Back when I was a kid, Sesame Street had a running gag in which a chef would appear at the top of some stairs with an impossibly large, improbably complicated multitiered confection. He'd yell out its name and count the ludicrous number of ingredients that had gone into every layer and then, gingerly, start down the stairs, presumably to serve this, the creation of a lifetime. He never made it. He always fell before he got to the bottom, invariably covered in the remnants of his creation.

My...