
I don’t think you should name pets people names. It’s weird if your dog is named Jerry and not, say, Commander Poopypants or something. Lucky, Scoot, Scout, Patches, Batman, whatever, these are all very fine names for dogs, but then you have people who name their dogs like, Susan, or Gary, and nobody likes that. Nobody wants that. It confuses us all. Why are you telling Susan not to shit there? Asking a neighbor for a poop bag because Gary deuced in their yard? Just out there at night yelling for Jeff like you know some guy who is lost in the woods instead of who it really is, your dog. “Don’t eat that, Rachel,” you say to your weimeraner as she tries very hard to eat weird mushrooms.
The same is true for apples and vegetables. Nobody wants to eat a tomato called Gordon. And yet, here I am, eating an apple called Jonathan.
My review of a Jonathan apple, Manoff Orchard, PA, mid-Oct:
This is a real chasing the dragon situation — except today, I think I caught the dragon. To rewind and remind:
Blah blah blah, I generally didn’t like apples because, obviously, I’d eaten the bad ones like the rest of us. I’d had cardboardy suck-ass Red Delicous apples at lunch and they are the Fruit of Woe, so I thought, unless they’re in a pie, no apples. An apple a day keeps the doctor away because the doctor is like, “Fuck them shitty apples.” But then blah blah blah, I went to Colorado later in life with my father after we’d kind of… gotten over some of our issues, my wife-to-be was there, it was really lovely. And while there we were driving through Fruita — a town on the Western slope known for it’s SPONTANEOUSLY-GENERATED TRACTORS just kidding, c’mon, it’s known for it’s fruit, it’s right there in the goddamn name — and we stopped at a roadside fruit stand and my father bought us apples.
And we ate the apples there.
That apple was a Jonathan apple and it was a revelation.
Sometimes, though, revelations aren’t permanent. We forget them, because, I assume, our monkey brains get overstuffed and concerned about other things, like for instance we get irrationally annoyed when people name their dogs people names instead of Lord Pawsington Tailweather or Doctor Chaos, like you have all these cool fucking names and instead you went with Jerome, what the actual shit are you doing, you marry a Jerome, you don’t leash and walk a Jerome, unless that’s a thing you do with your husband, and that’s fine, no shame, no shade, you and he should explore whatever sides of yourself you feel comfortable exploring and–
Okay, I’m off track again.
Point is, I ate this gorgeous, glorious apple and realized apple could be amazing — and then I kinda forgot that again. Like, I still had the memory of eating the apple, but the deeper connection to apples didn’t stick. I did not go seek out more apples. And occasionally I’d look for a Jonathan apple and never found one.
Now, though, my local orchard has ’em.
And I got one.
I had a Jonathan apple… I think last year or so out in the Midwest, and I don’t think it was much of a revelation, which worried me. And I’ve had one or two others before that and, nope, still no revelation.
Then I ate this apple.
And it might be my favorite apple so far this season.
It was this beautifully ripe thing, just a hair shy of soft, still a lovely bite, an absolute candy gusher of juice, not bright so much as assertively sharp, still sweet in balance. Even just smelling the apple like a perverted ol’ apple-sniffer gave you the sense memory of walking through a rose garden — but blessedly, it doesn’t taste like roses, which can (for me) be off-putting in an apple. (Rose flavor tastes like grandmas smell, I dunno, don’t at me.) This might be one of those apples where we’re tempted to look for complex, complicated flavors — cherry pipe tobacco mixed with the ennui of a baby whose soul is too old for its chubby little body — but really, this is just an apple’s apple to me. It offers us quintessential appleness.
It’s an absolute classic, this apple. Even the skin was pleasing to eat!
HELL YEAH WE FUCKIN DID IT
Jonathan, lovely.
Revelation, re-revealed.
We’ll call it a 9.1 out of 10 — I would’ve gone higher, but it has a person name, and I just can’t abide that kind of shenanigans.
Remember: no kings, and fuck ICE.
Watch the video of me eating this delightful apple.
Jonathan: tender wonder boy apple, three cheers for Jonathan the apple

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, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature