恶人谷

I would love to do something with Mario. It's been an unrealized ambition to produce a show for Mario, honestly. He's so smart. The guy knows so much. He's easily the funniest and smartest celebrity chef out there. The Spain show. I'm disappointed. After seeing the Spain show, I see room for improvement. Life is good for Mario, he's got life by the tail. It was probably a lot of fun for him to make that show and not too demanding of his time. But I would very much like to produce a show where he tells us everything he knows about Italy. I think that would be good and informative television. I just don't know if he wants to put in the time commitment given all the businesses he has.

Okay, I'll just say it. I think the Spain show is f***ing awful. Mark Bittman comes off unsympathetic to say the least. Bringing someone who cannot or will not eat jamon [Gwyneth Paltrow] to Spain is a misjudgment. My crew grinds their teeth with rage looking at the crummy production values. Bad camera work, bad sound, bad direction. The whole thing sucks. It's unfortunate. It's mesmerizingly awful.

I'll tell you. Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic. I mean I'm not crazy about our obsession with corn or ethanol and all that, but I'm a little uncomfortable with legislating good eating habits. I'm suspicious of orthodoxy, the kind of orthodoxy when it comes to what you put in your mouth. I'm a little reluctant to admit that maybe Americans are too stupid to figure out that the food we're eating is killing us. But I don't know if it's time to send out special squads to close all the McDonald's. My libertarian side is at odds with my revulsion at what we as a country have done to ourselves physically with what we've chosen to eat and our fast food culture. I'm really divided on that issue. It'd be great if he [Obama] served better food at the White House than what I suspect the Bushies were serving. It's gotta be better than Nixon. He liked starting up a roaring fire, turning up the air conditioning, and eating a bowl of cottage cheese with ketchup. Anything above that is a good thing. He's from Chicago, so he knows what good food is.

Same thing happened this past week. I'm happily playing tea party with my daughter, contemplating future good works, thinking about sending a fruit basket to my producers (who I'd abused so badly after the blowhole incident), generally in the kind of mood that makes me want cuddle stray dogs, adopt a kitten, sing Cumbaya with the homeless crackhead who hangs outside my neighborhood supermarket - when the text of Alice Waters' open letter to the President hit my Inbox.

The new guy in the White House has a lot on his plate - as a recent trip through America's Rust Belt had just brought rather poignantly home. So I found the allegedly chronic non-voter Waters' offer to head up a "kitchen cabinet" - an advisory board guiding the new administration to a new, organic, locavorean foodie Valhalla - well ...presumptuous. Particularly in light of the Normandy invasion of chefs, logistics and ingredients for the series of benefit meals which followed. I had a hard time visualizing all these guys foraging for vegetables in D.C. in January. The combined carbon imprints of these talented interlopers - alone ...seemed at odds with the high minded sentiments in the letter.

Out pops Vic and next thing you know, my comments are all over the blogosphere, attacking the Mother Theresa of the food world, viciously sinking my snaggled teeth into the shanks of St. Alice of Berkeley - possibly the most beloved and revered figure in the world of food.

Why did he say Alice Water is legislating good eating habits? What did she do?