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12/26/2005: "Immaculate Conception Finkelstein"
In the spirit of Jean Teasdale meets your pretentious college roommate,
it's time for RATYHTCook's 2nd Annual Gingerbread Celebration.
Last year, you all took a brief respite from downloading amputee porn to
lean how to create gingerbread and how to transform those globs of dough
into eye-popping works of art that make the efforts of the Great Masters
appear as the finger paintings of Red State children by comparison. One
reader was so impressed that she wrote in to say "Mr. Anonymous, as an
art historian, I can attest that the gingerbread houses created by you
and your readers will, someday, expose charlatans such as Leonardo da
Vinci and Michelangelo as the frauds whom I've now come to realize they
are. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is transformed into a river of
fetid hobo's piss when placed beside your magna opera. My eyes have been
opened and I hereby renounce will current occupation and shall enroll in
culinary college immediately!" This year, we'll be playing a subtle
variation on that theme: Tribute Gingerbread Houses.
Once I'd hit upon the idea to build a gingerbread house paying tribute to
the work of one individual, I was next face with the dilemma of choosing
exactly whom that individual should be. Should I build a James "The
You-Bet-Your-Ass-He's Amazing" Randi house, featuring the bent spoons of
debunked "psychic" Uri Geller? Perhaps a "melty" Salvador Dali house? I
decided that it was best to leave the choice to serendipity and set off
to the Reading Terminal Market to buy gingerbread supplies. And
that's when I saw it…
A lobster shaped cookie cutter! Could there be any clearing sign that I was
to base my gingerbread house on the life and work of Jean-Paul Sartre?
Here's a side and back (photographed while the house was under
construction) of the house which prominently display the monstrous lobster
motif (as you're probably aware of, Sartre spent the final years of his life
believing that he was being pursued by a giant lobster)
I've mentioned in a previous essay, one of the central tenets of
Existentialism is that with freedom comes responsibility. As Sartre had
been a devout Marxist, I felt that I had the responsibility of using the
gingerbread house to depict the struggle of the urban proletariat; but
how? One again, serendipity came to my rescues as, while exiting the super
market after picking up some extra cloves, I notice a vending machine
filled with Homies. This time, responsibility had resulted in freedom; as
I was now free: free to complete my masterpiece.
The Tower of Gingerbread Existentialism…
