The end of a Christmas caroling tradition.

The NY Post reports:

The tradition began in the late 1970s when cabaret singer John Wallowitch would walk by Berlin’s [NYC] house and warble “White Christmas” while walking his dog, Winnie. Five years on, in 1983, he had added a group of fellow performers, and Berlin, then 95, famously welcomed the carolers inside for cocoa and cookies. They sang in his home’s beautiful ballroom from then on. After Berlin’s death, when the house became Luxembourg’s consulate and permanent mission to the UN, the tradition continued.

Berlin died 23 years ago, so that's a long time for Luxembourg to put up with this intrusion, but having done it for so long, you'd think the traditional would be so deeply internalized that they would never let it go. And how many other ways does Luxembourg have to inspire love here in America?

But Luxembourg Consul-General Jean-Claude Knebeler explains he was forced to stuff the ballroom with office equipment because his country was elected as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, and so is housing more staff for two years.

Security Council?! That's the excuse?

"We used to stay at home and drink Drambuie and eat cheese and play Scrabble."

"He loved to win at cards, and I always made a point of losing by the time we went to bed."

Said Valerie Eliot, the second wife of T.S. Eliot. "He was made for marriage, he was a natural for it, a loving creature, and great fun, too." She died last week at the age of 86. He died in 1965 at the age of 76.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Eliot was wounded by criticism that he had been cold and self-absorbed, that he had been an anti-Semite, that his treatment of his first wife had been ruthlessly self-serving. She rarely responded publicly, though the release in 1994 of a movie about Eliot’s first marriage, “Tom & Viv,” starring Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson, prompted her to [defend] her husband on every front, even producing copies of letters to refute the film’s unflattering assertions, including a scene in which Vivienne pours melted chocolate into the Faber & Faber mailbox after being unable to get into the office.

The doors at Faber were always open, Mrs. Eliot said, so the chocolate story was a fabrication.

“What Tom did like was vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce,” she added. “He was eating it in a restaurant once and a man opposite said, ‘I can’t understand how a poet like you can eat that stuff.’ Tom, with hardly a pause, said, ‘Ah, but you’re not a poet,’ and went on eating.”

It was all about ice cream and chocolate and cheese and Drambuie and Scrabble and cards and... poetry!

Politico deploys the racial epithet "vanilla."

"Rob Portman: Vice President Vanilla?"

 Not only is this offensively racial, it's an insult to an amazingly complex and powerful flavor.

Vanilla is, according to the OED, "A pod produced by one or other species of the genus Vanilla (see sense 2), esp. V. planifolia. Chiefly in pl."

Ah, yes. A pod. We were just talking about pods. Continuing in the OED with the oldest appearances of "vanilla" in the English language:

1662   H. Stubbe Indian Nectar ii. 11   They added‥the Vaynillas [to the chocolate] for the like ends, and to strengthen the brain....
1673   J. Ray Observ. Journey Low-countries 485   Vanillas which they mingle with the Cacao to make Chocolate....
1697   W. Dampier New Voy. around World iii. 38   There grow on this Coast Vinelloes in great quantity, with which Chocolate is perfumed...
1748 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 45 160   The Vanelloe. With the Fruit of this Plant the Spaniards perfume their Chocolate.

Strengthen the brain!

The NYT fails to engage with any of the most compelling arguments made against the healthcare mandate.

Here's the embarrassing editorial they printed, apparently trusting that readers would accept their characterization of what went on at the oral arguments yesterday, pack up a neat opinion that only activist judges would strike down this law, and move on to other articles... ooh, look! over there on the "most e-mailed" list! It's "The Chocolate Diet?" and "Forging Social Connections for Longer Life" and something about private schools and "The Brain on Love"... la la la... it's so nice to be a good person who cares about the right things and believes what the good people believe...

But who is the New York Times really talking to? I think it's Justice Kennedy, who, everybody who know anything knows, is the vote which, if you have it, you will be on the side that gets the majority in this case. So... Hey, Anthony Kennedy! Don't you see what all the good people whom you need to keep loving you are all going to believe? All those pesky arguments that you publicly puzzled over yesterday are as nothing to the elite class of Americans who internalize New York Times editorial opinion as if it were yummy chocolate that somehow also makes you lose weight.

A Drudge photo juxtaposition, presented for your intepretation.

You've got Obama, turning to his right, gleefully chomping a chocolate-dipped strawberry, with the heading "Obama Ready to Eat the Press." (The linked article is about the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight.) The photo underneath Obama is his father, turning in the opposite direction, a pipe clenched in his teeth. (The heading beneath that pic is "Obama's father forced out at Harvard...," linking to an article referring to Harvard's "difficulty... figur[ing] out how many wives he had.") The third picture freezes Mitch Daniels in a gesture that gives the impression — to my eye — of being quite rude.



Come on, Matt. What's this supposed to mean? A wider view may flesh out the meaning:

The drinking age, a Samuel Pepys phrase, the etymology of "cunt," a George S. Kaufman joke, and the erosion of Althousian moderation.

"Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Drink/Republicans can make up for a Reagan-era error by returning this issue to the states." That's the title of a Glenn Reynolds op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, but you'll have to pay to read the whole thing. Feel free to discuss the topic without reading the article. It's a topic we hashed out on the blog back in August 2008, when the "Amethyst Initiative" — a statement from 114 college heads — came out. At the time I said:

The initiative wisely invites debate about whether the drinking age should be lowered instead of calling outright for legislative change. Let's be scientific about this. It's one thing to say alcohol abuse and drunk driving are terrible, but it's another thing to figure out the causal connection to the legal drinking age. There's nothing wrong with responsible, moderate drinking. What's the best way to encourage young people who are inclined to drink to do it the right way? I doubt that prohibition is best, and I'm enough of a libertarian to want to resolve doubts in favor of freedom. But sure, let's debate. I'd like to see the evidence analyzed.

Hey, I was a lot more moderate 3 years ago! I wonder what happened. Has Meade infused me with right-wingitude? On that topic, just this morning, by chance, I ran into an old George S. Kaufman joke, which I don't remember ever seeing before: "One man's Mede is another man's Persian." Does that even work as a joke anymore? You need to know the saying "One man's meat is another man's poison." I don' think a joke writer today could assume the background knowledge.

Let me tell you the story of how I arrived at that George S. Kaufman joke. This is another way to pass the time we can't spend reading the WSJ op-ed, since we don't have a subscription. Meade was just quoting the diary of Samuel Pepys: "I was with my main in her cunny." I said it was a shame we don't still use that word "cunny." We do say "cunt" and "cunnilingus," it was observed, and that led to a search for the etymology of "cunt." Is it related to "cunnilingus"? The answer is no, I learned, along with some detail about Latin- and Germanic- derived English words that begin with the letter "c" and how they trace back to Indo-European. (Words that were "c" in Latin will begin with "h" in German if they come from the same Indo-European word. And English words that come from German words that begin with "k" will begin with "g" in Latin if they have the same Indo-European source.)

I ended up reading this Wikipedia article on Latin profanity:

Cunnus was the basic Latin word for the vulva.... Cunnus has a distinguished Indo-European lineage. It is cognate with Persian kun "anus" and kos "vulva"....

Kos?! Has anyone told The Daily Kos? Did Markos Moulitsas deliberately chose the second syllable of his first name as his blog name because of the Persian meaning? He got that nickname in the Army, where perhaps jokes that require knowledge of Persian are understood. I Googled "'daily kos' vulva persian," and the first thing that came up, a link to Daily Kos, didn't answer my question, but had that line "One man's Mede is another man's Persian." I Googled the line and got to a 1961 Time Magazine article about George S. Kaufman titled "One Man's Mede":

Kaufman's quirks—he despised airplanes, wore stiff collars well into the 20th century, fueled himself with sickening fudge that he made himself—never interrupted his enormous output of hit plays... 

Fueled himself with sickening fudge... Why does that amuse me so much? Is it the humor magic of 3? 1. Despised airplanes, 2. Wore stiff collars, and 3. Fueled himself with sickening fudge. 3 related-unrelated things. All 3 are precise details about George S. Kaufman, but 1 is something he hated, 2 is something he wore, and 3 is something he ate. Comment/blog meme of the day: Write 3 things about yourself (or someone else) that follow that pattern of 3 related-unrelated things and seem equally amusing. Make very specific details, and have one thing hated, one thing worn, and one thing eaten.

Oh, good lord, where am I going with this? Well, the next thing that happened was, I decided to write this post. I couldn't get into the Wall Street Journal, so I Googled "althouse drinking age federalism" to find my old post on the subject to get things started. The search also turned up a law review article I published in 2001, which had this:

There are some policies that do not work unless they are adopted by all... [W]ithout a national drinking age of twenty-one, a state that chose a lower drinking age than its neighbors would tempt younger drinkers to drive across state borders, creating hazards beyond its borders....

Hey, I was a lot more moderate 10 years ago!

ADDED: My son John, who apparently subscribes to the Wall Street Journal, has a post this morning with a fair amount of text from the aforementioned op-ed. AND: John emails to say he doesn't subscribe, he just has a method to get to the full text. (Commenters to my post explain the method.)

The chocolate milk controversy.

Some people think schools shouldn't give kids chocolate milk, but what if it's the only way to get them to drink milk?

Stupidest compromise: Change the sweetener in the chocolate milk from fructose to sucrose.

Additional, non-milk-related controversy:

Jostled by the new politics of school lunch, Fairfax officials have vacillated over other staples. This year, for example, they removed salt from pretzels, but weeks later they were coaxed into putting it back.

You can't remove salt from pretzels. The saltless thing is not a pretzel. It's like serving "regular" milk and calling it chocolate milk.

How we spent $100 at Whole Foods...

... for just a small bag of things....


(Enlarge.)

So, there was the chocolate. The steak was only $7.58. But — oh! — those pine nuts.

Still life with chocolate.

The chocolate comes with instructions....



I favor the Barcelona bars. Meade bought the Bacon Bars because there were only 2 Barcelonas left, and he didn't want to deprive me of the maximum allotment of Barcelonas.

At the Things Looked At/Things Consumed Café...

... you can make up your own mind.

(Photos taken today at David Bacco Chocolates, where Meade had the Mayan and I had the White Violet.)

Hillary as Obama's benefactor?

Maureen Dowd explains:

Obama had not been hit hard until this campaign; he sailed through his Senate race. Without Hillary, he never would have learned to be a good debater. He never would have understood how to robustly answer distorted and personal attacks. He never would have been warned about how harmful an unplugged spouse can be. He never would have realized how a luminous speech can be effective damage control....

Hillary has clearly raised Obama’s consciousness about the importance of courting the ladies. Touring a manufacturing plant in Allentown, Pa., Tuesday, he was flirtatious, winking and grinning at the women working there, calling one “Sweetie,” telling another she was “beautiful,” and imitating his daughters’ dance moves by twirling around.

Later, at a Scranton town hall, he went up to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore wearing a Hillary button. “What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he charmed, before promising: “I’ll give you a kiss.”...

At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline.

“Oh, now,” the woman managing the shop told him with a frown, “you don’t worry about calories in a chocolate factory.”

Wait, is she toughening him up or feminizing him? And is the feminine stuff nauseatingly stereotyped?

Footnote: Lititz, Pennsylvania is the ancestral home of my paternal grandmother.

Panini, pancakes, and chocolate in DUMBO.

The city is bleak:



But let's have breakfast:



Let's have a chocolate break:

"There is no product on the planet that can match that lush, melted-chocolate mouth-feel of milk chocolate."

Are you a dark-chocolate snob or are dark-chocolate snobs just making you feel that you shouldn't want what you really want? Get over it!

Althouse eats chocolate, tweaks photographs, watches "American Idol"...

... and fails to keep all her body parts out of the aggressive view of the fisheye lens.



I skipped blogging the audition phase of the show this year, maybe because it's too much trouble to keep track of everyone — especially on my dinky Brooklyn TV — but I've been watching.

I liked the way they did the Hollywood phase this week. They skipped all the reality show drama created in the past by putting people in groups and letting personality conflicts and artistic differences play havoc with the selection process. Good! I always hated group assignments at school. (But I must say that the coolest "American Idol" performance of all time came from one of the Hollywood week groups.)

This year, Hollywood was all about the on-stage audition. With one exception. We saw Josiah Leming crumple as he lost sleep and freaked out at the band. He was an extremely attractive contestant and we were invited into his lonely little world. The teenager left home and has been living in his car. I think the producers decided he was not emotionally capable of handling the pressure of the show. Speaking to one of the other very young contestants, the judges talked about how psychological readiness is taken into account. That contestant made it, and I think it was a subtle way of telling us why they rejected Josiah. They may toy with youngsters for the amusement of millions, but they draw the line at teenage nervous breakdown.

Here are the final 24 contestants. I've only mentioned one by name so far in my minimal AI blogging and that is the beautiful 16-year-old Alexandréa Lushington. My personal favorite at this point is the 29-year-old Australian Michael Johns, who sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" this week.

So, on to more "American Idol" blogging and fisheye photography! Am I descending into madness? At least I had the sense — I think it's sense! — just now to order another lens — so my lensomania won't be entirely convex.

"The 2nd Annual Worst Quotes From The Daily Kos (2007 Edition)."

Jack Hawkins makes his selection. You know, I used to go over to see what was going on on that hugely popular blog, and I would find things I could write about here. But I gave up looking because I encountered too many unfamiliar names writing things that seemed like they belonged buried deep in the comments. Why did I care what these people were writing? Who are all these "diarists"? I didn't see the point of critiquing what they wrote. Where's Kos?

(What would my blog be like if I chose commenters I liked and gave them access to the front page? Now, it might be really good. But it would be an altogether different blog.)

Let's see what 10 things Jack came up with:

9) ... So, is the argument that Jesus didn't have a d*ck?" -- Cenk Uygur

Okay, I cut most of the quote, because it was just dumb meandering about a chocolate Jesus and why are people so uptight about it. It reads like a transcript of a high schooler's late-night YouTube. I'll just turn on the camera and see what comes out. Presumably, "Cenk Uygur" is the name or pen name of the person doing the typing. Who cares?

I switch to skimming:

... sallykohn

... Archangel M

... rainmanjr

... slw0606

... GreyHawk

... bluedogtxn

... Granny Doc

1) "... A man’s killing list is a very personal matter. It should be between him and those persistent voices in his head. So to sum up, I don’t like our troops, I don’t like what they’re doing, I don’t like their fat, whining families, and yet, I support them. Thank God I live in a free country. Thank You." -- AWhitneyBrown

Who are they? What's going on over there on Daily Kos? As I said, I don't read it anymore.

UPDATE: I'm criticized in the comments — and on other blogs — for failing to understand the Kos website. If that's your criticism, my criticism of you is that you've failed to understand this post. My point is that the site has become cluttered and uninviting to someone who isn't into cozying up inside the group. I don't want to figure it out. I saw Jack's post, and my response to it is that I have no idea whether the writers he picked out are ones who are supposed to count or not. And I don't know whether AWhitneyBrown is the person who used to be on "Saturday Night Live" or someone appropriating his name.

Eat chocolate, have sex, and don't diet.

For your brain.

"Being overweight but not obese was associated only with excess mortality from diabetes and kidney disease..."

"Excess mortality"... what a weird phrase. I prefer the locution "insufficient immortality." But I suspect, reading this WaPo article on new research showing it's not that unhealthy to be fat, that all of us — fat, skinny, or just right — have exactly the same mortality and whether it's "excess" is a matter of opinion.

But the article is not about whether it would be good to live forever. It's about whether we're going to die sooner if we're fat.

The researchers calculated that in 2004, obesity was associated with as many as 112,000 excess deaths from heart disease and more than 45,000 deaths from diabetes and kidney disease. Obesity was not, however, associated with an overall excess in cancer deaths, though it was linked to as many as 19,000 excess deaths from malignancies commonly blamed on fat, including breast, uterine, ovarian, kidney, colon, esophageal and pancreatic cancer.

The most surprising finding was that being overweight but not obese was associated only with excess mortality from diabetes and kidney disease -- not from cancer or heart disease. Moreover, the researchers found an apparent protective effect against all other causes of death, such as tuberculosis, emphysema, pneumonia, Alzheimer's disease and injuries. An association between excess weight and nearly 16,000 deaths from diabetes and kidney disease was overshadowed by a reduction of as many as 133,000 deaths from all other deaths unrelated to cancer or heart disease. Even moderately obese people appeared less likely to die of those causes.

Although the study did not examine why being overweight might guard against dying from some diseases, [Katherine M. Flegal, a senior research scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta] said other research has suggested that extra heft might supply the body with vital reserves to draw upon to fight illness and aid recovery.

"You may not just have more fat. You may also have more lean mass -- more bone and muscle," Flegal said. "If you are in an adverse situation, that could be good for you."

This is similar to those studies that show a moderate amount of drinking is good for you (though heavy drinking isn't). People who disapprove of drinkers or fat people want to believe it's also very unhealthy. They are collecting more arguments for what they already think. Those who are modern and liberal don't want to express old-fashioned moral disapproval, so they won't say drinking or eating too much is self-indulgent and gluttonous. Pleasure-seeking is quite all right these days. And they want to be able to think of themselves as good people, so they can't just say they hate the way you look if you're fat. They have to believe they're actually concerned for your well-being.

But we all know we'd look better at our ideal weight. Each of us needs to make a personal decision about how much pleasure in eating we'll give up for the pleasure of looking our best. The anorexics love the dictum: Nothing tastes as good as thin feels. But that's a matter of opinion. Some chocolates and pasta dishes and deep-fried things taste as good as thin feels. But maybe no oversized portion of anything feels good enough to outweigh how bad fat feels. Make up your own mind.

The epitome of indolence.

Eating bon-bons.



But that's what they call their chocolates at Jacques Torres: bon-bons.

Madison and New York/young and old.

Last semester, as I drove my car to and from work every day, nearly every time, I listened to the album "Poses," by Rufus Wainwright. The ride is short, usually the length of one song. Sometimes I played the satellite radio, but when I did, I had to switch to the CD player a few seconds after I entered the underground garage and the car lost contact with the satellite. My Rufus Wainwright addiction began when I happened to hear the song "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk":

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything it seems I likes a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

It's a song about addiction, and I got addicted to the song. Over the course of the semester, I became strangely bonded to the entire album. Strangely, because I hadn't gotten attached to a new artist or a sequence of songs in many years. Funnily, one song on the album is "Grey Gardens," based on the movie, "Grey Gardens," which has always been on the short list of favorite movies in my profile and which I often rewatch for inspiration.

I felt very close to Rufus Wainwright from January to August in Madison, Wisconsin.

Yesterday, my sister and I were traipsing through the Village and Soho. She wanted earrings and mementos. I balked at going into one store that had big sales signs in the window and -- I took one step up toward the doorway -- looked completely chaotic inside. I'd linger in the place next door until she was done with the chaos. The place that suited me was called Theory. I prefer Theory to chaos. She rummaged through the chaotic sale store and bought nothing. Not meaning to buy anything, I found two ideal black sweaters at Theory. I resist chaos but am a pushover for a rational pullover and a Cartesian cardigan.

It's a warm day in SoHo, and I'm weighed down by a bag with two heavy sweaters that will make so much sense back in Madison in January. A few stores later, I'm hitting the wall, and I need respite, so let's find our way back to that restaurant, Provence, that looked so pretty with the tables sticking halfway out the wall of doorways. A perfect choice for someone who almost loves the idea of a sidewalk café.

But now, the restaurant has crowded up, so we can't sit in one of the doorways. But I'm happy to get a seat by a pillar, even with another table -- a big table -- crammed right up to the other side of the pillar, and, of course, I let my sister, my guest, have the seat that looks out toward the doors. I'm recomposing myself with the beautiful French press coffee, and they seat six men and one woman at the big table at my elbow.

Diagonally across from me is a man who looks like Rufus Wainwright or is Rufus Wainwright. I glance at him now and then and try to eavesdrop over the restaurant din. I hear him refer to his mother and to Lorna Luft. I could imagine Rufus Wainwright talking about his mother -- is the woman at the table his mother? -- and Lorna Luft. He talks about a party where people talk about rehab, and then seems Rufus-y. Then someone calls him Rufus. So, it's Rufus, then.

I keep trying to eavesdrop -- it's nearly impossible -- there's some talk of religion -- and to converse with my sister. Dell is looking over to the big table more than I am. It's not that she's interested in Rufus Wainwright. As I suspect, and I learn for sure later, she's never heard of him. She's interested in what they are eating. What are those powdered sugar things with the little turd-like berries? Beignets. What's that metal stand? They're getting oysters.

I think about whether I'm excited to sit for so long so near a person whose music I have so much feeling for. But no, I feel normal, as usual. I remember the time, more than 30 years ago, when I sat in a restaurant at a table next to John Lennon. The feeling was overwhelming. I am so much older now, but is it that I fell in love with Rufus's music as an older person or that I'm sitting near him as an older person. I could find out if some day I'm sitting in a restaurant and, at the next table, it's Ray Davies. Maybe Bob Dylan. But no. I think it's a theory that can only be tested on Ray Davies.

"All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out."

Man treed by crocodiles for a week.

Although [David] George's two sandwiches ran out after three days, he was able to get running water during the day and knew rescuers were looking for him as he could see helicopters in the air above his tree....

A chocolate bar, given to him by rescuers after being winched to safety, "was like a gourmet meal," he told the newspaper.

To me, a chocolate bar is a gourmet meal. And so, for a crocodile, is a 53-year-old Australian.

I await the reenactment on "I Shouldn't Be Alive." Meanwhile, one can rewatch the episode called "Blood in the Water":

Five friends enjoying a weekend fishing trip on one of Africa's wildest and remotest rivers are left fighting for their lives when a hippo suddenly attacks their boat in one of the world's most crocodile-infested rivers. Three of them manage to make it to a sandbank in the middle of the river, but the current's too strong for them to move. One of the men decides to swim for shore — the group's only chance of survival — only to be attacked by a crocodile along the way.

The people have to keep standing on the sandbank all night. Meanwhile, the guy who's attacked by a crocodile somehow has the wits to reach down the animal's throat and release the valve that prevents water from pouring in when it's trying to kill its prey in the water.