Friday Afternoon Confessional: A Life of Leisure
I confess that I find it to be a noteworthy occasion when I sleep straight through the night. One night this week, in fact, The Dog woke me up at 4:30 and I “counted” it as sleeping through the night since I normally wake up, like clockwork, three hours after I go to sleep, in order to go to the bathroom. The precision often amazes me.
I confess that I was discussing it with a colleague, and I probably have the lowest workload that I am likely to have at any future time during my career at Shimer. I confess that next semester I am doing two sections of a writing-intensive course, which will result in much more grading as the students can apparently do unlimited rewrites. I confess that, sappy idealist as I am, I am actually looking forward to helping them with their writing — that was a major goal of mine at Kalamazoo, and I found it consistently frustrating that I didn’t know whether my advice would do any long-term good, given that I was only there for a short time and only had a handful of repeat students.
I confess that my superego continues to mildly berate me for not making better use of this relative life of leisure. But my ego and perhaps my id are telling me that I’ve been pretty tightly wound for the past few years between my ridiculous number of writing projects and the horrific stresses of the job market. In the past, I’ve found that my body will eventually give me an “involuntary day off” when I can’t get up the energy to do much more than catch up on the DVR — this may be the longer-term version of that.
I confess, however, that I have received my Hebrew grammar and lexicon in the mail, so I will at least have some kind of larger project to fiddle with.
Spoiler Alert Thursday
Many shows are on break for one of two reasons (or both): (1) that baseball game thing; (2) the fact that there are thirteen more broadcast weeks in a season than there are episodes. Expect a lot of repeats on CW given that they have no mid-season replacements. It would be an ideal time to catch up on “Supernatural,” if you haven’t already done so. Consequently, there is less than usual to report this week–starting from last Friday, where we left off.
“Supernatural” A great episode–and rather unexpected. Cordelia and Spike, from “Buffy,” are a witch-couple who have split on account of Spike’s Kanye West ways. Cordelia begins killing Spike’s business associates; Spike begins killing Cordelia’s business associates. Sam and Dean fucked up the spell that would neutralize their powers and have to talk their way out of the situation by convincing them that they were killing for each other, which proves how much they must love one another. Later, the Leviathan who has been stalking Sam and Dean busts into their motel room and starts kicking their asses. Spike arrives, mindlessly casts a spell thereby disabling the Leviathan, and retrieves an enchanted coin from under their bed (which would focus magical death energy on them). Anyway, Sam and Dean have captured a Leviathan alive and now they know Leviathans can be harmed by magic, if not by weapons. I hope Spike and Cordelia (who I hated in both “Buffy” and “Angel”) return later in the season.
“The Walking Dead” A rather brave episode: almost “Lord of the Rings”-ian in scope. It was mostly walking in the woods. Even though the “I’m not a doctor; I’m a veterinarian” reveal was seen from a mile away, it was still hilarious when he said it. Is it too much to ask that the kid die while the fat guy and the other cop play zombie-and-sneak in a high school trying to get a respirator? I did not like the hillbilly last season; this season he is, by far, the best character. And is Shortround still in the show?
“Dexter” Up until the discovery of the first victim (the one with the snakes), I did not like Quinn. But, now that he’s partnered with Angel, I like him. They have a good rapport, especially when they find the doobie in Angel’s mid-life crisis car. It remains unclear if the Deputy Chief is playing Deb or not: Deb’s failures being Maria’s failures and so on. Mos Def remains surprisingly good as the redeemed killer turned pastor/mechanic. I look forward to Dexter’s baptism.
“Call Me Fitz” Mostly included this one because of the above image. Not like anyone watches a depraved Brandon Walsh sell used cars and seduce women to a soundtrack of terrible lounge songs. Again, I ask, why must a clearly made-in-Canada show primarily to be watched by Canadians obviously rewrite small-town Nova Scotia as a nondescript American town? Isn’t it all the more hilarious if Fitz is selling cars to funny-talking Canadians and having his pick of a few dozen eligible women in a town of 4300 than if he is in some shitty mid-sized, mid-western city? It’d be a lot funnier–to me, at least–if a night on the town meant driving to Kentville (pop. roughly 5400)?
“Bored to Death” The girl who worked at the pet store whom Bret bought a lot of fish from in “Flight of the Conchords” has a real annoying voice. I was disappointed than when Ray stumbled upon the breast feeders support group that he didn’t pull out his own man-tit and have the kid suck on it. Given that he’s already had the kid suck on his nipple, why not actually do it? PC was pretty funny. The PC/Max Fischer relationship is likely the funniest in the series.
“Hart of Dixie” See the Kanye lyric above. Looking for things to say about the show this week, I was surprised to discover that the bartender/alligator wrangler living on the mayor’s plantation is the same person who played Cpl. Evan “Q-Tp” (note: not to be confused with the other Q-Tip) Stafford in “Generation Kill”–the guy who spends the whole invasion saying “screwby,” the etymology and meaning of which is not entirely clear, even to the good corporal.
“Once Upon a Time” Again, Kanye West says it all: “this is bad, real bad.” If you thought that Jennifer Morrison was really, really bad and irritating in “House,” then you need to see this. A whole new level of “what the fuck is she doing pursuing a career as an actress?” Convoluted and incoherent backstory? Check. Annoying kid with annoying voice who is her long lost son? Check. Suspending disbelief such that we can believe that an 82 pound 32 year old old is deemed to be “hot”? Check. A surrounding cast of equally unbelievable characters? Check. With equally unbelievable backstories? Check. This show, I guarantee you, will be a success. It’ll be on for years because people love to watch absolute garbage on TV (c.f., “Unforgettable”).
“NCIS” Is there anything worse than a Ducky-centric episode? I even twatted that NCIS had become stupider than “Ringer” when it turned out that Ducky’s girlfriend was the killer–and she did it for him! Ordinarily, I’d consider the “I killed them all for you!” line to be either romantic or noble (depending upon genre), but this was just dumb. The good news: Gibbs’s first wife–later married to Fornell–will be at the centre of the next episode. Gibbs/Fornell episodes are always, by far, the best. (Gibbs/Franks episodes are only marginally better than Ducky episodes.)
“Unforgettable” I’d say, “Can this get any stupider?” But I’d be repeating myself. For whatever reason, once she used her native Australian accent to play a character to get into a club, all I heard for the rest of the episode was a thinly masked Australian accent. It was really distracting. Poppy Montgomery needs to hang out with Ryan Kwanten to see how it is done for real.
All images shamelessly borrowed from kanyedbythebell.tumblr.com. Wish I could take credit for discovering this site, but it belongs to Blythe. The “Cute Pets of OWS” tumblr is so passé.
Wednesday Food: Food Writing (Part Two)
I’ve been trying to assemble a formidable list of current food writers for you, following up from Part One. It’s a taller task than I anticipated. My trouble has been assessing who is a ‘food writer’ in the (post-?) post-modern context of the term, and who is a writer dabbling in food. The designation appears entirely fluid and boundless.
Many writers continue along the traditional lines of food/ travelogue/ memoirs as such writing existed in the 20th century, addressing their experience of food and culture. But the political nature of food is now more evident than ever and it would be incomplete to omit those writing from a political perspective. The entertainment value of writing for laughs is high, and the very personal human interest scope of food writing is as alive as ever. Accessibility is streamlined so that anyone can write from their humble blog for immediate publishing.
The only categorization I could come up with for now is that of The Cheeky, those writing for shock or entertainment value, The Political, who generally posses an investigative journalist background and want to convince readers of something, and The Sentimental, which happens to also host a cross-over of restaurant critics. I wanted to include a section of bloggers who write well enough to support their food-porn pictures but that may take weeks. So for now, a very modest introduction to food writers who have affected my plate and palate…
The Cheeky
Jeffrey Steingarten. A long-time editor at Vogue, Steingarten wrote The Man Who Ate Everything (1997), and It Must’ve Been Something I Ate (2002), which account for his obsessive relationship with food. He has a tendency to push himself to uncover every detail about an ingredient or dish, master techniques involved in it, find where in the world it is best produced, and then mock himself for how ridiculous his indulgent behavior becomes. His humor makes him agreeable despite his odder proclivities, and the scope of his taste– Himalayan Sea Salt to bite-sized Milky Ways– makes his experiences more sympathetic.
Calvin Trillin. With an oeuvre that extends far beyond culinary topics, varying from poetry to comedic novels, Trillin writes food with a good deal of snark and honesty. His primary food contributions now assembled in The Tummy Trilogy were written between the 1970s and 80s and, because they allude to a number of then-popular restaurants the book feels somewhat dated. But mocking the Establishment of fine dining is a timeless tradition that will always feel like a wink and a nudge to those of us salivating from the sidelines, and so he earns my readership.
Anthony Bourdain. The man has a way of polarizing audiences– he’s hilarious or he’s hypocritical. Some think he’s an arrogant shit, or charmingly sardonic, or just lucky. Regardless of your personal opinion his debut publication, Kitchen Confidential, did have an effect on the fine diner at-large. He wrote candidly about ingredients that were unabashedly recycled, the drug habits of line cooks, and the realities of kitchen cleanliness. His sporting condemnation of Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee is pretty cathartic and amusing, even if his own path to fame bears a striking resemblance.
The Political (Muckrakers!)
Upton Sinclair. So this is an unusual addition, and the only deceased author in the post, but I felt the list would be incomplete without him. The Jungle (1906), which revealed the horrific circumstances of industrial meatpacking at the turn of the century, further exposed class divisions and labor abuses rampant in factory settings. Granted, his book is not strictly about food, it uses the industry as a point from which to unveil a wider scope of the injustices of modern life and capitalism. But his approach resonates with food writers today who use points about agriculture, food production and distribution, migrant labor, and cost and availability, to illustrate governing agendas and operations that determine what you eat. Food is entirely political.
Eric Schlosser. An investigative journalist, his relevant work, Fast Food Nation (2001), examines the quality conditions, sanitation, labor issues, and discriminatory practices commonplace in the fast food industry. He traces the advent of production-line kitchens and the growth of franchises and how they’ve changes the American meal. The book touches on everything from controversial marketing tactics toward children, practices in cattle farming, government subsidies, and the health and welfare of the nation. His account is problematic at points– Schlosser was never permitted entry to the meatpacking facilities that provide for the industry so his evidence is largely based on first-hand accounts of current and former workers. However, the larger commentary on the role of food and dining, and the way it’s institutionalized in the 21st century, is reason enough for the book to be included on most high-school and college reading lists.
Michael Pollan. More so than other political food writers, Pollan writes predominately about food. The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) charts the origin, evolution, and habits of the human diet. This book includes the fundamental problems of industrialization, the principles of pastoral farming and its manifestations today, and difficulties of personal food procurement– finding and preparing a meal without intervention. Botany of Desire (2001) and In Defense of Food (2008) were likewise responsible for the popular culinary question of the decade: where does your food come from? I have some issues with Pollan that I will suspend for commentary, but his 7 word mantra: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants,” is as important to his ethos as bacon was to the Atkin’s Diet.
The Sentimental, The Critical
Claudia Roden. A prolific writer of cookbooks, But so many food writers, she did not grow up with a family that lived to cook and did not learn the craft from women of her family. She came to cooking and food writing on her own, as a way to reclaim her heritage and adopt the techniques that were not introduced in her youth. She marries a more traditional manner of food writing with the contemporary.
Ruth Reichl. She may be the ‘truest’ food writer on the list. With nearly 40 years of experience in terms of coming from a substantial literary background she has always focused almost exclusively on food. Her career as restaurant critic for the New York Times earned her many loyal readers because of her honesty about fine-dining in the city. As the final editor-in-chief at Gourmet magazine she solidified a captive fan base. A great deal of her writing is memoir and culturally influenced, including Tender at the Bone (1998) and Comfort Me with Apples (2001). They’re pleasant to read and I love her simple recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara, but Garlic and Sapphires (2005) is her most compelling read. It chronicles her encounters of haute cuisine in New York, dressed in disguise, so that restauranteurs wouldn’t alter the experience to affect the NYT review.
Jonathan Gold. A bit of an eccentric, Gold built a reputation on sharing the virtues of modest ethnic restaurants over flashy, well-recognized names in 1980′s Los Angeles. Beginning at LA Weekly and then moving onto the LA Times, he wrote for Gourmet under Reichl and then returned once more to his current post at LA Weekly. He has authored numerous articles in an assortment of well-recognized publications, and boasts a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Which fuckin rules.
And many more worth pursuing… Michael Ruhlman, Harold McGee, Shirley O. Corriher, William Shurtleff, Akiko Aoyagi, Laurie Colwin, Margaret Visser… OTHERS?!…
Tuesday Hatred from Sunday to Monday (backwards, as always)
My life is so hideous and boring right now that only a Lars Von Trier could capture its lack of essence on film. My hideous nothingness would be best rendered if viewers felt socially compelled not to walk out, so it has to be thé Lars Von Trier.
I hate cliffhangers. They bring out the worst in writers. Characters who were passed off for years as incorruptible turn out to be the root of all evil but manage to redeem themselves as heroes in the last instant. It’s all so biblical that I think the best treatment for writers of cliffhangers is to hang them from cliffs and then not continue the series in the next year.
As far as 50′ detective stories goes, The Family was for a long time on a strict All You Can Eat diet. It didn’t even bother us too much that the same scenario (inspired by the same lobbyists or product placers) was used across all of the formats. It is not uncommon to enjoy a same dish over and over again provided it is well made.
The cliffhanger thing is however spoiling the Family’s fun. Luckily in Europe we are mostly spared the non-suspense of the lead actors not fucking or the lead nemesis not actually being shot. Unfortunately this reveals the whole ridiculousness of a dramatic high point which is not at two thirds of a viewing but at the end of it.
I confess that, ridiculous or not, it is mostly impossible for us to live without the closure on the other end of a cliffhanger. The empirical fact that it is never either creative or surprising has little influence on the desire to know the outcome. It is not the cliffhanger episode that finally spoils it but the resolution episode. Such is the tragedy of one-too-many.
Let me provide The Weblog story with a cliffhanger: I might happen to be in Evanston in one of the next months. Would Kotsko, Adam feel that my being there provides a sufficiently ‘sincere’ reason for using the corresponding L-stop?
Monday Movies Only Needs One, But We’re Going to Make Nine In Case We Break Eight.
Kings of Pastry is another oddball-competition documentary in the tradition of Spellbound, Wordplay, and Battle Royale. We follow three of the 16 competitors to be the Meilleur Ouvriers de France, or MOF; there’s no limit to the number of pastry chefs who can achieve MOFdom, but few are selected, and like the Olympics, the competition is only once every four years. As with all of these docs, it’s impossible not to be hooked and then torn by meeting the competitors early in their journeys. Jacquy runs a pastry school, has a butch Chicagoan wife, and consults with a team of like seven coaches. Phillippe is young, sweet, nervous and lacks a chin. Regis competed four years ago and shattered his sugar sculpture, scotching his chances.
The drool ebbs and flows. Jacquy’s creampuffs look delectable but the whole thing reeks of effort, man; the bulk of the labors go into the sugar sculptures, which are attractive to the eye but not to the tongue. Sugar artisans, like breakdancers, have a fairly limited repertoire of moves, and the sculptures come off impressively complex but headachey as well, as if made for the ugliest Bat Mitzvah of 1988. This centerpiece event reminded me of Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power, a classic of social and economic history and its descriptions of the vast and elaborate sugar scupltures commissioned by French aristocrats in the centuries before sugar could be imported from the colonies in sufficient quantities to sweeten the pots of the masses. Theirs were cooler.
All in all, diverting but a little disappointing from D.A.Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus of Don’t Look Back fame. (The wan digital video doesn’t help.) If you feel like queuing up a Netflix-available competition doc, this will do, but I’d hold out for Make Believe, produced by my friend Steven Klein, about the contest to be the world’s greatest teenage magician.
And you? What did you see, and how did it taste?
Friday Afternoon Confessional: Zizek!
I confess that I’m going to a Zizek lecture this afternoon, primarily because my fellow new faculty members at Shimer are interested in going. It’s at UIC, which has the side benefit of giving me a new L stop. Here’s how things will stand after the lecture:
For those who aren’t familiar with this particular manifestation of my neurosis, I have set myself the goal of visiting as many L stops as possible through “sincere usage” — i.e., I can’t go to the stop just to say I did, but must have an actual destination that naturally takes me to the stop. The past few months have been pretty productive, as my employment at Shimer College has allowed me to “get” the Red and Green Line 35th stops, and a trip to Pilsen got me the two Pink Line stops along Paulina.
I confess that the odds of me actually getting to every single stop are extremely low, as I haven’t even been able to find a “sincere usage” for some stops in areas that I regularly visit — the two lingering Purple Line stops in Evanston are the prime example here. On the other hand, they will soon be opening up a new stop on the Green/Pink Lines in the West Loop, where two of my friends live, so I’ll likely be able to pick that one off right away.
Spoiler Alert Thursday
We never thought we would watch it, but we ended up watching the season premier of “Harry’s Law” On Demand because we saw that Brad Chase/Christopher Chance was in it. Turns out that the show is not especially good. The doddering old man in the back office is a warmed-over Denny Crane and the eponymous Harry is a registered Republican version Shirley Schmidt. Brad Chase remains Brad Chase except this time he is called Olly Richard. Generally speaking, if Brad is not in the scene, it is completely forgettable and rather sad that David Kelley must rip himself off to come up with a show. Obviously there is no Alan Shore equivalent because Alan Shore is presently the CEO of Sabre/Dunder-Mifflin. Fortunately, Julie Bowen is otherwise occupied on some show that is watched by people who are the complete opposite of myself.
As far as I can tell, “Ringer” gets stupider by the week. Like most people, I only watched to see if Gemma was actually dead. She is. Otherwise, there was a really boring story about the spoiled, pill-popping daughter being sent to public school and–horror of horrors–being bullied by some mean girl with at terrible haircut and an equally bad dye-job. I can’t wait for the quid pro quo to play out between the teacher (who “went to bat” for rich girl) and Juliet or whatever her name is. “Secret Circle” continues to be fabulous: the really annoying man-witch is dead! But the demons are a bit lame. Is the Circle broken because one of them is dead?! Who knows! But this week, a handsome young gent jaunts into town and takes an immediate liking to Cassie! And the others get jealous because Cassie is so lame, but all the boys like her! She has no friends and she doesn’t like it there, but, like, all the boys want her! If only there were sparkly vampires too.
“Dexter” had a fairly solid serial killer of the week episode. This week the serial killer was in his eighties or something and living at a shitty “retirement home.” Dexter, of course, had to commit to not becoming that overwhelmingly sad should he live that long. In other news, Angel, in the midst of yet another mid-life crisis, bought a real awesome car and Maria continues to be really mean to Deb.
“Supernatural” was a bit weak this past week, but it was “cute” when Dean had to talk himself up outside a bar before getting it on with a lady. Otherwise, the story didn’t make a whole lot of sense and we had to suffer the return of Jo in ghost form.
The big news from the past week was the return of “The Walking Dead,” which was much better than any of the episodes from the previous season (which, as you all know, I found disappointing). Basically, it was more or less “General Hospital,” but with zombies. What’s to complain about?
Tuesday Hatred is Wholesome, like punching a punching bag
Sometimes I feel like hitting people. Sometimes people feel like hitting me.
There are for instance moments where people will confront me with talk about their unease about certain changes that affect ‘people’ adversely in a general way. At such moments I have been known to point out to that the adverse effects in question might well be of a more personal than of a more general nature. I may well have continued by stating that before such changes were enacted they had complaints about the lack of any changes and more specifically the lack of changes impacting ‘people’ in general (in this case, obviously, subtracting themselves from the over-all need for change).
I hate it when individuals resist something because they have personal issues with it but go on to express their dissent ‘for the general good’. Note that I don’t hate it when people have and voice personal issues. I just hate that they take their pars pro everybody’s toto. I hate it because it seems to me a fundamental lack of empathy to be unable to include in your reasoning that the thing that is bad for yourself might in fact be good for another.
I further hate that many who talk a lot about the general good are fundamentally unable to look past their very personal preferences being extrapolated to the whole world whether the whole world wants to have those preferences or not.
Maybe I just hate people that believe that they are doing the right thing ‘despite the world going down the drain’. If in fact the world is going down the drain (which I emphatically do not hold to be the case) it is precisely because so many people are un-self-critically certain that what they are doing is, obviously, the right thing.
I hate that whilst I wanted to be lighthearted and use practical examples I wound up being, again, very conceptual and at the same time (yes, that’s the word that comes to mind:) drab.
At least I didn’t wind up hitting anybody. Feel free to hit me. I won’t mind as long as it is in the form of Tuesday Hatred.
No One Wants to Fuck Monday Movies. We Look Like Voldemort.
50/50 is funny and sad at a perfect pitch — it’s hard not to spend the entire movie laughing and crying, each an engine for the other. Since Mysterious Skin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been my favorite young actor. He made (500) Days of Summer almost very good and Inception pleasant to look at in parts. He plays Adam, a twenty-something public radio journalist diagnosed with cancer, and a stick up his ass. Adam’s native emotional constipation turns dangerous with the arrival of his cancer, as his support network is patchy at best and he will need more than he can count on.
Bryce Dallas Howard plays his terrible girlfriend Rachael, whom he gives a chance to bail and who rejects it. Perhaps you’ve had a partner like Rachael. She can be distinguished by her need for your approval, which is much louder than her affection for you; as the latter fades away, she will affect ever more monstrous falsities in order to retain the former. There’s something hatable about Bryce Dallas Howard in this role. A lot of it is in her eyelashes. At times maybe 50/50 has its thumb on the scale against her. But mostly you can see where she’s coming from. You can see how cancer would turn a bad girlfriend terrible.
Anna Kendricks plays his therapist, two years younger than he is. She too is out of her depth, but she’s slightly less terrible a therapist than Rachael is a girlfriend.
Angelica Huston plays his mother Diane, also needy, even more empathetic. Perhaps you’ve had a mother like Diane. Adam tries to keep her in the dark because her emotions are a little louder than his. When he finally calls her to ask for help, she answers the phone shouting, “What’s wrong?”
Seth Rogen plays his best friend. Could you ask for a better best friend? Seth Rogen is not as chubby as he used to be, but he’s still a fine Falstaff, going so far as to teach Adam how to use his diagnosis to get laid. At the dawn of bromance, I said that Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers made homosocial expressions of desire look like “the only kind of sex anyone would ever want to have,” and Rogen carries that flame. Apparently Rogen himself played a similar role for screenwriter Will Reiser when he underwent the events that inspired the movie.
This is a lovely movie about friendship, disease, family, suffering and love. Ultimately, a light one. Mrs. K-sky has two friends fighting cancer, both surprisingly young, though not as young as Adam. This is a short movie. Adam has a short cancer. Death is in the movie, but at the margins. If Will Reiser told half of his story in those 100 minutes, then he was one of the very lucky ones.
What did you see, and how did you like it?
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