Every Monday in this space I pick something to rant about. Today, however, I'm at a loss.
I did want to thank Leslie Brenner for bringing up the growing "we don't take reservations" trend, which I find annoying...although I understand the value to a restaurant's bottom line. I thought, too, about asking Jerry Jones (indirectly) why his people forgot to attach cup holders to the seats at Cowboys Stadium.
Without cup holders, there's nothing to do with the empties but chuck 'em at Andriy Shevchenko. Of course, I may have been seated in the lone convenience-free section of the facility. And it is a great place to watch football (meaning soccer).
This morning I sorta embarked on a mini-rant regarding misuse of the term "review."
This was in response to a blog post comment by The Big Guy, who rather
innocently slipped the word into his thoughts about Lisa Petty's First
Look piece. To me, a review requires several visits, concentration and
a willingness to suspend your personal likes and dislikes. It's a
formal process in which the critic assesses how well a restaurant hit
its goals, keeping in mind such things as traditional technique, the
always ongoing "fusion" of ideas, ingredients, balancing of
flavors...blah, blah, blah.
But the current trend, fostered by sites like Yelp (not meaning to pick
on them, the site just comes to mind), is to consider "I just ate here
and I liked it" commentary as reviews. Even some of our own people
think this way.
Probably nitpicking on my part. Still, I'd never comment on a movie and call it a review. Sure, I have opinions...
Which brings me to another aspect of blog commenting. Under the piece
about Partida tequila last week, someone using the pen name "Partida
Sucks" declared "this tequila is shit"--hardly a clever comment and
obviously a difficult opinion to support, given the generally rave
reviews of the product. Now, I understand it probably loses something
if downed quickly with a lick of salt and bite of lime. But PS gave no
indication of being a disappointed frat boy--no indication of anything,
really.
Partida is a very good tequila. Probably not to everyone's taste, as it
lacks smokiness, but definitely not "shit." Maybe the owner poisoned
young PS's budgie, who knows. Or maybe PS has a vested interest in
another brand.
Anonymity and blogging has been debated before in various forms, so
that's not my purpose. One of the things I appreciate about our regular
commenters is their willingness to spell out what they're thinking, why
they like/don't, agree/disagree with a story. The validity of any
comment posted by a screen name depends upon the person's reasoning. To
label something "shit" is meaningless. To say "it's shit because..."
adds to the discussion.
If the person indeed hiding a vested interest, however...well, there's no way to stop that ruse.
Guess that's why I appreciate Bread Winners and Jay Jerrier, both of
whom have the balls to identify themselves in comments posted on
various web sites.
Found something to rant about, after all.
