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 Richard Frisbie Author, advertising and publishing consultant, former editor of Chicago and other magazines, former creative director of Campbell-Ewald and other advertising agencies. For more information, click here. Or see Who's Who in America or www.midlandauthors.com, Margery Frisbie Consulting editor, historian, poet and author of several books. For more information, click here or see www.midlandauthors.com. The Uncommentator BLOGS and GLOBS: I have been writing a blog since 1966, only I didn't know it. In those days, it came out in the form of a newsletter on paper. Remember paper? It never got lost in cyberspace, although if it got wet enough blog turned into glob. I called it The Uncommentator, and tried to make it amusing. To read some of my favorites, see contents. Recent Books by the Frisbies. |
No. 126 PERCHERON ON THE PLATE? At a Chicago Tribune Heartland Awards dinner, Ward Just, the winner that year of the $5,000 prize for fiction, reminisced about growing up as the son of the publisher of the Waukegan News-Sun. Among the long-ago dinner-table conversation topics he mentioned was the horsemeat scandal that erupted under Governor Adlai E. Stevenson. I thought everyone in the world but me had forgotten that. I couldn't resist accosting Mr. Just afterwards to tell him why I am reminded of the horsemeat scandal almost every week. The closest restaurant to my office renamed itself the "111 Sports Lounge." In a burst of creativity, they decided to give sporty names to the items on the menu. One section was subtitled, "Triple Crown Croissant Sandwiches." Each of the items had a racy name: "Belmont," "Preakness," "Kentucky Derby." Ward Just was amused, and agreed that no restaurateur who remembered the horsemeat scandal would want to have even the remotest association with anything equine. What happened was that meat purveyors with mob connections paid off state meat inspectors to overlook the substitution of cheap horsemeat for beef. This was significant because while beef for human consumption has to meet certain standards there was no way to tell where the uninspected horsemeat came from. Maybe the horse lost one race too many. Or maybe it got hit by a truck. More likely, it was rustled on the way to the glue factory. When all this came to light, one unsuspecting restaurant caught with horsemeat was the Blackhawk, then at Wabash and Randolph. The Blackhawk had been victimized by a supplier. Only the impeccable reputation of the owner, Don Roth, saved the business. I'm sure that a lesser restaurant could not have survived the front-page publicity. Nobody wants to order black angus and be served Black Beauty. My connection with the affair was to have covered some of the court action for the old Chicago Daily News. I remember being thrown off stride by the provincial insistence of the staff at the Lake County courthouse in Waukegan on following the rules about grand jury secrecy. In Cook County, somebody would have leaked something, not likely to me, but at least to our regular county beat reporter. In Lake County all we could get was the list of grand jury witnesses. None of them had names you'd know, like "Misty," "Trigger" or "Bucephalus." There may have been an "Ed," but no one called him "Mister," and he couldn't shake off flies just by twitching a muscle, although he might have been able to intimidate other witnesses. I don't remember which witnesses said what, if anything. The first time I ate at the Sports Lounge after they installed the new menu, I ordered a Kentucky Derby. That's sliced turkey on a croissant accompanied by a generous serving of fresh fruit. When the waitress brought it, I said, "Whoa." She didn't get it. I can't blame her. She didn't look old enough to remember when all the customers in restaurants were shouting "yoicks" or "giddyap" to see whether their fillet was really a filly. Besides, I've heard of people betting on a turkey, but I never heard of a turkey race. Still, it's possible the management at the Sports Lounge did remember horsemeat days, and didn't think it mattered. Some people in the food business are curiously insensitive to the imagery of language. How else to explain a brand name like "Tombstone" Pizza. * Tombstone -- something I may need if I eat one? *Tombstone -- a flat, hard object on which to chisel names and dates (after it cools)? * Tombstone -- if the pepperone isn't spicy enough, try a topping of prickly pear cactus? Then there are restaurant chains with names like "Long John Silver's" and "The Rusty Scupper." The original Long John Silver was a pirate. I see myself complaining to the waiter, "There's a Black Spot in my soup." The waiter says, "Ease your mainsheet, swab. I'll fetch the manager." The manager comes with a rusty saber, slams it in on the table and says, "Shut up and eat your nice Black Spot or I'll have you keel-hauled." "The Rusty Scupper" could do with some editing. Maybe "The Scrubbed Within-an-Inch-of-Its-Life Stainless Steel Scupper." No. That would make the electric signs too expensive. Anyway, there's as much problem with "scupper" as with "rusty." A scupper is the sea-going equivalent of a gutter, a part of a ship only slightly less appetizing than the bilge. And nobody who has ever seen a real bilge would describe it in polite company. Years ago, before becoming a creative director, I wrote copy for an advertising agency with several food accounts. The head of the agency firmly believed that most people are somewhat queasy about their food. He would never allow a word to be used that could remotely detract from an aura of purity and wholesomeness. It wasn't that he was a particularly good judge of writing. If, after numerous client revisions, copy sometimes got a bit overblown, I don't think he could tell. In any case, he never objected to purple prose. He just made sure it didn't turn the customers green. Richard Frisbie |
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