What Happened to Us?

It is the knees that remind me.

 

The stiff, cracking ache after nothing more than standing still or whatever middle-age shift of gravity passes for dancing these days. I start walking again and groan with every step I ascend.

 

Man, what happened to us? We used to stay awake until the sky started going gray. A different bar every night of the week. We heard about our favorite band coming and we were there—no questions, no considerations.

 

Now my ears ring with the echo of rhythm guitars off underground bar. Now traffic jams and the degree of difficulty of finding a parking spot downtown add up in my head before we even go. Now we talk about going to a bar after but it’s midnight and we couldn’t possibly. Now a good book in my living room outweighs all the trouble.

 

Now we talk about refinancing and new fences and HELOCs when it used to be all album release dates and where are we going this weekend.

 

Time rarely asks for your permission before it changes you.

It's always been my dream never to have to own my own restaurant

And I’m living the dream, baby!

 

I guess my dream of never having to own my own restaurant started when I was a very young child. I loved to eat (still do!) but I had no idea what things like “point of sale,” “firing times,” or “front of house” meant. I could sense I really didn’t need to know any more about those terms. I was happy the way I was.

 

Once I started cooking for myself, I became a little more worldly. I realized I was satisfied with cooking for myself or for small parties, rather than cooking for mass amounts of demanding strangers, worrying about inventory or daily specials, or dealing with staff turnover. I just wanted to go about my dreamlike existence of not working 80 to 100 hours a week or having my hands completely covered in cuts and calluses.

 

With the rise of the Food Network, I’m even more determined to live my dream of never being burdened by restaurant management. You see people on shows like Restaurant Impossible who were living out their own dreams of owing a restaurant. This caused many of them financial and emotional trouble. Some of these people left high-stress jobs like stock trading for the high-stress job of owning a restaurant. Personally, if I were to do a lateral move in terms of stress, I would dream of moving to an industry in which there was not a 30 percent chance of my new venture failing in the first year.

 

To achieve their dreams, some of these Restaurant Impossible contestants do things like raid their retirement funds, then run the restaurant into the ground and go into $250,000 of debt, then get their parents to put up their houses to bail them out of debt. Well, my dream has always entailed solvency. Also, my Mom also likes living in her house and part of my dream includes not having her mortgage it so I can keep serving small plates in a trendy part of town.

 

The stress of owning a dream restaurant also seems to take a toll on people’s marriages and families. No thanks. I’m fine living with my husband and son in tranquility and not coming home at 2 a.m. smelling like a grease trap.

 

Then you watch Chopped and my God, the things these restaurateurs and chefs go through to achieve their culinary dream. Here’s what they tell the judges:

 

“I had six strokes on the line while making one pasta primavera.”

 

“I burned off all my fingerprints recooking a ribeye someone sent back and the guy still didn’t like it.” 

 

“One night my sous chef had a psychotic break and spiked the risotto with acid and 14 people overdosed.”

 

“I had to sell my house to make payroll for my staff and had to move into the restaurant’s walk-in fridge and then the restaurant failed and I ended up on the street doing tricks with poached eggs for money.”

 

You know what? I’ll pass. I’m already living my dream of working in my field for the same company for the last 20 years, with a well-funded 401k, sitting at a desk all day with the freedom to slack off online occasionally and getting home every night for dinner. I’m basking in looking at the hell restaurateurs go through and saying, “I don’t have to do that.”

We Have to Save Ourselves

How much more of this can America endure? An 11-year-old girl plays dead by smearing her murdered friend’s blood on her face. A man treats himself to an AR-15 for his 18^th birthday and tells a teacher “Goodnight” before using the weapon to shoot her dead. Two little girls have to call 911 repeatedly while the 19 police officers—one for each murdered child—who are supposed to help them wait in the hallway for a janitor to bring them a key to their classroom. The obscenity of all that.

 

Who knows if anybody is coming to save us. I think we have to save ourselves. There’s a saying people invoke in a time of crisis, “Look for the helpers.” Mr. Rogers said that and while he had a lot of wisdom, that saying is still aimed at children. They’re the ones who need to look for helpers; we adults should be the helpers rather than look around for other people to rescue us.

 

Look at how many systems failed to help the schoolchildren in Uvalde and so many others. The police stood outside for crucial minutes while the parents begged them to save their kids. The part-time SWAT team was nowhere to be seen, probably off shooting another macho photo session in the desert. The politicians, particularly Senate Republicans, have consistently failed to do anything to keep kids from being killed. This is why Ted Cruz refuses to see this as a political problem—if he did see it that way, he'd have to acknowledge that as a politician, he has a responsibility to try to solve the problem. Yet he and others are happy to make this political when the gun lobby makes political contributions to them. Most of all, my generation has failed my son’s.

 

While we may not be able to help stem the tide of gun violence on our own, we can push the people who can help to do so. For my part, I’ve been emailing senators asking them to support the common-sense gun laws that have the support of the public. (Senators hear from me a lot on many issues.) They don’t respond to people from out of state, but I’m hoping some staffers will see my email and at least at it to the tally of people who are speaking out. I’m also contacting my state reps. These emails don’t take a ton of time and it’s worth a try.

 

I also still strongly believe in voting. I’ve been voting since immediately after I turned 18—in general elections, primaries, midterms and local elections—and I will never, ever stop. It’s frustrating when politicians don’t seem to be helping but the solution to that is to vote the riff-raff out and vote the competent people in. Look at the impact your vote has: If 80,000 or so people had voted a different way in a few states in 2016, the Supreme Court would be completely different, and they might not be about to overturn Roe v. Wade, or attack the right to marriage equality or contraception. If more people had voted in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, we also might have a very different country today.

 

I think there are a lot of people who refuse to participate in the system and won’t vote and I think that’s misguided. The legislative branch is not a TV show that they’ll cancel if not enough people watch it; politicians will still get elected even if you stay home. And if you stay home, you may just be opening the door to something worse—which you’ll then complain about and refuse to vote some more. I just don’t understand how anyone can look at the last decade in politics and believe the solution is less voting.

I’d also like to do more than vote and email politicians and I’m trying to figure out what that looks like for me. I can get more involved with the party at the state and local level. I thought of running for office but I’m not a leader and would be a terrible fit. I’m much more effective behind the scenes.

 

One thing I do know is if all you have to offer are cynicism and snark, you’re doing as much to solve the problem of gun violence as the people who only offer “thoughts and prayers”—nothing. You’re doing jack shit to solve anything.

 

Even if I don’t see results from the little things I’m doing, I have to try. What we do today may have effects that won’t be apparent for some time but will be real. It looks grim but there’s a flicker of hope. That flicker won’t become a fire if all I’m doing is sitting there looking at what other people are doing and saying “And nothing will change” with a cynical smirk on my face.

 

67-Course Meal

With a movie, reality cooking show, and several documentaries, the story of Julia Child has been told and told and told and told and told. But has it really been told?

 

I just think we need more. There was that Julie and Julia movie a few years ago. Then this year we’ve had the Food Network’s Julia Child Challenge, a Julia TV show with an actress playing the fictional chef, and at least one documentary. Come on—I think we can do better than that. We’re missing a lot and here are some suggestions to explore this woman from every conceivable angle from now until the end of time:

 

·      A Hulu show, Julia and Julie, that dramatizes the behind-the-scenes drama of Julie and Julia, with actors playing Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

·      A musical version of the above.

·      Another Food Network show that uses famous chefs to recreate, line by line and move by move, every episode of The French Chef as exactly as possible.

·      A Broadway show, La Dame Qui Cuisinait, showcasing the ennui of Julia Child during a down period of her life, performed entirely in French.

·      Reviving Behind the Music on VH1 but every episode is about Julia Child.

·      A podcast where each episode is just a famous actor reading a different recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

·      Reenacting each episode of Baking With Julia using stop-motion animation.

·      A documentary on the filming of the Dinner at Julia’s series.

·      An reality show, What’s Julia Doing?, where interpretive dancers recreate famous recipes and the panelists have to guess which ones.

·      A documentary on the making of each of the above.

 

I just think we need more, is all.

 

Better Call Saul S6 E7: Plan and Execution

As Howard was reading Jimmy and Kim the riot act, I was thinking, “Where is Howard in Breaking Bad? He’s one of the few major characters whose fate is unknown in that show.” After his big blowup, I didn’t think it would be plausible to enter the Breaking Bad timeline and show Jimmy with no relationship with Howard; their fates were just too intertwined by Jimmy and Kim’s betrayal scheme. There would have to be some kind of acknowledgment of what happened in Better Call Saul.

 

Then I got my answer: Howard doesn’t survive until Breaking Bad because Lalo Salamanca blows his brains all over the Wexler/McGill kitchen floor. It’s chillingly casual—Lalo doesn’t even know who Howard is but shoots him because he couldn’t be allowed to live to witness Lalo speaking to his lawyers.

 

My God, the way they shot that—with the flickering candle and Lalo entering the frame out of focus and Jimmy’s dawning horror—was just breathtaking. It was the best kind of shock when you know the character is doomed (like Nina in The Americans) and their death is still hair-raising. There was plenty of foreshadowing in this episode, with Howard speaking wistfully before the portrait of his dead former partner, Chuck—another person whose life, if not directly ruined by Jimmy, was certainly not helped by Jimmy.

 

Like Nacho, before he goes, Howard unloads on Jim and Kimmy. He calls them “sociopaths,” “soulless,” that they “have a piece missing.” Maybe the harshest words were for Kim: “One of the smartest and most promising human beings I’ve ever known and this is the life you choose.” And what could Kim really say to that? Howard’s dead right, and that’s the tragedy of her character.

 

“What do you tell yourselves?” he asks the lawyers who screwed him. “What justification makes it okay? Howard’s such an asshole that he deserves it? So, what is it? I sided with Chuck too often? I took you away from your office, put you in doc review? Howard’s daddy helped him get to the top, but you both had to struggle. Howie has so much, but we have so little. Let’s take him down a peg or two. What allows you to do this to me?”

 

Before it ended in blood, it was all fun and games for Jimmy and Kim setting up Howard. In the Breaking Bad tradition, the actual caper of reshooting the fake bribery of the judge was fun and exhilarating. (I think it would have been even funnier if they didn’t explain why the woman was dressed in a Dark Crystal costume and just let the viewers infer it.)

 

Their scheme was kind of brilliant, allowing their obvious ruse with Wendy to fall apart. Howard then let his guard down and let himself fall for the transparently fake bribery photos. His rant in the Sandpiper mediation about the photos being switched reminded me of Seinfeld when George Costanza insisted he saw a woman on a horse in Central Park and everybody thought he was crazy. But he was right! Ruthie Cohen really was riding a horse! Howard is also right about switching the photos but after everyone sees his dilated pupils and sweaty face, his reputation is now destroyed, and he can’t get it back from the grave.

 

There will be a half-season’s worth of fallout from Howard’s death. Even though Lalo used a silencer, the neighbors must have heard Jimmy and Kim screaming. (It was very effective seeing them flip out this hard, considering these are people who would be capable of compartmentalizing a nuclear blast.) How do they explain this murder and who cleans up the body? Would those people trailing Kim contact Mike and have him arrange it? Funny how Howard’s murder is indirectly the fault of Mike and Gus—if Lalo hadn’t heard the bugged line at the nursing home, he wouldn’t have fed Hector fake information that he was at the laundry and wouldn’t have been clear to go to Jimmy and Kim’s in the first place.

 

There will also be huge emotional fallout in the McGill–Wexler marriage. Will Kim tell the truth that she knew Lalo was alive? If Jimmy had known, he might not have left the door open for Lalo to just walk in.

 

I don’t think Kim will die at the end of Better Call Saul. The best character endings are sometimes those where the person doesn’t die but ends up in some sort of purgatory of her own making. I think Kim will just end up in one of these, after ruining her own promising career for, as Howard said, the life of petty vengeance she chose.

 

At least we only have to wait six weeks for the resolution to that brutal murder. 

Better Call Saul S6 E6: Axe and Grind

Oh, Kim Wexler—you were so close to breaking good. Instead, you decided the con job against your former boss “happens today,” and you made that U-turn back to Albuquerque to continue the scam.

 

Maybe this is always who Kim was. The flashback shows us she learned at a young age how to scam people. After Kim shoplifts jewelry, her mom puts on a big show about her daughter paying for it, only to steal the item anyway—she invokes righteousness, like her daughter eventually will, and then does something underhanded. “I didn’t know you had it in you,” says her impressed mother, in what could be an overall theme for Kim’s character. The car radio playing Duran Duran’s “The Reflex” is maybe a sly wink to the idea that running a scam is a reflex for the Wexler daughter.

 

“Relax,” her mom says. “You got away with it.” These lessons carry a big impression with kids that they remember for a long time. (The actress playing Kim’s mom really did her homework. Her voice and mannerisms were so like the adult Kim that we had to check closely to make sure it wasn’t Rhea Seehorn playing her mother.)

 

Kim could have done some real good, with some significant financial assets backing her, in the law firm for less fortunate clients, but it’s hard to imagine she can just back out the meeting without losing the whole deal. Cliff is kind enough to offer her the meeting, and sees the truth that Kim really does want to help people. She could have just delayed D-Day by one day, but her antipathy toward Howard is just too strong. Helping poor clients can wait; it’s the con job that can’t.

 

I don’t know—are we supposed to hate Howard? I don’t. He’s coded like a fat cat, with his slick suit and detached attitude, and he was condescending toward Kim, but I don’t think he’s terrible. I felt bad for him, meticulously making his estranged wife a cappuccino, only to have her dump it into a travel mug without a thought and spill some of it on the counter (very nice attention to detail in this scene).  

 

The plan against Howard proceeds. The Post-It notes are back. Where Kim once memorably used them to work her way up the ladder at the law firm, she now uses those colored slips of paper for nefarious purposes, planning revenge that apparently involves a video with the always fun film students, and Slippin’ Jimmy slipping Howard a drug that makes his pupils dilated.

 

There were a few nods to the future of Breaking Bad this week. I felt bad for Francesca—Saul’s office actually does look pretty nice the way she decorated it. You can almost see her spirit being grinded down until the office is a tacky mess, with cigarette-damaged furniture and the Constitution-themed kitsch of Saul’s inner office.

 

And the vet is apparently the key to a lot of the illegal shenanigans in Albuquerque. He’s the one with the connections to the fixers and shady characters, including the infamous vacuum cleaner repairman who will disappear Saul. Will Kim need to call Best Quality Vacuum soon and ask to repair a specific model of vacuum?

 

I don’t know what will happen to Kim. Maybe next week, the last before the mid-season break, I’ll offer up some guesses.

Better Call Saul S6 E5: Black and Blue

During the run of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, one thing I’ve really come to appreciate is the shows’ cold opens, introducing some mysterious object or event that only reveals its meaning as we go through the episode. I also appreciate both shows’ attention to craft and the painstaking efforts the characters take to make something useful or beautiful.

 

All of that came together in this week’s cold open. We see a lovingly rendered depiction of the intricacies of everything that goes into sealing a slide rule in Lucite and engraving that with “With Love, the Boys” in German as a memento. This, of course, belonged to Werner Ziegler, the superlab engineer whom Mike had to kill after he contacted his family against the rules.

 

There’s a lot of poignancy in that slide rule—it’s a monument to Werner’s real accomplishments in life and it took a lot to make that memento, but his life was ultimately fragile and now even the memento of that life is gone, stolen by Lalo in an attempt to prove that Gus is working against the cartel. Luckily, Werner’s widow, Margarethe, escapes with her life after unexpectedly coming home while Lalo is searching her home. (Also, I know Margarethe is still grieving, but can you imagine the sheer willpower it would take someone not to sleep with Lalo? Damn.)

 

Anyway, most of this episode seemed to be table-setting for the end. Cliff confronts Howard (maybe after his jittery leg and animated speech to the Sandpiper people further convinced him he was on drugs) and Howard immediately figures out he has a “Jimmy McGill” problem. They settle this in the boxing ring, but of course none of this is over.

 

Jimmy and Kim must have wanted to get caught, which was why their scheme seemed so ridiculous and inelegant. The lunch with Kim now seems like an obvious setup (though Howard apparently has yet to realize Kim is the ringleader on this one). Plus, Howard’s therapist could easily confirm his alibi that he was in a session during the one-act play with Wendy on the street. There must be another level to all of this.

 

Why doesn’t Kim tell Jimmy that Lalo is still alive? Does she want him not to get distracted from the Sandpiper scheme, or does she withhold the information because she believes, as Mike said, she’s made of “sterner stuff” and that Jimmy couldn’t handle it? Kim is indeed solid, but still wakes up paranoid in the middle of the night, bracing a chair against the doorknob in case Lalo comes back.

 

Jimmy also has his new practice to worry about, with Albuquerque’s finest lining up outside his office for legal representation. Francesca makes her first appearance as Jimmy’s secretary. She may not seem it on the surface, but when she got double pay out of Jimmy, it was an amusing reminder that this woman is a total hustler, just like her boss.

 

Gus is paranoid, too. That scene at Los Pollos Hermanos was a concise little character study and a representation of where he is right now—he’s meticulous enough to straighten the row of employee visors on their pegs, but he’s paranoid enough about Lalo’s return that he gets distracted during taking the customer’s order and the sound of the crashing trays. He plants a weapon in the superlab, in case it all comes down to needing that.