Introducing the Best Burger Poll

THE LA Weekly has just announced a sure-to-be-controversial top-10 burgers list. Over here at the Misread City, we can occasionally lift our noses out of Faulkner (you'll see that one next week) and foreign film (next week also) to consume quantities of ground beef and carmelized onions. To inaugurate the poll, here is a short ode to the burger written by Wendy Fonarow, a UCLA-trained anthropologist, LA native, and longtime friend of the Misread City. 

Don't forget to vote.

Here she is:  

As an anthropology professor and researcher in indie music, I find it funny that over the years, students have asked me to write about burgers more than anything else.  

There are few subjects that will derail me from the topic at hand, but the beloved cheeseburger is one of them. From espousing the placebo effect of In-and-Out burgers (don’t be jealous you don’t have such an amazing placebo) or railing against those who bag on McDonalds for being disloyal, burgers are in my blood and perhaps make up 20 percent of my body mass.  Being a native Los Angeleno makes one extraordinarily well positioned to discuss burgers.  

We are the cutting edge of fast food, hybrid cuisine and the innovators of so much including the drive through squawk box. I’m often asked what is the best burger and my answer is “only a heathen would ask that.”  It’s like saying what is the best dessert. How can you compare a pie, to an ice cream cake or a donut? Only a person who doesn’t like sweets would do that.  

There are genres of burgers: the thousand-island, the mayonnaise, the restaurant, the mustard, the chiliburger, and the hickory. These are the major ones and I might include the outdoor grill, sans cheese, and bacon-added as well. It is perhaps these distinctions that capture the imagination of my students. Most people tend to have a favorite style and therefore use their favorite flavor profile to trump these enormously different categories of food. 

So if there is going to be a discussion, let’s be precise. Shall we begin with a vote for your favorite restaurant style burger? I’d tell you mine, but then I’d have to make you take me there.

Neck and Neck Over Nabokov

WELL gang, Misread City readers seem to be equally split between Pale Fire fans and Lolita fans -- there is a joke here I can't quite summon. In any case, because the vote ended in a dead tie, I have put up this blog's first ever runoff to break the tie.

Please vote for one OR the other and please tell your friends.

All my best,

Scott

Spring in California

DESPITE some early support for sage and cilantro, the fragrant, woody rosemary seems to be leading my Favorite Herb poll.

Still a couple days left to vote -- a lot could happen between now and then.

Update: Poll results in! It's rosemary, then cilantro then basil. Take a bow, folks!

Hats off to Oscar Wilde

LET'S have a big irish "cheers" for oscar wilde, winner of my "world's coolest irishman" poll, which just expired. (he drew slightly more than a third of votes.) for much of the poll, joyce (whose "dubliners effectively taught me to read) was leading, but st. oscar made a last minute rally. yeats, that master of swoony celtic romanticism (and later, crisp, steely modernism) came close. van morrison (like wilde and yeats born a protestant), morrissey (an english citizen of irish heritage) and arthur guinness, father of the great stout, did not chart so well.

wilde joins syrah/grenache/rhone ("favorite wine") among recent winners on this blog. (tho i imagine he preferred port or absinthe.)

i'd considered listing john lennon -- take a look at the gaelic last name folks, and he was not the only beatle of irish heritage -- but figured it would lead to confusion or fisticuffs. (there will be a poll with lennon on it shortly.) 

and i hope the enthusiasm that met these celtic heroes is matched by support for japanese film in my latest poll.

as for wilde, i often think of his definition of a cynic: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

and here is one of his finest aphorisms, one still pertinent today:

"The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years."

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