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Let’s Pizza!
Robot pizza machine whips out a pie from scratch in 3 minutes. Hey, it can’t be any worse than Pizza Hut. Welcome to the future.
The Hardest Part Of Wanting Is Knowing What You Want
**Moonrise Kingdom Spoilers**
Wes Anderson films all center around childhood. Sometimes we adults dealing with the fallout of growing up. Sometimes we see the parents who struggle to accept how they raised their children. The transition from kid to grown up is always painful and awkward. There is always a basic lack of empathy separating one generation from the next, and it ends up damaging everyone involved.
Moonrise Kingdom is interesting because we’re not coming in years after the fact. There’s still hope for these kids. Sam and Suzy have been having a hard time of it lately, but now that they’ve found each other, maybe they’re not fated to wandering the earth as miserable as the characters from The Darjeeling Limited.
The unspoken truth of adolescence is that most of us have to struggle through it alone. There’s a gulf between you and everyone around you because you’re too hopped up on hormones to articulate you’re feelings. The frustration of youth is knowing exactly what you want but not being able to explain it.
Wes Anderson drops us in to the lives of these characters at a point where they still haven’t settled. They strongly know the kind of life they want, and somehow stumbled upon one of the few other people in the world who feels the same way. They can’t really talk about it, but that’s okay, because each of them already knows what the other one wants. It’s an immediate bond, and one that the the adults in the film don’t understand because they’ve never had anyone else know what they want.
Desire is problematic. Fitting your life into a vague sense of place is difficult, so you compromise. You cut corners. Eventually you wake up one day and find yourself in a Talking Heads song. Sam and Suzy have found the best lifeline you could ask for in surviving growing up. They found a partner.
CSA Week One
I wasn’t exactly born a city boy, but considering my connection with nature, I might as well have been raised on the Lower East Side. If I go too long without hearing a car I get nervous. I couldn’t tell clay soil from cat litter. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere out of walking distance from a good slice joint (we’re missing one in the West End, but that’s a whole other post).
The point is I don’t even own a single pair of overalls. Working the earth has never been my specialty. So I was a little hesitant to get up at 6 am and go work in a field. And pay for the privilege. Still, kale don’t grow itself. Or maybe it does. As I stated, I’m still not clear on how this stuff works.
Last summer I joined a CSA near by. Every week I would drive out there early in the morning, before the sun was it it’s most evil, and pick some greens, tomatoes, okra, whatever happened to be ready. In real life, unlike in supermarkets, crops tend to grow on a micro-seasonal schedule. You’ll have a handful of weeks when certain fruits and veggies are perfectly ripe, at the peak of their freshness and flavor. The following week anything that hasn’t been picked is looking it’s age, like a Real Housewife after her fourth Pino Gris and not enough sunscreen. Pretty soon it needs to be plowed under to make way for the next round, and something else is blooming a few rows down.
I really enjoyed the challenge of this. How much kale is too much kale? There’s only one way to find out. See how many meals you can make out of it. Creativity always comes out of restrictions. How much great art has been created because a starving artist couldn’t afford to buy more paint and was forced to use what she had at hand? Food’s the same way, except you get to eat it afterwards. It’s a comment on transience of life. It’s also delicious.
Last year was an experiment. This year I’m more prepared. I’ve also agreed to help out. Today I had to till the soil between rows of onions. Got to push this big plow looking thing. Worked with a downright medieval looking contraption called a stirrup hoe. And I’m proud to report the onions are no worse for wear. Mostly.
For a couple hours of work, I got to walk out of there with a big bag of kale, some bok choy, and red leaf lettuce. Erin already has visions of kale chips dancing in her head. I’m thinking noodles with peanuts and stir fried bok choy. The hard part isn’t so much the tilling and the planting and the harvesting. It’s not even coming up with ideas on how to use bushels of greens. It’s just finding the time to cook all this.
Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Missing Quantum
When I was a kid, my cousin gave me a copy of The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes for Christmas. I read most of it by the end of Christmas vacation. I was fascinated by the deductive method. “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the truth”.
I ready more and more detective stories. Some were part of the Western canon, others were comic books. It didn’t matter to me. It’s been a while since I read a good detective story, but I’m still libel to turn on an episode of Law and Order every so often to get my fix.
Modern detectives don’t work the same way Sherlock Holmes did. In the post War era, a private dick would basically bumble around asking questions until someone slips up. Later films turned to share the point of view of the criminals. Modern sleuths use science to such an exaggerated extent that lawyers bemoan the CSI Effect.
Recently, Sherlock himself has come back in a big way. I’ve been watching the BBC adaptation, and I love the way the writers attempt to stay true to the deductive style of original stories, even as they obnoxiously modernize the aesthetic (I get it. It’s the 21st Century. Can we stop with all the lens flare and talk about blogs?).
But something seems sort of, well, antiquated about the way he solves crimes, and I think I’ve put my finger on it. It’s Quantum Physics.
The fact of the matter is that the character was invented in an era before quantum physics. Before we understood uncertainty. Before the pervasiveness of chance in the world around us was part of our conversation.
Consider a case Sherlock Holmes solves in the finale of Series 1 (each BBC “Series” consists of 3 hour-and-a-half long mini-movies). Sherlock interviews someone loosely connected to a murder victim, and judging by a tan line, an itch, and some Columbian currency that the whole thing was a set up. The idea is that for every effect, you can follow a single chain of causality back to an elegant solution.
However, we broke that chain decades ago. Most people today don’t understand quantum physics. It’s not taught as part of a standard curriculum. It’s not discussed in mainstream media in great detail. There’s a reason for that. It’s really, really complicated and unintuitive. But I think that the ideas generated by the last century of study has permitted the public consciousness. We have a sense that not everything is as it seems. Actions and consequences aren’t as tightly linked as we suspect. The world is random sometimes crazy shit just happens. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t get that.
Luckily, the writers of the BBC series get it. They poke a bit of fun at the character’s over confidence. But it still makes our hero seem a bit of a relic. Detective work today is mostly luck, mixed with a bit of science and psychology. There’s a reason why most of the great literary sleuths 1 come from the early 20th Century or so. That’s the last time we could be certain about anything.
- FOOTNOTE ↑
Of course, Columbo could be considered an exception, but his whole schtick was that he seemed like an anachronism.
Skyfall Teaser
I don’t even think they’re done filming it, and we already have a teaser for Skyfall, the newest Bond movie. It just shows you how hard these guys are working to get this done by Thanksgiving.
All great franchises go through a cycle where they get stale, they evolve, then they return to their roots. Bond has found a way to seem up-to-date, while also feeling very true to Ian Flemming’s original vision. Let’s enjoy this while it lasts.
Chris Christie Falls Asleep At Springsteen Concert
Gotta cut him some slack here. Even being a shitty governor has got mean some long days.
New Jersey: A Portrait In Pork Roll
Wow, it’s been a while since I posted. The last few weeks have been pretty hectic, and it’s been tough enough to find time to squeeze out a few tweets, much less long form writing. Hope to resume regularly scheduled blogging soon enough.
In the mean time, enjoy the state of New Jersey as carved into pork roll.
Under Their Thumb
Imagine you are young and impressionable, and in love with a rock and roll band. Not just any old band either, but the Greatest Rock And Roll Band In The World™. Imagine that you create a fanzine in your bedroom in your parents house, and actually manage to get a copy to the band. Then imagine they think you seem like a good enough guy and invite you into their inner circle. They make your zine the band’s official newsletter, sent to thousands of fans around the world. You get to follow them around the world. It’s the days before blogging, so in between adventures you have to lay out and publish and distribute these stories, photos, and interviews. And all the while, the band is falling apart at the scenes.
Bill German lived that. I saw him speak last night, promoting his memoir Under Their Thumb. If you’re a Stones fan at all, do yourself a favor and try make it to one of his appearances. If you’re not, go out and buy Exile On Main Street and a bottle of bourbon and listen for a week.
The time period covered by this book is the late 70’s to the early 90’s Stones bios that touch on this period at all tend to focus on the Mick vs. Keef war that went on for most of the 80’s. But there’s a whole story to tell beyond the sniping in the press. It really is an overlooked time period, and Bill comes at it from a very unique perspective.
He was an engaging speaker overflowing with stories. I’m greatly looking forward to reading this book.
How To Make Scrapple
It’s a bit past breakfast, but this will give you time to prepare this for tomorrow.
For those of you not from the greater Philadelphia area (defined as anywhere you can catch a Phillies game on TV on a random night), scrapple is pork parts (don’t ask which) cooked down and mixed with cornmeal and spices, then pan fried. Think of it as ham and grits all mixed together. If you’re a Philly expat, don’t bother having your mom ship some to you. The recipe looks easy enough.
Nothing Was Delivered 