the cupcake paradox, or the adams-mcclosky problem
I’m not positive when my cupcake obsession began. I know it took a turn for the ridiculous around Halloween of last year when I spent the day decorating 50 some-odd cupcakes that looked like, well, this:
Ever since I’ve been captivated by the possibilities of The Cupcake (like all my obsessions, as soon as it catches my fancy it becomes a Platonic abstraction: see also, The Knitted, The Horror Film, and The Baby Animal). Wandering through Barnes & Noble a couple of days ago, I stumble across a cookbook simply titled, Cupcakes. In it are recipes for tiramisu cupcakes, pistachio white chocolate cupcakes, chocolate orange cupcakes, maple pear cupcakes — it’s gorgeous.
Giddy over my newest acquisition, I indulged in a little facebook gloating. My friend Anthony requested that I bring cupcakes to a movie night he’s hosting this week, and that’s when we started thinking: people love things in miniature. I’m much more likely to eat a cupcake than a piece of cake or a donut hole than a donut. Anthony just bought a new ottoman that kicks ass. Why? Because of a smaller, identical ottoman stored inside the larger one. As a child, when I’d start cracking open Russian stacking dolls, my question was not really “How many are there?” It was, “How small do they get?” The smaller, the better.
This, we decided, is the cupcake paradox. One would assume that when we have a good thing we’d want more of it or to make it bigger. Not the case. You want to make a popular thing (fried chicken) more popular? Make it smaller (hello, chicken nuggets.). After some semi-intense pondering, we couldn’t think of a single, non-sexual example of something that is considered better when it is made larger. Even possible exceptions, such as a drink, turn out to be inaccurate. Liquid is measured by volume, not mass. So, you can’t really have a smaller diet coke (by which I mean beer), you’d just have a smaller glass. Which I’d just fill up over and over again because small things are precious.
Miniature trains, dollhouses, those monkeys that are the size of your finger when they’re babies: these are the things people get strangely obsessive about. That’s The Cupcake Paradox at work.
Filed under life i guess, why's and how's and what's | Comment (1)and speaking of assery…
This is hands-down the most fun I’ve ever had reading an interview. Mr. Vidal, though I’d never, ever want to meet you and the way you treated this poor interviewer is abhorrent, I applaud your adamantine nerve. Some of my favorite bits:
On his reaction to William Buckley’s death: ”I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.”
On reading contemporary fiction: ”Like everyone else, no, I don’t.”
And my favorite…
On the interviewer’s comment that it was a pleasure speaking with him: “I doubt that.”
For the whole text of “Literary Lion: Questions with Gore Vidal,” click here. And give a round of applause to Ms. Deborah Soloman, the woman who took the senseless beating.
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