Firehose #100: Ceci Ne Pas Une Vacation
Also: Oh hey what’s going on with the politics and whatnot
Not gonna lie, was all set to take the weekend off, what with me currently experiencing an actual vacation (pictured) for the first time in a thousand years, after a particularly strenuous three-month stretch of travel, television, ticket-hawking, complicated writing assignments, sneks, and the odd self-poisoning. But since our recording-to-releasing system seems to be glitching, and I don’t have the excuse of taking maternity leave during this time of national WTFery, I’ll fire off at least a couple of links here before heading back to the ol’ Hamm’s commercial….
* Oh hey look here’s me on CNN on Tuesday (care o’ the ever-reliable Busty Wimsatt, of course) talking about issues you could have heard two whole unreleased Fifth Column episodes about—the Supreme Court immunity case, and Joe Biden’s accelerating cognitive issues:
* Though the next two episodes you hear from us were recorded before the George Stephanopoulos debacle … (StephaNOPoudebacle?) … you can at least see some proof of life here that there was some professional suffering-through-the-cringe live, which did not automatically devolve into a puddle of Dorito-margarita goo….
* Speaking of people who can’t hold their liquor, Kmele and the entire Foster fam came out to make the Welches’ Fourth of July even more patriotic:
I have … July 4th-related thoughts and reverie re: America, Fuck-Yeah! vs. the bottomless shitshow being dug deeper daily by our political professionals … but you’ll just have to wait for our future episodes!
* Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, Special Dispatch #51, #326, #368, #407, Members Only #184) rang in Independence Day with a very Re-Education-style episode of Honestly, about “what happened in 1968 when President Johnson decided he was not fit for reapplying for his job.” Sez Eli: “He listened to his critics and backed away from the White House, allowing the Democrats an opportunity to stage an open convention to choose their next candidate for the presidency. But why did the party want him gone so badly? And how did this seismic decision work out? It’s a tale of murder, war, and riots that culminated in the most explosive convention in the history of America.” Woo-hoo Chicago!
* I see here on the Chat that there’s a Fifdom listener effort to get a Tel Aviv meet up going this week. Here’s the WhatsApp!
* Also via the Chat (quoting a subreddit) comes the important news that the atrocious 2003 “reality” TV pilot The Celebrity Lookalike Show, in which I was very improbably one of the 12 “finalists” for allegedly looking like Ben Affleck (it’s a long/dumb story, one that I allegedly talked about on Episode #111), is now possible to view here on the Internet. Spoiler alert: This about all you’ll get of me (I hope):
* Speaking of ego-surfing (hey, I need to do it for work!), Moynihan quipped on a recent epi that I am near the all-time record of Bill Maher appearances, and while I’m probably not in the top 100, I did find this pretty comprehensive guesting page that has me at … 16 times! That’s a lot! Very grateful to be invited.
* Comment of the Week comes from Craig Mahoney:
As the resident Walt Disney amateur historian, I would kust like to note that Doritos are anpther one of many, many ubiquitous things we take for granted that can be traced back to Walt, or at least Disneyland, which is where they were invented. In early Disneyland there were many outside contractors and partners who ran food and merchandise. Fritos had a restaurant called Casa de Fritos, and...
" In the early 1960s, an Alex Foods salesman noticed that Casa de Fritos was tossing unused tortillas in the trash at the end of each day. He suggested that the cook cut the surplus tortillas into triangles, deep fry them, and season them in the style of a Zapotec Mexican snack called totopos. The cook took the salesman’s advice and fried up the first batch of what we now know as Doritos. Casa de Fritos offered them to customers free of charge, as an alternative to the free bag of Fritos that came with every meal. The new chips were a hit with Disneyland guests."
Walkoff music is a flat banger I cannot believe I hadn’t used before!
Incoming mail fired some shots at our Comment of the Week.
From: Beloved past guest Gustavo Arellano
Subject Line: re Doritos Zapoteco bullshit
"Craig may be the resident Walt Disney amateur historian, but I'm the resident Mexican food professional historian, so I must take extreme offense to his risible retelling of the history of Doritos, which he obviously found by cobbling together different half-fried narratives instead of the definitive one that I broke in my 2012 little-read masterpiece 'Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.' Fritos did have a restaurant called Casa de Fritos, but Alex Foods ran it, so it wasn't an Alex Foods salesman who suggested workers fry up what became Doritos; it was the Morales family who owned Alex Foods (named after the founder, Alex Morales). Zapotecos have nothing to do with totopos, no matter what Wikipedia may tell Craig, let alone Doritos. How do I know? Because I interviewed the grandson of the founder of Alex Foods, Michael Morales. Hell, the word 'totopos' isn't even Zapotec!
Oh, and this one is for Moynihan, that lover of ethnic humor and immigrant success: For decades, the second and third generation of Morales boys were involved in the Southern California sprint car circuits. The name for their car? The Tamale Wagon, named after how the family first made their fortune. Not a single damn person complained about the name."
I can’t stop laughing at the thought of watching a Biden interview with the close captioning on like in that photo. I just picture some poor schlub frantically trying to type the nonsense coming out of bidens mouth and getting so frustrated he throws the machine out a window.