The New York Times got on the Internet’s bad side today with what people took as a particularly unforgivable bit of blasphemy: the tweeted suggestion that peas should be put in guacamole, based on an ABC Cocina recipe that the paper had actually published back in 2013. As The Guardian noted, “the mockamole of ‘pea-gate’ quickly escalated to a bipartisan political platform,” with Jeb Bush, the Texas Republican Party and Barack Obama all weighing in. Since the initial outrage, some brave, selfless individuals have spoken out in the recipe’s defense.
I regret to say that thus far, Marina Abramovic has not taken it upon herself to bear the burdens of unconventional guacamole fandom by, say, carrying peas one by one across a long chamber in a struggle-depicting performance piece. That may be because she’s busy planning her actual final performance: her own funeral. The artist intends to be buried in three places (one will contain her real body and the others will hold fakes — but it’ll never be revealed which is which), and to have Antony Hegarty sing I Did It My Way. In other art news, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s acquiring of a woven image of Pope Benedict XVI has resulted in an uproar from Midwestern Catholics (before the piece has even gone on view) — because it’s made of 17,000 condoms. The piece, by Niki Johnson, is titled “Eggs Benedict,” and is also referred to, more directly, as “Condom Pope.”
With the summer getting increasingly damp and warm, it’s guaranteed that we’ll soon be able to call it, “wet” and “hot” — especially with the July 17 arrival of Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (see what I did there? Wish you didn’t? Me too). And now, Netflix has released the first full trailer for the prequel series. Apart from making the upcoming show look purely spectacular, the trailer gives quick glimpses at the roles of newcomers Kristen Wiig (playing a rowing seductress) and Jon Hamm (playing… someone who wears camo and gets into kitchen fights), as well as camp veterans like Janeane Garofalo, Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper. Meanwhile, in a very different universe (that of DC Comics), the first images from Batman v Superman have been revealed, and feature Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and Ben Affleck as Batman. And in the equally weird universe that was the mid-to-late 20th century, T.G.I. Friday’s played the role of the “revolutionary bar that brought the co-ed cocktail party outside of the home.” Now dip a chip into that pea paste.