If there’s one thing that Racket does more than kick ass, it’s stuffing our collective face. Thai food, sushi, Mexican food, Chinese, In N’ Fucking Out, fucking…Funyuns. Put it in our gut. If you mix kicking ass and food, you get Duff Goldman, owner and head bake-master at Charm City Cakes, know around the world (at least the parts of the world with Food Network) as the location of Ace of Cakes.
Baking is a pain in the ass. You have to be all precise with the measuring and can’t really substitute too many of the ingredients. Let’s take stir-fry for example. If you replace bell peppers with snap peas, there is going to be no discernable damage done. Lord help you if you replace baking soda with baking powder.
I had a freak opportunity to drop Duff a line and what I thought was going to be a short lived venture into new territory turned into a conversation reaching from Rick Springfield’s ass to Zeppelin to tits in cinema.
The Emperor!: How’s it going, man?
Duff Goldman: Pretty good, it’s my first day of vacation.
TE!: And you’re doing this crap, that sucks.
DG: Well, no, this is fine. It’s just my first day of not being in the bakery or on a plane or something.
TE!: Ahh, so you first day of…not doing shit.
DG: This is kind of fun stuff, too. Once you start getting into this crazy life, you start realizing the stuff that used to be bizarre, like people recognizing you on the street and asking really strange questions, you sort of change the way you view the reality of the situation. Instead of being put out by the demands on your time, you enjoy it because it’s awesome.
TE!: I love cooking, but I have no desire to be a chef. I see the craziness that goes on on your show or other cooking shows and I think “that would suuuuck.”
DG: It definitely doesn’t suck, it’s exciting. People are always like “you’re always laughing, do you take anything seriously.” The answer is yes, I take a lot of things seriously, but I have that Monty Python absurdist sense of humor that when things are kind of crazy, I just sort of laugh. I was on a competition for the food network and I had this cake I was making, and it just fell apart in the last 30 seconds. It just completely destroyed itself. I just started cracking up. I was like “Wooooow, I just crashed and burned in front of millions of people, this is so funny.” Everyone’s looking at me like “Are you insaaaane? You just totally lost, you look like a jackass and you’re laughing?” Yea, I’m laughing, What am I supposed to do, push a table over and storm out of the place? So I made a big joke out of it. We’re supposed to transport the cake over to the judges table, so I made this little fish, so I picked up the little fish and made a big deal out of carrying it over, pretending like it was really heavy. And they were like “You just don’t care.” And I was like “Meh, no, not really.”
TE!: [Emperor’s note: here’s where I said some inane bullshit about where I work at my (now ex-) day job of arresting shoplifters]
DG: You’re the guy who used to chase me out of Nordstrom’s and Woolworth’s!
TE!: Yea, that was me.
DG: I’m a very accomplished shoplifter.
TE!: I don’t blame you. If you knew who I was, you would think that would be an absurd joke. That I would give a shit about shoplifting. I don’t.
DG: I grew up, I was a graffiti artist. I was breaking into train yards, painting subway trains. You sort of get into it. I’d go into wherever and get a cd out of those big crazy plastic things. I could get it out of one of those things in two and a half’s seconds, boom, I’m done. It was one of those things that was just fun. I never did it because I needed to steal anything, I was just like, “Eh, let’s give this a whirl.” I did do my share of shoplifting. I got caught, I stopped.
TE!: Oh, yea, totally. I got caught stealing a hot wheels toy from a Thrifty’s when I was in like 4th grade. And my mom caught me and made me apologize. Have you ever used your celebrity status to meet any of your celebrity idols?
DG: No, I haven’t. It’s happened, where I’ve gotten to meet some really awesome people. Some amazing, amazing people. Like Steve Carrell for example, who is just as cool as you would imagine him to be. One of the coolest guys I’ve ever met. Like the Stanley Cup for example, when the Stanley Cup came to the bakery, now, I was a hockey player in college, but when they brought that over, I had no idea that they were doing that. The production guys surprised me with that. It wasn’t like “Oh, we’re making a cake of the Stanley Cup, let’s call the NHL and see if they’ll send it down here.” It wasn’t like that. That’s kind of getting into douchebag territory, you know. For example, I’m in a band, most of the people in the bakery are in bands in some shape or form, we don’t use the show as a vehicle to promote the band. I mean every once in a while, the world of cakes and the world of music will collide and we’ll end up on camera. But it’s not like, “OK, make my band big because I am on this TV show.” The band is very very separate, we’re signed, we have distribution through Warner Brothers, we record, we rehearse and we play about once a month. And when I play I put shades on and a hat, I don’t want people to be like, “Oh, it’s the cake guy.” And that’s like Dogstar [Emperor’s note: If you haven’t heard Keanu Reeve’s band, I envy you.] shit. That band sucks, by the way. And Russell Crowe’s band, UGH, it’s HORRIBLE! Have you heard it?
TE!: No! Why would I?
DG: It’s so BAD, it’s so bad. I’m like, “Russell, come on!” I mean, the dude’s cool. He played some cool…he was Gladiator for crying out loud.
TE!: I don’t see him as being a cool dude. I don’t see it. I see him as being very pretentious and talking about himself in the third person. Like instead of saying “Can you pass me that glass of water” I see him saying “Russell Crowe wants water.” That’s how I see him.
DG: I can see that. Dude’s had a pretty crazy career, though, if you think about it. Did you see Romper Stomper?
TE!: No, I actually suck at seeing a lot of movies.
DG: OK, Romper Stomper is Russell Crowe, at like 18, and he was playing the neo-nazi, white power, weirdo Australian guy.
TE!: What?
DG: It is IN-sane. It makes Clockwork Orange look like Care Bears.
TE!: That sounds cool.
DG: I mean, I’m Jewish, it’s not like I’m all “Oh, cool, white power.”
TE!: No worries. So, you haven’t, but can I use your celebrity status to meet some of my celebrity idols?
DG: I think that is a fantastic idea. Make some shit up. “Hey, I’m having a dinner tonight, he’s coming. He’s bringing a cake.”
TE!: Yea! “He’ll be here in a bit.” “I thought he was in Baltimore.” “SHUT UP.”
DG: “He has a plane, he’ll fly over.”
TE!: “Yea, he has 18 planes, shut up about it. Shut yer mouf.” What is your favorite musical instrument of all time.
DG: In what sense and in whose hands?
TE!: Let’s say, what instrument have you always wanted for yourself?
DG: Ooooh, ummm, man. I’m going to say a mellotron. Because when JPJ does that whole mellotron solo on No Quarter, oooo. That or, there’s another one I really want, it’s a [spells out] s-u-r-b-a-h-a-r.
TE!: That doesn’t look like any English word.
DG: It’s a bass sitar.
TE!: Oh, weird. I take it you are the bass player, then.
DG: Yea, I have a bird’s eye Spector. It’s beautiful. I got it at a scratch and dent. It’s like a $13,000 bass that some dude ordered and he sent it back because they got some stain on one of the inlays, and I got it for $1,100.
TE!: That’s awesome. I got a fretless for free from NAMM. It rules.
DG: What!?
TE!: So stoked.
DG: A couple guys in the band and I are trying to go to NAMM next year. Two of the guys in my band used to work at PRS and they would go to NAMM all the time. They’re like “We need to take you to NAMM and talk to the Spector reps and tell them that you’re really into their basses.” Again, that’s approaching on the douchey, using your shit to get shit I try to shy away from, but if we get sponsored by Spector, that’d be pretty cool. We are playing Paul Reed Smith’s 25th anniversary show, which will be pretty cool.
TE!: Have you ever thought about making a mellotron cake so you could at least pretend you had one?
DG: That would be cool, but it’s got this weird tape delay, I’m not sure if I could make one that actually works. Sometimes when I’m having a cake nightmare of the cake falling apart of the cake not making it to the venue on time or an angry father on the phone, sometimes what will happen in my dreams is John Paul Jones will sit down at the mellotron and hand me his guitar and let me play bass while he does the solo in No Quarter. Makes me feel better.
TE!: Sometimes when I play Bejeweled too much, I dream of giant exploding gems, so I shouldn’t be surprised that you have cake nightmares.
DG: I have waking ones, too. They’re not nightmares, but I can’t help looking at something and wondering how to make it out of cake. Anything, you name it, man. I’ll see a dog being walked down the street and I’ll go “That’s a cool looking dog…how do I make it out of cake?” You see something random, like I’m looking at pictures of these subahars right now and going, “that would be a really, really kick ass cake.” And usually when we do stringed instruments our of cake, we make them playable. Like when we do a guitar, we’ll give it an open-A tuning so you can strum it.
TE!: Is your staff genuinely concerned when you use power tools, or have you proven your prowess with them yet?
DG: Umm, I refuse to answer that question on grounds that I might jinx myself.
TE!: OK.
DG: I’m serious! Last year I jammed a box cutter into my palm…
TE!: Ugh!
DG: Yea, it went in sideways. OK, so put your hand out flat. It went underneath my thumb and slid towards my wrist.
TE!: That’s terrible! I can’t even believe I just did that.
DG: Yup, it’s cool. I have this little caterpillar scar because they had to sew it back up. I was sitting in the kitchen I was bleeding all over the place around bunch an art students. I’m a cook, so I’m used to cutting shit off, and I was like “Will you guys stop freaking out and crying and bring me the butterflies, the first aid kit and some superglue, PLEASE.” And finally someone brought me the stuff and I had to dress it myself, no one could even look at the gaping, disgusting, like all the meat was coming out from inside my palm, I had to stuff it back in, superglue it all back up. There’s three butterflies on it, I wrapped it all up. A couple hours later my hand swelled up to the size of a catcher’s mitt and I’m like “aww, fuck.” So I go to the doctor’s and get it all stitched up.
TE!: Gross. I grew up in a redneck family, so superglue and Band-Aids were pretty much the extent of our first aid kit.
DG: That and duct tape, man. I reattached a piece of my thumb once with duct tape. Just left it on there for three days. I was a line cook and I was julienne-ing some zucchini and I was slicing slicing slicing woo, shit. “Chef, Chef!” and I’m sitting there holding my thumb and he’s like, “What happened?” and I showed him, but the blood started to come, so I clamped back down. And he’s like, “Hold on, go put your hand under the sink.” So I do and it’s just bleeding and then the chef goes to my cutting board and finds the piece of my thumb and then goes to the office, and I’m still at the sink, making a tourniquet around my thumb with my other hand, and he comes back with a roll of duct tape and this piece of my thumb. He lines up my fingerprints with the piece and wraps it up with duct tape. He says not to take it off for three days and I’m like, OK. So I left it on there, and I guess the sticky stuff in duct tape is anti-bacterial, and when I took it off the piece had re-attached itself. I have this really awesome scar that is a perfect circle on my left thumb. [Emperor’s note: zucchini sucks, this story adds credence to that.]
TE!: That is really cool. Have you ever lost a loved one to a baking related injury?
DG: Well, baking, amazingly, has turned into a spectator sport. I lost my first rolling pin I ever had. I bought a rolling pin when I was still in college, and I had it my whole cooking career. I started the bakery, then all my tools started getting used by all my employees, and something happened and my rolling pin got a nick. And I loved this rolling pin. I had it for ten years at this point and it was so well-oiled and perfect, I took really good care of it. But I tried to very gradually sand it down from a nick to a dip, so every time you would roll with it, it would leave a bump, so what we did was, well, we have this table in the bakery, and it was a museum of our fallen brethren, we’d have like a busted airbrush we had our first broken Kitchen-Aid. We’ve since busted like fifty of them, we’ve probably had to get a new one every month. And that’s not anything wrong with Kitchen-Aid, we just abuse them way beyond what they’re designed to do. It’s more expensive to replace a transmission in a Kitchen-Aid than it is to buy a new one. But, we had this whole table of things that have broken or we’ve taken parts for other things, there’s a busted disco ball, the ball is on the table but the guts, the motor was used for something else. My rolling pin had gotten a place of honor among the table of fallen brethren. I was away, I was doing a food show or something, and we had to make a giant crab mallet for a big cake in the shape of a crab. One of my employees, who shall remain nameless, took it into the shop and cut a big chunk of it out and then drilled a hole into the side of the chunk, stuck a small dowel into the hole and made this mallet. I got back to the bakery and saw my rolling pin missing about 6 inches and was just like “What…what’s this?” and they were like “Oh, we had to make a mallet.” (sounds of disgust)
TE!: It seems like, well, you could use a rug, but you didn’t need to dig up my dead dog.
DG: Exactly! We have a hardware store three blocks away! We have a good 25 of those rolling pins in various places around the bakery. We only use this one kind of pin, it’s a French style, so it’s basically just a thick wood rod [Emperor’s note: Heh. Perv.] There’s no handles on it, they’re all over the place, they could have used any of them! But no, had to use my first rolling pin ever. I used it to make biscuits here in Baltimore, it was my first real fine dining establishment I ever worked at.
TE!: Did you try using a sticker to cover up that dent?
DG: Well, then the edges of the sticker would have left marks.
TE!: Use LOTS of stickers.
DG: Well, what we do is so exact, I would have had to use Bond-o or something.
TE!: Which I’m not opposed to.
DG: Yea, thinking back, why didn’t I do that?! I’m such a jackass!
TE!: Looking back at your other firsts, what was the first concert you ever went to?
DG: (a LOT of stuttering starts off this answer) Man, are you guys are really gonna print this…my first concert was MC Hammer.
TE!: NICE! I’m all for it!
DG: OK! Good!
TE!: Mine was Rob Zombie fer chrissakes.
DG: (Laughs, I hope with me, versus AT me.) We just saw Rob Zombie. Some of his guitar techs were fans of the show, and they were opening up for Ozzy, so we went down to DC, and some of the guys in the band and I went backstage and we gave them all t-shirts and it was funny. And Zakk Wylde is back there, and it’s funny because Zakk Wylde does this 50 minute guitar solo cuz Ozzy can’t sing for shit anymore and it’s pretty sad. Maybe three weeks ago, we just opened up for Black Label Society, Zakk Wylde’s other band, at House of Blues in Atlantic City and I was like “Wow, we’re opening up for Zakk Wylde’s band.! What alternate universe did we just step into?”
TE!: How about your first tape, CD and album you have ever purchased?
DG: OK, first vinyl that I ever spent money on was the Jackson Five Victory album, it was a picture disc. First tape was 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul.
TE!: Nice work.
DG: And my first CD, I remember this very clearly, I got a CD player and I went to a used CD store and I bought Led Zeppelin I.
TE!: You have nothing to be ashamed of.
DG: Are you kidding? Best band in the fucking universe, of course I’m not ashamed! You got something to say about Zeppelin!?
TE!: NO!
DG: I’ll be Patrick Swayze and tear your fucking throat out, kid! Come on, you’ve seen Roadhouse!
TE!: Of course I’ve seen Roadhouse, it was the first movie I ever saw a boob in.
DG: And the guy gets his throat ripped out with Patrick Swayze’s bare hands!
TE!: Yea, dude!
DG: You talk about Led Zeppelin and I will freak the fuck out. I love that movie.
TE!: I remember watching it at my grandma’s house and I had to peak around the corner into the kitchen to see if she was ignoring me. And I was like “I JUST SAW BOOBS! That’s awesome.”
DG: Did you ever see the director’s cut of Amadeus?
TE!: No.
DG: There’s some really good boobs in the director’s cut.
TE!: I’ll have to check that out. True or False: scones are gay.
DG: Well, you know, they are…English. So, I’d say they fall into the category of… ambiguous? [Emperor’s note: he said it as a question!]
TE!: That’s better than any answer I could have hoped for.
DG: I’d say that in their ambiguity, you could go with clotted cream, or jam and I think depending on the topping of the sexually ambiguous scone would push it one way or the other. Much like a bisexual, it depends on the day, the bar and who’s in it.
TE!: Have you ever had to turn down a cake idea?
DG: The only ideas are ones that are really distasteful.
TE!: Like what, swastika cakes?
DG: Just anything that’s really in poor taste, a lot of times who want cakes for a baby shower, and they’ll want one in the shape of a baby. It’s like, “You realize this is a cake…you have to cut it…you have to cut your baby’s head off.” It’s like, you sort of have to explain this. There’s that. We do say we do not do cakes of the human form, ALTHOUGH, we ARE doing a bust of Lionel Richie. You know the one video where a girl is sculpting his bust out of clay? We’re actually doing the clay version of Lionel Richie…out of cake. That is no joke, by the way.
TE!: Then why am I laughing!?
DG: Cuz it’s fucking hilarious, that’s why you’re laughing. Also, and you can call and ask them, we made a cake of Rick Springfield’s bare naked ass…for Rick Springfield. We have photographic evidence of him holding it up.
TE!: {Fighting through the tears of laughter) Why would he want that?! “EAT MY ASS!”
DG: He’s just really into his ass. He’s very proud of it. Evidently, someone wanted this cake for him. It’s an inside joke, apparently he’s so into his own ass, he’s just like “Look at my bum, it has it’s own gravity!” We made this cake of his butt, and someone sent us a screenshot of his barenaked butt that someone got from a movie he was in. Lionel Richie. Out of clay. Jerri Curls and all.
TE!: Are there any inter-office romances in the bakery?
DG: Not that I’m aware of, my staff doesn’t really talk to me about that stuff.
TE!: What about Katherine Hill, is she single? [Emperor’s note: I was so wrong to pick Katherine as the one to ask about. Charm City Cakes is filled to the brim with beautiful women, but it wasn’t until I was culling images for this badboy that I came across THIS, created by gorgeous young Lauren Friedman, that I realized I was sorely mistaken. Lauren is obviously my soulmate. Or, at least my cakemate. Duff, hook it up, man.]
DG: Absolutely not.
TE!: Figures.
DG: Ever hear of a band called Ponytail?
TE!: Sounds stupid, I hate them. Is she dating someone in it?
DG: Yup.
TE!: Totally hate them.
DG: No you don’t, cuz they’re fucking rock stars and they’re awesome.
TE!: Is that your band?
DG: No.
TE!: What is your band called?
DG: Soihadto.
TE!: Huh, real close to a full sentence, I almost believe you’re a screamo band.
DG: I was in an emo band called Two Day Romance.
TE!: That definitely sounds like an emo band.
DG: It was so emo, it was horrible. We were actually getting looked at by Sony, and we went to meet the Sony rep, it was me and the guitar player. We went to go to this venue North of Baltimore to see this showcase show and we’re talking to this guy and he came to one of our shows to see us play and we’re talking to this guy and all excited. He was all “You guys are a really good band, but lose the singer and we’ll talk to you.” And it’s like “whooooaa.” But then, these kids get off the stage at this showcase show and come over to him and were like “What did you think, Steve, what did you think!?” He was like “You guys were really great!” And we were like “Yea, you’re really good.” And they’re like these fifteen year old kids, sporting like crazy neon red hair, and it was Linkin Park.
TE!: Jeez.
DG: Yea, random.
[Emperor’s note: At this point in time, I had run out of questions and was just enjoying my conversation with Duff. Some of it is nonsense, some of it is amazing. I have left out the bits about taking pictures of those taking pictures of you, and we’ll pick it up again with this funny shit:]
DG: If..what’s his name, Ashton Kutcher can “punk” people, then I think I can goof off a little.
TE!: He can also bang Demi Moore and we can’t.
DG: Yea! You know?! The guy wears a stupid trucker hat, jumps out of a bush and scares somebody and all of a sudden he’s rolling around with Bruce Willis’ wife. Man, I’d be afraid Bruce Willis would Die Hard my ass. You do not fuck with John McClain, he will kick your ass! He has four movies to prove it, he killed LOTS OF PEOPLE!
TE!: Oh my god.
DG: And he got on a fucking space shuttle, blew up that asteroid and saved Earth’s ass.
TE!:YES! Armageddon was AWESOME!
DG: Armageddon is the shit.
TE!: One of my roommates is really into film, and I keep trying to convince him that Armageddon is the pinnacle of American cinematography. He keeps shaking his head at me.
DG: A friend of mine plays saxophone in a Booker T cover band, and he arranges all the music. He is an incredible musician, he’s sucha paradox, because he’s this incredible musician, and he’s this frat boy college football player, and that’s like the pot calling the kettle black, I was a rugby and hockey player in college, but still, he’s this super dude who plays and writes some of the most beautiful music and swears up and down that Armageddon is THE best movie ever made. I’m not doubting that it is a damned fine piece of cinema, but he’s like “It’s not ‘pretty good’, it’s the BEST MOVIE EVER MADE. When Steve Buscemi gets reunited with the stripper when they get back, that’s a tear-jerker, you know!” When he’s sitting on the bomb like Slim Pickins from Dr. Strangelove…
TE!: He just wanted to feel the power between his legs!
DG: That movie was definitely very well crafted, God bless Ben Affleck, people love to hate him. Have you ever read any of the Kevin Smith auto-biographies?
TE!: No.
DG: Oh, man, he talked about Affleck all the time. Kevin Smith is a guy I admire and respect and think is a genius. When you hear him talk about Affleck, you see him in a whole new light, like “Wow, he is a funny dude.” He is always hitting on Kevin Smiths wife, cuz she’s really cute.
TE!: Right.
DG: And then he walked into Kevin’s house one day, picked up his daughter and said “Hey, did I ever tell you that I’m your real daddy?” AFFLECK! That fucking rules.
–Jonathan Yost
Post Script: After our touching heart to heart, Duff emailed me after checking out the mag he had unwittingly been in contact with. Rather then devaluing me as a human being, he actually had some nice things to say! Duff also reminded me of an old post we had involving a benefit auction to help the parents of Callum Robbins, a rock and roll progeny of J. Robbins (Jawbox, natch) and Janet Morgan. Callum has Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which besides being lame to have, is costly to treat and combat. I know you, like my unemployed ass, are dirt broke, but come on, skip the Big Mac and pitch a couple bucks their way. There’s a PayPal link on their SITE and if you donate, tell Duff and he’ll promise not to call you a douche. Unless you talk shit on Zeppelin, then you’re on your own. Douche.
