They did the slash

The Monster Slash (video).

Kids, just kids

NewMexiKen’s very own parents eloped on this date 62 years ago. She was two weeks past 17, a senior in high school. He was 19 and in the U.S. Navy.

I don’t think getting married at 17/19 is a good idea, but I’m sure glad they did.

Do you know who Steve Cropper is?

He’s 63 today. According to the All Music Guide, Steve Cropper is:

Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Cropper came to prominence in the early ’60s, first with the Mar-Keys (”Last Night”), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG’s. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the ’60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic “In the Midnight Hour.”

And Green Onions is the single greatest rock instrumental ever, period (Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Lewis Steinberg, bass; Al Jackson, drums). MG’s, by the way, stands for Memphis Group, not the car.

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own

Writing at The American Street, Jell Alworth points out – rightly NewMexiKen thinks – that the “undecideds” aren’t undecided at all.

They decided and they decided long ago. … Rather, seven percent of Americans are just coy.

Our National Eating Disorder

From Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:

Asked what comes to mind upon hearing the phrase ”chocolate cake,” Americans were more apt to say ”guilt,” while the French said ”celebration”; ”heavy cream” elicited ”unhealthy” from Americans, ”whipped” from the French. The researchers found that Americans worry more about food and derive less pleasure from eating than people in any other nation they surveyed.

Compared with the French, we’re much more likely to choose foods for reasons of health, and yet the French, more apt to choose on the basis of pleasure, are the healthier (and thinner) people. How can this possibly be? Rozin suggests that our problem begins with thinking of the situation as paradoxical. The French experience with food is only a paradox if you assume, as Americans do, that certain kinds of foods are poisons. ”Look at fat,” Rozin points out. ”Americans treat the stuff as if it was mercury.” That doesn’t, of course, stop us from guiltily gorging on the stuff. …

Perhaps because we take a more ‘’scientific” (i.e., reductionist) view of food, Americans automatically assume there must be some chemical component that explains the difference between the French and American experiences: it’s something in the red wine, perhaps, or the olive oil that’s making them healthier. But how we eat, and even how we feel about eating, may in the end be just as important as what we eat. The French eat all sorts of ”unhealthy” foods, but they do it according to a strict and stable set of rules: they eat small portions and don’t go back for seconds; they don’t snack; they seldom eat alone, and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. A well-developed culture of eating, such as you find in France or Italy, mediates the eater’s relationship to food, moderating consumption even as it prolongs and deepens the pleasure of eating.