The annual New Yorker food issue is still at your doctor’s office, and
it is good enough, if not up to past food issues. My favorite
contained a photo of Gordon Ramsay holding a lamb while looking like
Hannibal Lecter’s Scottish cousin. This year Raffi Khatchadourian has
a long article about artificial flavors. “Vanillin was synthesized in
1874 by two German scientists from a molecule found in coniferous
trees. Today vanilla is the world’s most popular flavor, and
thousands of tons of vanillin are synthesized from industrial
petrochemical and waste from the production of wood pulp. (It is
possible to extract it even from cow dung, as Japanese chemists
demonstrated in 2006.) There is no molecular distinction between
synthesizd vanillin or vanillin extracted from vanilla beans.”

Those Japanese scientists earned a coveted IgNobel Award for that
achievement. And Toscanini’s, while unable to obtain any of the new
flavor, made an ice cream in homage to those scientists and those
cows. It was served -in the middle of a paper airplane storm- to real
Nobel Prize winners at Harvard’s Memorial Hall.

The newer November 30 issue of The New Yorker is full of surprises.
John Lahr reviews “In the Next Room or Vibrator Play,” as well as a
revival of Finians’ Rainbow. Mike Sacks’ “My parents, Enid and Sal,
Used to be Porn Stars” is very funny. A long piece by Ariel Levy is
concerned with a South Africa woman runner and the issue of gender
identity. It is a very long New Yorker story, similar in effect to a
long summer sermon. Finally The Talk of the Town includes a piece on
the Mr. Skin website and the revelations to be gained from revisiting
old movies now available in Blu Ray format.

This issue does not have a name but maybe it is The Sex Issue

Texas Monthly is always better looking than The New Yorker and much
more democratic. The December 2009 issue has a wonderful cover story
on small town Dance Halls. There is also a puffy piece on Houston
Mayor Bill White that people in the northeast should probably read so
they won’t be surprised.