Pretentious

I wrote in an earlier entry how I dislike pretentiousness; whether in food, in conversation, in consumerism, and even in writing.  People generally love to make themselves look better than perhaps they really are or at the very least, to portray themselves in as favorable a light as possible.  I guess I can't really blame folks for this, for who doesn't want to look good?  Of course, when pretension emerges in written form, the results run the gamut from the merely laughable to the downright foolish.

So what does any of this have to do with the focus of this blog?  Truthfully... not much.  But I was reading a review on Urbanspoon (I won't mention the author, you'll have to find it yourself... a Valpo restaurant review: hint, hint) and I came across the following nugget.  It is sooo cheesy--no pun intended--that I felt compelled to comment.  Anyway, here it is and you can judge for yourselves:

"The two cheeses (blue - not bleu - crumbled on top) did not mesh well and also had no subtlety, brawling in my mouth for dominance rather than working together like a melody."

This is bad on so many levels, I don't even know where to start.  What initially struck me was how utterly pretentious this little gem appeared and how one presumes the author smugly posted it believing himself to be a budding Hemingway or Fitzgerald.  I love the phrase "brawling in my mouth..."  Wow!  One can only imagine opposing wedges of cheese--perhaps a Mr. Gorgonzola and a Mr. Stilton--with sleeves rolled to expose bulging biceps, slugging it out on a damp, taste bud infested tableau surrounded by the ever present teeth silently cheering their favorites on to victory.

The writing issues aside, who here has had a "subtle" blue/bleu cheese anyway?  These cheeses are many things, but subtle just ain't one of them!  And by the way; in the United States, "blue" is the accepted form of spelling for this type of fromage anyway.

Okay, okay, calm down!  Find your center.  There... blood pressure returning to normal.

Sorry about that.  I momentarily lost control due to the near overwhelming combination of bad writing, misinformation, questionable taste, and pretentious thinking.