Monthly Archives: May 2012

The end of superlatives.

I’m sure you do it too: describe something good not merely as good, but as epic, or unbelievable, or inconceivable!

And it’s not that we actually think that something is epic, or inconceivable (I do not think that means what you think that means), but that we’re being all hipster-ironic or whatever you want to call it. Everything is the biggest! best! most! amazing! EVAR!

And this is not restricted to cool kids (and those of us who are no longer cool, really, and certainly not kids); it’s more or less everyone who has ever read or written anything on the internet. Which is basically 90% of everyone I know.

So you end up with Chris Hayes of MSNBC, who gives the impression of being young and excitable, given his normal fast-paced speaking style. He’s patently an intelligent and thoughtful person, and he’s certainly a liberal (as, of course, am I); I don’t know that I’d call him an elitist–well certainly not in the pejorative sense that the chattering classes use the word. I certainly do believe in striving for excellence, and I admire accomplished people. I have often wished that I had enough ambition to actually accomplish things :p

But regardless, he’s a young and clean-cut fellow who is very passionate about justice and the safety net, among other things, I guess I can fairly say. He guest-hosts for Rachel Maddow, who is not beloved by the right-wing either.

And now I’ll send you over to Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, who has written an excellent piece on what happened to Chris Hayes the other day. That should get you up to speed.

I looked at Chris’s facebook page on Monday when I heard about the brouhaha, and liked it (I haven’t actually seen his show, because it’s on at 0400 on Saturday and Sunday, or something, and we don’t have a DVR and I just am not getting up at that hour for anyone). The comments (at that point, there were fewer than 200 to the most recent post) were largely (and SO DAMN PREDICTABLY) ad hominems about Chris by people who very obviously did not watch the show and just hear “MSNBC” and seemingly get all foamy at the mouth in a very Pavlovian way. They were slamming him for disrespecting soldiers and their families, and saying things like “come over here and say that so I can deck you, you whiny little liberal socialist puke” and god knows that else. It was depressing to the point that I didn’t read them all, and can only hope that there were some messages of support.

I follow Chris Hayes on twitter, and I mean he doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground, but while I might not agree with everything out of his mouth, or necessarily even understand everything out of his mouth, he is not at all the kind of guy to badmouth soldiers. He very clearly said that he wasn’t saying anything disrespectful of soldiers!

But Chris was commenting about (among other things) the way that everyone is a “hero” now. And it’s the kind of thing that I have thought about as well: not every dead soldier is a hero. Some soldiers are just dead guys who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and died for it. And it’s horrible, and it’s unfair, and basically any right-thinking individual (‘right’ as in morally right, not politically right) can agree that it’s a massive sacrifice for someone to make, and those of us who are not in the service are normally fervently grateful to those who are, and represent our country in dangerous places far away, and fight or keep the peace on our behalf.

But.

But. The same way that every little tyke who makes it through pre-school on the way to Kindergarten really isn’t a graduate, or deserving a cap and gown (which actually signify something in the world of academia). The same way that we are not, every one of us, a beautiful and unique snowflake, as Chuck Palahniuk might say it.* The same way that no, we don’t all win the race by finishing: finishing is great! and a worthy accomplishment! but only one person actually wins the race: the winner. In that way, not every soldier, not every policeman, not even every firefighter! is a hero, to my understanding of the word.

A hero, to my understanding of the word, is the guy who goes back in to the burning building to rescue the kid or his comrade or coworker. A hero is the soldier who does something incredibly dangerous, most likely knowing that it’s incredibly dangerous, in order to help his fellow soldiers or advance the line, or whatever the objective is. A hero is the person who, for selfless reasons, puts himself or herself on the line for others’ benefit. A hero is a special kind of person, and while all soldiers deserve honour, gratitude and respect, not every soldier is a hero any more than every cook is a chef or every teacher makes that big difference in every student’s life or every actor deserves an Oscar.

That’s just not the way things are. And that’s OK. There’s nothing wrong with having more better things to strive for, and probably even more controversially, there’s nothing wrong, in my opinion, with being content with who you are, inasmuch as knowing that you’ll never be an Olympic gold medallist, or Grammy-winner, or Master of the Universe, and being OK with that, is perfectly acceptable.

Being good is OK. Nothing wrong with being superlative, but nothing wrong with just being good.

So can we maybe stop with the BEST! THING! EVAR! or slow down with the most appalling lie ever and I’m so goddam insulted by what that guy said that other guy said? Can we stop cherry-picking the sound-bites so that people are quoted completely out of context and saying exactly what they didn’t say?

I am so weary of the outrage, because it’s false outrage, and what’s worse, it’s a cynical pretense of outrage meant to garner page-clicks and dubious brownie points, and I’m just epically tired of it, if you know what I mean.

*  Many thanks to The Boogerhead for correcting my miss on the Palahniuk-ism. And to Lithos, who pointed out that my link was pointing in the wrong direction entirely. Sigh.

Dinner at The Sardine Can

The Sardine Can has opened its doors.

Open from 3:00 pm daily, 26 Powell Street.

Menu

Sardine Can Opening Menu

We went last night (how could we not, really?).

We started with a glass of red. Total tally was three glasses each, working our way up the list.

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Then we had these gorgeous shrimp in spicy garlicky butter. Make sure you get some bread to sop up the juice.

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This is the partially eaten rice with paella bits…we didn’t get there till pretty late for us, so we were hungry enough to forget about the camera.

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These are the lovely piquillos rellenos, filled with bacalao.

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And a special half-and-half serrano and pata negra plate that Chef made for us. I managed not to get a pic of the amazing albondigas, or the tomato and manchego toasts, both of which were unbelievably tasty.

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And I completely failed on dessert pics; we had one of each, and a glass of sherry to go with each, and shared all of it.

Fantastic. Everything was great.

It’s tiny (19 seats), you may have to wait a little while. Sit at the bar if you can, and chat with Chefs Andrey and José. But go! don’t let the neighbourhood deter you. They open at 3:00 daily and I may be sneaking out of work early more than once this summer :D

Yo, Baby, what’s up?!

So there have been a few things going on since last I wrote.

The MD and I went to Victoria at the last minute last weekend, to say hello to some friends and to visit a friend‘s art show at a gin distillery. We had some fantastic pizza at Prima Strada. Cannot recommend too highly if you’re on the Island. The show was a success (although we didn’t get anything; we still haven’t put up most of the art we already have, and buying more at this point seems a bit silly. But one day I will! I love his stuff!). The weather was pretty good if on the cool side, and the hotel was cheap although the number of hairs stuck to the wall of the shower gave me pause. We’ll spend another $20 next time to save me the shudders.

The night before we went, some douchebag scraped the side of the Bunny pretty badly, oh yay, another massive deductible. No note, of course. How do people live with themselves, wrecking people’s stuff and just fucking off? The side mirror was totally snapped back and even the wheel cover is all scraped, so there’s no way the driver didn’t know they’d hit the car. Maybe they said “Oh, their insurance will cover it, who cares?” Yeah? well, I care, $500 isn’t something that comes so easily that we won’t notice. So, a big, hearty, “FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE,” to all the hit and run drivers out there. I hope karma bites you on the ass a little extra-hard.

Last weekend the Main Distractor and I both had haircuts, and I started the road back to blonde. I am currently sort of orangey-gold, or prawn, depending. Which is fitting since we went to the Spot Prawn Festival on Saturday and ate some lovely fresh little dudes. The lineup to get some to take home was too long, though, so my planned prawn dinner will wait.

Instead we went to Cafeteria because it had been too long and they had shrimp and grits with cheese and bacon on the menu, and it had been calling me, “Deeeeeeeeeeb!” It was delectable. You know, if you follow them on twitter, you can keep up to date with important happenings such as the presence of shrimp and grits with cheese and bacon on the menu.

Spring seems finally to have arrived. Not a moment too soon!

***

The post title is, of course, a Beastie Boys line. Today Maurice Sendak died, and that’s a pity, too,  but he was 83 years old, so….it’s nothing like the big glaring pile of awful that came with the news of Adam Yauch’s death last Friday, aged 47. My friend Sandra, whose boyfriend Robert was from Queens, introduced me to the Beastie Boys in 1983-84 or so. We were already listening to Run-DMC and Grandmaster Flash et al., but Sandra and I were about the only people who would race to the dance floor for “Cooky Puss.” (Take me home and eat me, yeah!)

“Licensed to Ill” was just so much awesome punctuated with the dumb jock song…had some great times listening and dancing to that record. Oh my. “Hello Nasty” was a big part of the road trip P. and I took up to the Yukon in 1999, too. Is there anything quite as fun as listening to loud music with the sunroof open, on an empty highway on a beautiful day?

Anyway, I have 100 Beastie Boys songs on my iPod, from the old days to newer stuff, and I listen to them still, all the time. Other people, more eloquent than I, have said all kinds of lovely things about MCA and the difference he made to so many people’s lives. I just know that my life wouldn’t have sounded, or felt, as great as it has all these years, if not for the Beastie Boys and Adam Yauch. Thank you.