Long have I desired to look upon upon the waffle fries of old. Just before the holidays, I’d heard from a few Carolinians in and about the city that, yes, there was in fact one Chick-Fil-A in Gotham. And, sure enough, this morning I found it, in NYU’s Weinstein Hall at the northeast corner of Washington Square Park. (Alas, it was closed until Tuesday, when the new NYU term starts — and it looks like there may be intermittent security attempting to keep displaced non-NYU Southerners like me away from the quality chicken products.)
Category: Food and Drink
The Grapes of Wretchedness.
Lost in a wine-dark sea, Miles (Paul Giamatti) is withering on the vine. His wife left him two years ago and he’s still in the drunk-dialing throes of despair. His novelist aspirations are dying an ugly death in ever-smaller publishing houses. Both oenophile and alcoholic, he drinks too much, eats too much, surveys the world in furtive glances, and cringes with self-loathing every time he looks in the mirror. He’s lugubrious, pedantic, bristling with negativity to the core. In sum, Miles is almost completely beaten down by life…so of course he attracts the attention of a smart, beautiful woman (Virginia Madsen) who shares all his important interests and remains fond of him, even and despite his awful behavior.
If you can get past this one critical and wholly improbable plot point (and I did, eventually), Alexander Payne’s Sideways is a trip to California wine country well worth taking. The movie basically plays like an approaching-middle-age version of About Schmidt (right down to the unfortunate nude scene), but this seemed a more well-rounded and generous film than its predecessor. (I thought Schmidt derived too many laughs from turning Dylan McDermott’s character into a buffoon. That being said, I also think Sideways flinches from reality in the closing moments in a way About Schmidt didn’t.) And, while I’m about as far from a wine connoisseur as you can get (whites with chicken and fish, right?), Sideways also succeeds in making the subculture of oenophilia both accessible and reasonably engaging, a few ham-handed “wine-is-life” soliloquies notwithstanding.
Special nods go to all the actors involved here, and particularly Paul Giamatti for making it so easy to empathize with the easily unlikable Miles…I can’t think of many other folks who could have pulled it off so well (In fact, looking back I’d say Nicholas Cage pulled it off less well in Adaptation.) I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Thomas Haden Church, as Miles’ low-key, horny doofus of a best friend, and Virginia Madsen, as the previously noted underwritten muse of second chances, get some action come award time (which may end up meaning sour grapes for the Closer crowd.)
Frenchfries 9/11.
Along the same lines, Slate‘s Seth Stevenson scrutinizes the return of the (Burger) King.
It’s a Bender.
He’s gonna keep drinking til he can’t move a toe… By way of Web Goddess, see if you can get the drunk Swiss guy home. I’ve found it easier if you don’t move your hand too much.
The Colonel Demoted?
Slate‘s Seth Stevenson examines how Kentucky Fried became Kitchen Fresh. Hi-carb, lo-carb, no-carb, all-carb…call it whatever you want: I’ll still be a sucker for the popcorn chicken.
Gotta Travel On.
“The creepiest on-screen clone army of 2003 wasn’t The Matrix’s league of Agent Smiths at all, but Masked and Anonymous‘s cast of Bob Dylans. He was everybody, everywhere. Or, rather, everybody was him.” Via my friend Mark, an intriguing take on Bob Dylan’s recent run, including M&A, Live 1964, and the new book on Blood on the Tracks. (No Victoria’s Secret, however.) Also in Dylan news, by way of Absolute Piffle, Bob’s apparently also gotten into the wine business. Lingerie, wine…are Dylan-brand scented candles next?
What’s taters, precious?
Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew…
Paul, Polls, Pols, and Pints.
More grist for the orals mill:
| Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism. William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction: 1869-1879. Matthew Josephson, The Politicos. W.J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. |
Super Sized.
Dahlia Lithwick examines the legal strategies soon to be employed against “Big Food”. Sounds like these cases’ll be tough to make, but they still might encourage Mickey D’s to back away from McGriddle and the like.
Know thy enemy.
The Boston Globe sheds a little light into the dark corridors of oppo research. Of course we already know Dubya was a alcoholic cokehead who went AWOL for a year to escape a drug test and had so little sense that he’d drive around drunk…and we still elected him for four years. So skeletons in the closet just ain’t what they used to be.