Watching the sausage being made is a sure way to put you off of it...

[jducoeur]

... or watching the imitation crabmeat, in this case. The current episode of Unwrapped, on Food TV, is showing how they make the stuff, and it's enough to confirm my utter lack of desire to ever consume it. They show everything from the large frozen bricks of chopped fish it is made from (which look like nothing so much as uniform white plastic building blocks), the adding of artificial flavor ("the fish in its raw form has almost no flavor!"), the blending, the extruding (yes, it is actually pureed and extruded), and the painting with a nice red stripe down the side.

Okay, it's a process that I casually accept when the subject is candy. But somehow, when applied to fish, it's oddly horrifying...

Comments

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Okay, I was going to show how unconnected I am and ask "who's Ed Sobansky?" but Google seems to show that he's an SCA member from Atlantia, a member of Clam Chowder, and an attorney for the Washington (DC) Science Fiction Association. Have I got that right?

[jducoeur]

Correct. If you're not familiar with the work of the Clams, I commend it greatly -- they're one of my all-time favorite music groups. Ed was, in some incarnations of the Clams, their bass, but he really specialized in story-songs. He's an exceptional storyteller: his tale of "The King of Meridies and The Treasure Halls of King Valoo" is one of my favorite Pennsic stories, and the reason that, to this day, msmemory and I occasionally spout the line "them's *gooood* onions!". (No, I can't do the story justice; sometime I'll see if I can get you and Ed in the same place at Pennsic so he can tell it.)

Anyway, in this particular case, I actually started out by writing "my best Flanders and Swann accent", but realized that's not true. The song is "Madeira, M'Dear", which I learned from the Clams cover long before I ever heard the original. So it's Ed's voice that I really associate with that line. (There are many songs I learned from the Clams rather than the original, ranging from "Charley and the MTA" -- the reason I always sing that one with "vote for Ed Sobansky" in the last verse -- to "Carrot Juice is Murder"...)

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

I saw Clam Chowder live at BosKlone, which was, what, 20 years ago? I liked them a lot, but I never followed up. So I take it he's Igor Medved, a/k/a Igor Bear? That's a name I vaguely know, but I don't know why. It's just my silly peer trick: if I've ever heard an SCA name, I remember it, but the "skill" is utterly useless since my brain stores no further references.

I know "Madeira, My Dear" from Tony Randall singing it on the old Tonite Show: he was apparently an aficionado of those old musical-hall ditties. (Some of those are hilarious. If anyone knows "Oh, That Gorgonzola Cheese" [which may in fact be modern: I heard it from the CT group How to Change a Flat Tire, who may have written it] I want the lyrics).

[jducoeur]

Correct: Igor == Ed...

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

lyrics:
http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/boneill/SongTexts/GorgonzolaCheeseWentWrong.txt
I think I first heard it from the Incredible String Band. Some very brief web searching produced yet another music hall song featuring gorganzola cheese and resulting confusion about which song was earlier, or really
from the music hall at all.

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Way cool! Thank you!