Shut up and feed me.

Attention ‘Sopranos’ fans.  Remember that episode from Season 6, "Luxury Lounge"?

That's the one where the two Jersey Family idiots, Christopher and Little Carmine try and solicit actor Ben Kingsley's interest in their slasher flick but wind up mugging Lauren Bacall for her award-ceremony goodies bag instead.

It's also the episode in which one of the other Jersey Family idiots and hangers-on, chef and restaurateur Artie Bucco, has a spectacular meltdown before he eventually acknowledges his station in life - as Tony Soprano's goofy, garrulous, perennially put-upon purveyor of free dinners. Artie's epiphany arrives only after a series of brutal humiliations - verbal, physical, emotional – respectively dished out by Tony, psychotic and deceitful Benny Fazio, and Artie’s loyal, exhausted wife Charmaine.

Artie realises he will never be respected by the made-guys, nor desired by the Bada-Bing's strippers, even if he is still much-loved by his trooper of a wife Charmaine. Artie is a gifted chef but an annoying presence (his ham-fisted and desperate attempts to make small-talk with his diners make you sweat with embarrassment), so his restaurant ‘New Vesuvio’ is failing, doomed to survive only by catering to the discount voucher crowd.

The episode's later scenes are especially poignant. Charmaine has just seated a young couple at a table after the restaurant is officially closed, the staff have left and there's no more food left. A battered and bandaged Artie, drained by his trials, insists the couple will get what he gives them, no menu - no options.

Artie is then shown quietly and lovingly cooking a rabbit he'd shot himself (after he caught it helping itself to his precious imported Italian greens in his kitchen garden – another humiliation. Poor Artie) in his beloved restaurant kitchen, from a handwritten recipe in an old family cookbook.  

It’s a beautiful scene, and the camera lingers on Artie’s devoted concentration in a way that makes my mouth water just remembering it. The plump rabbit, the oil, the chopped onions and tomatoes…arghhhh.

Forget HD - I pine for scratch and sniff television.

It’s also a great scene because it highlights exactly what cooking and serving food should be about – making something special out of whatever you have to hand. Being thankful when someone makes you something tasty and delicious and not being a pernickety arsehole about your likes and dislikes.

(I imagined a Saturday Night Live – style parody of this scene where the young couple start listing all their food intolerances and allergies, and Artie finally loses it and comes out wielding a cleaver and hacks the couple to death).

I have been guilty of listing my dos and don’ts when out with friends or just visiting (there are some things I can’t/won’t eat during the Lenten fast and I believe allowing for faith-based food restrictions is a mark of respect even though I know intellectually, they’re ancient and irrational) but this whole gluten-free, wheat-free, did-the-chicken-have-a-humane-death, is-the-cutlery-organic shtick beloved of the modern diner is disrespectful, First-World bullshit - pure and simple.

Just shut up and eat. Just shut up and eat when you’re invited to someone’s home. Respect the chef – just shut up and eat. Ask yourself:

• How lovely is it to sit down and put your tastebuds in the hands of people who know their food and wine? 
• How relaxing is it to sit down at a table adorned with crisp napery, good crystal and good company and not worry about deciphering the menu or mispronouncing the dishes?
• How lovely is it to discover a taste, flavour or texture you’ve never experienced before – and maybe never will again?

The single word answer to all of these questions is 'very'.

 

Note to Artie Bucco – Just shut up and feed me.

Farewell Gough Whitlam (1916 - 2014)

Folks,

I was truly saddened by the death of former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam yesterday morning. His extraordinary social agenda (universal health care and education), foreign policies (establishing diplomatic ties with China and abolishing conscription - thereby Australia's involvement in the Vietnam mire) and his recognition of Australian Aboriginal land rights ensure he will forever loom large in our country's political consciousness.

Here's a little something from 1969:

“When government makes opportunities for any of the citizens, it makes them for all the citizens. We are all diminished as citizens when any of us are poor. Poverty is a national waste as well as individual waste. We are all diminished when any of us are denied proper education. The nation is the poorer – a poorer economy, a poorer civilisation, because of this human and national waste.”

Remember, he burst on the scene in the late 1960s. Think about that for a minute.

He was a big man with a big voice, a big brain and a big vision. I love the fact that Gore Vidal thought he was our 'most intelligent Australian'. He was an unapologetic agnostic - a 'post-Christian' - (try selling American voters on the idea of a non-Christian, non-believing Head of State). He polarised people. To this day, you drop his name at a dinner party at your peril. If you're kindred spirits, there's nothing like the click of shared infatuation.

Which is why there's not a better time to buy, borrow or steal a copy of George Megalogenis' The Australian Moment, a fantastic political, social and economic history of Australia's last 40 years, essentially starting with the Whitlam years.

For people younger than me who struggle to understand why Gough Whitlam is such a polarising figure, this book sheds much-needed light (and startling objectivity) on the policies, people and power-shifts of Whitlam's tumultuous time in office. It smacks our collective - selective - memories in the face. Hard. Really fucking hard.

Get it, read it.

In the meantime, enjoy this one brilliantly witty rejoinder from the Big Man himself, upon being harangued by a pain-in-the-arse voter who wanted to know his position on abortion:

“Let me make quite clear that I am for abortion and, in your case Sir, we should make it retrospective.”

Gold.

RIP.

No-one told me this! Middle-aged disorders you never knew about until now.

Lately I’ve been wondering if I should start my own version of the DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - tool used by mental health professionals), which carefully and methodically lists all the weird mental stuff you experience when you hit middle age.

I don’t wish to belittle the seriousness of Narcissistic Personality or Acute Stress or Adjustment disorders, it’s just that I find there are some conditions which begin to afflict us in middle-age, conditions which disrupt our daily lives, which require identification and description. Followed by compassion and understanding…

Here goes:

Laundry Alzheimer’s  - decided to take advantage of off-peak power rates and put on a load of whites overnight? Went to work the next morning and forgot all about them? Suddenly remembered them when you got home after work and then forgot about them again until after dinner? If this is happening to you, you have Laundry Alzheimer’s – closely related to Ironing ‘Did I turn it off?’ Dementia.

Audial Deprivation Rage – when you shout into a wardrobe, under a hot shower, over a flushing toilet, into a cupboard or while bending over a sock drawer, yet still believe your spouse can comfortably hear and understand you three rooms away AND THEN GETTING ANGRY WHEN THEY CAN’T is insane. It’s not them, it’s you. You are the crazy one. Deal. (In this case, I need to deal… my deepest apologies, Muddy.)

Parking Fee Payment Syndrome  –  this begins with a strange involuntary spasm that courses through your body when you see what you’re expected to pay for a couple of hours of parking at the airport, hospitals, CBD etc. It then culminates in 20 minutes of misted-over vision, mild Tourette’s and excessive gripping of the steering wheel upon exiting the parking lot.

Special mentions:  If I Buy Online I Save 20 Cents Mania; Aldiphillia (and the related Costcophillia); Underwear Purchase Trauma.