bassproblues

[bassproblues]

You have no idea how happy I am to be leaving Los Angeles and go home. What a wretched city.

[bassproblues]

Doc, I’m moving out on my own for the first time, and I’m wondering what cookware is absolutely vital. I tried looking it up and got told about a wild variety of cookware that I’m not sure I need if I’m just cooking for me, but also I don’t know which can be left out in favor of more versatile cookware.

OKAY FANTASTIC I THRIVE ON THIS KIND OF THING.

So, let's say I'm going into an empty kitchen, and I can only have six pieces of cookware. These are ROUGHLY in order of how I would buy them, though I could be argued on a couple points. All brands are what I think are the best version of said object is--you are free to buy a different or cheaper one.

Dutch Oven

This is an absolute workhorse. You can braise in it, cook pasta in it, use it as a roaster for chicken, make soup in it, fry in it, bake bread in it, even bake a cake if you gotta though it wouldn't be my first choice. I prefer plain to enameled, enamel always chips eventually.

Lodge Logic 7 quart

2. Sheet Pan

Here's what we use for cookies, roast vegetables, fish, also can be used for chicken and other things.

Nordic Ware Half Sheet

3. Sauce Pan

So for making sauces, heating up a can of soup, melting chocolate, making jam, etc, you're going to want something smaller than the Dutch oven that heats up a little faster. Note this isn't the pan I own: The pan I own i got used and actually would never pay the new price for.

Tramontina Stainless

4. Skillet Pan

Okay, so now we're expanding. This is what I would use to saute, to make paella, you can even bake a giant cookie in it--I do this all the time.

Lodge Classic Skillet

5. Cake Pan

This would be my next pick! It's easier to bake cakes in a cake pan rather than a cast iron pan. I actually make my brownies in cake pans, i like them better thicker, and other people seem to agree! You can also make banana bread in one, no problem.

Fat Daddio's 8 inch round (I prefer an 8 inch to a 9 inch, but most people use 9 inch and most recipes are written for 9 inch, FYI)

6. Ninja Everyday

Okay, JOKES. The next think I would buy is actually not a pan but a whole cooking system thing. It has a rice cooker, braiser, slow cooker, pasta cooker, oatmeal setting. Is it the BEST at any of these things? No. But it does a good enough job at all of them that I think it's a great choice over buying a slow cooker or rice cooker.

Ninja Everyday Possible Cooker

Secret 7th pan: 9 x 13 pan. For cornbread, sheet cake, lasagna, bake ziti. You can make do without it, but I'd like to have it.

PYREX (french import that is still made of borosilicate glass yes yes it's very annoying that you need to go through importers to find this and so it is spendy)

I hope this helps!

[bassproblues]

What western novels do you recommend? I don’t think I’ve ever read one and was hoping to give it a try!

I LOVE Westerns. I love them even when they aren't particularly good. Whenever people accuse me of hating genre fiction, I'm like, "I think my collection of Westerns begs to differ. I just have DIFFERENT bad taste." (My collection of horror books too)

OKAY SO, MUCH OF THIS DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU'D LIKE TO FIND IN A WESTERN NOVEL.

Perhaps the best Western Novel ever written: Lovesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry.

It's not just me that would say this of Lonesome Dove, I think you can find this on lists of the world's greatest Westerns, it's fairly largely acknowledged as a great American Novel, many books have TRIED to be Lonesome Dove and are not. This book was one of the things Jill and I talked for HOURS about on our first date. We almost mutually changed our last names to McCrae instead of her taking Holligay. She walked down the aisle to the theme from the miniseries.

To MASSIVELY OVERSIMPLIFY, this is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. But it's about relationships, and dedication, and doing everything right and losing anyhow, sometimes. It's about finding connections. It's about dreams and failures. It contains one of the greatest versions of "the grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one" in platonic form. Also the idea that a friend, who is never anything romantic, can be the love of your life.

A fun revival Western: The Shootist by Glendon Swartout

I actually just reread this! So in the 80s and 90s, Westerns became 'grittier' sort of like comic book movies did in the 00s. This is not an altogether bad thing, and it certainly wasn't all the way to 'gritty' until we get to, movie wise, things like 3:10 to Yuma, which actually is incredible. ANYWAY, so The Shootist breaks from a lot of the molds of 60 and 70s Westerns (upstanding law officer, gang of mustache twirling villains, etc) and is about the last great shootist--what a gunfighter would have been actually called in the 1800s--who is dying of cancer.

I know that does not make it sound fun, but it is, actually, and it is an easy read. Lots of fun Western colloquialisms and there IS depth there if you want to go looking for it, but it's totally extraneous to the enjoyment of the book and also might be half made up in my head.

A great classic Western: Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

Riders of the Purple Sage is actually responsible for helping form a lot of what we understand as being the Western genre today. This puppy has it all: Gunfights, cattle rustling, the moral code of one's own pride, falling in love with a lonely little woman hell bent to make it on her own.

There are so many things in this novel that will come to define the genre, but because it is a little pre-genre, at least in a strong and stratified way that separates itself from the dimestore novels, it's not as formulaic as you might expect and borrows heavily from early 1900s literature wrought large.

A WESTERN Western: Literally anything by Louis L'amour

Am I here to defend Louis L'amour? No I am not. Do I love Louis L'Amour? Yes absolutely. I am not even so much suggesting that you actually read a L'amour book because I think you really have to love the genre to get into them, but boy are they GENRE. Love them. There's like 5 or 6 plotlines between them. I read them in the tub all the time. I don't even count them toward my books read they are such popcorn. Delightful. I gave them away as favors at my wedding.

A modern Western: All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Now we're getting into the weeds a bit because there are some people who would argue that a lot of what modern Western literary fiction is, isn't really "Westerns" and I know what they're saying but I don't think I agree. There can be great novels of any genre that break genre, and I think this is just one of those. It has all the hallmarks of a Western.

Anyway, anyone who tells you The Road is Cormac McCarthy's best novel is out of their fucking minds and also probably very boring and controversially either doesn't read much or doesn't read much serious stuff. All of McCarthy's border novels are better than The Road, All the Pretty Horses just happens to be my favorite.

A Western that is probably more fairly slotted into Historical Fiction: Doc: A Novel, by Mary Doria Russell.

This book made me stop writing my Doc Holliday historical novel because I can't do a better job than this.

[bassproblues]

Butch Troubles

So, for the unaware, I'm a hard butch -- not only a woman, and not completely a man. I wear men's clothes, I certainly behave very much like a man. I pass as a man more often than not to the untrained eye.

At my mma club, which is mostly guys, most people know me as male. The only one who doesn't is a girl who I told I was a butch when she was having a particularly bad day, and I sensed she wanted another lesbian to connect to.

Here's where it gets interesting. I was training with the guys (getting gear on, some wrestling warm ups) when one of them spots my boxing shoes poking out my gym bag. Not to brag -- my boxing shoes are VERY COOL LOOKING I ASSURE. He reaches into my bag to get them. I get anxious -- my cluster of pads are in full view. I dress how I please and live how others care to find me, and a positive to that is people largely leave me alone. The moments where people notice the contradiction that I am --maybe the softness in my face, the angle of my hips, a break in my voice -- things tend to go very terribly. People do not like feeling deceived, and I'm the 5G cell tower that's been Frankensteined into passing as a fake tree. I've been jumped and attacked before by men, and more times than I can count women have called me a predator or a child molester before finding their boyfriend/security to deal with me. And, to be both frank and ironic, I've found that the vast majority of today's lesbians are massively under-socialized with butches and can't spot one in the wild. It's a side effect of being butch that just sucks, but I just truck on and deal with it.

My training buddy just sifted past my pads and pulled out my shoes to show off to everyone. No one noticed the pads (I may have had a sports bra in there too?). All is good, all is well. He probably didn't think too hard about them. Butches, who are me, have found that gender fuckery really points out the folks who are suggestible and notes all the quirky ways our brains fill in the blanks to resolve perceived contradictions.

While it stressed me out in the moment, I laugh about it lots now.

[bassproblues]

Goodbyes Are Hard

The one person who doted on me and never tried to make me any harder than need be was Andy. My good friend, Andy, who oh so very casually dropped that she's moving to a whole new country via text the other day.

When I was a kid, not to overshare, I was in a rough situation and things were not so great. Andy and her wife took me in. I would trek over to Andy's house and help her wife make dinner. I'd come over after school to do homework and play some ball with Andy well into the night. I'd spend dozens of nights on their couch whenever I needed to just close my eyes and not have to think.

Andy didn't raise me -- I was a little past that age and a bit feral when we came into each others lives. But she certainly raised the best parts of me.

She taught me the velvety goodness of a fresh fade on a crew cut. And always made sure I didn't go to school looking like a scruffy Muppet.

Gave me my first sex talk, cause who else was gonna do it.

I'll miss seeing her dote on her wife, lavishing affection or doing little things to make her feel safe and comfortable. Andy and her wife were the first realization I had that maybe I could have a wife too one day, that it was a very real and possible future for me.

Andy told me all her fun stories about the local dyke bar that shuttered way before my time. How all the straight girls working the strip club next door would come over after work and tease the butches relentlessly, and how they'd walk the dancers to their cars at closing.

She taught me not to be ashamed of my stone and all my other butch quirks. And that if I found a girl I wanted to be touched by, that there's nothing wrong with a butch who rolls over in bed with a girl they trust.

Andy coached me through my many, many, mistakes when chasing straight girls, and tried to caution against her own faults and trappings that she saw in me.

Andy taught me so much. It's hard to write down.

Andy wasn't by any stretch of the imagination consistent, and I have no doubt she would agree as much. Her own family problems, financial problems, and her wife's poor health made consistency hard. But goddamn she always tried. And I always knew she loved me more than an extra mouth to feed ever inconvenienced her.

Her work, ultimately, is why she wants to move. She's works 12 hour days on a construction site. She's hard as diamonds, and always deflects whenever I bring it up, but it's hard to ignore. When I first met her we could still play some sports and hike and hunt and camp. Now the sum of her life has really worn down her neck, spine, and legs. Matter of fact, when I told Andy (far after the fact, mind you) I worked construction to put myself through college she had to restrain herself from grabbing me by the scruff and shaking me around. Andy knows it's bad, her wife knows it bad, I know it's bad. Ever since I was a kid, I've seen her come home from work late at night, not even shower or eat, pass out in the living room, and then get up in a few hours to do it all over again.

The new job is overseas, and it's a nice little desk job. Lots of sitting down inside with air conditioning. A better boss that wouldn't ride her ass as much. It's in her wife's home country, maybe her health will improve. It should be good. I just can't bring myself to be happy, and I know it's selfish of me.

I'm not sad right now. I'm sure one day I'll wake up and want to down whisky and wings with her after work, and maybe on that day I'll be sad. But now I just have feelings, and that's a bit much for me.

[bassproblues]

Butch: The Good, The Meh, and The Ugly

A recent girlfriend of mine asked me about what it was like being butch. I flat out told her that, while I wouldn't have it any other way, it comes with so many problems the positives are nearly negated. I spent some more time thinking about it and feel just a tad differently. I think I spoke from a place of clouded judgement and wasn't really taking in the sum of my life. Below is my experience with butchness. And I fully own I am unique or unusual in some ways.

The Good:

* No line ever in the men's restroom.

* My body finally feels like home.

* I connect with men very well over things downstream from masculinity; hobbies, interests, traumas, and more.

* I pass as a man. People ignore me and leave me alone.

* I love it when a girl calls me handsome :)

* I am stone. My stone melts when I'm with a woman I can trust to not feminize me in the bedroom. It's a truly wonderful thing.

* I love the masculine preening that comes with butchness.

* I love being chivalrous -- spending a night on a girls couch to protect her from her ex who trashed the place, giving a woman my last $200 to pay for groceries for her and her kid.

* I love making women feel safe. I'm the one that walks them to their cars, tell their boyfriends to bug off when they get aggro, stay up late with them cause they're worried about an ex.

* I've maxed out my masculine personality (things like assertiveness, stoicism) in such a way that it perfectly contrasts my feminine traits (things like joy, gentleness). I feel like very complete and whole person.

The Meh:

* I don’t mind being called sir or ma’am, nor he or she. Neither one is offensive to me because I know that people are limited in their understanding of me unless they know me intimately.

* Gay men often hit on me. It's a very bizarre experience.

* I walk into queer spaces and feel like a goddamn space alien.

* Women expect me to be the pursuer in relationships.

* Women often regard me as some kind of exotic full-time crossdresser (see: The Ugly). As a result, they think I've got more sexual experience and am way more sexually active than I actually am.

* As a very masculine butch, I spend a lot of time defending that masculinity. It is a source of contention among LGBT and straight people alike.

* I am stone. Women often regard me in the bedroom as something they can "fix.

* AFAB Non-binary people often regard me as a gender therapist that has endless patience. I am not-- I am annoyed and want to be left alone.

* Forms and IDs with gender markers are the bane of my existence. I'm often the ridicule of police/security/ bouncers/bartenders/government pencil pushers when they realize my appearance does not resemble my sex unless I'm stripped down.

The Ugly:

* Women will 100% scream and call security and start crying when I use the women's bathroom. I have not used the women's restroom in 6 years.

* Many (ignorant) lesbians reject me outright because of my masculinity and question why they would not just date a man if they were going to date a butch.

* Lesbians and bisexuals sometimes treat me like a rare, exotic, crossdressing sex object. They can be quite predatory sometimes.

* Women and men often write me off as an inherently aggressive entity.

* Pop-feminism thinks I need to be enlightened and I don't know what's good for me. It often feels like modern day feminists admonish butches for not being more feminine in the streets and in the bedroom.

* Women sometimes think I'm butch because someone touched me as a kid and I'd grow up to hurt their kids. I was in 7th grade when a woman first expressed this fear to me.

* Men sometimes see me as a challenge to be overcome or as a threat to their identity. I can count on being jumped a few times a year.

* I pass as a man. People don't like feeling deceived.

* Women sometimes dip into 'masculinity is a lack of expression’ and forget that butches have feelings.

* Lesbians sometimes often write me off as an oppressor or a chauvinist. It often feels like I have no voice in those spaces.