WRITING CULTURE 2012: Film, Food & Beyond

Social Media on Election night was abuzz with everyone who’s anyone’s opinionated stance on what should happen, what is happening, and who should be the next President of the United States.  Some of the commentary a little more entertaining than others, with entertainers such as Kathy Griffin cracking jokes on her twitter feed, and Presidential mocker Donald Trump spewing words of disdain for the Democrats; it makes for an entertaining, as well as informative means of knowing what is going on in the election.
All the news outlets have twitter feeds now; some of them, numerous accounts: CNN News, CNN Election Coverage, and you could replace CNN with Fox or NBC or ABC, or NYtimes, or NYPost – any news outlet imaginable at this point; you can tweet with them.

They each claim to be unbiased; we all know this is really not true, but the NY Times does do a semi-good job at appearing fair, with enough media content for both sides of the parties.

I have to wonder what the election looked like pre-twitter/facebook/television…

As he acknowledged to the country that he had won his second term as President of the United States.  With a tear in his eye, and amounts of happiness and appearing gratitude that overflowed, he took his place as a two-termer.  It surely was late enough into the evening, after his opponent Mitt Romney all but refused to concede – his hopes of winning getting smaller by the second as each state came in with who their votes were going to… almost every one adding to Obama’s already significantly higher number of electoral votes.

It was semi-brilliant watching FOX News’s anchors look pained as they announced Obama as the winner; the clearly biased news source would have loved to have announced Romney as our new president, but were denied the pleasure of their Republican candidate winning.  They held on until late in the evening as well, while other news outlets had announced much earlier that Obama was clearly getting the Presidential nod.

The fun really to be had on election night though was on social media – everyone with their “I am going to de-friend you’s” being threatened to their Facebook counterparts publicly endorsing their particular candidate.  I, personally, (while happy with the current president), would love to see Hillary Clinton in office; she would rock it.  http://hillaryclinton.com/

To be as objective as possible and keep my subjective-ness removed, if possible.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is a beautifully filmed, and well executed film.  It is not my taste – I would much prefer to watch a romantic comedy where someone is in love and out of love and there’s something funny and lighthearted and a happy ending.  This is not that movie.

Hushpuppy and her father live in the ‘Bathtub’ of Southern Louisiana, where life is hard and the people who live there are die-hards.  They are born there, raised there, and die there, and it will take something terrible to get them to leave – and even then, a lot of them won’t go.  This is somewhat realistic for a place like the Bathtub in real life – however, in the midst of a terrible storm (it is assumed it is a hurricane without actually being told that it is), it is time to go.

Hushpuppy’s father,  who seems to be a relatively small minded, wife-beater, is raising this poor little girl on his own (and mostly she is raising herself) is adamant they will stay, and so they do.  They stick out the terrible storm and get stuck in the ‘Bathtub’ with the other folks who refused to leave.  They have none of the things they need to survive, and it is all too real to watch them struggle the same way as the people who in real life refuse to leave before a storm and then get trapped and are in trouble.

We also learn after the storm that Hushpuppy’s father is very sick, another thing to make this little girl’s life harder.  The only redeeming qualities of this film (to me) are the beautiful cinematography and the fact that there is a semi-happy ending.  I would actually recommend going to see it – if only for the beautiful camera work and the fact that it did win the grand jury prize at Sundance.

Long Branch, by Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart, is a short film about a potentially long relationship.   The film opens with our lead characters making out in a tunnel with a car driving past.  Our female lead (name still tba) bluntly asks the guy if he would like to have sex, in a much more crude fashion than we’ll touch on here, to which she receives a reply that is expected of any straight male; yes.  Her roommate has people over so they have to go back to his place – as he checks his phone for the time, he asks how good her shoe’s arch support is and they start running to make the train, which they do.  If they hadn’t the rest of the somewhat predictable plot would not be able to play out.

Long Branch

Once on the train, they make the few other people in the car uncomfortable and myself too a bit, to be honest.  Finally, after their make out session goes on for a while and a station name is announced, our female (who’s name we still do not know) asks where this guy lives to which he finally admits he lives in Long Branch – nearly 2 hours away.

Cue to them now being on a city bus in the snow – at this point, quite unrealistic.  Their down to awkward conversation when at least the girl lets us know why we don’t know character names “basic one night stand etiquette”.  That cleared a little bit up at least.  Finally, they make it back to his house where it is clear to the audience immediately that he lives with family.  She stays and they end up cozy-ing up to sleep, no sex involved, and leave the viewer thinking they may actually go on a real date. Not original, but cute and relatively enjoyable.

To be fair, Chote Nawab was not our initial destination, but it turned out to be an incredibly afternoon of deliciousness.  The restaurant we intended to eat at (whose name I will with-hold since we didn’t actually eat a bite there) did not have even one thing on the menu that was gluten and/or dairy free, meaning I would not be able to eat.  So on we went, and a few moments later walked into Chote Nawab.  This was the best accident we could have had happen.  Upon walking in, we were very warmly welcomed and seated right away.  The restaurant is very new and has a chic modern decor, that was comfortable and warm.  We were brought menus and water right away.  We also were offered drink menus, which due to the fact that it was still mid-afternoon and we all had classes were politely declined.
We quickly decided on what we would order, myself going for the chicken saag – a delicious mix of cubed chicken and heavily spiced spinach, very similar to creamed spinach (minus the cream).  Along with that I had some rice, and dal, made of lentils.  They also brought naan bread to the table, but sadly I was not able to eat any of that due to it being gluten laden.  It looked just as delightful as everything else that was on the table.
I have eaten at my fair share of Indian restaurants in the city and have to say, Chote Nawab is high on the list of them.  The quality was very high, the flavors awesome, and the atmosphere and service equally great.  I will definitely be going back, and I will be bringing friends!

Growing up in South Florida, I have seen many a hurricane. Some bad, some not so much, and a lot of time spent indoors waiting out the storm. Hurricane Sandy, however, interrupted life in a more irritating and destructive manner.

Coming in on my birthday, which of course is a petty complaint, and then sticking around for a few day, I was fortunate enough to be in a location where power blipped off for a few seconds only to resume and stay on for the remainder of my forced hurrication. A crane precariously dangled above 57th street just half an avenue away forcing most of nearby blocks to evacuate. Imagine, not being forced to evacuate by the actual storm, but because a building where apartments are selling for $90 million dollars neglected to secure their equipment.

I would love to say I see redeeming qualities about the storm; maybe that it is now bringing people together to help those who lost everything, but, it should not take disaster to do this. So with just these few things, I sufficiently loathe Hurricane Sandy.

The flavor/texture combination of a golden kettle cooked potato chip is something enjoyable at anytime of day. Plain potato chips are a fool-proof means to a gluten free snack that can literally be found around the world!  The identifiable crunch as you bite into a chip is heavenly, with just enough salt to keep them from being bland.  Three ingredients (potatoes, oil, salt) mean that while we know potato chips are not the healthiest choice, they are a lot better than most options you can find on short notice hunger, and it also means there is nothing there to be nervous about when eating them… you know exactly what you’re getting.

The fact that potato chips are absolutely delicious is merely icing on the cake for this crunchy treat.

As of about a year and a half ago, and many stomach aches/weird ailments/and sleepy days later I discovered that I am gluten intolerant.  A blessing in disguise, kind of; with the exception of a weakness for sugar cookies.  How could one ever recreate the deliciousness that is a sweet, buttery sugar cookie with anything other than regular old wheat flour?  Well, the wonderful folks at Gilbert’s Gourmet Goodies have not only figured it out, but have upped the bet by not only making the most delicious gluten free sugar cookies; they are also nut, dairy, soy, corn, and trans-fat free! 

Basically, they are a person with food allergies dream.  The only thing they are not, is vegan, as they do contain eggs.

If you happen to be rife with food allergies the way I am, you know that finding an equal (if not more delicious) substitute is a challenge.  Even with all the new-found gluten free options seemingly coming out of the woodwork for people who think this is a passing fad (let me assure you, it is not – those of us who truly need to eat gluten free are more excited than we should admit to for these new arrivals), it is not always easy to find one that is delicious!  Some are dry, some have a funny texture, some taste absolutely nothing like what they are supposed to be replacing, and some are just downright awful, so when you find one as good as these sugar cookies are you sing a little food song and thank the gluten free gods of the universe that someone was able to figure out how to take a delicious staple and make it allergy acceptable.

For those of you are not as married to sugar cookies as I am, but still can’t have gluten, they also make Chocolate Chip, Snickerdoodle, Simply Chocolate, and Double Chocolate Brownie flavors!

watch?v=RESwG23_YGw

The movie Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, is a love story like many other, but something special about this film makes it more charming and endearing than the others.  The girl is beyond famous, and her would be ‘prince charming’ is certainly anything but.  He wins her over with his charm, lack of woo-ing, and I don’t think the fact that even though he knows she’s famous but still treats her normally (for the most part) hurt his case.  She falls in love with him because he is everything her Hollywood ex-boyfriend was not; he’s casual, kind, quirky, and cultured.  He’s a catch and he didn’t even know it.  And then, all of a sudden, they find themselves in love – and of course there is a happy ending because a love story should always, in theory, have a happy ending.  The viewer of this movie is truly left in a euphoric state of how magical love can be and for that reason I write my ode to you Notting Hill – the ultimate romantic comedy.