----------------------------------------------------------- So there you have it. Feel free to argue for any of the 10 possibilities: Original cake, Scientist Babe, Displaying MOC, Sharing MOC, OC #1 - 5, or Sunkist Cake. Or make the cake yourself (recipe at the bottom of this page), take a photo of it and send it to us for our use. Or -- go off on a tangent. (Citrus sprays everywhere when you take a bite.)
(The original orange cake image)
Here at Maoist Orange Cake, we're in the middle of a discussion about changing the image we use at the top of our webpage. We've decided to share this conversation with you, to reveal our culinary process. And encourage your input.
It began thusly:
Shado to Maggie, 2 October 2007: I found this picture online. Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow get that bottle out of her hans, and replace it with a piece of Orange Cake?
Just thinkin'....
(Scientist babe)
Maggie to Shado: my god yes. i'm pretty crappy at adobe photoshop but i may have to give it a try. i'll also send it to liza and see if it catches her interest.
Maggie to Liza: Liza, is this is this a project that (a) interests you and (b) is do-able?
Shado to Maggie: whoops sorry---you know I meant hands right? I was just so excited about stumbling onto the picture. I'd love to see what you could do with it.!
Maggie to Shado: oh, well, if its hanDs, forget it! i was so glad to hear someone mentioned that overlooked and extremely delicious body part, hans, i was beside myself. but since you're willing to side with the hands over hans crowd, count me out. HANS FOREVER!
Shado to Maggie: Oh yeah---I know you're just thinkin' about doing something with your "hans" and that piece of cake...
Liza to Maggie: Too tricky. But look at this
(Displaying Maoist orange cake)
Or this. 
Maggie to Liza: EXCELLENT. I'm going to share it with Shado but I vote for the second -- it's fairly perfect. Is it public domain?
Liza to Maggie: public domain? It's communist, gimme a break. Who should be making a profit on it? Who owns it? Really, I don't know chinese copyright law.
It's called Friendship and it was done in 1959. I'm attaching a larger version.
Maggie to Shado: Shado, Liza says altering the photo you sent is too complicated (the star rays, I bet) but she offers two other possibilities, attached. I vote for the second one, the little girls eating Maoist Orange Cake. Whaddya think? I could put it up at MOC and see what the vote there is.
Shado to Maggie: I vote for the little girls too! Very cute, but looks like they're up to something!
Maggie to all the MOCers: Thx to an idea from Shado and the finding of a Mao poster by Liza, we now have a new image up at Maoist Orange Cake. Tell us what you think! -- Maggie
Shado to Maggie: I just saw it---looks great!
Maggie to Shado: i gotta say, tho, that scientist babe in the original photo you sent me is ROCKIN'.
Shado to Maggie: She is isn't she? Very cute!
Feminista to All, 3 October 2007: While the Chinese children are cute, I would like to see the piece of cake remain a part of the blog.
Maggie to All: Well, now that some of you are voting for the cake, I realize I didn't save that image and I can't find it in my archives. It was not an actual picture of Moist Orange Cake according to our recipe, you understand -- we don't have one of those, not yet, anyhow -- it was a public domain generic orange cake photo I pulled from the web. So, since it's lost, attached are five other options. Please vote for one of these if you want a cake image. Majority rule. Thanks. -- Maggie
(Orange cake #1)
(Orange Cake #2)
(Orange Cake #3)
(Orange Cake #4)
(Orange Cake #5)
Kat to All: I concur. I like the new pic, but is there room somewhere for the piece of cake as well?
Liza to Maggie: How's this? The image is from a 1937 Sunkist recipe booklet that I happen to have here in the gallery. I'm sending the original scans plus a little graphic i did for you.
(Sunkist recipe cake)
Jana to All: I like cake No. 4. The photo has the most clarity of design, and it is closest to the description of the real Maoist Orange Cake.
I have a suggestion. Somebody needs to make the cake and photograph it from various angles. Then we can use them for the time being, and I can also use the photos as reference to make a Mao poster with a round cake and happy marching peasants. I imagine the cake dominating the background, either as a tower or the sun, while the peasants march across the foreground carrying giant forks and knives. I know it should be chopsticks, but giant chopsticks no longer look like chopsticks.
I don't promise it in a hurry, but I think it would be a good solution. In the meantime we can leave up the children for a while, then put up No. 4, or perhaps rotate all the images. But remember, there is no decadent chocolate on a true People's Orange Cake!
By the way, it might be more amusing to our readers if we discussed this on the blog, including what we've wr itten here. We could even take non-binding advisory votes from our readers. In my opinion, the MOC is not sufficiently chaotic. If no one is planning to be this week's diva, Maggie can post her letter as-is, with photos, and we'll add our comments.
Little Gator to All: Please not 1 or 2. They both scream "Im a carrot cake!'
Feminista to All: Cake #1 gets my vote.
Josiah to All: The original cake picture is still up in Google's cache of the MOC home page. That said, I like the Chinese kids. I also like Jana's idea of throwing the matter open to the readership.
Josiah to All: Immediately after my last email, I found the Blogger page for the original cake image. So, as Dubya would say, all options are on the table. (But our options taste better than his!)
Feminista to All: Thanks, Josiah. I vote for keeping the original.
Maggie to All: very much like the idea of putting this conversation on the blog itself. Unless you have any objections, I'll make a post that includes the comments so far, images so far, and throw it out there -- showing our process would be lovely, I think. Our individual conceptions of what "orange cake" looks like. We can go on from there.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
WORKERS' PROCESS ON TRUE PEOPLE'S CAKISM
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33 comments:
All:
I like the current pic of the little girls very much; I also like Cake #4.
After this weekend (payday and I have MOnday and Tuesday off) I may very well be able to bAke the true Maoist Orange Cake and take various pictures. Will keep you posted.
I must say, I fINALLY went to that Alt site maggie posted and watched Iran so Far. Have to say that I DON'T GET IT! No milk spurted from my nostrils (sorry, Shado) and I did not fall down laughing. I got some of it, but not all of it.
I guess you had to be there,and I suppose the timing of Ahmadinajad or whatever his spelling is being dissed by Columbia UNIV president had something to do with the timing. I did like "You're in NY now baby...." I got that much.
I do love our entire Maoist Orange Cake mythology. We all remember the protracted humorous riffing about maoism that went on in the DTWOF blog about this time last year. it was brilliant and if I did drink milk I am sure it would have spurted from my nostrils at the time...that was one FUNNY thread.
So it is fitting that we are seeking the perfect Maoist Orange Image to set off our esteemed blog.
xx
silvio
Shado--SHOULDN'T the girls be up to something, if they're going to chill at this blog?
I thought that was rather that point!
**grin**
whoops, "the point"
was so distracted by hot scientist.....
Brainstorm! I have a friend whose husband actually knows Chinese (and Russian and Arabic and Uigur). He’s the one who told me that the Chinese writing used for decorative effect on a blouse I own is actually a list of Chinese postal codes, upside down. I will see if I can get him to write “Maoist Orange Cake” for us in Chinese, and our new image can include the writing.
I think we need a picture of a genuine, authentic Maoist Orange Cake, according to the recipe. We cannot have a carrot cake because carrots, although the proper color, are phallic, feudalist vegetables. The rounded end of a carrot represents the bound foot of an oppressed woman, and is sexually arousing to the patriarchal mind. We don’t want a bunch of aroused patriarchs running around our blog, screaming.
As has already been established in the original Dyke Texts, chocolate is the flavor of decadent capitalism. As China has left behind the road of pure Orangeism, one sees chocolate more and more often smothering the simple orange cakes of the people beneath a liquid layer of lawless looting. This must not be permitted.
I assume the Scientist Babe is preparing the authentic People’s Orange Sauce, although it looks a bit like Ruby Red to me. “Displaying Maoist Orange Cake” appears to depict a Trotskyist Key Lime Pie. We support our Trotskyist comrades, but they really need to get their own blog.
Jana C.H.
Seattle, Soviet of Washington
There's no Pravda in Izvestia and no Izvestia in Pravda. --Old USSR Joke
Silvio,
It was a take-off on Flock of Seagull's "I Ran So Far Away"; plus with that Maroon 5 guy in there...if you can get the lyrics and read them, I'll bet you'll crack up.
In case you still don't like it, here's another from that same night (I'm mostly putting this up because Jason Sudekis is a hometown guy from the Kansas side of town.)
http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2007/10/im_a_lefty_from_kansas.php
The People's Orange Sauce goes red when in collective study of imperialistic atrocity after the heat of agrarian labor, but reverts overnight to its correct color. This is assisted by the modernity of the flask's shape, which has a wide, completely accessible base representing the will of the proletariat rather than the narrow beakers of old, which concentrated power into an up and down configuration.
The crust on Cake #4 is not an "added" ingredient stolen from our indigenous comrades of other hemispheres, but rather represents the organic conversion of simple fruit sugars (via the dialetics of collaborative appreciation) into the caramel of solidarity.
"Ladyfingers" is a royalist term. Women of the revolution do not find the pretense of gentrification respectful. Let us, rather, call them "wombdigits".
And very tasty, in all their permutations.
By the way, I also like Lisa's Sunkist cake, though those mandarin orange segments remind me of feudal bureaucracy for some reason.
JcH
Okay, Shado,
I am beginning to get it. I read the parody lyrics.
I guess my problem is that I never heard of Flock of Seagulls or their song.
But I get the line, "Like Eugene, you got me straight trippin' boo..."
That is a reference to that Steve Martin/Queen Latifah/Eugene Levy movie, "Bringing down the House," where they invented all this urban black slang so that when the movie opened it would not be dated.(Clever!)
Ah humor...such a delicate affair.
Are you all following the thread about the New Yorker cover of Ahmadinejad discussed on the DTWOF site? Pretty interesting.
Now back to Orangish rhetoric and cake-o-centric discourse!
Yeah, I've been following that "New Yorker" thread too--still wondering what the significance of the orange pant leg and sandaled foot.
Orange pant legs, orange cake...wonder what the proletariet would say about Mandarin oranges on the Maoist cake?
Y'know, Silvio, I found "Iran So Far" hilarious and I didn't know about the Flock of Seagulls song. For me, here's what worked:
(a) Mahmoud Ahmadenijad is being vilified and pilloried out there in the right-controlled press as a dictator, a Holocaust denier, and a nuclear threat. G*d knows I have no reason to support the man, but the first two claims are simply inaccurate -- he was duly elected, more legally than our own President. And if you read his actual comments about the Holocaust, while he's no friend of Israel, he's not a strict Holocaust denier, not like, say, Mel Gibson's father. Jew-hating takes many forms and there's no good to be derived from conflating them.
With regard to the nuclear threat, I assume several things that feel like common sense to me. One is that if I were listed as part of an "Axis of Evil" by the greatest military threat the world has ever known, a rogue nation given to invasion and conquest without cause, I'd want to have some of the same Big Guns they have. Another is that the threat of nuclear capability is working for Iran almost as much as actually having the weapons would. Just like it is for North Korea, whose main goal in developing their weapons program is to sell them to other small countries who cannot manufacture them on their own -- it's a lucrative cottage industry for a country starved for resources. And the overwhelming reason why countries around the globe are seeking a nuclear back-up is because of US. Because as soon as Bush took office, he and Cheney declared nuclear attack was back on the list of options for our country -- long before 9/11. WE are the nuclear instability in the world. Next in line to us, though nowhere near as great a threat, are portions of the former Soviet Union, India, and Israel, all of whom our government defend having the bomb.
So, when attention is drawn away from the Big Scary Lies about Ahmadenijad, lies used to grease the skids so Bushies can declare war (a war that is going to be started before Bush leaves office, unless Democrats grow some ovaries), and instead focuses on him as just a goofy guy who is secretly gay -- well, the use of humor instead of hate made it all the funnier to me. Especially coming from Andy Samberg, a Jew. Especially since the Christian Right, who coalesce as a movement around two main agendas -- gay-hating and racism -- are pretending to use Iran's homophobia as a reason to condemn the country. As if Dobson wouldn't line us all up and decapitate us as well, given the chance.
Political parody, when done right, is far more effective and enduring than hate speech. And I gotta say, in my experience nobody ever does it better than Jews. A survival tool honed to perfection.
(b) Combined with this political poke was a scathing commentary on pop culture, specifically on the kind of music videos that are currently used to sell in a youth market. Vapid is an understatement. They are constructed of 1-2 second jumbled shots of fuzzy images, using Vaseline-coated lenses (or the modern equivalent) and lip-syncing to make the singer look attractive and earnest instead of just a singer. Completely irrelevant objects and scenes are thrown in for emotional manipulation, but before you can entirely focus on them, zoom, the next shot appears. This is particularly egregious in "love" songs, to keep us distracted from the lack of actual intimacy and meaning in the message. It's calculated and cynical in the extreme, and it's no wonder that attention spans have gone down the toilet, as well as an ability to have serious, effective conversation -- especially about relationships. (Have you noticed all the "finish the lyric" gameshows on TV right now? The reason why they offer any competition at all is because even with the words to the line offered onscreen, it's hard to guess how the line is constructed -- stupidity reigns in current pop lyrics, and one line looks just like another.)
But Samberg and Crew take those same vapid ideas and words (going to the "animal zoo" -- I mean, what other kind of zoo do we talk about?) and apply them dreamily to a romance between a young Jewish performer and the President of Iran. It's subtle yet comprehensive ridicule of the whole genre. The line of children walking across the bridge -- completely gratuitous, but if it was in a "regular" music video, we'd concoct meaning for it. It's a pastiche aimed at the consumers of music who drive the market these days, daring and still hilarious.
Lest you think I'm just some old coot grumbling about kids these days (well, okay, maybe I am), let me acknowledge, the love songs of the 50s and early 60s were just as vapid, designed to sell and distract rather than inform or inspire. I absolutely adore those old songs, AND I admit it's because I was conditioned to, more than anything else. We had another wave of vapidity in the late 70s/early 80s, although that was offset by punk's influence. It seems to come in cycles. Rap had the chance to make a difference, and did make some difference, but was easily coopted by misogyny and drugs, the twin barons of hell that the dominant culture always unleashes on progressive art. But young people of each generation are just as smart as the one before them, and eventually songwriters find a crack in the edifice through which to seep music of meaning and contradiction. I fell in love with the music of the mid 80s, Joan Jett, Chrissy Hynde, Souxsie, Elvis Costello, Jello Biafra, The Smiths -- I hope for another such renascence, once the I'll-never-grow-beyond-14-years-old-emotionally boybands and let-me-find-another-way-to-tell-you-I-like-how-you-mistreat-me girl divas are out of the way.
On another track completely: Reading about "milk squirting from nostrils" while comparing images of cake made me queasy! One of those CSI moments.
Let me be perfectly clear--It was WATER shooting out my nose (bottled water, at that), not milk. No milk, milk products, or cows were involved in my hysterical reaction to said video...
Ahhh. You might think it's milk but it'snot.
God will get you for that, Maggie!
wow, maggie read way more into the video than I did.
I just thought it was funny to have someone who is pretty ridiculous (come on, now, no gays in iran? please...) and gave him an ode/blew him a raspberry that was equally ridiculous.
I also like that it was classically absurdist: tearing down both the subject matter and the very form/genre.
I like absurdism....
Maggie, you say the lyrics were clever, but when I played the Iran video I could hardly understand a word. The guy mumbled the whole way through! (His back-up singer, on the other hand, was understandable.) If your song has two lines of lyric that don't even rhyme, you can mumble or screech or overlay it with loud instrumentals with no argument with me, but that's not the way to perform a clever political parody. Without witty lyrics it was just a mildly funny joke that went on way too long.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith JcH: ENUNCIATE! Someone sat up all night writing those lyrics.
Jana, I think that had more to do with the quality of that video in the Alternet. version. When I first saw the piece on SNL, (and even the video on YouTube, before NBC pulled it) all the lyrics were clear and easily understandable, which is why I shot Evian out of my nose.
Re sound quality -- I listened to it on my work computer, which is set up for best sound quality available (since my job depends on that), so it came through very clear for me. And I'm sure the production values on this digital short were as high as NBC could go, because last year's similar parody, "Dick In A Box", just won the Emmy and garnered more attention for SNL than anything else all year. There are reviews currently about "Iran So Far" at Salon, in the New York Times, etc., worth reading for the back story. They're hoping for a repeat smash, it's clear.
But, part of the point in hip-hop and pop music is to imitate the non-standard English of disaffected youth. I mean, even in my day, rock lyrics were often hard for me to decipher; my teenaged friends made relentless fun of me because of my inability to hear certain lines and my imaginative rendering of what I thought it must be. If you're "in", you get it. And this short was aimed at that demographic, looks to me.
Last weekend I watch ten minutes of Lawrence Welk as a sort of anthropological exercise. As a teenager and young adult, you could have used that show as torture and gotten me to confess to almost anything rather than watch it. Part of what drove me nuts was the prissy enunciation and the destruction of most emotional content by cool-whipped singing. But I once had a crush on Janet Lennon (age ten) so I watched the Lennon Sisters last Saturday for a bit. Got irritated and turned it off. I love rock'n'roll...
As I was saying, humor...very high context. But thanks, Maggie for the whole rundown.
shado, here's my take on why the orange pant-leg and birkenstock:
If Ahmadinajadahoosie is sitting in the toilet as the "cop," then the other guy is Liberal-Gayfriendly-America.
(American cop: Closeted Gay Republican = IRAN President: American Liberals)
Perhaps it is portraying liberal America as the hypocrites accusing Iran of things they already do themselves.
Here the equation falls apart, but I bet one of you could make something of it.
Maybe the orange pant leg is the liberals to refer to the Columbia U debacle.
It was not lack of standard English that was my problem with the Iran video. It was breathy mumbling overlaid by too-loud instrumentals. I caught so few lines that I didn't notice any non-standard English. It's good to know it wasn't created to sound like that.
Silvio, I don't see how liberal America works into the cartoon at all. If I wanted to over-interpret I'd say the orange pant leg represents a Guantanamo Bay jumpsuit, but that makes so sense in the context either. To me the message is simply that there are gays everywhere, despite the fantasies of Ahmadenijad and the U.S. Senate. Bringing in other issues just muddies things up. Sometimes a pant leg is just a pant leg.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Tommy J: I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending to too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
I think Jana may be right about the leg.
I thought maybe Ahmad-however-it's-spelled might have had an interested look on his face, but then I checked back with my own copy of the magazine and he looks really perplexed.....
*Teh gays, they are everywhere! bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha*
Yeah, Jana and Kat, I agree about the Pant Leg.
Maggie,
forgot to mention that you have accurately nailed right on the head the way the Lawrence Welk entertainers killed the lyrics of every song with their "destruction of emotional content." Well enunciated!
I do, however, also have other issues with Lawrence Welk. His piano player's name was Joanne, for one thing, and Myron whats-his-name played the accordion, two reasons my parents would holler for me all over the house to make sure I did not miss any of their performances. AAAAAHHHH...
SASQUATCH ALERT!
I have finally gotten around to doing something with my Live Journal blog, and it is now the second home of the Flying Sasquatch. Check it out http://jana-ch.livejournal.com/ and make comments about hypnotized chickens and the Happy-Go-Lucky Guys.
You are perfectly free, of course, to comment on Sasquatch items on the MOC as well, on any live thread. There is no off-topic on the MOC! But the LJ site might be more convenient.
Say, do you think the the Happy-Go-Lucky Guys are happy because they're all about to dig in to a delicious Trotskyist Key Lime Pie? No, Stalin would never permit that. They have to be stuffing their faces on Leninist Lemon Bars.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Martha F.H.: Ovens are for baking, not for cleaning.
I don't have a coherent theory about the set-up in the bathroom stall or why orange pants/sandals, etc. And I'd be inclined to agree it's just coinkydink EXCEPT: (1) That New Yorker cover artist tends to imbed meaning into his art and (2) orange is a Significant Color. People tend to select it (like purple) because it is unusual, and it has a lot of different meanings out there. I can't come up with one that makes sense, but it still looks to me like it was intended to have some sense.
That color, and the sandals, and the fact that the orange pants are not regular slacks but have an elastic cuff. Orange doesn't occur anywhere else of import in the painting (I downloaded it from Flickr and went over with the magnifiying class), but the painter goes to the trouble of making fake Arabic script for the newspaper, so time was taken over this portrayal.
I feel like Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters" with a plate full of mashed potatoes, raking at it with a fork and murmuring "This means something..."
Oh, and with regard to Ahmadinejad's name -- I noticed when he was first elected, David Letterman made a point of learning his name, being able to speak it fluently. Dave runs that "Great Moments from Presidential Speeches" bit every night, which may be the most popular segment on his show, and it never fails to point out that Dubya can't speak any form of clear English and sneers at those who do. And while Dave takes pride in his Midwestern heritage and humor, he clearly doesn't think that has to mean he's ignorant (bravo, I say). So I took it upon myself to learn the names of world leaders, too. Texan doesn't have to mean ignorant, either.
maggie, you're right about learning the names, of course, I just can't spell to save my life...
I need to take a moment to gloat. Please forgive me.
I went to the new-ish Industrial Light and Magic/Lucasfilm complex in SF today, and got a tour. It was beyond cool! I have photographic proof of me petting the original R2-D2!
The coffee station in one of the buildings is called "Javva the Hutt"!!!!!
I read on the web somewhere Katie Couric's trick phrase for remembering the pronunciation of Ahmadinejad's name: "I'm a dinner jacket." Unfortunately, I can't think of that without also thinking "I am a jelly doughnut." (I'm trusting this crowd to know the reference.) As for spelling, I just google something reasonably close and Google will ask me, "Did you mean Ahmadinejad?" Then it's all copy and paste. In fact, I have just now corrected the spelling from my previous post by that very method.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Floss Forbes: If you don't know the tune, sing tenor.
LOVE the "I'm a dinner jacket."
And Javva the Hut. Send us the photo of you and R2D2 and I'll post it, Kat.
When Leslie Gore opened a salad bar on Pier 39 in San Fran during the early 1980s, she named it "It's My Parsley."
will do, maggie!
they wouldn't let me take a picture of Javva the Hutt, which sucked....I think what was happening was that the guy who showed us around said "yeah, take pictures, just not of anyone's computer monitor" whereas the actual security dudes were all uptight about no pictures of anything that wasn't in a public area....
I want to let you know about film I just saw with a decidedly orange-haired young man; Rupert Grint ("Ron Weasley" from the Harry Potter Movies) made a movie in 2005 called DRIVING LESSONS. He stars with Julie Walters (who played "Mrs. Weasley" in the aforementioned Harry Potter movies.)
I totally did not recognize Julie Walters in this role--she plays an aging actress who hires the young Grint to be her assistant. Her character is like a somewhat more scattered Stephanie Cole as "Diana" in the BBC series, WAITING FOR GOD.
I never knew about this film--Grint plays a rather beleaguered teen with a very controlling mother, and he holds his words in (but not his feelings-they telegraph very well) through the first half of the film, but by the end you get a sense of what this actor is capable of.
Just a little orange-haired gem to share with you all.
I also want to note that since my earlier cluelessness I have watched IRAN SO FAR about 6 times and I have reached the state of finding it very funny indeed. It had to snap into focus for me.
(I even watched the real "Mahmood"s footage at Columbia and suspect that the writer of the parody was not being totally satirical; the real Mahmood IS charming--as long as you don't listen to what he is saying.)
Now I understand why I would always try to tell my ESL Intermediate-level students classic American jokes (puns and such) and most of the time they just would not get it. I knew they would not get it, but I felt I had to start laying down some layers of context for their future English-speaking experience. Even though it made me look and feel like a fool, which I have accepted at this point in my life.
Oh Silvio, you're nobody's fool! Thanks for that little "oranged haired gem"; it always does my heart good to see the ginger-haired actors at work. "Waiting For God" is going on my Netflix list.!
Hello Div(a)(o)s:
In the matter of the cake picture, how about this one:
www.lakeland.co.uk/content/images/staticpages/recipes/almondorangecake.jpg
The recipe looks the same, although for some reason it is using the alias "Tunisian almond and orange cake".
Oops. That didn't come out quite right...the last part of the URL was chopped off.
This needs to go right after .../recipe with no spaces in between:
s/almondorangecake.jpg
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