Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Why is it that sometimes you eat well-regarded apple but find it terrible? Or, the reverse: an apple that sucks is, to you, in that moment, good?

There are, of course, a lot of things going on. Some of it could be objective — that was a bad season for that apple, the weather was weird, there was some kind of apple disease present like cedar rust or fireblight which are both real things and not fantasy diseases, the apple’s been too long off the tree, the apple’s been not off the tree long enough, someone did not properly wassail the tree with the proper songs and blood-a-sprinkling.

And a lot of things are subjective. You wanted a sweet apple, got one that was tart. You got one that tastes too much like apple or not enough like apple. Context plays big with food — you were hungry, you were thirsty, you didn’t really want an apple, the day was cold or warm or you just broke up with your boyfriend or your boss just tried to replace you with an AI toaster oven.

Sometimes life is a filthy lens through which it’s hard to see.

The opposite can be true, too — those rose-colored glasses can make an otherwise uninteresting apple taste big, bold, refreshing, the best thing you’ve had in years. The best apple I can remember was a Jonathan apple in Fruita, Colorado — was it really the objectively greatest apple I’ve ever eaten? Probably not. But it was a good day, that day. Colorado was beautiful. My father and I were really getting along after years and years of definitely not getting along. I had my wife — not yet my wife at that point — with me. The apple was a filter for all of that.

So, you just never know why a thing resonates how it resonates. Apples in particular. Different years, different growers, different time frames, different storage applications and durations, different you, different me. Sometimes an apple you love one year won’t be one you love the next. And that’s fine. Things change. Life is chaos. We are a different person every time we wake up, the dial turning a tick this way, a tick that way, every morning a chrysalis from which we emerge.

What I’m trying to say is, let’s review an apple.

My review of Orleans Reinette from Scott Farm, VT, mid-Oct:

French apple. Over a hundred (!) alternate names. (I read off just a handful of them on the video of me eating the apple, if you care.) Earliest trackback to them seems to be 1776, so let’s assume the entire Revolutionary War was fought over these. A war over apples? I’d write that book.

Lotta people love these. Online, you’ll find “delightful treat” and “will blow your mind” and “I had to change my pants, for such a vigorous shellacking did I give them upon biting into this Edenic fruit” and I might be making that last one up but you get the drift. This apple brings the enthusiasm.

And that’s where I’m a little disappointed in eating this one.

It’s pleasing enough in appearance — I found the russeting to be kind of fascinating in that it felt almost fuzzy, like a peach. Not rough, but still soft. Squat, almost donut-shaped, or like a donut peach, and no I swear this isn’t a peach because that’s the second peach reference.

It bites like you’re calving a glacier.

Then there’s this peary-pistachio (Perry Pistachio is also my detective name, nice to meet you) thing going on followed by a softly citrus kick. There’s a faint scent of florality to it, which is nice. Is florality a word? I don’t think it is, but it should be. Anyway. All these flavors, though — well, most of it beyond the rearview, though.

It’s chewy. And the skin in particular remains in your mouth, eternally, like the restless dead, like an offended specter, just haunting the shit out of your teeth forever and ever, ever-chewed and existentially angry.

So, I’m going with “kind of disappointed.”

I feel like a 4 outta 10 is where I’m going with it.

Orleans Reinette: Squat, chewy, weird, but not all bad, the Paul Giamatti of apples, I’m just kidding, Paul Giamatti, come back

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent

Well, fuck this apple. I mean, don’t fuck this apple — here at Apple Snack Gang headquarters we do not condone apple-fucking. We love apples, but we don’t love-love the apples, you know what I mean? So put your pants back on.

Anyway, I’m just gonna jump right in here:

My review of this piece of shit Opalescent apple, Scott Farm, early-Oct:

You ever meet a well-meaning person who sucks? Sure, okay, they’re bright-eyed. They’re not a dipshit. They get the job done, perhaps even excelling at said job. They were on Student Council. They were in all AP classes. And yet, their eyes are kind of glassy, their gaze somehow both desperate and empty? At the end of the day you really don’t want to spend any more time with them than you have to because there is absolutely nothing interesting about them and it feels like just by being near you they are wicking away your time, your attention, your very existence?

That was this apple.

This is a beautiful apple.

And it is largely devoid of flavor.

It’s got a few characteristics worth talking about:

First, it is genuinely a pretty apple. Very shiny. Very red. For some reason, on Pomiferous it is also described as “very greasy,” which is a curious description I’m not used to with apples. GUESS WE GOT OURSELVES AN OILY BOY. Except this apple wasn’t oily or greasy in any way? But red. Waxy. Bright. It is a well-produced apple. Good job, nature gods. You got the look down!

Second, that skin is thin and yet deeply resilient — it’s not tough, but rather, pops like you just bit into a natural-casing sausage. It’s like chomping through a fucking kielbasa. As I’ve noted before, my family doctor some years ago gave me a prostate exam and referred to my butthole as having, and this is a true story, “good snap.” I would describe this apple as having good snap.

Third, the flavor is almost something. It has the desire to be more than it is. It kind of starts out with this strawberry whiff, as others have found, but it’s also one of those unripe too-white-on-the-inside strawberries you really only want to eat dipped in a fucking shitload of sugar. Then it’s gone. It’s like someone painted the apple with a light veneer of lemon juice and powdered sugar — but it’s gone three seconds into the chew.

And then it’s just a wad of flavorless, unscented apple. You know how some people buy unscented deodorant? This apple is unscented deodorant. It’s the gum in a pack of Garbage Pail Kids, except with flavor that dies even faster. It’s like licking very pretty wallpaper. Except that wallpaper probably tastes like something.

The flesh is blah blah and the grain is whatever who cares. Fart noise.

I’ll try another in my batch to see if maybe that one was just a little stinker. I’m to understand that this may be one of those apples you really, really need to eat right off the tree, and after that it’s a series of diminishing returns. (Other apples are shit right off the tree and only gain with a week or a month in storage. What a world of wonder are these mad fruits!)

Either way, I hate this apple not because it’s bad, but because it’s boring. It’s like a calculator. Like Elmer’s glue. Like a Reese Witherspoon movie. It’s just there, taking up space on the counter, in your mouth, in the world.

I think 2.4 out of 10 is a perfectly dull score.

Watch me eat it here, if you dare.

Opalescent: Meh

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel

This apple sounds like some Clive Barker shit. Like it’s a forbidden relic — an infernal device you use to enter the Labyrinth of Hell. (It continues its horror pedigree by tasting just a little like you’re kissing a haunted scarecrow, but in a good way? Whatever, more on that in the review.)

As a writer, one of the most compelling things about heirloom apples is their names. Ashmead’s Kernel is a fantastic name. I remarked that when I first started my Heirloom Apple Journey, many of the names sounded either like vampires or hobbits. Lord Lambourne? Vampire. Claygate Pearmain? Hobbit. Calville Blanc d’Hiver? Vampire. Fearn’s Pippin? Hobbit, obviously. Black Gilliflower? Could go either way. Arkansas Black? Clearly a vampire hunter.

Ashmead’s Kernel, again, has a Clive Barker ring to it, to me — as if it were a diabolical, demonic artifact. It is, in reality, named after a man, Dr. Ashmead, which himself sounds like a Clive Barker character — some Faustian doctor and academic trying to logic his way into the pleasures and pains of Hell.

So, know that my very initial interest in these apples had nothing to do with apples, or the taste of apples, but simply because the names were so fucking goofy I had to know what was up with that, and why all these apples were clearly named after creatures of the night and fantasy folk.

Anyway. To the reviewmobile!

My review of an Ashmead’s Kernel apple, Scott Farm (VT), early-Oct:

This small, unassuming little apple sits round and dense in the hand, comfortably nestled in the palm, whispering for you to eat it. I mean, at least that’s what I heard. Perhaps you would not be as fortunate as I was.

I’ve had good ones of these and bad ones of these and the bad ones eat like you’re chewing a parsnip and taste weird, but the good ones are a special kind of sublime — oh, still weird, but a lovely kind of weird.

For instance: the first bite from this thing is giving haunted scarecrow vibes. It has this faintly burlap-sacky cornfield crow-fear taste — it is autumnal in a deeper, more eldritch way than simply “oh dry leaves and cider spice.” That fades quick, and yields more overtly pleasant, if still odd, flavors: gingerbread and graham cracker. Some of this is bound to the skin and is only present when you eat it with the skin on — and here I wonder too if the skin absorbs not only the nutrients from the ground where the apple grew, but the air, too. Gently soaking in the orchard air. Quietly inhaling the dreams of scarecrows.

The flesh of the apple is a dense, chewy thing — not so dense it’s punishing, but you’ll work harder to eat this apple. And it will reward you with big fucking flavors: it’s big tart, big sweet, brings orange and hazelnut vibes to the party — it’s really something else, this apple. It’s also juicy in fits and bursts, as if it chooses when to gush and when to not.

This is a strange apple, perfect for October, fit for Halloween. It’s also small enough but heavy enough to throw at the heads of less the treaters and more the trickers — you get some sneaky little fuckers on Halloween night trying to shit in your pumpkins, well, you could bean them with one of these. Then again, that would be a waste of a wonderfully weird-tasting apple.

Score-wise, I think its weirdness is a virtue but might turn some folks off — as such, an 8.3 feels like a perfectly odd-shaped score.

The eating-it-live review is here, and it gets a bit… kooky.

Ashmead’s Kernel: Big tart, big sweet, tastes like you’re tongue-fucking a haunted scarecrow, but like a cool haunted scarecrow, it’s fine

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp

Yes, I have seen Apple Rankings, the website. No, I didn’t write it. (It’s written by comedian Brian Frange.) No, I don’t like it. Yes, I don’t like it because in part he stole my gig goddamnit and also in part because I’m petty but mostly because he loves the Honeycrisp and hates the Arkansas Black, what the fuck. It is a funny site and occasionally offers real information about apples, to be clear, even if it looks like something designed for the Myspace era. (If you want an actual apple review site that is genuinely good and useful, Adam’s Apples is a great site to go to. Visit Adam. Learn about apples. Be better for it.)

With that being said, I think it’s time to jump right into today’s review:

My review of a Suncrisp, from Manoff in PA, early October:

What we got here is an apple from New Jersey, though whether this apple calls the famous meat product from that region “pork roll” or “Taylor ham” remains to be seen, given that was produced by Rutgers, which seems to be in the DMZ where you can’t pin down the proper name. (I call it pork roll, because I am a civilized Pennsylvanian. Don’t at me.) One assumes the apple is at least a little mobbed up, and likes to go Down The Shore for vacation. Maybe it says Gobbagoo. Unsure.

The Suncrisp is, truly, a very sunny apple. It’s fantastically golden in spots, though also sometimes green, sometimes orange, sometimes blushing almost-red. It’s a pretty big apple, too — not too heavy, not too dense, you wouldn’t use it to break a guy’s nose, but it’d take more than a wiffle ball bat to knock this thing into the outfield.

It is reportedly a cross between a Golden Delicious and a Cox’s Orange Pippin, though I also saw someone assert that Cortland is in there, too? My very cool apple encyclopedia says nothing about that, though, so who the fuck knows. (It did also show me that there is a Russian apple called Striped Anis, which I definitely will always pronounce Striped Anus, because I have free will and it delights me, fuck you.)

The skin is lighter than in a lot of apples and I did not find it chewy or overly persistent in trying to stay in my mouth. It’s not as whisper-thin as the Honeycrisp’s skin, but it’s also not “I think I’m chewing a sun-dried condom” like you might get with some russets. The skin is just a little oaty in taste.

Some are quite certain they taste pear in this apple and I do not — I think it’s more of a generically tropical kind of vibe, like a POG juice from Hawaii combo. Sniffing it like the creepy apple pervert I am yields a faint rose scent before biting into it. Once you’re into it, that tropical fruit note hits big — there’s a wave of sweetness that would make the apple seem subacid, and it is, but only just so. The lingering tartness on your lips and tongue tell you it’s still like, a 60/40 split of sweet and tart, which definitely puts it in (for me) a fairly perfect Flavor Zone — not too psycho-sweet, but also doesn’t make your butthole clench from the sourness. Further eating yields some vanilla, honey, and apple pie spice.

This is a favorite apple. It’s just sunny. It feels nice. Like it cares about you. It’ll help you move and hide the bodies while cracking jokes the whole way. This is an apple that doesn’t know how bad the world is, and would you really want your apple to be poisoned by the truth of the world? I don’t think so.

This is an affable idiot apple.

I’ll score it just shy of a Cox’s — let’s go 8.9 outta 10.

Mah video review HERE.

Suncrisp: Big and bold and optimistic about the world — a naive hee-haw waif just ready to brighten a bleak day

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein

The push and pull of art is, I think, the part where you do it for yourself versus where you do it for other people.

And yes, this is sort of about me making my weird apple videos.

And no, I don’t think my weird apple videos are art.

Bear with me.

When we talk about art and writing and the making of cool things we sometimes frame it as ART vs COMMERCE, but I think that’s a bit of a false dichotomy — or, at least, the deeper struggle is that thing I said at the fore: making it for yourself versus making it for an audience. Commerce in that sense is represented by audience — the thing you make? You want it to be seen or heard or experienced, and in theory (and in hope) someone is willing to throw money at you for that thing. At the same time, you had to kind of get there on your own, somehow. You had a love of a thing and at some point just wanted to make the thing, do the thing, be the thing, without necessarily having that muddied by the expectations of a mass, invisible, unknowable audience.

It’s important to find that balance. I expect that people who just make art for themselves — they’re probably pretty happy about it, I guess, and I don’t think it’s wrong to be that way or approach the making of cool things in that manner. On the other hand, art is so keenly part of the human experience and the human connection — you make a thing, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes quite on purpose, in order to put this squirming tether into the world in the hopes that your seeking tendril finds another seeking tendril and forms a connection. I often say storytelling is a shout in the dark: you’re hoping someone will hear you, and shout back. It’s an exhortation against loneliness, but it’s also fine if it’s an emblem of that loneliness, instead. Just you making something in the midst of your own existence, kept and considered only by you.

On the other hand, I think there are people who only care about the audience (or, the crass version, only care about the money and attention it brings). I don’t think this is wrong or bad, either — it just is. I think the danger is maybe you have no creative True North, right? You’re just a compass spinning, willing to make whatever others want rather than having any kind of perspective or an angle that’s yours or anything lensed through the unique human experience that is you. You want to please everyone, but that’s impossible, and at a certain point one of the things that actually attracts other humans to your work is how you parse an idea through all the squishy gnarly filters that comprise your heart and mind. They want the weird shape your own personal Play-Doh Shape-Making Factory extrudes, y’know?

I knew someone in the game writing space Way Back When who was genuinely a very very good writer but had little interest in doing what outlines asked of him and didn’t really like editorial notes or feedback from anyone, and as a result was in this space of making his own content by resisting the audience (and, further, the client). I also know writers who are like freelance guns-for-hire, and will write anything at all for anyone — not just for the paycheck but just to say YES to whatever comes across their door, and ultimately I think the work can end up reading a little hollow because it doesn’t have that mark of their own individual spiritual-emotional-intellectual fingerprint. There’s just no special sauce, you know? Like it’s missing a bit of soul. Again, there’s no wrong to any of this — it’s all about choice and who you are as a maker of cool things, but at the end of the day, for me, the goal is to find the balance of making stuff I want to make and making stuff people want to in some way experience. Letting my own freak flag fly, but also hoping very hard it looks like your freak flag, a little bit, too.

So anyway yeah okay I’ll still make my doofy little apple videos. I like making ’em and some folks seem to like watching ’em so away we go.

And now, an apple review.

My review of a Holstein apple from Scott Farm, VT, rec’d late Sept:

No, it’s not a cow.

It moos not, for ’tis an apple.

There is frankly nothing cow-like about the apple, not in taste or smell or appearance. Fruit is mysterious!

Anyway.

The Holstein — or the Holsteiner Cox, the Holsteinerapfel — is a German apple that either has Cox’s Orange Pippin as a parent or was a sport of the Cox’s. (A sport is a random genetic mutation that produces a divergent fruit, and then you take that sucker and graft its branches onto another tree to continue this new alternate universe version of the original fruit. Because clearly mutations are actually just intrusions from an alternate dimension. This is just science, you cannot disagree.)

I am ever a fan of this apple — it’s very much like the Cox’s Orange Pippin, usually just bigger, and sometimes with punchier flavors. It’s often an aromatic apple (which is a romantic way of saying smelly but in a good way) — tropical fruit forward with big pineapple karate happening in the mouth. Usually got a big burst of juice. (I was going to say, “it’s a squirter,” but I didn’t, and you’re welcome.) Further, it’s a fairly pretty apple. A little lopsidey, maybe, but that gives it character — and it takes the blushing orange of the Cox’s and dials it up, brighter, sunnier, bolder.

This batch brought all of that. And it also brought some curious additions.

I ate two out of the three I have and both had these, ahh, additions.

First: smell, very buttery pineapple smell.

Second: the bite. First apple was a bit softer, second apple, firmer. The first apple seems to be on its way out of the Zone of Deliciousness in terms of its time off the tree. Gonna judge more on the second apple regarding its score, but both were coarse-grained, and if this apple wore Yoga pants, those pants would have JUICY written across in the ass in a jaunty cursive font.

Third: the flavor, you know, yeah, it’s pineapple, it’s a bit vanilla-sugar-cookie, it’s a little lemon-orange brightness, though not as bright as some have been, not quite buzzing on the lips.

And now, the weird part.

Both apples had this smell-slash-taste that on the video I kind of described as a bleachy, cleaning detergenty vibe, but umm, there’s also something else it reminds me of? If you know, some trees (like old chestnut trees, RIP the American Chestnut, also please watch this fascinating video about the American Chestnut tree and efforts to bring it back from its weird interstitial realm of not-quite-extinct) when they blossom have an, uhhh, odor, that some have described to smell a little like, err, well, ahh, let’s call it jizz. So, this apple brought a little of that. Not a lot! Just, “what if vanilla jizz were a scent at Yankee Candle?”

And then the second apple also brought with it this faintly sulfurous eggy hell-stink with it. Just a moment’s whiff. So brief you barely notice it but also it’s an eggy hell-stink, so you’re gonna notice it.

What’s fascinating is, when I peeled the rest of each, these off-flavors dissipated. I’m not entirely sure why that is, as I am no APPLEOLOGIST and merely an AMATEUR HOUR APPLE ADVENTURER, and though I am head of the APPLE SNACK GANG, that confers upon me no special knowledge! But! I do know that the skin contains a lot of zesty molecules and volatile esters concentrated there, and so certainly the skin brings different flavors and scents to the party, and removing the skin and revealing only the sweet precious apple meat isolates different expressions.

Whatever. Anyway. Once peeled, they got infinitely more pleasing.

So, I’m still gonna call these an 8.2, even though on a better year they’d be a full point or more higher.

(Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem)

Holstein: Not a cow, nor a pineapple, peel for maximum non-jizziness?