Floyd Elliot's Open Salon Blog

Why I Will Never Use the Word "Fuck" On OS Again

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:01:18 -0500

I wasn't going to do this, the, in Open Salon parlance, "flounce." I don't flounce. People who wear tutus flounce, and generally only before the age of five. I stride purposefully toward the nearest exit, stopping only occasionally to brain with a handy beer bottle a random idiot or two standing in my path, my steely gaze fixed firmly on my goal. (Or, you know, the stripper's tatas.) It was my intention to just stop posting. However, neilpaul's eminently classy farewell last week convinced me that I can't simply abandon my blog; I must do so in a way that is classier than that motherfucker ever dreamed of. (Also, if I can piss a few people off on the way out, awesome.) Hence this post, which I feel achieves a degree of class that requires that that word be reconfigured to start with a "k:" this post is all about leaving with "klass."

All of which is to say that this will be my last post on OS. Despite my torrid three-way affair with Kerry Lauerman and Joan Walsh, a relationship that ended in despair, madness and Kerry's abdication as OS editor, the reasons aren't personal but professional. In the seven or so months that I've been posting on OS, I've done exactly no real work, written no fiction nor anything other than blog posts, nor felt a need to. I have not submitted my novel anywhere, nor felt a need to. I've done nothing to further my writing career, nor felt a need to. I've had fun writing these essays, but they're not professional writing; nobody's going to pay me for this stuff. Probably nobody's going to pay me for my novel or the short stories I have in mind or the second novel I'm about to start on, but there's a better chance of that than of anything coming of my work here, which also takes a great deal of time and energy, since I, OCDed as I am, never let anything go out without three or four or, you know, 20 readthroughs. That is time and energy I could be applying to my real work. (Or to drinking and masturbating; either way, it's a win.) I am not a blogger, and I don't want to be; I am a fiction writer. Or, at any rate, I have been, and I will be again.

So, I'd like to thank the wonderful writers and readers of OS (the rest of you can of course and as usual kiss my whole entire ass) for your support and encouragement. If in the course of my writing here, I have caused but one person to strike a loved one in anger, it will all have been worth the while. I will be leaving my posts up for awhile; I don't really see the point of taking them down, and it's a shitload of work to copy each one, so they may stay here forever. (Laziness, not love, conquers all.) Oh, and also, someone might want to read them--right, yeah, that too.

In the immortal words of Edward R. Murrow, I'm just a guy that makes shit up. Oh, wait, no, that was me who said that. Murrow said, "Good night, and good luck." So, that too. To all of you.

Well, most of you.

By the Numbers

Tue, 5 Jan 2010 12:01:30 -0500

Numbers speak to me. Not in a numerologic or paranoid-schizophrenic kind of way: I don't think numbers reveal my character (it's my reckless disregard for explosives-handling safety that does that) or the secrets of the universe (that'd be season 2 of Buffy) or the details of the Illuminati plot (check out the 1905 Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 17, Fatimites to Flatulence, and decide for yourself). No, I just find certain numbers pleasing, congenial. I notice when a digital clock shows 1:11, 11:11 or 5:55. I'm queer for 5s, so 5:55 on May 5th catches my eye; I hope I happened to look at a clock at 5:55 on May 5th, 2005, since if I make 5:55 on May 5th, 2055, I'll probably just yell querulously, "Hey, you 5s! Get off my clock!" (I dumped a girlfriend who liked 12:34s; how could I be expected to deal with that kind of perverted shit, you know?) Once, speaking on the phone in a crowded cubicle-farm with a headhunter and needing to convey the number "125" obscurely, I kept repeating, "5 cubed! 5 to the 3rd!" I suppose if the guy hadn't been innumerate (and illiterate), he'd have had a real job.

Today I am celebrating--well, having--my 50th birthday. (That's 2x5², not by the way.) I've been preparing myself for this day since I turned 49. Besides numerical distinction and bodily-decay bullshit--mysterious aches, bi-fucking-focals (I'm lobbying the FDA to make that term official), the profusion of nose- and ear-hair that requires me to own an array of machetes--50 resonates with me for another reason: it was the last age Dead Dad attained before he earned his adjective. Two weeks after turning 50, Dead Dad locked himself in his car near Stillwater Park on Miami Beach and blew his brains out. (He was a crack shot; it was a small target.) I don't know who found him, but I sometimes imagine it was some kid on his way to Little League. If so, I expect he was off his game that day.

I was 18 and in the midst of rehearsals for The Merchant Of Venice, which I was co-producing, directing and playing Shylock in, when I got the weeping call from my mother. My co-producer drove me down to Portland International (they had a weekly flight to Montreal) and I flew to Miami, where for three days I watched my mother argue with the rabbi who'd prohibited my father's interment in consecrated ground (she claimed Dead Dad had not committed suicide, despite the, you know, gun in his hand in a locked car) (those crafty CIA bastards), heard a bunch of people I didn't know tell me how sorry they were for my loss (I nodded solemnly, hoping my actors were at least running lines while I was gone) and felt the sweat-warm rain soak my ill-fitting suit as I stood in the boneyard, the location of which I did not, sadly, note for future grave-pissing purposes. Afterward, the morticians drove me to the airport in the limo, which, okay, was kind of cool, though they kept the liquor locked up.

When I got back to Portland, what I needed most was to tell my co-producer the joke that had been running through my head the whole time. It was way-inappropriate.

So in two weeks, I will have outlived Dead Dad. During this past year I've contemplated my achievements, or lack thereof. They are damned few, if you go by the numbers. I squandered my early promise as a writer. I am not famous or rich, powerful or irresistible to women; I have not invented, discovered or created anything of lasting or even fleeting value. In my day job, I make rich people slightly richer. I raised two good (well, mostly; q.v. sub, re butter), smart kids, but, shit, they were, like that horrendous flour with baking powder mixed in, pretty much self-raising. My cholesterol is good and I do work out frequently.

I am unlikely to follow Dead Dad's sterling example. Things are okay, and even if they weren't, they get better. (Then they get worse, and better again, endlessly, until you achieve a ground-state equilibrium.) (Hee! See what I did there? Ground-state?) (Oh, shut up.) But I have been keenly aware of this date, and have been doing my damnedest to make it the Bestest Most Specialest Birthday Ever. I intended to finish it thrilled with my romantic life, fulfilled by my writing and having had the perfect celebration with family and friends, then possibly acrobatic sex, possibly with Tori Amos. Instead, I'm single and already bone-weary of dating; I'm bored with blogging and have not started to do all that "real" writing that I'd planned; and I could not even celebrate the way I hoped. (Tori! Call me! There's still time!) This essay will not, as I'd planned and hoped, be the best piece I ever write. Plus, my kids still leave the fucking butter out. It's Plugras, you little shits! That stuff doesn't grow on trees. (It grows, in fact, in cows.) Refrigerator! Three fucking feet away! Auuuggggghhhh!

But this morning, making the bed, I had an epiphany. (As we Elliots say, I got piphed off.) (And a day early too.) It was a simple one, and a good thing too, given my utter failure to comprehend complexity. (I needed extensive facial reconstruction surgery that time I opened all those boxes of cats, shouting, "Fuck you, Schrödinger!") I've granted this day significance, and I've insisted it proceed as planned, by the numbers. I've made it exceptional in my mind, but in fact it is like all the other days in my life, some better, some worse, but each day just another day. You don't get the life you ask for; you get the life you get. Either you enjoy that life as best you can, with all its limitations and frustrations, or you are miserable. If you choose misery, it's a good bet you would have been miserable even had you gotten the life you asked for. If this were the best essay I ever wrote, I'd probably stop writing essays, which might be a big win for essay-writing and maybe for me too, and may one day happen, but not today. It's just another essay.

Sure, I feel a sense of incompleteness, of things undone, but so what? That's just my life, and your life, and the human condition, and probably also the gerbil condition and the cockroach condition. (Squish! "Aaaauuuuuggghhhh! I should've eaten that guy's Snickerdoodles and mated in his ear! Oh, wait, I did mate in his ear...") I'll keep trying to better my life, to publish my first novel and write my second novel and the short stories that are buzzing in my head (that or the cockroaches are mating in my ear again), to meet someone crazy enough to want to spend my declining years with me, to get a reservation at my favorite restaurant (the one with the genius chef who can't take reservations to save his fucking life, the name of which I will not divulge because who needs more reservation-competition?), to do things by the numbers.

But in the end, they are just numbers, fun to notice, devoid of meaning, and the number of your days is the number of days in which you grab and hold on to your life as it, runaway train, careens past you.

Happy birthday to me, and to you.

My Top 10 Things About Which I Do Not Give a Fuck

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:12:53 -0500

#1: Top 10 Lists. With all the top-10 lists proliferating on the Interwebs--top 10 movies of the decade, top 10 books of the year, top 10 numbers between 1 and 10--I think it's important--to me, of course--that I don't give a fuck about any of these things. I mean, sure, I care about what I think are the top 10 books of the decade, but I could not possibly give less of a shit about what you think the top 10 books of the decade are, not, at any rate, without extremely expensive specially-designed giving-less-of-a-shit apparatus. Ordering things into top 10s, while it satisfies a certain desire for neatness and finitude, ignores the fact that in some categories--top 10 most fucktarded Republicans, for example--there really needs to be a top-1,000,000 list, while in some categories--most rational Faux News on-air personality, just e.g.--the list is empty. Plus if you order your list the way I have, from 1 to 10, those from-10-to-1 assholes will come around and fuck you up.

#2: Tiger Woods and Charlie Sheen--No, Wait, Make That Tiger Fucking Woods and Charlie Fucking Sheen. Seriously, are either of these guys US Senators? Did they vote for or against the healthcare bill? No? THEN WHO THE FUCK GIVES A FUCK??? "But, Floyd, they're public figures blah blah bliditty blah. And also? Blah." Seriously, dude, go justify your disgusting prurient interest in people who have done far better than you in the Lottery Of Life somewhere the fuck else, because I don't give even a fuck so submicroscopic that a scanning electron microscope couldn't detect it. You want to know whether or not Tiger's a tiger in the sack, you go fucking fuck Tiger your own self, tiger, and save me having to read and hear about this idiocy on every news outlet in the fucking Western Hemisphere.

#3: Reality Television Assholes Of (Almost) Any Description. Seriously, if you mention that Survivor guy again, I will fucking hurt you. I. Don't. Care. I mean, I like Top Chef, a show that places artistry at the foreground, but competition shows for which the only criterion for winning is...winning? Do please allow me to opine that these shows not only waste the substance of network television's dwindling resources, but that they are a carbuncle on the increasingly carbuncular ass-cheek of humanity. And also? They make Baby Jesus cry. They suggest that triumphing over our fellow poor sods is the onliest way to distinguish ourselves from the vast baa-ing herd that our corporate overlords have rendered us into. Oh, and incidentally: that's just the message that our corporate overlords would like us to receive. Cooperation? Community? A public space for artists and all the others who don't fit a corporatist schema? BZZZZZZZZTTTTTT! You're off the fucking island!

#4: Sports. Seriously, I know I am less of a man for believing this, but these are just games, you know? When your team loses, no one will die. (Although that would catch my interest, and is also the foundation of my own soon-to-be-unveiled sport, DeathBall!™) (Motto: "You can't spell DeathBall!™ without a ! Or a ™, because our lawyers are like fucking blood-crazed piranhas.") (Yeah, it's a little long for the side of a bus, but that's one of the kinks we're working out, along with hygienic disposal of the losing team's charred bodies.) (I'm thinking an intensive advertising campaign: "Human Flesh: the other other white meat.") How is sports--the outcome of games that have no relationship to anything real--news? For god's sake, people fucking watch golf on television. The only thing more boring than playing golf--which you'd need a large team of especially wild horses to drag me to do--is watching other people play golf. How sad and boring must your life be that you would descend to watching other people not get exercise? And why are sports more important to many, perhaps most, people, than issues that directly affect their lives, like healthcare, corporate greed or global warming? It's a distraction, a sleight of hand our corporate masters run to prevent us from toppling their lofty towers, that obviates the need for them to give us even a token of a living. We're one down on the Romans: we've got circuses, but no bread.

#5: Megan Fox, Paris Hilton Or Any Other Celebretard. These people are celebrities because they're...celebrities? I'm agitating my wash by putting it on top of my head while I shake that selfsame head. I include in this list people who used to do stuff and then died. Yo, Mikey! Yo, Farrah! Couldn't possibly care less about you! Have a nice death!

#6: Any Movie With More Explosions Than Lines Of Dialog. Talking to you, here, Transfuckingformers I or II. Plus you've got Megan Fox (q.v., supra, re celebretards) in that piece of shit, and that more or less ensures that I'm falling into a deep coma-like sleep as soon as you mention it, in which state you could steal my iPhone, and that's happened to me enough this year. I mean, I like movies with shit blowing up as much as any psychopath or 12-year-old boy (I know: same thing), and Avatar kind of rocked the whole entire house, but that's because it actually took some time to get you involved with the characters--or manipulate you emotionally; same thing--before it started in to 'splodin'. I know that the "Blow 'Em Up Real Good" flicks cost big bucks and are therefore of interest to the industry, but that doesn't explain why they should be of interest to anyone else.

#7: Sarah Jessica Parker. No good reason; really just on general principles.

#8: Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Or Indeed Any Shit On the CW. Buffy would have staked every last bitch-vamp on TVD in the first five minutes of the first episode, while they were still practicing looking broody and soulful. (She'd been there, done that, and she was using the t-shirts for cleaning rags.) Word to the CW: Buffy succeeded because it appealed to us elderly types too. Oh, and also? It wasn't boring as shit.

#9: Bitch-Ass Traders, Financial Commentators and Investment Bankers Whining About Socialism. Hey, Cramer, remember how you said the market would crater? Hey, dumbass on CNNFN (I can't be bothered to look up his dumbass name), remember how you ranted from the floor of the Chicago Board Of Trade that the housing crisis was the fault of loser borrowers? Oh, and do you all remember how there was going to be a Great Depression? Well, apparently our socialist President (who is rather to the right of me) managed to prevent that, huh? No screaming tirades about what a kick-ass job he did? Thought not. Also? Shut the fuck up. Forever. The Feds should have confiscated every last penny of the profits you would never have made without TARP funds, you dumbfucks.

#10: All the Many Many Assholes Whose Acquaintance With Reason Is Tenuous At Best. Birthers, of course, for whom no evidence is good enough, and global warming deniers, ditto. Those who blame all our current woes on the President who's been in office for less than a year, rather than the dick who was there for eight. (No, he's not moving fast enough and he's doing some things I think are flat-out wrong. I'm sure you would do much much better; sadly no one voted for you, 'k? Perhaps you could run next time and see how you do.) Tea-baggers (hee!) and Town Hellers. I will say that one group of these morons does strike a chord with me: looking at these fuckwits, I too find it hard to believe that we evolved from apes.

All the Joys (And Peaces) Of the Holidays

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:12:13 -0500

Ah, the holidays: children, their faces alight with joy, joining their parents in celebrating a season of peace, stores and our televisions pealing carols of joy and hymns of peace, and bell-ringers on every corner, ringing out melodies of…wait for it, wait for it…a little more…it's almost here…joy and peace. In this season of, yes, joy and peace spreading throughout the world like a virulent fungal plague it is good to remember that some of us, most notably me, hate joy and peace and wish you would all just shut the fuck up about it. I suspect that many of you secretly agree with me, because of how the suicide rate spikes around the holidays. Of course, those people who have made the ultimate statement about how much they hate the holidays no longer agree with me, because of how they're dead. Who will speak for those who nobly expressed their disdain for and disgust with the happiest time of the year by offing themselves? Only I, and maybe that chick played on television's Ghost Whisperer by Jennifer Love Hewitt's dinners.

Yes, Virginia: Jennifer Love Hewitt does have some mighty big dinners.

Also, if Blow Reilly, Glenn Blech and His Lardship Limbaugh are right and there is a war on Christmas, I want to sign up. Seriously, I have my own flamethrower.

Consider children, certainly among the least appealing of the many unappealing aspects of this season, and their theoretically alight-with-joy faces. Look around the next time you're passing a toy store (running past, in my case, eyes closed and fists aflail); that is not joy you see on their faces, bunkie; that's sheer unadulterated avarice, the kind of greed you're not likely to see on the face of any other creature who does not manufacture crystal meth, spend TARP funds on his executive suite or trade T-bill futures on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. If that child were larger and you got between him or her and whatever useless, annoying, degrading or just oddly disturbing piece of shit his/her little pals and the media have told her/him (yes, we're talking about a hermaphrodite child here) he/she just has! to! have! on this most joyous of holidays, he/she would fuck you up, my friend. (That's why I don't feel so guilty about trampling the little sociopaths.) (Although if trends in childhood obesity continue, the trampling will soon be on the other big fat foot.) The only people more miserable than these adorable little crotchfruit are their parents, for whom the perfect gift might be this little beauty. (A sniper air-rifle: when Ralphie grows up, he's not going to shoot his eye out; he's going to shoot someone else's eye out.) Run, little Mary, Joey and/or Sarah! Daddy's got a gun! "Oh, it's not a real gun, officer; it's a BB gun; I was just funning the little'uns. Little Oxycontin! Stop playing with your eyepatch! That scab where your eyeball used to be ain't ever going to heal if you keep pickin' at it!" That look of abject terror on a child's face, or where his face used to be: that's the real meaning of Xmas right there.

Also, if your kids are anything like mine--and I thank god every moment of every day that they're not--they will have forgotten whatever you gave them in like 15 minutes--forgotten it as thoroughly as if they had gone back in time and killed its grandfather--and will be playing with the boxes that shit came in out in the back yard the rest of the day. Whee! Expensive-toy boxes are so much more fun than Alpo boxes from the supermarket!

It has not escaped my attention that some people claim to enjoy holiday music, and I suppose it's possible; somebody, probably the very same somebodies, buys Celine Dion CDs and goes to Mariah Carey concerts. (And for the sake of fairness, please allow me to opine: Mariah Carey too has some mighty impressive dinners.) (Hey, Virginia? It's way past your fucking bedtime. Please leave Daddy alone with his "medicine.") You know something? There are also people who insert needles into their clitorises and/or penises for fun (probably that annoying hermaphrodite kid again when he/she grows up), but that doesn't mean every fucking store and television commercial has to play back for us what it sounds like when someone does so. (In case you're curious, it sounds a lot like, "AAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH, I'VE INSERTED NEEDLES IN MY PENIS AND/OR CLITORIS, AAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!") Now, I enjoy saccharine virtually melody-less music as much as the next guy likes being disemboweled and his entrails fed to wolverines, but could we limit the playing of this music to, say, places where I might never be? Wal-Mart, for example. Seriously, Wal-Mart, play the fuck out of "The Little Drummer Boy." Play it every fucking second your doors are open, and implant chips in your customers' heads (not that most of them don't already have them, generally placed there by Fox News or the RNC--how else to explain Sarah Palin?) that keep playing it while they sleep, shit, multiply like fruit flies and buy guns to blow the fuck out of one another. But keep that shit out of my local wine emporium, or I might not be responsible for my actions. Well, not that I'm all that responsible for my actions at the best of times, but I could get way less so, especially with all the firepower available to me at Wal-Mart; where do you think I got the flamethrower? I am, as always, just sayin'.

(I know: I just claimed never to have been in Wal-Mart and that I purchase my weaponry there. Silly readers: that's what the Interwebs are for: never having to go into a Wal-Mart. And of course, now and forever, for porn.)

(Oh, and speaking of "The Little Drummer Boy," did two people ever look less comfortable in one another's presence than Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing that song together on some long-ago television special? Exactly how many 'ludes did Bowie drop to achieve that perfectly-glazed demeanor? And what military-grade CIA hallucinogens were the writers and producers on when they thought of pairing those two artists in a duet? I cannot imagine that anyone before or since ever thought, "Hey, you know who'd do an awesome duet of a Christmas song together? That 'White Christmas' guy and Ziggy Stardust!")

Another holiday thing that just affects me like chewing aluminum foil (which I do on a regular basis, because it makes me look tough): bells. Fucking bells. I totally get Poe's annoyance with the "tintinnabulation of the bells bells bells." Why bells at Christmastime? Did Jesus play the bells? I think not. If Jesus had played the bells, he would not have gotten a following of (mostly) loyal apostles (12 out of 13 ain't bad); he would have gotten regularly and brutally thrown in the Sea of Galilee. Although I suppose it is possible that the Romans crucified him precisely because he played the bells. "Hey, who should we crucify for the holidays?" they might have asked one another, only in Latin, because of how pretentious they were. "Dude, how about that bell-ringing guy?" (Dude, from the Latin dudus, meaning "dude.") "Yeah!" Thus was a tradition born, one that 2000 years later led to my severely wounding a Salvation Army guy, then throwing his ass in Lake Michigan.

So this year I shall celebrate Christmas as I do every year: alone, drunk and masturbating, probably while looking at pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt's dinners. (Or possibly Mariah Carey's. This Xmas, like all Xmases, I shall thank god for the Interwebs, which has, I reiterate with true joy, given us the gift of cheap and abundant porn.) Should good fortune come my way and the sidewalk outside my condo be blessed with carolers, I will welcome them as they were welcomed in the middle ages, by pouring a cauldron of boiling oil down on them. (Oh, how their screams of agony make me chuckle. I guess I'm just a sentimental fool after all.) And should anyone wish to join me in a suicide pact, I am agreeable. You go first.

Seasonings Greetings

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:12:34 -0500

Cross-posted on Gourmet Gourmand Glutton.

If you've spent much time in Chicago fine-dining restaurants, you may have noticed an intriguing fact (well, it's intriguing if you're me, and, given the size of my readership, for all practical purposes you are): they don't put salt and pepper shakers on the table. This is not the case in New York or San Francisco or New Orleans, only here. I have to say, I like this; I think it shows a becoming arrogance: your chef is telling you, I'm in charge here; I know how to season your food. (And may I add: bee-yotch, he goes on. He's kind of a dick, this chef in my head.) This is a risky move; far safer is the route proposed by the woman I used to call the Not-Girlfriend (because of how she was not my girlfriend) one time when I had overseasoned some seared scallops I'd made for her: barely season, and let the diner decide how much or how little salt he or she wants. Personally, I regard this as weak-kneed wimpiness. Take a stand, damn it! Your food should reflect who you are, should taste like you. (Well, not like every part of you, because, well, feet.) (And of course, ass.) Some people won't like it, but the hell with them. I've never been in a place where they've been less than cordial about bringing salt and pepper if asked, but the ideal is: you shouldn't have to ask. The chef should have taken the risk of seasoning appropriately to bring out all the other flavors in the food. Because that's what salt does: it opens up your tastebuds and opens you to all the nuances of the dish. That's why, no matter how many herbs or spices you dump into a recipe, if it doesn't have salt, it will still taste bland.

My daughters and I went over to try Blue 13 a few weeks ago, and I had high hopes; after all, this was a place that advertised its "rock and roll" sensibility, whatever the hell that means, and had a dish on the menu called "steak and eggs on acid." Sadly, as happens so often with fine-dining restaurants, nothing lived up to the hype; the only flavor in the crispy pork belly was kimchi, and it too was bland (I know: bland kimchi; that's just wrong, and I think maybe against the laws of god and man), the truffled mac and cheese was watery and tasteless and the steak-and-eggs not so much on acid as on some form of mild painkiller--ibuprofen, perhaps--or possibly a placebo. They, like most everything else, pretty much lacked all flavor; I say "most everything else" because the short rib, which was undercooked for a braise, did have flavor, a weird and unfortunate flavor, slightly reminiscent of wet dog or skunky beer. And everything, every! damn! thing! we tried was desperately, hopelessly underseasoned. I don't think of a "rock and roll" sensibility as "lacking in flavor," but perhaps they're thinking of their favorite "lite rock" station when they use that phrase. Yeah, baby! Bring the Air Supply! Party on, though not past 9:30.

I mention one more disappointing fine-dining restaurant not because I'm a particular devotee of applying cudgels forcibly to defunct equines, but because Blue 13, like most other Chicago fine-dining establishments, does not put out salt and pepper on the tables. But here's the thing: if you're not going to make salt and pepper readily available, you must be bold, and damn near perfect. That was my objection to Blue 13: pictures of tattoo art on the walls or not, there was no sense of boldness there, no sense of risk-taking. Mungeing together steak, pierogies and wasabi is not taking a risk if the steak, the pierogies and the wasabi all taste the same, and if the wasabi has no kick at all. Sometimes if you are bold you will fail, put too much or too little salt in your food, but there's no risk without the chance of failure. Julia Child, one of my culinary heroes, never suggested, "Put a little less salt in; the people you're cooking for will add their own" or, "You know, that might be a little too much butter for some people..." She dropped butter in by the handful--more even than Jacques Pepin apparently could handle on occasion, and he's French, for god's sake--and attempted, not always successfully, to achieve the perfect level of seasoning. Anything less is an abrogation of responsibility, throwing your hands up and saying to your diners, "Ah, well, you go ahead and do it."

Balls! Take a stand, and if you screw up, take the blame, but don't push your job as a cook off on the diner. Well-behaved women, it is said, do not make history, and self-deprecating chefs do not make tasty food. (Well, I do, but I'm only self-deprecating in my blog.) Cooking is art, not color-by-numbers.