Choking the Bluebird: Gael Greene, Twitter and the Art of Masturbation

Possums, we are great believers in the powers of time, and just look what time has done for Gael Greene. Though scarcely four years old, her memoir, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess, has gone from being execrable (and we were trying to be kind) to being a minor camp classic, and may soon be a television series.

How do you judge campiness in the case of memoir? Well, just imagine a drag queen doing a dramatic reading. Would a drag queen love it? Would it work?

We submit that, under this criterion, Insatiable qualifies. Just have a look at this passage:

“I…remember the terror and joy of discovering masturbation. I shared a bedroom with my sister….At night after lights-out, I would get my sister to sing along with me so she wouldn’t hear the sound of the bed creaking as my body rubbed against my wadded-up pajama bottoms. I did my heartrending Judy Garland vibrato as we sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and then segued into a popular wartime anthem, ‘The White Cliffs of Dover,’ and its reassuring images of bluebirds flying free in a near tomorrow. Till, exhausted and satisfied, I fell asleep.”

Now, possums, take a minute to catch your breath. Let your eyes, which undoubtedly were popping, settle gently back in their sockets. That was quite something, eh?

Be honest now, possums. If you didn’t know it was Gael Greene’s story, wouldn’t you think it was the memoirs of a drag queen, and perhaps a parody of what an ur-drag queen’s childhood was like? Who else would beat the bishop while vocally impersonating Judy Garland?

As you can see, Gael Green really is Top Chef Master of Her Domain, and we urge you to get yourself a copy.

There is one another thing that intrigued us about this passage—the bluebirds. The cited Vera Lynn World War II classic famously promises that “there’ll be bluebirds over/ the white cliffs of Dover,” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” asks, “If happy little bluebirds fly/ beyond the rainbow, why can’t I?” Would it be unreasonable to assume that Gael Greene associates bluebirds with masturbation and sexual release? Could that be why she has taken to vigorously to Twitter?

Amuse-Biatch Heterosexual Monday: Gael Greene's Shaded Eyes Only Hint at All She Knows About the Burning Yucca

‘Biatch-Slapped: Gael Greene v. Jimmy Bradley

Well, possums, there seem to be so many spats and meow moments that we figured we might as well gawk, and so we inaugurate a new feature, ‘Biatch-Slapped, wherein we’ll briefly examine and rate these catfights.

First up, it’s “Insatiable” Gael Greene v. Top Chef Masters contestant Jimmy “I have oldness” Bradley.

In the New York Times story on his wedding last year, Bradley said of himself that he is a “self-made chef and restaurateur.” And just last week, the Times restaurant critic, Sam Sifton, also referred to Bradley as a “chef.”

On her Bravo blog, however, Gael Greene begs to differ, saying that Jimmy Bradley “is popular and very successful as owner and creator of Red Cat and the Harrison in Tribeca, but is not really a chef” (emphasis added).

Jimmy Bradley, you've been Biatch-Slapped! We give it three meows out of a possible five. What say ye, possums?

(By the way, if, like us, you were bemused and crinkle-browed by Jimmy Bradley quoting Coco Chanel on last week’s episode, the Times wedding story will clear you right up. Bradley’s 11-years-younger bride is “the fashion merchandising director for Lucky, the Condé Nast magazine,” so he must have learnt the apocryphal Chanel quote at home. Interestingly enough, the first impression the future Mrs. Bradley had of the chef was of “this gray-haired man, smelling like a dirty hippie with his patchouli oil and kitchen grease.” Ah, l’amour, toujours l’amour!)

Amuse-Biatch Heterosexual Monday: “Insatiable” Gael Greene Scandalizes, Titillates Victorian World by Showing Her Knees

Why Gael Greene Is Disqualified from Judging the First Episode of Top Chef Masters, or, Indeed, Anything Else Ever Again

Possums, fear not. We’ll get to our impressions of, and reactions to, the first episode of Season 2 of Top Chef Masters in two shakes of a lamb carpaccio’s tail, but we simply could not go on without getting this off our chest.

Well, more like getting this unstuck from our craw, where it has lain for a few weeks since we read this account of Judge Gael Greene’s date night, er, morning, on her Twitter feed.

Ah, yes, that renowned romantic masterpiece Precious…. You know, possums, the one that features—in no particular order of tribulation—incest-rape, teenage pregnancy, Down syndrome, illiteracy, morbid obesity, poverty, colorism, AIDS, and Mariah Carey.

Or, as Miss XaXa so pithily put it, “Gael, girl, that’s just naaasty.”

Mercifully, the tweet does not contain sufficient temporal clues to determine whether the necking took place during or after the watching of the film. Frankly, there’s not much of a choice between the two, for either you were inspired to neck by the film, or the film wasn’t repellent enough to put you off your necking. (As for the culinary accompaniment to a viewing of Precious, surely salad is a little unimaginative, given that pig’s feet, bacon, and fried chicken make memorable appearances in the film.)

Now, if that is the Insatiable Gourmet’s idea of a date night (or date morning), we submit that she is not the right person to judge a challenge designed around the proper meal to accompany a first date. Indeed, we would question her very aesthetic bona fides. Sure, we know from her autobiographical tales of the Elvis-bagging days of yore that she’s a freak bitch, baby, but is this a freak too far?

What say you, possums? Are we not giving a fair shake to the kooky, oversexed, milliner’s wet dream of a great-aunt?

Amuse-Biatch Book Report: Gael Greene

We are reading a memoir by famed New York Magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess, and we are quite sad to have to report that we are very dissatisfied indeed.

The pedigree and the title seemed promising, but once we got a look at the cover, we knew we were in for trouble. As you can see, it features a souped-up odalisque adorned with every vulgar visual cliché about female sexuality, viz. the papaya, the kiwi, and the pomegranate. These prove prophetic--the entire book is a vulgar cliché.

The back cover carries a blurb from, of all people, gossip columnist Liz Smith: "Gael Greene is the best food writer since the late M.F.K. Fisher. I predict a runaway hit for INSATIABLE, which has all the sex (plus food) that the law will allow. I simply couldn't resist it."

I mean, Liz, honey, we love that fact that you're from Texas and a blonde and a goodtime gal and a 90-something lesbian, but you and good writing, much less food writing, are strangers to each other, as proved by your own effort in the genre, Dishing: Great Dish -- and Dishes -- from America's Most Beloved Gossip Columnist (oy, and the title! I would have gone with something along the lines of Dull as Dishwater or Dull-Ass Dish). A good Texas chili recipe does not make you A.J. Liebling.

It isn't so much what Liz Smith says as that fact that she is saying it that crystallizes what is wrong with Insatiable. The other blurbers are Sirio Maccioni, Tim Zagat, and Bobby Flay. Need we say more? This book is about the gossip of food, the celebrity of food, but fails as gossip and as food writing (though we will give her credit for a few bons mots, such as "soup opera," which we are stealing).

We really wanted to like the book; we swear. We certainly respect Ms. Greene, but the writing is not very good, and the whole book is sloppy, with poor copyediting (a food book that discusses fois gras is enough to bring on both a crise de foi and a crise de foie). We get to hear about her allegedly torrid encounters with Elvis, Clint Eastwood, and Burt Reynolds (and she brags of once seeing an issue of Time Magazine only to realize she had slept with both of the men on the cover). But there's no sensuality, no passion, in her rather limited descriptions. It's just belt-notching, and just as unattractive in a woman as it is in a man.

Trying to give us a bedroom and dining room romp, she makes adultery seem joyless and desperate (which it may very well be), and in the end comes across as an elderly aunt who's a bit of a lush and a perv. Get Helen Mirren or Jeanne Moreau to show her what true sensuality in an older woman looks like.

No one ever had to spell out for us the connection between food and sensuality. Trust us on this one. And here at Amuse-Biatch, we're all in favor of intelligent, empowered women who are in touch with their sexuality. In fact, that's pretty much the only kind of woman we consort with.

However, there's a difference between being a sensualist and being merely slutty. It's the difference between getting it and getting some. Gael Greene admits that she has never found food better than sex. That should come as no surprise. Based on Insatiable, it's clear that, no matter how much she got, she just doesn't get it.