Highly emotional people may seem wildly unconstrained, but they are not. Well-accustomed to emotionality, they preserve some shred of control and restraint in the midst of explosion or collapse.
By contrast, people who feel they possess complete emotional control are dangerous because we can't constrain what we don't recognize. Such a person might crush your skull over some triviality because there's no ongoing measured process of ascertaining proportionality—or any other sort of measuredness when it comes to emotions.
Those who fashion themselves evolved beyond emotion are actually emotionally stunted, so when emotions do arise, they're like daggers wildly projected from subconscious viscera.
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Friday, December 27, 2024
Longevity Escape Velocity
LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) is, they say, coming (I think later than sooner, but I'm in the minority, plus I'm just a trombonist). We're all going to live to 150 or a thousand or whatever.
Suicide is fundamentally taboo, so don't be so sure we'd be permitted to opt out of more life this way, either. It's already been firmly decided that we mustn't leave money on the table.
As for me, I'd be super stoked to go another 50 years with arthritic shouders, overstretched ankle ligaments (randomly and excruciatingly flopping into sprain while I walk) and torn plantar plates (the tissue just below the toes which let you walk), among other compiling ills. Fun! And how awesome for us Olds to fossilize ad infinitum in a society where we can't speak the lingo or follow the references.
Meanwhile, the Youngs, currently struggling for foothold in job and housing markets, and caught in a holding pattern munching cannabidiol gummies in their parents' basements, will remain there forever, because mom and dad won't be passing on their assets. The Olds will keep holding the best jobs, the best properties, and disproportionate power, while more and more Youngs keep piling up behind them.
With Olds calcifying and Youngs languishing (and me mercilessly animated despite a growing checklist of bodily insults), society will take on a zombie-like quality, shambling onward without the essential churn and renewal.
It sounds nearly as fun as colonizing Mars, or Universal Basic Income!
Wishes are notoriously problematic (we're urged to be careful with them, not that we ever are). And Utopias are nothing but great big hairballs of demented wishes. Here's the absurd lowdown: Cartoon Me wants to live forever, and go to Mars, and never need to work.
See also "A Case for Opting Out of Life Extension"
Suicide is fundamentally taboo, so don't be so sure we'd be permitted to opt out of more life this way, either. It's already been firmly decided that we mustn't leave money on the table.
As for me, I'd be super stoked to go another 50 years with arthritic shouders, overstretched ankle ligaments (randomly and excruciatingly flopping into sprain while I walk) and torn plantar plates (the tissue just below the toes which let you walk), among other compiling ills. Fun! And how awesome for us Olds to fossilize ad infinitum in a society where we can't speak the lingo or follow the references.
Meanwhile, the Youngs, currently struggling for foothold in job and housing markets, and caught in a holding pattern munching cannabidiol gummies in their parents' basements, will remain there forever, because mom and dad won't be passing on their assets. The Olds will keep holding the best jobs, the best properties, and disproportionate power, while more and more Youngs keep piling up behind them.
With Olds calcifying and Youngs languishing (and me mercilessly animated despite a growing checklist of bodily insults), society will take on a zombie-like quality, shambling onward without the essential churn and renewal.
It sounds nearly as fun as colonizing Mars, or Universal Basic Income!
Wishes are notoriously problematic (we're urged to be careful with them, not that we ever are). And Utopias are nothing but great big hairballs of demented wishes. Here's the absurd lowdown: Cartoon Me wants to live forever, and go to Mars, and never need to work.
See also "A Case for Opting Out of Life Extension"
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Corrected Shoulder Posting
I have rearranged the ordering of yesterday's posting, "Self-Healing Shoulder and Arm Arthritis". I realized I'd put some of the harder moves first, burying the very easy moves that provide useful quick relief.
I've put the easy stuff first.
I've put the easy stuff first.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Self-Healing Shoulder and Arm Arthritis
I wrote about my calcific periarthritis of the shoulders in July. Globs of calcium crystals build up in the shoulder joint, gradually destroying the joint and limiting movement. What's worse, symptoms of pain and immobility spread down the arm, all the way to the wrist. Yikes!
The only relief beyond heavy painkillers is surgery requiring months-long recuperation with severe pain (my physical therapist - who's birthed two kids and worked with patients after this surgery - says the pain levels seem comparable). But that's actually an improvement. Untreated, the pain has driven me into seizure.
That low point was six months ago, and the experience focused my attention wonderfully. Necessity mothered invention, and I seem to have fixed it. Against all odds and every medical expectation, I've been nearly symptom-free for half a year (my doctors tell me it's a medical impossibility). And I'll explain my bag of tricks for any sufferers stumbling in.
I've drawn on yoga positions, but you won't find this routine in yoga books. It's a fresh solution - based on 50 years of yoga practice and working around physical challenges - to a terrifying condition. And much of it applies to any sort of shoulder or arm arthritis.
Arm/Elbow Arthritis
The condition spurs arthritis down the arm in a chain reaction as biceps try to compensate for immobilized shoulders, and then elbows try to compensate for immobilized biceps. It took a few years to figure out what was going on, and a few more to experiment with fixes. Forced by horrendous circumstance to conjure up a miracle, I've eliminated most pain and restored my range of motion. It's not a cure, though. I need to recharge twice daily via the routine below. But it sure beats surgery! I beat the rap!
While these poses are normally supposed to be practiced with straight arms, that part is much more important for this purpose. Focus on maximally straightening your arms....or at least intending to, which is just as therapeutic. It's the intention that counts; trying to go from a 15° bend to a 14° bend, if that's the most you can do, is an act of straightening! The following will only improve your arthritis insofar as you apply effort to keep your arms as straight as possible. Think of all these exercises as "straight arm therapy under duress". Every extra iota of straightening yields disproportionally more therapeutic effect.
Now that I've beaten this critical point to death, here are two easy tricks for quick relief before we get to the more deeply healing moves.
Trick One: Hand Extension and Rotation
This provides instant but temporary and limited relief of arthritis pain in the bicep, elbow, and wrist.
Keeping (or intending to keep) your arms incredibly straight, and elbows locked (or intending them locked), extend your fingers like this:
Now push your palms forward 90° to make (or intend to make) a right angle with your forearms. If you hear cracks and pops (from you arms, not your shoulders), that's good! Now rotate your wrists slowly and sensitively in both directions, while keeping/intending your arms and elbows fiercely straight and stable. As you rotate, you'll find spots that are less comfortable (though nothing should seriously hurt). Hunt for these spots, and work them the most.
Then flip between the two hand positions with wrists rotated this way or that. Experiment like a curious child, hunting for less comfortable (not painful) spots to work. Lock at the elbows, so you're not torquing anything near your shoulders.
This offers immediate relief which lasts for a surprisingly long while. You'd never imagine that such a simple action could have such profound effect. It will feel scary at first - it's the last thing you'd think to do with arthritis pain - but it shouldn't hurt (if you feel any sharp or alarming sensations, stop immediately).
Self-healing is always like this. It's hard to straighten your arms? The cure is to...straighten your arms! Self-healing is the move you don't want to do. You must fly into the eye of the storm - always with careful attention to your body's signals.
Trick Two: Shoulder Rolls
Shoulder Rolls, aka Circular Shoulder Shrugs, are an easy move we all learned in grade school - where it felt ridiculously pointless. Well, now you actually need it!
As you do shoulder rolls, you'll feel and hear tendons plucking against each other, like guitar strings. This is incredibly beneficial. It is more therapeutic for a tight muscle to have its associated tendons plucked than to work the actual muscle directly, and shoulder rolls pluck many tendons en masse with hardly any effort.
Do five or ten rolls forward and then an equal number backward, slowly and sensitively. Make this your warm up and warm down for any of the moves suggested below, and it's also something you can do throughout your day, especially if your shouders smart a bit. Stop if there's the slightest bit of real pain!
Step One
Maximally straighten your arms before you lift them over your head, and diligently maintain that as you gradually bring them up.
You can ignore the Sanskrit names, but FWIW, this one's called, ridiculously, "Tadasana Urdhva Baddhanguliyasana."
Step Two
This flips the arm-straightening the other way. The counter-stretch, if you will.
If you're older and inflexible and in arthritis pain, you'll obviously need to work up to this gradually with a good teacher (I recommend Iyengar system; start your search here). If you're younger and/or healthier, practice this so it is available when the need arises. It will also stave off the arthritis itself....if you don't stop practicing when it's sore (there's the rub)!
Drawback: any Iyengar yoga teacher will have their own firm advice for arm arthritis. Try their approach if you'd like, but also make sure they teach you these poses. They are working from theory and dogma, while I've developed this approach from personal experience.
FWIW, this one's called Baddha Hasta Uttanasana. Remember to breathe. I practiced it for 35 years before noticing I always hold my breath.
Step Three
This one (Parsva Urdhva Hastasana) doesn't do a ton, but it's a helpful add-on, and the easiest of all. Be particularly gentle here, though - easy moves tend to provoke carelessness.
Arms straight! If they're not either straight or intending diligently/sensitively toward straightness, you will not get benefit.
It helps to do this one in front of a mirror. Notice that you're forming your body - from the soles of your feet to the tips of your fingers - into the letter "C". If you stay cognizant of that broad arc (plus straight arms), your form will be correct.
If you've done all this stuff, congrats. Your arthritis is much better. Keep practicing twice daily to discover how good it can get. Perfection may not be possible, but if you practice diligently, you should recover a full range of motion, and even be able to sleep on the bad shoulder. Note that I have quite an advanced case (every doctor who's seen my MRI has winced in sympathetic pain).
Shoulders
The preceding healed the arthritis. Now comes structural help for your shoulders. Behold my favorite yoga pose, pincha mayurasana:
This pose might seem intimidating, but you can work up to it with a few years of yoga experience. Ideally, you'd balance freely (come up with toes against the wall, and then pull them an inch away) because the dynamic micro-corrections required for free balance provide much of the therapeutic benefit. But even with toes remaining against the wall, the position will still help your shoulders.
Practicing this twice weekly is sufficient, though more is fine. But be cautious and gentle while entering and exiting the pose, as crashing might worsen your shoulders. Proceed as if you were old and sick!
I realize this pose is a very tough sell for a rigid, elderly person with bad shoulders (though an Iyengar system teacher can coax almost any body into position using belts, chairs, and other props). But if you start working on it earlier, you'll "own" it when you need it. Just don't stop once you start. I suspect my shoulders began to calcify when I stopped after many years of daily practice.
On days when you practice pincha mayurasana, do the above arm movements afterwards....with shoulder rolls liberally added in-between.
Wrapping Up
These are all well-known moves. But nothing someone with calcific periarthritis of the shoulder would imagine doing (just as meditating is not something you'd do while suffering with a hangover, though it's magical, per this link on self-healing repeated from above). That's why no one's tried it, and that's why the idea went unknown until I stumbled upon it.
Something to bear in mind: none of this will actually repair your shoulder damage. You'll be aware of that damage by the clicks and pops you hear whenever you move your arms. But it eliminates the inflammation which causes pain and limits motion, potentially avoiding surgery.
My shoulders still cycle between good and bad, but at worst they're mildly sore (certainly no seizures!) and at best they're a joy. I enjoy full range of motion. I’ve achieved what seemed impossible, and I hope this routine helps you find relief, too.
The only relief beyond heavy painkillers is surgery requiring months-long recuperation with severe pain (my physical therapist - who's birthed two kids and worked with patients after this surgery - says the pain levels seem comparable). But that's actually an improvement. Untreated, the pain has driven me into seizure.
That low point was six months ago, and the experience focused my attention wonderfully. Necessity mothered invention, and I seem to have fixed it. Against all odds and every medical expectation, I've been nearly symptom-free for half a year (my doctors tell me it's a medical impossibility). And I'll explain my bag of tricks for any sufferers stumbling in.
I've drawn on yoga positions, but you won't find this routine in yoga books. It's a fresh solution - based on 50 years of yoga practice and working around physical challenges - to a terrifying condition. And much of it applies to any sort of shoulder or arm arthritis.
I've had many breakthroughs with self-healing (here are all postings on the topic). Decades of avid hatha yoga (the bendy/stretchy part of yoga, though I practice the rest, too) has fostered deep body awareness and a creative, intuitive approach to working around physical problems.The following is my most remarkable self-healing result. Happy to share. Maybe you'll improve on it!
Unfortunately, the better I get at self-healing, the more problems get thrown at me, like a factory worker manning a wildly accelerating assembly line. What's more, self-healing, like hatha yoga, is not one of my natural facilities. With this stuff I am slow and gluey and dumb. But as I've written, the most remarkable results seem to come from diligently plying weakness - congenital weakness, not just underdevelopment. The realms where you've never sped up and never will. Our bad sides, with courageous persistence, produce more fruitfully than our good sides.
While these poses are normally supposed to be practiced with straight arms, that part is much more important for this purpose. Focus on maximally straightening your arms....or at least intending to, which is just as therapeutic. It's the intention that counts; trying to go from a 15° bend to a 14° bend, if that's the most you can do, is an act of straightening! The following will only improve your arthritis insofar as you apply effort to keep your arms as straight as possible. Think of all these exercises as "straight arm therapy under duress". Every extra iota of straightening yields disproportionally more therapeutic effect.
Now that I've beaten this critical point to death, here are two easy tricks for quick relief before we get to the more deeply healing moves.
This provides instant but temporary and limited relief of arthritis pain in the bicep, elbow, and wrist.
Keeping (or intending to keep) your arms incredibly straight, and elbows locked (or intending them locked), extend your fingers like this:
Important: all rotation should be from the wrists, not the arms. Elbows are locked to prevent arm rotation in the shoulder socket.Now reverse the hand position. With fingers still extended, push the backs of your hands toward your arms, making/intending the opposite 90° bend. Rotate wrists, again maintaining/intending arms straight (and elbows locked) as your top priority. It's not the hand motion that helps you, it's the arm straightness.
Then flip between the two hand positions with wrists rotated this way or that. Experiment like a curious child, hunting for less comfortable (not painful) spots to work. Lock at the elbows, so you're not torquing anything near your shoulders.
This offers immediate relief which lasts for a surprisingly long while. You'd never imagine that such a simple action could have such profound effect. It will feel scary at first - it's the last thing you'd think to do with arthritis pain - but it shouldn't hurt (if you feel any sharp or alarming sensations, stop immediately).
Self-healing is always like this. It's hard to straighten your arms? The cure is to...straighten your arms! Self-healing is the move you don't want to do. You must fly into the eye of the storm - always with careful attention to your body's signals.
As you do shoulder rolls, you'll feel and hear tendons plucking against each other, like guitar strings. This is incredibly beneficial. It is more therapeutic for a tight muscle to have its associated tendons plucked than to work the actual muscle directly, and shoulder rolls pluck many tendons en masse with hardly any effort.
Do five or ten rolls forward and then an equal number backward, slowly and sensitively. Make this your warm up and warm down for any of the moves suggested below, and it's also something you can do throughout your day, especially if your shouders smart a bit. Stop if there's the slightest bit of real pain!
I'll keep saying two seemingly contradictory things: 1. all this stuff is uncomfortable - they're the actions you don't want to do with arthritis, but 2. stop at first sign of pain.Ok, onward to the heavy stuff.
The issue is with the word "pain". Distinguish between destructive pain and the mild discomfort of stretching tight parts; swollen parts; unhappy parts. Don't overthink it! Pain is like pornography: you'll know it when you see it. Take heed when your body hollers HOLY CRAP DON'T DO THAT!, but ignore minor moans and complaints. These aren't particularly fun things to do with arthritis, but trepidation is a different thing than pain. The correct mindset is one of stoic gumption.
It's best to consult with a yoga teacher to guide/check your alignment. I'm not providing instruction, essential safety info, warnings, etc. Plus, all these (stolen) photos suck and shouldn't be closely followed. They just offer a general idea. This isn't a yoga lesson, it's the key to fixing your painful condition.
If you're older and inflexible and in arthritis pain, you'll obviously need to work up to this gradually with a good teacher (I recommend Iyengar system; start your search here). If you're younger and/or healthier, practice this so it is available when the need arises. It will also stave off the arthritis itself....if you don't stop practicing when it's sore (there's the rub)!
Drawback: any Iyengar yoga teacher will have their own firm advice for arm arthritis. Try their approach if you'd like, but also make sure they teach you these poses. They are working from theory and dogma, while I've developed this approach from personal experience.
FWIW, this one's called Baddha Hasta Uttanasana. Remember to breathe. I practiced it for 35 years before noticing I always hold my breath.
Arms straight! If they're not either straight or intending diligently/sensitively toward straightness, you will not get benefit.
It helps to do this one in front of a mirror. Notice that you're forming your body - from the soles of your feet to the tips of your fingers - into the letter "C". If you stay cognizant of that broad arc (plus straight arms), your form will be correct.
If you've done all this stuff, congrats. Your arthritis is much better. Keep practicing twice daily to discover how good it can get. Perfection may not be possible, but if you practice diligently, you should recover a full range of motion, and even be able to sleep on the bad shoulder. Note that I have quite an advanced case (every doctor who's seen my MRI has winced in sympathetic pain).
The preceding healed the arthritis. Now comes structural help for your shoulders. Behold my favorite yoga pose, pincha mayurasana:
Practicing this twice weekly is sufficient, though more is fine. But be cautious and gentle while entering and exiting the pose, as crashing might worsen your shoulders. Proceed as if you were old and sick!
I realize this pose is a very tough sell for a rigid, elderly person with bad shoulders (though an Iyengar system teacher can coax almost any body into position using belts, chairs, and other props). But if you start working on it earlier, you'll "own" it when you need it. Just don't stop once you start. I suspect my shoulders began to calcify when I stopped after many years of daily practice.
On days when you practice pincha mayurasana, do the above arm movements afterwards....with shoulder rolls liberally added in-between.
Something to bear in mind: none of this will actually repair your shoulder damage. You'll be aware of that damage by the clicks and pops you hear whenever you move your arms. But it eliminates the inflammation which causes pain and limits motion, potentially avoiding surgery.
My shoulders still cycle between good and bad, but at worst they're mildly sore (certainly no seizures!) and at best they're a joy. I enjoy full range of motion. I’ve achieved what seemed impossible, and I hope this routine helps you find relief, too.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Thrilling Food in Stupid Places, Chapter Nth
I continue to leave weekly posts on Facebook documenting my unaspirational cheap lunches in semi-anonymous joints in Setúbal, Portugal (here are links, and I've since posted this one and then this one.
There’s "unaspirational" and then there’s total collapse. This might appear to be the latter.
Setubal is host to over a dozen roast chicken specialists, four of them leading lights. All are excellent, and locals have their fierce favorites, but there's one thing everyone agrees on: never buy roast chicken at the supermarket.
You don't need to be Portuguese to know this. This is deep cultural intelligence shared in the collective unconscious of all humans. A part of our birthright as a species.
Pingo Doce is the ubiquitous chain grocer here, and it's decent though no one's idea of fancy. Especially not their prepared foods, patronized exclusively by stingy pensioners, clutching cut-out coupons and filling up for pennies. It's no place for a chowhound.
But at this one Pingo Doce (the one at Monte Bello), the chicken is improbably great. Better, even, than the leading lights.
I'm normally a blabbermouth with food tips, but I've tried to hold this one back because many people here suspect that the clueless American may actually know a thing or two about their food, and this absurdity would completely jump my shark. If he's eating roast chicken from Pingo Fricking Doce, and calling it the best in town, we obviously need to revoke his visa.
But não, people.
I have a long history of brouhahas with locals after briefly swooping into their longtime hunting grounds to insist that some blurry nothing place is great/fantastic/soulful/genius/etc. Longtime Flatbush residents still can't imagine what that idiot writer ever saw in Di Fara Pizza, which never struck any of them as heaven-sent (indeed, it was chronically deserted when I first ate there). It's a thing that happens, and it's never smooth. You'd think they'd be delighted by the tip. But não.
A few times in my life I pulled the rug out from under society en masse. For instance, I wrote in the mid-1980s about a White Castle in Astoria where the grill kid had developed a technique where he'd cook the burgers two minutes longer, until crunchy. A whole other experience! Bells and buzzers would be going off - FLIP THE MEAT! FLIP THE MEAT! - while he'd stand there steadfastly, awaiting the optimal moment.
His legend quickly grew - the customer queue was out the door - and, less than a month after he'd first appeared, he was gone. The custodians of a Machine can not; shall not; will not allow ghosts in The Machine.
Then there was the Roy Rogers on the Jersey shore where everything was eye-poppingly good. This was a bit less surreal, because Roy Rogers were pretty good to begin with. But this one was superlative.
And many food lovers remember the time I found a wonderful Thai chef hiding behind the corporate armor of a midtown Manhattan sandwich shop. Blimpie Subs & Salads, AKA Joey Thai: Thai Fast Food Restaurant was a wonder (here's my original article, scroll halfway down, explaining the grandeur, the flop sweat, the sleight of hand...everything).
Also there's my alltime favorite hustle. Want to make lots of money? Bet foodie friends they'll enjoy top-five lifetime fried chicken at a KFC, and bring them to the one in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (it's a long drive/ride, and well worth it). I've never lost the bet. KFC isn't Blimpie's or Roy Rogers or White Castle. There's wiggle room in the procedure. What's more, KFCs in black nabes get delivered spicier fixings. You don't need to ask for "spicy" (like at Popeye's), it's just automatically spicier and better. And the ebullient, friendly Caribbean workers at East Flatbush KFC know they're a centerpiece of their proud immigrant neighborhood. It's meaningful, so standards are very high (and they've mastered all the hacking options), and, to this day, I've scarcely had better fried chicken.
Cooking, like soylent green, is people. Deliciousness has nothing to do with the branding, the quality of the linen tablecloths, what you call it, or how you present it. It's a matter of talented people trying much much much much harder, working their way up the curve of declining results and obstinately refusing to shut down at "good enough". And one thing about planet Earth is that people are everywhere, and some tiny percentage of them conjure up magic, where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.
That's how this one Pingo Doce, in a nation brimming with identical Pingo Doces, makes extraordinary roast chicken.
Cursed with self-awareness, I'm prone to self-gaslighting. Suspecting I've lost my taste (and/or mind), I devised a check. I can't help ordering other stuff to go with. Some rice, french fries, pasta salad, roast potatoes, sautéed vegetables, anything to break up the poultry monotony. And while none has been truly awful, the chicken quality ratchets my standards so high that I've never taken a second bite of any of that. It all tastes supermarket-bought, i.e. an octillion times worse than great. This, in turn, confirms the chicken's celestiality. The store's own standards reveal how vastly it excels - aw, priori.
So is the white meat consummately tender despite the golden crispiness - i.e. the standard measure of truly fancy, expert roast chicken? Nah, dude. Come on. This is supermarket chicken. But it's never dry, and will delight anyone who isn't a tight-assed dean at Le Cordon Bleu.
Setubal is host to over a dozen roast chicken specialists, four of them leading lights. All are excellent, and locals have their fierce favorites, but there's one thing everyone agrees on: never buy roast chicken at the supermarket.
You don't need to be Portuguese to know this. This is deep cultural intelligence shared in the collective unconscious of all humans. A part of our birthright as a species.
Pingo Doce is the ubiquitous chain grocer here, and it's decent though no one's idea of fancy. Especially not their prepared foods, patronized exclusively by stingy pensioners, clutching cut-out coupons and filling up for pennies. It's no place for a chowhound.
But at this one Pingo Doce (the one at Monte Bello), the chicken is improbably great. Better, even, than the leading lights.
I'm normally a blabbermouth with food tips, but I've tried to hold this one back because many people here suspect that the clueless American may actually know a thing or two about their food, and this absurdity would completely jump my shark. If he's eating roast chicken from Pingo Fricking Doce, and calling it the best in town, we obviously need to revoke his visa.
But não, people.
I have a long history of brouhahas with locals after briefly swooping into their longtime hunting grounds to insist that some blurry nothing place is great/fantastic/soulful/genius/etc. Longtime Flatbush residents still can't imagine what that idiot writer ever saw in Di Fara Pizza, which never struck any of them as heaven-sent (indeed, it was chronically deserted when I first ate there). It's a thing that happens, and it's never smooth. You'd think they'd be delighted by the tip. But não.
A few times in my life I pulled the rug out from under society en masse. For instance, I wrote in the mid-1980s about a White Castle in Astoria where the grill kid had developed a technique where he'd cook the burgers two minutes longer, until crunchy. A whole other experience! Bells and buzzers would be going off - FLIP THE MEAT! FLIP THE MEAT! - while he'd stand there steadfastly, awaiting the optimal moment.
His legend quickly grew - the customer queue was out the door - and, less than a month after he'd first appeared, he was gone. The custodians of a Machine can not; shall not; will not allow ghosts in The Machine.
Then there was the Roy Rogers on the Jersey shore where everything was eye-poppingly good. This was a bit less surreal, because Roy Rogers were pretty good to begin with. But this one was superlative.
And many food lovers remember the time I found a wonderful Thai chef hiding behind the corporate armor of a midtown Manhattan sandwich shop. Blimpie Subs & Salads, AKA Joey Thai: Thai Fast Food Restaurant was a wonder (here's my original article, scroll halfway down, explaining the grandeur, the flop sweat, the sleight of hand...everything).
Also there's my alltime favorite hustle. Want to make lots of money? Bet foodie friends they'll enjoy top-five lifetime fried chicken at a KFC, and bring them to the one in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (it's a long drive/ride, and well worth it). I've never lost the bet. KFC isn't Blimpie's or Roy Rogers or White Castle. There's wiggle room in the procedure. What's more, KFCs in black nabes get delivered spicier fixings. You don't need to ask for "spicy" (like at Popeye's), it's just automatically spicier and better. And the ebullient, friendly Caribbean workers at East Flatbush KFC know they're a centerpiece of their proud immigrant neighborhood. It's meaningful, so standards are very high (and they've mastered all the hacking options), and, to this day, I've scarcely had better fried chicken.
Cooking, like soylent green, is people. Deliciousness has nothing to do with the branding, the quality of the linen tablecloths, what you call it, or how you present it. It's a matter of talented people trying much much much much harder, working their way up the curve of declining results and obstinately refusing to shut down at "good enough". And one thing about planet Earth is that people are everywhere, and some tiny percentage of them conjure up magic, where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.
That's how this one Pingo Doce, in a nation brimming with identical Pingo Doces, makes extraordinary roast chicken.
Cursed with self-awareness, I'm prone to self-gaslighting. Suspecting I've lost my taste (and/or mind), I devised a check. I can't help ordering other stuff to go with. Some rice, french fries, pasta salad, roast potatoes, sautéed vegetables, anything to break up the poultry monotony. And while none has been truly awful, the chicken quality ratchets my standards so high that I've never taken a second bite of any of that. It all tastes supermarket-bought, i.e. an octillion times worse than great. This, in turn, confirms the chicken's celestiality. The store's own standards reveal how vastly it excels - aw, priori.
So is the white meat consummately tender despite the golden crispiness - i.e. the standard measure of truly fancy, expert roast chicken? Nah, dude. Come on. This is supermarket chicken. But it's never dry, and will delight anyone who isn't a tight-assed dean at Le Cordon Bleu.
Monday, December 23, 2024
Friday, December 20, 2024
Winning
After a lifelong fear of missing out (FOMO), I've dropped that stuff. It started one Christmas Eve years ago as I noticed my perspective flipping between the lovely evening I was actually having and the optimal evening I was not having. Heaven and Hell chasing each other's tails, the whole enerprise absurdly needless.
"What's not happening" is empty mental torture. It's how we shave off excess joy. When we notice that we're overly happy, we draw upon the infinite fodder of "What's Not Happening" to restore our customary glum ennui. I wrote about this in "Ballasting Happiness"
All that matters - all that's real - is what is, not what's not. Playing the cards we're dealt; making lemonade from lemons; etc. Reframed to this greater sanity, depression drops away and everything begins to transform as perspective shifts.
I retain one chunk, however. No matter where I am, and no matter how well I'm eating, I'm acutely aware of what I'm missing. Here in the Portuguese boonies, it’s crippling to imagine that my annual consumption of pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, and barbecue has dropped to mere ounces. In two years, I've had four glasses of good wine, three Chinese meals, and a mere handful of dishes prepared by trained chefs, as opposed to soulful grandmothers. I'm the biggest fan of soulful grandmothers, but once in a while a hound needs some refinement. A hound needs it all once in a while. That's the problem!
This remaining chunk is more persistant than the FOMO I've expunged, because food isn't idle caprice. The topic arises, unavoidably, several times per day, and I brim with data points and memories. So when the notion of eating pops up, there will appear a need for jerk chicken, ramen, enchiladas, etc. ad infinitum.
I've fed my diversity jones too indulgently. Having eaten so widely and so well, my yens are diverse and persistent. Feed me the best pizza in the world two meals in a row and I'll claw my way out of Naples in quest for a scrambled egg sandwich.
This makes a sleepy Portuguese fishing town an unlikely place for me to wind up in. Traditional Portuguese cooking is fantastically well-preserved. I'm eating more like a person in the 19th century than 21st. But the downside of faithful tradition (something I love and appreciate) is narrow insularity (I'm not a fan).
Via superhuman exertion, I've managed to find (or somehow conjured up???) Punjabi, Bengali, Angolan, and Moroccan chow within a 10 minute radius of my apartment, all as good as can be found anywhere. But even this oddly improbable diversity can't satisfy my fickle depravity. Hell, after living Jackson Heights for a decade, I came to view even Roosevelt Avenue (possibly the most diverse street on Earth) as limiting.
As I mentioned, I've been posting to Facebook photos of my ordinary pedestrian lunches here, sending onlookers into slobbering tizzies. So I'm eating great! And, per my Christmas Eve revelation, clarity appears as you opt out of indulgent FOMO pain. So in this clarity, I recognize that while in other respects I waver between "above" or "below" average, as an eater, I've maxed out. It's possible that no one on Earth eats better than I do. And this has been true for a long time.
There are people who live with phenomenally talented chefs, eating splendid things that would drive me insane with envy. My friend Rino enjoys the supernal gifts of the blessed Mamma Grimaldi day after day. But when he tires of her repertoire, or can't make it home for lunch, he just grabs a bite. Me, I never just grab a bite. So my overall deliciousness quotient is higher.
A billionaire can hire any chef, or hop into a private jet to satisfy any yen. But he doesn't know where to go, or what to order, like I do. He doesn't know the possibilities! And, aside from lavish sprees, he'll just grab a bite. I never just grab a bite.
While I have my gaping failures - I often curse my lousy chowhounding skills - I'm shocked to acknowledge that no one would lower their deliciousness quotient by eating in my footsteps, nor would mine rise by eating in their's.
Even in a sleepy Portuguese town.
Even sans pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, barbecue, and refinement.
The hardest human task is to recognize when we've won. We can waste decades chasing phantoms before finally framing a "win" correctly.
You don’t need to be a grandmaster of food or whatever. Winning is in the framing. No, that’s not quite right. The anguish of not winning is in the framing. So framing away from obsessive attention to “what’s missing” is the ultimate win.
"What's not happening" is empty mental torture. It's how we shave off excess joy. When we notice that we're overly happy, we draw upon the infinite fodder of "What's Not Happening" to restore our customary glum ennui. I wrote about this in "Ballasting Happiness"
All that matters - all that's real - is what is, not what's not. Playing the cards we're dealt; making lemonade from lemons; etc. Reframed to this greater sanity, depression drops away and everything begins to transform as perspective shifts.
I retain one chunk, however. No matter where I am, and no matter how well I'm eating, I'm acutely aware of what I'm missing. Here in the Portuguese boonies, it’s crippling to imagine that my annual consumption of pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, and barbecue has dropped to mere ounces. In two years, I've had four glasses of good wine, three Chinese meals, and a mere handful of dishes prepared by trained chefs, as opposed to soulful grandmothers. I'm the biggest fan of soulful grandmothers, but once in a while a hound needs some refinement. A hound needs it all once in a while. That's the problem!
This remaining chunk is more persistant than the FOMO I've expunged, because food isn't idle caprice. The topic arises, unavoidably, several times per day, and I brim with data points and memories. So when the notion of eating pops up, there will appear a need for jerk chicken, ramen, enchiladas, etc. ad infinitum.
I've fed my diversity jones too indulgently. Having eaten so widely and so well, my yens are diverse and persistent. Feed me the best pizza in the world two meals in a row and I'll claw my way out of Naples in quest for a scrambled egg sandwich.
This makes a sleepy Portuguese fishing town an unlikely place for me to wind up in. Traditional Portuguese cooking is fantastically well-preserved. I'm eating more like a person in the 19th century than 21st. But the downside of faithful tradition (something I love and appreciate) is narrow insularity (I'm not a fan).
Via superhuman exertion, I've managed to find (or somehow conjured up???) Punjabi, Bengali, Angolan, and Moroccan chow within a 10 minute radius of my apartment, all as good as can be found anywhere. But even this oddly improbable diversity can't satisfy my fickle depravity. Hell, after living Jackson Heights for a decade, I came to view even Roosevelt Avenue (possibly the most diverse street on Earth) as limiting.
As I mentioned, I've been posting to Facebook photos of my ordinary pedestrian lunches here, sending onlookers into slobbering tizzies. So I'm eating great! And, per my Christmas Eve revelation, clarity appears as you opt out of indulgent FOMO pain. So in this clarity, I recognize that while in other respects I waver between "above" or "below" average, as an eater, I've maxed out. It's possible that no one on Earth eats better than I do. And this has been true for a long time.
There are people who live with phenomenally talented chefs, eating splendid things that would drive me insane with envy. My friend Rino enjoys the supernal gifts of the blessed Mamma Grimaldi day after day. But when he tires of her repertoire, or can't make it home for lunch, he just grabs a bite. Me, I never just grab a bite. So my overall deliciousness quotient is higher.
A billionaire can hire any chef, or hop into a private jet to satisfy any yen. But he doesn't know where to go, or what to order, like I do. He doesn't know the possibilities! And, aside from lavish sprees, he'll just grab a bite. I never just grab a bite.
While I have my gaping failures - I often curse my lousy chowhounding skills - I'm shocked to acknowledge that no one would lower their deliciousness quotient by eating in my footsteps, nor would mine rise by eating in their's.
Even in a sleepy Portuguese town.
Even sans pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, barbecue, and refinement.
The hardest human task is to recognize when we've won. We can waste decades chasing phantoms before finally framing a "win" correctly.
You don’t need to be a grandmaster of food or whatever. Winning is in the framing. No, that’s not quite right. The anguish of not winning is in the framing. So framing away from obsessive attention to “what’s missing” is the ultimate win.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Cleopatra’s Pink Slip
I haven't exactly been a soaring addition to the Portuguese jazz scene. In fact, I haven't played a note outside my apartment. The best players in the country - themselves only barely okay - assure me that there's no musical interest here, an hour from Lisbon.
And how! The live music (besides fado, the hyperdramatic singing tradition which is its own thing) has been muddier than the local espresso.
But wandering around my town's center this week, I heard a guitarist struggling through a Charlie Parker song, accompanied by a play-along record. And for some reason I clicked into form, like a punchy old boxer hearing a ringing bell.
It took me a moment to locate him in an imposing nineteenth century building, which turned out to be the Musician Society. I snuck into the impressive interior, entered the salon, and effortlessly slipped behind a piano to accompany him. I was, at least, sparing him from the karaoke approach - the last resort of musicians with no one to play with.
I play professional level jazz piano. Not good professional, or top professional, like my trombone playing, but reasonably solid by New York standards, which is needle-busting for small-town Portugal (imagine a Broadway actor swapped into your kid's middle school play). In my milieu I'm merely okay, so that's how I frame myself. But everything's relative.
We played together for a few minutes, and I coaxed him into swinging a little harder, and he managed not to stumble on a few of the easier chord changes (by local standards, this constitutes jazz mastery). The song ended and he looked up at me, thoroughly unsurprised, and asked where I'm from.
I said "New York". This is like an Okinawan showing up in a Dutch karate dojo, but he wasn't visibly affected. He just coughed and told me about the jam session every Thursday which I might sign up for a week ahead if I'm aching to play. Perhaps they’ll let me, because I sound pretty good. Then he very politely and courteously told me that he needed to practice, and sent me on my way while he resumed the karaoke.
I was not terribly disappointed by the sudden end to our brief collaboration, but considering it from his perspective, it was like Cleopatra materializing in the bedroom of a frantic masturbator, and having him tell her, as she peeled off her clothes, “Not now, I’m busy.”
This happens a lot, in different realms, though polite courtesy isn't the norm. But I'm okay with it. I view the world with blithe amusement and low expectation, immune from the entitlement epidemic. Enjoy a brief montage of typically surreal experiences:
Two food obsessed guys at my gym were weighing local dining options, and I piped up, shyly, to ask if they'd heard of Chowhound. They replied, with suspicion, in the affirmative, so I introduced myself and offered tips. Without a word, they moved to treadmills at the far corner of the gym.
Upon moving to small town Connecticut, immediately after leaving CNET, I introduced myself to a neighbor, explaining that I'd founded a nationally-known web site. He told me how his nephew, Petey, had a web site selling lawnmowers he'd refurbished, and that, if I'd like, he could put me in touch, so Petey could offer me some wisdom.
There are loads more. Back at the dawn of this Slog, I wrote a posting titled "Kafkaesque", recounting other bizarre tales. It's amusing. Check it out.
A major breakthrough finally occurred some years ago when someone posted a plea for help to a general interest forum where I participated under alias. They wanted advice on launching an online community to cover a specific topic, hoping to attract a particularly expert and passionate usership. My previous replies there had seemed smart to me, but rarely rated a thumbs-up. Mostly just contemptuous snark. But for this, I was uniquely qualified. So I dove in, whipping up 500 words of pure distilled hard-won Truth…which drew nary a thumbs up (there was, however, an errant "go fuck yourself").
This time seemed different. It was a unique circumstance where I could be 100% certain the problem wasn't on my end, being pretty much The Guy for this particular query. I've always suspected that I might be far less clever than I sometimes dare to imagine, but this time my confidence was bulletproof despite having drawn the usual result.
I finally allowed myself to acknowledge the gaslighting, and to muse about how I'd been operating under a "curse" of some sort. I've written several postings trying to account for it, finally explaining it as a hairball of edge-case factors, though I've been unsure of what to do about it.
None of this depresses me. I'm pliable; comfortable being reduced to vapor in anyone's esteem. I don't need to be recognized, much less appreciated, let alone respected. As a karma yogi, I'm fully invested in what I do, not who I am. I used to live on the flip side of that, and, believe me, the weather here is much much better (in Sanskrit, it's called satchitananda).
The Curse makes it hard to feel useful - a conundrum for someone with an irrepressible helpful streak. I've resolved it by realizing that no one actually needs help. It's all aristocrats amusing themselves with theatrical exasperation over Rich People Problems, and the last thing anyone wants is for some janitor to turn up the glaring house lights, spoiling the fun. So, really, it's all going smashingly. And here I am in Portugal eagerly scarfing my nth lovely plate of codfish. Plan A!
Plan B (let's call it the "Jim Leff project") never happened, despite decades of straining to make it happen, and then coming to grips that it would never happen, and then accounting for why it never happened...and why it's perfectly okay that it never happened. All that meta work was a ridiculous Plan C, leading nowhere, so I've completely stopped Jim Leffing and embraced the cod.
See also "Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You"
And how! The live music (besides fado, the hyperdramatic singing tradition which is its own thing) has been muddier than the local espresso.
But wandering around my town's center this week, I heard a guitarist struggling through a Charlie Parker song, accompanied by a play-along record. And for some reason I clicked into form, like a punchy old boxer hearing a ringing bell.
It took me a moment to locate him in an imposing nineteenth century building, which turned out to be the Musician Society. I snuck into the impressive interior, entered the salon, and effortlessly slipped behind a piano to accompany him. I was, at least, sparing him from the karaoke approach - the last resort of musicians with no one to play with.
I play professional level jazz piano. Not good professional, or top professional, like my trombone playing, but reasonably solid by New York standards, which is needle-busting for small-town Portugal (imagine a Broadway actor swapped into your kid's middle school play). In my milieu I'm merely okay, so that's how I frame myself. But everything's relative.
We played together for a few minutes, and I coaxed him into swinging a little harder, and he managed not to stumble on a few of the easier chord changes (by local standards, this constitutes jazz mastery). The song ended and he looked up at me, thoroughly unsurprised, and asked where I'm from.
I said "New York". This is like an Okinawan showing up in a Dutch karate dojo, but he wasn't visibly affected. He just coughed and told me about the jam session every Thursday which I might sign up for a week ahead if I'm aching to play. Perhaps they’ll let me, because I sound pretty good. Then he very politely and courteously told me that he needed to practice, and sent me on my way while he resumed the karaoke.
I was not terribly disappointed by the sudden end to our brief collaboration, but considering it from his perspective, it was like Cleopatra materializing in the bedroom of a frantic masturbator, and having him tell her, as she peeled off her clothes, “Not now, I’m busy.”
This happens a lot, in different realms, though polite courtesy isn't the norm. But I'm okay with it. I view the world with blithe amusement and low expectation, immune from the entitlement epidemic. Enjoy a brief montage of typically surreal experiences:
Two food obsessed guys at my gym were weighing local dining options, and I piped up, shyly, to ask if they'd heard of Chowhound. They replied, with suspicion, in the affirmative, so I introduced myself and offered tips. Without a word, they moved to treadmills at the far corner of the gym.
Upon moving to small town Connecticut, immediately after leaving CNET, I introduced myself to a neighbor, explaining that I'd founded a nationally-known web site. He told me how his nephew, Petey, had a web site selling lawnmowers he'd refurbished, and that, if I'd like, he could put me in touch, so Petey could offer me some wisdom.
There are loads more. Back at the dawn of this Slog, I wrote a posting titled "Kafkaesque", recounting other bizarre tales. It's amusing. Check it out.
A major breakthrough finally occurred some years ago when someone posted a plea for help to a general interest forum where I participated under alias. They wanted advice on launching an online community to cover a specific topic, hoping to attract a particularly expert and passionate usership. My previous replies there had seemed smart to me, but rarely rated a thumbs-up. Mostly just contemptuous snark. But for this, I was uniquely qualified. So I dove in, whipping up 500 words of pure distilled hard-won Truth…which drew nary a thumbs up (there was, however, an errant "go fuck yourself").
This time seemed different. It was a unique circumstance where I could be 100% certain the problem wasn't on my end, being pretty much The Guy for this particular query. I've always suspected that I might be far less clever than I sometimes dare to imagine, but this time my confidence was bulletproof despite having drawn the usual result.
I finally allowed myself to acknowledge the gaslighting, and to muse about how I'd been operating under a "curse" of some sort. I've written several postings trying to account for it, finally explaining it as a hairball of edge-case factors, though I've been unsure of what to do about it.
None of this depresses me. I'm pliable; comfortable being reduced to vapor in anyone's esteem. I don't need to be recognized, much less appreciated, let alone respected. As a karma yogi, I'm fully invested in what I do, not who I am. I used to live on the flip side of that, and, believe me, the weather here is much much better (in Sanskrit, it's called satchitananda).
The Curse makes it hard to feel useful - a conundrum for someone with an irrepressible helpful streak. I've resolved it by realizing that no one actually needs help. It's all aristocrats amusing themselves with theatrical exasperation over Rich People Problems, and the last thing anyone wants is for some janitor to turn up the glaring house lights, spoiling the fun. So, really, it's all going smashingly. And here I am in Portugal eagerly scarfing my nth lovely plate of codfish. Plan A!
Plan B (let's call it the "Jim Leff project") never happened, despite decades of straining to make it happen, and then coming to grips that it would never happen, and then accounting for why it never happened...and why it's perfectly okay that it never happened. All that meta work was a ridiculous Plan C, leading nowhere, so I've completely stopped Jim Leffing and embraced the cod.
See also "Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You"
Saturday, December 14, 2024
Midnight Trains
There was an idealistic little company called "Midnight Trains" trying to create a new culture of overnight sleeper trains serving European capitals, and the founders dreamed big, envisioning a transportation utopia with greatfood and culture and affordable comfort. Environment-friendly without austerity. It was the exciting, vivacious European train system one might imagine in one's dreams.
They tried to make it happen - actually tried to buy train cars and such - and they sent around a strange and beautiful email newsletter which dreamed so vividly that one might easily conclude that the operation presently existed. Where do I buy my ticket?
In May, they shut it all down, like an enormous balloon suddenly deflated. The vividly-etched counter-reality was revealed as not only vaporous but futile. It was painful to read their farewell email, so one can only imagine how the founders felt. Months later, I caught up with the news and sent them this:
Hello, and forgive my very belated reply. Perhaps I'm getting the last word?
I myself blundered into entrepreneurship, and chose the roughest of all roads, eschewing all investment, including seed money. I built upon my own adrenal glands and nearly died.
Because it was a web company, launched at the opportune moment of 1997 (and required no investment in train hardware, etc.), and because it was really good (because my adrenal glands were ripe), it was a success. We attracted 1 million regular visitors. And I even managed to sell the thing, though not for a ton (I still fly coach).
But while this sounds like a success story, the company that bought it, naturally, wrecked it (I told the surreal tale in this series). And the spin I so doggedly worked to impart proved as ephemeral as a spritz of perfume.
Even if I had personally seen it through further growth, the writing was on the wall: heroic effort might make a thing happen, but never per the original vision. At least not for long. Mission creep (aka entropy) is the way of things, especially amid meteoric success. And I'm describing success. Ozymandias was no unicorn.
The original operation is now long gone (the brand got re-re-bought and turned into a zombie site, don't even click) and while there is fond nostalgia among many, the distinctive spin that gave it its unique edge has utterly dissipated. All lingering traces are banal, like a discarded Lego set. The "What" is remembered, but the "Why" - the actual substance - evaporated ever so swiftly.
The vision you had in your head would never have manifested, at least not for long. You might've made a buck, there might've been trains running somewhere that didn't completely suck. Or it might have grown into an enormous monster with scant resemblance to anything you were aiming for. These were always your best case scenarios.
It's the journey. Everything you did, everything you wrote, everyone you persuaded, and all the readers you delighted (certainly way more than you disappointed!) were real. None of that was offstage, in-queue, or stillborn. What you did, you DID, and if some non-sucky train ran for a while, or if you'd made a buck or birthed a monster distant from original intent, it would not have felt materially different to you. Very different to outside observers, certainly! But I have the standing and experience to authoritatively tell you how it would've seemed to you.
You actually did stuff, and the fairytale result in your imagination was always a fairy tale. Nothing's a straight line; it's all bank shots. If you'd continued - if you'd even prospered - it would have still felt like the exact same striving, but for ever-higher stakes. Perpetual striving. You never arrive. No one ever arrives, at least from their own perspective.
This means you didn't fail. You strived, and now you'll strive otherwise, and when you're old and frail, you'll recall, with satisfaction, how faithfully you strived, all along, for visions both grandly ambitious and minuscule (it doesn't matter).
Jim Leff
Founder, Chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat
They tried to make it happen - actually tried to buy train cars and such - and they sent around a strange and beautiful email newsletter which dreamed so vividly that one might easily conclude that the operation presently existed. Where do I buy my ticket?
In May, they shut it all down, like an enormous balloon suddenly deflated. The vividly-etched counter-reality was revealed as not only vaporous but futile. It was painful to read their farewell email, so one can only imagine how the founders felt. Months later, I caught up with the news and sent them this:
Hello, and forgive my very belated reply. Perhaps I'm getting the last word?
I myself blundered into entrepreneurship, and chose the roughest of all roads, eschewing all investment, including seed money. I built upon my own adrenal glands and nearly died.
Because it was a web company, launched at the opportune moment of 1997 (and required no investment in train hardware, etc.), and because it was really good (because my adrenal glands were ripe), it was a success. We attracted 1 million regular visitors. And I even managed to sell the thing, though not for a ton (I still fly coach).
But while this sounds like a success story, the company that bought it, naturally, wrecked it (I told the surreal tale in this series). And the spin I so doggedly worked to impart proved as ephemeral as a spritz of perfume.
Even if I had personally seen it through further growth, the writing was on the wall: heroic effort might make a thing happen, but never per the original vision. At least not for long. Mission creep (aka entropy) is the way of things, especially amid meteoric success. And I'm describing success. Ozymandias was no unicorn.
The original operation is now long gone (the brand got re-re-bought and turned into a zombie site, don't even click) and while there is fond nostalgia among many, the distinctive spin that gave it its unique edge has utterly dissipated. All lingering traces are banal, like a discarded Lego set. The "What" is remembered, but the "Why" - the actual substance - evaporated ever so swiftly.
The vision you had in your head would never have manifested, at least not for long. You might've made a buck, there might've been trains running somewhere that didn't completely suck. Or it might have grown into an enormous monster with scant resemblance to anything you were aiming for. These were always your best case scenarios.
It's the journey. Everything you did, everything you wrote, everyone you persuaded, and all the readers you delighted (certainly way more than you disappointed!) were real. None of that was offstage, in-queue, or stillborn. What you did, you DID, and if some non-sucky train ran for a while, or if you'd made a buck or birthed a monster distant from original intent, it would not have felt materially different to you. Very different to outside observers, certainly! But I have the standing and experience to authoritatively tell you how it would've seemed to you.
You actually did stuff, and the fairytale result in your imagination was always a fairy tale. Nothing's a straight line; it's all bank shots. If you'd continued - if you'd even prospered - it would have still felt like the exact same striving, but for ever-higher stakes. Perpetual striving. You never arrive. No one ever arrives, at least from their own perspective.
This means you didn't fail. You strived, and now you'll strive otherwise, and when you're old and frail, you'll recall, with satisfaction, how faithfully you strived, all along, for visions both grandly ambitious and minuscule (it doesn't matter).
Jim Leff
Founder, Chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Possible Medical Breakthrough
Slog technical advisor Pierre, who does not normally get excited about science news (understatement alert), notes that scientists have transformed ubiquitous skin bacterium into a topical vaccine.
No needles and no side effects...at least for mice. They've apparently identified a bacterial species that naturally produces a super-adjuvant that works for all antigens via mere topical application. It's a very long way away, but if it works in humans, Pierre, who seriously does not talk this way, says it's "instant Nobel".
No needles and no side effects...at least for mice. They've apparently identified a bacterial species that naturally produces a super-adjuvant that works for all antigens via mere topical application. It's a very long way away, but if it works in humans, Pierre, who seriously does not talk this way, says it's "instant Nobel".
Wealth and Blandness
Tying together two major Slog themes:
1. We have, comparatively recently, become wealthier and more comforted and entertained than the most ambitious dreams of our forebears - and we don't notice because we're spoiled princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
2. We've grown blander and blander. When I was a kid, most people rolled their eyes at uptight corporate speech patterns. Since then, HR-speak has become normal in most workplaces, and is now the prevalent mode even for social conversation (for just one example, constant pained effort to avoid giving offense has - per the mattress peas - made everyone increasingly sensitive to nano-offense). When I was younger, a number of people you'd describe as "characters" showed passion, personality, and discernible life signs. I haven't heard that term in ages. Now we are dominated by puddy pudpuds; corporate creatures through and through, and the average American could not pass a Turing Test. G.F.S.P.!
But, back in the 70s, when spontaneous characters roamed the earth, it was a wilder, more un-tamed place. Workplaces were less efficient because people didn't behave like obedient cogs. The 1977 hit "Take This Job and Shove It" struck a chord, whereas one imagines a contemporary American furrowing her brow:
The messy, wild, untamed nature of 1975 left money on the table. Everyone dropping dead of emphysema and inhaling leaded gas fumes and being dehydrated most of the time (no bottled water) and enjoying three martini lunches and plenty of fun non-stigmatized recreational drug use and defiantly failing to assimilate into team values did not foster optimally efficient profit-making.
We're wealthier now because we're blander. HR won.
1. We have, comparatively recently, become wealthier and more comforted and entertained than the most ambitious dreams of our forebears - and we don't notice because we're spoiled princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
2. We've grown blander and blander. When I was a kid, most people rolled their eyes at uptight corporate speech patterns. Since then, HR-speak has become normal in most workplaces, and is now the prevalent mode even for social conversation (for just one example, constant pained effort to avoid giving offense has - per the mattress peas - made everyone increasingly sensitive to nano-offense). When I was younger, a number of people you'd describe as "characters" showed passion, personality, and discernible life signs. I haven't heard that term in ages. Now we are dominated by puddy pudpuds; corporate creatures through and through, and the average American could not pass a Turing Test. G.F.S.P.!
But, back in the 70s, when spontaneous characters roamed the earth, it was a wilder, more un-tamed place. Workplaces were less efficient because people didn't behave like obedient cogs. The 1977 hit "Take This Job and Shove It" struck a chord, whereas one imagines a contemporary American furrowing her brow:
"Eek. While any employment situation certainly has its challenges, and many workers might prefer, at a given moment, to be pursuing personal interests, such language and sentiment are highly inappropriate for the workplace. This individual clearly has only themselves to blame for their failure to assimilate team values."Let's integrate the two observations.
The messy, wild, untamed nature of 1975 left money on the table. Everyone dropping dead of emphysema and inhaling leaded gas fumes and being dehydrated most of the time (no bottled water) and enjoying three martini lunches and plenty of fun non-stigmatized recreational drug use and defiantly failing to assimilate into team values did not foster optimally efficient profit-making.
We're wealthier now because we're blander. HR won.
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Bad Writers and German Shepherds
While the crowd delightedly enjoys a puppet show, puppeteers in the audience peer critically at the strings. It's not the most enjoyable approach, but they can't help it. And it's the same for writers. Today I spotted this:
The writing is bad, and the editor should be fired. Both seem satisfied with mere cleverishness. Ox carts stuck in snow! What a life, what a world! Henrietta, won’t you fetch me another cognac, darling? My piece for the New Yorker is coming along splendidly.
Much, much worse, this introduces an essay on the nineteenth century Donner family's tragic migration west, possibly involving cannibalism. The perfect context for wry detachment. I showed it to ChatGPT and asked which magazine it seemed like. Beautifully skilled in spotting patterns, it immediately guessed, correctly - The New Yorker - barely suppressing a "duh".
For the New Yorker this wasn't a bug, nor even a feature, but their proud signature. The editor, declining to blast this to smithereens, beheld the hollow pretention and approved. "This writer gets us!"
Calvin Trillin once wrote a piece about me and Chowhound for the New Yorker. It was laced with condescension. A friend remarked that he'd shown me no more respect than the ticktacktoe-playing chicken he'd profiled the year before. My favorite food writer, John Thorne, offered this magnificent advice: "Never let yourself be profiled by someone more famous than you."
But I can hardly demand more sober treatment than the Donner family, catastrophically lost in all that ironic snowy snow - which, if we took a moment to contemplate, might throw us off our cognac, or else compel, per my wont, six or seven more!
The Trillin piece was useful to my "career", such as it was, but was not a pleasant experience. And today, bombarded by New Yorker memories and associations, I find myself wondering how JD Salinger, the grand exemplar of phony-haters, ever wound up in such a place.
As a musician, I suppose I do understand. It was a gig. He took the gig. And his apocalyptic exit wasn't exactly unpredictable. He didn’t just leave The New Yorker, he blasted off so hard he reached galactic escape velocity, leaving public life entirely.
Perhaps Salinger wouldn’t have self-ejected so spectacularly if he hadn’t planted himself in the belly of the beast in the first place. It’s like the woman with the nightmare boyfriend who finally breaks up and immediately finds a girlfriend to hook up with. Long accommodation coils the spring tightly.
Note that this writing wasn't from Dana Goodyear's thoughtful article. It was penned by a staffer to introduce that article.
See my earlier thoughts on Salinger
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, heavy storms buried multiple U.S. states in snow, paralyzing traffic and making it an especially good time, one imagines, not to be travelling by ox-drawn wagon.I asked myself, incredulously, what "one imagines" is doing there. It adds nothing to an overstuffed sentence. Cramming it in was an indulgence, compounding the indulgence of the aside itself. Its only purpose is to establish the writer's wry detachment, like a German shepherd marking its scent. We, the readers, serve as hydrant.
The writing is bad, and the editor should be fired. Both seem satisfied with mere cleverishness. Ox carts stuck in snow! What a life, what a world! Henrietta, won’t you fetch me another cognac, darling? My piece for the New Yorker is coming along splendidly.
Much, much worse, this introduces an essay on the nineteenth century Donner family's tragic migration west, possibly involving cannibalism. The perfect context for wry detachment. I showed it to ChatGPT and asked which magazine it seemed like. Beautifully skilled in spotting patterns, it immediately guessed, correctly - The New Yorker - barely suppressing a "duh".
For the New Yorker this wasn't a bug, nor even a feature, but their proud signature. The editor, declining to blast this to smithereens, beheld the hollow pretention and approved. "This writer gets us!"
Calvin Trillin once wrote a piece about me and Chowhound for the New Yorker. It was laced with condescension. A friend remarked that he'd shown me no more respect than the ticktacktoe-playing chicken he'd profiled the year before. My favorite food writer, John Thorne, offered this magnificent advice: "Never let yourself be profiled by someone more famous than you."
But I can hardly demand more sober treatment than the Donner family, catastrophically lost in all that ironic snowy snow - which, if we took a moment to contemplate, might throw us off our cognac, or else compel, per my wont, six or seven more!
The Trillin piece was useful to my "career", such as it was, but was not a pleasant experience. And today, bombarded by New Yorker memories and associations, I find myself wondering how JD Salinger, the grand exemplar of phony-haters, ever wound up in such a place.
As a musician, I suppose I do understand. It was a gig. He took the gig. And his apocalyptic exit wasn't exactly unpredictable. He didn’t just leave The New Yorker, he blasted off so hard he reached galactic escape velocity, leaving public life entirely.
Perhaps Salinger wouldn’t have self-ejected so spectacularly if he hadn’t planted himself in the belly of the beast in the first place. It’s like the woman with the nightmare boyfriend who finally breaks up and immediately finds a girlfriend to hook up with. Long accommodation coils the spring tightly.
Note that this writing wasn't from Dana Goodyear's thoughtful article. It was penned by a staffer to introduce that article.
See my earlier thoughts on Salinger
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Shaving a Trope
I'm wandering through the holiday fair in downtown Setúbal and hear a brass band in the distance. As I get closer, I realize, to my horror, that they're playing "YMCA."
Are these guys MAGA? Has some vestige of Salazar-era authoritarianism arisen to align with the Trump cultural circus? Do these guys realize the current implications and associations of this song?
But then I recalled similar anomalies encountered in foreign lands. I keep endlessly relearning that transported tropes seldom retain context.
I've previously told the story of flying to Japan to perform with a (nearly) all-black big band, and the fat cat Japanese producer who paid for it all welcomed the band with a huge spread of fresh watermelon.
As my colleagues dug in nonchalantly (musicians on tour are like locusts; never knowing when you'll be fed again, you ask no questions), I parsed out the situation.
The producer genuinely respected us. He'd gone to great effort and expense to fly us over. He was certainly not looking to insult us.
Moreover, I knew that off-season watermelon in Japan costs $100 per melon (my bandmates would have choked if they'd known). So, again, this was not what it seemed. It was a gesture of respect, horribly bungled.
I finally understood that the situation was so simple that I'd failed to consider it: he'd heard somewhere that black people like watermelon. Not in any sneering way, but just as a data point. So he was being gracious. Like having frozen vodka ready for Russian visitors.
No other context was applicable. Just a data point he'd picked up from the ether (as we acquire most of the things we know). It took effort for me to shave off the layers of context and recognize the simplicity.
There's a Jewish restaurant in Krakow, Poland serving Jewish soul food cooked by gentiles in a restaurant festooned with the most vile caricatures of huge-nosed, money grubbing, grubby-bearded, well, Jews.
I didn't notice all at once. It was a slow burn as I tackled the greasy fare, peering around the room while chewing. My initial thought was: What exactly am I supporting here? Was this like striding into Auschwitz' gift shop circa 1944 to buy a commemorative "I took a shower!" yarmulka and lend support to the important work being done there?
Again, I pondered. The owners needed to brand; to convey that this was not Chinese or Italian or French food, but Jewish. So they sought out the most Jewish-seeming decor they could find. And, hoo boy, they'd found it! But there was no intention to offend; as with the Japanese producer, the whole enterprise was intended as respectful tribute. Not being Berkeley sociology grad students, they weren't trained in the art of tonal adjustment - e.g. the meticulous insertion of "sadly", "unfortunately", and "tragically" before all verbs - nor had they recognized the need to avoid cartoons of greedy, dirty rabbis. That's all!
Once again, shorn of context, a trope can be utterly without spin. The malignance is only in the interpretation.
Finally, back to Japan again. I was walking down the sidewalk as a gang of punks with mohawks and spikes and studs and crazy piercings approached with menacing expressions. My impulse was to dash to the other side of the street, but a tiny wizened grandma happened to be walking near me, and I paused to considered whether she was in danger.
She kept shuffling forward obliviously, a sweet smile on her face, having a nice walk on a lovely day. And, as they passed, the punks paused to bow with deep respect to their elder before recomposing themselves and moving on.
Even having left Kansas, you often must remind yourself you're not in Kansas anymore.
The band was just playing the damned song. Yeah, it might have entered their playlist because they've been hearing it on the news, but they're not bringing political baggage along with it.
On my end, I might consider the musicians terribly naive, and figure they ought to pay closer attention to implications. Or, I might acknowledge that they're just nice guys playing a fun song everybody kinda likes, and the only problem in all of this is me clutching at my pearls.
I lean toward the latter interpretation.
This, btw, is why boredom is never appropriate. The tedious tediousness of existence is only at the surface. Travel widely or observe deeply, and there's lots more going on. Also: less!
Friday, December 6, 2024
Zeal
I never understood competitiveness. Just do your best! Who cares what other people do?
The problem is that most people can't summon an iota of zeal without an ego tie-in; without some tangible what's-in-it-for-me. The dogs won't run the track without a crappy mechanical rabbit zooming down the railing.
I was shocked speechless to learn from an early girlfriend that most guys required assistance rising to the occasion, so to speak, even beholding her dazzling naked splendor.
This world is largely populated by N.P.C.s. It's really hard to grasp the listlessness - yet another aristocratic trait widely acquired as society grew unimaginably rich and comfortable.
The problem is that most people can't summon an iota of zeal without an ego tie-in; without some tangible what's-in-it-for-me. The dogs won't run the track without a crappy mechanical rabbit zooming down the railing.
I was shocked speechless to learn from an early girlfriend that most guys required assistance rising to the occasion, so to speak, even beholding her dazzling naked splendor.
This world is largely populated by N.P.C.s. It's really hard to grasp the listlessness - yet another aristocratic trait widely acquired as society grew unimaginably rich and comfortable.
Monday, December 2, 2024
Sliding Scales
Overlooking the sins of your own tribe because the other tribe is so very sinful is how Israeli/Palestinian-style uber-stalemates foment.
Right and wrong are not sliding scales. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but its exit ramps get blocked with “But they’re so much worse!!”
I watched professional tennis as a kid. Once, I saw an umpire call a shot "out of bounds" though the opposing player (and viewing audience at home) clearly knew it was inside the line. The camera zoomed in on the player’s face, which betrayed the slightest pinch of tightly constrained discomfort. Conflicting forces, impulses, and rationales were at play, and while the ones favoring justice, fair play, and sportsmanship were stifled, at least it wasn't entirely comfortable for him.
I realized that I'd spotted a saving grace. Though I very much wanted to see the player explode with indignation over the bad call - the same sort of angry response he'd have offered if a bad call went against him - at least I could spot his stomach lining eroding a little; his hair greying a little; his cells anti-oxidizing a little; and his mortal soul desiccating a little. There were at least some subtle consequences (see Brazilian Bus Driver Syndrome).
My two reactions: 1. I stopped watching professional tennis, and 2. I realized how hopefully close humanity was to a moral threshold. Yeah, we often chose to do the bad thing, but our saving grace was our tinge of teetery ambivalence.
That was back in the 1970's. Since then, we've clenched back from that ambivalence and toward greater comfort with our bad behavior and that of our cohorts (while becoming exquisitely fine-tuned to bad behavior by The Other; we’re paragons in judgement and pragmatists in action). But I maintain hope. The crossover point was visible in my short lifetime, so it's not inaccessible.
We can go first! We can risk nonconformity by leading, rather than following, the crowd! By being less extreme and rigid and awful. By insisting on smart calls and level standards. By standing for justice, fair play, and sportsmanship for everyone, even our despised opponents.
Or...we can keep blocking the exits from the highway to hell (hey, at least our intentions are super good, right?).
Greetings from sunny Portugal.
Right and wrong are not sliding scales. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but its exit ramps get blocked with “But they’re so much worse!!”
I watched professional tennis as a kid. Once, I saw an umpire call a shot "out of bounds" though the opposing player (and viewing audience at home) clearly knew it was inside the line. The camera zoomed in on the player’s face, which betrayed the slightest pinch of tightly constrained discomfort. Conflicting forces, impulses, and rationales were at play, and while the ones favoring justice, fair play, and sportsmanship were stifled, at least it wasn't entirely comfortable for him.
I realized that I'd spotted a saving grace. Though I very much wanted to see the player explode with indignation over the bad call - the same sort of angry response he'd have offered if a bad call went against him - at least I could spot his stomach lining eroding a little; his hair greying a little; his cells anti-oxidizing a little; and his mortal soul desiccating a little. There were at least some subtle consequences (see Brazilian Bus Driver Syndrome).
My two reactions: 1. I stopped watching professional tennis, and 2. I realized how hopefully close humanity was to a moral threshold. Yeah, we often chose to do the bad thing, but our saving grace was our tinge of teetery ambivalence.
That was back in the 1970's. Since then, we've clenched back from that ambivalence and toward greater comfort with our bad behavior and that of our cohorts (while becoming exquisitely fine-tuned to bad behavior by The Other; we’re paragons in judgement and pragmatists in action). But I maintain hope. The crossover point was visible in my short lifetime, so it's not inaccessible.
We can go first! We can risk nonconformity by leading, rather than following, the crowd! By being less extreme and rigid and awful. By insisting on smart calls and level standards. By standing for justice, fair play, and sportsmanship for everyone, even our despised opponents.
Or...we can keep blocking the exits from the highway to hell (hey, at least our intentions are super good, right?).
Greetings from sunny Portugal.
Sunday, December 1, 2024
I've Cruelly Deprived You of Food Porn
I've been posting an ongoing series on Facebook: photo essays of nothing-special, non-aspirational neighborhood meals in Setúbal, Portugal - with a strong emphasis on baked apples. It's pretty much "What Jim Had For Lunch Last Week", with wry running commentary. Catch up via links below.
October 18, 2025
October 25, 2025
November 3, 2025
November 12, 2025
November 13, 2025
December 1, 2025
Why am I posting this stuff there and not here? To explain, I need to tell a story of heights I cannot scale.
In a previous century, I wrote (as part of a weekly diary for Slate) about the closing week of wonderful Bo restaurant, a labor-of-love operated single-handedly by a feisty super-talented Korean woman named Maria who'd worked in fancy restaurants as a pastry chef but wanted to serve traditional Korean food in a cozy Queens storefront. She was the darling of food critics and of Chowhound's early years, but hardly anyone showed up.
I've experienced the death throes of thousands of restaurants. Normally, they turn glum and hapless. You'd think they'd be glad to see a customer, but, as you enter the dining room, you can feel the mental calculation: "This makes no real difference." Food goes downhill and servers bare their fangs. You lose your enthusiasm and stop coming as the circle turns vicious.
Maria, however, ran through the tape. The more hopeless it got, the better she cooked, and her gratitude to her small cadre of loyal customers only increased. As recounted in the link above, she walked me out to my car after my final meal on her final night, consoling me in my disconsolation. That's strength.
This Slog has been an abject failure, for a variety of reasons I've offered over the years. I have a long acquaintanceship with rejection (Chowhound's brief acclaim was a fluke), so I'm no stranger to the impulse to keep improving in the face of shunning (even when it's counterproductive because the problem all along was that you were too far ahead). I once explained the mindset:
So that part was good, I guess, but, ultimately I've proven to lack Maria's strength of character. I haven't run through the tape; haven't shown diehards proper gratitude. I know many of you are here for the sporadic food content, but I've been posting it to Facebook without bothering to copy it over here for the tiny clique of readers who, in many cases, have followed me for years. I am the bitter idiot waiter who scowls at the good guys because there aren't enough of them. I am, alas, no Maria.
I have, though, at least turned out to be a Walter, despite lack of appreciation for the bubblegum (come to think of it, most of the kids just grabbed the gum and sullenly walked back to their seats, oblivious to the gesture and effort from this sweet old guy).
October 18, 2025
October 25, 2025
November 3, 2025
November 12, 2025
November 13, 2025
December 1, 2025
Why am I posting this stuff there and not here? To explain, I need to tell a story of heights I cannot scale.
In a previous century, I wrote (as part of a weekly diary for Slate) about the closing week of wonderful Bo restaurant, a labor-of-love operated single-handedly by a feisty super-talented Korean woman named Maria who'd worked in fancy restaurants as a pastry chef but wanted to serve traditional Korean food in a cozy Queens storefront. She was the darling of food critics and of Chowhound's early years, but hardly anyone showed up.
I've experienced the death throes of thousands of restaurants. Normally, they turn glum and hapless. You'd think they'd be glad to see a customer, but, as you enter the dining room, you can feel the mental calculation: "This makes no real difference." Food goes downhill and servers bare their fangs. You lose your enthusiasm and stop coming as the circle turns vicious.
Maria, however, ran through the tape. The more hopeless it got, the better she cooked, and her gratitude to her small cadre of loyal customers only increased. As recounted in the link above, she walked me out to my car after my final meal on her final night, consoling me in my disconsolation. That's strength.
This Slog has been an abject failure, for a variety of reasons I've offered over the years. I have a long acquaintanceship with rejection (Chowhound's brief acclaim was a fluke), so I'm no stranger to the impulse to keep improving in the face of shunning (even when it's counterproductive because the problem all along was that you were too far ahead). I once explained the mindset:
However good you are now, get way way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it.A vicious circle of rejection can thus provoke a virtuous circle of improvement. In the spirit of The Red Shoes, geometric progression can hoist things so far up the curve of declining results that a dimwitted trombonist/food critic might somehow (I can't take credit because it was mostly epiphany) conjure up fresh and credible explanations for most of the long-standing mysteries (human happiness, theology, cosmology, art, creativity, messiahs, god, autism, addiction, depression (here and here) spirituality, self-destructiveness, art, etc).
So that part was good, I guess, but, ultimately I've proven to lack Maria's strength of character. I haven't run through the tape; haven't shown diehards proper gratitude. I know many of you are here for the sporadic food content, but I've been posting it to Facebook without bothering to copy it over here for the tiny clique of readers who, in many cases, have followed me for years. I am the bitter idiot waiter who scowls at the good guys because there aren't enough of them. I am, alas, no Maria.
I have, though, at least turned out to be a Walter, despite lack of appreciation for the bubblegum (come to think of it, most of the kids just grabbed the gum and sullenly walked back to their seats, oblivious to the gesture and effort from this sweet old guy).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)