Cooking the Books, with Emily Gould: Obsolete Methods of Making Cookies and Popcorn, with Anna Jane Grossman

Cooking the Books, with Emily Gould, was shot and edited by Val Temple. This week’s guest, Anna Jane Grossman, is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. (Previous episodes are here.)

We are mercifully approaching the end of the Christmas music season! Just a couple more days and you don’t have to think about “Silver Bells” for another year. But I’ve been thinking: When’s the last time we got a new Christmas song, one that accurately reflects the way we live now? Not for a long time, right? So I went and wrote one just now. Hopefully it will join the pantheon of holiday favorites, particularly if someone bothers to set it to music. Anyway, enjoy! I hope you find a little bit of yourself in it. And Merry Christmas!

The traffic sucked, your flight was late
Your luggage got “delayed”
It’s clear we’re near the special date
That makes us all afraid

Yes, the family’s all together for the holidays
Getting loaded just to fake some Christmas cheer
Sulking in the shadow of the fire’s blaze
Hoping that we’re dead this time next year

Mother’s in the kitchen whipping up a snack
Crying about how you never call
Father’s sneaking whiskey in the shed out back
Wishing that that bitch would hit the mall

Sister isn’t happy with the gift you gave
“Just another lousy pair of slacks”
Grandma has decided that she won’t behave
Listen to her rant about “the blacks”

Yes, the family’s all together for the holidays
Getting loaded just to fake some Christmas cheer
Sulking in the shadow of the fire’s blaze
Hoping that we’re dead this time next year

Brother’s looking anxious and depressed again
Just the way he does each year this day
Just two simple words would make things right, but then
He’d have to tell your mom and dad he’s gay

Uncle Eddie’s leaning drunk against the kitchen hutch
Like he has been since you were a tot
And even though you both recall that one bad touch
He prays to God each year that you forgot

Yes, the family’s all together for the holidays
Getting loaded just to fake some Christmas cheer
Sulking in the shadow of the fire’s blaze
Hoping that we’re dead this time next year
Yes, we’re hoping that we’ll all be dead next year

So, possibly the most secretive billionaire in the whole world, a man that hundreds of reporters both in the finance world and the art world have begged for interviews, turns out to have once actually done one, the Post discovers. Downside: It was 18 years ago. Upside: It was with Cristina! YOU KNOW, Cristina Saralegui, the insane Cuban talk-show lady who you can’t turn off even if you don’t speak Spanish and you just happen to be drifting past Telemundo or Univision or whatever. She is like an Almodovar drag queen. So during one brief magical moment, Cristina did a show in English, which I vaguely remember even, and at that time, one of her guests was Stevie Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire behind SAC Capital who buys million-dollar art like it is dime-store candy. He is basically the mythical unicorn of the art world, unless you are Saatchi or Gagosian or whatever, in which case you are all up in him 24/7.

So the chat-show segment has, hmm, mysteriously appeared in this world at this date in time just “a week after [his long-ago first wife] Patricia filed a shocking federal lawsuit against her ex-husband, accusing him of cheating her out of millions and alleging he confessed to insider-trading activities.”

The best part about this video is that it had to have come through a deposition, or through something Patricia kept in a vault from producers, or her lawyers went and somehow dragged it out of the show’s vaults, because it has the original time-codes on the video.

[UPDATE: Lord, never write about these things before coffee. Obviously this didn’t come out in discovery, because the case is too new. The timing quite clearly suggests that this is something the wife dug out, mostly likely with the participation of Cristina’s people. Writes a smart person: “However Patricia/her lawyer/her investigator got the video, it wasn’t through legal process in this case. I would imagine Cristina would be happy to get the English language press… although I am sure given the content of the tape, Patricia got it a long long time ago and probably plays it once a day getting madder and madder.”]

I have no idea how Patricia’s claims are showing up in court now; obviously her complaints are time-barred but, since she’s pursuing this under RICO, if there was an active cover-up on the part of Cohen and his business partners, her claims of fraud and insider trading will be allowed. What a mess.

But my real question is: how did this happen? Was Cristina the person who convinced Stevie Cohen of the perils of ever doing press, thereby frustrating an entire generation of journalists? How did he get booked on this show at all? It’s sort of like JD Salinger having done a “What R U Wearing?” spread in US Weekly.

What was the worst song of this terrible decade? Here’s a very plausible candidate.

“I think Gen X is a very sarcastic generation, and sarcasm doesn’t really translate online. Gen Y has grown up interacting with people online. They’ve developed different social skills, a different rapport. Being sort of dry, sarcastic, snarky — that’s not going to get you any friends online. Social currency is only built around positive interactions.”
-Allison Mooney, vice president of emerging trends at media consulting firm Mobile Behavior, explains the new spirit of bonhomie on the Web.

Good morning! “The last Indochinese tiger in China was killed and eaten by a man who was yesterday sentenced to 12 years’ jail.”

Jews actually monstrous to everyone, Jew-hating paper grudgingly admits.

Hello! Thanks for doing this. If you have questions, or something doesn’t make sense, drop us a line. Ideally what you’ll email back to us will be one document, divided into the following six sections. Let’s begin!

SECTION ONE: DEALING
Here are three things from our inbox (authors’ names and the like are redacted). Directions: Please respond to each in the manner you feel is best!

Next: stories!

SECTION TWO: FUCK/MARRY/KILL
Here are three stories! Directions: Give one story a fast and dirty run-through to publish right away online. Reject one story. Give one story (presumably your favorite!) the best possible in-line edit for review by the author prior to publication. Include headlines on the two you don’t kill. And tell us briefly why you chose each for its fate. Pro tip: If you format these in Word, you probably should have your smartquotes and ordinals turned off, otherwise you are setting yourself up for HTML disasters.

Piece One [doc file download]

Piece Two [doc file download]

Piece Three [doc file download]

Please note: These are pieces under consideration by actual contributing writers; please accord them privacy and do not distribute, quote or discuss, thank you!

Next: plans, thinking and story time!

SECTION THREE: GOING FORWARD
Between January 1 and March 1, what are some things that should be on The Awl’s publication calendar? And how do you think they should they be executed?

SECTION FOUR: FREE TIME
If you had 30 peaceful minutes of uninterrupted solitude, what do you really, actually most feel like learning more regarding to write about today?

SECTION FIVE: SCHEMING
With sponsored editorial content, a lot of times brands and companies will come to us and say: “we want to reach x audience,” or “we want to reach people who care about y.” And then we craft something that — most importantly — we actually want to publish, independent of the sponsorship, and take that back to them.

Can you come up with:

• two one-off ideas for a brand that wants to reach young men between 24 and 36;

• a five-part series (by the same author or many, directly related or an array) for a company that wants to reach people who care about “fitness and healthy lifestyles.”

SECTION SIX: STORY TIME
Tell us a little story about the people who raised you, please.

Thanks! That is actually the end.

by John Del Signore

I was nodding off at my desk, high up in the airtight offices of Deutsche Bank, across the street from the World Trade Center, when the big call finally came through.

I had been temping at Deutsche Bank for about a month, on assignment through one of the employment agencies that used to keep our city’s offices humming with human resources. My supervisor had been out of town for the whole month, and my sole task was to take down his telephone messages and read them back when he called in. The period concluding that sentence also punctuates the full extent of my duties.

My daily routine went a little something like this:

1. Report at nine.
2. Retrieve a cup of complimentary juice from the commissary and withdraw into my cubicle.
3. Read the paper until I would catch myself falling asleep, and then walk off the lethargy by taking the scenic route to the men’s room.
4. Finish the paper in sweet, sweet “stallitude.”
5. Return to desk.
6. Read about Illuminati-Freemason-Stephen King-John Lennon conspiracy theories on the Internet. (Here you go!)
7. Check e-mail.
8. Take a goodwill tour of the office, walking one brisk lap with an attitude of business-like urgency, clutching a folder with my conspiracy print-outs.
9. Make copies for friends and masses.
10. Return to desk and read internet research about Mark of the Beast-UPC Symbol-Book of Revelation prophesies. (Enjoy!)
11. Check e-mail.
12. Catch myself falling asleep again and embark on another brisk office tour, smiling brightly and waving to my colleagues.
13. Walken’s favorite word: LUNCH!
14. Repeat process in the afternoon with added emphasis on wakefulness.

All over town there were indolent kids occupying cubicles just like mine, getting paid almost twenty bucks an hour to merely show up and behave civilly. A special lady friend at the time had a job in the Flatiron making sweet coin as a graphic designer for a major publishing house. But whenever I called her she was busy playing a simulated drug dealer game. A buddy from college had gotten a temp job “working” in the Chase Manhattan Bank Y2K Preparedness Division-but the office was just a front for running his theater company. (For years I kept a one sentence e-mail from him taped to my refrigerator: “Who knew working for the Empire would be so boring?”)

And so silent! It was unnerving, that plush seductive quiescence. I knew nothing of Deutsche Bank’s role in the harmonious new global economy; I could only assume that any business conducted with such smooth silence had to be in the service of a magnificent evil. My friends and I were just happy little barnacles gripped fast to the rolling hull of the digital economy. We didn’t care where we were going, and the officers on deck were too busy lighting each other’s cigars to pay us much mind.

The morning of the big call began like all the rest, until the cheerful voice of a co-worker lacerated my cyber-reveries.

“This pod is so quiet today!” she breezily observed to one of my pod-mates. It seems that a cluster of cubicles is collectively referred to as a “pod.” To keep up appearances, I hammered out my default ‘look busy’ sentence on the keyboard: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make complacent.” Her little remark had, as the poet sings, cut like a knife.

Indeed, I had become one of the pod people. Was it not all a bit too easy, all this pay and no work? What was the catch? Were they monitoring us, doping us with some sort of sedative in the water cooler and studying our behavior? WHY WERE WE BEING ENCOURAGED TO GROW SO SLEEK AND FAT?

The phone!

“Hi, John, it’s Kathy Dannaher! How ARE you?”

Kathy was one of the militantly upbeat young women from my temporary agency. I always mirrored her blistering enthusiasm with an equally cheery tone, tempered with just enough private irony to maintain my small illusion of dignity.

“I’m great, Kathy! Really busy over here. It’s a fun job though. Great group of people. And every Friday they bring in pizza for everyone. And each person can have as many slices of pizza as they want, and complimentary pop, too!”

“That’s great! Listen, John, I have got the perfect job for you.”

“I don’t know how it could get any better that this, Kathy.”

“What would you say if I offered you the role of Santa Claus at Saks Fifth Avenue this Holiday season?”

“I’m twenty-four years old.”

“That’s what they want! They asked for a tall, young guy with good attitude! Bursting with holiday cheer!”

“But won’t it be obvious that I’m just some twenty-something punk in a fat suit?”

“No, you’re perfect! They’re going for a crossover audience!”

“How much are they paying?”

“Nineteen an hour.”

“Ho Ho Hokay,” I said.

I reported to Saks on Black Friday of 1999, elbowing my way off Fifth Avenue into that frothing pandemonium of over-confident consumers that was to be my place of business. The flickering Christmas lights cast a lurid sheen on the mob as they swung shopping bags at the backs of each other’s calves.

I fought my way toward the Information Desk to rendezvous with Patricia, my guide. I was struggling straight up into the heart of darkness itself. In fact, my job was to become that heart of darkness for thousands of innocent children programmed to see me as the living embodiment of Christmas. I was to be their Almighty until December twenty-fifth-granting their prayers with a pat on the head, or spurning them cruelly.

I, their sovereign lord, would walk among them, clothed in mortal rags. Who among us could turn down such power, and the nineteen dollars an hour that came with it? “Out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be God,” is how it was put in Apocalypse Now.

Finally, I reached the woman whose name tag identified her as Patricia.

“Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas, young lady,” I said.

“You must be John. I’m Patricia.”

“Nice to meet you, Patricia! Have you been a good girl this year?”

“Not really.”

“Ho, Ho, Ho.”

I was already running out of juice.

“Uh, you know, “ she said, “you don’t have to be in character yet. It’s okay.”

Tomorrow: So maybe Santa drinks a little.

John Del Signore is currently employed by Gothamist.

A note to those in charge of offices this time of year! Just as one does not give alcohol to one’s movers before they relocate the objects in your apartment (rather you give it to them after), perhaps it is also not the best idea to provide “beer and sandwiches” in the office beginning at 12:15 p.m., particularly when there are deadlines ahead. That is all! SANDWICHES, though, YES! (N.B. Your mileage may vary; I am not a doctor; this does not constitute legal advice.)