In fourth grade someone got the bright idea of cutting lunch to an outrageous 15 minutes (as if going to a year-round school without a cafeteria wasn't enough--we ate at our desks and were served by mobile carts in the hall). To get the slow eaters (me) up to speed, our teachers implemented a charming little policy called "Shovel Time."
The first nine minutes would pass normally. Then as the tenth approached, Miss Stauffer (a feathered-haired gal who drove a Camaro, loved Little River Band...and apparently still teaches at Hollydale Elementary) would yell, "Do you know what time it is?!" The class would manically shriek back, "SHOVEL TIME!!!" Talking was absolutely forbidden the final five minutes—it was a deathly silent scarf fest.
I
don't know if I've ever been the same since. But as a nod to this classy
ritual, I've adopted the humble scooping implement as my rating system's
icon. Shovel on!
----------------------------------
1 Shovel=Passing Fancy
2 Shovels=Puppy Love
3 Shovels=Crippling Crush
4 Shovels=Serious Stalking
Hell’s Kitchen is good for something after all. First the fat dude who calls women fat got karmic payback when his heart started giving out. That would’ve been enough, but holy crap, a “spontaneous” dessert-based marriage proposal too?!
No truer words have been spoken than doomed contestant Ben’s upon witnessing the world’s most unique and romantic gesture, “It’s like being stuck in prison, then being able to look out the window and see a rainbow.”
Those Jeopardy get-to-know-me snippets after the first commercial break are always painful. I try to tune them out, but when I heard “propose” and “wife” on an episode last month (it’s taken me this long to figure out how to capture and upload a video from TV and it's still wonky) I opened my ears back up immediately.
No disappointments. Matt Cushman has quite the romantic tale involving a box of cereal and—yes, you guessed it—an engagement ring.
I’d like to poke a little more fun but no matter how cutely I get my hair cut with time it invariably morphs into Matt’s limp hairstyle. I cannot mock someone with a similar flat frazzled do (plus, the last time I mentioned a Jeopardy contestant, they went nuts in the comments).
You put Mormons and milkshakes together and hilarity is bound to ensue. A gentleman from New Mexico got the bright idea of stashing an engagement ring in his sweetheart’s Frosty while out with friends at Wendy's. And as LDS members are wont to do, an impromptu ice cream eating contest began. Chug! Chug! Chug!
Sure enough, the game girlfriend chowed down to the bottom of her cup with no ring to show for her efforts. After Kaitlin Whipple was sent home from the hospital with a most romantic x-ray she set about the serious business of reclaiming her prize.
“‘Everybody stocked me up on fiber and prune juice and everything we could think of, and pills just to make that thing come out!’ Kaitlin said.”
Two days later that Metamucil paid off. Aww…dreamy.
Just in time for the Valentine’s season, a new article about the pitfalls of proposing in a restaurant is up at Gourmet.com. A topic near and dear to my heart, though I’m less concerned about the logistics of such operations and more interested in why men (and the occasional lady) need to hide jewelry in food in the first place.
On a side note, there’s been lots of Heimlich talk lately: gagging on rings in above article, the big Tom Colicchio save and a chicken and waffle mishap at Carroll Gardens’ own Buttermilk Channel. Maybe choking will be big in 2009.
Not technically food, but damn close. A jewelry box tucked inside your macchiato cup? Does an engagement get any dreamier? I would’ve preferred a loose ring bobbing around in the coffee for dramatic effect.
Really, I was more fascinated to learn that NYC has drive-through Starbucks (this Coney Island location is the only one).
Photo courtesy of New York Daily News (I also like photo #5 with the dumpster in the background)
Despite Gourmet not providing me with any solid alfresco porn this month, they offered up a much more tantalizing bit. It seems that Jay McInerney proposed to his fourth wife (Patty Hearst’s sister) using food a vehicle. My favorite cliché!
A ring in the puff pastry at Alain Ducasse in Paris? Louche is one thing, but déclassé, as well? Quel horror.
Unfortunately, I will have to use my imagination for what this sweet (or was it savory?) baked offering looked like.
I don’t make a habit out of watching I Propose. In fact, I’d never seen an episode until Friday while flipping through the channels. With a description like, “A man makes a memorable dinner,” I knew there would be high likelihood of a food-ring combo. There was, but I have to say that frugal as I tend to be, this wannabe groom's $1,000 jewelry budget was a little dismaying.
Apparently, these chocolate boxes are commonplace so I’ll be desensitized when I inevitably encounter the next cocoa-based vessel.
While only indirectly using food as a ruse, at least #11 on this list of marriage proposal ideas doesn't involve chocolate (starch-lovers might also enjoy #26, involving a baked potato).
The second I heard A.J.’s little Latina lady friend utter the words “I didn’t order nothin’” as a fancy silver domed tray appeared, I knew I was in a for a treat. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any hiding, wedging or tucking into edibles, just a clean and simple diamond ring in a box. Classy, just as one would expect from a young Soprano.
Sunday’s Times featured numerous poignant tales of interracial, interfaith love. Yawn. But my favorite tabloid of record came through with class, aplomb and a bag of candy. The Harrison-Roses union was sparked by this new, unique form of proposal involving, get this, food.
“Candy can satisfy a sweet tooth, but finding a diamond amid a mess of gummy worms is the ultimate treat. ‘I put the ring in a bag of candy,’ laughs Travis Harrison, founder and owner of Serious Business Music, describing his proposal to Rebecca Roses. ‘I knew I had to seize the moment.’”
Yes, nothing says carpe diem like a wad of gummies. (Unfortunately, that’s not the groom pictured above.) Hiding an engagement ring in a sack of earthworms? Now, that would be at least slightly memorable.
Oh, this week’s Lost had a total gotcha moment. I wasn’t particularly fond of the plot focus on two undeveloped characters. Mysterious collapses, buried treasure, gasped last words…who cares. But I was holding my breath during the scene where the cheesy actress was offered the bread basket by her sugar daddy. “Here, try one of these homemade rolls” so translates to “will you marry me” in my mind. Damn, but it was a fancy bracelet, not an engagement ring. So close. Now they really need to work a food-based proposal into 24, which will be no small feat, considering the only character I’ve seen eat on that show this season was autistic.
The New York Post has it all over the New York Times for sundry superficial reasons, one of them being their spookily democratic wedding coverage. Finally, there’s a place for the girthy, college-free and the non-white to express their love.
I’m afraid the Castillo-Boneta profile won’t be up much longer, so here’s the passage that matters:
“Boneta, now a New York City police officer, proposed on Easter Sunday in 2005, but it took a little coaxing to have Castillo find something even sweeter than chocolate in her Easter basket. ‘I was totally exhausted that morning, but after he and my mom nudged me a little bit, I opened it up and found the ring,’ Castillo remembers.”
I have no visual on said romantic Easter basket so I’ll just have to imagine the beauty.
As a nostalgic obsessive aside, I recently couldn’t help but Google my early-teen first stalkee/near date raper who tormented me all of 8th grade and freshman year with his grotesque hotness and put me off of straight guys for years. The very first hit was a five-and-a-half-year-old New York Times wedding announcement. I hazard to guess that he’s one of the very few, possibly only Gresham, Oregon natives to make the column (ah, there is one other possible candidate from 1997). I just wanted to see a grownup photo, that’s all. Um, he does appear to be living on the Upper West Side so I guess if I was dangerously curious I could always stake out the building.
“Creepy Easter” photo borrowed from The Seven Deadly Sinners
There have been a lot of rings and food near misses in the past few days. During a commercial break, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a woman pulling a ring out of cooked salmon. Score. Thank goodness for technology allowing me to rewind “live” TV. It was an eBay commercial where a fish ate a ring fashioned from the words IT. Later, a woman finds the ring while eating dinner. No proposal, just randomness.
Last night I was thwarted again when Salma Hayek’s character on Ugly Betty was trying to get Daniel Meade to propose to her in 60 days (unbeknownst to him) and he said he had a surprise for her. It was a glass of yogurt and granola containing heart-shaped slices of papaya. I was holding my breath as Sophia rooted around the glass looking for a ring. I so wanted it to be there for my sake. But no, sometimes yogurt is just yogurt. She did get her engagement ring later in the episode.
I Do(nut), which might seem cryptic at first glance, is the latest to join the ranks of my pointless but must-be-pointed-out categories a la No Fat Dudes and Vomit Watch. It’s documenting absolutely useless crap like this that keeps me sane (seriously, it’s very soothing). The crap in question is when a man (and it’s almost always a man) proposes using food as a vehicle for the diamond (and it’s almost always a diamond) ring. Does this happen in real life? I would just pretend like I didn’t see the gem and put the offending piece of food in my mouth like nothing was up.
I’m no chick flick lover, but apparently James is, he’ll watch the worst schlock and watch it repeatedly. If I’ve seen a film, I don’t want to see it again for at least five years, even if it was amazing. I used to get irritated by his TV viewing habits but I’ve learned to relax and go zen even if it’s the fifth time Batman Begins comes on or something I have zero interest in like Glory appears on screen.
So, the other night he put on In Her Shoes about thirty minutes into the movie and just left it there. It seemed that Toni Collette was fat because she was wearing a heavy coat and her pretty, partying sister, Cameron Diaz called her fat. And then like thirty minutes later she’s thin because she’s not wearing the coat anymore and she finds love and a Jewish lawyer asks her to marry him in a Philadelphia Jamaican jerk shop using a plate of rice and beans topped with shrimp.
The photo’s a little pixilated but that’s an engagement ring gracing the front-facing prawn. Is there anything dreamier than a jewel-encrusted crustacean?
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