gastropoda

On our way to buy hardtack the other day, my consort and I stopped at an NYPL branch to return a carefully culled DVD and by chance found “City Island” on the shelf. I remembered several touts by our co-op’s own private Ebert, the Sun-thru-Thurs elevator operator whose taste is unerringly right-on, so we brought it home and watched it with great pleasure. Now all I want to know is why NPR’s producers weren’t mentioning it in their segment on the Butter Guzzler, the one that alleged her appeal is to “people who live alone or have fractured families.” I suspect what’s up is more the feeder/feedee dynamic the filmmaker ID’d in his quest for an obese actress in a celluloid world where 170 pounds is deemed over the top. And I don’t even want to  delve into how Liberace had the same appeal to my lonely mom after her nine pregnancies in 8 1/2 years . . .

. . . “Into the Abyss” is one of the most retrospectively powerful movies I’ve seen. Werner Herzog definitely gets at Real America and its gated communities, so safe you could die for want of a clicker. The ending is beyond compelling, and even as I joke about my epitaph from the crematorium being “Twittered Away,” I am thinking more and more about The Dash. Mostly, though, I’m trying to get the crime scene with the vintage cookbook and the half-finished batch of cookies out of my head. Also, too, many furious thoughts about The Chimp and his enabler, Panchito. . .

“Contagion” was pretty much a waste of our discount coupons and 6 gazillion dollars for  popcorn, but (big-time spoiler alert) the ending could have been even more chilling. Bad enough a chef wipes his mitts on his apron and shakes hands with a patron. Imagine if that hand had been in a glove. Used in a bathroom shortly before it went into a pig’s snout. . . .

Chipotle’s Willie Nelson video is “Our Daily Bread” condensed to mere minutes. But it’s funny how one short is worth a thousand Egopedist textings.

On a related topic, though, I have to say I was glad I schlepped to a screening of the short film Terry Gilliam made for a pasta company based in Naples. Clearly, his sponsor did not get between him and his inner demons at all. This baby is dark. And funny, of course. You could almost call it “Mangia, Brazil.” And the best part is how it makes clear that as much as you may want to storm across a restaurant and throttle a screaming baby, it’s the bad parents who are the true villains in any piece.

“Bridesmaids” was worth my consort’s $26 for two for the alimentary canal lessons alone. There’s a reason Trump’s mouth makes you want to look away, and not south. But when the fat sister of the groom erupts after Brazilian (food, not wax) and can’t determine from which end, you realize why writing about food is such an ephemeral pursuit. Chick-fil-A or foie gras, it all comes out the same.

Okay, sap’s stopped rising. Back to bile. Is there anything sillier in a 140-character world than 30 gazillion words about a single recipe? Even without slogging through, I was reminded of the coulibiac in the marvelous “Decline of the American Empire” — all that yapping about fish in a blanket.

File under Out of the Mouths of Consorts: We were at AIPAD, the photo show at the Armory, and I stopped to gawk at an old Herbert Ponting news shot of the start of the doomed 1911 Scott expedition to the South Pole. It showed about 30 sled dogs on the deck of a ship loaded with supplies, and it looked so upbeat — unwitting animals being ferried on a noble human exploration of parts unknown. While I was “wow”ing and mulling and romanticizing, Bob just said: “Yeah. They wound up eating those dogs.” Please never tell me what happens in “Delicatessen.”

My favorite part of the not-overhyped “Social Network”? The sandwich scene. To think the whole friending business could have turned out entirely differently if the Wasp twins had had the good sense (and manners) to bring out cucumber on crust-trimmed white  on a silver salver, just like he pictured it. But I also have to say I started to take the story most seriously after the 66 scene. The faux rang true.

And I always hate to say anything positive, but “Soul Kitchen” is not just an exceptional movie but can be seen at IFC, which has the best popcorn in town. It’s about a chef and food and a restaurant but about so much more. At a time when America is looking rather grim, this makes you feel more hopeful for the world. It’s a multi-culti place, and hot gazpacho has no place in it.

On the happy side of life’s little ledger, I persuaded my consort to take me to see “Mid-August Lunch,” and we both squirmed through it, wondering if it was ever actually going to go anywhere. But we walked out feeling transported — it’s so very Italian, and you can almost smell the Rome apartment it’s filmed in. I was mostly interested in it for the food, and it definitely delivered, and not in a porn-ish way. Only the Italians would think sliced potatoes and fish fillets will bake in the same amount of time (branzino and orata there are always 375 degrees of separation from crudo). The crisp veal Milanese, the limp roasted asparagus, the cakes both store-bought and home-baked, the gooey/cheesy lasagne, the pasta-with-red-sauce portions are all just right. So much of the movie takes place in the kitchen and around the table it’s well worth watching once it comes to DVD. The poster slogan should be: No smarm, please. We’re Italian.

Time Out deserves a fist bump for printing the most self-indicting letter ever, from some bleeding idiot outraged over a photo of a whole pig roasting on a spit: “I don’t want to see visual reminders that my lunch was once a living and breathing animal.” As they say on the political blogs: Teh stupid — it burns. Hot dogs good; porchetta scary. Please. Food does not come from the supermarket. And if you can’t face the artisanal link, you certainly don’t want to contemplate the industrial chain. “Our Daily Bread” should be required viewing for anyone who reacts to a picture of a whole hog by throwing her turkey sandwich in the trash. Tom died in vain.

That kind of denial is exactly what’s involved in one of the most unsettling processes I’ve read about in some time, how processors turn pigskins into chicharrones, aka pork rinds. The story was in the WSJournal, on a dispute over imports of skins from countries with foot-and-mouth, the disease that devastated British farms less than 10 years ago. Pigs there, of course, contracted it by eating imported meat (you don’t even want to dwell). Thank allah for the photos and relatively long text to make it clear just how  processed this stuff is: In one factory, frozen skins are mechanically minced and cooked into pellets, which are then boxed up and shipped off to other factories to be fried. Forget the issue of whether the meat is contaminated to begin with. How many un-health-cared hands touch it before it lands in someone’s mouth; how many chances are there for something to go horribly wrong? And people freak out about lard?

Nothing epitomizes America’s defeated attitude better than the coming teevee show about a “chef” who works in a struggling burger joint. We don’t even aspire to cuisine these days, even as fantasy; we’ll just settle for one step up from McFilth. Someone should put “Frank’s Place” back out on DVD. Gumbo is complex — and shrimp and crab don’t get recalled for shit.

I’m usually pretty good at over-interpreting meanings in movies — I still remember how quickly I pegged the crack epidemic to “Alien Nation” at a time when everyone was still pretending Lee Atwater was not the vilest dog whistler around. So why am I mystified as to the significance of the frozen corn in Sendak cinematized? The kid flees the house after spurning Birds Eye’s best, with a grandiose statement of his disdain. But why? Maybe Spike Jonze’s next project is with Saint Alice and other sanctimonious souls in the Bay Area: “Where the Chang Talks Aren’t.”

So much for Michael Pollan’s cred. Food & Wine has just declared this the year of the home cook, even as he is swearing cobwebs are covering American stoves. Hmm Balzer notwithstanding, someone is buying an awful lot of groceries these days. Then again, there’s a whole cookbook coming out on ways to doctor up pre-fab cookie dough — with no ways to take shit out, of course, only to add it back in. Leave it to the Guardian, though, to really put all this in perspective with a story on how “Meryl Streep film starts debate on loss of cooking skills.” Yes, Sophie the Prada-Wearing Devil did it. Apparently the paper is outsourcing its headline-writing to Lahore.