50% of Dropouts are Undercover Rejects

It's impossible to distinguish a dropout from a reject. And nearly all rejects pose as dropouts.

Your friend who entertains you with crazy horror stories about his nightmare ex who he's finally decided to let go? There's a 50-50 chance he was dumped, and that he deserved it.

Your friend who quit her much-hated job? And feels wonderfully free to pursue new opportunities? Just as likely, she was fired (and deserved it).

You do not know. You cannot know. The truth is indeterminable, because such people mask the truth not just for your eyes, but for their own. Their deep cover stems from deep denial. They could likely pass a lie detector test.

I once recruited someone to help out with some Chowhound business issues. He'd been a player in the first dot.com bubble, but had dropped out to take on much smaller work, and was infinitely happier with this "downsizing". It seemed like a terrific opportunity to get help from the sort of figure who was normally too busy to pitch in with the likes of us.

At some point, a distant slightly scary possibility arose. The sort of prospect normal people shrug off, since, of course, no action in this world is without risk. But this affable, non-emotional, grounded, sensible person went into utter freakout mode, forcing us into some very painful, very expensive restructuring to rule out the contingency. He threatened, with uncharacteristic belligerence, to walk away if we didn't. Oddly, a year later, he could not remember any of this. It was like he'd had a small stroke.

Being less experienced back then, I called this same person to help with a subsequent project. And it happened again. That time I let him walk away after he issued his ultimatum, having recognized that he was no drop-out. He was damaged goods.

Be careful with dropouts. 50% are what they claim to be, but 50% are in deep denial regarding flaws and fissures that spurred a pattern of rejection. And you’ll only know after those flaws and fissures have become painfully obvious. 

Crew vs. Talent

There are two kinds of people: Talent and Crew.

Talent always considers Crew to be wannabes. They're the remainders who can’t cut it; the sad unsparkly souls who don't clean up well and who've let themselves go.

The Crew knows the Talent thinks this (this is not a symmetrical situation), and they know something the Talent doesn’t. Crew recognizes that Talent's perennially desperate, hovering in a state of anxiety, recognizing that they're a few extra quarts of ice cream, or a plastic surgery disaster, or a gaffed social media statement away from being revealed as the Crew we all are under the facade.

No one’s born Talent. We all come from Crew; Talent elevation is a fleeting contrivance of vanity. And we'll go out as Crew, too. Few of us have the capacity for delusion to complete this trip imagining themselves Talent the whole way.

I once noted that "Maturity is the correction of the misconception that you're the protagonist in this drama." So the Talent is immature. Circumstance chipping away at their facade does them a kindness. It's a necessary adjustment to their outlook; a gentle reminder they've been Crew all along.


Ich bin ein Teamster!

More Backsplashing

I've taken to heart the cook's mantra "never catch a falling knife". Let it drop, let it clatter, don't move. To reaffirm the habit, I mutter the mantra to myself each time. Never catch a falling knife!

The problem is that now that it's engrained, it happens when anything drops. Pens, scouring pads, TV remote controls, Pop Tarts. Just now, I passively watched my heavy gym lock clatter to my previously immaculately finished wood floor, morosely intoning "Never try to catch a falling gym lock."


Mental/behavioral programming always backsplashes. For instance, my clever technique for unwinding at night so I could fall sleep was making me weirdly sleepy during stressful daytime moments.

The POTUS and the Pea

Vulgar, vain, shallow, narcissistic, ignorant, racist men have run every institution in the world for thousands of years. Trump is only abnormal because in this one country and this one office, we’ve been spoiled - and even here, only lately so - with unusually elevated figures, even, in retrospect, GW Bush (that reframing, btw, offers a useful glimpse of the larger truth).

The fact that we’re all swooning and stressed over this guy is evidence of something I keep pointing to again and again: the downside of life being so wonderful here in The Future is that we're hypersensitive to mere displeasure. We're all princesses more and more vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas. In utopia mere normality (which this guy absolutely is, in the long view of human history) strikes us as unendurable hell.


When I posted the above to Facebook, a friend answered:

We should expect better. We’ve evolved.

Here's how I replied:

Have you evolved your ability to frame situations realistically, per my posting above? Or are you still exhibiting the ancient fussy neediness, where we need conditions to scan as "just right" before we can get on with enjoying our precious time here?

In my view, evolution consists of expanding perspective, not wrangling a more favorable gift bag of preference results and checkboxes checked. Evolution is measured by changes in me-in-here, rather than in you-all-out-there.

A peaceful, open, and appreciative internal perspective trumps the default human drive of unquenchable entitlement; of How It Must Play Out For Me to Feel Grateful to be Alive. That, to me, is the potential evolution. And there's no hope of evolving our politics, or anything else, until that happens.

If we've evolved in any conceivable way (and I think humans have progressed miraculously over the millennia), it's been almost exclusively under the stewardship of vulgar, vain, shallow, narcissistic, ignorant, racist men. We work awfully well in spite of them. Any/all evolution happened on their watch.

This isn't my endorsement of that approach, of course. Nor am I complacent about this guy, who I loathe as much as anyone. But this is not the worst life experience any generation has ever felt. On contrary, we are overwhelmingly, obscenely, ridiculously more comfortable, secure, healthy, fed, and entertained than any human beings ever dared imagine, and our forebears surely hate us for our spoiled, disgusting, ungrateful failure to appreciate it. I sense their roiling anger.

Why Simplicity is Hard

In many lines of work, professionals will tell you that the simplest tasks can be the hardest to really master.

I've usually attributed this to exposure. A band of fourteen screeching electric guitarists can hide issues/problems more effectively than one spotlit dude introspectively strumming. Lamb stew may conceal many a shortcut and still be delicious, but a decent spaghetti carbonara requires meticulousness. There's simply nowhere to hide when you're doing something simple.

But as I recently reheated some leftover lasagna (lasagna!!!) with brutish vapidity (belying the many years of experience behind my reheating choices), thunking the cold carby slab into a nonstick skillet at medium heat, drizzling a tablespoon or two of chicken stock into the pan, covering, and cutting heat back to low at first sizzle, I experienced a flash of self-awareness, showing me how Philistinian I looked.

Not a pretty picture. I appeared like some elderly British pensioner futzing around mournfully in his bathrobe, dutifully executing a series of tasks beginning with the opening of a reeking can of cat food. This is not how magic conjuring is assumed to look (yet again: magic is messy).

But then I transferred the lasagna to my plate and beheld a thing of beauty. The bottom was just starting to crunch/caramelize, and the rest was perfectly melty and moistened. As is often true, my reheating turned out better than the original. So-so lasagna was transformed into something that could make you weep. All via my dull, dutiful, uninteresting actions (it reminds me of Von's inability to account for the magic of his legendary cookies cooked from the recipe on the oatmeal box).

But thinking back on it, I realize that I'd done one really clever, advanced, amazing thing: I stayed out of the way. There are infinite ways - many of them smart-seeming - in which I could have made it worse, and I did none of them. Very few people can downshift to this lowly level of utter brutish vapidity. No one wants to be Nigel in his shabby bathrobe. They all want to be brisk, confident David Copperfields. They want to execute moves.

Simple things are hard because of the exposure, sure, but, just as much, it's because we're sorely tempted to screw things up with counterproductive complexity.

My favorite Yiddish word: "undgepotchkied", the term for something hopelessly over-tweaked. It's a subset of FUBAR.

In fact, the very essence of being human is the inclination to fuck up simplicity via heavy-handed complication. It's what we do.

As I wrote in my explanation of why god lets bad things happen:

Consider America. After millennia spent desperately seeking cheat codes for this world, figuring the whole while that things would be so much better if only we could purge the illness and lions and warlords, the famines, draughts, and extreme poverty, we've done it! This richest of rich-world countries has expunged the vast majority of its nemeses! Yet look around you. Most of us spend most of our time building needless drama, stress, and sorrow for ourselves. We are far more depressed than any human beings anywhere, ever. We build internal towers of brooding discontent, and spend vast tracts of time lost in tumultuous TV shows and video games and sad songs and memories of pain and worries of loss, desperately seeking out whatever snatches of drama we can find to identify with. Having finally slayed the monsters, we are bored, discontent, and hellbent on creating new monstrous worlds to inhabit as deeply and as continuously as possible. Virtual reality technology is right around the corner, and one senses that the public can hardly wait. Do you imagine we'll use it to build lovely realms without violence, pain, or menace? Of course not. We like those things! We plainly crave them! Even in our "real" offline lives, we creatively find dire stress and drama amid our ridiculously safe and comfortable American existence!

Pepin's Chowhound Manifesto

From Jacques Pepin's Washington Post op-ed on eggs

The ham and eggs of the corner diner can be as superb as the caviar omelet of Michelin’s most touted triple-starred restaurant.

I never thought I’d see the day when Jaques Pepin would be caught publicly saying something like this. Jesus, he sounds like me, circa 1997. At that time, as was true for decades prior, such heresy would have marked you as a lunatic. Believe me, I know.

Many readers will have no idea what I'm even talking about. It's been forgotten that until fairly recently restaurants without linen napkins, or serving cuisines other than the handful deemed "serious" by tastemakers like Pepin, were gastronomic outcasts to be ignored or else described with dripping condescension ("These wonderfully inexpensive little 'ethnic' places" - thus is literally the entire world tossed casually into a 'miscellaneous' drawer - "offer surprisingly tasty quick fill-ups for those without the refinement or funds to enjoy proper dining").

Always "little" places. "Grandma" places. "Greasy spoons". "Holes in walls". Restaurants that couldn't cough up cash for shmancy digs represented a whole other ilk - dare I say class? It was 100% snobbery, with nothing to do with food or quality.

People don't think like this anymore - the preceding two paragraphs will seem alien to anyone under 30 - because a couple generations of food writers fought tenaciously to bash through long-standing gates of snobbery painstakingly maintained by the likes of Pepin, who needed to justify their premium branding as they fed and/or informed status-seeking "gourmets" and foodies.

Those guys were always in on their own con. They privately winked at people like me - and ate like people like me - while publicly scowling at our lack of refinement. Now you've seen the truth revealed.


I like and respect Pepin and his work. He was far from the most egregious of the old guard of snobs, periodically expressing delight for the "lusty rustic fare yadda yadda of the provinces" (always with a touch of condescension to preserve the elevation of his own position). He was not an utter French chauvinist, sometimes cursorily covering other cuisines.

But he made such moves only after tides had turned, when it was not only safe but lucrative to do so. And, to my knowledge, he never before went as far as this corner diner quote, which comes 25 years too late (frankly, I could have used some cover from someone as established as Pepin back then).

Why 100% of Mueller Report Should be Public

Frank Figliuzzi, former Assistant Director for FBI Counterintelligence, is the only talking head who says surprising things on TV. Here's a whopper, from a couple minutes ago.

Frank demanded 100% public disclosure of the Mueller Report.

Host Katy Tur asked the correct follow-up question: But what about parts of the report revealing secret intelligence or intelligence-gathering techniques?

Frank batted back with a reply so utterly reasonable, yet so missed by literally all other pundits, that I felt compelled to record it and post here.

Viva Frank Figliuzzi.

Pizza Protocol

During my heart problems a few years ago, I was ordered on a permanent low fat diet. After the subtle shrug that firmly shuts down (if I catch it early) my mind's eager inclination to make things A Whole Drama, I set myself to thinking about how I'd handle my pizza situation.

I resorted to a tactic I like to call "reality". It's the alternative to self-indulgently spinning up ditzy drama (e.g. pouting about how life as I know it will never be the same whenever something changes). And I cooked up the following ground rules:

• I'd eliminate all bad pizza.
• I'd eliminate all so-so pizza.
• Really good pizza is permissable, but only one slice.
• If really necessary, I could occasionally enjoy two slices.
• Since I already cooked healthy at home, I'd cook at home a bit more to offset the errant slices.

This policy eliminates 90% of my normal fat-ingestion-via-pizza, while removing only 10% of my enjoyment:

• I never liked the bad or so-so pizza anyway (and I'd simply work harder when hungry with nothing else easily within range).
• The first slice is the best slice, anyway. And the third slice is pleasureless gluttony.
• There's not a single hard denial here of anything really meaningful to me.

Along similar lines, see "The Best, Easiest, and Most Sustainable Diet Tip"

Definitions

Welcome the latest label/tag here at the Slog: “Definitions”.

Here are all postings with that label (they're pithy enough that you can read all nine in a couple minutes).


Speaking of pith, here are some uncharacteristically pithy statements a Slog reader once extracted.

Why Hacks Think They're Geniuses

I write a lot about commitment. The degree of dedication, focus, obsession - whatever you want to call it - required to create something with some magic to it is not just extremely high, but downright repulsive to view from up-close. I like to remind people that Beethoven composed in a diaper (that expression of revulsion that just crossed your face says it all. Hold that thought!).

As I keep saying, magic is messy...even though we innately expect our magicians to be suave David Copperfields. If people knew what truly went into the magic tricks of creativity - the demented level of over-the-top caring - they'd cross the street to avoid the pathetic, kicked-in wretches who traffic in such work.

I offered this quote a few months ago which gave away the formula:

"When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely." - Zen dude Shunryu Suzuki

Burn victims aren't real suave. A pile of ashes is in no position to impress you.

Practical example. I once challenged a chef friend to try something difficult - it was a playful, informal thing, with no stakes at all - and two hours later I glimpsed him in his kitchen throwing ingredients at the wall and sobbing uncontrollably (and he was a tough-assed, unfussy sort of dude). You might imagine that I dashed, ashamed and alarmed, into the kitchen to call off the challenge. On the contrary, I felt immense satisfaction. Not because I'm a sadist, but because I knew I'd inspired him to create, and this is what real creativity looks like. It's a dirty job that breaks you if you do it right. (P.S.: his final result totally killed.)

My thoughts on this seldom seem to land for people. It's impossible to drive any of this home to uninspired, uncreative creators (the ones who churn out the usual crap, leaning on formula and emulation, and who are constitutionally incapable of a good sob). And I just realized why.

It's super hard to write a lousy book, compose a lousy symphony, direct a lousy film, or paint a lousy mural. It takes 10 years of instrumental training plus another decade of improvisation experience to even begin to call oneself a jazz musician - far longer than med school! - so it's little wonder that every unexceptional player considers himself some sort of genius.

Every purveyor of crap feels - with good reason! - like they've made the Big Sacrifice. They've tasted commitment and suffered for their art. Every one of them. That's why uninspired hacks nod along in weary agreement when you discuss "commitment". Just getting to square one, assembling and presenting something with some minimal degree of competence, is inhumanly difficult. They all believe they've done the thing because they've done the thing!

Here's what I'd say to such people: Remember how hard it was just to generate and organize that material and have it be coherent? Well, what if some impossible-to-please tyrant loomed constantly over your shoulder, screaming at you to demolish perfectly adequate chunks and rework them for a result that's far better than it needs to be; far better than audiences will likely even notice, much less appreciate?

What if that belligerent asshole required you to treat every trivial decision like a matter of life or death?

What if every facile choice and easy cliché stabbed at him like a dagger to the heart?

What if, amid the overall death march, he compelled you to weigh yourself down further with seemingly unnecessary extra compulsions and requirements?

What if he demanded ceaseless self-questioning, leaving you perpetually unsure whether you've committed the sin of settling for "good enough" rather than riding the curve of diminishing results all the way to brilliance (100,000 times harder...when it's already so, so hard)?

What if you needed to spend time soothing collaborators who might otherwise feel smothered by the intensity of the demands he compels you to satisfy?

And what if you could never, ever evade this person, because it was you?


And what if you - broken, bedraggled, and having been entirely (per the Zen quotation above) consumed by the task - needed to put on a tuxedo and go out there and feign ease, because people won't even notice magic unless it's conjured/marketed by some shiny, toothy, theatrically effortless David Copperfield?


See also "The Times Everything Worked Out" - especially the footer - and "The Most Helpful Insight About Creativity"