Adapting the Recipes

recipe; plural noun: recipes

1.  a set of instructions for preparing a particular dish, including a list of the ingredients required.

There are recipes for success, failure and everything in between. Or are there? I mean, I can give you directions on how to make the perfect bruschetta (Note: And I will in a bit if you’re patient) but it might not come out exactly to your liking. Or you could stray from my instructions and produce something much better and more to your liking. That’s the thing with recipes. They need to be adapted to the person or situation at hand.

For instance, last week I actually went to my local movie theatre (imagine!) and saw the new film, Noah. Never mind that it was about a subject as old as the Bible because it quite literally dates back to a story told in that book that long ago. This Noah promised to be, well, promising. It’s directed and co-written by one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers, Darren Aronofsky (yes, I loved Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream still haunts me, and The Wrestler spoke to me quite personally about a guy in a neighborhood not totally dissimilar from my own). The film was also rumored to employ all of the newest technology of the day in the service of updating a classic good vs. evil story that spoke to the issues of today. And, most importantly, many of the extreme fundamentalist right wing nuts in this country were already up in arms about Noah’s heathen-like approach to religion weeks before it had even come out. So, to quote an old Jewish philosopher and great aunt of mine, what could be bad???

I’m flooded with puns to make here, but I will resist.

Well… Noah could. Though that’s solely my opinion about what seemed like a pretty good recipe on paper. Still, the film that I saw featured a mumbling and earnestly crazed Russell Crowe doing Bible speak as if it were Shakespeare; CGI’d Transformer-like boulders with glowing eyes pulverizing tens of thousands of starving humans trying to come aboard a large CGI raft made up to look like an arc; and a dull, meandering narrative that precluded any possible thematic resonance to what I see as our contemporary world.

Yes, that’s merely one man’s (Note: this man’s) opinion. Which is the point.

There is no real recipe for anything, nor has there even been – merely guidelines, suggestions and ideas. No matter what you’re cooking up, you have to interpret your thoughts and the ideas of others in order to arrange them in something that makes sense to you at the time. And even then, there is no guarantee of success, or even failure. Merely a completion of the task that you hope upon hope will work for you and, perhaps, a few others. And – if you’re really skilled or lucky – a number quite far beyond that.

The Chair on a stool.

This past week I was at the Finger Lakes Film Festival (FLEFF) in Ithaca, NY and spoke on a panel entitled Diaries of Dissonance: Filmmaking In And Outside the Mainstream. It was an eclectic group of filmmakers, fundraisers, marketers, writers and educators speaking about the way new work is created, financed and exhibited in an ever-changing global media and political landscape. That’s a lot of fancy words for questions like: Do you tailor your material to the big screen, Web, smart phone or iPad? How do you raise money for anything but the most mainstream pabulum? Or – Why is the US trailing so many other countries in state-supported arts programs and how do we shift our value system back to a more community-based, less corporatist way of thinking?

Looking out into the faces of the many young people in the audience I was forced to reveal the answer that no one wants to hear – especially when they’re young. And that is — there is no sure-fire recipe for any of that. Nor does one exist for anything else. Somehow it’s easier to believe that there is THE ANSWER out there rather than to shift one’s thinking to the truth that only educated trial and error amid real thought will get you to where you want to be rather than strict memorization and adherence to a pre-digested formula and/or set of rules guidebook that will guarantee you victory or your money back.

That is the excitement and the conundrum of working in the arts or doing anything creative. In math 2+2=4 and in science the world is round and not flat (Note: It’s still safe to say the latter, right???). Those formulas have been proven and do work 100% of the time. However, the joy of creativity is that there are a myriad of answers to the telling of any one story and none of them are right or wrong. They…..just….are.

It is particularly important to remember this when critiquing and counter-critiquing the work of the day. Apparently, there was a media revolution last week with the airing of the series finale of the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother. I know this not only as an obsessive culture vulture but as an observer of many college aged seniors and juniors whose voices angrily raised about three octaves shouting their post mortem horror and disgust at how disappointed they were that the mother was actually (SPOILER ALERT!) dead and their beloved Ted Mosby would probably wind up with Aunt Robin after all.

Sigh.

Yet to me, this seemed to be the right ending – probably because I stopped watching the show years ago right around the time after Ted and Robin broke up and each were moderately successful yet still somehow semi-miserable in their own single lives. Of course, that could be a recipe all its own – bail years before something is over so you create the ending of your choosing rather than to wait for the real-life one that might displease you. Ugh, I hope not.

In fact, when I tried to create a premature ending to what seemed like an endless 24-hour commute from Los Angeles to upstate N.Y. this weekend it fell flat miserably. You know the drill — you get to the airport and your plane is taking off two hours late. Then you arrive in a big city like NYC and you have a two-three hour layover to make a connection to a smaller city. But the crew of the commuter plane you’re taking in the next flight has been delayed on its connecting plane and you have to wait another 90 minutes. Then you’re on the ground in your plane for another hour in airport ground traffic. Only to finally land in your location several hours late to find the car-rental place you used to reserve your vehicle to take you to your hotel closed at 12:30am and it’s now almost 1:00am. So you wait in another company’s car rental line, get an alternative vehicle and drive though endless very dark roads in a new car where your lights don’t seem to get bright enough and your GPS suddenly goes in and out on the fritz.

You pray you will get to the hotel you’ve reserved in time and you don’t speed but you do go the speed limit, alternating between shining your bright headlights and keeping them low when appropriate. After another 45 minutes you can practically see your destination on the horizon when the bright lights of a police car shine on you out of nowhere and pull you over on a highway that is about to end for no apparent reason whatsoever other than to tease you into believing you soon just might be able to rest. Then, suddenly an extremely short Highway Patrolman with a shaved head, Pharrell Williams-type hat and an accent right out of Deliverance stops his car, leisurely ambles over and barely explains that when he shined his headlights at you back there that you shined yours back. You quickly realize that clearly he took this as an insult and sign or disrespect when it was just merely a safety measure on your part to make sure that your lights were indeed working properly.

I believe the official name is the “Oh Shit” moment

Anyway, he then leaves while you’re in mid-sentence in explanation and takes another 10 minutes in his car to write you a $210 ticket for failure to dim (could I make this up?) which you’re actually thankful for because you were sure he was using that time to impound your car and throw you in a rural jail where you would be sentenced to hard labor and never see the light of any highway ever again because you will be murdered in your cell for being gay, or for simply answering someone back in much too sassy a manner (Note: As if there’s a difference).

When you finally do get to the hotel at 3:30 am you notice that the warning at the bottom of the ticket stipulates that, if you attend, your hearing will be held in a criminal court – and that if you plead guilty to this offense you could have your license taken away. This does not cheer you and will give you nightmares. Most certainly, it has convinced you that there is, nor ever again will there be, any sure-fire recipe for reliable cross-country air travel. Ever. At least not in your lifetime.

Well, perhaps recipes are better left for food items since cooking, especially baking, lends itself a bit more to scientific formulas. Of course, that might be the case in creating the dish but nothing more. For instance, an article in the Huffington Post several days ago touted a headline offering The World’s Best Cake but when I clicked on the story I found that it was actually the world’s best cake according to the citizens of Norway and it showed an unappetizing photo of a large yellow rectangle with a heavy cream filled middle, topped with slivered almonds. This all looked, quite frankly, disgusting. Forget that personally I’m allergic to nuts but the idea that the world’s best cake could possibly not include — chocolate???? I don’t think so.

Really?

That being said, the following is the closest I can come to a sure thing. It is a bruschetta recipe I appropriated from an old Italian cookbook and doctored a bit. It’s simple and it never fails.

THE CHAIR’S BRUSCHETTA

1. Take three baskets of cherry tomatoes. Cut then in half. Put them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt.

2. Roast them in a preheated oven at 250 degrees for two hours. Then open the oven, sprinkle them with sugar lightly and continue roasting for another half hour.

3. Take them out of the oven and combine them with one additional basket of raw cherry tomatoes, also cut in half, or even thirds.

4. Pour one-third to one-half of a cup of olive oil (or a bit more) over it. Then add in a cup or two or chopped FRESH basil, a bit of salt and pepper. Then mix and let it sit an hour or so. Then add a bit more olive oil or salt/pepper to taste.

5. Serve on grilled sourdough, French or other rustic bread. The best way to do this is brush the bread with olive oil on both sides and grill for 2 minutes on each side. Take the bread off the heat, rub garlic on one side and cut it in slices. Then spread a little bit of bruschetta mixture on the garlic side of each piece of bread.

It is FABULOUS.

Yes, there are no sure-fire recipes in the world but this is the closest to perfection that you will get. Though in the off-chance you don’t like it you can go watch Noah – or better yet, drive an hour from the airport in upstate NY in the middle of the night, and tell me which of the three was the better experience. Clearly, there are also no sure-fire wins in life, but I’m more than willing to take the above bet.

03.30.14

by notesfromachair

The Lion and the Lamb

Everything is small until it’s big. No, this is not a metaphor about gaining weight. Rather, it is an observation about what you DO and SAY as opposed to what you INTEND and MEAN. Or at least, what you WANT people to think you INTENDED and MEANT once you realize they don’t like your original meaning or intention.

Seldom does anyone mention Gwyneth Paltrow and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the same sentence – except perhaps movie fans in the Trenton statehouse sifting through the credits of Ironman 3 – but strangely enough both have a strong connection at this moment in time. And that is:

They have each put their feet so far deep down into their mouths this week that even a team of the best surgeons in the world could not remove them without the pair also having to consult a podiatrist instead of an ear, nose and throat doctor whenever they felt a case of laryngitis coming on. Though in both cases, the latter ailment might be their best prescriptive course of action.

Yes, we all misspeak, but to use a tennis metaphor in honor of Maria Sharapova’s birthday later this month, these are unforced errors. The kind of missteps that could have been so easily avoided had they just thought through what were saying or doing beforehand. Or even, to use a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? metaphor (because why wouldn’t we?), phoned a friend.

To wit:

Oscar winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her rock star husband Chris Martin (you know, that guy from Coldplay) have decided to separate after 10 years of marriage. That would be a succinct, adequate announcement for the public from two very famous people.

Instead, Ms. Paltrow has decided to bill the dissolution of their marriage as a Conscious Uncoupling, replete with elaborate supporting explanations from her L.A. based doctor/healer/mentor, Dr. Habib Sadeghi, founder of the Be Hive of Healing Integrative Medical Center in Los Angeles (Note: As if we on the left coast don’t have enough problems).

Final judgement: bullshit

Among other things, Dr. Sadeghi explains that because the average human life expectancy was 33 years of age in 50,000 BC and is now 76 and 81 respectively, for men and women, we need to change our concept of divorce.

(Note: Was there even divorce and marriage in 50,000 BC? Wasn’t it more about dragging someone by the hair with one hand under the strength of an ominously large club in the other until death literally did you part? In fact, I think it might even still be that way in some territories of our 50 United States, plus Puerto Rico)

Not to be outdone by herself, that same prior week Ms. Paltrow also decided to give an interview with E! News expounding on the plight of working mothers and the special challenges she in particular faces in balancing a film career and parenting in comparison to the average Mom who is employed outside the home.

I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening, Ms. Paltrow reckoned. When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”

You mean multi-millions of dollars worth of private planes and multiple months of time off DON’T….SOLVE….ANYTHING?

And you wonder why actors need writers.

Hey Gywennie.. why don't you stick to the things you do know?

Hey Gwyennie.. why don’t you stick to the things you do know?

On the flip side, there was an aggressively indignant and embattled Gov. Chris Christie giving yet another hour-long press conference basically announcing that an internal investigation done by a law firm chock full of close friends and associates he hired and had New Jersey citizens pay for at a cost of $1 million to uncover the true story of his administration’s Bridge Gate scandal has totally exonerated him personally of any wrongdoing. In fact, not only did it find that Gov. Christie did not order the closing of car lanes to the George Washington Bridge on the anniversary weekend of 9-11 – thus creating the largest recorded traffic jam in the history of the world – but it also categorically stated that the governor had no knowledge of it (or did he?) until one of its perpetrators, a close Christie appointee to the Port Authority, casually informed him after-the-fact in a large group of people during the hustle and bustle of the oh so many 9-11 commemorations he attended.

No, in this case and in this report the blame for the lion’s share of this mess was heaped on the much, much smaller shoulders of Bridget Kelley, chief of staff for Christie at the time, who the report positioned as in an emotional state of mind when she wrote the memo ordering the lane closures. The exhaustive 360 page report then elaborates that what contributed in part to her taking this particular action was Ms. Kelley’s foul mood due to her recent romantic breakup with Christie’s other former chief of staff and campaign manager.

On his own the governor has referred to Ms. Kelly as a liar and has in previous press conferences called her actions stupid despite the fact that he never talked to her about any of the above face-to-face and chose to fire her not in person but by proxy for those aforementioned misdeeds and/or moods. Yet when questioned by Bloomberg news reporter Terence Dopp several days ago about those findings and why he terminated Ms. Kelly without allowing her the chance to present her side to him live or even across a crowded room, the governor leaned in to him and pointedly barked:

I don’t know if you can’t take notes or you’re not listening. For you to characterize my last answer as ‘I didn’t want to ask her because I didn’t want to know’ is so awful that it’s beneath the job you hold.

Of course, several days earlier the governor chose a more measured tone in a cozy, at-home interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer. Perhaps it’s because Ms. Sawyer asked her questions regarding the actions of Ms. Kelley and his other aides in a much softer tone and with a fire roaring the background, though we will never know for sure.

Sometimes, people do inexplicably stupid things., the governor more gently reflectedto DS… And so that’s what makes it so hard then to, as the guy in charge ….. none of it made any sense to me. And to some extent it still does not.

…You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, he continued. You struggle. You struggle. But I do believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Wait, what was that? Is this guy a lion or a lamb? A tiger or a mouse? Huh? HUH???

Which one is it, Chrissy?

Well, very much like the truth, it depends not only on what you say but how you say it, how people ask it and how others choose to see and/or hear it. Or in this specific case perhaps on the power of the person doing the asking and your particular mood and/or strategy at the time.

Certainly we have no idea what is in the hearts of Gov. Christie or Ms. Paltrow or anyone else except what they choose to share with us. Or even if they have hearts at all. All we have is what they say and our interpretation. That’s all that anyone has really, even with people they know and love or those that fall everywhere in between. Sure, we might understand and feel stuff based on past experiences and our intuition, but it is important to note that even Samantha Stevens on Bewitched often made the wrong choice and she was a witch. Not to mention Prof. Charles Xavier in X-Men, who also had a pretty much infallible gift of seeing into other people’s brains but whose life could hardly be described as trouble-free.

Oh I feel you, Samantha

Still, for those who are sick of considering these issues through the all-too American lens of celebrity comments, it might help to reflect on a few morally questionable actions and statements I personally encountered this week – smaller than life though they might be:

#1 The Facebook Frenzy:What was Facebook really thinking by arbitrarily switching us all to that annoying change of font and their persistent larger-than-life ads? Certainly, they don’t mean to alienate millions of users plus everyone on my news feed by cavalierly doing this without asking? Are there reasons for the actions we’re not seeing other than an insatiable need for expansion and money and a general disregard of every one of the loyal customers who made them? Or is the outrage I’m feeling really misdirected anger towards Direct TV because I can’t get their movies to stream properly in the upstairs room of my house due to a perpetually weak Internet signal? #1stWorldProblems.

YES

#2 The Slow Roll: Did the five awful people doing that rolling drive thing in the cars in front of me on five different days this week – oh, you know the one, where the vehicle is going 8 mph in a 25-35 mph zone and you pull next to them only to see the other driver TEXTING – really intend to be that selfish and cause my trip to be an additional two and a half minutes longer than it should have been? Well, perhaps their texts were urgent? Or maybe it’s what we all think – that each of them deserves to die a slow, bloody and painful death. Preferably via ice pick.

#3 The Missing Plane: Were the powers-that-be at Malaysia Airlines purposely intending to look like the most incompetent corporation in the history of the planet by merely textingthe probable death confirmations of all the missing passengers on Flight 370 to their friends, relatives and loved ones only mere seconds before the news was announced to the entire world via press conference? Or did they have some other kinder, gentler plan in place that went awry? But what could that have been? Not telling them at all???

The take away from all of this is to watch what you say and do because the smallest of things can become very big indeed. Yes, one could conceivably believe Ms. Paltrow thinks she’s re-languaging the world and that her declaration of conscious uncoupling is among the noblest efforts of all. And sure, others may agree that Gov. Christie is convinced that by bluntly insulting the press and anyone else who challenges him with a question or tone he doesn’t like, he is providing a much-needed version of tough love to a sissy society gone soft. Certainly a case could be made for both

But each also has many, many, many more detractors. Read the open letter one working Mom posted via the NY Post that has gone viral in answer to Ms. Paltrow’s views on work and motherhood –

Or simply consider my own personal view of Gov. Christie, echoed in some form by pretty much every person I know or have read — that he is more like an abusive parent who enjoys publicly shaming his “children” as loudly and threateningly as possible in front of the greatest number of people he can muster in order to deflect any sort of blame or personal responsibility off of himself.

So what’s the lesson here? Hmm, as with most things the devil is what is in the details of what you make of them.

Though I prefer the explanation my once working mother would most certainly give were she still around to speak on it.

On Gwyneth:

Oh please – she just thinks her shit doesn’t stink!

On Christie:

Oh come on, he’s just one mean son of a bitch bastard.

Yes, I am my mother’s son. Though in some cases, no matter how you look at it, that’s not such a bad thing to be.