Winter is good for very few things: cuddling, gaining weight, crying about gaining weight, wearing sweaters to hide gained weight, and, most importantly, eating soup. All soup is good. I mean, you got your matzoh ball soup, your chicken noodle, your bisque, your clam chowder, your kale and squash, your wedding, your minestrone, your lentil — there’s a lot of different kinds of soup! (TMI: I totally snagged my boo by mentioning that soup was my favorite food in my OKCupid profile.) Anyway, all soups are good, but ramen is perhaps the king of soups at the moment, especially in New York City (so, basically, the world).
It’s unfortunate, then, that during this time of High Ramen, David Chang, King of Momofuku and the noodle’s ambassador to the United States, has, in his publication Lucky Peach, declared ramen to be dead. His argument is kind of the same as every argument made for something that was once “hip” now being “dead”: too many people know about it and have too much of an idea about it for it to truly grow as a culinary thing. That’s so sad, David Chang, and I see your point. However, I am eating ramen tonight.
Ironically, (or maybe just by happenstance), Lucky Peach published a pretty awesome guide to the regional specifics of ramen in the same issue. So, it’s kind of like a historical text, then, if ramen is dead? I don’t know.
I don’t know about this, either: Beshine is a 31-year-old woman in Germany who apparently has the largest breasts in the world. Her boobs each weigh about the same as a small dog. She has 122,000 twitter followers, and growing. And, of course, there’s a rabid fanbase on reddit hoping that Beshine will make her boobs bigger.
But, let’s not forget that the Internet can be used for good, too, such as this video with Panda Bear over at Pitchfork. We’ve written a lot about Panda Bear/Animal Collective this week, so it’s nice to see what the dude is listening to, and what shapes his music. The clip has a bunch of cuts from pretty obscure electronic acts, but it’s a nice introduction to the tastes of someone who is usually part of what tastemakers listen to.
On that note, then, is this massive “mixtape” released via Youtube by electronic groovemaster Caribou. The artist — Dan Snaith — compiled and released the mixtape as a thanks to his fans, who have helped make his 2014 release Our Love one of the most acclaimed of the year. The list is more than 200 songs long, and Snaith suggests listeners play it on shuffle. I’ve tried it, and it makes for pretty good listening. Especially for eating ramen or contemplating the terrific insanity of the Internet.