One to Watch... And Follow

Those of you who read this blog with any regularity can surely detect my reluctant embrace of the Internet. I am a bit of a Luddite, and while over time I have accepted that the Internet is here to stay, and even gets its own proper noun, I have been slow to join many online phenomena.

My most recent arm-twisted membership: Twitter (you can follow me @whatssheeating, btw). I signed up groaning audibly and assuming my association would be fruitless and permanently brand me as someone who spends her Saturday nights wearing chain mail and playing D&D. But I have been pleasantly surprised on many counts. Twitter has been great, among other things, to bring awesome food articles to my attention, alert me to must-attend events, and "meet" really interesting people. One of the most interesting people I have "met" on Twitter is Liza de Guia, the self-professed food addict and video storyteller also known as @SkeeterNYC. Liza and I are not friends in real life, though I confess I sometimes wonder what that would be like (Liza, I swear I'm normal and there is nothing of human origin in my freezer). Other than exchanging some tweets, however, I know very little about her, except that she makes really good short films about food.

Her most recent one is a seven minute video about SCRATCHbread and its founder Matthew Tilden. Tilden is a baker without a bakery. He works during the night in a closed pizzeria where he molds dough by hand and moves his floury creations around an ominous brick oven with a long wooden spatula. His story is an interesting one so I won't ruin it for you, watch the video. I also really enjoyed her piece about a Long Island oyster farmer and another about a guy who farms one lone acre all by himself.


So my point is two fold. One is that Liza's videos are really neat and worth checking out. The second is that Twitter is the new cool. There is no better way to be "in the scene" in whatever it is you are interested in than to get in the Twitterverse mix. Forget that you are called a "follower" for reading others' tweets; both its culty and lemming-like implications are misplaced. And forget that the verb "to tweet" when used for anything other than referring to bird-to-bird communication is painful to say, you'll get over it. Just get an ID, join the fray, and see how much you learn. And while you're at it, follow me. I don't make awesome videos, but I'll make sure you don't miss any.