Having Things, or Knowing Things?

Well, you want a combination of both, with the bias towards the 'knowing things.'

You could have a lot of (material) things but suffer from the abject poverty of not knowing what it is that you are holding between your hands.

So I'm going to embark on an essay that is possibly of more interest to the females of the world than the males here.

Like the ice cream sundaes of which we spoke in the last missive, there are those who have walked past the windows and have seen the tall frosty glasses on the other side (of the Drake or the Algonquin or the Knickerbocker) from not five feet away - and those also who see beautiful women and how they dress - but who never have been inside the boudoirs of the truly glamorous; nor who have been at table service a la russe.

You see even if you are undertaking what you think is the highest level surveillance against someone, you may be 'seeing' them, but you may be doing it through the glass windows walking by... You 'saw' it all. Didn't you?

I'm going to tell you women out there who are as of yet, not aware, how to dress glamorously - and I'm going to tell you, as it were, as if I were 'a Watcher' so to speak; oh yes, even one of those that the SecureTeam10 kids want to call 'Fallen Angels' (LOL) as in that these characters apparently, according to the internet ubiquitous 'Book of Enoch,' gave out tips to early Earthling women about make-up and mascara.

As the Charlie Brown cartoon says, when Snoopy goes looking for his birth place
at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, only to find it has become a carpark: 'like Snoopy's brother Spike says, Linus - you can never really go home again.'

So I'm going to tell you something along the lines of the same ideas as pertain to the genuine, albeit these days mythic 'Knickerbocker' and 'Merry Widow' ice cream sundaes. 

On the outside it looks like one thing - of course it looks great - but when you place your spoon into it and take it to your lips it's quite another thing again.

My impression is these chefs and great gastronomic creators knew things - and when they had to create and serve dishes to very wealthy people who had things but did not necessarily know things, they had the common sense to provide their paymasters with an education about culture.

In fact culture itself is an education.

All of these ice cream sundaes relate to some Gilbert and Sullivan theatre. You didn't know that did you...

And that's how you wear cocktail rings, you see

Specifically to the libretto of a two-act comic opera called 'the Sorcerer.' This story is the usual one about people trying to fall in love or desiring to make someone else fall in love with them - and seeking a magical potion in order to effect the responses they want to have happen.

So the sorcerer they find, makes a concoction which has that effect, or has that power.

This is all happening around 1876. Along comes Franz Lehar and his librettist Viktor Leon in 1905, and they write and compose 'The Merry Widow.'

So you see, for one thing, The Merry Widow comes first. Before, that is, the Knickerbocker.

And both of them come from a Central European mentality and culture and from Swiss or Austrian more likely, chefs.

A master chef at an hotel in New York creates 'The Merry Widow.' The opera is played first in the US in New York in 1907 and has opened two years earlier in London. And so, by a process of amateur and highly questionable deduction, my suggestion would be that the dessert is made for John Jacob Astor - who died on the Titanic. He was, at the time, thought to be one of the richest people in the world, a multi-billionaire by today's terms.

Astor, who crossed the Atlantic often, took with him the most prominent European chefs of the day, and installed them in his New York hotel - The Knickerbocker.

Powder snow everywhere - I could do a 'Knickerbocker snow-storm'
in New York City, but I like this pic better. It's the same idea: thigh-deep snow and
a warm light ahead...

...Now at this point, you gotta understand something here - what you're being told is worth a small fortune because you will hear it from nobody else you know and there isn't that many people in the world who know it anyway in the first place. (Even though you might not 'get' the 'secrets' although you are reading them and they are right here). In the second place - well, do you know any billionaires from the Astor social circle? You know me, at least, from this Blog. Now I have cousins from Europe whose surname means in English, something like 'three leaves of a rose flower...' Well anyway, one thing and another, they retired away from Europe during the Second World War gigantically wealthy from the fur industry. And it's possible they made some of that wealth supplying one side or another in the war with fur products. To cut it short, there are parts of their ethnic circles who never speak to them. If you get what I'm saying.

Anyway, let's move on. I have personal knowledge of the Astor Family.

Now, so. This Viennese or border Italian or something, chef, makes this concoction that is designed to twist the eater's mind into a state of la Grande Amour.  And he makes this on account of the libretto of 'The Merry Widow' which itself has come from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. The Merry Widow concoction contains a magical potion. And I will describe it, at least in some significant part.

And then in a great inspiration of genius, he makes another dish, which is not the anti-hypothesis, but rather, the outcome of the magical idea - and it, in an act of pure fate and destiny, is called: THE KNICKERBOCKER. ('Glory' at least); The Knickerbocker GLORY.

And this is an amazing combination of actual events, weather, visuals, sensation, colour, in every sense as much as the actual dish itself is a created thing, it is also something that mysteriously parallels real life. A Knickerbocker snowfall, is what happens in New York when powder snow falls and you have to wear boots up to your thighs to be able to get through, and then you can get warm inside the actual Knickerbocker Hotel...! 

Having things, and knowing things.
Where do you go to beyond this (immediate above)? It has to fly, surely, at the next iteration
or else this thing is 'false' or even meaningless at the present juncture.

So the magical potion is in the Merry Widow, and the magical object is the Knickerbocker.

Now unlike today when people are stupid and uneducated, in those day what I am saying is not outside the norm of social ideas at all, especially not in these circles.

There is no question that The Merry Widow contains alcohol - at minimum this is obvious in the Maraschino cherry at the top. In England this dessert has a mint leaf garnish at the top too, in the US (in earlier times) this was creme de menthe liquor. There is no 'green cherries' or fake 'green' stuff as there may be in the counterfeits made in tacky contemporary places now - this green item is angelica soaked in absinthe and snow-covered with tiny sugar crystals.

There are layers of ice cream, real cream atop, and beneath crushed ice with alcoholic syrups and warm, real authentic butterscotch. 

It is not peanuts that are crushed and sprinkled as has become common practice today, but warm or even rather hot cashew nuts in caramel and river salt.

I shall keep a few of the other ingredients back for the present. And matters to do with the construction of the whole thing.

But you have quite a bit as it is.

So let's move onto the subject of dressing for glamour and sex.

Here I speak with the tongue of the Egregoroi - unless you use your mind and you know what you are doing, you are not sexually attractive in any unique way that would place you at an advantage over anyone else... 

You must dress, like the way the concoction is made... And how it is constructed...

Now as for Astor, a short word in passing: he wrote a science fiction novel called 'A Journey in Other Worlds' - and a very very great, and strange book it is.