Rejection from the NY Times
Ever since I was a small boy living in Belgium, I have always wanted to publish an article in The New York Times. The only problem was that, unlike the very important journalists who are in the employ of that august institution, I simply never had anything noteworthy to write about. Until last week, that is, when I came up with an article so newsworthy I was sure the Times would grab it. To my chagrin, however, they did not. Instead, they stated in their rejection letter that "this has to be the most infantile nonsense to have ever reached the Times' editor's desk." Well, I beg your pardon, Mr. Editor, I completely disagree! In any event, the article has been reprinted below. You be the judge!
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"Salad with Dressing on the Side"
By His Serene Highness, The Magnificent D
Vi Naigrette is a 34 year old investment banker and divorced mother of two, who often finds herself in charge of preparing salads for potluck dinners she attends with her colleagues from work. Almost without fail, after each of these events she must send her suit to the cleaners so they can wash out the salad dressing stains that invariably splash on to her clothes. "It's not always easy," she tells a reporter [me! HSH, Mag D!] on a recent Sunday morning over coffee and croissant at Serafina. "I have one daughter and one son who both need to be taken to school and it is therefore doubly hard for me to have to also run to the cleaners at least 3 mornings a week to clean out these stains."
(For reasons of full disclosure, I must confess that Vi and I have a "friends with benefits" thing going on. As you can tell, however, our conversations are a little on the dull side.)
Vi, it seems, is not alone. One market research report after the other confirms this trend. Because of salad-dressing-related stains, many people in the work force are now thinking twice before they reach over to grab the free packets of Italian dressing available in ample supply at the cashier's station.
Indeed, Chad Burlington, 26, a fitness trainer and frequent visitor of Salad-O-Rama's midtown location says, "It used to be that you always took dressing with your salad, but now people are pausing to ask themselves the question: 'Is this dressing stain worthy'?" With a touch of existentialism, Chad adds, "The jury is still out whether this will push people away from eating salads or just from salad dressings. I hope the former, because that may lead to expanding waistlines, and expanding waistlines may lead to more business for me."
But there is more to this trend than the shrinking or expanding sizes of waistlines alone. Professor Balsamic V. Naigrette (no relation to Vi, as far as I know), who is a lecturer and researcher at Columbia's Max and Doreen Rosengarten School of Nutrition, and who has been studying the way people consume salad dressing for more than 30 years (I never knew there was more than one way - HSH, Mag D), concurs. "Certainly, the movement away from salad dressing should be viewed as a movement away from salad, which in turn should be seen as a counter-reaction to Fidel Castro's chewing of tobacco. The thinking goes that if Fidel who has been chewing tobacco for 50 years is still suffering from economic sanctions then perhaps we should be chewing less green weeds. This is a stupid notion, of course, but we should not underestimate how strongly this line of reasoning resonates with today's youth."
In the end, perhaps we should take our cue from Vi. "No one has yet found a substitute for salad dressing," she says, "So when a suit gets dirty, I simply put it aside in the dirty laundry hamper. This way, instead of running three times a week to the cleaners, I only need to go once. Sure, it's a short-term fix, but for now it works."
***
Now you tell me, should this not have been published by the Times!?
His Serene Highness,
The Magnificent D
***
"Salad with Dressing on the Side"
By His Serene Highness, The Magnificent D
Vi Naigrette is a 34 year old investment banker and divorced mother of two, who often finds herself in charge of preparing salads for potluck dinners she attends with her colleagues from work. Almost without fail, after each of these events she must send her suit to the cleaners so they can wash out the salad dressing stains that invariably splash on to her clothes. "It's not always easy," she tells a reporter [me! HSH, Mag D!] on a recent Sunday morning over coffee and croissant at Serafina. "I have one daughter and one son who both need to be taken to school and it is therefore doubly hard for me to have to also run to the cleaners at least 3 mornings a week to clean out these stains."
(For reasons of full disclosure, I must confess that Vi and I have a "friends with benefits" thing going on. As you can tell, however, our conversations are a little on the dull side.)
Vi, it seems, is not alone. One market research report after the other confirms this trend. Because of salad-dressing-related stains, many people in the work force are now thinking twice before they reach over to grab the free packets of Italian dressing available in ample supply at the cashier's station.
Indeed, Chad Burlington, 26, a fitness trainer and frequent visitor of Salad-O-Rama's midtown location says, "It used to be that you always took dressing with your salad, but now people are pausing to ask themselves the question: 'Is this dressing stain worthy'?" With a touch of existentialism, Chad adds, "The jury is still out whether this will push people away from eating salads or just from salad dressings. I hope the former, because that may lead to expanding waistlines, and expanding waistlines may lead to more business for me."
But there is more to this trend than the shrinking or expanding sizes of waistlines alone. Professor Balsamic V. Naigrette (no relation to Vi, as far as I know), who is a lecturer and researcher at Columbia's Max and Doreen Rosengarten School of Nutrition, and who has been studying the way people consume salad dressing for more than 30 years (I never knew there was more than one way - HSH, Mag D), concurs. "Certainly, the movement away from salad dressing should be viewed as a movement away from salad, which in turn should be seen as a counter-reaction to Fidel Castro's chewing of tobacco. The thinking goes that if Fidel who has been chewing tobacco for 50 years is still suffering from economic sanctions then perhaps we should be chewing less green weeds. This is a stupid notion, of course, but we should not underestimate how strongly this line of reasoning resonates with today's youth."
In the end, perhaps we should take our cue from Vi. "No one has yet found a substitute for salad dressing," she says, "So when a suit gets dirty, I simply put it aside in the dirty laundry hamper. This way, instead of running three times a week to the cleaners, I only need to go once. Sure, it's a short-term fix, but for now it works."
***
Now you tell me, should this not have been published by the Times!?
His Serene Highness,
The Magnificent D
posted by The Magnificent D at 4:42 PM
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