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bisluthq · 24 days

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I 100% agree with everything you said about the harm that comes from denying these procedures!! I was one of those teenagers who didn’t understand why my face and body didn’t look like the 30 year old playing a teenager on a tv show, and it only got worse as I got older UNTIL I knew all the work they’d had.

As a teen the best thing for me was this beauty campaign that was done by some trashy magazine where they got a bunch of famous women and did a big photo shoot together. Then they showed the difference in the women with how they came in (no makeup, no hair extensions, no blow out, etc), how they looked after x many hours in the HMU chair + the cost of the clothes and that they were altered to fit their bodies… then they showed the final version that goes to print and said how much photo shopping had been done. It was seriously enlightening and helpful. At the time I used to get a lot of compliments on my hair - I was just lucky and used cheap shampoo but had thick and glossy long hair, never had it coloured and my mum cut it for me lol, so like budget maintenance right. But it fucked with my head as a teenager that I was always being told how great my hair was but when I styled it, it NEVER looked as good as the starlets I was copying (many reasons including not knowing what I was doing and lack of products) but then I found out THEY ALL HAD EXTENSIONS for thickness! Mindy kaling mentioned in one of her books that trying to look like someone on tv is impossible because everyone has false lashes, extensions and so much more “natural looking” stuff even before they get into styling.

I do have a lot of body image issues still, but it’s so much better when I’m wondering why I don’t look as toned? Oh because they also spray tan and body contour their muscles!

Why can’t I pull off this hair style? Oh right I don’t have twice the thickness in extensions!

Etc etc etc

And then some people are like ‘what? YOU THOUGHT IT WAS NATURAL?!?’ But in a really derogatory way when people say they have body image issues. But until you know every part of their body has been touched up, WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU THINK?!!

Now I just assume most famous people have something and have gotten better at not comparing myself to them and generally recognising when people have had work done. But even my sister I’m pretty sure got some wonky fillers and says she hasn’t had anything (where I live it’s not unheard of or shocking, but definitely not common to get fillers or Botox)

I mean most women I’m friends with AND my sister get fillers and Botox. I haven’t ever and I don’t want to right now but I might when I’m older for maintenance more than anything else? I’m not crazy pretty at all but I’m happy with my face and the things I’d like to change (my nose for example I don’t like and my lips aren’t even - the bottom one is thicker than the top and obviously that’d be nice to fix) would change my face too dramatically imo and I wouldn’t be willing to do that just personally because I don’t think I’d like to wake up and see a different face lol? I’m okay with my face. I do want it to stay this way for as long as possible but besides that eh it is what it is. My friends and I discuss work a lot idk because as I say basically everyone has had some done. A lot of the guys in my social circle also do work tbf. Quite a few guys have had hair transplants for example. A few have started Botox. My bf is VERY classically handsome and actually hasn’t done any of that but more because he’s worried like once he starts he’s gonna get very obsessive about it and try look 22 again and obviously he isn’t lol. He does gym a lot and plays sportz but face wise he’s not as into doing things as a lot of our other friends.

I think talking about this stuff is really healthy?? Because yes as you say, so many teenage girls (and teenage boys) don’t know that what they’re looking at is totally unrealistic. No matter what they do, unless they start spending money, they’re not going to look like that.

I’m also huge on celebs being honest about diet and gym lmao because unless you work VERY hard, you won’t look like that. Which is fine and normal and if you want to look a certain way, that’s what most people will have to do to join u, but don’t be like “oh I eat anything I want” when you clearly fucking don’t.

And I don’t think it’s stupid teenage you believed this was just normal nice makeup and pretty hairstyles and a healthy lifestyle because no one really talked about all this stuff.

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randommusingsstuff · 3 years

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Why Ben and Devi are Endgame (Meta)

At the heart of every rom-com, it always comes down to this: what does the protagonist truly want?

Why Devi and Paxton Don’t Work

In the season 2 finale, Devi triumphantly says “So, I guess I'm Paxton Hall-Yoshida’s girlfriend now”. She got what she thought she wanted at the start of her journey, only it’s not what she wants anymore.

Although Devi cares for Paxton, she views him as a status symbol. Paxton, for all his growth, still sees himself as cooler than her. And no, he was not just embarrassed because she cheated on him. Before he knew she was cheating, he invited his friends on their first date and refused to call her his girlfriend. In the finale, it once again takes someone else to point out that he shouldn’t blow her off. As Devi and Paxton walk into the dance, he gives his friends a sheepish look while they judge him. Not only does he still have lingering feelings of embarrassment, his friends’ reactions suggest turbulence ahead for their relationship.

There is also a lack of communication between Paxton and Devi. They have a magical kiss by the window, and makeout sessions afterwards, but they don't actually talk about their relationship in that elapsed time. Devi makes the assumption that they are together and Paxton doesn’t articulate what he wants until it is forced out of him.

What can we conclude from this? Paxton is a great character, but he is not the one for Devi. They have differing interests and goals, a lack of communication and they do not see each other for their true worth.

Can the writers surmount all of these issues to give them an endgame? Yes, but it would require fundamentally changing who Devi and Paxton are.

Why Devi and Ben Work

In episode 1 of season 2, Devi wants to pick Ben but her friends talk her out of it. This is crucial to understanding why they belong together: her gut instinct has already revealed the truth. She had both guys vying for her and she wanted Ben. Just by this one fact alone, we can infer that Devi’s relationship with Ben was more meaningful to her than her pursuit of Paxton in season 1.

When it’s revealed that Devi is two-timing the boys, Paxton is hurt but Ben is devastated. Paxton likes her, but Ben connected with her on a deeper emotional level. Devi follows Paxton out of the party, which is understandable because he is the one walking away. Again, this is cleverly hinting at their communication styles. Paxton wants to avoid the situation and Ben wants to talk about it. From Ben’s perspective, Paxton is the guy she has wanted for so long and he is the second choice.

Throughout the season, Ben never considers the fact that Devi could want him over Paxton, which is equal parts sad and infuriating. Her therapist asks what she wants more than anything and she says Ben. In context, it’s a comical line, but it’s also Devi revealing her truth. Like she does at the beginning of the season, she makes a choice and it’s Ben. She pursues Ben romantically before Paxton even though Paxton is the one more willing to forgive her.

It takes Ben longer to forgive her, and yet he is still there for her when she needs help. The little things he does like give her advice about Aneesa and make her feel better about Paxton’s rejection all show Devi’s ability to be vulnerable with Ben.

As an aside, they had the opportunity to show Devi being vulnerable with Paxon but didn’t take it. In episode 8 of season 2, Paxton sees Devi crying and she reveals that she got into a really bad fight with Eleanor. I was thinking: here it is, here is the moment that Paxton finally helps Devi with her problems... but no. His response is “seems like you’re in a fight with lots of people” and the conversation quickly shifts to her apologizing and helping him yet again. Devi is able to open up to Ben and be supported by him in a way that she can’t with Paxton.

Before I talk about the finale, which is arguably the biggest point in Ben and Devi’s favour, I want to look at the season overall. The entire story arc is Ben and Devi wanting to be together but constantly running into roadblocks in the form of Eleanor/Fabiola, Paxton and Aneesa. It was so alarmingly obvious they belonged together after season 1, that the writers had to find ways to forcibly separate them for the time being. It’s important for Ben and Devi’s relationship that she dates Paxton first. If she had been allowed to go for Ben, they would have had to explore Devi wondering what she missed out on. When Devi and Ben do get their happy ending, it will be because Devi has realized that Paxton is not the person for her.

In the finale of season 2, we get 3 crucial scenes from Devi and Ben. The first is the bathroom scene which reaffirms Devi’s ability to be vulnerable with Ben and his ability to support her (something she doesn’t have with Paxton). The second is their tension-filled scene at the dance where they longingly stare at each other. This directly contrasts the scene in episode 8, where Devi tries to reframe her mindset and stop seeing Ben as someone she is attracted to. Here, it becomes apparent that she is unable to stop thinking about him in a romantic way despite actively trying.

The third scene is basically Eleanor saying “you dummy, she wanted to choose you!”. The writers intentionally reference the pros-cons scene from episode 1, re-affirming that Devi wants Ben. The only reason they are not together is because he is not an option.

Then we get the line “it wasn’t always him”. Many Devi and Paxton fans believe her choice was Ben, but he took too long and now it’s too late. But when has it ever been too late for a main love interest in a rom-com? Mindy Kaling is a rom-com savant, and she knows as well as I do that it’s only ever “too late” for douchey guys who do not acknowledge the self-worth of the heroine. That’s not Ben though, he has always seen Devi for who she is.

The heartbreak on Ben’s face is infinitely worse than Paxton’s voicemail at the end of season 1, although these scenes are meant to parallel each other. Devi and Paxton are two people who like each other but do not work as a long-term relationship. Ben and Devi are two people who work as a long-term relationship but never acknowledge their feelings for each other at the right time. It’s a tragedy just waiting to be rectified in season 3.

Season 3 Predictions

Now that I've given my analysis on why Devi and Ben are meant to be, here are some predictions I have on the Devi-Ben-Paxton love triangle for season 3.

Fabiola/Eleanor will be the ones to help Devi act on her true feelings for Ben. This one is a no-brainer for me. After sabotaging their chance to be happy in the first place, Fabiola and Eleanor will decide that they want their friend to be happy and set things right. It will also parallel Ben mending their friendship in season 1.

Paxton and Devi will have some sweet moments in the first half of the season, but not without their issues. The lack of communication and their respective status (the way they view each other) will cause them to fight. They will break-up mid-season, but the ending will leave hope for reconciliation.

On that note, I do not think they will kill the love triangle. Even though we will likely see Devi confessing her feelings for Ben and saying that she wanted to choose him all along, this is still a TV show. Contentious love triangles = buzz and money.

Ben and Aneesa will break up by mid-season, but probably earlier. Ben will find it hard to be in a relationship with Aneesa as he grapples with his feelings for Devi.

Ben will be a pillar of support to Devi as she navigates how to be a girlfriend. It’s the classic trope of the guy helping the girl win over the man of her dreams, only to realize that the person she wants is right in front of her.

Devi and Ben’s friendship and lingering feelings will culminate in an epic finale confession and kiss. Everything that they were unable to say to each other last season will be spoken aloud in season 3.

Ben and Devi are soulmates, drawn to each other and unable to avoid their feelings. I can’t wait for them to take over my life again next year.

#benvi #ben x devi #ben gross #devi vishwakumar #nhie #nhie season 2 #never have i ever #never have I ever season 2

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truthbeetoldmedia · 6 years

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Why Am I So Obsessed with Rom-Coms?

*This article contains spoilers for almost every major romantic comedy from 2018, and a few oldies too*

This year has been particularly outstanding for romantic comedies. It started with Love, Simon this spring, followed by Set It Up, and then this week’s smash hits Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I’ve soaked up every single one and greedily looked forward to the next one’s release.

It’s true that romantic comedies are having a moment at the box office, but I’ve always loved them. When Harry Met Sally? Seen it a million times. Clueless? My favorite movie to watch when I’m sick. 13 Going On 30? Instant classic. The Proposal, Easy A, His Girl Friday, and Shakespeare in Love are all consistently in my screen rotation. I will watch two unassuming people fall in love in any place, any time period, in any way. Over and over.

Why do I love romantic comedies so much? On the surface, it would seem they are pure escapism. An easy-going, enjoyable, predictable way to spend my evening. Romantic comedies take rites of passage that we all go through and turn them all up to a highly idealized 11 out of 10. How do you wish your high school prom turned out? Wouldn’t it be nice if that coworker or best friend that you bickered with all the time was actually your soulmate? People in romantic comedies live in fictional versions of cities we know well, making it seem like every cute coffee shop or iconic landmark is just a ten minute cab drive away. In that way, rom-coms have more in common with the fantasy genre than they do with realistic fiction.

To be fair, I think that is totally true. There’s no shame in getting lost in a dream world for two hours, where love reigns supreme and high schoolers somehow have time to have breakfast dates before their first class. Of course, rom-coms are in the business of making people sigh to themselves, “I wish I had that.” But underneath the sugar-spun exterior, there’s a distinct authenticity that every really good romantic comedy needs to have in order to work.

The best romantic comedies preach that even when we are at our most genuine, it’s possible for us to be loved for who we are. Our truest selves are capable of being understood. That’s not fantasy. That’s vulnerability.

Think of all the romantic comedies that have the theme of mistaken or hidden identity, in its many shapes and forms. The love interest is always the one who sees the main character for who they really are, and still find themselves attracted. Josh knows that Cher is more than “just a ditz with a credit card” in Clueless. Patrick sees through Kat’s inclination to push people away in Ten Things I Hate About You. In Easy A, when Olive’s promiscuous persona brings her to her absolute lowest, Todd drives her home and admits his feelings for her.

“Why now? Why are you all of a sudden into me now?” she asks. “I don’t know. I haven’t overanalyzed it, like you’re about to,” he responds. Todd knew Olive before she had to make herself over into a modern Hester Pyrnne to survive high school.

I have a million more examples, because that’s the reason that I keep coming back to romantic comedies. It’s not that any of these couples are impossibly perfect matches for each other. It’s that when they look at each other, they look past the money, the red “A,” the tough posturing, or whatever is in the way, and they still see someone worth loving. While many of us will never find ourselves in these outrageous settings and situations, the fear of this kind of vulnerability is very real. It’s emboldening for us to watch characters overcome the dread of rejection. It’s validating to see characters come into their own and maintain successful relationships while doing it.

Nick doesn’t tell Rachel about his family fortune in Crazy Rich Asians, but they get to choose each other on a economy class flight. Simon and Bram hide behind their computers for most of Love, Simon, and see each other for the first time on a ferris wheel. In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean and Peter enter a fake relationship for their own contrived purposes, and cultivate a real one in the process. Harper and Charlie, the couple at the center of Set It Up, even tell each other “you like because, and love despite.” The most beautiful moments of this year’s comedies are when the characters are allowed to come out of hiding, and the find love and acceptance waiting on the other side.

I also think this is why it’s so important that this year’s rom-com boom has more different faces and sexual orientations than we’ve seen before. Romantic comedies have been dominated by white actors since their inception. For the first time, non-white and lgbt couples are beginning to feel this cathartic emotional journey played out by people that look like them.

This shift can be traced back to The Mindy Project, a romantic comedy TV series that had Mindy Kaling, an Indian-American woman at the helm. Kaling used her character, Mindy Lahiri, to reclaim many romantic tropes that were previously only played out by white ingenues. Since The Mindy Project, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V Gordon were silver screen breakouts with The Big Sick, a romantic comedy about an interracial couple that is based on their own relationship. Since then, the ball has kept rolling. I hope it doesn’t stop anytime soon.

Because I will never not love to watch people fall in love over, and over, and now that the mic has been passed to voices that have previously been silent, there’s going to be so many new kinds and varieties of love stories to be told. Yet the authentic core of the genre is going to remain. Open yourself up, be true to who you are, and be proud of the person you’re becoming.

Somebody loves you for it.

#Rom-Com #Romance #Representation

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years

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The Weekend Warrior Home Edition May 29, 2020 – I WILL MAKE YOU MINE, THE HIGH NOTE, HBO MAX and more!

Before we get to any potential theatrical releases – there aren’t many (if any?) this week – today is the day that HBO MAX launches! I hope to add it to the streaming section below, but since it’s a newborn baby launching today, it will get the lead in this week’s column…

Some of the HBO Max original programming at launch will include On the Record, the new doc from The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War directors Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, which looks at the story of music exec. Drew Dixon and her decision to be one of the first women of color to come forward about being sexually assaulted by Russell Simmons. I’ll freely admit that I haven’t watched this yet, but my friend/colleague Candice Fredrick did this amazing interview with Dixon and the other subjects for Shondaland, which you can read right here, and it’ll make it obvious why (like Dick/Ziering’s previous docs), this one NEEDS to be seen, even if you don’t have a horse in this race.

Anna Kendrick will be starring in new romantic comedy anthology series called Love Life from Sam Boyd, each season which will follow a different person from their first to last romance. I hope this is better than Kendrick’s Quibi series.

On a lighter night, there’s a new series of Looney Tunes Cartoons, a series of 11 to 12-minute cartoon collections featuring all your WB favorites. While I was mildly dubious about new cartoons, apparently WB has been making these for a few years although they’ll now be migrating over to HBO Max. Some of the first toons will include a couple Porky Pig-Daffy Duck shorts: “Curse of the Monkeybird” and “Firehouse Frenzy”; another one called “Harm Wrestling,” pitting Bugs Bunny against long-time nemesis Yosemite Sam, and another Bugs one called “Big League Beast.” These new toons definitely have their own identity and charm and are pretty clever with wackier modernized cartoon violence ala “Ren and Stimpy” or maybe Adult Swim would be a more current reference. The series is exec. produced by Peter Browngardt, and I don’t think regular Looney Tunes fans (or cartoon fans in general) will be too disappointed by these offerings.

There’s also the Not Too Late Show with Elmo, which looks cute, but it’s definitely veering more towards the TV side of things than movies, at least for now.

Something rather strange and interesting happened leading up to this week’s “Featured Movie,” but it involves an introductory story: Just before the lockdown on March 12, I went out to see Emily Ting’s great new comedy, Go Back to China on its very last day in New York theaters. One of the actors in the movie, Lynn Chen, seemed vaguely familiar but I couldn’t figure out where from. Sometime after that, I started seeing a few tweets about Alice Wu’s 2004 film, Saving Face, which I thought I was one of the only people who knew about it, having covered it 15 or 16 years ago. This led to a Twitter conversation about Wu’s new Netflix movie, The Half of It, which made me realize that Chen was one of the two leads in Saving Face. One thing led to another and besides learning about Wu’s new movie, I also found out that Chen’s own directorial debut would be coming out soon. That movie, I WILL MAKE YOU MINE (Gravitas Ventures), is now available digitally and on DVD/Blu-ray. Got all that? Good. So that’s what I’m going to write about next.

Chen’s directorial debut is an interesting black-and-white romantic dramedy, but you really need to go into it knowing that it’s also the third part of something being labelled, “The Surrogate Valentine Trilogy,” based on two indie comedies directed by Dave Boyle. I did not know this the first time I watched Chen’s movie, which may be why I was so confused about the relationships between three Asian-American women with a musician named Goh Nakamura (who plays himself in the film). Once I watched the previous movies, Surrogate Valentine from 2011 and Daylight Savings from 2012, things became a LOT clearer.

Both those movies were quirky comedies mostly based around Nakamura’s day-to-day, but they also had romantic undercurrents with three different women over the course of the two movies: Lynn Chen’s best friend Rachel, “the professor” Erika (Ayako Fujitani) and fellow singer-songwriter Yea-Ming (Yea-Ming Chen, also playing a version of herself). It’s immediately clear that Chen’s movie is going to focus on the three women, but it my not be as evident who these women are or their relationship to Nakamura without having seen the previous two films.

The movie takes place five years after the previous one, so Chen is taking the Linklatter “Before” trilogy approach, at least in concluding the overall story with a few players from earlier movies also making apperances. Erika and Yea-Ming are still polar opposites with Erika’s moodiness being increased by the death of her father and having to care for her five-year-old daughter (Ayami Riley Tomine). Yea-Ming is still single and ready to mingle, while Rachel is now married but she is still reminiscing about Goh, who she long ago put in the friend zone despite his feelings for her.

Both the previous movies were left hanging with no real answers, so it’s quite respectable for Chen to take the reins in trying to answer some of the unanswered questions. The general idea is that all these women are still thinking of Goh, and you’ll have to watch the movie to see which one he ends up with, if any. (Not too sure how I feel about all these beautiful women chasing after the mopey Nakamura, but like the “Before” movies, you’ll be quite invested after seeing the other two movies.)

Nakamura is an incredibly talented musician, songwriter and singer (as is Yea-Ming) but not a particularly expressive actor, especially in comparison to a seasoned pro like Chen. As a director and co-star, she does a better job getting a performance out of him than Boyle did, although her character’s arc is more about dealing with her cheating husband Josh. Chen maintains the quirky humor of the earlier movies without involving as much of the bro-ness of the characters around Nakamura. Putting the focus on the three women trying to discover themselves and figure out what they want in life just makes her film a far more enjoyable experience as a whole, especially as we get to see them interacting with each other.

I particulary like this movie on its own merits due to the very funny and talented Yea-Ming Chen (whose own musical project is called DreamDate). She clearly has the best chemistry with Nakamura, but I Will Make You Mine gains so much more knowing the characters’ history together, even if those relationships were not necessarily the focus of the previous two films. There’s no question Lynn Chen has a solid future as a filmmaker, as she takes the ideas and characters introduced by Boyle’s films to a far more emotional level. I recommend watching the entire trilogy, which hopefully Gravitas Ventures will put all in one place (like a collection of all three movies with a soundtrack CD?) someday soon. In the meantime, you can find out where you can watch I Will Make You Mine on the official site, so do check it out!

I had been pretty interested in Focus Features’ new film, THE HIGH NOTE, which will be available via PVOD this Friday, mainly because it was directed by Nisha Ganatra, who did such an amazing job with last year’s Late Night. This is a very different movie, maybe more commercial but also not quite as much my thing, which is odd since it’s set in the music business, which is almost definitely my thing.

Dakota Johnson stars as Maggie, personal assistant to legendary soul singer Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross from black-ish), but she would rather be a record producer. Maggie hs been practicing by doing an edit on a live album for Davis who is being drawn by her manager (Ice Cube) to take up a Vegas residency ala Celine. Soon after, Maggie meets Kelvin Harrison Jr’s David Cliff, an aspiring singer and songwriter who she decides to take under her wing, without letting him know she’s actually a personal assistant.

Written by Flora Greeson, her first produced screenplay, it’s almost immediately apparent this movie came about due to the success of the 2018 remake of A Star is Born, which did so well despite winning only a single Oscar for song. There are a few hurdles the movie had to overcome right away, the first being my general “eh” feelings about Johnson as an actor, but then there are also serious credibility issues of a Hollywood personal assistant getting away with HALF the things Maggie does in the movie. There is definitely an aspect of the movie that reminded me of Working Girl, one of the movies that made Johnson’s mother (Melanie Griffith) a household name, but this sort of “everything works out for the white girl” just seems kind of stale and played and maybe a bit out-of-tune in this day and age.

The High Note is barely a drama and more of a romantic dramedy and while the songs are decent, there’s very little way that this can be deemed any sort of “musical.” There’s also the whole “white savior” thing in play where Maggie is there not only to save Grace’s flagging career but also trying to help David make it big. Harrison is as good as he’s been in almost every role, and that seems almost wasted among the other okay performances.

The thing is that The High Note did eventually win me over, oddly with a pull-the-rug-out twist that for some reason I didn’t see coming. There is a cuteness aspect to it that makes it palatable, if not always entertaining, but I definitely expected more and better from Ganatra for her second feature. It makes it that much more obvious what Mindy Kaling brought to the table as the writer/producer on Late Night.

Next up is John Hyatt’s documentary SCREENED OUT (Dark Star Pictures), which is probably rather apropos right now as it deals with something very prominent and timely: our addiction to our devices. The movie follows Hyatt and his family who go through their own journey of dealing with screen addiction. It will be available in the US and Canada this Friday. I really couldn’t get too far into this movie, since I generally hate docs where the filmmakers turn the camera on themselves, and I’m not talking about Morgan Spurlock or Michael Moore so much, as those who make these movies about themselves without having too much to offer the viewer.

Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema adds two new repertory films this week: Philip Borso’s 1982 film, The Grey Fox, starring Richard Farnsworth (in a new 4K restoration) and Andrei Ujică’s 1992 film, Videograms of a Revolution. Film at Lincoln Center’s own virtual cinema adds Mounia Meddour’s Papicha (Distrib Films) about a university student during the Algerian Civil War who is studying French with an interest in fashion so she defies religious conservatism to design dresses for her peers. The film won the César Award for Best Female Newcomer and Best First Film, and was a selection for the recent “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.”

STREAMING AND CABLE

Netflix’s big launch this week is the new series from The Office (American version) creator Greg Daniels (his second new one in the last month!), SPACE FORCE, a comedy based on the Trump military initiative that reunites Daniels with Steve Carell. He’s joined by John Malkovich, Jimmy O. Yang, the late Fred Willard, Ben Schwartz, Noah Emmerich and more, so we’ll see if I like it more than the Amazon series, Upload. (Granted, I’ve only seen one episode of that.)

I’m semi-flattered that Hannah Gadsby named her second Netflix comedy special, Hannah Gadsby: Douglas, after me, but honestly, I’m one of the few people who never really understood the appeal of her as a comic. She just seems like a snarky Australian who just happens to also be a lesbian, but I dunno, maybe I’ll like this one more?

Fernando Frias’ Mexican teen drama, I’m No Longer Here (also on Netflix), is about a young street gang in Monterrey, Mexico who get into a feud with a local cartel, forcing the leader to migrate to the United States.

Also, I’ve heard good things about Andrew Patterson’s THE VAST OF NIGHT, which will be available on Amazon Prime, this Friday. It stars Sierra McCormick as Fay Crocker, a switchboard operator in 1950s New Mexico, who discovers an audio frequency that can change their small town forever. It sends Fay and a radio DJ named Everett (Jake Horowitz) on a scavenger hunt into the unknown. This movie played a lot of genre film festivals last year after debuting at Slamdance, and I generally enjoyed it, since it has a very different vibe of other thrillers, even period ones. The two leads are so cute together in the film’s opening scene, you’ll definitely want to see where things are going, and the dialogue is particularly good. Maybe the movie isn’t as direct in its genre elements as others, but it goes to interesting places for sure.

Also, the We Are One: A Global Film Festival is supposed to start this week, running for a week from this Friday to June 7 with proceeds going to benefit COVID-19 relief funds with programming curated by a number of film festivals including Tribeca, the New York Film Festival, Berlin and others. You can see some of the programming here, and the festival will run starting Friday on the YouTube channel.

Next week, more movies (mostly) not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #TheHIghNote #IWillMakeYouMine #Movies #Reviews #Digital #Streaming #HBOMax

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ramblingsrantsreviews · 4 years

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Season Review: Never Have I Ever (Netflix, 2020)

I’m a little late to the party since Never Have I Ever released on Netflix on April 27th but there’s just so many amazing shows nowadays that it can be hard to keep up. At least I joined the party!

Co-created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, Never Have I Ever is Netflix’s latest coming-of-age dramedy to take the world by storm. The show centers around 15-year-old Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) who is desperate to change her social status and redeem herself from her disastrous and traumatic freshman year of high school. Let’s just say, the only thing worse than being known as the freshman who lost her dad during a recital is being the girl who lost the ability to walk because her dad died and she went into shock. Just as quickly as she lost the ability to walk, she gained it back and now Devi is determined to redefine herself and make sophomore year her bitch. With her friends by her side, Devi devises a plan to get them boyfriends so they can start climbing the high school social ladder. In addition to her plan, Devi must also learn how to finally grieve her father’s death, deal with her nemesis Ben (Jaren Lewison), and figure out how she’s going to get her crush Paxton (Darren Barnet) to fall in love with her.

In true coming-of-age fashion, the show deals with friendships, crushes, parties, and the general displeasure that comes with being a teenager. It’s cringey, hilarious, heartbreaking, and emotional all at the same time. Plus, it’s a fun and easy binge you can knock out in a day or two if you’re a hardcore binger.

Now, here is my review of Never Have I Ever.

As always, spoilers ahead. Proceed at your own risk.

Favorite Episode: 1×10 — “…Said I’m Sorry”

Season finale episodes can be hit or miss but Never Have I Ever knocked it out of the park. It truly did the impossible by tying up loose ends while still leaving us on a cliffhanger of sorts so that we beg Netflix for a season two.

With the title, “…Said I’m Sorry,” it’s safe to assume that episode 10 is going to be the redemption episode for Davi. What’s so incredible about this episode is that it’s not just Davi who is saying sorry for her actions, everyone around her is. The episode begins at Ben’s house since she has moved in with him so that her mother can’t force her to move to India. When Nalini shows up at Ben’s house Devi is less than pleased. Her displeasure soon turns to anger when Nalini tells Devi that she plans to spread her father’s ashes today, on his birthday. Devi freaks out and refuses to attend because she fears this is another “spring cleaning” attempt so they can go to India.

When Ben finds out that Devi isn’t going to the beach to spread her father’s ashes he springs into action. He convinces Devi’s best friends Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) and Eleanor (Ramona Young) to put aside their annoyance with Devi and come convince her that she needs to do this with her mother. The girls show up and eventually convince Devi that she needs to do the right thing. Ben offers to take Devi to Malibu and though they face some obstacles, Devi makes it and is able to reconcile with her mother.

Meanwhile, Paxton gets a reality check from his sister Rebecca (Lily D. Moore) and shows up at Devi’s house. When she’s not there he calls and leaves her a voicemail. Devi doesn’t get the message right away though since she discovers Ben waiting for her in the parking lot of the beach. Instead of checking her phone, Devi and Ben kiss.

All of that happens in less than 30 minutes so its a pretty intense episode but an amazing one nonetheless.

As I mentioned above, I love this episode because everyone gets their apology moment.

Devi must first apologize to Fabiola and Eleanor, again, for her shitty behavior. What I love though, is that it’s not just Devi who’s apologizing, Fabiola and Eleanor also recognize that they’ve been a bit unfair to Devi too. One line that really stands out to me is when Eleanor says “just because we aren’t talking doesn’t mean we don’t care about you.” It speaks volumes about what teenage friendship looks like. It’s messy and there will be fights but true friends will always be there for you when needed. And they’ll always be there to call you out on your bullshit and point out harsh realities.

The true emotional moment of this episode comes when Devi and Nalini reconcile on the beach before spreading Mohan’s ashes. While it’s Devi who begins apologizing for her terrible behavior and for telling her mother she wished she had died, it’s Nalini who steals the show by apologizing for making Devi feel like she didn’t love her. It’s the perfect mother-daughter moment for these two and one that is so important because it shows that these two do love each other despite everything they’ve said and been through.

There’s one more apology within this episode, though it’s more subtle. To me, Devi and Ben finally apologize to each other for their years of bickering and nonsense fighting when they kiss in that car. Not only did Ben prove that Devi can count on him in the hard times, but Devi also proved to Ben that she could appreciate his presence.

Least Favorite Episode: 1×06 — “…Been The Loneliest Boy In The World”

Before you yell at me, it’s not what you think. I absolutely adore Ben; in fact, he’s my favorite male character in the show. And I don’t even hate that they decided to give Ben a stand-alone episode, what I hate about it is that it didn’t do anything to further tell us who Ben Gross really is.

The episode, which is narrated by Andy Samberg, opens with Ben on the bus on the way home from the disastrous Model UN event. Not only is he hurt that Devi turned on him causing him to lose, but he’s also hurt because he thought they really had a breakthrough moment at the hotel party. Things only get worse for Ben when he gets home and finds out his mother is leaving for another retreat so she can “be a better mother.” In addition, Ben’s father informs Ben that he’ll be unable to go to an NBA game with Ben.

Things aren’t much better for Ben at school. Sure, he has a girlfriend but she’s only with him for his father’s money and he’s definitely lacking in the friend department. In fact, Ben becomes so overcome with loneliness that he agrees to meet some dude he met in a Reddit forum. Of course, that goes about as well as one might think and Ben flees the restaurant after the dude is revealed to be a middle-aged man who asks him to “blow on his pizza.”

After a large pimple finds a home on his face, Ben goes to Dr. Vishwakumar’s office to get it dealt with. While in the chair, Ben breaks down and Dr. Vishwakumar ends up inviting him over to her house. Let’s just say Devi is less than pleased to have her nemesis sitting across from her at the dinner table. Despite it all, they end up having a great time together. In fact, Devi and Ben even have a moment while doing dishes together.

See, I told you it wasn’t a bad episode!

As I was researching the show I stumbled upon an article published on Forward.com that exposed the show’s “Jewish problem.” The author, Mira Fox, makes some good points, and its one of the reasons I decided to pick this episode as my least favorite.

Fox points out that while the other characters are either not defined by their backgrounds or are allowed to have nuanced opinions about their backgrounds. Everyone that is, except for Ben who is trapped under endless Jewish stereotypes.

Ben’s stand-alone episode could have given us the depth to his character and his personality. It could have introduced us to his family and his life that is drastically different than Devi’s. It could have even explored his Jewish background in the same way that Devi got to explore her Indian heritage in episode 4.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this episode lacked depth until the final scene with Devi and Ben in the kitchen together. When I realized it was Ben’s point-of-view episode I had high hopes for it but unfortunately, all I got was a bunch of character backstory I already knew and a weird catfish scenario.

Favorite Character: Devi Vishwakumar

I’ll be honest, I had a really hard time picking a favorite character because there were so many amazing ones to chose from. My honorable mentions include Ben, Kamala, and Mohan but I eventually decided to pick Devi since I had more to say about her as a character.

Devi is insufferable at times and she’s selfish pretty much all the time but that’s why I love her so much. All too often we expect the female characters to be nurturing, to be selfless, and to be this perfect stereotypical version of what a woman should be. It’s refreshing to see a teen girl who’s allowed to be a mess because let’s face it, teenage girls are messy.

While it might seem that Devi stays static for most of the season, it’s simply not the case. With every minor mistake and fall out with a person, Devi is getting closer and closer to working through her grief and trauma to become a better person.

One of the things I love about her is that she’s so ready to have the best sophomore year ever that she doesn’t stray away from asking for exactly what she wants. Is her asking Paxton to have sex with her even though they’ve barely talked weird and probably qualifies as harassment? Yes, but when has a teenage girl ever been allowed to pursue what she wants so stubbornly?

More importantly, I think Devi is an extremely interesting and important character because of how she deals with her father’s death. While it might be an odd statement, I found that a lot of people I knew in high school, myself included, went through their first death while in high school. High school is hard enough with the pressure to succeed academically and socially but when you add in the need to grieve it gets so much more complicated.

Devi’s grieving process explores one that’s not traditional but is common. She’s so affected by her father’s death that she simply cannot process it. Dr. Jamie Ryan (Niecy Nash), Devi’s therapist, nails it when she tells Devi that all her issues with people stem from her trauma from her father’s death and the fact that she hasn’t been able to grieve it. And while I don’t condone Devi’s constant need to use her father’s death as an excuse or pass for her behavior, I do understand it.

Lastly, I want to briefly discuss Devi’s relationship with her Indian heritage. I love that the series chooses to introduce her right from the start as someone who isn’t “traditional” or rather is “Americanized.” We further see her complex relationship with her heritage explored in the fourth episode of the series. In fact, she even states that sometimes “she doesn’t feel Indian enough” to a family friend who used to feel the same way but after going to college has reconnected with his heritage.

It’s a theme we’re seeing explored a lot with characters who are both American and from a different ethnic/religious/racial background and one that is so important. I’m glad we got to see Devi’s version of her struggle to fit in and I hope (assuming the show is picked up for a second season) we get to see it explored more later one.

Least Favorite Character: Eleanor Wong

Similar to my disclosure before my least favorite episode, I also don’t really have a least favorite character from Never Have I Ever. Part of the reason why this was so difficult that all because all the characters are sort of terrible which is the point of the series!

While I could have picked a guest character, I decided to pick a character that was a bit more permanent to the story at large. In the end, I ended up choosing Eleanor as my least favorite character. While I did like aspects of Eleanor’s character, I felt that she was just another stereotypical theater kid. While it’s true theater kids can be over the top and dramatic, it’s not true for everyone. I wish the media would understand this and diversify it’s theater kid characters.

I also wasn’t a fan of her plotline with her mother. While it was interesting and unique it didn’t pull the same emotional weight as Devi or Fabiola’s storylines. I had a lot of questions regarding the plot. Why was her mother hiding from her? Was she ashamed? Why did Eleanor decide to give up acting when she finally was finally the lead? I know it’s because she didn’t want to be like her mother but by giving it up she became her mother.

Again, I just wanted more from her both in her character personality and in her storylines.

Favorite Pairing: Devi and Josh

Like most teen shows, Never Have I Ever does have a love triangle but unlike most shows, this one doesn’t seem forced. You’re either Team Paxton or Team Ben and I am 100% Team Ben.

While Devi and Paxton are cute (if you can get past the fact that the actors are literally 10 years apart in age), but they’re nothing unique about them. The cool guy falling for the nerdy girl is a tried and true trope and Never Have I Ever doesn’t do much to make it fresh. Nemesis to lovers, on the other hand, is something I haven’t seen done in quite some time which is why I was so excited when the show decided to explore Devi and Ben’s relationship.

Ben and Devi just get each other, even if they don’t think they do. They’re both competitive and smart, they both deal with familial struggles, and they’re both desperate to figure out who they are so they can fit in. In fact, the one thing constant in these two lives is each other’s presence. Even in their most vulnerable moments, these two seek each other out because they know they’ll be real with each other.

I mean come on, Ben ends up at Devi’s house after being neglected by his family and his girlfriend and Devi literally moves into Ben’s house when she has nowhere else to go. Not only that, but Ben literally rallies Devi’s best friends because he knows they’ll be able to convince her to do the right thing.

When will your favs ever?!

I knew I was shipping them the entire season but what really sealed the deal was the fact that Ben stayed at the beach when he didn’t have to. He could have dropped Devi off and left which would have forced her to work things out with her mom or else she’s been stranded at the beach. instead, he chose to stay because he didn’t want Devi to be forced into any situation she didn’t want to.

In my eyes, there is no love triangle after that kiss!

Complaints:

One of my biggest complaints regarding Never Have I Ever is that the series didn’t utilize it’s reoccurring characters as strongly as they should have. Obviously, the show is mainly about Devi and her struggles but that doesn’t mean that the other characters couldn’t share some of the action. There were several episodes where they were MIA completely. I would have loved to see Fabiola struggle to figure out the right way to tell her family that she is a lesbian. I would have loved to see Eleanor in action in the theater club and how her relationship with a crew member made that better or worse. I wanted to see more of Paxton and Rebecca’s relationship. I really really wanted to get to know Kamala better. It almost felt like Never Have I Ever was pulling a Twilight by having all these amazing secondary characters who didn’t get the time they deserved. I hope we get to see more of them in season 2!

Another complaint of mine was the arranged marriage storyline. While I’m not Indian and I can not speak to the culture at large, I personally felt like it was an outdated stereotype. For a show that’s so diverse and progressive, I felt they could have done something else with her character that was equally as entertaining and conflict inducing. Or, at the very least I would have wanted them to dig deeper into why she was being subjected to an arranged marriage. I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t like that the storyline was played for laughs instead of actually digging deeper into it. It still could have funny elements but I wanted a deeper meaning out of it. Who knows, maybe that’s something that’ll happen in season 2.

Lastly, and this one is minor and has nothing to do with the writing, I was displeased with the fact that they cast two actors who are ten years apart to play romantic love interests. Look, I get it, when an actor is right for the part they’re right for the part but at some point, you have to be cautious of age. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan who plays Devi is only 18 and yet Darren Barnet who plays Paxton is 29. Maybe I’m too old but I just can’t ship a couple knowing that there is an age difference of 10 years! Ramakrishnan and Barnet are both amazing actors and they did an amazing job portraying their characters and I wouldn’t want them re-casted. I just would prefer it if they weren’t love interests.

Praise:

I haven’t loved a show so quickly and so deeply in a long time so it was refreshing to have that moment again while watching Never Have I Ever.

The humor and the dialogue was spot on from the beginning to the end. I literally laughed through every episode of the show not because I had to because I genuinely thought it was hilarious. From one-liners to entire conversations I seriously couldn’t believe how funny the show is. And it’s not just cringe humor nor is it purely physical humor. It’s not even just the humor that the dialogue nailed but also the serious and awkward moments. I cried through the entire final five minutes because of the dialogue leading up to that moment and the dialogue in the moment itself.

Never Have I Ever completely nailed the awkwardness of being a teenager in high school. I don’t know what exactly it was but watching the show immediately transported me back to my sophomore year of high school which is both a bad and a good thing. The friendships dynamics were spot on. I loved that they explored a friendship break in an authentic and positive way instead of it being a bigger moment than it needed to be. Had friendship breaks been acceptable when I was in high school I probably would have had more friends. Even the relationships were spot on — both romantic and familial. In fact, I really appreciated that Devi and her mother weren’t the perfect mother-daughter duo and that they both were still grieving Mohan’s death.

I absolutely love the show’s diverse characters. One thing I think was groundbreaking about the show is that none of their sexualities/races/ethnicities/religions specifically defined who they were. Devi wasn’t just an Indian-American character. Fabiola wasn’t just a lesbian. Eleanor wasn’t just Asian-American. Ben wasn’t just Jewish. Paxton wasn’t just Japanese-American. They were those things but they were teenagers first and foremost. Were there times I wished we got to know more of their backgrounds? Of course, but I also appreciated that it wasn’t the focal point of their characters or the story at large.

Finally, I did love that they gave Ben a stand-alone episode — even if it was my least favorite episode. It was refreshing to have a different point-of-view character and it helped keep the series fresh and entertaining as I binge-watched. I really hope they continue with this trend and that we get to see Ben have his own episode again but also that some of the other characters get there’s too. I’d love to see Kamala and Paxton get one to explore their characters more. Fabiola and Eleanor would also be interesting too. Even Devi’s mother would be interesting!

* * *

Overall, I did really love Never Have I Ever. I thought it was fun, fresh, diverse, and entertaining. I will definitely be rooting for the series to get a second season because I’m not done with these characters.

You can stream Never Have I Ever on Netflix.

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Jonathan Gold, the restaurant critic whose curious, far-ranging, relentless explorations of his native Los Angeles helped his readers understand dozens of cuisines and helped the city understand itself.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Margy Rochlin, a close friend.

In more than a thousand reviews published since the 1980s, Gold chronicled his city’s pupuserias, bistros, diners, nomadic taco trucks, soot-caked outdoor rib and brisket smokers, sweaty indoor xiao long bao steamers, postmodern pizzerias, vintage delicatessens, strictly omakase sushi-yas, Roman gelaterias, Korean porridge parlors, Lanzhou hand-pullled noodle vendors, Iranian tongue-sandwich shops, vegan hot dog griddles, cloistered French-leaning hyper-seasonal tasting counters and wood-paneled Hollywood grills with chicken potpie and martinis on every other table.

Unlike some critics, Gold never saw expensive, rarefied restaurants as the peak of the terrain he surveyed, although he reviewed his share of them. Shiki Beverly Hills, Noma and Alinea all took turns under his critical loupe. He was in his element, though, when he championed small, family-run establishments where publicists and wine lists were unheard-of and English was often a second language, if it was spoken at all.

“Before Tony Bourdain, before reality TV and ‘Parts Unknown’ and people really being into ethnic food in a serious way, it was Jonathan who got it, completely,” writer and editor Ruth Reichl said. “He really got that food was a gateway into the people, and that food could really define a community. He was really writing about the people more than the food.”

Gold wrote about restaurants for Gourmet, California and Los Angeles magazines, but the bulk of his reviews appeared in two newspapers: LA Weekly, where in 2007 he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and the Los Angeles Times, where he had been the chief critic since 2012, treating the restaurants of famous and obscure chefs as if he saw no distinction between them. Each publication hired him twice, with long breaks between tours of duty.

He became the subject of a documentary called “City of Gold,” a role model imitated painstakingly and largely in vain by a generation of food writers, a living street atlas of Southern California, the inspiration for a rap tribute in which his list of “99 Essential LA Restaurants” was declaimed over the beat of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” and a verb. When actor Mindy Kaling asked Twitter for a pizza recommendation, she added: “Don’t Jonathan Gold me and tell me to go to the San Gabriel Valley.”

He may not have eaten everything in Los Angeles, but nobody came closer. He rarely went to the subject of one of his reviews without stopping to try four or five other places along the way. He once estimated that in the hunt for interesting new things to eat and write about, he put 20,000 miles on his green Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck each year. While driving, he liked listening to opera.

If a new group of immigrants turned up in Los Angeles County, chances were good he had already studied the benchmark dishes of their cuisine in one or more of the 3,000 to 5,000 cookbooks he owned. If a restaurant opened, he probably knew the names and specialties of the last five restaurants at that address. In a 2006 review of a Beverly Hills steakhouse, he recalled going to the same location to eat patty melts with his mother and to drink warm beer that a sympathetic waitress poured into teacups after hours when he was a young punk rocker, all in the first paragraph.

“LA always seemed better when he wrote about it,” film critic John Powers, a friend of Gold’s, said. “You just thought, There’s so much stuff here.”

He made a subspecialty of one street in particular. Reichl, who hired him at the Times and Gourmet, recalls his telling her in the 1980s that he had eaten every taco on Pico Boulevard. It was not just tacos. Eventually he wrote about his fascination with the street in a 1998 article that began, “For a while in my early 20s, I had only one clearly articulated ambition: to eat at least once at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard, starting with the fried yucca dish served at a pupuseria near the downtown end and working methodically westward toward the chili fries at Tom’s No. 5 near the beach. It seemed a reasonable enough alternative to graduate school.”

In 2016, Ecco Press bought his proposal for a memoir, which Gold called “a culinary coming of age book, I guess.” It was to be called “Breakfast on Pico.”

Jonathan Gold was born July 28, 1960, in South Los Angeles, where he was raised. His mother, Judith, was a school librarian who had been a magician’s assistant. Irwin Gold, his father, was a probation officer assigned to supervise Roman Polanski and Charles Manson, among other offenders. Jonathan later recalled eating Rice-A-Roni every Tuesday night and spending much of his childhood in his room, playing the cello. When he was old enough to fall under the influence of new wave, he plugged in his instrument and sawed away at it in the short-lived local band Overman.

With cello proficiency in his favor, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles. Although he got his degree in music history, in 1982, he had a sideline in art; he took a class with and worked as an assistant for guerrilla performance artist Chris Burden. For a brief time, Gold thought of himself as a performance artist, too. “A naked performance artist, to be specific,” he told an interviewer. His materials for one piece were two bottles of Glade air freshener, a pile of supermarket broiler chickens, a live chicken at the end of a rope and a machete wielded by Gold, who wore only a blindfold. The chicken survived and may have come out of the ordeal in better spirits than Gold, who later said, “The few minutes after an art performance are some of the most depressing in the world.”

While he was in college, Gold walked into the office of LA Weekly, an alternative paper, where he was soon reading proofs and pitching big, doomed ideas about the zeitgeist. For a time in the 1980s, he was the newspaper’s music editor, and by the 1990s he was better known as a music journalist than a food writer, contributing long articles to Spin, Details and other magazines. While reporting a Rolling Stone article about the emergence of gangsta rap, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg gave him a nickname: Nervous Cuz.

The music scene changes at a pace that can wear out a middle-aged writer, but food writers tend to improve as they get more meals under their belt. In 1986, Gold had started a column for LA Weekly about the kinds of places where he liked to eat. It was called Counter Intelligence. Week by week, year by year, he built a reputation for finding restaurants that were virtually unknown outside the neighborhoods of immigrants who were often the only customers until he walked in.

In his peregrinations, he came to appreciate how Los Angeles’s far-flung neighborhoods allowed small, distinct cultures to flourish without bumping into each other.

“In New York, because it is so condensed, you’re very aware of who’s around,” he once said, “whereas in Los Angeles, if you open a Korean restaurant, there’s a good chance you’ll only serve to Koreans. That sort of isolation is not necessarily good for politics or civil life, but it is really good for food.”

Far from a stunt eater, he nevertheless understood that a writer trying to persuade unseen strangers to read about a restaurant one or two counties away cannot afford to dismiss the persuasive power of chopped goats’ brains, pigs’ blood soup or an octopus leg separated from the rest of a living octopus so recently that it twirls itself around the nearest pair of chopsticks.

These delicacies and others were described in language that was anachronistic in its rolling, deliberate gait but exquisitely contemporary in its allusions. He could pack infinitesimal shadings of nuance into a rhetorical question.

The hallmark of his style, though, was the second-person voice. He used it prodigiously. Taken literally, he seemed to be saying that you, personally, had visited a great number of restaurants and consumed a wide variety of animal parts that, taken together, nobody but Gold had ever visited and consumed.

In “City of Gold,” Sue Horton, an editor at Reuters, says of his use of the second person, “He’s forming a bond with the reader: You and I are people who eat deer penis.”

His prose was apparently as agonizing to produce as it was pleasurable to read. For a time he saw a therapist for writer’s block until it was mutually agreed that somebody as prolific as Gold could not be described as blocked. Editors were driven to despair by his habit of taking deadlines seriously only once they were safely in the past. Powers, who edited him at LA Weekly, called him “the Usain Bolt of being slow.”

Like many restaurant critics, he tried to keep his image out of circulation for years. Anybody who had seen him was unlikely to forget him, though. He was more than 6 feet tall, with wispy ripples of shoulder-length strawberry blond hair that in recent years had tended to avoid the top of his scalp. His chin was capacious. When he turned up at a Peruvian stall in a food court a few years ago, the chef, Ricardo Zarate, wondered why so many pictures were being take by a man who “looked like George Washington.” He figured it out a few weeks later when Gold’s review was published.

Informally, the incognito phase ended when a photograph of Gold celebrating his Pulitzer win in a pink, Champagne-basted shirt got around. Officially, it was finished when he allowed LA Weekly to publish his photograph shortly before the release of “City of Gold” in 2015.

Between his amiability and his longevity on the job, he accumulated friends in the restaurant business. Some of his disclosures could make interesting reading. When he reviewed David Chang’s new restaurant in Los Angeles, Majordomo, his thoughts on the cooking took up only slightly more space than his partial history of his dealings with Chang.

In his first term at LA Weekly he met Laurie Ochoa, an intern and now an editor, whom he married in 1990. They went to restaurants together and contrived to work together, moving in tandem from one publication to another: the Los Angeles Times, Gourmet, LA Weekly again, the Times again.

She survives him, along with their children, Isabel and Leon, and Gold’s brother, Mark, the associate director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.

Many claims have been made for Gold’s criticism, but he saw his work in modest terms. He wanted to make Los Angeles smaller.

“I’m not a cultural anthropologist,” he once said. “I write about taco stands and fancy French restaurants to try to get people less afraid of their neighbors and to live in their entire city instead of sticking to their one part of town.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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some-thoughts-and-crosses · 6 years

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When the slopes hit back...

I’m out of sequence again…I wanted to capture this trip but had things to say I wasn’t sure how to express. As with all these blog posts though, I decided to just write them completely unedited, so at least there’s a record. Plus I have another upcoming trip this weekend and am 2 posts behind already – so, best do it now. What a compelling start!

In Feb, I went away for the weekend to a ski town called Ovindoli. It’s about an hour and a half outside Rome, in Abruzzo. I went with 3 lovely girls from work, invited by one I knew pretty well (Sarah), while the other I knew a little (Stephanie), and the last not at all (Inkeri).

We stayed overnight at a beautiful medieval town called Fontecchio, an hour or so away from Ovindoli. Our digs looked like they were once part of a castle, and our host was so gracious and kind. We met him at the Square’s parking and he walked us over to our rooms – which we wouldn’t have found on our own.

This is where the women used to gather for water until as late as the 1960s.

Here be a medieval-times store-front. “Just like in Beauty and the Beast!” (Steph).

The town’s cultural group was having a celebration and aperitivo that night and we were invited.

We ended up passing the chief performer anyway as we went by the clock tower – the starting point. He was animatedly playing the accordion as we went by in preparation for the evening. He and his friend – a sweet girl who spoke English, told us they were starting at 19:30, so we walked around a bit and headed back closer to the time. It was very informal and apparently he and another friend’s first performance! They played accordion and tambourine, singing local songs in dialect with great enthusiasm!

They even dressed in matching plaid shirts – their way of looking like ‘mountain’ people, we were told. I sent a clip to the gang and Aatish mentioned they gave off chutney jol vibes – which is pretty apt!

Everyone there was so friendly and welcoming to us – we were treated like VIPs. Steph pointed out that we made quite the exotic and international group, with her being Chinese-American, Inkeri being Finnish, and Sarah (also American), being red-haired – particularly uncommon in these parts.

Alessio, our host, gave us a tour of the clock tower. It’s housed at the top of what is now a gallery. This was part of a permanent exhibit showing images from the earthquake of a few years ago that caused damage and deaths.

However all this came after day 1 at the ski resort. I managed to book a private hour lesson around 3PM, and had all but managed to psych myself out before it. Sarah and Steph can ski, and Inkeri was set to ski-board. I, on the other hand, had never so much as ridden a ski lift. I got fitted out for my skis and boots with the others anyway, and wore the boots for the day until time for my lesson. This was a big part of why I almost cancelled! It’s hard to explain just how awful these boots are. They’re extremely heavy and cumbersome. I felt like they were moon boots built to withstand anti-gravity environments, except I was wearing them on earth. Each step felt like a fall waiting to happen. And they hurt my shins. Carrying the skis around was also uncomfortable. I was also convinced (helped in part by anecdotes from colleagues) that I would fall and injure myself in the attempt of learning. I mean, I could barely walk with these boots – and I’d had a lot of practice walking! Please note that the idea of falling is not new to me. I have fallen many times on incredibly varied forms of transport. I’ve been jet-skiing (great fun, though I did end up overturning it and landing in the water). I have even face-planted in snow from steering a husky sled in Norway – at night, while it was snowing on my eye-balls. If you know me, you’ll know that looking cool is not my primary concern in this life. However I was worried about how I would get around and manage by myself in Rome, should I end up with injuries. Being alone and reliant on public transport, has its drawbacks.

My travel buddies were so sweet though, they even offered to give me a trial lesson pre-official lesson, so I could be more comfortable. This didn’t go well. This was not because they weren’t good instructors. I fell, and couldn’t get up. They had to help me un-click my skis before I could rise. This made the idea of practicing on my own nerve-wracking. I pictured myself in some undignified pose, unable to help myself back up. In retrospect, I could have probably managed to un-click my skis and get up, but I was pretty nervous at this juncture and not thinking very positively. I also didn’t want to get in anyone else’s way and unwittingly hurt someone.

I realised I was also feeling particularly sensitive. I suddenly felt a little overwhelmed by not knowing how to do yet another thing. And being torn between warring feelings of privilege that I could even be in a position to learn, and frustration that I had to suffer through the process of learning so late in life, when it’s just so much harder (for various reasons). At this juncture I want to quote Mindy Kaling (Why not me?):

Yes, I had the extreme privilege of starting to learn to ski. And I was miserable. I hated the feeling of ineptitude. I was suddenly tired of all the hassles whenever I wanted to try something new, logistical and otherwise. I remembered learning to scuba dive, and being beset with the worst sea-sickness from the choppy water. And feeling conspicuous from being the only people of colour then (along with my brother. I’ve always been a proponent of doing the thing; trying new experiences. I’ve abseiled and been on zip-line slides. I have had a few horse-riding lessons. I’ve had one archery lesson. I tried to ice-skate once, when I lived in London over a decade ago. Kew gardens in winter is pretty magical, but I can still remember the unwieldy awfulness of being in those skates, as I clutched the rail for as long as I could stand before getting off the ice. I was tired of all these wonderful, awful experiences. I was resentful that so many of them were so hard, or had scary elements. I know…I was feeling sorry for myself. Poor Sena, who has trouble with her elitist adventures. All I can tell you, is that the struggle felt real. I realised that so many of these involved me venturing out alone, and receiving strange looks for being there in the first place. I am not over-sensitive, but I am perceptive. I wished it could just be easier. I felt resolve that my nephews and nieces wouldn’t ever feel this way. That they would have options early, and would be helped along as far as I could.

I did manage to pull myself together in time for my lesson. I lucked out with a wonderful instructor. She was patient and kind, and I ended up having a great lesson. That doesn’t mean I turned out to be a skiing savant…not at all. I still fell, but I learned too - and after my 2 lessons, I could feel an improvement.

Post weekend, I gave my mixed feelings some consideration, and happened to come across a timely article by one Maria Popova:

“De Botton distills Nietzsche’s convictions and their enduring legacy: The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains…

Why? Because no one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfilment. Nietzsche was striving to correct the belief that fulfillment must come easily or not at all, a belief ruinous in its effects, for it leads us to withdraw prematurely from challenges that might have been overcome if only we had been prepared for the savagery legitimately demanded by almost everything valuable. (Or, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in his atrociously, delightfully ungrammatical proclamation, “Nothing any good isn’t hard.”)

I’ve been nursing the assumption that I am uncoordinated and un-athletic, but actually, I was an active kid. I ran and jumped long and high, and there was always swimming. Stopping to think about it, maybe it’s more that I’m just bad until I get good. I still have a list of other activities to try out. I will try to remember this lesson.

After all that, let us end with a pic of the best hot chocolate I have ever had. It was in a cozy restaurant on the mountain, while surrounded by snow. Also, ski-lifts are fun.

#keepontrucking

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Entertainment: Jonathan Gold, food critic who celebrated la's Cornucopia, dies at 57

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Margy Rochlin, a close friend.

“LA always seemed better when he wrote about it,” film critic John Powers, a friend of Gold’s, said. “You just thought, There’s so much stuff here.”

In 2016, Ecco Press bought his proposal for a memoir, which Gold called “a culinary coming of age book, I guess.” It was to be called “Breakfast on Pico.”

In his peregrinations, he came to appreciate how Los Angeles’s far-flung neighborhoods allowed small, distinct cultures to flourish without bumping into each other.

In “City of Gold,” Sue Horton, an editor at Reuters, says of his use of the second person, “He’s forming a bond with the reader: You and I are people who eat deer penis.”

She survives him, along with their children, Isabel and Leon, and Gold’s brother, Mark, the associate director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.

Many claims have been made for Gold’s criticism, but he saw his work in modest terms. He wanted to make Los Angeles smaller.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/entertainment-jonathan-gold-food-critic_22.html

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