The Weekly Meat

Holiday Gift Guide: 2011

In past years, this post has been reserved specifically so I could shill for the publishing industry. This year, it's more like "catching up with consumable culture" — some of which is book-related, some not so much.

Here are some things I've run across in the past year that would make good holiday gifts. So go ahead, treat yourself or your loveed ones while boosting the economy in the following ways.

 

READ

Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman — Split into three discrete sections, this looks at the CIA's (Culinary Institue of America, that is, not Central Intelligence Agency) Certified Master Chef exam, as well as the restaurants of chefs Michael Symon, and Thomas Keller.

Cooking Dirty by Jason Sheehan — If Soul of a Chef is for the 1%, Cooking Dirty is for the 99%. It captures the crazy intensity (quite well, I might add; this is a James Beard-winning writer and former chef) of actual working restaurant kitchens in a way I've very rarely seen in print — but saw in practice every day in every restaurant in which I've done time.

Life by Keith Richards — Easy, late night reading, but well-written, entertaining, enlightening, and insightful.

The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan — A sure-handed, fascinating, writerly, and suspenseful novel, from a first-time novelist not afraid (curse you, writing programs!) to have an actual plot drive the story. (Full disclosure: Keith is a friend. And I wish I had his slapshot.)

 

WATCH TV AND MOVIES

Wallander — For a good 10–15 years, Kenneth Branagh and his agent made it too easy for us to forget what a fantastic actor he really is. Here, he brings an honest, humble performance as a Swedish detective, in which he shows his age, his gut, and his chops. Excellent, beautifully shot, understated yet intense TV. Get it from Netflix or wherever you get your goods.

Sherlock — Another BBC production worth watching. An updated and imaginative take on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson — and starring the man with the most British name of all time: Benedict Cumberbatch.

The Other F Word — Great documentary about punk rockers becoming dads. Deals with the topic of fatherhood better than anything else I've seen or read. And the music kicks ass.

A Face in the Crowd — Classic Elia Kazan flick I'd missed out on until recently. Incredibly prescient (1957) look at how media feeds the cult of personality and vice-versa. Great performance by Andy Griffith as the lead, and it stars both Patricia Neal and Lee Remick. Be still, my beating heart.

 

GO TO A MUSEUM

I could walk around the following museums even if they were absolutely empty. Both are beautiful and fascinating architectural spaces, well worth the time when you're in town.

• Mass MOCA
• ICA Boston

 

BUY RANDOM KITCHEN STUFF

Pickling tongs — What? You're not pickling or otherwise canning? Get on it; stat! You'll need this cheap but invaluable tool. And a mess of mason jars. Here's a basic pickling how-to from Rick of Rick's Picks.

Busha Browne's Authentic Jerk Seasoning — Marinate chicken or pork, cook, eat, thank me.

A sharp knife — Using a dull knife for food prep is more dangerous than using a sharp one. So go to a proper kitchen supply store and buy yourself a good knife, or take care of the good one you already have.

 

DRINK BEER

I like beer. These are a few new favorites, all from excellent breweries. Give them a shot.

• BBC Berkshire Ale — Straight-ahead English-style pale ale (currently my fave type of brew).
• Otter Creek Black IPA — Just what it sounds like. A real dark India pale ale that doesn't go overboard on the hops.
• Great Divide Hoss — A rye (grain of the moment) beer; delicious on tap.

Or if you or a loved one is in or around Boston, give em a gift certificate to (and ride home from!) Meadhall, which has an insane selection (~100) of craft beers on tap.

 

BUY RAZOR BLADES

I have no explanation (outside of a "vast right wing conspiracy") why replacement razor blades are so damn expensive, while disposable razors are so damn cheap. I just know they are. So buy your loved ones some replacement razor blades. I'm personally a Gilette Sensor Excel guy. I'm just saying.

 

GET YOUR MEAT ON

Why buy a T-shirt when you can buy a TWM-shirt?

 

GIVE IT AWAY

We have too much stuff and don't need more. We all have folks who have died on us that we'd trade every gift to have back. Agree with family to not give mutual gifts, but rather to put your money where your heart is. Do some homework, and donate.

 

That's all folks. Now go get your holidays on.

(D)Evolution

Original old-school Pumas (à la Walt "Clyde" Frazier) -> middle school Asics -> new school Reeboks.

The stealing and gradual worsening of a fresh, clean design.

P.S. Yeah, Nike, you too.

Matzo Ball Soup

With apologies to Andy Warhol, have a good Passover, people. Get your soup on.

Painting

Twenty years ago, I’d convince myself I painted because if I didn’t, my head would blow up. Though I, uh, no longer believe that to be the case — and though I now work full-time for The Man — painting remains both an outlet for creativity, and a necessary means of expression.

More than that, writing and painting — far more than my day job — are how I parse the world. How I figure out what I think and feel about whatever particular stage of life I am presently experiencing. And how I strive to make sense of a world that seems to make less and less sense each day.

If possible, I would like nothing more than to get paid even half my current salary to simply write and paint 40 hours a week.

And yet, it is with some trepidation that I find myself gearing up for a big (spatially, if nothing else) art show of paintings at a cavernous local hipster hangout. Typically, I'm confident enough in my ability to create what I deem to be "good" art, so it's generally not fear of failure that gets me in times like this — rather, it's often fear of success (what if I sell a whole bunch of paintings and then feel conflicted about my full-time/"real" job...?). Not so this time. This time, it's more like agoraphobia. That is to say fear of having enough good art to fill what amounts to nearly 200 linear feet of high-ceilinged wall space.

I'm half-assed about plenty of things in my life (surely, regular readers can see that some of these columns are far better than others), but things like this, things so much in the public eye, I tend toward obsessiveness in my attempts to do as best I can. I'm not worried about salability (in fact, it often works out that I sell more of the pieces I'm not crazy about than the ones I am); rather, I want to ensure that the show is strong and representative of my best work.

And so, with six days to go, I'm fussing with show posters and getting the word out and revising an artist's statement and making sure all the work has hanging hardware attached and, of course, still working on new pieces. One tends to forget just how difficult the business of being an artist or a writer is. Creating the work itself is the easy part; getting published, getting shows, getting read or seen or bought or sold is the hard part. So in times like this, I find myself pining for a pimp to do (what I see as being) the dirty work for me.

It is, in fact, the same notion that at least in part drove me to start this blog in the first place. I like the writing, hate the business. So instead of seeking out markets for every little thing I write — and I well understand that only one in, say, 15 or 20 of these blog pieces is an idea worthy of submission to traditional media outlets — and so I save myself the time and energy by self-publishing on the blog.

And, mind you, what's a blog without shameless self-promotion? So, the art . . .

I work with materials I feel some connection to. I grew to love the “hand-me-downs” received as a child, and now, be it clothes and furniture for myself and studio, or canvas, tree bark or scrap wood for my art, I like old, rough, weathered things — objects that already have a story.

The idea is to then construct “canvases” in which the placement of these objects in relation to each other creates not only a dynamic composition, but an intriguing dialog between the objects. Of course, not only do the objects themselves have stories to tell, but so do the textures, colors and qualities of both paint and line.

at a dozen pieces from the show

Unfortunately, what is lost a bit in photographs are surface textures. It becomes difficult to distinguish between layers — what is paint, what is birch bark, what is torn bits of litho or photographs. So, those of you who are local to Boston, come out to Diesel Cafe in the 02144 and have a look at these constructions for yourselves. I encourage you to do so as I see them — an arm’s length from the canvas — and then get on my Facebook page and let me know what you think.

Greenest Corporate Logo Contest Winner!

Sarcasm.

P.S. This, despite this.

Come On, Get Pepsi

I'll let those who get paid more than me concoct utter horse-hockey about the global gravitas of the new Pepsi logo. I know what I know, and it's quite simple, really. Pepsi = Obama + The Partridge Family:

Shooting Junk

I'll leave it to the scholars and shrinks to tell me why, but I love junk. Always have, probably always will. I like worn in — and worn out — things. In college, I shopped at thrift stores so often that many of my friends still call me Sal. Broken-in clothes just felt more comfortable to me.

Junk pulls me in at an artistic, gut level and brings out my camera. From burned out buildings to garbage dumps to scraped billboards, something about the randomness sticks in my craw, and I can't look away. The following are a couple dozen shots of stuff I love looking at through the lens.

at a dozen BLACK and WHITE PHOTOS of junk

at a dozen COLOR PHOTOS of junk

Matchbooks

As a kid, I was a bit of a collector. I bought Topps baseball, football, and hockey cards in wax-packs with stale sticks of gum because I loved the sports, and because that's what kids collected in the '70s. My friends and I hoarded them, coveted them, traded them, and occasionally gambled for them.

During my early teens, my card consumption fell off and I picked up two new items: bottle caps and matchbooks. Both pursuits were far less social. Neither would cast me as a misfit, but I kept them to myself. It felt a bit Mad Men, which I liked — the paraphernalia of drinking and smoking — and more grown up than I actually was.

In the '70s, exotic bottlecaps were more difficult to come by than they are now, so matchbooks won out. As a collectible, you could do far worse. All the restaurants and bars had matches. They're free — not even requiring patronage — and there are always new places to eat and drink. Matchbooks are small, geographical snapshots, relics, conjuring memories and melancholy; they light our fire. In a pinch, they might even save a life.

In retrospect, the matchbooks were more to do with my interest in art and graphic design than anything else. I was taking design classes during high school, studying typesets at the local repro shops before fonts became things piled on our computer and worthy of multimedia brillance and hip documentaries. Some were clean, some ornate, some curvy. And the line art — some muddy, some art deco, some racy. My collection was a library, an encyclopedia of design — some god-awful, some outstanding.

I like all the ones below, some for admittedly personal reasons. All tell a bit of a story, be it through their design or through my stories associated with them. And many of these places are gone — one, heartbrakingly so. (Click on any pic for a closer look.)

Public Art

I'm part of the global warming problem. I have a ~30 mile commute to work, and I drive it solo, four days a week. I drive a '95 Camry, not some idiotic suburban assault vehicle — and I work at home one day a week — but still, it's a long drive. Oh yeah, this post isn't about being green. My point is this: the drive is boring as all hell.

I miss the days when my commute (which took the same ~45 minutes) involved bus and/or subway, and I could just read, or write, or people watch, or zone out to my Walkman (yes, it's been that long since I last worked vaguely near public transportation), or all four at the same time. But driving (well) takes some modicum of concentration, and listening to NPR, or a good college station, or AM hate radio, only gets me so far. So I listen to podcasts and audio books, and what have you. Of course, the scenery still sucks.

That is, but for several hundred yards of what might otherwise be the most uninspired part of the commute — a down-in-the-mouth bit of traffic-choked local roadway alongside I-93. Because brightening up that bit of the drive is one of my favorite painted murals of all time.

As far as I am concerned, the Mystic River Mural (yeah, that Mystic River) is the second most successful piece of public art I've had the pleasure to experience (more on the first, below). Its success in this case is due mostly to the improvement of its blah surroundings (it's literally sandwiched between a community housing project and the interstate), its staying power (new sections are added each year), and the fact that it plays such a refreshing role in my daily commute.

Public art should be just that: widely viewable, well-executed, and aesthetically accessible. Even some of the graffiti writers create great public art. (Also appreciated on many a commute.) Wish I had some better pics to link to for some old school Philly faves, but suffice to name-check "Mr. Blint" and leave it there. Dude could paint.

This mural — which stretches several hundred yards, and covers up nothing but ugly concrete reinforcement walls — actually achieves its clear mission every day, which is to remind those who take the time to see it, that there is an living, flowing river just on the other side of the overpass. The location is the subject matter is the message.

Hands down, the greatest piece of public art I've seen was Olafur Eliasson's "Sun" installation at the Tate Modern in London. Trippy, religious, almost too cool and too powerful for words. It was a feeling, beyond the sheer enormity of the space, which is bigger than most outside of Cape Canaveral.

The Tate Modern is housed in what used to be a mothballed old power plant on the bank of the Thames. The Sun installation played on the building's former life so well, filling the vast, open turbine hall space not just with a glow, but with a low hum that made you wonder if the plant was still cranking out electricity, or if it could be the "sun" itself.

At its core, the piece (now long gone) was about raw power: of the sun, of electricity, of art; the powers of perception, suggestion, and even group inertia. It drew you in — literally (the photo at right is what I saw upon entering the museum), and figuratively (respectable people lay down on the floor, as if sunbathing, basking in the yellowness and warmth).

It immediately made me want to get to museums more often; made me wish more art was transcendent, had vision, had balls, had an audience. What I liked most about the Sun was that it was free. The old turbine hall is essentially one of the world's great foyers. You needn't pay a pence to come inside and hang out.

One of the brilliant things about The Internets and our new global world is that art is increasingly more accessible than ever. The best of the best are no longer locked up in castles or salons or museums, or even in expensive textbooks.

Back in the day, NYC graffiti writers dreamt of painting "all-city" trains, so their sometimes fantastic murals could be seen in all boroughs. Nowadays we have whole marketing teams concerned with tracking "eyeballs," and we can count unique visitors to sites, exhibits, etc. Nowadays, the talk is about going viral, or going global.

Bring it on. Paintings to the people!

More of my Tate Modern "Sun" installation pics.