No I’m not posting a Good Charlotte video. That’s for next week.
I am currently in the middle of a rewatch of Succession. I am fascinated by the obscenely wealthy and the way they live their lives, both in the real world and the one’s that reside in the magic box on my wall. So besides just being a great show in it’s own right, it’s filled with wealthy people doing obscene things. So, you know, I love it.
As I was going through it again, I was struck by a particularly lovely scene. Have you ever heard of the ortolan? Yeah, I hadn’t either. I’m poor. I wasn’t even entirely sure what they said so thankfully Google can decipher my dumb searches. Here is an ortolan.

Tasty looking, right? I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Tom takes Greg to an exclusive pop-up restaurant to show him the finer things in life (I’m going to assume you know who these people are or that you’re going to go watch Succession right after reading this). They get the full tasting menu, and at the conclusion, the ortolan.
What make the ortolan peak rich person gluttony? Here’s a pretty interesting article from Eater on the matter, but I think I can paraphrase. Those pretty little birds up above are caught, kept in darkness, fattened up on millet, killed, and cooked in Armagnac. My mouth is watering already. I’m sure it is divine, but what takes it over the top is how you eat it. You take your napkin, drape it over your head, and eat the bird whole. The napkin is to hide your shame from the world. Next level stuff here.
I for one am all for it. Eating song birds whole. Taking helicopters to play a softball game. Getting married in castles. Covering up deaths to stop a hostile takeover. I need to become rich quick (oh hey, I wrote about that once). Having said all that, I’m more of an Eyes Wide Shut kind of guy.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t share the Succession theme song. That piano or whatever just gets me going.
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