Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Muffin McFun

I accidentally came across what appears to be a pop culture niche: celebrities in old McDonald's commercials. Here's one with Will & Grace's Megan Mullaly and Roseanne's John Goodman:

Editorials: Television: Arizona Roundup (Part 2)

A thought I had regarding Starbucks is that I am routinely disturbed by their drive-thrus. (Perhaps I should keep in mind that high temperatures here in Arizona average 100 degrees or more in summer.) It seems like the coffee giant takes human connection and turns it into a kind of parody. Similarly--and on a related note--the marketing-to-women juggernaut turns the contemporary female experience and turns it into kind of an absurd parody of itself. I'm glad to have been exposed to so much television (particularly cable television) this long weekend, as I hadn't realized just how ridiculous things had become. A current Fiber One commercial advertises 90-calorie brownies, enjoyed by a model who is slim and trim by Western US standards, much less Milwaukee standards. Regardless of whether women are slim and trim, why shouldn't they be able to eat a brownie without worry?  I think such distorted situations are fueled by a particularly unfortunate combination of ignorance and hyperconformity.

Editorials: The Single-serving Society's War on Your Wallet (Part 3)

As I fly from Milwaukee to Denver, I can’t help but reflect on some of the aspects of my hometown that have been on my mind lately.  Milwaukee is very centered on the economics and dynamics of inequality.  By this, I mean not only incidental matters such as having to pay $1.50 for a cheap cigarillo at midnight, but primarily more intractable inequality. Long-term single people tend to live in dense areas such as Milwaukee’s East Side, where prices are inflated and the bar for quality goods and services is set vastly lower than in the suburbs.

On the inflight television—free to me with the purchase of a Plus ticket—Rachael Ray’s show conveys the promise of a woman who knows her way around the kitchen and the bedroom. I’d always wondered why people watch cooking on television, until the stewardess delivered the earbuds and I could hear the ridiculously innuendo-laden dialog. (Ray praises appetizers as an opportunity to “keep my mouth busy while I wait for the entrée.”) I wouldn’t want Ray as my wife or girlfriend, but can easily imagine the makings of a very fun weekend. Assuming Ray doesn’t hold any deep, dark secrets, though, being married to her (or a woman like her) would represent a kind of financial and sexual security that would likely change my outlook on life vastly.

Successful marriages and other romantic relationships provide security to make major life decisions that are beneficial both to society and the individual. However, these choices transform life into a sort of capital investment that may mean less quick profits for the service industry and other businesses. With a lack of wealth-creating business in places such as Milwaukee, tax revenue is generated by rental properties, bars and nightclubs. Meanwhile, there is a lack of conventional grocery stores. Absurdly, Target is carpet-bombing Miwaukee with advertising that promotes its fresh food selection, when probably 10% of the population lives within one mile of a Target store. In reality, grocery shopping is shifting towards chain drugstores, convenience stores and mini-marts.

As if to prove that God has a great sense of humor, the TV fare on my flight from Denver to Phoenix is Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker.”  No sound this time, but it’s interesting  to watch the display of good manners (I think it’s called acting). I don’t waste a lot of time thinking about what my life would be like if I were a millionaire, but I imagine it would mostly just amplify the good and the bad in me and my life—as my middling income has over the years. But I know there’s no harm in any of us psychologically staking a claim to a significant amount of resources, particularly if we have the work ethic to back it up.

 

Television: The Million-dollar Snow Globe

Tonight, I watched two or three hours of network television with my parents. As always, tonight's viewing provided some interesting insights. On the 10:00 news, Kathy Mykelby, with her short hair and leather top, looked like she was headed for a beer-and-a-shot and pool night at Mo'nas after work. Ironically, despite our diversity, art appreciation does not seem to flourish in the Milwaukee area. Later in the newscast, there was a feature that seemed patently ridiculous. I wish I'd recorded it, as the details are proving so hard to research on Google that I wonder if it was a put-on. Apparently some artist is aiding families facing foreclosure by selling his art and donating the proceeds. They showed one glass dome-encased piece that was supposedly going for $800,000, and I'd swear it looked like a snow globe.

I no longer subscribe to biblical inerrancy, but I do believe in the historical Jesus. Something I do find inerrant is the fact that our society gives attention to the negative. We know every last detail of the lives of mass murderers, but dispute the existence and motives of those who do good--both in our own time and throughout history. Even two thousand years ago, there were "Kathy Mykelbys" who presented a version of reality designed to elicit a certain course of action from the populace. The way to make Kathy's newscast has always been to do wrong. I advocate doing right anyway.

Television: Fly the Friendly (and Poorly Acted) Skies

OK, can you stick with me for one more off-topic post? Anyone else think Pan Am is starting to suck realllllly baddddd? The first two or three episodes caught me up in the Titanic-style excitement, but the acting is just so horrendously ham-fisted. (And that's after applying a 50% discount to account for the fact that I'm kind of a snob.) I think it's the worst I've ever seen in outside of movies with five minutes or less of total dialogue. I'm not a cinematographer, but it seems to be shot like a soap opera, with consistently tight shots and lots of camera angle switches to emphasize the back-and-forth of the dialogue. (I wonder if that has anything to do with the eventual lip-synching, as the show seems mostly conceived for the international market.) 

Editorials: A New Way of Communicating (Part 4)

I'm going to write this post from back to front, as it were. Consider this quote (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers):

"During the 1997 Daytime Emmys, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Rogers. The following is an excerpt from Esquire's coverage of the gala, written by Tom Junod:

Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence."

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, "I'll watch the time." There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly "May God be with you," to all his vanquished children."

What a powerful anecdote--though I admit the writer seems to be trying a bit too hard to be a literary giant. Be that as it may, I think it cuts to the heart of our current dilemma as a society. What I miss from observers of our society is some admission that on some level, we in the USA are suffering economic distress because we need to perform and behave better as human beings. I miss some admission that perhaps the reason China and India are outperforming us is because they are, in certain respects, better-functioning societies. As strongly as I believe in democracy, I don't think our society was ever intended to become the 24/7 entertainment and consumption circus it is now. I know a correction will come, and I fear it will be cruel. I think the way for us to avert that fate--on a personal and societal level--is to revolutionize the way we communicate. 

Our communication is still premised on the reality of our legacy of primary industry and secondary industry. "Legacy" may be an apt word, because primary and secondary industry is kind of the DOS of our society. It's the old operating system. Basically, primary industry is the business of extracting raw materials from the earth and adding value by refining them. Secondary industry is the business of using those refined raw materials to manufacture products.  I'm sure it's not really a headline-grabbing revelation that we're not doing much of that anymore. Refining raw materials and manufacturing adds so much economic value that huge profit margins are possible. Historically, these profit margins have enabled (in the pejorative sense of the word) people to be real assholes. We need to think only of the robber barons of yore.

Our shift towards tertiary industry necessitates a new way of behaving in order to adapt to the changed playing field. Tertiary industry, like everything else, is increasingly communication-intensive. I don't really want to get into talking business other than in the most general terms, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of late-night exchange of data involved. That's not an uncommon reality for folks nowadays. When you're staring at a computer screen at midnight, that message saying "lavender and lollipops" sometimes sounds--by no fault of the writer--an awful lot like "doomsday and damnation." That, too, is a reality for so many of us who read e-mail shortly before bedtime, even if we work more conventional hours.

So, I think the need is for more "lavender and lollipops", and I don't use that phrase to make light of the situation.  Rather, I think it reflects the need to not be afraid to show a bit more vulnerability and cooperativeness.  This holds all the more true due to the increasingly female face of the workplace.  I think the men who will succeed most professionally over the long haul are those who can appropriate certain traits that have traditionally been considered feminine. And I don't think that means compromising their masculinity.  Especially as old paradigms reach the end of their useful life, I think the business world needs more restless and indeed unruly men to show us what lies ahead.  But those restless and unruly men will need to be disciplined and diligent in their communication habits.

Editorial: What Not to Watch

Early Saturday afternoon, I had my regular appointment at the Blood Center of Wisconsin's Downtown location to donate.  The newly installed flat-screens were tuned to TLC, specifically "What Not to Wear".  I don't own a television and what little TV I do watch is at my parents' house, and they've never had cable. So my impression, having never seen the show before, was that its premise is slovenly, overweight men taking their wives into the shop for a tuneup. 

The second part of the episode featured a woman who was supposedly a "witch" (I put that in quotes because the whole thing had such an air of scripted bogusness about it--it was just now that I learned that TLC is also the Jon & Kate network).  Actually, she looked like a mashup of any number of my ex-girlfriends and paramours.  I wonder if the "witch" part was thrown in because one wouldn't put a larger woman on TV without it being part of some kind of gag.  It brought me back to a blog post that had been forming in my mind since watching the documentary of "Julie & Julia".  This is what Julie Powell looks like.

Surprised?  I was too--but in retrospect, how could one be?  As much as I find "Julie & Julia" enjoyable to watch, its lovely images aren't believable, at least insofar as Amy Adams plays Powell.  Amy Adams' BMI (Body Mass Index) is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of my own, which at about 22.4 is smack dab in the middle of clinically "normal."  (A little Internet research indicates Adams is about 5'4", but obviously her weight is a better-guarded secret.)  Maintaining that kind of figure in a life composed of working a desk job, blogging and cooking super-rich food is simply not plausible.  

Moreover, as much as such things are in the eye of the beholder, Adams' portrayal is far too bland to do justice to Powell.  The real-life Powell has a saucy demeanor (the computer I'm writing this on doesn't have sound, so when watching the video I just linked to, I can't hear what she's saying).  She also sounds really, really intelligent.  Adams' portrayal is smart enough to get through the day, but with not much left over at the end.  That's not blogger intelligent. 

Starbucks Eats Humble Pie

Last Wednesday The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer aired a report about Starbucks’ recent sales and stock woes on the heels of the announcement that the java corp would be closing 600 stores.

While the report is riddled with tired coffee metaphors, it's still worth watching the streaming video for a glimpse of CEO Howard Schultz's meek and modest address to stockholders.

Link

It's a Go for More "Wisconsin Foodie"

I had the opportunity earlier today for a little tête–à–tête via e-mail with Arthur Ircink, executive producer of "Wisconsin Foodie," regarding the future of the local fledging TV program. He confirmed that WISN Channel 12 has given the green light for more episodes and he generously shared with me some very intriguing ideas the show may implement down the road--he's a heck of nice guy, ain't he?

Ircink wrote:

WISN has agreed to put us back on and we are currently negotiating when and where. We are also looking for sponsors and advertisers, because without money Wisconsin Foodie has no chance.

Within a couple of weeks we are going to continue production, so when the time comes it won't be a rush. If I had to say when I thought we were going to be back on I would say starting in August with the same time slot.

Another interesting thing is we are going to really start expanding our website so it can become a database of videos and reviews for restaurants in Wisconsin. Our plan is to approach restaurants that may not make the cut of the show and shoot them just for the web, we also want to do other segments for the web specifically such as "Homemade",  which is a segment were we would go into viewers kitchens to see what they've got cooking. 

So the path appears clear for "Wisconsin Foodie" to continue on, but I encourage all of you out there with influence to do your damnedest to get some sponsorship and advertising money into their production coffers. A local show this good deserves your support.

Review: "Wisconsin Foodie" is Pretty Damn Good

Last week I blogged about the debut of a new local culinary TV show "Wisconsin Foodie" on WISN-TV Channel 12. So, yeah, I did manage to sit my butt down in front of the boob tube at noon this past Saturday to check it out, but I've been letting my impressions bubble and simmer so as to offer up a fair-minded and thoughtful review. Then I blissfully ignored those lofty goals and came up with this:

The half-hour program is remarkably fresh for a local production, with a hand-held documentary style that, for the most part, didn't make my brain swim too much from all the inherent jiggling and shaking. The decision to use this camera style was no doubt made for both budgetary and hipster attracting reasons, and I give them credit for taking the chances that must be taken in order to successfully pull it off.

I'd like to see a little more post-production work go into the show as the digital format tends to produce harsh, too crisp images that could definitely use some softening. My other suggestion is that they widen their one and two shots just a tad--it doesn't have to be a ton--because we don't really need to see every pore of the host's and guests' faces and, frankly, I kinda like being able to see the tops of people's heads on occasion--that way I can be fairly confident that they're not being controlled by wires connected directly to their gray matter.

The host of the show, Kyle Cherek, has a very personable and unpretentious style that works well with the overall casual approach of the show. The only negative thing I can say about his performance is that the level of his interviewing technique is set--I suspect deliberately--too low. You're a Foodie, Kyle, so don't be afraid to demonstrate some of your own knowledge to keep things moving. Oh, and if the show is picked up for more episodes beyond the four that Channel 12 has committed to, please go get yourself some camera friendly lenses for your glasses--it's really spooky when we can't see your eyes.

I wholeheartedly agree with JSOnline's Tim Cuprisin that the standout guest of this pilot episode was Jessica Bell, a wine expert and educator scheduled to be a regular on the show. Exceptionally articulate and completely natural on camera, her presence brought the show up to a new height. In an unfortunate and just plain ignorant move, the producers have given her the title of "Wine Girl"--a designate that deserves serious reexamination as it hardly shows her the respect she so clearly deserves. Think about it, grub boys.

Okay, to sum up, "Wisconsin Foodie" has real potential to be a top-notch culinary show and a welcome enhancement to the local TV scene. With just a few minor nips here and a couple of tucks there, it could well become the best commercial television Milwaukee has to offer.