s editor, Gil Mihaely, to hear his side of the argument.

The front cover of the Causeur magazine containing the 343 manifesto

VICE: Why did you create this manifesto?
Gil Mihaely: The French government is considering a new law that will penalize prostitutes’ clients, so it'll be illegal to go to a prostitute. This is part of a larger project aimed at prohibition. The ideological heart of the debate is that a woman cannot freely decide to become a prostitute—that a woman becoming a prostitute is just like a person deciding to become a slave.

But your manifesto is about defending the right of men to visit prostitutes, not a woman's right to become one.
The manifesto can’t be read outside a French context, and the French context is twofold. First, it’s a parody of a manifest published in 1971, written by Simone de Beauvoir, saying that since women have absolute control of their bodies, they should be allowed to have abortions. Because we feel the same way—because we feel women should be the only ones to decide what to do with their bodies—we say that free women who can decide to abort can also decide to become a prostitute.

And this is why we have a second title, translated as "Hands Off My Bitch." It’s another parody. There was a slogan against racism called "Hands Off My Friend," and friend in French is pote and prostitute is pute, so it’s kind of solidarity. We are dealing with consenting adults. The state should stay out of it.

OK. But don't you think that, by having men who visit prostitutes sign it rather than the prostitutes themselves, you've ended up focusing on the wrong people?
We didn’t think so, but maybe you’re right. The idea was to initiate a debate, because there’s been talk about this law for almost a year and there wasn’t really a debate. We decided to do something we thought was provocative and funny. Some people don’t find it funny. We think women should have full control of their bodies and can decide what they want to do with their bodies, whether we like it or not. Because freedom isn't only tolerating what we like it’s tolerating what we don’t like.

Do you think the kind of people who actually call women bitches would understand your message?
I really do hope that people understand the humor in this initiative. I think someone can use a word like bitch and people understand that, when he comes home after work, he doesn’t say, "Good evening, bitch." It’s funnier in context. It’s kind of a pun.

Alright. In your manifesto it says, "Under the guise of protecting women, this is a war against men." Isn’t that a little misguided?
In France, there's an intrinsic tension between equality and liberty. The equality of women and men is really something that is accepted by everyone. Some people, especially those now in power, seem to have a real problem accepting that there’s equality and difference. So there’s an ideological project to make men women with penises; they don’t accept that you can be equal and different.

What’s the difference in this case?
They say that prostitution is a scandal because women also have a libido and don’t go to prostitutes, so men should behave themselves. I’m just saying this is the way it is, and it's probably true that most prostitutes are women and most clients are men, and it’s true that it’s been like that in many societies and for quite a long time. We are very suspicious of people trying to do projects to create a new man, a better man. So, men are men. They're human beings – they're not perfect.

How many women do you think get into prositution because it's something they've dreamed about doing since childhood?
This is a very good question. First of all, during the debate we’ve learned that we don’t know exactly how many prostitutes practice in France and we don’t know how many of them are doing it freely. What everyone sees is the street prostitution—the most miserable kind. But we don’t know how many other kinds of prostitution exist and how many other prostitutes practice.

The other part of the answer is that it’s very difficult to narrow down the field of consent, because very few people do as adults what they dreamt of when they were young. If liberty is being able to choose between being Prime Minister, an astronaut, a fighter pilot, or a brain surgeon, there are very few people in the world who enjoy this freedom.

Don’t try to say that you cannot consent to be a prostitute. It reminds me of what the Bolsheviks used to say—that if you work in a factory and you don’t understand that the only party that represents you is the Communist party, then you are a victim to propaganda. And this is the liberty issue. Who will dare to say you can’t vote because you don’t vote correctly? So this is what the feminists are saying to the women: "Look, you're destroying your body and your soul." But even after all that, they still say "Yes, and I'm going to do it anyway." What are you going to do?

But you understand that a lot of prostitutes will be in the sex trade because of stuff like trafficking and drug addiction, right? And you see the difference between women wanting the right to abortion and men wanting the right to visit prostitutes?
I think you have to really want to not understand in order to see things like that. And I think that what bothers those who are criticising us is that most of the people who signed this petition are seen in France as right or reactionary. So the government, instead of debating with some of its allies—because, as I said, this is a debate that divides the left and divides the feminists—they can say, "Look, the fascists are against us—let’s be together because male chauvinist pigs are trying to interfere in this business." I think this is why they choose to present things like that.

Right, OK. I'm not sure what you mean. Do you think prostitution makes France a better country?
I think that prostitution is part of our society. I think it's unrealistic to try an abolitionist or prohibitionist stand. I think it won’t work and it will make the situation worse.

Have you ever visited a prostitute yourself?
No, but of course I know people who have. When I was a teenager, a couple of friends and I went to the big city to see a prostitute, and when we got there we were so scared that they started laughing at us and we went back. We went up and down the street, so they knew we were afraid, and we went away ashamed.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Follow Kate on Twitter: @littletinykate

More stories about the sex trade:

Women from All Over the World Are Being Sex-Trafficked into Greece

WATCH – I Posed as a Prostitute in a Turkish Brothel

WATCH – The Japanese Love Industry 

Chef Margot Henderson, pictured above, is sick of the boys club.

Time magazine has pissed off the international restaurant world. They’ve alienated female chefs. Oh wait—they forgot them altogether. The recently released November issue is titled “Gods of Food: Meet the People Who Influence What (and How) You Eat.” A bro-centric series of culinary stories about key influencers in food, the content includes a list of 13 “Gods of Food” (no female chefs made the cut) and a visual “food family tree” of heavy hitters who have pioneered the current restaurant scene. You won’t find ladies in there, either. 

Like a bad train wreck, Time issue editor Howard Chua-Eoan—the dude who edited this entire package—recently engaged in an offensively revealing interview with Eater's Hillary Dixler to explain the sausage-heavy content. When asked about including groundbreaking female chefs to the “family tree” flow chart, Chua-Eoan responded, “the chart came about because men still take care of themselves. The women really need someone—if not men, themselves actually—to sort of take care of each other." The chart failed to include key influencers like Alice Waters, Barbara Lynch, Anita Lo, Elena Arzak, April Bloomfield, Clare Smyth, and Dominique Crenn, for starters. And when it couldn’t get any worse, he added that the Time editors, “did not want to fill a quota of a woman chef just because she's a woman. We wanted to go with reputation and influence." 

The issue and Howard Chua-Eoan’s recent interview are revealing by-products of the pervasive sexism that continues to exist throughout all aspects of the culinary world. Or in the words of New York chef Sarah Jenkins, “the relentless circle jerk between the media, PR agents, and the chefs or countries who employ them than any kind of reflection on what's truly happening out there in the real world.” 

London chef Margot Henderson—chef and co-owner of Rochelle Canteen, and wife of chef Fergus Henderson—decided to call bullshit. Here’s her response to Time, the reality of women in the kitchen, and why she believes media will continue to promote men before women.

David Chang, René Redzepi, and Alex Atala look quite charming on the cover of Time, don’t they? I think that most of these chefs set out to become famous, putting themselves in front of newspapers. I think that women are getting on creating great restaurants, but men feel that they have to change the world. Australian chef Stephanie Alexander has one of the top restaurants in the world. She has now—admittedly—stopped cooking, but the people that she has taught are incredible. Her cookbooks are incredible. That’s the thing: women are better food writers than men, aren’t they [laughs]? And they often stop because they’re so successful and brilliant at writing books when the men aren’t [laughs]. That Time editor… what a wanker? To not even include Alice Waters in this piece? It’s pretty shocking.

If you think about it, women didn’t really start working in kitchens in the culinary world until about fifty years ago. We’ve got women like Angela Hartnett and Joyce Molyneux, one of the first female chefs to win a Michelin star. Angela is one of the chefs that influenced a whole generation of young men who went on to have great careers. Maybe men are better at taking? They recognize the good things that they’re doing and go with it. In all of these media focused articles, they’re often based on geography. Ferran Adrià is an amazing chef who has undoubtedly influenced food in this generation. David Chang is great, and so is René Redzepi, but it’s just that the hard hitting punch line of tacking the name “Gods” on the cover of Time, and the Time editor's recent interview where he alludes to not including women—on purpose—is offensive.

The media tends to promote men more than women. In Howard Chua-Eoan’s quote from his interview with Eater, “it's all men because men still take care of themselves. The women really need someone—if not men, themselves actually—to sort of take care of each other,” I would argue that men need women more. Behind every male chef, there’s most likely a whole team of amazing women who are making his career happen, but the man has propped up in front. In our food magazines here in Europe, the press promotes men more than women. They like to promote sexy, posh girls. It’s all about what’s going to sell, but it didn’t used to be like that. It used to be whether you’re a really great cook or not. 

I’m not one of these women that should’ve been in there. I stopped cooking and had a lot of children. As female chefs like myself, we have to both work and look after our families. We have to cook, and then go home and cook more. Until I got married, I didn’t realize that the culinary world was so sexist. Fergus left to open a restaurant while I looked after the children. It takes you a while to get back into it, and at that stage you might not have the mojo to be in the kitchen all of the time. I do believe that there are a lot of women out there who are cooking really hard and producing truly incredible food, but it’s a boys club. 

I do believe that women are maligned in kitchens. I constantly have to fight in my own kitchen. Even my own female chefs at my restaurant have to fight to prepare meat, to brown the meat. Male chefs prefer to have women preparing vegetables and pastries. A girl has a hard enough time in the kitchen in the beginning that she has to fight her way through. She has to really push through if she wants to be dealing with things like fish and meat at the cooking stations. Men feel it is their right to prep the fish because they will be better at it, perhaps because they are stronger. But it’s about technique, not strength. 

That’s also this theme with the type of food that we are currently celebrating in the world—a very male type of food. Women tend to cook in a much more straight-forward way—a gentler approach, and that’s not being celebrated. 

More on sexism:

Aetheism-Sexism= Atheism+

Why Men's Rights Activists Are Celebrating the Brian Banks Case for the Wrong Reason

danperry.com

I’m curious about vaginas. Not in a sexual way. In an anatomical way.

My brothers are both much younger than me, and I remember when they were toddlers, they’d sit naked on the floor with our male cousin, also a kid, and pull their tiny penises out as far as they could and scream “my willy’s bigger than yours!” at each other, and then almost die laughing. From their earliest cognitive age, boys are part of a culture of dick sharing and a bizarre weiner pride that I, as a female, cannot understand because I have never partaken in any analogous comparative activity with my vagina.

By the time a boy becomes a man–even if he is a straight man–it’s likely that he’s seen a lot of non-sexualized peen in person. I’ve been naked around my girlfriends and had them naked around me, but never have we shown such fascination with each other’s anatomy as men do. Much of it has to do with the fact that all our stuff is inside our bodies, all neatly tucked and not dangling about like an extra limb, so taking a good look requires a lot of bending and spreading. It’s an ostensibly uncomfortable thing to do, asking your friend for a gander at her genitals.

But I want to see some more vaginas in the flesh. Sure I can look at medical images or porn but it’s not the same–I want to know what my vagina looks like compared to those of my peers. I want to know if my labia is larger or longer, if all my bits fold into each other in a similar pattern. I want to see how everything is arranged on other women I know and see if the color matches. I want to see how my pink bits fit into the scheme of vaginal aesthetics.

It’s not that I feel like I don’t understand the vagina or it’s machinations–it’s that as a heterosexual woman, I have never been exposed to anyone’s but my own, and I’m interested in the comparison and contrast between them. We have a frigid state of mind about women’s downstairs business, and it prevents us from exploring each other’s bodies the way men do. Our society deems it innocuous for men to stand next to one another while urinating, and yet women are separated from each other, even though a man is fully exposed in the act and a woman is not.

Penises are normalized in our culture. Even the in the most heteronormative quarters, the penis is shamelessly displayed between men, whether they’re peeing, changing in locker rooms, getting naked at parties (as the boys at my high school so often did, but the girls–never), or checking out each other’s junk in an inquisitive, jockular setting. I’d like to live in a world where girls and women can learn about their special parts in a communal way, the same way boys and men so often do.

I find it so strange a thing–to share this organ with 50% of humanity and yet to not share it at all. And for all the cock-sharing men do, they’re the ones (at least the straight ones) that also get to peer down the barrel of the vaginal gun. It’s an unnecessary stigma that we still attach to female nudity, and I feel like it might be time that we let curiosity get the better of us, because in this particular case, I don’t see that curiosity killing the pussy.

Today, at the age of 25, I enjoy the social life I think everyone’s meant to have. If I want to check out a new restaurant or see that movie everyone’s talking about, my friends are just a text away. There’s always someone who’s up for something.

Flashback five years, though, and it was a different story. My weekends were spent alone trying to figure out my place in life and why I felt so misunderstood. I stumbled a lot along the way, but I learned some valuable lessons about making and keeping friends.

Maybe I can save you the time and trouble I went through by sharing the biggest discoveries I made on my own journey.

1. Small Talk Has Big Benefits

I looked down on the idea of small talk, thinking it was for people who had nothing interesting to say, when the opposite is true. Small talk is the quickest, most efficient way to gain insight into someone’s personality and find shared interests. 

Starting a conversation with someone doesn’t have to be complicated. You can take your cues from your surroundings to come up with questions. For example, when you end up next to people you don’t know that well in school or at work, get to know them by asking simple questions, like what they are up to and what they do on their free time. Like anything else it gets easier and more natural with practice, and the bonus is that the more you do it, the more people you’ll meet.

2. Share Time Pursuing Shared Interests

When you’re a kid you can make friends by just “hanging out”, but when you become an adult that’s no longer a good option. Cultivating an interest will get you involved in activities where you’ll meet others with whom you already have something in common. I’m passionate about entrepreneurship, and many of my close friends are like minded people I’ve met through business networks.

Whatever activity you choose should be something you’re genuinely interested in. You’ll either get bored and quit or your relationships won’t go anywhere because they have no solid ground. As you get to know people through your interest, you’ll eventually find opportunities to meet for other activities as well.

3. Make Friends with the People You Want To Be Like

We all have a tendency to subconsciously seek approval by mirroring the appearance and behavior of those we spend time with. That’s why the old saying stays true: You will become the average of our five best friends.

Seek out others who have qualities that you want to develop in yourself. If you want to improve your social skills, make friends with outgoing people. If your career is important, develop relationships with those who are successful. The best friends are ones who challenge you to improve and become your best self.

4. Making Friends is a Long-Term Investment

Once you turn 30 you’ll find it harder to develop new friendships. It’s part of the natural cycle of life as we marry and start families that take most of our attention. At that age we also have more fully developed values, making us more selective about those with whom we spend our time.

Being in my mid-20s, one of my goals is to make as many friends as I can. As time goes on it becomes easier to maintain close friendships than to make new ones, so I look at it as an investment in my future social circle.

5. Never Try to Prove Yourself

Does this sound counterintuitive? You may be asking yourself how you’re going to make friends without showing how interesting you are. The truth is that your accomplishments aren’t the reason why people will like you.

Think about someone you know who’s always talking about their great vacation or expensive new car. Do you enjoy spending time around them? That behavior tends to make people feel inferior, which then causes them to become resentful. Instead of making yourself look important, make others feel important. Take a genuine interest in them and what they do. That’s what will make others like you.

Making friends doesn’t have to happen by accident. What strategy have you found useful for making friends?