Ultichinno

Unless your workplace was always in your own home, you likely got up and shot out the door, figuring you would get your morning eye opener closer to your final destination. Whether you stopped off at the corner deli or dropped into the teachers' lounge or swung past the cart on the corner, there's a reasonable chance someone else brewed your kickoff cup o' joe.

Not this past year. Likely one of the biggest changes to your morning routine has been that you've had to be your own barista. And while you may have your preferred brand or flavor, the end result was likely a fairly simple affair. You put some ground-up beans in a pot, added some hot water and that was it. You might add some sweetener or something to lighten it, but that was probably the extent of your customization. No double shot of this, no sprinkle of that, no artfully poured foam forming a flower on top.

But now that the world is opening up you can once again overpay for the privilege of someone giving you brown hot water. Up until 1987 that was all it used to be, save some minor and easily replicable customizations. That all changed when Howard Shultz bought Starbucks and turned it from a small coffee-only specialty retailer in Seattle into the worldwide java-themed behemoth it is today. And so began the age of organically-grown sustainably-produced fair-trade jitter juice that can be ordered as bespoke as any suit from Saville Row. 

And we're not just talking one or two sugars. Walk into any Starbucks and the menu board sports a dizzying array of creations that take coffee drinking to the next level. There are the classic variations you can get in any Italian café, such as lattes and espressos and macchiatos, and the more modern flat white and Americano, almost all available hot or iced. Beyond that are the home-grown cold beverages under the trademarked Frappuccino label. These ice, coffee and sugar blends are designed to give a coffee-esque spin to a milkshake, and come in a dizzying variety of flavors, from White Chocolate Mocha to Caramel Ribbon Crunch to Java Chip. 

Additionally the company rolls out specialty items to coincide with various events and seasons. Their 2021 Summer Menu features flavors such as Strawberry Funnel Cake, Mango Dragonfruit Lemonade and Mocha Cookie Crumble. From the names alone you would think you were in a bakery or rooftop bar. But no, they are created in a retail chain built on the art of brewing coffee, even if they bear about as much resemblance to a cup of Pike Place Roast as a rabbit to a tractor trailer.

There's even a supposedly "secret" menu, though the secret is so out that many an experienced green apron employee will know these concoctions without going to the vault to look up the recipe. There's the Thin Mint Frappuccino (green tea, java chips, mocha and peppermint syrup, and designed to mimic a Girl Scout Cookie), the Chocolate Covered Strawberrry (Coldbrew coffee with raspberry syrup and strawberry puree) and Butterbeer (an homage to Harry Potter, it's caramel, toffee nut flavoring and cinnamon syrup). And for your four-legged friend ask at the drive-in window for a small cup of whipped cream, known as a Puppuccino.

But the real action in customization is the almost infinite variety of shots, syrups and other ingredients you can request to be added to any given drink. Yes, some people refer an extra squirt of vanilla syrup, or a double shot of espresso. But that pales in comparison to the postings by Baristas who have to concoct bitches-brew demands from obviously deranged people like this one: "Trenti iced coffee, 12 pumps [sugar-free] vanilla, 12 pumps [sugar-free] hazelnut, 12 pumps [sugar-free] caramel, 5 pumps skinny mocha, a splash of soy, coffee to the star on the siren's head, ice, double-blended!" I'm not a proponent of violence, but if were I behind the counter that could make me reconsider.

As for me, I will stop by the last cart before I reach my destination, forego speaking Starbuckian, and order a large (not tall, grande or venti), pay the man my two bucks and go on my way. Because sometimes to start your day, you don't need an inspirational quote, you just need coffee.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't have to have a cup, but he likes it. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

World Record

With the Olympics starting up the world will once again be treated to amazing feats of athletic ability. There will be Bronze, Silver and Gold medalists, attesting that those who earn it are the best in their sports. Additionally, some of those performances will take it to another level altogether and be certified as world records, the best that there has ever been. 

It's one thing to be able to run a mile, still another to be able to best others in a competition. But to do accomplish any athletic feat in a way that is faster or further or higher than any other person in recorded history is truly remarkable. Those records might stand for a day or a week or, in the case of Yuriy Sedykh and his hammer throw of 86.74 meters, for 31 years. That makes Sedykh the current world record holder for holding world records.

Of course not all records are made in the field of sports. There are markers for tallest building (Dubai's Burj Hhalifa at 2,716.5 feet), for longest bridge (China's Danyang-Kushan Grand bridge at 102.4 miles) and for deepest tunnel (Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel reaches a depth of 2,300 meters). Many of those are achieved by advances in the state-of-the-art which enabled them to reach a superlative that was formerly out of reach. At the time, Gustav Eiffel's Tower was the tallest man-made structure in the world; now it is just another 81-story structure, not even as tall some of the apartment buildings surrounding Central Park.

But just as the Kardashians are famous for being famous, there is a whole set of records that exist for the sole purpose of being records. Civilization will not be advanced by putting a marker in the sand demarcating the most hula hoops ever spun at once or the largest serving of pancakes or the fastest motorized toilet. And yet those are all verified superlatives as compiled by the bible of such things, the Guinness Book of World Records.

If you have ever had dreams of being listed in that volume, it's likely that you consider your chance as the same as holding the world record in the pole vault (Mondo Duplantis at 20.18 feet). But as you might have gleaned from some of the aforementioned records, all the top spots are not necessarily achieved after years of training and practice. Yes, it does take determination, time and skills of a sort. But if you are dead set on holding the title for Most Socks Put On One Foot in 30 Seconds or Most Soft Toys Caught Blindfolded, Guinness has accreditors ready to look at the tape and pronounce you the best of the best.

And that's just what happened in Solihull England. Will Cutbill was enduring Britain's third pandemic related lockdown. With nothing but time on his hands, he opened a bag of M&M's and started putting one on top of the other. "I was in the living room, and I was incredibly bored and I just decided to see how many of them I could stack on top of each other," he told BirminghamLive. "I started thinking, I wonder if there's a world record for this, so I looked it up online and found out the most anyone had ever stacked was four."

Yup. Just four. But Cutbill, a civil engineer by trade, was a man with a mission. Sort of. "It's not something I would normally have taken the time to do - especially now that the sun is shining and the pubs are back open - but at the time, there wasn't much else to do so it seemed like time well spent." And in just a few hours he did it, besting the previous record jointly held by Silvio Sabba of Italy and Brendan Kelbie of Australia. "Five M&Ms doesn't sound like a lot, but it was near impossible to do so I was chuffed when I achieved it."

Chuffed indeed. So as the best in the world gather in Tokyo to swim the fastest and jump the highest, let Cutbill be an inspiration to each of us to reach for our personal best. Need a place to start? Leah Shutkever holds the current mark for fastest time to eat a burrito at 44.2 seconds. Do you have stuff (and stomach) to beat it?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford could medal in peanut butter cup eating. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Mongolia's Got Talent

Let's play word association with places. If I said Hollywood you might respond with movies. London might produce Big Ben, while the South Pole would produce penguins. And depending on your state of mind, Sweden could prompt smorgasbord, Ikea, and for a few misguided souls, ABBA.

If you were asked to play the same game with Mongolia you might come up with yurts, or maybe even Genghis Khan. But it's pretty certain you wouldn't come up with boy bands or heavy metal. That is, unless you were a guy who says he was more or less the Simon Cowell of Mongolia, Reghu Ragunathan.

Reghu was born in Singapore, the child of an Indian Singaporean mother and a Malaysian father. But as a rebellious kid he didn't really identify with those cultures, and the expectation of "going to the temple, marrying early and then gathering with the family to watch Tamil movies on Sunday." Rather, he grew up on Solid Gold, listening to everyone from A-Ha to Dionne Warwick, with the first album he ever bought being "Somewhere in Time" from Iron Maiden. Like many a kid he wanted to be a rock guitarist, but without innate musical talent he went sideways, and focused on audio production.

He started learning the ropes in Singapore, then went to London to study further. After getting his degree, he did as many recent graduates do and returned to stay with his parents while finding work in a local studio. With Singapore being the Mecca for moderns of the east, local and regional musicians flocked there to record, including those from Mongolia. And while he couldn't speak the language, his technical chops befriended him to Bold, then the lead singer of Camerton, that country's most successful pop/boy band.

Bold asked Reghu if he could replicate what they had in Singapore a little closer to home. Reghu was no music studio designer or construction engineer, but figured he had nothing to lose: "I figured I'm probably going to crash and burn anyways, so why not give it a try?" He signed on, getting a real-world course not only in studio design and acoustics and even how to make the furniture he needed, but also in a foreign language in a place where he was served a sheep's head at dinner: "As the guest I was offered the eyeballs, and when they went ‘squish" in my mouth I threw up on my host."

But he stuck it out, eventually meeting his wife and building a following. While the country has about 3.4 million people, nearly half live in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar where Reghu was based. And so while popular association with the country is with those yurts, a large number of residents have tastes not dissimilar to other urban centers in the world. As with any locality, those tastes are influenced by history and custom. In music that meant traditional 2 and 3 string instruments crossed with rock and pop as well as the R&B sensibility of Boys II Men, leading to groups like the Mongolian folk rock-heavy metal band The HU and their viral hit "Wolf Totem" which has 55 million views on YouTube.

As Reghu got more established he worked with some of the locally emerging acts of the day, including A-Sound, Maraljingoo, and Uka. Later on he started Mongolia Live, an online destination for Mongolian culture and traditional and fusion music videos, one of which became #1 in France on the world music charts, racking up 12 million views on Facebook. And that Simon Cowell reference? Reghu was one of the judges on a well-known television show called Universe Best Songs. Contestants performed for a live audience, hoping to make the cut and move on to the next round. And if you make the obvious connection to "America's Got Talent," then Reghu was the obvious Cowell standin, including his catchphrase of "Medremj" (Mongolian for "Feeling") which actually became a thing in Ulaanbaatar.

These days Reghu is happy in New York, with friends and projects in his chosen profession, neither of which require him to eat animal heads. He says he's "working on my second or third life," noting it's a long way from where he started. Or perhaps best said in words from the refrain of "Yuve Yuve Yu" by The HU, "how strange, how strange."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford finds there are stories everywhere if you ask. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Key Bricks

They say the language to learn these days is not Spanish or French or even Chinese, but computer code. It is the most basic building block of everything we do, from making Zoom calls to buying toothpaste on Amazon to writing a report for your boss. Sure, you can punch up an existing app or program and do most of what you need. But if you want to do something a little bespoke, something not off-the-shelf, then the ability to code lets you create anything you can imagine. 

Back in the day we did the same with LEGO. Long before there were computers, LEGO blocks were the child friendly way of building something from nothing. While Meccano and Erector Sets were made of metal and required tools, and Tinker Toys were wood and good for abstract designs, LEGO's plastic bricks were more manageable, compact and "concrete," in the sense that a wall was a wall. It took only the most rudimentary of motor skills to snap one onto another, and before you knew it you had something that looked like a rocket ship or a house.

Just like code, each individual piece was basically nothing, existing as a standalone. There were big pieces and little ones, round ones and flat ones, and specialized shapes you only needed once in a while. You could follow a pattern to get a basic car or airplane, customize that construct to have 5 wheels or 3 wings, or create something from scratch that no one had thought of before. I started that way, eventually using the bricks to make a case for an old FM radio I was rebuilding, and a hollowed-out skyscraper with a secret door where I could hide my bubble gum from my sister. 

I moved on, and LEGO did too. Not content to just make more bricks in different colors, the company started making more refined sets with specialized pieces to enable builders to create castles, space stations and pirate ships. You can get a kit that enables you to build a model of the Coliseum, a VW Camper Van or the Sydney Opera House. They started doing movie and TV tie ins, from the DeLorean from "Back to the Future" to The Kwik-E-Stop from "The Simpsons." And just released is the largest kit ever created (so far), enabling you to create a world map that measures over a yard wide and 2 feet tall, consisting of 11,695 pieces, most of them single studs.

But while I appreciate the detail of their model of Big Ben, the working mechanics of their Roller Coaster and the architectural accuracy of their Eiffel Tower, I confess to be taken by one of their newest creations. That's because while just slightly smaller than the real thing, it looks remarkably similar to my most constant college companion. Back in the dark ages when I went away to school the most important piece of technology I owned was my portable typewriter. I learned to clean the keys, and to flip the ribbon when the ink got low. I became adept at wielding a little brush of white correction fluid, learning to dab it on carefully, then blowing on it gently until it dried. But maybe the greatest skill of all was learning how to reinsert an already typed sheet back into the roller and line it up so a correction would look more like a book report and less like a ransom note.

And darn it if LEGO hasn't gone and made a faithful recreation of my Olivetti. It has a center typebar that rises every time a key is pressed, the carriage moves from right to left until it needs to be slid back, and you can feed in a piece of paper that will move up as you type. Alas, there is no ink in the ribbon, so your word processor and printer combo shouldn't feel threatened. 

According to early builders, it's a fun kit to put together, with very little repetition, and working mechanics. And perhaps best of all, as one reviewer says, "The sound of the keys is also almost exactly what a real typewriter sounds like! It's just so dang cool." Cool indeed. Now if LEGO would just make a model of a crappy stereo, I can feel like I'm back in freshman year.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford still likes to build things. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Thigh Man

The story goes that back in 1964 Dominic Bellissimo was behind the taps at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY when some hungry buddies stopped by. Dom asked his mom Teressa to prepare something for his friends to eat. The kitchen was a little bare, but she did have some leftover chicken wings she was saving for soup. She threw them into the fryer, added some sauce and spices. And just like that the city became known for something other than being the birthplace of President Millard Fillmore.

Teressa's invention led to an entire industry. About a billion servings make their way to tables every year, with many paying homage to the original flavor and its tantalizing mix of butter and Frank's hot sauce. Variations abound, from the relatively sedate lemon-pepper to the more exotic mango-habanero. They have become a staple of football tailgates and parties, and appear on menus as appetizers and main courses. One time I even made a condition of leaving a family vacation to fly to Buffalo for a meeting that an order from the Anchor Bar be waiting in my hotel room. The client gladly complied, but I'm embarrassed that it did reinforce one of my favorite sayings: while everyone has a price, it's a shame how low it usually is.

That demand for a formerly throwaway foodstuff has meant that supply can also be challenging. While producers ramp up stockpiles in advance of three-day weekends and Super Bowl Sunday, a ravenous populace can still experience periodic shortages. Most recently increased demand was fed by a desire for comfort foods during the pandemic, as well as bad winter weather in poultry producing regions. The USDA reported that slaughter was down 4% in the first quarter of 2021, and pounds produced down 3%. The result, as National Chicken Council spokesman Tom Super said, is that there is "very tight supply but short of a shortage."

To be sure there are workarounds, most notably the appearance of so called "boneless wings." Not wings at all, but rather breast meat cut into approximately wing size nuggets, this blasphemy to purists got some press last year when a man in Lincoln, Nebraska asked the local city council to pass an ordinance requiring a relabel. As Ander Christensen noted, "Nothing about boneless chicken wings actually comes from the wing of a chicken. We've been living a lie for far too long." His impassioned plea garnered 5 million views on Twitter, showing just how deep sentiment runs on this topic.

But now there is an attempt to deal with the problem with transparency rather than sleight of hand. With wings having gone from 98 cents per pound a year ago to $3.22 today, it's as much an economic necessity as supply imbalance. And so Wingstop, a chain known for, well, wings, has rolled out a virtual offshoot called – wait for it – Thighstop. Currently only available online for takeout and delivery as opposed to dine-in, they offer a limited menu featuring many of the same flavors people have come to expect, just based on that other appendage. You can get them bone-in or boneless, though these boneless are the real McCoy, not some substitute body part. 

With thighs going for about half the costs of wings, restaurants and connoisseurs of dark meat both make out. Over time our household has come to prefer thighs for their flavor, availability and adaptability to various recipes, but we're in the minority. By and large Americans prefer white meat for its nuggets, sandwiches and parms.  Says Charlie Morrison, Chairman and CEO of Wingstop, "Thighs just don't get the appreciation they deserve."

So as summer dawns, perhaps those of you with a wing fixation need to take stock. You can still savor your celery and ranch accompaniments, but for the main event cast your eyes a little lower. Perhaps it is apropos as we approach the Fourth to paraphrase actor Bill Pullman from the movie Independence Day: "Should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, 'We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on, we're going to survive.' Today we celebrate our independence day. With thighs!"

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has a go-to summer favorite of dry rubbed grilled thighs. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.