New York, 7/22/2020 (Note the proper way to write the date!)
Dear Friends Across The Pond,
That shoe is a cake! This pickle is a cake! That bonsai tree is a cake! This cake is a cake! Everything on the Internet is suddenly cake!
Why? Why? Why?
We are shuttered inside due to a worldwide pandemic and our response is … “What if that couch was really a cake?”
OK … I see where this may have started. You’re home, nothing to do, nowhere to go, so you figured you’d experiment with that joint your friend gave you just before lockdown. And you did.
And then your head got a little crowded and a little spacey at the same time. It’s hard to explain. Strange thoughts kept crashing into your head like, “What if that coffee cup was made out of cake? What if my hand was made out of cake? That chair? That clock?”
And then you realized how hungry you were and you decided to bake a cake that looked like the toaster to fool your girlfriend … Boy, that would be funny when she put a slice of toast in tomorrow morning! Except, when you were done, you were so damn starving that you cut into it and ate it.
Fortunately, you filmed the whole cutting ceremony because, well, what is anything in life unless you capture it and put it up on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram?
Call me traditional, but I like my cake to look like cake. Rectangle sheet cakes. Circular ice cream cakes. Rectangle ice cream cakes. Maybe a neat, edible photo of Grandma Sally with all the grandkids on top of that sheet cake (how do they make those edible photos anyway?). Or perhaps a nice note celebrating Laura’s PhD in English like “Congration! You done it!”
Back in the day, here in America, we had ‘Fudgie the Whale’ from Carvel. This was a chocolate and vanilla ice cream creation resembling a sperm whale. We’d get it every father’s day with “To a Whale of a Dad” written on it in frosting. Nobody was fooled that it was an actual sperm whale. Who wants to eat an actual sperm whale for dessert? I don’t think Dad would have enjoyed that.
And that’s my whole argument about these camouflage cakes … these imposter cakes … Eating is not just about taste. We don’t eat blindfolded in the dark with cotton balls in our noses. Eating is a multisensory experience. Your sense of smell and the visual presentation of the meal effect your taste long before the food hits your tongue. They set gustatory expectation, igniting your palate, watering your mouth.
And you want me to eat that shoe? That pile of dog shit on a plate? What the fuck? You’ve just killed dessert for me!
“Congration! You done it!”
Letter from America, part 14: Love and isolation
Letter from America, part 13: Words with an ‘F’
Letter from America, part twelve: Nostalgic fiction and fictional nostalgia
Letter from America, part eleven: I went to camp with Jeffrey Epstein
Letter from America, part ten: Yesterday, yesterday
Letter from America, part nine: Where are your balls, Theresa May?
Letter from America, part eight: Bohemian Rocketman
MMR does podcasts. Check them out on our YouTube channel. I mean here’s one with Ben Diamond!
Modern Media Review Podcast 