jammin' on Jupiter

And “Are we alone” which is a 130 minute/50 song masterpiece has appeared/seemingly been released by Bandicoot (of Swansea)

However searching reveals that Symbiosis of the Sexes still exists, but is now under a DIFFERENT Bandicoot artist. Bandicoot (of Swansea, the original) remains silent on social media about anything except Black After Dark.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that this is likely a DIFFERENT Bandicoot. Music remains an Experience I enjoy but I think “Are we alone” will likely be joining Symbiosis of the Sexes under the second artist labelled Bandicoot (undescribed, unknown, literally nothing to go on here).

"op what does this mean" "decay is an extant form of life"

Bake Off has a history with babka, which I wouldn’t be super proud of if I was Paul “challah is a bread containing butter and milk that’s eaten on Passover” Hollywood.

In season 5 (or collection 1 on Netflix) ep 6, the signature challenge was a European cake. Kate made a babka, claiming it was Israeli, but because “Israel competes in Eurovision” it could sneak by. For context, babka comes from the Ashkenazi Jewish baking tradition, which is how it ended up in Israel. You know, the whole thing where Eastern Europe tried to murder all its Jews along with the rest of Europe and sent a flood of refugees into all corners of the globe. Then, in season 8 (collection 4) ep. 3, Rav compares his chocolate cardamom and hazelnut loaf to a babka, which is met with looks of confusion from Paul Hollywood, who at least knows that babka has something to do with Poland. Which is a useful correction, because Rav thought it was middle eastern, which is understandable because he probably watched Kate’s season. Meanwhile, Benjamina is making an actual babka and doing it the proper way, which involves a yeasted dough (that’s borderline just challah dough with filling tbh) that’s rolled out, sprinkled with filling, rolled up, cut in half, twisted, joined, and usually put in a baking tin. Paul argues with her that it’s actually a couronne (it’s not) because cutting, twisting, and joining a dough makes it so (it doesn’t). Paul Hollywood proves, yet again, that he doesn’t know shit about babka or Jewish baking. 

Babka:

Couronne:

SO THEN THIS SEASON

First, they set rainbow bagels as the techincal challenge last week, because there’s like, one bakery in Brooklyn that makes them, and because the swirly colors detract from the eldritch horror that is a bagel made by a British gentile:

I won’t inflict photos of what the bakers attempts looked like on you. I have lived in the UK for 6 years and have taken to baking my own bagels because Jesus Biali Christ, what is wrong with England. I won’t even get into what they did with macaroons.

So then THIS WEEK they had them bake babka as the technical challenge, and it took me three whole hours afterward to find my eyeballs and stick them back in my head because they were unwilling to keep looking at things anymore ever.

It started with Paul showing off the babka he’d baked to Prue, which was kind of like when a 4 year old pees on the carpet and calls it art. After watching Paul Hollywood fumble his way through pretending he knows a damn thing about this bake for years (including claiming that it’s a cake and not a bread, when it can be both but whatever), seeing him show it off like some kind of expert was some next level chutzpah. It was quickly matched by Prue, who made a snarky remark about it being way better than any babka she had in New York, because apparently this old white British lady is whose opinion counts to when she says all New York Jewish bakeries make garbage babka I guess  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Meanwhile, the poor bakers have to make babka using Paul’s recipe, which, among other things, only calls for a single rise. In real life, you’re supposed to make the dough, let it rise (preferably overnight, but at least like, 2 hours), roll it out, fill, roll, cut, twist it, put it in the loaf tin, and then give it another 30-90 minutes. Paul’s recipe skips the first prove (which is also absent from his recipe, which I won’t link to because you can google it but I’m not sending any traffic its way, but if you want a legit great one, Smitten Kitchen’s absolutely kills it).

He’s then brutal in shitting all over everyone’s babka, though even the ones that get some praise are visibly poorly made. The dough was obviously not rolled out thinly enough on any of them, and the filling is spread unevenly and it’s all just a hot mess. Don’t even think about hoping for streusel topping.

We see all this after watching the bakers struggle with the recipe, several complaining with disdain that they don’t even know what a babka is because they’ve never heard of one, which is no surprise because in a country that’s expelled and blood libeled its fair share of Jews over the centuries (not to mention its current anti-semitism problem), the ones still living here have taken to calling babka “yeast cake,” probably because it sounds less “ethnic.”  Even so, the level of foreign-ness of such a basic Jewish staple just shows how few of these bakers have ever knowingly met a Jew.

Step 2: Kill the Queen

Step 3: Tank the UK Economy

Step 4: Resign as PM

I just run across a book claiming to be a dark retelling.

And the. The fucking summary. Reads. 

“You can expect ‘touch her and I’ll unalive you’ vibes.”