Open letter to the vegetarian option.

Dear The Vegetarian Option,

Because there was no fish option, which is what I usually opt for at the occasional institutional dinner event, you and I met again last night, The Vegetarian Option, at the round table on the far edge of the room, the giant ballroom filled with dignitaries and rich people and a bunch of us employee types, who were there to season the conversation and decorate the event. I keep thinking that things have changed--that "vegetarian" is actually a cuisine, maybe, at this point. I know I've eaten vegetarian food that has the imagination, the inventiveness, the je ne sais quoi of cuisine, that still fits the criterion "vegetarian." I cook this kind of food all the time.

But not you, The Vegetarian Option. No, there you sat in the bowl, all overcooked penne and saucy sauce, and cut up green-and-yellow summer squash and the occasional incongruous carrot chunk.

First of all, penne pasta: you are not optimal for this non-optimal dish. You are hefty where you should be subtle, and you are tubular and in general, suitable for other treatments, such as baking in cheese. Al forno, penne pasta: you are optimal for that.

Second of all, green-and-yellow summer squash: you are not currently seasonal, and you are in fact usually tasteless. You are a veritable place-holder of a vegetable. Not even the fancy decorative cut-outs in the shape of leaves with leaf-vein divots on the tops of them can address your deficiencies, vegetable-wise.

Thirdly, carrots? I love carrots. But a carrot, particularly in chunk form, is not--how shall we say?--relevant to this dish.

But most of all, The Vegetarian Option, you are lousy with thoughtlessness, rife with lack of care, with I'm-just-here-to-fill-a-dish-ness. You imply that the vegetarian, because she does not care for meat, does not care about food at all. I am taking it personally, The Vegetarian Option. From henceforth you are my nemesis and I shall not rest until you, The Vegetarian Option, behave like actual food, rather than the fodder you actually are.

I mean it,

lisa b.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to wear boy ponytails.

Lord knows I love me some comedies, and the recent Baby Mama was a rather happy surprise. Despite the trailer, which gave every evidence of being one of those where you no longer have a reason to see the movie, actually the movie had plenty of comedic surprises, one of them being Steve Martin doing a hilarious bit as one of those eco-CEOs who swims with the dolphins and believes he can save the world by selling it back to us, one organic fairtrade mango at a time. And how does a movie signal to us that he's a type? As the Bible preaches it to us: by their ponytails ye shall know them, the graying hippie men who've found a kinder, gentler capitalism to purvey.

The iconic graying ponytail: what a sad, sad thing it is, turning otherwise pretty good-looking men into sorry stereotypes. You know who you are, late-night jazz talk hosts. You already have the good navy blue suit and you know how to rock the white dress shirt, so why don't you get a haircut already? Get a haircut!

Tonight, at Red Rock before the movie, I saw yet another dejected ponytail on an aging man. (The ponytail itself looked forlorn, a coiffure adrift in an alien land.) He was wearing--wait for it:--black jeans, a mock-neck, short sleeved black turtleneck, a belt with some studs on it, and the 'tail. It was not good--so not good, in fact, that I was momentarily struck dumb, and my friends, that does not happen so often.

There oughta be a law, and if not a law, some absolute penalty: men, if you're too old to be sporting that ponytail, you shall summarily be shorn and made to wear golf shirts with tiny polo players embroidered at the breast, for a season.