COMMENTARY The Michigan Daily - New Student Edition - Fall 2004 -96 The blanding of America JESS PISKOR JOIN THE PISKOR Attn. snobs: I love rock and roll, Hrithik, Jimmy John's OCTOBER 21, 2003 AUBREY HENRETTY NELROTICA OCTOBER 28, 2003 J spent a good F ood is an interesting thing. It both keeps us alive and makes life worth living. It is both nourishment and a source of pleasure. Unfortunately, the pleasurable aspects of food are under attack by a group of unadventurous and ignorant eaters: the Blands. The Blands are intent upon making our world uniform. Blands are the people who seem to thrive on the bor- ing and the unoriginal. Blands are the people who desperately search for the same thing, the same foods and expe- riences everywhere they go. One of the main reasons chain restaurants are successful is the Blandian mantra, "I like the comfort of knowing that a burger in Los Ange- les will taste the same as here in Ann Arbor. When I eat at Tchotchke's I know what I'm getting, no matter where I am." Why do Blands feel this driving need to have the same food every- where? Lacking any understanding of real food, Blands only feel comfort- able eating when there's a big pile of fried something on their plates and free refills. When I was a junior in high school, my French class went to Paris. One evening, our teacher gave us free reign to stroll the Champs-Elysees to find dinner. A couple friends and I found a little bistro where we enjoyed a simple yet elegant authentic French meal with fresh bread, a nice entree, a cheese course and a cheap French wine. For a reasonable price we expe- rienced something new and delicious. The rest of the class - all Blands - found a Chili's restaurant and had strawberry daiquiris and french fries while listening to American rock music. In what must be considered a victo- ry for the Blands, another Jimmy John's opened its doors in Ann Arbor last week. Apparently, three stores selling tasteless, dry and poorly baked bread and overly-mayonnaised sand- wiches just wasn't enough for the Blands. Maybe they just couldn't get enough of the faux old advertising, free smells and fluorescent lighting. Jimmy John's is not good food. Despite their ads, it does not have the "World's Greatest Gourmet Sandwiches." Yet people swear they are wonderful. I will not deny that there are times when a Jimmy John's sandwich hits the spot - in the same way a Pabst Blue Ribbon does. However, it displays a remarkable level of ignorance as to what real food is to argue that Jimmy John's is quality food - or even remotely gourmet. Well, there's no accounting for taste, right? Wrong. Take your food relativism and shove it. Freshly baked bread topped with farm fresh toma- toes is better than white bread and Kroger's tomatoes, guaranteed. People might think they prefer Kraft Maca- roni & Cheese or Lipton brand tea, but this is for lack of trying anything better or a result of years of palate- deadening foods. It takes a little while after switching to real food to begin to taste all the subtleties of flavor, but once tastebuds are awaked, there is no going back. Blands are bland largely because they are lazy. The 10 minutes of effort it might take to make a real sandwich is just too much for a Bland, who would much rather walk somewhere out of his or her way to pay someone to prepare an inferior sandwich. Instead of using a modicum of plan- ning to buy a real loaf of bread from a bakery or perhaps go shopping for food with a menu in mind, Blands put as little thought into eating decisions as possible. Blands might argue that they aren't lazy, but rather too busy. However, the minimal effort required to eat better and the gloating attitude through which they express their love of all things boring belies this claim. Not only are Blands lazy, they are deeply in denial. Unwilling to believe better food is available at roughly the same price, Blands create a mytholo- gy around their choices and can be heard talking at length about the qual- ity of ingredients at Jimmy John's or the superior taste of a Bloomin' Onion. Psychologically unwilling to find foods that are in actuality better, Blands build up an aversion to new foods and flavors. Price is the last defense of Blands. "Surely," they argue, "better food costs more." Well, it can, but it doesn't have to. A bit of intelligent shopping goes a long way. Fresh breads and local produce can be found at bakeries and farmer's markets for no more than a few dollars and will provide for more meals than a sub. Yes, I'm a food elitist, a first-class epicurean. But better that than a Bland, a food relativist, living in a world without moral absolutes and unable or unwilling to distinguish good quality food from bad. Piskor can be reached atjpiskor@umich.edu. spent a good number of my hours last summer watching "reality" television and Bollywood movies. Usually back to back: a little "Paradise Hotel a little "Kabhi Khushi Kab- hie Gham" and a whole lot of subti- tles and crying. And I am not ashamed to admit I loved every sec- ond of these viewing experiences. I loved every cheesy profession of love or loyalty, every musical num- ber, every kissing-spree montage (especially the one they showed right after the hotel whore swore to her longtime boyfriend that she'd only locked lips with one PH boy - dramatic irony at its finest), every indoor close-up of Hrithik Roshan in which his hair billowed as if caught in a mysterious indoor breeze or the path of a large station- ary fan placed just off-camera. Massive structural differences aside, PH and K3G occupy similar spaces in the entertainment world. Both are products of huge profit- driven industries and both appeal to our most basic human interest: the interpersonal relationship and the many ways in which it can go horri- bly, horribly wrong. Critics roll their eyes at the strict adherence of each. to its genre's conventions and result- ing relative predictability, but fans wouldn't have it any other way. I suppose there is one other stand- out similarity between "reality" TV and Bollywood fare, and believe it or not, this is something they share with science fiction, Starbucks, pop music, chain restaurants and mys- tery novels. Something about their mass appeal makes people hate them. I'm not trying to suggest that some people don't loathe "reality" TV because watching it for more than 10 seconds at a time makes them want to reach right through the screen and throttle the next cast member to say "playing the game" with a straight face, or that some people don't scorn Starbucks because Starbucks coffee tastes remarkably like freshly burnt rub- ber. These are valid complaints. What's missing from them is the word, "hate." It takes something very special to elicit active hate from otherwise laid-back individu- als - especially for something as benign as a TV show or a song or a double tall mocha - and a quick conversation with any given hater is all it takes to see what that special something is: snobbery. Yes, the true pop-cultural haters are nothing but a bunch of stuck-up sourpusses, a humorless band of elitists who insist that nothing good is ever popular, that nothing popular is ever good. And they are every- where. You'll find them in every facet of life, from the literary ("Oh, my God, is that a Stephen King novel? Don't you realize that William Faulkner exists, you poor slob??) to the culinary ("Excuse me, did you just say Jimmy John's sand- wiches were delicious? But they use white bread and pre-sliced meat! Don't you have taste buds?"). They're expert martyrs, too, per- fectly capable of questioning your taste and attacking your character in the same breath. They'll tell you you're not allowed to continue to like what you once liked if too many other people now like it. I hate to keep coming back to Starbucks (mmm ... burnt rubber), but say you happened to like Starbucks coffee. If you lived in Seattle in the '70s and that was the case, fine; it was a successful local business back then, God bless it. But no more. Shop there now - i.e. drink the coffee you have been enjoying for the past 30 years - and you're a selfish, corporation-lovin', homogeny- pushin' sellout. You lose. If you had any kind of moral backbone whatso- ever, you'd buy coffee from the little coffee shop across town - the one that serves the coffee you don't like - so that others will have a choice. I think this reasoning is self-evi- dently ridiculous. But that is a side issue. What I suspect is really going on with our friends the snobs is that they - like the adolescent tormen- tors they are trying so desperately to move past in their minds - are so helplessly concerned with being the coolest of the cool that they've forgotten how to have fun. They'll never be able to point and laugh at their own silly problems (the lies they've told and been told, the stu- pid things they've said in the pres- ence of witnesses) as re-inacted in prime-time by "real" people on tropical islands. They'll never appreciate brain candy. The rest of us should pity them, but never judge. After all, there is no account- ing for taste. Henretty can be reached at ahenrett@umich.edu.