F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey

in Comedy, Food & Drink | November 29th, 2013

Image by “The World’s Work” via Wikimedia Commons

“At this post holiday season, the refrigerators of the nation are overstuffed with large masses of turkey, the sight of which is calculated to give an adult an attack of dizziness. It seems, therefore, an appropriate time to give the owners the benefit of my experience as an old gourmet, in using this surplus material.” There writes no less a legend of American letters than F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night (both available in our Free eBooks collection). His words quoted here, from “Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them with Numerous Scarce Recipes,” a column found in the Fitzgerald miscellany collection The Crack-Up, hold just as true this day-after-Thanksgiving as they did during those his lifetime. Lists of Note offers the full piece, which itself offers thirteen potential uses for your leftover bird, some of which, Fitzgerald writes, “have been in my family for generations”:

1. Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.

2. Turkey à la Francais: Take a large ripe turkey, prepare as for basting and stuff with old watches and chains and monkey meat. Proceed as with cottage pudding.

3. Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the latter to the boiling point and then put in the refrigerator. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In preparing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sandwiches around in case things go wrong.

4. Turkey Mongole: Take three butts of salami and a large turkey skeleton, from which the feathers and natural stuffing have been removed. Lay them out on the table and call up some Mongole in the neighborhood to tell you how to proceed from there.

5. Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being careful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicycle pump. Mount in becoming style and hang in the front hall.

6. Stolen Turkey: Walk quickly from the market, and, if accosted, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you hadn’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, anyhow, beat it.

7. Turkey à la Crême: Prepare the crême a day in advance. Deluge the turkey with it and cook for six days over a blast furnace. Wrap in fly paper and serve.

8. Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all connoisseurs of the holiday beast, but few understand how really to prepare it. Like a lobster, it must be plunged alive into boiling water, until it becomes bright red or purple or something, and then before the color fades, placed quickly in a washing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bayonet will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with dental floss and serve.

9. Feathered Turkey: To prepare this, a turkey is necessary and a one pounder cannon to compel anyone to eat it. Broil the feathers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost anything you can dig up. Then sit down and simmer. The feathers are to be eaten like artichokes (and this is not to be confused with the old Roman custom of tickling the throat.)

10. Turkey à la Maryland: Take a plump turkey to a barber’s and have him shaved, or if a female bird, given a facial and a water wave. Then, before killing him, stuff with old newspapers and put him to roost. He can then be served hot or raw, usually with a thick gravy of mineral oil and rubbing alcohol. (Note: This recipe was given me by an old black mammy.)

11. Turkey Remnant: This is one of the most useful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the holiday, and how to extract the most value from it. Take the remants, or, if they have been consumed, take the various plates on which the turkey or its parts have rested and stew them for two hours in milk of magnesia. Stuff with moth-balls.

12. Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a party of four. Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to age for several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.

13. For Weddings or Funerals: Obtain a gross of small white boxes such as are used for bride’s cake. Cut the turkey into small squares, roast, stuff, kill, boil, bake and allow to skewer. Now we are ready to begin. Fill each box with a quantity of soup stock and pile in a handy place. As the liquid elapses, the prepared turkey is added until the guests arrive. The boxes delicately tied with white ribbons are then placed in the handbags of the ladies, or in the men’s side pockets.

What, you expected recipes more… followable than these? And perhaps recipes with less alcohol involved? These all make much more sense if you bear in mind Fitzgerald’s formidable creativity, his even more formidable penchant for the drink, and his mordant sense of humor about it all. “I guess that’s enough turkey talk,” concludes this literary icon of my Thanksgiving-celebrating nation. “I hope I’ll never see or hear of another until—well, until next year.” If you haven’t had enough, and indeed feel like getting the jump on next year, see also the Airship’s list of twelve Thanksgiving recipes from favorite authors, including Jonathan Franzen’s pasta with kale, Alice Munro’s rosemary bread pudding, and Ralph Ellison’s sweet yams.

via Lists of Note

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, literature, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Facebook page.

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Two Viral Videos Push Against Stereotypical Messages Girls Get From the Media (Mildly NSFW)

in Comedy, Creativity, Current Affairs, Television | November 21st, 2013

The first of two videos circulating on the internet, “Girls Who Read” by UK poet and “Rogue Teacher” Mark Grist (above) hits back at the lad culture that objectifies women according to certain “bits” named above in some mildly NSFW language. In his video performance piece above, Grist, asked which bits he prefers by a lad in a pub, and faced with a looming cadre of both male and female peers putting on the pressure, answers haltingly, “I like a girl… who … reads.” Then, his confidence up, he elaborates:

I like a girl who reads,
Who needs the written word
And who uses the added vocabulary
She gleans from novels and poetry
To hold lively conversation
In a range of social situations

The ideal girl close to Grist’s heart “ties back her hair as she’s reading Jane Eyre” and “feeds her addiction for fiction with unusual poems and plays.” In his infectious slam cadences, Grist’s impassioned paean to female readers offers a charming alternative to the ladmag gaze, though one might argue that he still does a little bit of projecting his fantasies onto an unsuspecting lone female at the bar (who turns out to be not so alone). Maybe “Girl Who Reads” is a trope, like “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” an idealization that says more about Grist’s desires than about any particular, actual girl, but it’s still a refreshing challenge to the leering of his pubmates, one that communicates to girls that there are men out there, even in the pubs, who value women for their minds.

The video above, for a new line of toys called GoldiBlox, designed by Stanford-educated engineer Debbie Sterling, upends another adolescent male cultural touchstone—this time a by-now classic American one—the Beastie Boys gleefully misogynistic anthem “Girls.” While the original still likely scores many a frat party, it now must compete with the rewrite performed by “Raven.” The re-appropriated “Girls” plays over video of a trio of young girls, bored to death with stereotypical pink tea sets and the like, who build a complicated Rube Goldberg machine from Goldiblox, which resemble plastic tinker toys. I foresee snippets of the updated lyrics (below) making their way onto playgrounds around the country. Hear the original Beastie Boys song, with lyrics, below.

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pretty it’s girls.
Just like the 50’s it’s girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and everything else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we’ll grow up like them… false.

It’s time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
‘Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
they can engineer that.  

Girls.

That’s all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don’t underestimate Girls.

As with all kids advertising, this is aimed as much at parents—who remember the Beastie Boys’ song—as their kids, who couldn’t possibly. And unlike Grist’s video, which only sells, perhaps, himself, the Goldiblox video aims to get kids hooked on plastic toys as much as any of the ads for products it displaces. Nonetheless, I’ll play it for my daughter in a few years, because lines like “we are all more than princess maids” constitute the perfect retort to the seemingly endless cultural slotting of girls into ridiculously subservient and fantasy roles.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Mark Twain’s Viciously Funny Marginalia Took Aim at Some Literary Greats

in Comedy, Literature | November 20th, 2013

Hemingway once said that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Twain, however, was not only a master of subtlety and humor in fiction, but also a piercingly funny and sometimes scathing essayist whose pen ranged from politics to literary criticism. Despite publishing many biting essays, many of Twain’s best barbs never reached their targets. Instead they remained within the marginalia of his books. In a series of documents made public by the New York Times, Twain’s ire at sloppy writing makes itself known. Some comments, like this one regarding his friend, Rudyard Kipling, are fairly innocuous:

While Kipling got off lightly, John Dryden’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives seems to have hit a nerve, causing Twain to change the inscription to “translated from the Greek into rotten English by John Dryden; the whole carefully revised and corrected by an ass.” (Up top)

Notes in the margins of Landon D. Melville’s Saratoga in 1901 show that it fared no better. Twain, it appears, renamed the volume, dubbing it “Saratoga in 1891, or The Droolings of An Idiot.”

He also deemed some of the writings to be the “Wailings of an Idiot.”

And, just so there wasn’t any ambiguity about what he thought, Twain labeled Melville a “little minded person.”

For more of Mark Twain’s jottings, head over to the New York Times’ document archive and The Mark Twain House & Museum.

Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture and science writer. Follow him at @iliablinderman.

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by Ilia Blinderman | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stephen Colbert & Louis CK Recite The Gettysburg Address, With Some Help from Jerry Seinfeld

in Comedy, History, Politics | November 19th, 2013

On a Thursday afternoon in November of 1863, Edward Everett took to the stage in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to deliver the main address at the Consecration Ceremony of the National Cemetery. Everett was a politician who had served as both a classics professor and president of Harvard University, and was also a renowned orator. His address to the 15,000-strong crowd began on the following grandiloquent note, which Everett proceeded to hold for two hours:

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”

Despite this wave of lofty sentiment, Everett’s speech was overshadowed by the 278-word formulation that would forever commemorate that day, delivered by Abraham Lincoln.

Unlike Everett’s remarks, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (whose five versions can be found here) has shown little wear since its delivery on November 19, exactly 150 years ago. While there is some evidence to suggest that the audience was initially nonplussed by the speech’s simple language and striking brevity, today Lincoln’s words are considered to be among the most finely wrought rhetoric in the Western canon: they remain accessible to all, yet seamlessly entwine the thread of equality that ran so clearly through the Declaration of Independence with the idea of the war being essential to the preservation of the Union. One cannot help but suspect that honest Abe failed to grasp the impact that his pithy oration would have; Everett’s subsequent comments to the President, however, prefigured the speech’s historical arc:

“I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

In honor of the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg address, documentarian Ken Burns has embarked on a project called Learn The Address in an attempt to get Americans to record their recitations of the speech. In the mashup below, Burns provides footage of politicians, entertainers, and journalists giving their renditions. We’ve also included some of our favorites, including Stephen Colbert’s highly comical monologue (top) and Jerry Seinfeld explaining the significance of the address to Louis CK, right above.

For more versions of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, including those by President Obama, Conan O’Brien, and Bill O’Reilly, head to Ken Burn’s Learn The Address site.

Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture and science writer. Follow him at @iliablinderman.

by Ilia Blinderman | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch a 44-Minute Supercut of Every Woody Allen Stammer, From Every Woody Allen Film

in Comedy, Film | November 7th, 2013

In daily life, Woody Allen is far from the delicate bundle of cerebral nerves he so often portrays in his films. He was a successful track runner in high school, and, according to Eric Lax’s biography, trained for several months to participate in the Golden Gloves. But, as with so many young pugilists, parental concern got in the way—his parents refused to sign the consent form to let him box.

On screen, however, Woody Allen remains Hollywood’s reigning nebbish. Jesse Eisenberg once seemed poised to take the title, but while he is sometimes nervous and introverted, his performance in The Social Network confirmed that he can harness the flashes of intensity seen in teenage films like The Squid and The Whale and Adventureland. Michael Cera, meanwhile, the second most prominent of the contenders, is a wholly different actor to Allen—while Allen is insecure and all-too-voluble, Cera is simply all-too-nice.

Allen’s unabashed delight in his insecurities and his hypochondriac concern with neuroses is the platform for much of his humor. He has honed the persona’s mannerisms to perfection, and the clip above provides a master class in just one: the Allen stammer. By the end of this staggeringly impressive 44-minute supercut, containing every single one of Allen’s verbal stumbles and foot-drags from all of his movies, you should have laughed, cried, and fallen into a stupor. Please enjoy responsibly.

via Huffington Post

Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture writer. Follow him at @iliablinderman

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Watch Rare Film of Richard Pryor Singing the Blues: No Joke, All Heart

in Comedy, Music | November 1st, 2013

With the possible exception of Beyonce as Etta James in Cadillac Records, no onscreen portrayal of a female jazz singer tops Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. She is so mesmerizing, in fact, that it’s easy to forget, if you haven’t seen the movie recently, that Ross is flanked by two other excellent performers in Billy Dee Williams as Louis McKay, a composite stand-in for Holiday’s three husbands, and Richard Pryor as the “Piano Man,” Ross’s accompanist. It was a role that “propelled him into stardom” and kept Pryor out in front of an audience as a movie actor. Watch a clip from the film below, with Ross’s Holiday and Pryor’s surly Piano Man together at 3:39.

Odd as it seems that a dramatic role would be Pryor’s breakout performance, unexpected still perhaps is the video at the top of Pryor singing the blues himself. None of his raunchy or self-deprecating wit here, just a genuine, heartfelt rendition of Jimmy Cox’s 1924 “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” According to eOne Music’s Eric Alper, Pryor not only started performing comedy after he moved to New York City in 1963, he also sang, opening for such soon-to-be-greats as Nina Simone and Bob Dylan. Pryor in fact got his start on the club circuit as a drummer, so “he was familiar with the scene.” Movies.com recounts a poignant story from Simone’s autobiography about Pryor’s intense stage fright before one of these early gigs:

He shook like he had malaria, he was so nervous. I couldn’t bear to watch him shiver so I put my arms around him there in the dark and rocked him like a baby until he calmed down. The next night was the same, and the next, and I rocked him each time.

As a singer, Pryor doesn’t channel and focus his anxiety so much as he slowly masters it, appearing a little stiff at first but eventually knocking it out with a surprisingly good performance that well deserves a listen. The provenance of the clip isn’t exactly clear, and some intro material marks it as part of a documentary, maybe. Please weigh in if you know or suspect the film clip’s source.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

10 Figures of Speech Illustrated by Monty Python: Paradiastole, Epanorthosis, Syncatabasis & More

in Comedy, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry | October 31st, 2013

Ah, the ancient art of rhetoric. There’s no escaping it. Variously defined as “the art of argumentation and discourse” or, by Aristotle in his fragmented treatise, as “the means of persuasion [that] could be found in the matter itself; and then stylistic arrangement,” rhetoric is complicated. Aristotle’s definition further breaks down into three distinct types, and he illustrates each with literary examples. And if you’ve ever picked up a rhetorical guide—ancient, medieval, or modern—you’ll be familiar with the lists of hundreds of unpronounceable Greek or Latin terms, each one corresponding to some quirky figure of speech.

Well, as usual, the internet provides us with an easier way in the form of the video above of 10 figures of speech “as illustrated by Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” one of the most literate of popular artifacts to ever appear on television. There’s “paradiastole,” the fancy term for euphemism, demonstrated by John Cleese’s overly decorous newscaster. There’s “epanorthosis,” or “immediate and emphatic self-correction, often following a slip of the tongue,” which Eric Idle overdoes in splendid fashion. Every possible poetic figure or grammatical tic seems to have been named and catalogued by those philosophically resourceful Greeks and Romans. And it’s likely that the Pythons have utilized them all. I await a follow-up video in lieu of reading any more rhetorical textbooks.

via Coudal

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Watch an Exuberant, Young Woody Allen Do Live Stand Up on British TV (1965)

in Comedy, Television | October 29th, 2013

In 1965, Woody Allen took time out from his first film What’s New Pussycat to tape a half-hour of stand up in front of a live television audience in the UK.

Exuberant and horny in an adorable, puppyish way, the 30-year-old comic seemed to relish this return to his nightclub act. The comedy is situational, observational, autobiographical — imagine Louis CK with a PG vocabulary, no kids, a necktie and a twinkle in his eye. Already ensconced on the Upper East Side, he paints a decidedly downtown vision of a New York populated by artists’ models, swinging Bennington girls, and women with pierced ears. Like Louis—or the young Brooklyn hipsters on Girls—he’s itching to score.

It does a body good to see him at this “childlike” stage of his career.

As he told journalist Eric Lax in Conversations with Woody Allen:

“…comics are childlike and they are suing for the approval of the adults. Something goes on in a theater when you’re fourteen years old and you want to get up onstage and make the audience laugh. You’re always the supplicant, wanting to please and to get warm laughs. Then what happens to comics — they make it and they become a thousand times more wealthy than their audience, more famous, more idolized, more traveled, more cultivated, more experienced, more sophisticated, and they’re no longer the supplicant. They can buy and sell their audience, they know so much more than their audience, they have lived and traveled around the world a hundred times, they’ve dined at Buckingham Palace and the White House, they have chauffeured cars and they’re rich and they’ve made love to the world’s most beautiful women — and suddenly it becomes difficult to play that loser character, because they don’t feel it. Being a supplicant has become much harder to sell. If you’re not careful, you can easily become less amusing, less funny. Many become pompous… A strange thing occurs: You go from court jester to king.”

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Ayun Halliday wonders that she has yet to bump into this famous and curmudgeonly New Yorker. Follow her @AyunHalliday

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey

Two Viral Videos Push Against Stereotypical Messages Girls Get From the Media (Mildly NSFW)

Mark Twain’s Viciously Funny Marginalia Took Aim at Some Literary Greats

Stephen Colbert & Louis CK Recite The Gettysburg Address, With Some Help from Jerry Seinfeld

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