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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 04/20/01 -- Vol. 19, No. 42
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@avaya.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@avaya.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@avaya.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. In the March 5, 2001, issue of THE NEW YORKER, Malcolm Gladwell
has an article called "The Trouble with Fries." In this he talks
about the origins of various McDonald's foods and examines them
from the aspect of how healthy they are. He recounts the sorry
history of the McLean Deluxe burger, which actually did better than
their regular burger on blind taste tests. It was the result of a
project at Auburn University to make a healthier and better-tasting
burger. They developed the AU Lean, which tasted better and had
less fat. McDonalds made the burger and sold it as the McLean
Deluxe burger. In spite of the fact they were building a better
burger, it did not sell and was soon off the menu. Gladwell
concludes "People liked the AU Lean in blind taste tests because
they didn't know it was AU Lean; they were fooled into thinking it
was regular ground beef. But nobody was fooled when it came to the
McLean Deluxe. It was sold at the healthy choice--and who goes to
McDonald's for health food?"
Well, it is very possible that that is true. People really may
want unhealthy food when they go to McDonald's. Somehow I don't
think so. I would argue that is not really what is happening.
Things are changing with time and healthy foods are getting more
popular. There are three forces pushing in the direction of
healthier diets. Those are esthetics, education, and experience.
The first of the forces is esthetics. Our taste in food is
changing. Food tastes during the 1940s and 1950s were deadly.
People ate fat and cholesterol in quantities that are vaguely
nauseating today. It seems to me that in BACK TO THE FUTURE they
made that point. One of the time travelers was offered a meal at a
1950s lunch bar that had enough fat to float a battleship and chose
instead to have a salad and then asked for a diet soda. And to be
honest, that really sounded better even to me in the audience. Our
tastes have changed since the 1940s, 1950s, and even the 1960s.
Food we now consider being very unhealthy really sounded good in
the post-War years. It seems to me my father had eggs for
breakfast most weekday mornings when I was growing up. That was
regular cholesterol-filled eggs. Later he did have cardiac
problems and it very probably was connected to the amount of
cholesterol he had in his normal diet. Red meat was a standard
staple of his diet. Sunday dinner was usually steak or barbecued
ribs. Even as I write this I realize that it has been years since
I had any kind of red meat in my house. Out of the house I eat it
only rarely. But at home it must be years since I have had red
meat. That is not entirely for health reasons, part is ethics.
But attitudes about eating have certainly changed.
There are still signs in the media that we have the feeling that
real men do not watch what they eat. In TWISTER the tornado
hunters visit a friend because she serves them steak, eggs,
sausage, and a meal that is a killer in every sense of the word.
It looked so good and at the same time was more dangerous than the
tornadoes they are chasing. Depending on your mood, if you thought
about all the grease you were seeing, it could have been vaguely
stomach-turning.
Reinforcing the change in tastes is the second force, education.
Kids are being trained in first and second grade to have the right
attitudes about food and drugs and racism and conservation. We've
heard of stories like the little girl who came home and threw out
her father's cigarettes. Societies have always indoctrinated the
young with attitudes we have wanted them to have and called it
education. It is done subtly, but every society does. Today
children are learning earlier in some schools to cringe at the
thought of unhealthy, fat-laden foods. That will probably exert a
big force in people's decision of how to eat.
The third force will only come with time and currently it is
probably pushing in the wrong direction. In fact it was probably
the reason the McLean Deluxe failed. The reason people would not
eat the McLean Deluxe is experience. In spite of everything
Gladwell says, I still believe that everything else being equal
people would have preferred the healthy burger to the unhealthy
one. The fact is that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that
everything else could be equal. The history of healthy alternative
food is an inglorious one. It includes glubby Metrical milk shakes
that taste more like barium cocktails. You have soft drinks
sweetened with saccharine that leaves a bitter after taste. There
are cardboard-like breakfast bars. There are foods made with weird
grains that go pop in your mouth. We have whole generations that
have grown up with diet foods that you would have to be starving to
want to eat. Experience of bad diet foods is frightening people
away from good diet foods like the McLean Deluxe. It will take
some years of good diet foods to undo the damage done.
Those days are coming along. To me the new artificially sweetened
sodas taste as good as real thing, though others I know disagree.
And even when you have had diet foods that really taste as good as
the originals, then the lawyers take over to make sure the public
is warned about any possible side effect the company might be sued
about. I have never heard of anybody ever getting a negative side
effect from eating an Olestra product. Olestra is a fat substitute
that has no fat effects on the human body. But just in case, the
lawyers put a label on every Olestra product that is a little too
nauseating to quote here, much less on a bag of potato chips. But
in a few years people will have grown up who have never tasted
primitive diet foods. Hopefully in another fifty years a healthy
diet will taste as good as an unhealthy one. People will be used
to food that is healthy and tastes good. Then a name like "McLean"
will no longer be a kiss of death and will actually be a good
thing. But for now we are still in the period when one makes a big
aesthetic sacrifice for most healthy foods. [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (a film review by Mark R. Leeper):
Capsule: John le Carre's intelligence game
story is adapted to the screen as a sly black
comedy of the special relationship between a
failing British spy, one with some suspicious
parallels to James Bond, and a posh British
tailor living in Panama City. A good cast is
headed by Geoffrey Rush and the ironically
chosen Pierce Brosnan. This is an intelligent
and adult spy film with clever statements about
both the intelligence community and the spy
film in general. John Boorman directs.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
Spy stories come in many types. While Ian Fleming very much
defined many people's expectations of the spy story with what is
essentially a sophisticated comic book hero and what is basically
comic book action, John le Carre's style has tended more toward
realism and creating good characters. His approach has always been
one less of heroics and action. George Smiley is a complex three-
dimensional man who is away from most of the action and who uses
his brains rather than his fists. THE TAILOR OF PANAMA, based on
le Carre's novel is a devious little black comedy set at the outer
edges of the spy game. Pierce Brosnan plays Andy Osnard, a British
agent who has all the famous James Bond vices--sex, gambling,
drinking, smoking--without ever having had the James Bond sort of
successes. Osnard is given a rather unenviable posting to Panama.
There is not much to do there, but at least, his superiors comfort
him, there is a vital British interest in the canal.
In Panama, Osnard quickly latches onto a British tailor who knows
the important people. Harry Pendal (Geoffrey Rush) represents the
esteemed firm of Braithwaite and Pendal, a Saville Row Tailor. But
Harry is not all he would have people believe he is. Harry is a
bit down on his luck and Osnard had information he can use to
blackmail Harry. Harry must provide Osnard with useful
intelligence information that will be passed to Osnard's superiors.
Each for his own reasons overlooks the fact that Harry's
credibility has already been shown to be questionable. Meanwhile
Harry introduces Osnard to a number of colorful people from
Panama's underworld and from the previous resistance to Noriega.
One is a good long way into THE TAILOR OF PANAMA before any
character seems so likable that you are hoping the best for him.
The two main characters are each scoundrels and choosing between
them is not much of a choice. One ends up rooting for the smooth-
talking Harry, not a hero but a flimflam man with good instincts
and the best of a bad lot.
THE TAILOR OF PANAMA boasts good characters played by a good cast.
Harry becomes more interesting as the film wears on. He is a
smooth talker and seems almost too poised and well-placed not to
enter the intelligence game. His wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a
position of responsibility with the canal. Harry knows people who
really did stand up against Noriega, or rather knows what is left
of them. Osnard gets some lessons in real politics, but still is
more an more out of place in the real world of Panama and
Intelligence work. His womanizing charm and his polished ways only
make him look more and more like a fool. An almost unrecognizable
Brendan Gleeson, plays Mickie Abraxas who is as much of a hero as
Panama has, a man who speaks his mind regardless of the
consequences. Mickie becomes the center of Osnard's plotting.
Director John Boorman makes maximal use of the tawdry setting of
Panama City, which the script describes as "Casablanca without
heroes."
Whether or not it was consciously intended as such, THE TAILOR OF
PANAMA is sort of an adult answer to a James Bond film. It is
about seedy agents in a seedy setting giving results to the secret
service. Those results are not going to get any special thanks
from the Prime Minister in the end like we have seen in so many
Bond films. Osnard uses sex as a weapon as James Bond would, but
to much less effect. Almost every convention of the romantic spy
film is stood on its ear in this film. This seems like more what
the spy business is really like. I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10
scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@avaya.com
Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot does not make him wrong.
-- Roger Rosenblatt
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