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Really, Dolce & Gabbana? Again?

Anyway. The November 1 issue of the New Yorker contains, other than this ad, an awesome profile of Aziz Ansari by Kelefa Sanneh (dude is on a roll), which is subscribers only online. The short version is that Sanneh has the insight that Ansari's appeal lies in his enthusiasm:

This is one of Ansari's greatest assets: a counterintuitive ability to observe ridiculous behavior and react not with simple mockery or exasperation, as many comedians would, but with half-crazed wonder. Rather than fuming at the world's stupidity, he delights in its endless absurdity. . . . He says, "It's not fun to be like, 'Fuck "Twilight"!' It's more interesting to come at it from the viewpoint of 'What? This is awesome!' and embrace things." Not long after the brainteasing blockbuster "Inception" arrived in theatres, he said that his favorite review of it was a Twitter post from the rapper Slim Thug: "It was too complicated for me it's about having dreams while u are dreaming and I missed parts cause I was sleep so I was lost."

This is like my whole philosophy! Sanneh also has smart things to say about race, as always, and where Ansari has placed himself between black and white.

I also really liked Frances Hwang's story "Blue Roses," in the same issue (also locked), which is about a woman dealing with her three adult children and is the kind of thing I would not have been so interested in previously. Do y'all all know you used to be babies? And that your babies are going to grow up into people? I know! It's freaking crazy.

I also skipped ahead and read the food issue (Nov. 22) because it arrived in my mailbox before the Nov. 15 one did. Laura Shapiro's piece on Eleanor Roosevelt's kitchen in the White House, run by one Mrs. Nesbitt, is pretty fabulous, and it contains the following about Sheila Hibben, with whose work I'm not familiar:

A talented, well-traveled home cook who turned to writing when she had to support herself and her daughter after the death of her husband, Hibben had a culinary sensibility that was half a century ahead of its time. Americans had been "spoiled," she wrote in 1932, by "peaches from South Africa and strawberries picked green and shipped too far." She wanted gas stations to distribute food maps as well as road maps [this is still an amazing idea!], and believed that the best American cooking could hold its own against the best in Paris. "Cold boiled crabs, with their shells cracked open and served with a sauce of fresh lime juice and olive oil, are . . . superlatively good with beer," she suggested in a 1934 New Yorker article. It was a time when "the ultimate in flavor," according to the Times, was a popular buffet dish known as Turkey Supreme: diced turkey mixed with nuts, whipped cream, crushed pineapple, and mayonnaise, spread on a tray and frozen.

The same article contains a description of a dish that could well have appeared in the food issue of some years ago that had an article about Futurism and food:

[Mrs. Nesbitt's] Bobotee Salad was a mixture of cold rice, bananas, almonds, chicory, and curry powder, in a French dressing laced with Worcestershire sauce.

I am going to link to one thing you can read, though, and that is the profile of April Bloomfield, which is well written and just great all through, as in this bit:

In a blind taste test, you could identify Bloomfield’s food by the blasts of salt and lemon. It is not for the faint of palate. “ ‘Copious’ is a word I like to use when buttering my potatoes,” she told me. But in the kitchen she is as composed as her cooking is brazen. “There’s not too much ‘you wanker’ this or ‘you fucking idiot,’ ” she said. “It’s a waste of time.” Still, she projects such quiet disdain for sloppiness that “half-a-job Bob”—her biggest insult—stings as much as any bleepable tirade. If David Chang’s band of renegades are the Red Sox of the New York restaurant world, Bloomfield’s cooks are the Yankees, square and conscientious. When I asked her what kind of people she likes to hire, she replied, “Nobody weird. Nobody with dreadlocks.” She paused a minute, and added, “Well, no white guys with dreadlocks.” Her cooks wear black pants and black shoes. “People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen,” she said. When Bloomfield peels a carrot, she holds it out in the palm of her hand, like sheet music. Her posture is as correct, and her expression as intent, as that of a girl about to play “Chopsticks” in a piano recital.