5 Feet of Fury

Screw flying cars: Where are my food pills?

It’s my NEW Taki’s column, and I can tell you without even peeking that the comments from the He-Man Woman-Haters’ Club will be plentiful!

Sure, I enjoy the occasional hot fudge sundae or slice of good pizza (or six). But eating—or, more specifically, cooking—is mostly a chore, a duty, a speed bump. I’d rather be writing, reading—anything that holds out the promise of novelty, creativity, and discovery.

Eating, on the other hand, is so … ordinary. It feels more like a job than the activity it’s always so rudely interrupting: my actual work.

Long before I was old enough to earn a living, I was enchanted with the food pills on The Jetsons. Imagine: No dishes to do, no oven to remember (or, in my case, forget) to preheat before my mother got home. Such meaningless tedium. Didn’t my mother—didn’t the world—understand? I had better things to do.

(It doesn’t help that I’m also missing the gastro-porn gene. I hear tell that food-themed movies like Eat Drink Man Woman and Babette’s Feast and even 9 ½ Weeks are all terribly sensuous, or maybe sensual—I could never be bothered keeping those two straight. Whereas these “hot” films all leave me colder than yesterday’s leftovers.)