Will the youth of Knifecrime Island soon be too rotund to take up the blade?

A shocking picture of the way children are gorging themselves on sweets, chocolates and snacks was revealed yesterday. They are getting fat almost twice as quickly as American youngsters as they eat double the amount of sugary and savoury treats…. More than one in three British children aged five to 13 are already overweight or obese. But that figure is predicted to soar at a rate of 2.1 per cent a year through to 2014, far higher than the 1.3 per cent annual rise expected for the U.S.

Fatter than American kids? How is that even possible? Oh, right, a diet full of junk food plus an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Experts have repeatedly warned that the current crop of Malteser-masticating tubbies will be “the first generation to die before their parents as a consequence of obesity,” but perhaps there is hope: Cocaine consumption is way, way up in Britain, with Scotland’s particular love of sticking the stuff up noses helping the U.K. to become Europe’s leading market for the drug. So it’s probably okay if they pack on the extra pounds now. They’ll be losing a bunch of weight in a few years.

The YouTube description: “Chris & I evict a tenant of ours… of course the quickest way to throw shit out is off the balcony.”

by Nilay Gandhi

The more you run, the more it’s gonna chase you. And odds are you look pretty ugly when you run. So quit being afraid of wine!

Remember Franzia? Night Train? Boone’s “What Exactly Grows on This” Farm? Remember the winos in your back alley? There’s a reason they were called that. They drank more wine than anybody. The stuff that the guy who thought his trucker hat was a salt shaker slurped with the leftover Italian beef you gave him twice a week for lunch. Seemed like he had all the answers. So what happened to you?

A few years go by, you’ve got a couple degrees on your armoire, you move to the city. You say and purchase “armoires.” They call you “sir” (men) or agree to mix the Splenda into your beverage (women) at Starbucks. You start eating tapas. You actually understand itemized deductions. And you’re afraid of wine.

You used to listen to Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and you’re afraid of wine.

Maybe because that leatherbound book your server slaps on the table seems to have the same heft as the last term paper you had to write. Except, this isn’t an assignment, and if anyone’s being tested, it isn’t you. It’s your restaurant. Your server. God help you, your sommelier. Yet, just like that term paper, there’s one truth to that wine list you’re so terrified to negotiate: it’s full of baloney.

And it’s meant to be, actually. Because unless you’re lucky enough to eat at a restaurant where the list is one clean, thoughtful page of bottles, with several affordable choices by the glass and maybe even a couple cool cocktails and homemade sodas on the back, the whole point is that you’ll need to admit you know nothing. Good luck having the cojones then to turn down their recommendation. Good luck leaving with your cojones.

It’s easy to convince yourself the wine’s good once you get it, as you sit there wondering what the heck you’re supposed to do with the cork (answer: nothing) and what exactly you should say after the first half-ounce pour as the steward stands there staring at you like you’ve grown an extra head (answer: anything, though I prefer, “Do you do your eyelashes?”). Sparkling water never gets this kind of attention.

But was this really what you wanted, to be bossed around and spend a lot of money to drink something you might not like? Are you enjoying yourself at all?

What you reasonably may not realize is that the big wine list, the ritual, this general sense of unease — you asked for it. It’s not there for them. It’s all there to remind you you’re at a restaurant. You’re eating in public. It’s giving you bang for your buck.

If wine directors had their way, you’d see simpler, often local, small-batch wines (I’ll save that list for another time — in general, if the varietal sounds like a strain of staph, and it’s under $50, order it). These wines are almost always better with food. They’re almost always flat-out better. We’re talking wines from southern France or Loire, Austria, Spanish wines from Washington, the whole of northern Italy. Things with no region at all, labeled vin de pays, IGT, D.O.

Plus, they’re cheap, and no matter how you feel when you have to split the bill on two of your own credit cards at the end of the night, most of these guys aren’t making any money. I’ve had enough after-hours “sessions” with so-called sommeliers to know that after all the blind tastings, service classes, and Aubrac horn corkscrews, they all like to do the same thing: get hypothermically drunk on whatever’s around, eat tacos, and have sex. (Master Sommeliers can do this in reverse order.) It’s the only way I’ve ever seen it done.

Sorry if I’ve shattered your fragile Friday nights, but hopefully you’ll jump through that broken glass. You now have license to walk into any restaurant and toss out half the list. Start with the even-numbered pages; I find this paper useful for kindling.

Almost without fail, the second page of every section is full of bin numbers they’ve got to carry for the rich folks. Here you’ll often find your back-vintage Bordeaux and all that garbage from Napa that’s usually too heavy for your meal. They’re show wines really meant for some cheese, maybe plain buttered pasta, or just drinking barefoot in a cold, concrete cellar. Stop ordering them.

The less you worry about these wines, the less your server has to. You’re doing them all a favor. Before your dad tells you how you’re going to ruin it for him and all his golf buddies, understand that there are most likely only four to six regulars at his favorite restaurant ordering the good stuff. They pay for most of the business. You ordering an ’82 Lafite every third Valentine’s Day does not.

What to do with the rest of the list? Be honest about what you want, and ask. If you don’t know what to say, say you like “esoteric” wines. Or mention what you like to eat. Not the foie torchon and fish egg staircases-not what you’d eat here. Tell them what you eat for lunch everyday. This is who you really are. Pizza? Then they’ve got some dolcetto for you. Lamb shawarma? Peep the pinot and syrah. Fish and chips? Chug this muscadet.

Comfortable spending $50? $25 and under? Good. Because now you’re in the sweet spot. These are the wines that the hot, nerdy redhead you’re talking to actually helped pick out. Odds are, they’re also the ones the staff drinks at family meal.

Now, sometimes you’re just out of luck. You’ve gone through the motions, tried your hardest to be honest, but you’re not getting anywhere. You’ve followed my directions, ordered a wine, and still feel like you just made change in the collection plate. Truth is, some servers are jerks-upsellers and know-it-alls out for a tip they think they very well deserve. Whatever you call them, they (and the owners who encourage them) have no place in this business. They’re the reason you had to read this column in the first place.

So, when everything goes wrong, when in doubt, just ROCK. That’s right; I came up with an acronym for you.

It goes like this:

Riesling.
Oregon.
Costieres (de Nimes).
Kermit Lynch.

There is at least one wine among these four labels on every decent winelist in the world, and the wine almost always go with your food.

â —  Riesling. If you’re completely lost and looking for a white, pick up the most affordable Riesling on the menu, preferably from the Mosel. These medium-bodied whites come in a range of sweetnesses. To play it safe, pick up either the Kabinett or Spatlese. Often, the cheaper it is, the drier (and more appropriate for your food). Whether you’re having salad, grilled mahi, chicken or porchetta, a decent bottle of riesling will invariably get you through your meal.

â —  Then comes Oregon. Yup, the entire state. Because no place in the world makes such a universally food-friendly smattering of reds and whites. Whether a fuller bodied Dundee Hills pinot noir, a lighter, fish-friendly style from a winery like The Eyrie, or an incredible Austrian-influenced “field blend” white, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an occasion when something from Oregon won’t work. They’ve even started making amazing sparkling wine.

â —  Costieres de Nimes, a little off the beaten bath, straddles akimbo on the southern coast of France between the Rhone and western Languedoc. They tend to take the ripe, floral fruit of both regions without the gritty texture. They taste fancy and unabashedly delicious. When you ask for that “esoteric” wine I told you to ask for, this is usually what you’ll get. As particular as it is, it’s the trendy wine among tasting circles right now, the way Spanish garnacha was a few years ago. Which means, in a few years, you either won’t be able to afford it or you’ll never find a decent one again. But right now, they’re all good.

â —  And, lastly, Kermit Lynch. He isn’t a wine at all, actually. He’s just a lovely old man in the middle of Berkeley, California-a man whose life’s mission has been to import well-crafted French wine that he would like to drink. When it comes to importers, few have a palate as generous and welcoming as Kermit’s. It won’t be noted on the menu-you’ll have to ask-but if all else fails, see if they’ve got anything Kermit brings in. Even if they don’t, your server will immediately understand the kind of wine you’re looking for. You might even end up with a free glass of grappa at the end of the night.

And if anyone ever, ever looks at you sideways while you’re choosing a wine, give him the finger-and then leave and go grab a hot beef dip with your beau. The taste of sweet, beefy jus and peppers on your date’s lips is about as good as it’s ever gonna get anyway.

Nilay Gandhi is the proprietor of the excellent wine blog 750 mL; he even gives personalized wine pairing advice on request.

Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor, in this case Gillette; advertisers do not produce the content.

Photos (in order) by dizablah, mastermaq, underexpos and drcorneilus, from Flickr via Creative Commons.

by Mary Phillips-Sandy

Here is everything you need to know about the moon snail epidemic presently raging in eastern Maine.

Moon snails are not twee pearlescent creatures that might rally to the aid of a Disney heroine. Moon snails are vicious nocturnal predators of the Naticidae family. You do not want to encounter a moon snail in a dark alley or mud flat, especially if you are a bivalve.

If you are a bivalve and you encounter a moon snail in a dark mud flat, expect to have a hole bored into your shell faster than you can say whatever it is clams say when they are about to die. Moon snails are equipped with power-drilling probosci and lethal corrosive acid secretions.

There will follow a brief period of being sucked through a hole and eaten alive, without even the dignity of a lemon wedge.

If you are a human and you’ve encountered a semicircular mass of compressed sand on a beach, congratulations! You’ve found a sand collar, which is a deposit of moon snail embryos, thousands of them, just waiting to burst forth from their jellylike egg sacs and feed.

Some bad news, however, if you are a human who appreciates bivalves for lunch or for income: when moon snails go on extended late-night binges they leave precious few clams behind. Up in Lubec, Maine, where clamming is an important industry, moon snail destruction has compounded the woes caused by red tide and depressed seafood prices: current statistics indicate that the Lubec clam harvest, valued at over $560,000 in 2006, is now worth $39,000.

Lubec sits on a high peninsula overlooking New Brunswick in the region known as Down East. The nearest Wal-Mart is an hour away. Once upon a time when sardines were all the rage it was a boom town of canneries; the last sardine cannery in the United States was down Route 1 in Prospect Harbor, and it closed in April. The world ate its fill and moved on to other delicacies. Bacon, I guess, and boneless skinless chicken breasts.

Places like Lubec are typically described as “struggling” but a better word is “trying.” What else can you do when you are a town of 1,500 people on the easternmost spit of land in the continental United States and no one eats canned sardines any more? What do you do when you are fifty or sixty years old and you know, standing there in your waders, that imports make up 80 percent of American seafood consumption? Right now in Lubec there are some bed and breakfasts, some shops, some lobstermen, some artists, people who rake blueberries or make wreaths or repair houses, depending on the season. There are people who go out on the water in the middle of the winter to drag for sea urchins, there are people who’ve figured out how to farm salmon in Cobscook Bay, there’s a small saltworks. You do what you have to do, that’s a fact of life Down East and anywhere in rural America these days, but Jesus H. the last thing you need is a goddamn gastropod eating your livelihood while you sleep.

Or, if you cannot stop the gastropod from eating your livelihood, perhaps the solution is to make eating the gastropod your livelihood. As one optimistic Lubec man told a reporter, “there’s a market for moon snails somewhere in the world.” Indeed there is! According to a sushi restaurant in New Haven, moon snails are a) “considered a delicacy and a natural Viagra in Norway” and b) can be grilled and served with lime juice and soy sauce. Why not? Some genius thought to boil a lobster.

Maine will have to act quickly if it wants to stake a claim in the world moon snail market, though. China and Cameroon are already wholesaling the dickens out of these things.

Mary Phillips-Sandy lives in Portland (not Oregon).

Photo by snackfight from Flickr.

Here’s a timelapse video of wildfires in the mountains around Flagstaff, Arizona, which has had a very hot, bad week this past week. With apologies for taking any joy from the suffering of a faraway city, it’s amazing and beautiful to watch. And with apologies to anyone who is ever seen in my company, I will now admit that I really like the embarrassingly bombastic and melodramatic ballads of the Christian/goth/metal band Evanescence. (That’s their big hit “My Immortal” playing over the video.) Why is a mystery even to myself. Except that they had already nailed the “my-emotional-life-is-so-important-to-the-world” teen-reversion fantasy magic that the Twilight franchise has been taking to the bank way back in 2003. So, credit where credit’s due, I guess.

When you write the headline “Woman in sumo wrestler suit assaulted her ex-girlfriend in gay pub after she waved at man dressed as a Snickers bar,” you are making a promise to readers that what comes below is going to be every bit as dazzling as advertised. Ireland’s Evening Herald keeps that promise.

First, the basic details: “Sandra Talbot (32) assaulted her ex-partner with a bottle she had hidden under her costume in a fit of rage at the George pub, after more than a year of acrimony following their break-up.”

And the personal elements.

Ms Martin told the court she was out for the first time in several months, following the death of her sister from a brain aneurysm.

She had been in an on-off relationship with Talbot for three years which had ended in March 2007. During the evening Talbot, who was wearing an inflatable sumo suit, bumped into her. When she turned around, the accused said to her: “Keep smiling, c**t.”

Eventually, the aforementioned fellow in the Snickers bar costume waved at Martin. When Martin attempted to respond with a wave of her own, Talbot grew agitated. Then, claims Martin, because why not, Talbot ICED her.

Ms Martin said she saw a Smirnoff Ice bottle fly from the defendant’s sleeve. The State solicitor said the prosecution had no evidence that a bottle was used in the assault other than Ms Martin’s word.

The accused was escorted out and had to be asked to partially deflate her costume so she could get out the door.

Talbot’s barrister Diarmuid Collins argued that it would have been impossible for the bottle to have been in her costume and fallen out as described because the suit worked on an airtight seal.

There is too much more for me to keep blockquoting at length, including the part about how Martin allegedly showed up at a Gay Pride parade with her new girlfriend in specially-designed tops, where “one woman’s T-shirt read ‘Who’s sorry now?’, and the other’s stated: ‘Sandra is,’” and Talbot’s claim that Martin had “telling lies about her on social networking websites,” so go read the whole thing yourself. It’s really something.

An important follow-up to Upper West Side Jewish Family Found To Be “Left-Leaning”! Now we learn: New York City Once Not A Home To Just The Super-Rich, Also Full of Drugs! Oh yes. This is an amazing expose of Elena Kagan’s childhood in a Manhattan “long before Starbucks arrived” (seriously; and yes, I do think they mean “before Starbucks was invented”). Also! Did you know that “regulated rents forced many landlords to sell their buildings to tenant cooperatives”? This is a phenomenal look at history, of New York City seen through a blinding glare that obscures the very recent past to only the most vague of shapes.

Capital New York is officially live today.

Jeff Greene, the mega-rich housing market bust profiteer and friend of Heidi Fleiss and Mike Tyson… may actually become a Senator, as this delightful Washington Post profile reveals, because voters are crazy. He saved campaign money by buying his own eight-seater Gulfstream, for the bargain basement price of $23 million. On the plus side, he really hates Ron Howard, so he can’t be all bad.

It’s that magical day of the year, when New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approves ridiculous rent increases! Rent stabilized apartments will only see increases of 2.25% on one-year leases and 4.5% on two-year leases” this time around. One of the tenant representatives on the board actually cried afterward about how terrible it was-and yet landlords are still pissed off. This phenomenally broken system: still broken. Good luck dancing on the tables all night at the Life Cafe NOW.