Monthly Archives: August 2013

Pass the paella, por favor

Man, I just love paella. What a treat, a real Mediterranean treat. Spain’s Mediterranean, right? I mean, yeah, I know it’s Mediterranean, it’s right on the sea. But paella, is that like a coastal thing? Like do the people in northern Spain eat paella? How often, daily? Do the northern Spanish consider themselves Mediterranean? Or when they eat paella, are they thinking to themselves the same thing I am, the whole, “Wow! Paella! What a Mediterranean treat!”

It’s just so good. I wish I could be eating some paella right now, like right as I’m typing this. Which, yeah, I know it’s not possible. It’s hardly possible to eat paella when you’re sitting down at a table with a whole place setting. And don’t get me wrong, the fact that it’s not the most convenient dish to eat takes nothing away from its flavor, its subtle elegance and accessibility to a wide audience of diners.

But yes, a total pain to eat. There’s always rice everywhere by the time you’re done. And it’s not like I don’t know how to eat rice, I do. It’s just that, you sit down to that pot of fresh paella, and it’s always stuffed, overstuffed I would say. You try to make a clean spoonful, but your utensil hits some sort of clam, or mussel, and it’s not just the meat, it’s the whole shell. The imbalance sends everything flying, rice everywhere. There’s a piece of sausage in there somewhere, but it fell along with the rice onto the floor.

It’s OK. It’s paella. It’s a colorful dish, very Mediterranean, loads of flavor, of different flavors, did I mention clam shells? So your kitchen’s going to be a little messy. Have you ever been to the Spanish Riviera? Well, I haven’t. But I imagine it to be full of vibrant people eating paellas, rice and little tiny chopped up pieces of chicken (impossibly tiny, maybe not even there at all) flying this way and that.

You don’t see paella everywhere, which is a shame, because I try to order it wherever I go. “I’ll take the paella, please,” I inform the hostess before she even has a chance to bring me to my table. She’ll say something like, “Well, your server will be right over,” and then when the server does show up, I say something like, “Oh, it’s OK, I already ordered the paella from that woman over there.”

Yes, I understand that it’s a little loco to just assume that every random restaurant is going to carry paella. It’s a total crapshoot. But I’m hoping that by the time the server goes over to talk to the hostess, “He said something about paella?” they’ll be confused enough to maybe get a manager involved, perhaps a consultation with the chef wouldn’t be totally out of the question either.

Of course, the manager is going to try and be outright dismissive, “What the hell is this guy talking about? Paella, please, this is a barbeque restaurant,” but I’m hoping that one day this discussion is going to be happening in front of a chef who happens to be from Spain. From the paella part, the Mediterranean part. Maybe he’s not from there, but he definitely lived there. And he definitely loves paella.

And so he interrupts the manager, “Wait,” and as everyone stops to hear him out, he just kind of does this subtle nod, almost too subtle, the manager has to have it spelled out for him, “Hold on a second, you know what this guy is talking about?” Again, the chef just nods. He knows Spain. He knows paella.

And as everybody else in my party starts in on their ribs and brisket, all of the sudden the chef will appear with this cast iron pot. He’ll set it down in front of me and lift open the top. Before me, once the steam clears so I’m able to see, it’s going to be the perfect paella, a paella to end all paellas.

“Buen provecho,” he’ll toast as he watches just long enough to see me take that first magical bite. The perfect paella. Man, I was hungry for paella when I started writing this, but now it’s like, I need some paella. It’s the best meal. Like yes, every once in a while you’ll get a bad mussel, like it hasn’t opened up, and there’s a slime kind of oozing from the sides of the shell, a shell that definitely doesn’t smell right, and the smell sort of infects the rest of the paella in an almost insidious way. But when it’s right, like when it’s on, it’s paella all the way, I’m always ordering paella, more paella, please, pass the paella.

Let’s have some frank discussion

It’s about time that we, as a society, had a frank discussion about cutting boards. Everybody’s got a theory. I’ve heard people say to use one board dedicated for meat and one for vegetables. Someone else gave me some story about how chopping onions will make everything else taste like onions. And then you’re supposed to find one that doesn’t slide around, something that’s big enough to chop lots of stuff but compact enough to tuck away into a cupboard.

How about, enough with cutting boards all together? Am I the only one thinking that we, as a species, we’re supposed to have been evolved past the need to slice everything up on some stupid flat surface? When I was a little kid, I watched all of these old cartoons, like the Jetsons, stuff that imagined how the future would make everything easy, especially all of the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, the cutting and chopping.

Never mind the fact that I don’t have a robot housekeeper to make my bed and prepare my meals, shouldn’t I at least have some sort of a futuristic appliance that slices my vegetables and meats without the need of a cutting board? I always thought I’d have maybe like a light saber knife, or I don’t know, foods that come pre-sliced, everything should grow pre-sliced, man, it’s the future already, at least, from the time I was watching stupid future cartoons, shows that were already dated by the time I was watching them, whatever, twenty years later, now, this is the future. Why is everything basically the same?

Another frank discussion, this time about cotton swabs. I remember one time like five years ago I had this really bad earache, so bad that I finally had to go to the doctor. I’m not going to get into the gross details, but I left his office with some very explicit instructions: nothing in your ear smaller than your elbow.

And I was like, what kind of medial advice is that? It was some sort of a joke, his way of telling me to stop using Q-Tips, that it was pushing everything deep inside, making it easier for ear problems to develop. Well how about we just come up with some safer Q-Tips, cotton swabs that, instead of having cotton at the end, they have maybe like a hundred tiny little claws, and they’re robotic, so they keep opening and closing?

But yeah, it’s probably a little more complicated than just having a robot arm open and close at random intervals inside your ear. No, you’re going to need someone to pilot the futuristic Q-Tips. Again, it’s simple. The technology is available. You get one of those very small cameras, that goes at the end. Then you have one of your friends pilot the robot arms, collect the earwax, deposit it outside. If you’re on really good terms with whoever you’re living with, and you guys get in a good groove, it really shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, fifteen, tops. But you live by yourself? No problem. You could go on the Internet and find another loner to help you out. And you’d help them out. It’s a win-win.

It’s like shampoo. Let’s do it, let’s have that frank discussion about shampoo. Why does it sting your eyes? Do we really need it? Why do we still have hair anyway? If you ever look at that drawing, that illustration of the monkey that turns into a caveman that turns into a human being, there’s a definite progression, a loss of hair. You go from monkey, he’s covered in hair, and then caveman is only kind of covered in hair. As humans we might think, we’ve arrived, finally, we have hair only on our heads and on certain parts of our body.

But we should be even further evolved to have no hair at all. And that way if you walked into CVS and asked someone, “Hey man, where’s the shampoo?” they’d look at you like you were crazy, like what are you talking about? Shampoo? You mean that stuff that we use to clean the hair off of our less evolved animal cousins? I don’t know, maybe you can find some over in aisle eight, right next to ear care, right by those mechanical non-cotton swabs. And hey man, are you single? Like, I’m not trying to ask you out, it’s just that, would you pilot my Q-Tips? My Internet’s out and I’m having trouble finding someone to man the controls. What do you say, it shouldn’t take more than fifteen, twenty minutes, tops. Cool?

Movie Review: Elysium

It’s the end of the twenty-first century. All of the big problems that kind of threaten us in a vague maybe-ish someday way today have blossomed into a full-scale dusty global cloud of sepia toned urban smog. There’s overpopulation, pollution, and poverty on a mass scale. It’s an authoritarian state, everything enforced by robot police officers. You can’t even talk sarcastically to the droids or they’ll beat you up and maybe send you to jail.

But if you’re rich, everything’s fine. You live on Elysium, this giant Halo-like space colony orbiting the earth. Not only is the scenery lush and green, the citizens well-dressed and manicured, but health care has reached its apex: the elites lay down on these medical beds where everything from cancer to radiation poisoning can be almost instantly cured.

Elysium, to me, is the reason why we elect Democrats to office. All of the current social and political debates of today are embellished, exaggerated to such effect that the world in which this film takes place is at times totally alien, yet sometimes hauntingly a reflection of the present day. The disdain that the upper class exudes toward everyone else boils the blood, “Don’t breathe on me,” a corporate executive interrupts an underling for talking to his superior without covering his mouth.

The rich relax in the skies with their “I’ve got mine” security separated comfortably by the planet’s own atmosphere. Everyone else on the ground is a means to an end, to higher profits and revenues. I think about all of the fast-food workers holding these one-day strikes for a livable wage and I see the factory workers in Elysium get bossed around, threatened with their jobs, exploited for as much work with as little compensation. Profit, profit, profit.

Everyone’s desperate to get to Elysium, to use the medical beds, to escape what the previous generations – our generation – have left of the earth. We hear the words “illegals” a lot, “security,” “liberty,” it’s all of the same issues that we debate about now, how much to give to what people, do people truly deserve anything in this life?

Matt Damon’s character, Max, grew up in Los Angeles, and due not so much to character defects than the simple fact that the circumstances of his life suck, he’s in and out of jail, getting beat up by robot cops for no reason, working on the line at a factory that manufactures the same robot cops that then patrol the streets looking to beat him up again.

When he’s involved in an accident at work leaving him with just five days to live, his yearning turns to desperation as he agrees to wear a surgically attached robot exoskeleton with orders to fight his way to survival. Fortune winds up turning a simple heist into a political battle for control of Elysium, and Max finds himself being hunted down by Kruger, Sharlto Copley, the same South African guy from District 9 (also written and directed by Neill Blomkamp.) He’s traded in his bureaucratic government shirt and tie for a beard, cloak, and a giant sword. Kruger is a highlight of the film. I don’t know if it was his relentless cannot-be-stopped character or his creepy almost unintelligible accent, but his very presence on the screen made my skin tingle with static-like charge.

Elysium is over the top, but it’s everything that true sci-fi aspires to be. Like Alien, like his previous District 9, Blomkamp has taken all of the negative aspects of modern society and imagined them to run their course for about two hundred more years totally uninhibited. The result is everything that us liberals are afraid of: corporate supremacy, misery, dystopia, the haves and the have-nots on an extreme scale. It made me think about justice, about distribution, about the fact that we currently have the means to feed the world’s population, but we lack the political will to spread the wealth. How is this all going to sort itself out? In which direction are we headed as a species? I certainly hope that our future resembles nothing like the world of Elysium.

How many times do I have to apologize?

Of course I’m sorry about those pizzas. I just … look, I apologized already. It’s something that I’ve admitted to, yes, OK, I’m not making any more excuses, right? Right. So it’s like, what else can I do? Besides apologize? It’s not like I didn’t pay for the pizzas. I paid for them. And then I ate them. Were those pizzas meant for someone else? Of course. Obviously. This is all yesterday’s news, you know, at a certain point, I fail to see the benefit in constantly rehashing all of this negativity, my faults, the stuff I’ve already admitted to. I admitted to all of it! And I said sorry. So yes.

Yes. But I paid for them. So let’s get past everything, OK? Past the pizzas, past me going outside and intercepting the delivery guy, look, I’m not proud. I’m ashamed. But it’s thanks to my family, my core of strength, you know, my support system. I can tell these people, look, I’ve made mistakes, and they’re like, look, we get it, not we get the whole buying people’s delivery and then eating it outside of their house, but we get it, like you’re a human being, and you’re sorry.

My wife. She shouldn’t have had to see me like that, at my worst. Those nights I’d come home, she’d have like her own pizza that she had delivered, she’d be, “Honey! Look, I got us some pizza!” and how could I really push any more pizza inside my stomach? But I would. I’d take a slice, you know eat a few bites. I’d be like, “I don’t know what it is honey, I’m just … I’m just not that hungry.”

And when she found out. It crushed her. It crushed us. I crushed us. But she forgave me. You know why she forgave me? Beside I asked for forgiveness. I said, honey, listen, I’m apologizing. I’ve made mistakes. But most importantly, I’ve learned from these mistakes. I’m still learning from the mistakes.

It’s a learning process. You don’t learn how to speak French overnight, right? You can’t stop doing drugs in one day. No, you’ve got to have supervision, you’ve got to make sure it’s not too drastic of a shock. So I’m learning, yes, but I’ve been completely open about my willingness to learn, my wanting to continue to still be at a learning place.

I can do this. But only with you by my side, my wife, my family, everybody. I need everybody behind me on this. And you know, there are so many people out there, so much negativity, do you know how hard it is for me? For my wife? And for me. We’ll be walking down the street and some guy comes up to me and he’s like, “You! It’s you! You know I ordered a dozen wings last night and there were only ten when I opened the box. You stealing wings?”

It’s just that, I can’t … I’m not … who’s to say who’s stealing what? I’m trying. I’m trying to figure out who’s wings I might have taken. I don’t necessarily think they were that guy’s wings, but would that have been right of me to say so right there? To that guy?

I always tip the delivery guys, mind you, you know if they have to come back to your place to deliver a second pizza, don’t get bent out of shape. I mean, yes, you should still tip him again for the second trip, but don’t feel bad about the first trip. Certainly don’t get angry with him. He could have buzzed, yeah, but that’s not his fault, he’s not checking IDs, he gets money, he leaves.

And think about, you know, this has been out there for a while, and so the delivery guys are bound to start recognizing me. And then it’s like, you know a month from now, nobody’s going to give me anything, regardless of how much money I’m forking over. Those boxes I left outside? Yes, again, I’m sorry, but I just thought that since cardboard recyclables were a Tuesday thing on my block that … yes, I get that now, different blocks, different days, different routes. I’m sorry about the mess, about those raccoons that tore the boxes up, I can’t imagine cleaning that up Wednesday morning would have been any fun. But it was just one day, so I’m sorry. So I’m saying sorry. Please, can we please get past this so I can stop saying sorry? Please?

Like I said, this is going to be something that just goes away by itself. I can’t see myself keeping up with this for much longer. It’s exhausting. And I mentioned the delivery guys recognizing my face, right? That’s got to happen sooner rather than later. I can’t keep this up forever. And sure, I suppose maybe I could give one guy like a hundred bucks, and he might still give me your food but …

Look, I’m sorry. I said sorry like a hundred times. This is really so not a big deal. We’ve got crooks out there, guns, drugs. Am I really the most pressing problem in this neighborhood? And no, it does not reflect my work in the community, at a city level. Come on, I’m still on the up and up. Remember how fired up we all got last year when I suggested we make all of those delivery guys wear those stupid vests? That was huge! Come on, just let me have this one thing, it’s not that bad of a thing, just stop paying attention to it. Still pay attention to me, but don’t pay attention to it. Because that’s it. It’s just that. Just the pizzas. And yes, maybe a couple of wings. And heroes. I’m sorry. That’s it. Thank you.

When the right shower curtain rod comes along, you’ll know it

When the right shower curtain rod comes along, you’ll know it. You’ll just feel it. You can spend the rest of the week at Bed Bath & Beyond, going through every shower curtain rod in the store, finding employees, stopping them and saying, “Is this it? Are these all of the shower curtain rods that you guys sell? Because I was on the web site and there seemed to be much more of a selection, like a lot more rods. Is there anything else in the back? Can you go check? In the back?”

But why waste your breath? Why get so bent out of shape? Just pick one, any one, a placeholder, just get the simplest rod that they have. And then when you’re ready, when the right curtain rod is ready, it’s going to find you. You’re going to be out there, you might pass one of those boutique stores while you’re walking somewhere, the showroom will be so small, like they’ve tried to cram three bathrooms in the space of one bathroom, just stuff everywhere.

And there it’s going to be, you’ll see it, the shower curtain rod that you were meant to find, the one that, even before you moved into to your one bedroom, even before you finally decided, OK, I guess I can deal with this bathroom, I mean, it seems a little small considering what I’m paying in rent, but I can’t argue with the size of that bedroom, and so I guess if I can just make it look right, like if I can just find that right shower curtain rod, I think I could be happy here, this was the shower curtain rod that you dreamed about, something that just popped into your imagination, like you weren’t even sure that something like this existed.

Look, here it is, right here in this tiny, cozy bath goods store. And you’ll know, that’s it, you’ll get so excited, you’ll be like, “Oh my God! I cannot believe it. That’s it! That’s the one!” and you’ll start clapping, like you’ve grabbed the attention of the store’s only saleslady, not that you really needed to, it was just you and her in the shoppe, and so even if she wasn’t interested in selling you stuff, even if she was just pretending not to be paying attention to you browsing through the only three shower curtain rods in house, she’d still see you, hear everything you’re saying.

She won’t really know how to react to such unbridled enthusiasm. Part of her is thinking, OK, well, you’re certainly happy. I mean, this is quite the show of joy, euphoria even, and over what, a piece of hardware? It’s nice, yes, but this? Still clapping? She’s smiling though, she wants you to buy the shower curtain rod.

To be perfectly honest, business hasn’t been great, and this lady is desperate not to have another day with zero sales, she’d have to go home, her mom might call and be like, “So Suzy, how’s your little bathroom store coming along?” and Suzy’s like, “It’s great mom, thanks for asking, you know, we’re really creating a lot of buzz in the neighborhood.” Will she tell her mom about the shower curtain rod?

With all the excitement, everybody’s getting ahead of themselves, you, bobbing side to side, looking at the rod, holding the rod, and poor Suzy, she’s practically celebrating, take that mom! I told you it wasn’t a stupid idea to open a niche bathsellers in this part of town. This part of town is gentrifying pretty fast. Just look at all of these people peering in the windows, slowing their step to look at the display, coming inside to ask how to get to the artisanal muffin shop. It’s down the corner. But things are happening. This is happening.

Wait, seriously, fifty-five dollars? For a rod? It’s just that, you want to support local businesses, right? You can’t expect mom pop & Suzy shoppes to be able to compete with Bed Bath & Beyond, do you? You do know that they’re paying for shower curtain rods in bulk, right? They’re buying like trucks and trucks and trucks of the same shower curtain rod, and that’s good for the manufacturer, for distribution. Suzy’s got three shower curtain rods.

You’re saying, come on Suzy, you can’t go down any further? Come on Suzy. I love it, but fifty bucks? And Suzy’s smile is still … well, it’s still up, but the corners are shaking a little, she was already counting those fifty-five dollars, she considered getting the pencil sharpener ready so she could mark down the sale in that stupid leather bound binder she got at the craft small business goods store. And now she has to abruptly shift into sales mode and, let’s be honest, her voice is trembling, betraying the adrenaline still juicing through her system, she’s saying stuff like, “Well, yeah, it is a little pricey, but think of the quality. And the history of the … of the rod and the … it’s just really craft built.”

“Yeah,” you say, but are you really going to spend that much? On a rod? A pole? That Bed Bath & Beyond one isn’t that bad. It’s not great, no, but it’s not terrible. I told you, you’ll know when you find the right one. And you found it. But what about the right toaster? Or the right electronic toothbrush? You’re going to buy the rod and the toothbrush? And you think you’ll still have enough money left over for the nice soaps?

Just, it’s not going to be easy, and I know you’re going to want to try and find something small, inexpensive to buy, something to alleviate the guilt, something to stop Suzy from standing there, begging you, please, please give me fifty dollars. But it’s not worth it. Those hand towels might look nice, but they’re purely decorative, and where are you going to put decorative towels? Just get out, just, you don’t owe Suzy anything. Maybe she should’ve listened to her mother. But that’s not your problem, just say thank you and leave. Find a new way home from work. It’ll only be for another couple of months or so.