When is organic not organic? Well, when it’s loaded with non-organic ingredients! The USDA has just passed a law making it possible for major agribusiness and other corporate interests to use a bunch of gross non-organic ingredients in products that will carry the “certified organic” label. WTF, you might ask. Well, we might not be able to do anything about it, and basically just chalk up another win for profit over people, but you can sign a petition. Hey, I’m doing it from all the way over here in Hungary!

Meanwhile, don’t buy Budweiser if it isn’t the kind you get in the Czech Republic! As if you did anyway.

We recently picked up this cute little coffee grinder at a second-hand items store for about $8. It was dirty and beat-up but the seller threw in a bottle of polisher (also used) for free.

I spent about 2 hours shining that puppy from a hideous brown-black to a passable brass luster. I also had to take it apart to get at the grinding mechanism. I think the dents on the housing give it character. Who knows? Maybe this little guy saw some action back in ‘56!

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There are several new pictures up in the Assorted Hungary and Budapest, Hungary photosets in the What-What Galleries. Please enjoy.

UPDATE: Here’s a forum of reactions. It gets pretty ugly with some racism and poor English and such, but it gives a few more details of what happened. To sum up, apparently Nas’s managers weren’t satisfied with the venue (either the sound wasn’t good enough, the stage not good enough, or that it was a bigger place than they expected) and demanded more money. The Hungarian organizers balked at first, then tried to come up with the money in cash on the very night of the show. However, it was refused by the managers and Nas didn’t play. It should be noted, however, that Nas’s wife, Kelis, DID play her show in Budapest that very same night.

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This last Saturday night was very exciting, because E and I had tickets to the first ever Nas concert in Hungary. After a fast and fun bike ride up past Margaret Island as fireworks crackled ahead and above us, we got there at what we thought was an appropriate time, around 10:30, to a packed house of dressed-to-impress Hungarian hip-hop fans at an upscale warehouse-turned club called Studio. We wormed and squeezed our way up towards the front, finally finding a decent space between overexcited high schoolers wearing hip-hop pajamas, 300-pound gorillas wearing FUBU, and their attendant flocks of women, wearing very little at all.

Not having heard of either of the opening acts proved not to be an embarrassment, as they were both terrible - some kind of Marky-Mark/Vanilla Ice mash-ups from the 1980s wearing jean shorts and white t-shirts and rapping about, well, who cares. It’s lucky for them they didn’t really wait for applause between songs, because there wasn’t any. Afterwards a breakdance crew did their thing which was cool, I guess. And now for the main event, Nasty Nas, living legend, street poet, gangster philosopher, right? Wrong. We waited 30 minutes, sweating patiently. Then another 30 minutes, getting irritated at the DJ’s selection, most of which was popular back in 1993 (note: the Hungarians loved it, though. They can’t seem to hear Snoop Dogg’s “What’s my Name?” too many millions of times). At this point the DJ came on saying Nas was here, but wouldn’t come on for another 30 minutes. Exasperated, we abandoned our spot up front and headed to the rear of the venue, where some couches and tables provided a much-needed rest for the knees. We were entertained by a completely soused cica (”kitten”) wearing approximately 6 inches of skirt and dancing, let’s say provocatively, before passing out limbs askew and snoring on the couch next to us.

Finally, at after 2 a.m. after four hours of waiting and hearing one bottom-of-the-barrel tune after another, the music went down, the crowd gurgled expectantly, the announcer came out and said . . . “Sorry folks, but [expletive] Nas has refused to [expletive] perform because our [expletive] country is not [expletive] good enough for him. The police have taken him into custody . . .” - all else drowned out by boos. Who knows what happened. It’s doubtful our money will be refunded, which is especially tough for Hungarians, as the ticket price was a not insignificant HUF 4,000-6,000 ($20-30 US). They did offer free entry to the upcoming Snoop Dogg show, but who wants to go see pop music when we paid to see hip-hop?

I’m pretty disappointed in Nas, to say the least. There were thousands of fans there, and this was an important event for the promoter, who I can’t say I really care for that much either, but it was a Hungarian premiere. Superstars are pretty selfish, I guess. So much for that. At least the bike ride home was cool and lovely along the Danube at 3 a.m.

Oh yes they did. The American Air Force is the most advanced in the world. To reflect this, they’ve changed their well-known slogan of “Bomb ‘em back to the stone age” with something a little more 21st-century:

“Bomb ‘em into stoned gays.”

What’s next, a rainbow-colored arms race?

As part of my job, I do regular restaurant “reviews”, and I take pictures of the food and restaurants for the spread. Over the course of the last six or seven months, the results have been piling up, and I’ve realized that without noticing it or setting my mind to it, this has been one of the only consistent photo projects I’ve done in a while. Whereas in Japan I focused on aesthetics, daily life and portraits, here I have still to find my muse, which is not to say I haven’t been shooting at all. But you take what you can get, and I have certainly learned a lot from trying to both make poorly composed food look better, as well as maintain the beauty of artfully-composed food. Sometimes it just can’t happen - soup for example doesn’t have a lot of contours.

The results so far are HERE. Expect more to be added soon.

I looked in the fridge this morning to find that we had NINE kinds of cheese in there. Umm, how did this happen?

We’ve got:
1 round chive-cream cheese wedges
1 round spicy pepper cream cheese wedges
1 package sliced smoked cheese (for veggie burgers)
1 package rolled Slovakian cheese
1 package herbed and braided Slovakian string cheese
1 block olive-muenster (sp?)
1 small block smoked white cheese
1 large block normal trappista
1 tub cottage cheese spread

And now I’m thinking that we might also have a package of mozzarella in there too. Check back for an update later tonight.