Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Crossing Genre and the Demise of USC's MPW Program

The students in USC's MPW program were alerted to the demise of our program last week. We were made to understand that it was a "business decision," and that the program will no longer exist after spring of 2016.

I was not surprised because of several reasons. MPW is not a classic master's program in that the initials, which stand for Masters of Professional Writing, might not be recognized on someone's vitae as having the same merit as MFA or PhD. I'll get to whether or not this is reasonable. Furthermore, more petty controversies not worth mentioning here might have tainted the new dean's opinion of the program. Moreover, in terms of what qualifies as a "business decision," one can only imagine the kind of talks surrounding reputation and finances that go on behind closed doors in a private university like USC, where it's all about public relations and endowment. Beyond all of this, changes in the structure of the Writing Program suggest that it won't be using MPW students in the future to teach composition. And some overlap with the theater program and PhD program in Creative Writing and Literature might suggest redundancies in the mind of a new dean ready to prove his mettle. To show that he means "business."

So I was not particularly surprised to get the announcement. Do I think this was a good decision? Regardless of how the students feel knowing that the education listed on their resumes and vita will be defunct and require explanation to any future employers, was this the right way to pinch pennies or swipe away a program in the interest of repute? All emotions aside-- even aligning myself with pragmatism-- I still think it was a terrible idea.

Because we need interdisciplinary, cross-genre writing programs like the Masters of Professional Writing, which has little to do with the "P" and more to do with the "M" and "W." I have an MFA in poetry, and the program I attended at the University of Washington is a very good program where I learned how to be a better poet, but I also know that the poets and fiction writers did our work off in our own little enclaves where we, to a certain extent, became more polarized in how we approached genre. Our poems became more poetic and our fiction became more polished, more exemplary of good fictive prose. This is all very valuable. Long live the genre-specific MFA.

Some of us, however, really thrive in an environment where we are encouraged to use the kind of precision and figurative language usually reserved for poetry in our prose writing. Some of us become better poets when we are made to remember that there is a whole cohort of readers out there that do better with poetry when it respects the role the sentence plays in the line, and when poetry gives a nod to the kind of accessibility usually reserved for prose writing. In other words, no matter what one's literary art, we can often benefit from working outside our comfort zone, and for some of us, our comfort zone is specifically in the gray area that exists between poetry and prose. Or between playwriting and poetry. Or between creative non-fiction and poetry. Etcetera and so on.

The demise of the MPW program, which encourages, even requires, experimentation and inter-disciplinary writing, is a true loss then. What a shame to see this original program go away. What a shame to value the intensive MFA model over one which, if we're doing the work and open to new experience, makes us better writers both within and without our chosen concentrations.



Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Unsung Regular


Best bar and grill in Fremont
The difference between a “bar and grill” and a gastropub is like determining the difference between a pair of trousers from The Gap versus those from Banana Republic. It’s likely that they’re cut from the same cloth, but perhaps the stitching may be a thread or two better. Only the very picky may notice, and mainly it’s the label that counts. The same can be said for designating a burger. The one from a gastropub might feature a harissa-anointed compote of heirloom peppers while the bar-and-grill burger might feature a simple, roasted pepper medley. You can be sure though, just like the trousers, that you’ll pay an extra ten dollars or so for the privilege of a gastropub burger even if, for all intents and purposes,  you’d be just as satisfied with a bar-and-grill burger. Thus a gastropub becomes one more destination restaurant when, really, what every neighborhood needs is a bar and grill. A comfortable place you can go on a whim when you realize that the chicken breasts in your fridge have started to gray. A place that welcomes children, if not begrudgingly, with untruffled french fries, a cupful of crayons, and something to draw on. A place where— to quote the often over-quoted Cheers— everybody knows your name. You can keep your gastropubs. I’ll take sassy waitresses, sports television, Jaeger shots, and drunk regulars over harassed servers, ambient lighting, and an annoyance of microbrews. Gastropubs don’t make good second homes. Bars with grills do. 

        I worked in a bar and grill—self-designated as an “Eatery and Ale House”—for years in the capacity of both bartender and sassy waitress, and I look back on that mildly hung-over time in my life with fondness. The establishment in question, Norm’s, is still located in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. It may be that the drizzle of Seattle drives up the need for warm, amiable watering holes that feature comfort food. My old neighborhood had at least three such places. What distinguishes Norm’s—named after the owner’s golden retriever—from the other burger and beer joints is its dedication to all creatures canine. While Sunday brunch behind the bar turned me into a Bloody Mary-making automaton, Sunday brunch on the floor meant that I avoided the tangle of Flexi-leads like a jewelry thief avoids the laser-grid alarm in every hackneyed heist movie. The peerless Thursday night trivia, dimly lit red booths, quality of televisions, and stiffly poured cocktails are all selling points at Norm’s, but the dog art pinned to the walls and the fact that you can bring your Great Dane into the restaurant with you while you watch the World Cup finals is unprecedented. 

        And while bartending on weekend nights featured a distinguishable type known for their skewed ball-caps and taste for Jaeger Bombs chased by jumbo PBRs in paper bags, the rest of the week saw more subdued regulars lining the bar. The weekday shmoes— the ones who stood out as customers who crossed the friend barrier— were more interested in eating a quiet meal while bending the bartender’s ear. One such regular that easily pops into my mind is Chris Sypolt. When we moved back to Seattle for a second time, he was the first person at our house, and he bore the gift of The Macallan. It may have even been the 18-year. I don’t know now. The bottle is long gone. 

        I like to just call him “Sypolt” because although it is informal and friendly to call someone by their first name, it’s even more familiar to call someone by their last, so long as you drop the “mister.” Sypolt was reliably seated on his stool at least half my shifts, and although some evenings passed with not much more than light banter and the exchange of Visa for scotch, it was always comforting to have him there noodling around on his iPhone. His company elicited a kind of nostalgia associated with ready landmarks, although I’m not sure how he would feel if I equated his presence with that of the enormous Lenin statue that postures in all of its non-sequitur glory in front of the Fremont gelato place. 



Lenin and Gelato
Every restaurant operation is an orchestration. Sometimes it’s a small-town philharmonic, sometimes it’s a community production of “Annie,” sometimes it’s Sondheim, and sometimes it’s a bit of absurdist theater a la Beckett. In terms of the front-of-house players, at the very least you need enough bartenders and barbacks (producers) to handle the necessary flow of beverages; enough servers (actors) to manage “the weeds” because if they’re too dense, it’s guaranteed poor service; and a host (director) if customers must wait for turned tables. I would argue, too, that every neighborhood bar and grill needs its regulars as much as a symphony needs the kettle drum guy or the theatre of the absurd needs that character whose primary role is to randomly shout “Death to Napoleon!” while lying on the stage. 

        If I were to carry this metaphor a little further, I would say that although the regulars that frequent restaurants aren’t part of the crew in the strictest sense, they do function like audience plants who are a part of the production while being apart from the production. The role of “regular” is a coveted one. Though they don’t work for the restaurant, they do cross the fourth wall, and their functions are varied. For example, they act as extras on a set. Sypolt’s role as the extra would read something like “Pittsburgh Steelers fan who always wears black and gold during football season” and “guy who makes friendly wagers where losing means drinking a well-gin shot.” They also function like promoters who bring in friends and who talk at length with their outside associates about restaurant-specific anecdotes. Like the time Bradley puked on the bar during Solstice Festival. And I’m sure Sypolt has told many an acquaintance about our friend Alyona, a bartender from my era who was known for her enormous, natural breasts; taste for vodka with pickles; and prickly Russian demeanor. They ensure quality control, too. Although we’ll never let Sypolt forget that one time he lost his shit because his burger wasn’t prepared correctly, you can be sure that those line cooks were more careful with temperature and seasoning after that. And, finally, they also can assume the role of security. Though I wouldn’t have relied on Sypolt to defend the cash register, if necessary, I’m sure he would have defended my honor. At the very least he would have dialed 911 from his iPhone. 

        When I asked Sypolt about his place at Norm’s, he went round-about to offer an answer: “There is an unspoken understanding between customer and server at a bar or restaurant that goes something like ‘At the end of the night, you will be full, drunk, happy, or nauseous, or some combination of these things: just remember who helped you get there when you decide on a tip.’ The staff have to trust their efforts will not go unrewarded. Too many times they are, which starts the spiraling descent into service apathy, and the entire experience suffers. Every so often the server is having a bad day, and I will pull that person aside and try to help them see where they went wrong. I've effectively become an ad hoc quality manager to help ensure that other customers are being treated as well as I have been over the years. Part of this is enlightened self-interest. If people are treated well, they will come back, and one of my favorite places will continue to be there when I stop by.” 

        I think this is reductive, and that he doesn’t value the many roles he plays when he takes his place at the bar— eight seats down, I think— and empties buckets of cheap scotch. I will say, however, that he’s gotten more philosophical ever since he left his internet job. When I knew him— that is, saw him in-person all the time— he worked for the online company he created and then sold. Ever since I left Seattle, he’s been cultivating a keen, and successful, interest in writing. This interest was fueled by his departure from the corporate world, but also from a need to offer consolation to his best friend who died last year of cancer. 

        I asked Sypolt if Norm’s played any part in helping him compose his letters to Carla, which he assembled into an e-book called Letters to the Big C. He said that he didn’t set out to write a book. “I set out, quite simply, to try to inspire my friend, to give her things that she could hold on to late at night, when fear and anxiety were her constant companions. The book is the compilation of all of the email and text messages that I sent to her over the course of 2012, plus some ancillary stuff, including emails to friends and family that help to advance the story. With the rules of interaction, so to speak, firmly in place at Norm's, I knew that I could go in and do the things that I needed to do, and that people would understand that I wasn't really going to interact for a while. After I had all of the emails in one place, and started stitching things together into what became Letters To The Big C, Norm's was a place where I could go, be mildly social, and work through the editing and typography details. It helped that virtually everyone knew the basics of the story and they could understand me being hyper-focused on what I eventually started calling “The Thing.” And, of course, these same people were the first ones who started reading it and helped me to spread the word.” What Sypolt says only reinforces my theories about the complex role of the regular customer in the life on a restaurant. It was not merely that he went to Norm’s and an exchange of products for money occurred. A whole story emerges that belies the cold transactional nature of commerce. 



This is Norman
I may be over-thinking this as I tend to do, but no one can deny that the regular customer plays an integral role in the restaurant “show.” Necessary not just in terms of their roles as QA experts and PR reps, but also as part of the décor, flavor, and overall gestalt of the dining and drinking experience. It’s no accident that whenever we think about the show Cheers, it’s almost always Norm and Cliff that pop into our heads. Without them, the show would have been nothing. So, too, is it with a neighborhood place: without your regulars, you’re nothing but a place that serves eats and ale. I had to ask Sypolt whether he thought he was more of a Cliff or a Norm. It’s an annoying question, and he kind of shrugged me off by saying that “as amalgamations of people you meet in bars, they are probably representative of the people you see in any place that has regulars, but I'd need to sit down and think about the archetypes to try to figure out where I sit. It is, after all, a sitcom where character depth takes a back seat to funny possibilities.” But then he did admit that he has Cliff’s brain for trivia and Norm's iron-clad liver for drinking.        

        The final thing I had to ask was what he thought of me as a bartender. It’s been long enough now since I’ve slung booze, and I didn’t think I could be hurt by an answer. His response? “What you lacked in speed and execution you more than made up for in humanity. It was always a pleasure to walk in and see that you were behind the bar.” Hey, there was nothing wrong with my execution! But thanks for the humanity part.

        Eh, you’re a good egg, Sypolt. You made the experience more human, too.

Sypolt and my boy

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Undead(ish)


After Nathan’s knife-twisting schemer of a wife out-maneuvered him via court settlement to hand over the better car, primary custody of their kids, the house he penned a large check for every month, and a significant chunk of his earnings as a urologist, it felt like a real kick in the pants to come to his senses shambling down Melrose as a flesh-eating zombie.
        Well this is a real, fine how-do-you-do, he thought with the better part of his brain still intact thanks in no small part to Mensa and the Friday crossword. One minute I’m in the neighbors' garage checking to see if they have any moving boxes left, the next thing I know their three-year-old gnashes a hole in my knee like some kind of rat dog. "God, what a little fucker," he grumbled as the sudden urge to consume gobs of stringy flesh grabbed him by the throat and walked him to the corner Bistro where well-heeled trophies jockeyed for sidewalk spots fully unaware that the local Viagra doctor yearned to unzip their soft bellies like Saint Laurent purses bursting with strands of gleaming entrails.
        "Hi Shirley," he exhaled a little shakily, "haven’t seen Teddy in a while."

        "Hey Doctor Nate," said Shirley, "You’re looking a little under-the-weather." 
        "Yeah, well, I think the neighbor’s preschooler turned me into a zombie," he offered with an unsure chuckle. "Plus, I've been dealing with a messy divorce." 
        "Wow, that’s adding insult to injury," she said. "Maybe Frites has something on the menu you can eat?" 
        "I guess I could check," he shrugged as he got a grip on his appetite and steadied his breathing in the perfect half-mast light of a dying Los Angeles Saturday. 
        "I hear the tartare is very good." 
        "Great," said Nate. "I guess I could get a few orders."
        "Would you like to sit? I don’t think Ted’s coming." 
        "Sure. So much for twelve solid years of veganism."
         Barely able to control his fork, Nathan tucked into the mounds of glistening raw beef made sophisticated with dijon and capers while Shirley nibbled on the little, round toasts like a bright-eyed squirrel. So much for so little to show in the end, he thought at the quaint outside table as the palm fronds waved their shadows around in the Santa Anas like frantic women vying for attention. So much for all those dicks I’ve cradled in my hands with a sympathetic wrinkle on my brow. So much for the organized office of brown leather and perfectly feathered files. So much for the wife’s little peach-fuzz mustache. For my beloved ex-Porsche in custom orange fleck, for the two-room dog house I built on weekends for my ex-beagle. 
         "So much for all of it. I’d eat it if I could. Stuff it right down my throat," he said as the bloodlust of hunger cleared a little from his eyes. He smiled with a head tilt, "Let’s toast to being undead," he said with a toss back of Vueve. Then he leaned in and bit Shirley’s ear. Too hard.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

This is Not About the Apple Pan


I thought, given my trip to the Apple Pan, that I would be writing something I'll call hamburger porn, which is more drippy and muscular than your average food porn and what you might find in the pages of Esquire adjacent to a homo-eroticized torso selling cologne. I thought I would be disparaging the fussy little burgers from Umami and all the other burgers resting on beds of laurels organically grown from trend-setting gardens. I thought I would be extolling the tang of an Apple Pan burger, a tang derived from a dill relish and catsup sauce (hardly secret as sauces go). Figured I would describe how the Apple Pan’s inch-thick wedge of iceberg trumps, on any given day, the stingy helping of greens most fashionable burgers wilt on contact. Reckoned, in general, I would be focusing on how a good burger is one that knows how to make juicy what should be juicy, and how to keep dry that which should stay dry.

Then, of course, in the interest of countering myself, I figured I would have had to veer off to discuss my general problem with eating for nostalgia’s sake, which often chooses to overlook the inherent issues with a place and its food. For example, if I were to have been able to write a straightforward hamburger piece, I would have complained about the Apple Pan’s modes of delivery: The way the burger is half-wrapped in paper— with no accompanying utensils, and just the tiniest institutional napkins— means that you pretty much have to eat it all without setting it down. No savoring in that. But since I couldn’t write that, I also couldn’t complain about the perfunctory service, the stifling heat of the so-called quaint (read: un-air-conditioned) space, or the amount of trash the Apple Pan must produce given the cardboard trays that the fries and accompanying catsup are delivered on as well as the paper cone (cute or stupid?) from which I drank my Diet Coke. I simply won’t write about how the smell of an Apple Pan burger lingers for hours on your hands even after you wash them.

Nope. I can’t write any of that. Instead I have to write a human interest piece. Why? because I forgot that the Apple Pan is cash only, which is one more way that old-fashioned gives way to frustration. Luckily for the cash-poor diner there is a Bank of America right next door. Oh, but wait… I had forgotten my ATM card in my parenting backpack and I was carrying, instead, my teaching backpack. The morning had been frantic, with my son wailing about having to go to preschool and with me hustling to get a lesson plan together for my composition class, which I taught prior to burgertime. Not to mention that I had a lot on my mind: the reality that my son needs to be assessed for learning disabilities, for example, or the never-ending to-do list for our new home, or the large stack of papers that needed to be graded over the weekend. Why wasn’t I carrying cash? Because I wasn’t, so lay off. How could I stick my ATM card into the parenting backpack without replacing it in my wallet? Because my mind was trying to hold on to a million thoughts at once, so I can’t really write about the white, wrap-around counter, which is the only seating, or the metal behemoth of a cash register, which must be a relic from the Apple Pan’s founding in 1947. 

Above all, I have to write about Deke, a gentleman dressed in casual pinstriped broadcloth and khaki who sat down next to me and proceeded to tuck into his newspaper in a way that said closed for conversation. Of course, I felt bad interrupting his lunchtime reading with the question, meekly asked, Is the Apple Pan cash only? Yet I had to ask as a glimmer of memory made me panic three bites in to the burger (with all the snap and juice of lettuce and beef, the Tillamook added a smooth creaminess to the composition) I really can’t write about. His reply was something like, “I don’t know, but don’t worry about it. Enjoy your food first and talk to the man later.” I’m sure he saw the sheer dread in my eyes as I pawed through my backpack looking for my ATM card. I nervously dipped my golden, medium cut fries in the huge mound of Heinz hastily poured for me by the server as I imagined myself wearing a paper hat and peeling potatoes in the back while the rest of the restaurant workers made fun of me in Spanish. Gringa estúpida no tiene dinero.

When my check was delivered, so was Deke’s. He settled my tab as well with no prompting. Just a shrug and I’ll get this one, too to the man behind the counter. Deke must have had a good nose for desperation, which, I’m sure, was fairly leaking from my pores. We chatted then about USC and writing and real estate. I had a stack of student papers in front of me that I was trying to read and keep free of catsup smears. The point is, I can’t write about a burger joint, not when the number of texts devoted to hamburger porn grossly outnumber the burgers worth lusting for. Moreover, I especially can’t dedicate the words of this essay to the task of deconstructing the Apple Pan eating experience when what is really important is that a man I didn’t even know bought me lunch because I showed up at a cash-only restaurant with no cash. There are burgers and kindness out there that defy expectations. Thanks, Deke. I’ll do what I can to pay the karma forward.




Saturday, September 14, 2013

Saucy Meatballs


Look into my spice cabinet: the neat rows of white pepper, cardamom, ground cloves, paprika, and curries— they all suggest that here lives someone who must enjoy what fire and chemistry can do to raw foods. You may notice on closer inspection, however, that the seals on these vials of magical powder remain unbroken. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I am not a gourmand, just someone who gets a frisson of pleasure from the aesthetics of perfectly lined up glass jars, small and squared off, uniform in size and shape, organized from lightest to darkest hue. Sometimes I’ll open the cabinet just to assign color names to the earthen tones. What a thrill.



Really, though, I want to want to cook. I have tools, even unusual ones, and pots and pans plus all the accouterments of a woman who makes busy in the kitchen. Likewise, I love to eat food from a domestic scene where steam and the scent of garlic intermingle with sips of wine, chatter with children tasked to peeling potatoes, and a little Sinatra on in the background. This is the idealized image of a home kitchen, but I have yet to realize it. Instead, whenever I attempt to prepare something that requires more than pouring Trader Joe’s tots and fish sticks on a cookie sheet and calling it cooking, my four-year-old will sneak off into a corner so he can poop in his pants, cover the coffee table with hundreds of very sticky stickers, or simply walk out the front door and down the steps to the street. But I’m being unfair: multitudes of mothers have lovingly prepared complicated meals while their preschoolers unwittingly attempted to drive them mad. The boy is not to blame.

I’d like to think that my resistance to cooking springs forth from the years I spent having to cook for my siblings while my single mother split her time between earning a living and becoming sober. When cooking is assigned as one more chore to be dutifully executed, it’s hard to derive any pleasure from it, and there are only so many times that a teenaged girl can turn perfectly good pork chops and burgers into something more akin to jerky and hockey pucks (respectively) before she decides it best to hang up the plastic spatula (which she half melted on the electric coil of the stove top) and go fetch slices of pizza from the corner deli instead. Again, though, I’m diverting in an attempt to avoid the truth, which is this: I like it best when food is prepared for me.

A kale salad and pork taco from Mixto, my trendy taco joint; slices from Tomato Pie, pizza as ever a perennial stand-by; a rotisserie chicken with hummus, pita, and marinated cabbage from Zankou Chicken, my Armenian family-meal fallback; grass-fed beef sliders and shoe-string fries from the Patty Wagon, our friendly neighborhood food truck parked at the Silverlake reservoir every Tuesday; the occasional elaborate set-up orchestrated by my mother-in-law, who unintentionally shames me into realizing that you can make food and keep kids alive at the same time (my husband and brother-in-law as living proof); even my husband, who will make the time to combine fettuccine with prawns, bacon, and asparagus so we can sit with wine and a lit candle after our son goes to bed. And so on. If I lift a finger, it’s to open my wallet, wash my mother-in-law’s dishes, or offer a grateful, sated, bedroom thank you to my sexy, stove-fluent husband.

But we’re moving in two days, and I have defrosted a one pound square of ground beef from the freezer with the great intention of trying to use up as much food as we can so we don’t have to move it. My husband, the one with a knack for fixing meat, is now busy fixing the leaky pipes in our new house (insert your own innuendos about preparing meat or laying pipe here), which leaves me with ground round, too much guilt about wasting food, and renewed aspirations about wanting to want to cook. I can try, I think. I grew up with meatballs, and I have the flashes of memory to prove it: the clean iron flavor of raw chuck, stolen from the metal bowl; the image of my grandfather’s hands pressing breadcrumbs and egg through the combed red strands, the smell of onion and beef as the meatballs were first fried in olive oil before being plunged in marinara. I think I can make those. But can I do it without a recipe?


Improvisation is something that requires a knack, best for people comfortable with spontaneous jazz hands and not, perhaps, for people like myself who live and die by precision, or who, at least, get great pleasure from the Things Organized Neatly Tumblr account. Nevertheless, any ninny who has ever grown up watching other people cook knows that onion and garlic go well with beef. This ninny knows that. I figured that if I took memories from my childhood and combined them with a very basic knowledge of flavor combinations, I could ensure that the meatballs and sauce will at least taste good, if not great. But the process from start to finish always takes longer than expected when you're learning as you go.

It started with the very bowl for kneading the meat, and the first note of improvisation was struck. All of our bowls were packed, but our fruit bowl— large, glass, and non-porous— did the trick. Besides and anyway, the bananas were beginning to mottle beyond a satisfying ripeness, the apple gave a pithy thud when flicked, and the last remaining pear was sliced for preschool lunch. Into the former fruit bowl went the bloody cube of chopped meat (organic!); an egg (a dozen purchased just for this task; they will be fun to move); a generous, unmeasured pour of Italian herbs from one of the underused jars in the spice cabinet (I call the color "dark mood"); and a cube or two of conveniently packaged frozen garlic mush (usually admired in the door of the freezer when fetching tater tots). And then I ran into my first snag: I had no onion in the house. Manuel, my octogenarian, Panamanian downstairs neighbor had a tape of Argentinian music for me. I went down to grab it on the off chance he had some cebolla. He did. I told him I'd bring meatballs when they were done.

The second snag: The bread crumbs in my pantry expired two years ago (They were unopened, so I thought maybe, but no. They smelled like a mummy's linen wraps, or so I imagine). God dammit. So then I had to run off to Gelsen's (so close, so expensive), where I picked up some "Italian Style" bread crumbs, another onion for the sauce, a bottle of cabernet (for the sauce and for getting a little sauced), lime juice (always, at the very least, keep ingredients for margaritas on hand), some hoagie rolls (meatball hero!) and some basil, because there should be some sort of green stuff stewing around in the marinara. An hour later, finally, I added a dump of bread crumbs to the bowl, some salt and pepper, too, and I proceeded to knead, which, on the one hand, is enjoyable as a textural, tactile gush, and on the other hand, disturbing to know that meat went under my fingernails. Once the olive oil was nice and hot in the skillet, I rolled perfectly formed meatballs and set them to spitting in the pan, at which point my husband did come up behind me with a pinch for my ass and some innuendo about how well I was tending to the balls. See, this cooking stuff isn't so bad after all.

The sauce and its suspension of crumbled and whole meatballs are eventually left to simmer on the stove as my husband and Dexter's adopted gay uncle (Why mention orientation? Because I've always wanted a gay uncle, so I think my son is lucky) pack our belongings while the boy runs around in nothing but Thomas the Tank Engine briefs, hiding in every unclaimed cardboard box. In the interest of summarizing the rest of the meatball experience for you, reader, while not killing you with the details or jumping to any conclusions: the sauce wasn't half bad, although the paste added was too much. I saw my grandfather use paste. I thought I was supposed to, but the sauce reduced to a sort of sludge, so that the minute I stirred, all my carefully-formed, pan-seared meatballs made Bolognese out of the marinara, just like that.

In the end, we sat down with what I hadn’t already drank from the bottle of cabernet, and my husband and son’s gay uncle feigned disgust to tease me, but uncle couldn’t keep a straight face (Sorry, so sorry for the pun). They knew I worked hard to act like a cook, adopting the Stanislavsky method to immerse myself in the role. They dropped the joke quickly, having no stomach for even pretend cruelty. We tried to eat meatball wedges with provolone, which actually resembled something more akin to Sloppy Joe’s. I will deliver a bowl of sauce to Manuel before we move and apologize for the lack of meatballs, but he will find the Bolognese satisfying, if not intentional. At lunch today, as I tried to wrap this whole experience up using the exact combination of words— things arranged neatly (yay!)— I ate half a pepper steak sub from Giamela’s, my once-a-year calorie overindulgence, and I have to admit that it was so quick, so tasty, and so…effortless.   






 

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Festival Lights


We search the spring for carnivals
and find St. Charles in Toluca Lake,
so we go, as if we could drive by
all those neon rides making geometry
in the sky. Dirt on our feet, a shattered
rainbow of raffle tickets confetti
the ground, and kiddie cars turn you
in tight circles twice, punctuating
your dusk with delight. It could be
thirty years ago: Teens in crop tops,
goldfish in plastic bags, ribbed beer cups
in the hands of red-faced men
who clearly need a drink. A hotel band
does its best with oldies as grannies
toe tap to All Shook Up. Missing
are hot zeppoles in greasy bags
and the Virgin Mary pinned with dollars.
Otherwise I could be eight again:
tight braid, mosquito bites like quarters,
the flying swings spinning my heart out
on a chain as fireworks become
exclamation points sparking
the sky with chromatic rain.





Thursday, July 4, 2013

The Art of Merging

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as she drives up the onramp. She says, "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." -- Brett Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero


If you have seen the Saturday Night Live skit featuring the "Californians," but you have no knowledge whatsoever about Southern California, the skit's constant reference to routes taken must seem like an obscure reference. However, it's a somewhat true representation; our conversations here are peppered with anecdotes about roads and traffic. Los Angeles has to be responsible for the term "urban sprawl," and to get anywhere in a timely fashion (Or if the freeways aren't working, in a mind-melting, fuck-it-all, murder-something-with-your-bare-hands kind of fashion), one must brave the often terrifying ribbons of chaos and despair that qualify as our arterials.

What makes them so terrifying? On any given day, depending on the freeway, a reasonably responsible, defensive driver must contend with wobbly semi trucks, dingbats staring at their cell-phones, careless weavers, nervous breakers, aggressive drivers, motorcyclists with death-wishes, drivers unfamiliar with their indicators, and so on, all moving at seventy-ish on a rather densely packed span of macadam. What makes them so mind-melting? Because inevitably somebody does something stupid enough to cause an accident, and the whole thing grinds to a bang-my-head-against-the-steering-wheel halt.

Frankly, I'm less terrified of "the big one" ripping the fault lines asunder than I am of the following vehicle types: oversized white pick-up truck, souped-up little BMW in dark blue, silver or gold Lexus SUV, and Volvo station wagon (to a lesser extent). I believe it's only a matter of time before a driver of one of these vehicles hits me. I will offer no character assessment of the drivers of these vehicles (It would be a logical fallacy to assume that all drivers of the aforementioned vehicles are a menace). However, I do become more skittish when passing or being passed by any of the above.

I can't claim to be the best driver in the world, although I can claim to have avoided a classifiable car accident in my entire history of driving. Furthermore, given the highly vigilant nature of defensive driving required for the Los Angeles freeways, I have become an even better driver than I was because I'm basically trying to save my life (and my son's) every time I set wheels on the 5, 10, 110, 101, or 405. (You can tell I'm a recent transplant: If I were a long-time resident, I'd call them the Golden State, The Santa Monica, The Harbor, The Hollywood, and The San Diego.)

But let me get to the point of this posting: If you're going to frequent freeways, highways, or whatever you want to call them in your neck o' the woods, you have to know how to merge onto them. I refer to it as an art because if it were a simple skill akin to, say, staying in one's lane (also, possibly, an art?), then more people would be able to do it. I am convinced, though, that about twenty-five percent of drivers don't know how to merge into traffic, thus I feel compelled to offer this somewhat long-winded public service announcement...

Sometimes there are people driving in the furthest-most right lane, the one you would be merging into. This is a fact of driving we must accept. Maybe it's because they're getting off the freeway in a stop or two, or maybe it's because they like to putter along at a slightly slower pace than the more left-oriented lanes. Whatever the reason, they have the right-of-way. As the merger, it is your responsibility to merge in as seamless a way as possible onto the freeway. You must assess the length of the on-ramp, you must judge the length of the merge lane, you must roughly calculate the speed of drivers in that right lane, and then you must take that all into account and adjust your speed accordingly so that you can glide into an opening. In other words, you must either speed up or slow down while using your driver side mirror to determine where you can slip your car in. It's a matter of finesse, folks.

This is how to merge onto a freeway. Don't play chicken with the drivers already on the freeway. Don't rely on the hail-mary merge: It's dangerous, and you're expecting the driver in that right lane to accommodate your reckless driving. Don't tail gate in the right lane: You're creating a situation that make merging impossible for those entering the freeway. If you have a very short on-ramp and no merge lane, then you'll have to stop at the top of the ramp and punch that gas when you see an opening (One reason to have a car with more than four cylinders). The same rules apply when negotiating a traffic circle, rotary, or whatever you would like to call it. The cars already in the circle have the right-of-way. If you must merge into it, you must wait for your opening.

So there you have it. And if merging onto freeways is just too terrifying, you could always take surface streets. After all, here in Los Angeles, you can always take Wilshire, Venice, or Santa Monica across town, and if you have to go north/south, there's always La Cienega or Sepulveda. Make sure to pack a lunch and plenty of drinking water.