Two Medieval Monks Invent Dinner Parties

by Mallory Ortberg · February 11, 2015

Previously in this series: Two monks invent Christian denominations.

MONK #1: lets throw a dinner party
big feast
invite everybody over
MONK #2: oh yes for sure lets
MONK #1: whats good to eat, what do people like for dinner
MONK #2: one single peacock
2monks1 MONK #1: will that be enough do you think
MONK #2: well that’s what dinner is
a single peacock
so it better be
MONK #1: ok
MONK #2: people will know what to expect so theyll be prepared anyway
MONK #1: ok

 

MONK #1: should we have anything else ready though
just in case
MONK #2: look im telling you
dinner is a single bird
feathers on
all its feathers still on
on a big plate
thats literally what dinner is
MONK #1: ok
2monks2 MONK #1: sorry i didnt mean to be difficult
MONK #2: dont feel bad about it
i mean it was a little embarrassing but dont worry about it
MONK #1: ok
thanks

 

MONK #1: i forget if with dinner parties do people usually have normal eyes and smiling faces, or –
MONK #2: red eyes and despair
MONK #1: okay i was pretty sure that was the one
2monks3 MONK #2: just very red eyes and sorrow and pushing plates away
MONK #1: ok good
MONK #2: that’s how you know its dinner

 

MONK #1: how many ships with a nun on them should we have for the party do you think
MONK #2: hm
theres what
eighteen, twenty people coming?
MONK #1: i think so
2monks4 MONK #2: i think two
MONK #1: ok
MONK #2: yeah for that many people you definitely need at least one, maybe two, but for sure one at least

 

MONK #1: should we have a cup of horror do you think
MONK #2: yes definitely
2monks5

 

MONK #1: how many tables do you think we should have
MONK #2: oh one for everyone who wants to eat gold shapes
and then just a hot pig area for whoever wants to touch some hooves for dinner
2monks6 MONK #1: should we get a table for the hoof people or
MONK #2: no
fuck them
let em stand

 

MONK #1: what about anyone who wants to come that isn’t a king or a —
MONK #2: make em eat circles and sit on the grass
2monks7

 

MONK #1: i forget if dinner is at tables or where everyone sits
MONK #2: carefully on different branches in a tree with no one facing in the same direction
2monks8 MONK #1: oh right yeah
MONK #2: all up in a bunch of trees pointing in directions of each other

 

MONK #1: do you think most people will be wanting to wear clothes
MONK #2: four hats maximum, nothing else
MONK #1: what about if they want to wear a cloak or something
MONK #2: absolute clothing maximum is four hats overall
no exceptions
2monks9

 

MONK #1: should we have a surprise live goat on the table
MONK #2: umm idk are we trying to have a party??
haha yeah of course we should
2monks10

 

MONK #1: ive never really cooked before
do you think that will be a problem
MONK #2: whats to know
sit on a sad fat deer near some cactus plants
chop at its head with your axe
2monks11 MONK #2: then put it in a fire square and youre done
youre overthinking this
MONK #1: ok thanks
sorry i dont mean to be trouble
MONK #2: no its fine you’ll be great
you’re learning, its fine

Tags: ,

Related Posts

Mallory Ortberg

Mallory Ortberg

More from Mallory Ortberg →

109 Comments

      1. Mrs_Peel +24

        Things started going downhill in the ’50s, once housewives started using pre-packaged frozen hooves…

        1. amandajo484 +41

          Nowadays everybody’s just touching organic, locally raised hooves. I get mine from Whole Hooves.

    3. aquamarinaveen +11

      my dinner parties *always* include hot pig area, if you know what I mean
      *waggles eyebrows suggestively*

  2. femaelstrom +147

    Ugh, I shouldn’t have read this before my lunch break, now I’m starving for gold shapes. Touching hooves for lunch just isn’t going to cut it.

    (also omfg bless this series, I re-read it all yesterday and then changed my twitter name to “Two-Pen Eadwin”)

  3. tubatoothpaste +134

    As soon as I saw this, I stage whispered “OH MY GOD TWO MONKS” at my desk at work…. <3 u, monks.

  4. Mrs_Peel +39

    I love everything about this. Thank you for enliving my dreary workday, Mallory.

    As an aside, I was taken out for a very fancy lunch once at a place that had peacocks roaming around outside. They make the most HORRIBLE noises (like two cats in an alley, but louder and screetchier).

    1. MilesofMountain +21

      A friend of mine lives on a farm, and about a decade ago the neighbours moved away and released all their peacocks rather than take them with them. They now have a population of feral peacocks on their farm. She said her brothers can never seem to shoot enough of them to wipe them out so they have to put up with the horrible noise.

    3. projectbeks +15

      I used to live near a small farm that had peacocks. In my experience, they mostly made noise right around sunset. I can still do a pretty realistic peacock call, but unfortunately (and true to form), it’s really loud, so not actually a great party trick.

    4. keythah +9

      I made my dad sell our peacocks after being kept awake one too many night by their frenzied mate-seeking squawking. We had a male and a female but I guess they didn’t fancy each other.

    5. queenofbithynia +27

      I just read a book where a wicked uncle murdered a fellow and explained his screams away as only the screeching of the peacock. everybody bought it.

      2. elsajeni +30

        I used to go to a Girl Scout camp that was next to a peafowl farm. Let me tell you, there is no situation like “herd of undersupervised 10-year-old girls + UNEARTHLY SHRIEKING IN THE NIGHT” to really get a ghost story going.

    6. leahrobinn +14

      My university had resident peacocks that were protected by the uni and treated by everyone like no big deal. Just strollin’ around the grounds, showing feathers or not, eating or just watching us all in mild, resigned confusion.
      Rumour had it you could be expelled for hurting or killing one.

      1. somenerdygirl +18

        Did you go to Beauxbatons? Because that sounds like something they’d have at Beauxbatons.

        1. leahrobinn +15

          Alas, no. Though the grounds were beautiful, we only learned the regular tertiary things, like how to feel alone amongst thousands of people, and how to make friends only to lose them over the summer break.

  5. zolora +224

    Now I’m imagining the Yelp reviews. “WARNING: there was nothing but gold shapes at this party! I know it was called the Greate Golde Shape Partye but I don’t like gold shapes. There should have been some non-gold shapes. The gold shape I did taste was delicious. Zero stars.”

    2. irishbreakfasttime +111

      “Invitation stated ‘no pets,’ so you can imagine my outrage when a Surprise Live Goat arrived. Between him and the intrusive musician, I couldn’t focus on my cup of horror, which was really more of a cup of discomfort anyway. One star.”

    5. maccrocodile +77

      “I complained to my server about the gold shapes, and he directed me to a hot pig area where all there was to eat was hoof-touching.”

    7. Bming5 +6

      The ‘sound’ of peacocks….First time for me: Scene: 2:30 AM in our home in Mexico -old hacienda style. We were all awoken by screaming screeches of strangling babies and hyenas. We went running out to sound the alarm, whereupon we looked up to the rich neighbor’s roof/wall (roofs are flat), and there, in the moonlight on that tropical wall, was yep, the full-glory peacock presenting, and how. Straight out of Fellini. Maybe I’ll write a movie now!

  6. jekyllian +69

    pretty sure that axe guy does not know how to use an axe, but i guess it worked out for him anyway?

      2. JenV +10

        Ælfweard’s Amazing Arm totally distracted me from the fact that the lady is grabbing for the knife and is for serious about to stab that guy if he doesn’t get the cup out of her face RIGHT NOW.

    2. HotDoom +17

      He’s clearly saying “WELP LOOK AT THE TIME SORRY TO LEAVE BEFORE TRYING THE HORROR CUP PEACE OUT FOOLS”

  10. winterbymorning +49

    Can the two monks explain to me why medieval people were so much worse at Doing Art than, say, the ancient Romans?

    During ancient Roman times, people knew how to draw realistic trees and human beings and they knew what people sitting at tables and carrying food looked like.

    Fast-forward a few hundred years and suddenly this knowledge has been lost and nobody has the slightest clue about proportion and perspective? How does that work?

    (Here is a bonus fresco of a woman being inexpertly groped by a satyr.)

    1. menysnoweballes +56

      As a medievalist, I have to say that “worse” is a matter of perspective, and of expectations about what art is meant to achieve… 🙂

      1. winterbymorning +15

        The medieval art is already better than what I could accomplish, so I don’t want to be too harsh on them. By “worse” what I mean is “not as good at accurately representing reality,” I guess. The tree in that fresco at the Villa of Livia looks a lot more like an actual tree than the cactus-plant shown in this piece. I just don’t understand why there was such a step backwards in terms of technique. Was there a Purge in 476 CE and all the artists and craftsmen were mercilessly put to death?

        1. Absotively +43

          I think accurately representing reality just wasn’t a goal at the time.

          It’s like how the Mario games look way less like the real world than the Mass Effect games, but that doesn’t mean that Nintendo’s artists are bad, it just means that they want to make games that only look vaguely like the real world in a stylized way because they think such games are nice and there are people who agree and will buy them. Medieval artists wanted to make paintings that were stylized like these because they thought such paintings were nice and there were people who agreed and bought them.

        2. menysnoweballes +21

          For now I’ll direct you to Pear’s answer below! My area is late medieval English texts, and while I do know a reasonable amount about images, I’m hoping an art historian of the period will come along and talk about this. But if no one does, I shall do my best later! 🙂 But for now – this is (a) not representative of “medieval art”, which covers a thousand years and a continent, and multiple styles and forms of artistic production, and (b) values of what makes something “art” have varied enormously across time and space.

      2. TessierAshpool3 +27

        When you say “a matter of perspective”, do you mean that to some artists, knowing how to use perspective matters, and to some it…doesn’t?

    2. deleted6501527 +82

      A lot of it has to do with Western medieval art having different goals than classical art. While it’s true that some facets of classical art were… ~temporarily misplaced~, medieval art isn’t about representation or realism; it’s about allegory and symbolism, about depicting an understanding of the universe in which the visible world is only a thin veil hiding the True Reality. So it isn’t that it’s bad art – it’s actually very effective at doing what it’s intended to do. Also, keep in mind that the images here are illuminations; most of the monks creating them weren’t artists first and foremost, but rather transcriptionists who also dabbled in illustration. (There are, of course, exceptions to that, as there are to everything.)

      Eastern Orthodox iconography is a good comparison. We could look at an icon as crappy art, because of the weird poses and perspectives and because it doesn’t look remotely realistic. But that’s a particular bias that misses the goal of Orthodox iconography. The reason its perspective looks weird is because it’s meant to show the world from a heavenly perspective – which means everything is reversed and foreshortened, like looking through the large end of a telescope. It’s a different way of seeing, and extraordinarily beautiful when you look at it that way.

      (IANAn Art Historian; but I was a Medieval/Religious Studies double major.)

      (Edited to correct misspelling.)

      1. winterbymorning +67

        I’m nominally Orthodox and my only issue with our iconography is that all the saints just glare at you all the time! Is heaven an eternity of getting the stink-eye from the Virgin Mary?

      2. Myrtle +9

        I had never been in near where this information was available, apparently, as this is the first time I’ve heard this explained. It’s thrilling to finally know. “Perspective from Heaven.” Swoon. So glad you taught me this, thank you!

    3. alicia +11

      Yes, my understanding is that they were not trying to make it realistic. Think of Cubism or abstract art, it’s not that those artists had a lack of skill.

      1. winterbymorning +11

        That’s true, but on the other hand, not all artists in a certain time period produced solely cubist or abstract pieces – some of them were still doing straight-up representational stuff – while all the medieval art I’ve seen follows the same style.

          1. winterbymorning +11

            My fave medievalish-era portrait is definitely this dude. I think I may have linked to him before in another post. I don’t know why but he just fills me with glee.

    4. winterbymorning +28

      Thank you for your thoughtful and informative replies, everybody! I’ll be slightly less ignorant when I go to bed tonight than I was when I got up this morning.

        1. Mrs_Peel +5

          I knew they had to be hanging out somewhere.

          (I briefly considered going that route after enjoying AP Art History in high school, but ended up becoming a boring lawyer instead).

    6. ClassicalArchy +19

      Classical archaeologist here: there’s a greater variety in Roman art than one might expect. There is a classicizing style (as Pear talks about) that is generally realistic (or idealistic, which is not quite the same thing), but at the same time there are strands of an alternative style that moves away from realism. In the pieces with that style, you find squat/stocky figures, strange poses, and the foreground is separated from the background by having the figures in the background float in the air. There is a class and status division too, with this alternative style referred to as “plebian” or “provincial” because it shows up most often in the art of the lower classes and provinces. But eventually it creeps into official, imperial public art, and eventually it is the style that “wins” by being the predominant force that continues into medieval art. For a long time, Roman art was considered “bad” art because it had these elements; the “good” part of Roman art is really just a copy of Greek art, and therefore Romans were degenerates. But as others have noted in their replies, realism is not the goal of all art, and taken on their own terms, the stylistic features of plebian-Roman art and medieval art can be fascinating. And it doesn’t hurt that they are also often hilarious too. I will try to post some examples below, but this is the first time I’ve commented here, so it might be a fail.

      1. ClassicalArchy +9

        Here are a couple examples, though they are not nearly as dramatic as medieval.
        (1) an arch set up in an northern Italian provincial area (Susa) to celebrate Augustus, which features a relief with chunky big-headed men and ginormous sacrificial animals (in the “lato ovest” photo, that’s Augustus in the middle. AUGUSTUS): http://www.villardora.org/documenti/susa_romana.h…
        (2) A tomb from Ameriternum, Italy. Want to show a crowd on a vertical surface? Just float people up in the air! And some people are less important, so make them smaller. And even though they are carrying the dead guy in his funeral procession, let’s show him propped up like he’s watching the procession: https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/1531/fla…
        (3) Finally, the arch of Constantine. Now all that art from the poors have made it to the emperors. Constantine is missing his head now, but he dwarfs everyone else. The figures in the foreground have broken their necks trying to see him, and they are only as big as the background guys torsos. Plus, everyone looks more or less the same and the folds of their drapery are indicated with deep grooves. Gross: https://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/farberas/arth/Ima…

  11. Nimona +17

    Goddamn do I love the attempt at perspective in the red eyes one. It’s like the diners are in a different, rectangular universe from the waiters and the trestles and it’s perfect. Also the hat on the guy in the middle is pretty dope… is it a cat?

    1. Fluffernutter +3

      It’s SO bad! It almost looks like the dudes in the foreground are interacting with a painting, the way I sometimes do in museums for a fun photo op.

  12. emdash +28

    THE TWO MONKS ARE BACK THE TWO MONKS ARE BACK THE TWO MONKS ARE BACK

    [runs around the room flailing arms wildly, Muppet-style]

  13. protocoach +57

    I shouldn’t love Monk #2, given that he’s clearly kind of a know-nothing asshole, but dammit, I can’t help it. I love how go-for-broke confident he is.

  14. Fluffernutter +27

    CUP OF HORROR.

    I am getting a distinctly Beavis vibe from Monk #1 and Butthead vibe from Monk #2. I think it’s b/c Monk #2 is so damn bossy.

  16. kilks401 +8

    Hmm curious that the guy to the right of the Horror Chalice appears to be using an omni-tool. What do the Mass Effect writers know that we don’t about the medieval ages?!??

  17. logicbutton +18

    That is a much better depiction of The Emotion Of Horror than I have come to expect from medieval illustrators.

  18. betsymore +13

    TWO MONKS ARE BACK

    FLAILS HAPPILY

    Mallory thank you for this you have NO idea how much I needed this today.

    (*whispers* Or did she?)

  19. rmless +15

    You never know how much you’ve been missing the 2 monks until they reappear and a silent but gnawing hole is filled.

  20. Household_Opera +19

    In addition to inventing the Party Cup of Horror, the two monks also seem to have invented…bagels? Mmm, bagels and horror for dinner!

  21. queenofbithynia +17

    sit on a sad fat deer near some cactus plants
    chop at its head with your axe

    monk #2 thinks he knows so much just cause he has the vintage Joy of Cooking.

  22. redheadedwolf +25

    Lol, this is aces. I especially love the cup of horror.

    But that is NOT A DEER, MALLORY. I would say it’s a…warthog.

  23. connorjoel +9

    MONK #2 PROVES TO BE AN ACES HOSTESS, SHOWS UP MONK #1 AT LAST

    This is all I have ever dreamed of; thank you, Ortberg.

  24. Q_Continuum +7

    I’ve recently gotten really enthusiastic about looking at pictures of the Last Supper because John just cannot keep awake. And he gets in Jesus’s way. This one’s my favorite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#mediavie…
    “Yes everyone, when you have something to say it is very important to use a sleeping man as an armrest –a SLEEPING man, Thomas! Not a servant.”

  25. dancingcrowdesigns +6

    (it is a boar near the cactus plants)
    (I think)
    (which makes straddling it even more horrifying)

  26. crawlkill +6

    I was expecting something about putting the sad fat deer on your canvas to complete your masterpiece but the fire square destroyed me

  29. Gzortenplatz +5

    I’m sure this has already been said, but . . . THE MONKS!! THE MONKS ARE BACK!! Singing and dancing in the streets! Flagons of ale all around!!

    I’m a little bit excited.

  30. rolotomassi5 +8

    “all up in a bunch of trees pointing in directions of each other”

    Very Achewood-esque line. Excellent

  36. Joe in Australia +3

    The one with the “hot pig area” is actually supposed to contrast Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper with Jews at a Passover sacrifice. It’s weird, seeing as *everybody* at the Last Supper was Jewish, but medieval iconography showed “Christian” Jews in Classical(ish) dress and Jewish-Jews in medieval dress – including the stupid hats that they were required to wear by European law. You can find a Wikipedia entry for it under “Jewish hat”.

  37. Kathy +2

    Oh man, I think my mother-in-law might be a disciple of Monk #2. The theme of her dinner parties is definitely “red eyes and despair”.