28. January 2009 by Jenn.

A trend: Recently I received two calls, on different nights and from different men, at just about 10 minutes before one a.m. This seems evidence to me of two American problems - cell phone culture, which allows people to do all kinds of rude things in the name of reaching out and touching their neighbors, and the hell of dating. Oh, and drinking. Make that three American problems. Allow some backstory/overview here:

I should say that I’ve never “gotten” a boyfriend through dating - I’ve always spent time with the person some other way, and when we realized we enjoyed talking, spending time together began to include dinner and movies and so on. Anytime an appointment was made with scant reason to back it up (a fifteen minute chat in a bar, say), it was damn nearly a waste of time. So, dating: the weirdness of setting up what amounts to appointments, more or less, with people you barely know who might already want to see you naked.

The cell-phone part of this: a lot of us would agree that cell phone chat is the cigarette prop, the Something to Do With Your Hands, of our time. Many people don’t seem to want to buck up and read a book, call up a daydream, or understand that they’re not that important. (I realize that calls made from home, which the following calls surely were, might not qualify as cell-phone problems, but the cell thing has change the way people use phones, period.) 

So, do many people find calling in the wee hours appropriate? Or do I just attract the presumptuous sort?

My guy friends think it’s all about trying to get laid (”They want you,” “A booty call!” My friend Rob: “Has he seen you naked? If he hasn’t already seen you naked, it’s not okay.” )

Drinking is surely a factor - at least one of them sounded drunk. I didn’t answer that call. We met for the second time about six hours earlier at a local jazz bar, and I decided to, in keeping with this doing things I don’t normally do thing, give him my number. I just thought he’d be fun to know, probably. We had a fun chat for the second time in a few months, exchanged cards, and set off for different scenes, me a house party and him a businessy get-together. The text message arrived within an hour or so: How’s the party? Okay, now that would be cute if it stopped there for the night. A voicemail was left about an hour later, trying to get me to stop at the restaurant/bar where he was having drinks with other lawyers. I didn’t get either of these messages until after the fact; I left my phone in my coat pocke. So there was a pile-up effect to his messages that made me uncomfortable.

Then the call after I arrived home and was getting ready for bed, at 12:50 a.m. He sounded, on the message,  a bit slurry; he invited me to do something with him the next afternoon. The next day I sent a text. I figured some feedback might be the right thing to do.

The call from the other guy, which actually happened first, came about after hanging out a few times, but also after not having talked for three weeks.

The phone rings. I look at my watch. It’s 12:48 a.m. I pick up. Being the about-town person that I am, I’m curled up on my couch, watching Elf (this was Christmas week, after all).

I pick up; I don’t recognize the voice. He identifies himself. Me: “What time is it?” He may have sounded sheepish. “1.” A pause. “Is this an appropriate time to call me?” No answer. Me: “I’ll be around tomorrow if you want to call then.” Click. He hasn’t called again. 

It’s funny. He has performed in a unique, ironic-cover band, and the cd has been part of my home soundtrack for a few weeks. When listening to the band’s version of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love”, and his plaintive-in-an-ironic-way vocals on it, I can’t help smiling. The phone is not his friend.

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23. January 2009 by Jenn.

When you’re spending time with someone, in particular someone who professes interest in you romantically, watch how he treats your pizza. Why? Because pizza is, at least in this country, a canvas that can be painted any number of ways depending on your mood, whim, personality, budget, company, region, and/or ethnicity. And how open-minded, reasonable, and generous the players are can come into play. 

Because there’s so much room to play around, so to speak, a pizza order can speak volumes, serve as a litmus test, predict a lot about your interactions with the person with whom you’re doing the choosing. It can serve as a gauge of how amenable someone is to such things as change and compromise. You can determine how discerning someone is regarding matters of taste and balance. You may be able to see, in something as simple as a pizza order, how much someone cares about you, or put another way, how stuck on himself he is.  Is it all about him? Is he open to learning something? Is he a tad cheap? Does getting everything he can for his dollar (as he sees it) trump a tasty, well-balanced pie with a firm crust?  

Of course, this all applies to you, too. I try. I object to multiple toppings and indiscriminate combinations, but you could probably talk me into a pie with pineapple or something barbeque. Once. 

Topping a crisp ring of dough is an opportunity for creativity, perhaps, but it shouldn’t necessarily be, given the simple rules of the game:  

*Don’t overload your pizza with toppings, or you’ll detract from the, we hope, expertly rendered crust**, sassy sauce, glob of boring, pointless mozzarella, or other, more worthy, cheese. 

*Toppings should be lovingly prepared but considered supporting players to the main events, the aforementioned sauce, crust and cheese. 

*Too many vegetable toppings (say, more than one) result in a soggy, droopy crust. 

**A tip: When ordering a pizza for delivery, consider ordering it well done. I don’t advocate for well doneness any other time, but as the pizza will steam in the box on the way over to your house/gathering, having them cook it just a bit longer than standard can prevent a soggy crust. My friend Tom, owner of a pizzeria, supports this idea. “The pizza you eat in the shop is not the one you eat at home,” he says, referring to the differences in crust due to the boxed trip. 

And now for our story. Some months back I invited a friend over for a movie and pizza. I supplied the movie and of course, the venue, he the wine. He may have paid for the pizza - I can’t remember, and his paying may have something to do with what followed. We’ll call him Kurt. It went something like this: 

Kurt, perusing the pizza offerings on the takeout menu of a respected local establishment: They have a special; you can get five toppings. 

Me: Oh. I’m part Italian-American. Italian Americans - We think anything over two toppings is disgusting. [The special he was interested in featured pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions and mushrooms, I believe.] 

Kurt: But they’re having a special.  

Me: I’m pretty open – anything except mushrooms – most places use canned. And I’d rather not have more than one meat, unless we do a half and half. 

Now, this was actually me stretching a bit. I knew three vegetables, for example, would be a disaster: They release water as they cook, making the crust soggy. But I had decided to let things happen more often in my life, to not seem to be trying to teach my friends things so much. But really, I was practically retching at the thought of a mountain of crap topping our order.  

I thought of ordering a hoagie, as the place doesn’t have a small pie fit for one. He could get the smallest pie and take the leftovers home. But maybe this wasn’t such a “social” suggestion, and I felt sick of being a tiger in a lions’-pride kind of world. 

Kurt: But they’re having a special – five toppings. 

Me: But I don’t like that. [Translation: What good is a special if I don’t want to eat it?] 

[Insert dramatic pause, a pause that seems to indicate that I’m tampering with his happiness and wallet here.] 

Me: Okay: I can do two meats and maybe a vegetable.  

Aside: Now, if you think I complicated this matter, realize that I’ve said “I can’t eat that” and he’s not relenting. I’m being flexible and trying to make sure I can eat what we order. 

I’m not sure what happened next, except that he ordered a pizza with a minimum of four toppings. There may have been five. The slices hung vertically when picked up, they were so soggy. I slogged through two pieces because I was really hungry and several hours later threw the leftovers in the trash without hesitation, unheard of for me. I was proud, though, that I let this happen, sat back and saw where the night (and his less than stellar pizza taste) took us.  

The lessons: It’s hard to have any kind of sustained fun with someone who doesn’t listen to what you want, doesn’t take your pizza seriously. Subsequent events, not important here, proved this. I never considered Kurt a boyfriend, but if I was moving in that direction, the pizza incident would have sounded an alarm. (It’s funny: I’m not a pizza girl anyway; I suggested pizza with the movie as an easy, democratic way to have a meal.) Overall, it’s simple: With pizza, and in life, it’s easy to adjust up or down one or two ingredients. It’s not that difficult to be considerate as well as satisfied in most situations. I, for one, will continue to work on it.

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19. January 2009 by Jenn.

It seems I may be more of a journalist, or at least one better-rounded, than Katie Couric, the first solo female anchor on a major broadcast network. At least according to one controversial cultural commentator. Of course, the only national exposure I’ve had includes a tiny front-of-the-book piece in Gourmet and a lamely edited page in Ode, and I’m print, not broadcast, with all of its special requirements. But still.  

In a recent Salon.com column , Camille Paglia discusses the media take-down of Sarah Palin, whom she admires for being scrappy and perceptive as well as a lot smarter than many people believe. Paglia here makes reference to the Couric/Palin interview on foreign policy, and wags her finger at what she sees as the hypocrites who won’t give Palin a break, stating, “And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitely the stupidest.”

I interviewed Paglia in spring of 2005, and as we had a three-hour, wide-ranging conversation – I was excited to be meeting her and didn’t want to let her go – she may actually remember me as she mentally flips through the pages of the various reporters she’s encountered. And I stupidly brought her something - olives, which I’d read she loved since she was four. I heard later that, though she would normally not accept anything let alone avail herself of whatever it was, she ate them and loved them. So there. I’m smarter than Couric. Now if I could just be richer.

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31. December 2008 by Jenn.

Postscript: Apparently Piven has said since his story broke that the cause of his mercury sickness was fish twice a week for 20 years, not sushi twice a day. 

Maybe the strangest example yet of our celebrity-food culture: Actor Jeremy Piven bows out of a Broadway play because, his spokespeople say, he has a “crippling addiction” to sushi that has caused mercury poisoning. If this isn’t a perfect-for-our-times example of idiocy and pretension, I don’t know what is. Upon reading the story, I was put in mind of the more pretentious, self-satisfied strain of Whole Foods shopper.

Piven, according to the story, eats sushi twice a day. Is he hitting Whole Foods for his supply, with its McSushi, that is, with its sitting-too-long fish and rubbery rice?  (Sending an intern to a Japanese restaurant would be more in keeping it real with his celebrity, so he might go that way.) This would be beyond offensive. Of course, Whole Foods offers the hip and health-conscious brown, and more recently the ridiculous “multigrain,” rice (it’s apparently multiple rices, not multiple grains, and by the way, aren’t all rices the same grain?), and the opportunity to feel sophisticated and exotic. It is an astoundingly ripped-off group of people.  

So, Wayward Sushi Acolytes, It goes like this: Sushi should be made to order and by the way, should be made with white rice. (Texture is everything here, so you should be looking elsewhere for your whole grains.) Rather than hitting Whole Foods a few times a week and telling your co-workers how much you like sushi, save your money and go to a reputable sushi restaurant once in a while. It’s a much better value. Cheaper does not mean a better value. If you’ve only eaten sushi at Whole Foods, you’ve never eaten it. So there.

More recent food-world related silliness: Rachel Ray is marketing a sleek “garbage bowl” to save people the trip to the trash can while prepping food! This, presuming, I guess, that one can’t use nearly any receptacle in the kitchen for such a shortcut. This contribution is interestingly in line with her cooking abilities, but offensive nonetheless. She’s got around 20 books out at this point, which probably contain two books worth of recipes. How much money does she need? And who will buy such an insult? This should remain a mystery.

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31. December 2008 by Jenn.

December 31, 2008 

As 2008 comes to a close (it’s late afternoon), I’ll issue an appreciation, some of it strictly personal, and by association, some recommendations: 

Fencing (classes and advancing one level; barely scratched the surface of scratching the surface); the people at the Fencing Academy of Phila.; meeting my friend Sarah and discovering that meat substitutes can be worthwhile (Find her Vrapple - “We kick the crap out of scrapple” - at a store near you!); Seeing “Kooza” by Cirque du Soleil in the spring - avoided Cirque for years only to be knocked out by it; a few really fun trips to NYC, including a few rich exhibits at Fashion Institute of Technology (Yeah! I’m a girl!); Labor Day weekend on Fire Island at my then-employer’s lovely, better-than-beach house with work mates and their partners (a town full of vacationing gay men, the most fun place in the world!); the extended tomato season, including the cool black cherry tomatoes with the tasty, viscous juice (Thanks, Fair Food Farmstand!); Indian summer; The Phillies winning the World Series; The Obama win, though he’s just a man, and not King, Gandhi, Kennedy, and last but not least Jesus, rolled into one; introducing myself to the work of Eddie Izzard, George Carlin, and the people behind The Wire; Torchwood (Only enhanced by John Barrowman’s hammy acting - visiting Cardiff, Wales is now on the wish list); hookah/shisha smoking (it was an herb that wasn’t weed or tobacco, apparently); re-discovering how much fun my aunt is through e-mail letters; dad still hanging tough through a serious illness with an iron will and occassionally, his signature wry sense of humor.

Movies: Man On Wire; Hellboy II: The Golden Army, so weirdly different in tone than the first one. Lots of movies, some not released in 2008, including Paprika (anime); Candy; Broken English; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Once (quiet film about an Irish musician and the piano player woman he meets on the streets of Dublin); Flannel Pajamas; Dinner Rush (saw this before in the theater, I believe, but didn’t absorb it); Persepolis (though the girl’s grating rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” stayed in my head for a while and almost made me sorry I saw it); Rounders, finally - it went down like an appetizer, quick and clean and tasty; The Future is Unwritten: Joe Strummer -this is inspirational, in a way that Man On Wire is.

Caught up on several years of TV, on DVD, and was impressed enough to not want cable in my home, lest I stay on my couch for months at a time. Tried The L Word and (in the interest of seeing for myself what all the yelling was about) Sex and the City: unwatchable, both. Why are silly, annoying, and desperate for a man (or woman) so interesting to female viewers? Compelling? Five seasons of The Wire; the latest (and/or all of, on DVD) Arrested Development; Medium, Dexter; Weeds; Torchwood; The Office (US); 30 Rock. There were more - Like Mad Men but was sick of hearing how great it is: Okay, people smoked and drank and littered and thought unhappy women were mentally ill- How clever! Some things have changed, yes, I get it. Hate that secretary with the dumb bangs. Definitely not routing for her. I kept watching because I cared about the Drapers and wanted to see Betty’s dresses. Lots of straight men seem to like this show, which I find strange. Anyway, I’m a season behind and not minding it.

Saw Elf at last! Fine addition to my Christmas movies. 

Missed, but intend to make my movie-watching business: Patti Smith: Dream of Life; Wendy and Lucy; Encounters At the End of the World; A Christmas Tale; Synecdoche, New York; and The Wrestler.

There were books and magazine articles but I don’t feel like listing them here.

Taste sensations 2008: The blend of mayo with sriracha sauce - I’m a genius!; various heirloom and local tomatoes; shitake mushrooms; Uncle Richard’s hot peach salsa; candied fennel by the chef/owner of James, found at a local food-lover’s paradise (except for the annoying “foodies” the place is awash with); the stuffed squash blossoms at Persimmon (seasonal/changing menu) in NYC’s Village somewhere - you think it’s filled with Parmiggiano and bacon, but it’s a tofu-based mixture; the tripe sandwich from George’s window shop in Philly’s Italian Market. Really! A few weeks back I was melancholy for my mother, who had a father from just outside Rome. Passing the window, went for it. Try this offal once, in a spicy red sauce, if you eat meat anyway, and/or before you go vegan. And no, tripe is not cow intestine - find out yourself what it is.  All sorts of roasted vegetables. Bok choy - the salmon of the vegetable world; you can’t ruin it. The pad thai at a joint on Race Street, not sure of name now, but you just can’t get passed great pad thai. Dulse -a seaweed, minerally tasting and somehow addictive.

I’m closing out 2008 with George Carlin: Jammin in New York, and the 2nd season of the Sarah Silverman Program. Maybe some Thai or Thai-inspired food tonight. A party with the aforementioned Sarah, at the home of someone I don’t know. It remains to be seen where I’ll be at midnight, tipping my hat to 2009.

Alright, 2008. Well done. We need big now, though. Glitz, a little drama, maybe New Orleans. Devotion. Raw oysters. The opera. Hunkering down. Some roof-top shout-outs.

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18. October 2008 by Jenn.

October 18, Gramercy Park, NYC 

Things I’ve learned today: 

*Not much of a view: Dreaming about your ex-boyfriend just before you wake up is a melancholy way to start the day, made more so when you look through the window of your hotel room a minute later and see what looks like a charcoal drawing on the other side. Luckily, getting closer I found a sunny sky peeking through the slit between the two buildings out there. This was lucky not in the interest of cheering me up about a relationship, but because running around Manhattan in the rain is not what I planned for this birthday trip - and I have a blow out.

*At least a few scientists, social scientists, or scholarly types (it’s not clear what the credentials are) have espoused the view that “oriental” and “primitive” women  have “rearward” vulvas. The room I’m staying in at an artist-painted hotel has paintings on the walls of Chinese lovers - sort of ancients in rural settings without the rural settings . The slight haha factor of the room makes you come up with names for it (Ancient Chinese Secret, Chinese Laundry Room). One drawing is done as a poster of a journal or text book page, with a couple in a curious position and the scholarly, if erroneous, description/info about backward women underneath. Hot damn! 

*A chocolate, glazed donut at Dunkin Donuts has 34o calories, something I discovered when I went in to pick up a coffee with milk and sugar for Diego, the manager of the hotel, which I’ve stayed in since yesterday.  I was all set to get a donut, and the helpful info helped me decide against it. Do you really need calorie stats for donuts? This reminds me of Starbucks low fat and worthless baked items (except for a couple of full-fat muffins in chocolate and pumpkin): If you need to know how fatty a dessert-type snack is, or you only eat cake when it’s got no fat, choose something fruit or vegetable. If you’re strictly health conscious and obsessed with fat, eat a stalk of celery. There are so many ways to get a nutritional bang for your buck, and none of them involve cake of any sort. And that low-fat pound cake has a scarier list of ingredients than any lovingly made cake containing butter, eggs, and sugar. 

*From the “Gothic: Dark Glamour” and “Arbiters of Style” exhibits at the Fashion Institute of Technology - Virtually all fashion ideas have been done, that’s no surprise - they’re exponentially ripped off now - and that’s not a bad thing, just the way it is. But over the past hundred years, it’s amazing just how much recycling there is - like pop music. There aren’t unlimited great ideas, just unlimited ways of combining them, it seems. 

*From the Museum of Sex (I walked by twice and decided to go in): ** Wolves mating sound like a party in a haunted house; hyenas ramble, chirp, and laugh, well, like hyenas; the female hyena gives birth by “discharging a baby hyena [what else?] from the end of her ‘penis.’” Biologists collect this info, so I guess we have no right thinking animals are weird. Oh, and vasectomies are favored for “neutering” a lion, so to avoid influencing his role in his pride, and male seahorses do get pregnant (I’ve been hearing that for a while now) after females deposit eggs into their stomach pouches. On another floor of the museum, people were treated to celebrity sex tapes, which basically show that if you’re dumb enough to put yourself on tape being sexually intimate and you’re famous, you also tend to engage in curiously unsexy sex. I should go catch the Steinkamp installation, which involves “trippy” wall projections of poisonous flowers, but first I’m going to see if I can persuade Diego to show me/let me see any empty rooms - they’re all painted by artists. Cheers!  

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15. October 2008 by Jenn.

To all the men (boys may be forgiven) who wear basketball shorts: If you don’t play for the NBA or the NCAA, or you’re not, at least, in a pick-up game, give up the shorts. They look dumb. They’re not flattering. Especially if you’re short. Lots of things comfortable are not wearable. You don’t come off like a super sports-lovin’ hipster in them. Dumb. Clumsy. Not hip. Unsexy. You’re a grown man.

To all the women who wear racer-back tanks with bra straps shown running down your shoulder blades: Please consider purchasing a racer-back bra, or one of the many styles that include a hook for turning your bra straps into racer-back. Backs are sexy. Shoulder blades are sexy.  And as my grandmother said, “The back is as important as the front.” Or, “Going is as important as arriving.” Something like that.

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25. March 2008 by Jenn.

These movies, all of which I’ve seen in the past few months, sort of sparkle with freshness and humanity. It’s a movie lover’s assortment.

Broken English 

Candy

Casanova

Paprika (animated) 

Into the Wild

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