Your Civic Doody.

Treme, I love you. Or: Heather Havrileski, shut your useless, gaping maw.

Okay, I'm done.  I'm done with snotty culture theorists tearing down the good things and lauding the shitty things.  I don't want your essay about why Taylor Swift is good, or why American Idol is good, or why whatever the fuck YouTube video is good.  You know what?  Keep it.  You know why?  Because it's actually your job to tell us what is good. Even great.  Because if you like something, you stand with the other people who like it.  It doesn't matter why you like it.  If you give it airtime, it wins.  Do you know that your ironic Nielsen point counts exactly the same as the Appalachian mother of 5's Nielsen point?  You sit with them now.

How about we, the intelligensia, try to start liking intelligent things again?  Have we given enough time to the cool girls in the locker room?  Can we stop pretending we like their shitty bands?

And with that, I bring you:  a recent negative review of David Simon and Ed Burns' Treme on Salon dot com.  It was argued by Heather Havrilesky that the show's "overwritten outbursts" and overly political hits detract from an otherwise tasteful story about music.

And to that I say:  Heather Havrilesky, shut your gaping, useless mouth.

You find Treme unlikeable because of its overwritten outbursts? OVERWRITTEN? Surely, you mean "written," right?  You mean that you don't like Treme because it is a show with dialogue that exceeds everyday life?  Like a book maybe?  Or, God forbid, a play?  You hate that Treme was written by TV writers who aren't desperate to write down to us.  Because you prolly think that, like, TV shows should, like, sound like how we, you know, like, talk and stuff.  Or whatever.

Quoth Ms. Havrilesky:

David Simon and Eric Overmyer are in love with New Orleans, sure, but they're also in love with words -- angry words, big words, curse words, technical words -- about what's happened here. These words [...] tend to jostle us loose from this moment, distance us from the action, alienate us from what's actually happening on the screen.

If this reviewer actually turns out to have a real learning disability, I'm going to be sincerely sorry for saying the following:  she sounds like a couple of retards.  This, coming from a woman who 24 hours later decided that Sex and the City 2:  Sandy Hoo-Hah, was a feminist revelation?  You are ruining everything.  I'll take my hemlock-tini now.

Betty White on SNL: Census

The final sketch of the night on the Betty White episode of SNL.  By far, the funniest of the night.

This reminds me of a sketch called GUMP written by Scott Adsit for one of the Second City stages here in Chicago.  At Second City it's legendary, and for me it was the sketch that made me want to write sketches.

This is funny in its own right, though.  Take it away, Tina:

No August In May.

I think something terrible might have happened.  I think the world's best grocery store might have closed. August, lovely August, on Division and Milwaukee in Chicago.

Here is what I wrote on Yelp.  Partly as a review, partly as a rebuttal to a few particular Groupon Gammas who recently negatively reviewed it.  Rather than put my own eyes out, I decided to write a response cum obituary:

Anyone who argues that August is expensive has never shopped at Whole Foods.  I was a WF adherent until I discovered the greatest grocer in Chicago:  George at August.

The complaints swirling around here revolve around one idea, rooted in the Jewel/Dominicks frame of mind:  100 percent variety, 100 percent of the time.  This is not the model of a small grocer, never has been, and frankly shouldn't be.  How many times have we gone to WF, marveled at the variety of meat and produce, only to find that half the produce we bring home tastes and cooks terribly?  When in recorded history has it been a foregone conclusion that a kumquat should be available in Zone 6 in February?

So, while August did not provide a wide selection, I can attest, having stocked my fridge entirely with his food for the past two years, that everything he offered was always of superlative quality.  As it traditionally goes, the changing stock of the grocer is reflected in the changing food you eat.  It's really pretty civilized, actually:  letting go of the idea that quantity equals quality.

In addition to the food, George himself brought the missing ingredient to shopping and preparing food that was always missing from Whole Foods -- and let's face it, Whole Foods at this point is Jewel in a cheap sun dress.  

Every question about a cut of meat might start a lengthy conversation about preparation.  Every vegetable picked could lead to an hour spent browsing one of the cookbooks offered up at his counter.  Any question you had was a lesson he wanted to share.  August wasn't a place to trudge through at the end of a long day.  August was a place to celebrate food and cooking, with a community of people who shared your love, brought together by a person who made a life out of preparing meals.

I'm not sure what the status of August is now.  I can only say that the thought of spending my future nights picking over produce selected by an accountant, not a chef, is enough to make me lose my appetite.