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Craig Claiborne was the NY Times’ first dedicated restaurant critic, providing an example that was soon followed by newspapers everywhere in the US.

Some American writers had nibbled at the idea of professional restaurant criticism before this, including Claiborne, who had written one-off reviews of major new restaurants for The Times. But his first “Directory to Dining,” 50 years ago this month, marks the day when the country pulled up a chair and began to chow down. Within a few years, nearly every major newspaper had to have a Craig Claiborne of its own. Reading the critics, eating what they had recommended, and then bragging or complaining about it would become a national pastime.

As the current caretaker of the house that Claiborne built, I lack objectivity on this subject. Still, I believe that without professional critics like him and others to point out what was new and delicious, chefs would not be smiling at us from magazine covers, subway ads and billboards. They would not be invited to the White House, except perhaps for job interviews. Claiborne and his successors told Americans that restaurants mattered. That was an eccentric opinion a half-century ago. It’s not anymore.

A few years ago, I wrote about the first restaurant review to appear in the Times in 1859…it’s still one of my favorite posts.

Tags: Craig Claiborne   food   NY Times   restaurants

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In this Smithsonian interview, University of Minnesota history professor Jeffrey Pilcher drops serious knowledge on the history of tacos. Among other bits of taco trivia, Pilcher, author of the forthcoming book Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food, roughly disabuses us of the lie spread by Glen Bell (of Taco Bell) that Bell invented the hard shell.

What made the fast-food taco possible?
The fast-food taco is a product of something called the “taco shell,” a tortilla that has been pre-fried into that characteristic U-shape. If you read Glen Bell’s authorized biography, he says he invented the taco shell in the 1950s, and that it was his technological breakthrough. Mexicans were cooking tacos to order — fresh — and Glen Bell, by making then ahead, was able to serve them faster. But when I went into the U.S. patent office records, I found the original patents for making taco shells were awarded in the 1940s to Mexican restaurateurs, not to Glen Bell.

Pilcher’s other books include editing The Oxford Handbook of Food History, and writing The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917 and Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. The Sausage Rebellion indeed.

Tags: books   food   Glenn Bell   Jeffrey Pilcher

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Jesse Thorn had me on Bullseye again to talk links. We discussed Benton’s ham (see if you can make it past the “we’re about to go ham” crack at the beginning) and Senna, one of my favorite films from the past six months.

Tags: Allan Benton   Bullseye   Jesse Thorn   movies   podcasts   Senna

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In the spirit of conservation, Joe Smith shows us how to use a paper towel properly.

(via df)

Tags: how to   video

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Justin Bieber recently had his 18th birthday so GQ sent Drew Magary to make him a man. It didn’t quite go as planned, but here are the 8 best parts of the story.

Harrell is an incredibly nice man who looks like a black version of Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka, so I was happy to sit around and stare at his hair for a while.

If someone asks you if you’d like to punch Justin Bieber in the face, the answer is yes.

His voice is so high, it sounds like a ringtone.

No one can be normal living under the circumstances that constitute daily life for Justin Bieber.

We talk music, and he mentions his love for pre-”Black Album” Metallica–”One,” “Fade to Black.” “Those are my jams,” he says.

“I’m 18 years old and I’m a swaggy adult!” he yells. “Come on, swaggy bros!”

His flow is slower than prostate cancer.

And he surely knows what it’s like to be hated by people who’ve never met you. Unlike Kardashian, though, Bieber is legitimately talented.

The new Vanilla Ice hairdo is puzzling…why would Bieber want to go anywhere near that one-hit wonder flame out mess?

Tags: Drew Magary   Justin Bieber

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Tadao Cern sets people up in front of powerful fans and takes their pictures. Instant fun house:

Many more of Cern’s photos are available on Facebook. (via colossal)

Tags: art   photography   Tadao Cern

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Here is Terry Gilliam in 1970 explaining how he made the classic “fig leaf” stop-motion animation for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, in a spare bedroom at his apartment. (via Dangerous Minds)

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Andrew Leonard of Salon interviewed Charles Ferguson (director of Inside Job, the documentary about the unpunished criminals who caused the current financial collapse) about his new book, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America

Ferguson: I recently was at a dinner in New York City and one of the people there was a very, very successful man who is on the borderline between venture capital and private equity. And this guy went into an extended rant about how he was at a disadvantage because he had to pay 15 percent capital gains taxes. When I was first dealing with venture capitalists in a significant way, the capital gains tax rate was 28 percent, and nobody was complaining. Then they got them reduced to 20 under Clinton, and then later 15 under Bush. Plus, they got a rollover provision so if they took the proceeds of a venture capital investment and rolled it over into a new venture capital investment it was tax-free. At that point, we’ve reached nirvana, what more could there be?

But now we’re in this environment where this guy was loudly and aggressively complaining that he has to pay 15 percent to the government. And if that’s where you’re at, then of course you are going to complain about Dodd-Frank. You are going to complain about everything. If you have already got 96 percent of what you want, why not take the remaining 4? That’s where the culture of American finance is right now, and I think it’s really dangerous for the country.

Leonard: Do you find it alarming that even after this huge crisis and even with a lot of populist anger on both the right and the left focused on Wall Street, Mitt Romney is running for president while promising to further deregulate Wall Street and repeal Dodd-Frank, and the polls show him neck and neck with Obama?

Ferguson: That is true, but I don’t think that Romney is going to get votes primarily or even secondarily for that. Most of the votes he is going to get will be because he’s religious, he’s against gay marriage, et cetera, all of these allegedly “values” issues — things like that and wanting to reduce taxes. That’s why he is going to get a substantial fraction of the popular vote. The reason he says he wants to roll back Dodd-Frank is not to get votes, it is to get money.

Corporate Criminals Gone Wild

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Spider Robinson writes:

I just received word that Jay Kay Klein, THE photographer of science fiction
and fantasy, passed away on Sunday morning, May 13, in a Catholic hospice (a
“Francis House”) in Syracuse, NY, at age 80, of esophageal cancer.

This sad news came to me today by phone from Craig Peterson, a local plumber
and a great-souled man, whom Jay Kay originally hired to fix a bathroom
faucet in his longtime home in Bridgeport, NY….and who then, miraculously,
took it upon himself to become Jay Kay’s final friend, exactly what he
needed, helping him with his constrained living situation (Jay Kay’s late
wife had been a serious hoarder), plowing his driveway, and (all gods be
thanked) helping him get his immense and precious collection of over 65,000
negatives of virtually everyone in our field over a 40-year+ period safely
to the University of California’s Riverside Libraries Eaton Collection of SF
& Fantasy. Jeanne would have called Craig a true bodhisattva.

Craig’s been going through Jay Kay’s address book all day, calling people
like Fred Pohl, Bob Madle, and me. He tells me an exhibition and
celebration of Jay Kay’s photos will be mounted at Chicon 7, the 70th World
Science Fiction Convention (Aug 30-Sep 3), by Melissa Conway, the Head
Librarian at Riverside Libraries, who now has charge of the collection.

He just forwarded me by email a copy of the obit notice he wrote up for Jay
Kay. I attach it, and the photo he included of Jay with one of his own
iconic photos of Isaac. (I’m not sure who took it. Craig, I think.) He
also sent particulars for Melissa Conway, which I’ll paste below.

I met Jay Kay at one of Ben Bova’s legendary parties. I am attaching a
photo he took of me–not that there’ll be any shortage of his photos in
BOING-BOING’s archives! It was taken only minutes after I was introduced by
Jim Baen to Robert A. Heinlein, before the 1975 Nebula Banquet at which
Robert was given the first-ever Grandmaster Award. (And just as I’m about
to mail this, Craig sent along another shot I can’t resist including, of Jay
Kay with what appears to be a rare photo of a beardless Samuel R. Delany.)

Craig mentioned that at one point while he was helping Jay Kay shovel
through his wife’s incredible store of hoarded stuff, they found a small
fortune in GM stock. Jay had had no idea it existed, and continued to live
like a man of limited means. God knows what his treasure trove of photos is
worth, even just in dollars.

Science fiction owes Craig Peterson an incalculable debt. It’s only thanks
to his hard work those 65,000 negatives reached the right hands in time. I
exchanged long snailmail letters with Jay Kay twice in the past couple of
years, and knew he was in extremely poor health. He wrote by hand, because,
he said, it hurt his fingers too much to type, and sadly his handwriting was
incredibly bad. But I could tell he badly needed a friend, and made a
couple of unsuccessful attempts to scare up a volunteer who lived near
enough to help. I can’t express how happy I am to know that Fate sent Craig
Peterson to fix Jay Kay’s bathtub faucet. I understand Jay Kay left Craig
his awesome collection of vintage guitars, and I am very glad. He says they
were the topic of the first conversation he and Jay Kay ever had, that day
he came to fix the faucet.

Let’s hoist a glass in memory of Jay Kay Klein, my friends. I never left
his company without a smile on my face. Somebody call Gordy, and Randall,
and Ted, and Isaac, and we’ll all pass the guitar round in his honour.
Science fiction’s most acute and astute eye has closed for the last time.
But what it saw, we have forever, thanks to photography and the kindness of
Craig Peterson.

Jay Kay was one of the gods, when I first entered the field, and he was so
kind to Jeanne and me. She was just crazy about him, and also about his
photos. So am I.

–Spider

CRAIG PETERSON’S OBIT FOR JAY KAY:

Jay Kay Klein, 80, of Bridgeport NY passed away peacefully at Francis House
in Syracuse NY Sunday morning. Jay was a 1953 graduate of Syracuse
University and retired from the General Electric Corporation and Carrier
Corporation. Mr. Klein was well known in the World of Science Fiction
Fandom, both for his eidetic (’photographic’) memory, as well as for his
brilliant work as a photographer. In attending many science fiction
conventions throughout the years, Mr. Klein took photographs of several
thousands conference attendees, including many famous science fiction
authors. He numbered science fiction (or ‘SF’ writers Isaac Asimov, Fred
Pohl and Forrest J Ackerman among his close friends. Recently, 65,000
negatives of photographs spanning the last 40 years of Science Fiction
conventions and other items having historical significance were shipped to
The University of California, Riverside Libraries Eaton Collection of
Science Fiction and Fantasy, the world’s largest ‘SF’ collection. An
exhibition of a selection of Mr. Klein’s photographs will be on display at
Chicon 7–the 70th Science Fiction Convention, Chicago, Illinois, August
30-September 3, 2012. Mr. Klein was predeceased by his wife of 57 years,
Doris (Do you have her maiden name?) Klein on October 5th 2011. Jay has is
survived by his cousin, Rita Globerman, of New Salem, New York. No calling
hours / burial private in Bridgeport cemetery. A celebration of Mr. Klein’s
life is being planned for his friends at the Chicon 7 convention.

Written by Craig Peterson, May 14, 2012/edits and additions Melissa Conway

Melissa Conway, Ph.D.
Head, Special Collections & Archives
P.O. Box 5900
UCR Libraries
University of California
Riverside, CA 92517-5900
951-827-3233
951-827-4673 FAX

Alternate mailing address:
Special Collections & Archives
UCR Libraries
3401 Watkins Dr.
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521

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A dead bird found in a southeastern Turkey village caused a stir when it was found to have a metal ring labeled “Israel” around its leg. Apparently, some were suspicious that the European Bee-eater may have been carrying a spy chip in its beak. From the BBC:

The BBC’s Jonathan Head, in Istanbul, says the regional office of the Turkish agriculture ministry examined the colorfully plumed corpse and assured residents of the village, near the city of Gaziantep, that it was common practice to fit a ring to migratory birds in order to track their movements.

An official at the ministry told the BBC that it took some effort to persuade local police that the little bee-eater posed no threat to national security.

At one point a counterterrorism unit became involved in the case.

“Turkey villagers see Israeli spy in migratory bird“

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