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Anyway, The IHOP Is Flat

What if Thomas Friedman wrote copy for the International House Of Pancakes menu… In the hyperconnected world we live in, nothing is off limits, which is to say that when the phone rang at the Beijing Hilton I picked up and knew it was one of my Arab friends immediately. “If you have something good,” […]

What if Thomas Friedman wrote copy for the International House Of Pancakes menu…

In the hyperconnected world we live in, nothing is off limits, which is to say that when the phone rang at the Beijing Hilton I picked up and knew it was one of my Arab friends immediately. “If you have something good,” he said to me, mysteriously, “You can always have something better.” I tapped the message into my notepad app. It was only later, playing golf in the fuzzy green indoor 18 hole arena reserved for visiting businessmen from Europe and America, that I realized what the proverb meant. If you have French toast, stuff it with strawberries and vanilla frosting. If you stuff your French toast, put whipped cream and fruit sauce on top. It’s as simple as that and investments work the same way. I call it the Bettering.

There is more. 

What if Rod Dreher wrote for the IHOP menu? Hmm…

When I was Catholic, I loved plain pancakes, with nothing but butter and cane syrup. Then came the abuse scandal, and I lost my ability to enjoy pancakes in the old, uncomplicated way. Dante held that breakfast is the consolation God provides to those who have endured a dark night of non-snacking, though really, in this post-Christian age of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, can we really say we take the morning meal seriously enough? I have to read MacIntyre’s After Pop-Tarts sometime. Anyway, the other day, preoccupied with all things pancake, I was thinking back to how my lesbian Great Aunt Jemima — no, really, that was her name; she used to catch hell for that from American merchant marine sailors back when she sang cabaret in a waterfront boîte in Brest — so, anyway, years later, after my ancient great aunt had returned to Louisiana, she’d dose her morning coffee with marc and go on and on about how much better Breton galettes were than our common pancakes. How my sister hated her for that, and silently prayed to her plainspoken Methodist God for our great aunt to serve those haughty French pancakes one morning so she could refuse to eat them. I had no such rusticated scruples, naturally, and years later, pricking galettes with my fork at a café off the Rue Mouffetard, I could hear the ghost of Aunt Jemima — not kidding! Her spirit actually stood at my left shoulder! — badgering me about the view from my table, and it occurred to me that now might an opportunity to ask the waiter what made galettes taste so special. “Buckwheat flour, monsieur,” he said. So that’s it! Anyway, so if I’m thinking about the pancakes I really want to have, it’s going to be one made with buckwheat flour, because hey, France! Here in America, though, it’s hard to find flour made from buckwheat. Might as well just satisfy yourself with our delicious stack of four hearty whole wheat pancakes, and make them even more special with lightly sweetened blueberries straight from our local farmer’s market — you know, the booth run by ol’ Needlenose, who’s been mute ever since he caught the parish priest buggering his brother. Man, if I had been there, I would have cut that SOB’s tallywacker off with a butter knife [NFR: Apologies; I let my emotions get the best of me there. — RD]. Look, these things are great, trust me, especially with a light dusting of powdered sugar that mediates the kind of culinary grace that purifies and sanctifies one’s intellection (“The mind herein attains simplicity” — Wallace Stevens). On the other hand, these bad boys will make you really disgustingly fat, so maybe just have the oatmeal with Splenda. I don’t know. Thoughts?

 

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