Blah Di Dah

I am monumentally boring these days. I keep slogging along at work, making headway on various things, but always always always with another mountain of crap to climb. I need time to stop for a month, so I can do everything that needs doing without getting behind on something else and without missing this or that deadline and without having to scramble and drop everything to do some bullshit thing or another. Failing the time-stops-for-a-month plan, I'll continue with the current approach, and I'll just turn to the bakery camera when I'm feeling overwhelmed. That continues to make me feel better, because I can look at it and know I don't have to get up tomorrow and sling dough for 10 or 11 hours.

I also have a freelance job at the moment, and it's one that has morphed into a somewhat bigger job than I think anyone thought it would be. I'm editing what are called "ancillaries"--tests, instructor outlines, powerpoints, etc.--and those usually go pretty quickly. However, this author is completely unclear on the concept of an "outline" in that s/he basically took the text of each chapter and turned it into bulleted sentences. A 25-page single-spaced outline isn't really an outline so much as it is a reformatted chapter.

It's been a time suck the past couple of weekends, and it will be next weekend, too. The thing that really is unfortunate is that it's my first job for this particular assistant (though I know the person with/for whom she's working) and I'm hoping it doesn't go too much over budget for them; I've given her enough warning about the state of things so they can alert everyone about it, and I've tried to scale my level of effort to a place that will work for everyone (i.e., they're getting at least some worthwhile copyediting out of it, but I'm not spending so much time as to make it exorbitant). And, hey, I'm glad to have the work, or, more accurately, the extra cash.

I did manage to get out a little, though; Friend and I went out to dinner Saturday night, and then yesterday marked the start of the outdoor grilling season. We picked up a piece of salmon, and I applied a paste to it that included salt, sugar, pepper, honey, balsamic vinegar, cumin, chili powder, paprika, oregano, and cocoa. It was supposed to be a dry rub, but I leaped ahead, thinking the "essence" from another recipe was a liquid instead of more dry ingredients, so I added the honey (subbing for some of the sugar), then threw in a splash of the balsamic, because I've been throwing it into everything. It was quite excellent, though I'd reduce the cumin by a bit next time.

I also have to add that I have been using my rowing machine. I was going to add a bunch of qualifiers there, about how it's not this or hasn't resulted in that or I'm not quite doing the other thing, but fuck it. I've been rowing 3 to 5 days a week, and I've been upping my distance/time a little such that I'm now rowing about 4000 meters (in about 28 minutes), and a couple of days a week I lift 5-pound weights for a (very) few minutes. I would like to get a heart monitor, and will probably do that soon, and I have not completely abandoned the idea of resuming my yoga practice. I find that viewing my Netflix selections, particularly the various television series (at the moment, it's "The Pallisers," based on the Trollope novels), works quite nicely as a distraction while I row; hockey works, too, because there aren't a lot of commercial breaks. Music doesn't work as well for me, though it has sufficed in the past; it's easier to lose myself in the viewing, and I don't have to choose from the crappy health-club viewing choices to do it. Not surprisingly, the exercise is helping my back pain quite a bit. It's not completely gone, and sitting too long in the wrong chair will cause it to flare up, but the rowing seems to be building core strength in ways that help. Baby steps, people--or any steps at all.

Simple Solutions to World Problems

No individuals were harmed in yesterday's meeting. In fact, in part thanks to my boss, everyone sat around holding hands and singing kumbaya.

Not surprisingly, I continue to fibrillate somewhat about the apartment thing. I keep Deciding--that I'm going to stay put, that I don't want to pack and move, that there will be plenty of nice places available next year, and so on, ad nauseam, but do I listen? No; no I do not. I peek at the listings here; I glance at the pictures there; I start to dream about granite countertops and a full-size stove whose pilot light doesn't go out whenever I use the burner, about a bathroom that doesn't suck, about a really great place! for not a lot more a month! which I can afford! Basically, I have to hunt my brain down, and haul it by the scruff of the neck back to the Decision, where I point to it and say, hey, brain, remember this? Because we are NOT MOVING. Lather-rinse-repeat.

I don't think it has all that much to do with moving, per se, but has more to do with fantasies about the Perfect Space. I realize that there is no such thing--especially not within the boundaries of my budget, generous though that is--but whenever I bump up against the thing that is irritating me (or the multiple things, in the current case), then I get frustrated. I also recognize that the owners of the current place could decide it would just be easier to have me move out, or they could dick around and not actually fix any of the things they said they'd fix, in which case moving has to go back on the table. But that would be foolish on their part. The rental agent I saw the other day said they've already had three tenants who had to move out (essentially break their leases) because they'd lost their jobs, and a fourth is about to join them, and this is all since December. It is going to get worse before it gets better. (And, to continue my point, I am actually willing to continue living here and paying rent here, if they fix the shit that's broke.)

Which is why the AIG assholes do, indeed, bug me. Why, exactly, do the companies need to retain the people who caused all these problems? Why aren't they firing those people? Clearly, they suck at their work, and, more to the point, with all of the people who are out of work--in part because of the aforementioned sucking of these "executives"--surely there are people out there who would be happy to take the jobs, and for considerably less than the assholes are making. Oh, they say, but there are so few people who truly understand all this international financial stuff!

Yes, exactly; that's the point. How 'bout we go back to the other plan, the one that involved making things and selling things rather than inventing new ways to shuffle money around while taking a cut for one's own pockets and the pockets of shareholders? I realize this sounds kind of simplistic, but, seriously, the whole point of banks and banking, so far as I can tell, is so people don't have to stuff their mattresses, and other people who want to start businesses (see: things, making and selling) can get loans. What else is there, really? This other shit is just a fancy version of what the mob does--it's money laundering, with a serious vig that you and I are forced to pay.

I've been watching "Bull Durham" with the Robbins/Costner commentary on while I row, and I am reminded of one of the best lines ever: "This is a simple game. You hit the ball, you throw the ball, you catch the ball." Seems like money should be the same thing, no? You make things; you sell things; you buy things. And they are things, not invented financial products that have little or no relationship to the actual world of things. There. Fixed.

Irritation Overlord

I had planned to take off on Thursday, in exchange for having gone in on Saturday and so i could catch up on my editing job, but nooooooo. A person in the organization is being a pain in the ass, and I therefore have to go to a meeting tomorrow morning. I am getting mighty tired of some things, most particularly of scrambling, constantly, to fix things and get things done and submit required things and smooth things over with various funding agencies, and then getting shit because I haven't also done it while balancing on my head and I haven't cured cancer. I jumped up and down and waved my arms around and cursed loudly a lot today, in the vicinity of my boss, mostly to blow off some irritation and partly to make sure he has my back and to figure out what our approach is tomorrow, so I can sit back and mostly shut up. Which I will make every effort to do, unless and until the person who's been being a pain in the ass starts pissing on my shoes again, at which point there will be issues. And then I'm going to come home and edit.

I saw an apartment today, and it had a balcony, and if you stand on the balcony, the thing outside is the beach. That's the good thing. It gets a lot of light, which is also good. However: it's $100/month more than the current place. It's a little smaller in the living room, which makes finding a place for my rowing machine a little more challenging. The kitchen is substantially smaller, with a lot less counter space. Most important, though, my spidey sense didn't tingle even a little--I didn't stand there thinking, "Wow; I'd really like to live here . . . hmmm . . . how can I make that happen? What do I need to do? Can I live with [this or that somewhat undesirable aspect]?" The location is tempting, the lake is tempting, but then I think about the deficits, particularly in the kitchen, and the extra money, and the cost of moving, and I'm not sufficiently tempted.

So send me calming thoughts for Thursday morning.

Ides After

Yes, I suppose I could be working on the editing job in my in-box, but it is incredibly poorly written, and I would rather not. I'll spend most of Thursday on it (because I am not going in to the office, because I was there on Saturday) and then the weekend, and, while that still probably won't be enough, because it is so sucktastic, I should be able to get a bunch done. Or something. Short version: I don't feel like working any more today.

Things are still kinda crazy at work, and I'm gearing up for a fight with the central admin folks, though I'll have to get my boss on board for it. Sometimes I think the people who work in the central office forget that their job is to support us, i.e., the people who are providing services to people who need them. The downtown folks often act as though our job is to do what they ask, and to do things on their timetables, and so on. I understand why, and I understand that they, too, are overburdened, but when I see how much of our budgets are going to support administration, I no longer care about their problems. There is one function, in particular (which I won't detail here), for which we are paying many, many, many dollars, yet it is done poorly. This particular function is done much more efficiently and effectively when performed in the for-profit world, because said performance determines one's pay and profit. I will not fail to point this out--politely, and as diplomatically as possible--when the occasion arises.

I have also begun a fibrillation about whether I should move. My apartment is, in many ways, quite nice: large, lots of closet space, decent light, decent (though not great) kitchen. But. Remember that flood 2.5 years ago? Well, I still have big blotches of paint coming off the walls in the living room and the kitchen ceiling. The bathroom walls get a little moldy, because there's no circulation in there, especially when I insulate the window, which I must do in the winter because there's no heat in the bathroom. The bathroom sink doesn't drain properly, and the drain-closing-thingy has never worked; the shower head needs replacement, and the water pressure in the shower is painfully strong. The stove is kinda eh; the pilot light on the right goes out whenever I use a burner on that side. The young woman who works in the office came up last week and made a list, and said she'd let me know, and said they wouldn't raise my rent, which is all good, but I haven't heard from her yet, which makes me a little peevish; at least call and tell me what the holdup is.

So I rummaged around in the ads, and came up with a few apartments that overlook the lake (as in, are practically on the beach), and I'm going to go look at them this week. Basically, I've decided that I will only move if I find something completely fab right on the lake; I do not want to do another citywide search, because I know I am not likely to find something better than, or as good as, what I have, at the price at which I have it. Plus, I actually like this neighborhood. The big things are going to be kitchens, because I do not want a small one, and laundry; both buildings I've mentioned have laundry rooms for which I will need to go outside, and one of them is a three-story walkup, i.e., I'll have to go outside AND schlep the laundry up and down the stairs. I can tell you now that it would have to be an incredibly fabulous place to overcome that drawback. Some people do not care about this particular thing--Friend and GFriend have tried to convince me it's no big deal--but I have not had to go outside to do my laundry since 1986, and I am in no hurry to change that. Plus, I hate to move.

I guess I still have this fantasy of having the Perfect Living Space. Big, self-cleaning kitchen, with lots of counter space and cabinets; a dining area in or right near the kitchen; in-unit washer and dryer; a bathroom that is toasty in the winter and has perfect water pressure, and has a window, preferably in the shower/tub; lots of closet space and built-in shelves and drawers (I've actually had this a lot, such that I don't own a dresser); a lot of natural light from the south, all day, but enough cross-breezes so i don't bake in the summer. A view would be nice, but isn't that relevant. Close to public transportation, and not too far from the grocery stores. A manager on the premises, preferably with an office and a willingness to accept packages. A balcony or deck, so long as we're fantasizing. And? I don't have to do any of the moving or arrangements for moving, I just show up at the new address on the appointed day, and all of my stuff is magically arranged exactly where I want it and can find it.

Back here in the real world, however . . .

I know I still have a few more words to contemplate, but the Top Chef discussion sidetracked me, and I've been busy, so it remains undone. I haven't even been doing much of interest; as noted, work remained nuts and will continue to be so for a few more weeks. I've been fighting something off, too, I think: Friday Friend and I had planned to go to a small little theater performance, but then he missed out on the half-price tix, and then we changed our minds, and and and, and I started feeling all clogged up in my left ear, so we just went to his house instead. As I was making my way over there I asked myself what I wanted/needed, and the answer that bubbled to the surface was, of all things, a hot bath. Readers, believe me when I tell you that my Self doesn't come up with that answer more than once every couple of decades, so I was a little surprised; on the other hand, if that's the answer I'm hearing, I'm gonna listen. So I did that, and then vegged out while Friend watched hockey and played the guitar, and I suspect I was all the better for it, despite the lack of excitement it signals; I even did it again on Saturday (the bath part, anyway), even though my tub isn't as nice as Friend's.

Anyway; enough blather. For tonight, anyway.

Home is Where?

Okay, I could go on about Top Chef some more, but no. I do have two other recommendations for you, though. I'm in the middle of Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods and I am really liking this book. On one hand, it reads very quickly, but on the other hand, it's got some deep implications in there, so it's a lot of fun. The other recommendation is a movie, Big Eden. It's about a successful gay NYC artist who "goes home" where he's not really out (or so he thinks) to the townspeople and his grandfather and so on. It's a romantic comedy, and it's very entertaining--on one hand, it's obvious what's going to happen and who's going to end up with whom, but it can't rely on gender tropes to get the lovers together. It's clever and amusing.

A central plotline--one that shows up in n romantic comedies--is the "going home and finding true love in the small town one left." This also made me think of one of kstyle's followup questions for me, i.e., where, exactly, "home" is for me. I've been ruminating on this for several days, and I have to confess that I don't really feel like anyplace is home, which kind of bums me out.

My home town is small and sad and worn out. It used to depend in part on industry--several of which have left town--and . . . I don't know. There were farms nearby, but they've all been paved and "Developed." The whole area has, with the completion of a major interstate, become a byway on the way to New York, and the farms and some of my town have become a suburb of NYC, albeit a VERY far-west-NJ suburb. Point is, there's not much there for me, and I'd have to drive everywhere, because it's not the kind of small town where people can or do walk anywhere. If I'd been able to be a professor, it might have worked, because there are a couple of colleges not too far away, but the must-drive-everywhere problem would still be in effect.

I did like Philadelphia, quite a bit. It's a city that's walkable, with lots of public transportation, etc., and it probably feels more like home than anywhere, but I only lived there for five years--less time than I've lived anywhere else--and it's not as though I have deep ties there. I used to feel at home there, but who knows if I still would; I'm sure things have changed in the 23 years since I moved away.

And here doesn't feel like home, either, despite the 23 years.

I guess I think of "home" as someplace where one has ties, and knows people, and feels welcome and embedded, but also where one can find worthwhile work to do. I have the work here, more or less, but not a whole lot else. I have been part of communities here--in grad school, and then when I played handball, and when I was married to Chuck--but all of those communities have disintegrated in one way or another. Grad school friends are dispersed, with one notable exception in the form of the administrator of the department, who has become one of my best friends. I'm only vaguely in touch with the handball players, in the sense of I hear from one of them every few months but not from any of the others. Obviously I'm no longer part of Chuck's community. When both Friend and my grad-school friend are out of town or busy, I can easily go two or three days without talking to anyone I know in this city. I could drop off the face of the earth and it would take people a few days to notice, which really doesn't sound like a characterization of "home" to me, and certainly not like the kind of "home" represented in media-world and romantic comedies (which yes, admittedly are not necessarily the best source for anything other than a hyperidealized version of the world).

Mostly, this doesn't bother me, mind you. Individual bits--e.g., the disintegration of my relationship with Chuck--might cause sadness or grief, but that's very specific to the relationship, not necessarily to the totality of my life in a place. So I don't know. I suppose I could try to rethink what could count as home, but part of the resonance of those concepts is how they vibrate some deep part of us, I think. (And, of course, there's the whole other unfathomable level of it that people who are truly homeless experience, which makes my situation rather trivial.)

Anyway. Must get to work.

The Business

As I knew she would, the Brazen Tart had some interesting contributions to the cook/chef discussion. By those lights, then Fabio is actually one of the best chefs on the show, because, during Restaurant Wars, he practically single-handedly saved his team's ass. (His memorable comment, as he put on a jacket to prepare for running the front of the house, was that you could give him monkey ass and an empty clam shell and he could sell it.) The judges even told his team's ostensible leader, Leah, that she would have been going home if their team hadn't won, because her dish sucked--that is, Fabio managed to sell monkey ass. Conversely, when Carla was having difficulty getting her dessert out because the freezers weren't actually freezing anything, Radhika didn't say, for example, well, let's call it chilled soup, or otherwise suggest a solution to the problem.

Arguably, that's marketing more than being a chef, but it's partly because Fabio understands that the whole enterprise is an experience (I'm not surprised that he has his own restaurant). It's about the food, most definitely, but it's also the experience. (One of the things I have enjoyed so much about going to one of the city's best restaurants--one of the places I went for my birthday last year--was that even though I was being served world-class food, I wasn't treated with an attitude. I have been there three times now, and the experience has been the same.) By these same standards, we shouldn't be surprised that at the farm, the team of Stefan, Carla, and Jamie were the team that nailed it: three strong cooks, and at least two people (Stefan and Carla) own catering businesses, which means they should have at least some chef abilities. All of their food was good and there was no drama.

The biggest problems with the industry as a whole, though, are that it's brutally difficult work and the pay is generally for shit. BT probably has one of the highest-paid pastry cook positions in this city, in that she gets a decent wage (and that's decent by industry standards, which is a whole other thing), plus she gets benefits, including health insurance and free hotel rooms around the world. At the bakery, I made $4-$5/hour less than she did, with no health insurance, and my benefits consisted of 80 hours of pay after I'd worked there a year (i.e., a two-week "vacation" that I opted to take as pay rather than as days off). People who work in restaurants probably were even worse off than I was (I was actually treated pretty well by some industry standards). At BT's place, however, the front-of-the-house staff, i.e., the servers, can make several hundred dollars a night in tips; this is not shared with the people who actually make the food. Thus, the restaurant world is much like the industries in which I have worked, i.e., the people doing "marketing" (the servers) make a big wad more than the people making the product or doing the actual work behind the scene. (I can't even say "marketing" without sneering a little.) Although, to be fair, salespeople also take the brunt of the shit from customers. Someone in the kitchen fucks up? It's the server who hears about it, not the cook who wasn't paying attention--that is, I am most assuredly NOT harshing on servers or salespeople; it's not work I do happily, though I can do it reasonably well if I think it's a good product. (Marketing people, though, ew.)

Part of the problem in doing this kind of analysis, though, is that there are so many different pieces and levels to the whole thing. The bakery was not a pastry kitchen--and it's a small business, not part of a large corporate entity, so Bossman could not operate at a loss. And, while he seemed to be doing reasonably well, he wasn't rolling in profit and he worked his own ass off. Here's the thing, though, that gets at BT's point: while Bossman had to operate as a "chef," i.e., he had to expedite things and run things, he could also operate as a cook, i.e., he still got to make stuff, which is the part he absolutely loves. He tried to make the team for--and eventually won--an international competition because he likes trying to make the products. I know that one of the things he liked about having me around is that that's what I liked, too, and, really, that's why I wanted own a bakery (especially if BT was a partner in the enterprise).

Bossman especially liked making products that sell. And that actually brings to mind a good example (and one of my lasting contributions to the bakery). There are always scraps when you make croissants--the edges and pieces that result when you cut and shape the dough. You don't want to throw it out, especially when it's made with 100% butter the way ours were. Bossman had me throwing a couple of chunks into the next day's dough, as a kind of sourdough-starter principle. Unfortunately, especially when I was making thousands, I'd end up with more scraps than I could use, and I could rarely get the night guys to use it in the doughnut dough or the danish dough. The scraps were affecting the quality of the dough. So I suggested we chop it up with cinnamon and sugar and make monkey buns. (We also tried a cheese one, which didn't really work, and a chocolate-cherry one, which a few people liked but which didn't sell.) We started using the large muffin tins, with muffin liners, but they tended to stick to the tins, which was a complete pain. Bossman had the idea of using these little standalone paper pans--you can get them in different shapes and sizes, and they're generally used for things like brioche and pannetone--and he measured the muffin tins to figure out the right size to get. Then we experimented with how much dough to put in. Then we figured out how to run the dough down the belt with the cutter and guillotine so we'd get squares of rolled out cinnamon-and-sugar-covered croissant-dough scraps. I kept a hotel pan in the reach-in freezer and threw my scraps in there, and once a week I'd thaw it and make monkey buns. They absolutely flew off the shelves, particularly at the farmers' markets.

I typed "money buns" up there, and that turns out to be pretty accurate. We solved the problem of what to do with the scraps by creating a product with them that makes money and that the customers love. For a small-business owner, that's the fucking holy grail. For a restaurant like BT's, I doubt it makes any difference, though I could be wrong.

Anyway.

Some quick notes for all of our "friends" over there on the right:

1. Go ahead and let Rush be your spokesperson. Please; really. I can't think of a better way to demonstrate how out of touch your party is with the people who are losing their jobs and houses and life savings and health insurance. Plus, he's giving Jon Stewart some fabulous material.

2. Please try, again, to understand the concept of a marginal tax rate, okay? And please try to get it through your brains that the highest marginal tax rate is still substantially lower than it was under several recent Republican presidents.

3. Those of you who keep threatening to "go Galt"? When, exactly, are you leaving? And will you be using roads built by the government to get there? Has your magic electricity generator been perfected yet? Who's going to build the factories and equipment you're going to use to grow food and deliver it? What are you going to do for water? Because surely you don't want to sully yourselves with anything that has the taint of a public works project, do you? You'll be constructing barrels to catch rain, perhaps? Who's going to make the barrels? And so on. But really, go ahead and leave, and don't take with you anything that you haven't made with your own two soft, pasty, overpaid hands.

ETA: One of the things I have observed in at least three different industries at this point is the fact that our ostensible meritocracy, piled on top of the managerial/hierarchical way we think about work (thank you for nothing, Mr. Taylor . . .), means that the only way people can make more money is to move up a ladder, even if the upward movement takes them away from the work at which they excel and that they may well love. Do you really want to turn great teachers into principals? Do you really want to turn great counselors into clinical supervisors or managers? Do you really want to turn great cooks into chefs who rarely cook a thing? No, you don't, but if you overvalue "management" and undervalue the people who do the actual work, then that's what you get. Nobody wins.

Top Chef, not Top Scallop

I'm going to hold off on the last few words to muse about Top Chef and about a post that Brazen Tart is promising to write. I should note that i didn't watch the first third of the season all that carefully. But here are some random observations about the cheftestants.

1. Three of the final four deserved to be there--Carla, Stefan, and Fabio. Hosea, the person who won, arguably belonged, but he made a few fatal errors in my book, to which I'll get in a minute. I think that possibly Jamie might have been the better choice, and I think that might have made for a more interesting last two shows, but, she was kind of a whiner. Although Jeff clearly had some chops, his ego was constantly in the way, and he seemed to think that just because a dish was complicated, and/or because he made every last component and grew all the herbs and ground all the spices with a mortar and pestle and did it all while standing on his head, well, then it deserved to win. Dude: the question is how it tastes, and complicated preparation techniques does not always mean good.

2. I loved Fabio, and I'm not surprised he won the "fan favorite" prize on last night's reunion show. He was funny, and he could cook like a mofo, and it seemed clear from a few of his dishes that he could really get some flavor going. I do think that he had less . . . classical training? classical chops? than some of the others, which might get to the cook-or-chef question that BT mentioned. But if he had a little neighborhood joint down the street and ran it well and didn't try to get too big or anything, i'd totally go there, because I know I could get kick-ass Italian food. (I also loved that he cooked a "last meal" for Lidia Bastianich, and won the challenge, with a broken finger, no less. When they interviewed him about his injury, he said that he'd rather cut off his finger and sear it on the grill so it wouldn't bleed on the food, and then cook the next day with nine fingers, than go home. Which was so amusingly over the top.)

3. I think that Stefan, Carla, and possibly Jeff and Jamie were closest to being actual chefs. I couldn't get a read on Jamie, but it became clear that the other three knew quite a bit about the techniques and the flavors and so on. Carla didn't know all the new molecular gastronomy/sous vide shit (which was part of her downfall at the end, in that she let her sous chef talk her into methods that (a) were wildly inappropriate for the meal she was trying to create, in the case of the meat, and (b) were touchy and difficult to pull off, rather than a relatively easy win, in the case of going for a souffle instead of a tart, especially when pastry is one of Carla's strong suits, and (c) both resulted in massive fail.)

I think it's telling how that group did in terms of trying to recreate a dish (and incorporating feedback from the chef who created the dish), and I wish that Jeff had still been around to participate in that particular challenge. Jamie kept coming close but then fucking up something, or she would do really well, but someone else would do just a little better, so I just couldn't tell with her.

4. Of the many things that unimpressed me about Hosea, the biggest ones were that he screwed up several challenges that involved fish, even though he kept telling us that fish was his bestest thing evah, and a second was that, even though he did make some things well, I never got the sense that he was doing anything all that interesting. I really don't care about his thing with Leah. I also got mighty damned tired of hearing him go on about how he and Stefan were battling it out. You know what, dude? Just do your own test and don't worry about everyone else's paper, okay? And I don't remember him ever making a dessert. I realize that fine-dining places will have separate pastry chefs and pastry kitchens and such, but I still think his lack of dessert chops is a major issue.

5. The thing that totally turned me off of Hosea, though, was the challenge where he was on a team with Leah and Ariane. Ariane was trying to hack up the lamb (I think it was) and doing a damned poor job of it. Hosea said that, yeah, he had done that kind of work--but he just let her go on fucking it up, even though she was a team member and struggling, and he was doing something bullshit-simple like roast potatos I think. And then in front of the judges he basically threw Ariane under the bus (or he and Leah did, which totally sucked). Don't get me wrong--I think Ariane was in a bit over her head, and not because she was the oldest one there. She may be a good cook, she could probably run a small restaurant and do a fine job, but she is not a top chef. All that aside, it was like he set her up to fail and then gave her a nudge over the edge. You'll also notice that, at the final judges' table, Carla started to cry, because she knew that the two fails had basically put her out of the running. Hosea stood there. Stefan, who is supposedly such an asshole, according to Hosea and others, went over to Carla and basically comforted her--and not in a patronizing way. He did that again after the three of them were in the other room, waiting for the decision. Carla knew she'd fucked up, knew it wasn't something she could rescue, and knew that that meant she wouldn't win. She didn't whine, she didn't blame anyone else--even though she could totally have blamed her sous chef, she refused to do so, which I thought was completely classy--but she was also sad, and who wouldn't be. Hosea never showed the slightest bit of empathy, at all.

And that actually gets to the point I wanted to make about being a chef. I'll be interested to get BT's take on this, but, to me, one of the questions is how the person in charge deals with coworkers and with mistakes. I'm not interested in working with or for someone who is going to throw me under the bus; fuck it--life's too short to deal with that. I'm also not well-suited to work with someone who's going to be temperamental. If you screwed up, Bossman would say, "Not every day can be a good day." If you didn't show evidence that you could learn, and avoid making the same mistake twice, well, he wouldn't necessarily trust you with much, but he also had run a business for 20-plus years and he knew that things happen. (My boss's boss threw him under the bus in three separate meetings yesterday, which explains why he was peeved--and she threw him for things that weren't actually his responsibility or his mistake.)

Now, let me also make it clear that I am not a chef. I'm a pretty good cook, and, if I had started 25 years ago, I might--but only might--have been able to become a chef. I also don't have the temperament to work a line at a restaurant, and I don't know how necessary that is to being a chef. (Whaddya think, BT?) Of course, as BT also has been known to remind us, it's food. Not world peace or a cure for cancer. I would like it to be prepared at least a little mindfully, and I would like to remember to eat it mindfully, and I'd like it to be healthy and tasty and leave as small a footprint as possible. And I want Stefan or Carla or Fabio to prepare it for me.

ThreeFour Little Words

philosopher I became a philosophy major almost by accident. I had nearly finished the political science major, and had taken a bunch of philosophy courses, so I figured I may as well do the additional major. Here's the thing, though: much political science tries to emphasize the "science" part, insisting that people who do work in the field ought not ask about what we ought to do in a given case. At the same time, a lot of philosophy became either the study of long-dead Europeans or highly analytical parsing of . . . something. Thus, neither field in which I was interested enabled its practitioners to try to find ways to ask real questions about real people's real lives. My own experience is that in order to illuminate a dispute of some kind, it is important to understand the assumptions at the heart of it--not least because it may be the case that the disputants do not share important assumptions and thus will have great difficulty reaching agreement. It may also be the case that some parties to a debate are being inconsistent, or dishonest, or disingenuous in some way, and it's important to figure that out, too. (I'd say that other debates are more purely political, in the sense that it's a fight for land or power, say, despite whatever historical justifications the parties involved bring to bear.) The thing is, I think it is profoundly important for us to ask ourselves what we ought to do--in a particular situation; with regard to the world at large; in terms of how we interact with the world. Take, for example, the statement that Oliver Stone had Michael Douglas make in "Wall Street" (though I've never seen the movie, I've obviously seen and heard the line): "Greed is good." No. No it isn't. I can tell you what the argument is in favor of greed, and I can also argue against it. That may seem trivial, but it's not. Many people have a sneaking suspicion that that statement is wrong--or right--but they aren't sure whether greed really is good or bad, or why. Different authorities say different things; many people who seem to be arguing against it do not live a lifestyle that seems in accord with a non-greedy philosophy. And just how pure do we expect people to be? I think it is the job of the garden-variety philosopher such as myself to try to illuminate those questions. I had hoped to do it in a classroom, but it seems my real venue is destined to be the barroom and the lunchroom.

Wittgenstein When I first read Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, to be precise), in graduate school, I found it completely understandable--even easy, in many ways. Now, LW is supposed to be notoriously difficult to "get," and, indeed, many people in the class seemed to be struggling mightily with it. Thus, I wondered whether there was something going on that I was missing. At one point I stumbled across a paper I'd written in college (on Rousseau or Kant, IIRC), and, in rereading it, realized that I had anticipated my reading of LW, as it were, by a decade or so. That is, LW was easy for me to understand because I had already absorbed much of what he had to say, even if I didn't have his way of saying it available to me. There isn't a really easy way to sum up LW's Investigations, but, if I had to try, I'd say that his central point is that language and practice are intertwined--what we say and what we do are intertwined, in the way that mind and body are intertwined. Can we talk about them as separate things? Well, yeah. Does it make sense to do so? Not very often, especially not outside of a philosophy class. And if you start thinking about the deep and far-reaching implications of language and practice being intertwined, well, you'll come up with the Philosophical Investigations, or an Investigations-like approach to the world.

well-read I don't particularly think of myself as well-read, so that's an interesting thing for someone to associate with me. I've read a lot, which isn't the same thing, and, in the case of some of you, I've got an extra 20 years of reading. The variety of careers I've had contributes to the variety of things I've read, too. There are substantial gaps: very little Shakespeare; no Joyce or Melville; not much Dickens (because I really didn't like what I read a million years ago); nothing in other languages. But I do love to read. I don't remember not knowing how to do it, and there's not a whole lot I like better than falling in to a good story that's well-told. I don't read much non-fiction--almost none, really--in part because I like the escape of invented worlds.

Okay, the rest of the words will have to wait. I've been working like a dog, still, yet, though good things are happening. (A lot of shit is, too, but I can only do what I can do.) Apparently some shit went down today, but my boss was too peevish about it to tell me, so I'll have to get the scoop tomorrow.

Next Word

Well, yes, it appears that I have abandoned you, but I have not. I was busy Being Social the past few days, and working hard last week, so I have been slow getting to your other words. Events included a hockey game, a play, and, of course, much good food. (The play was "Desire Under the Elms," which, good lord, what a depressing piece. Also, of the two theater productions I've seen in the past two weeks, there were a total of ten characters, exactly one of whom was female. Also also, "Desire" is very very shouty; there's barely a word spoken that isn't in the form of yelling or some other kind of thrashing around. Entirely too much Drama for me, thanks so much. But I feel all Cultured and shit, so there you go.) So anyway; on to the words. I'll get through the ones I can tonight, but I'd rather take my time and ponder a few of these, so you may only get a few at a time.

Chicago Ah yes. I have lived here, let's see, 23 years, which is longer than I have lived anywhere else. Even though I know the city reasonably well--and I know quite a few bits of it, and I know some of it better than many residents, for reasons I'll elaborate in a minute--it still does not feel like home to me, and I doubt that it ever will. I'm not a midwesterner, for one thing, even though I don't know that I could tell you exactly what characterizes a midwesterner or a non-midwesterner.

The city comprises 77 neighborhood areas; the areas were originally delineated by sociologists in the 1920s, pretty much along ethnic lines. What's truly interesting is how much of that character has survived for nearly a century. There's still a south-side Irish parade; there's still a Polish neighborhood (where many people actually speak Polish, mind you, and the businesses advertise in Polish); the city still celebrates Pulaski Day. The city is also, still, profoundly Catholic, and specifically Irish- and Polish-Catholic, which have a different flavor than Italian or French or German Catholics. (People my age who grew up Catholic in this city will still ask people they've just met which parish they're from; someone I knew in grad school said it wasn't until she moved away from the city that she realized most people do not identify the place where they live by the parish they're from.)

Part of what this means is that people often grow up in and remain living in the same neighborhood, or near enough to it, for their whole lives. Chuck could tell those stories better than I, but many people regard "downtown" as a foreign country, and a suspiciously foreign one at that, despite the fact that the public transportation to and from downtown is actually pretty good for most parts of the city. (Except for the poor black sections, but that's a different story.)

The city also has a profoundly racist past: past mayors built housing projects in ways that were designed to segregate black people into overcrowded neighborhoods, and woe betide any black person who attempted to move to a white neighborhood. In the 1970s, whites basically fled to the suburbs, abandoning the city and the school system. This has not worked out well. One of the side effects is that many of the white suburbanites live in their outposts and possibly work there as well, sucking benefits from the fact that the city exists but not paying their fair share (see Myron Orfield's work on this). It is not uncommon for kids to grow up in the 'burbs and then live in Lincoln Park or Lakeview or downtown or Wrigleyville after graduation for a couple of years. (Some go to school in the city, thus expanding their years there.) Eventually they meet someone, marry, and then move back to the suburbs once they start procreating. They will have visited few other parts of the city and will have utilized public transportation for few of their ventures, and they will only rarely have interacted much with someone who is Not Like They Are, but they typically think they have lived in the city and Experienced it.

It is also still possible for people to arrange their lives so they rarely or never see someone of a different race--which, in a city that is slightly less than 40% black and slightly more than 40% white, is pretty amazing. I go out to dinner quite a bit, and I can tell you that most of the time, most places I'm eating, there are few or no black customers, which is only partly a comment about where I'm eating dinner. I can also tell you that vocal racism is alive and well: many is the time that someone has made a remark to me, assuming that I share their views because I share their skin color. The old ethnic white neighborhoods that haven't seen much development are particularly notable for this. (To Chuck's everlasting credit (and to the credit of his mom), although he has many of the markers to fit right into that mold, he profoundly does not.)

I'm unusual in a number of ways: I've lived in three very very different parts of the city, and have spent time in three or four others, including the neighborhoods in which I have worked. I take public transportation everywhere, pretty much (not having a car will do that to a person). At least two of the neighborhoods in which I've lived, including the one in which I now live, are racially much more mixed than the downtown neighborhood. I don't root for the Cubs OR the Sox.

So anyway.

There are things about the city I appreciate. There are things I enjoy. As anywhere else, there are many nice people. I live here, even though it's not Home, not least because I'm not even sure what would count as home for me these days.
-----------

One last thing tonight: yes, I am peeved that Hosea won Top Chef. I'll elaborate at a later date, but let me say it had nothing to do with his supposed romance with Leah.