On tonight’s episode of Let’s Get Real…the truth is revealed! The truth about where I come from, and who or what created me. No, not my very short Jewish parents of Eastern European descent, they barely had anything to do with it. My true ancestor, the holder of my DNA, the source of all of this darkness and doom, turns out to be Howard Beale, the legendary protagonist of the brilliantly dark 1976 film “Network”! I never realized it, but after attending a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, and a discussion by David Itzkoff and Keith Olbermann afterwards, (Itzkoff just wrote a book about the film), I now know. I get it. The truth has been revealed. Forget being the Jon Stewart of Food, I’m the Howard Beale of food! But with much better teeth…Wow did people have ugly teeth in 1976. What was Fay Dunaway thinking?
And after watching two straight weeks of Olympic coverage, and the endless parade of advertising that enveloped it, I can tell you this. If those guys in “Network” thought the lines between corporations and people, capitalism and journalism, truth and advertising were breaking down back in ’76, they had NO idea what was coming down the slushy half-pipe a few decades later. Athletes eating sh*t for money? That’s nothing new. How about the surreal, rabbit hole-y image of your favorite radio host dressing up as a hungry homeless person for a photo shoot about homeless people and hunger? Confused? All will be revealed in this new episode of Let’s Get Real, The Cooking Show About Finding, Preparing, and Eating FOOD.
And to paraphrase Howard Beale…I’m mad as hell about Foodiness™, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!