Author: Chris

Writer, journalist, wanderer. "Gnashing," a blog about stuff — cultural, personal, important and frivolous. Lots about wanderlust and books and movies and memories. Much about travel and social observations. Hopefully entertaining, a little insightful, forever random and rambling.

I hate everything

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“I wish I was like you/Easily amused”  — Nirvana, “All Apologies”

Someone just pointed out — sooo boringly — how I don’t like anything. It’s an asinine statement that can only come from the congenitally cheery extrovert who unthinkingly likes almost everything, no matter how lame and degrading it is. These are the loud laughers and knee-slappers. Ha! What a hoot! The kind that still thinks “SNL” is funny.

It’s true, I’m a rough critic with shades of the pessimistic and a tendency toward the comparatively negative. I’m a dark spirit with high standards and a low tolerance for mediocrity and pure crap. I try many things. I am usually gravely disappointed.

Too many people like too many things. It’s as if they like everything. I consider myself discriminating. I don’t need, nor want, to like everything. Most things are middling or overrated, and I feel like a chump for investing time in them. I once interviewed a critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, and he admitted that most shows, films and concerts he sees are worth two out of four stars. I nodded wisely. 

And so, I’m labeled a hater.

Just because I find Taylor Swift numbingly average, think team sports are boring and obnoxious, abhor nearly every Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino movie, and am convinced the American version of TV’s “The Office” is grating and unfunny and not a whisker near the greatness of the British original. And Marvel: like daggers in my eyes.

Call me cranky, call me what you will.

But I’m not having it. 

There’s so much I do love, such as, in no order: 

World travel, books, reading, writing, drumming, snow skiing, romance, vintage BMX, animals, “Breaking Bad,” the Beatles, Philip Roth, stellar art museums, Iranian cinema, Paris, cold weather, big cities, director Michael Mann, “Hacks,” old film noirs and screwball comedies, Beethoven, architect Frank Gehry, ice cream, Radiohead, the Marx Brothers, “Top Chef,” David Bowie, nice people, the singer Mitski, rollercoasters, “The White Lotus,” Toni Morrison, boygenius, Martin Short, “SCTV,” an inspired cocktail, a great meal, Al Pacino, and — surprise — Anderson’s “Rushmore” and Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” … and so on and so forth. I could rattle off superlatives all day.

I should just keep my mouth shut, because too often my opinions suck the oxygen out of the room. People simply can’t believe I don’t think “The Wire” or Springsteen are unvarnished genius (they’re not). But below the negativity gurgles a sparkling river of all that I praise to a degree of adoration, even obsession.

Nope.

When I was a theater critic, years ago, readers complained about my cynicism to the point that my editors did a scientific breakdown of how many negative reviews I had given as opposed to my positive reviews. The result was 84 percent positive. People, I think, like to cling to the negative response, all that contradicts their self-righteously proclaimed passions that they protect like little bunnies. Free Britney!

Still, it is true I find dissing unworthy cultural totems liberating, a perverse pastime, and I’m not alone in this (see: Larry David). More things that make me recoil: Donna Tartt’s overrated novel “The Goldfinch,” souped-up cars, dinner parties, Harry Potter, bros (frat, finance, tech, gym, etc.), most tattoos, Kanye, that 40-year-old skateboarder … 

Bah. 


Lennon & McCartney in 3D

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As surprising as it may be, especially for this recovering metalhead, the Beatles are unshakably my favorite musical entity, be it Mozart to Metallica (a pair that shares far more in common than you might think) and beyond. 

I adore almost every damn thing the Beatles recorded (OK, I can skip “All Together Now”) and marvel endlessly at their unsurpassed songcraft, sappy lullabies to psychedelic loopings, to the point of becoming overwhelmed and misty-eyed. Their music moves me like a great Vermeer or Turner, an old Woody Allen or Chaplin flick, a sumptuous Bolognese, or a beautiful woman.

It’s nothing new, this affection. As a toddler, I was singing along to “Yellow Submarine” with my dad and having a ball (I have it on tape). But it’s been roused as I read Ian Leslie’s new book, “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” a head-first spelunking into the two main Beatles’ musical/artistic/personal relationship as they composed some of their greatest tracks: “Yesterday,” “In My Life,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “A Day in the Life,” “Hey Jude.” It examines a plethora of terrific tunes, but places 43 under the microscope. Forty-three!     

Animated by fact and folklore, the book, which I admit I haven’t finished, begins in the beginning: how the boys met, formed early bands and honed their chops in German nightclubs. Yeah, yeah (She loves you, yeah, yeah) — that’s old news to Beatlemaniacs. It gets more interesting when John and Paul’s creative minds miraculously meld and songs start to pour forth in gorgeous, gobsmacking cataracts. 

The author launches with the somewhat green “Come Go with Me” in the late 1950s, strikes upon “Please Please Me,” with plenty of songs in between, and finally hits the stratosphere with “Ticket to Ride” and “We Can Work It Out.” It’s all joyride from there as the Beatles — George and Ringo included, of course, though they’re mere cameos — orbit Earth for seemingly ever. (But hardly. The Beatles lasted roughly 10 years, 1960-1970.)

Expectedly, Paul is painted as the pretty, peppy one, John the caustic, callous one. Yet both are endowed with bristling intelligence and an ample sense of play and worldly curiosity. They are autodidacts of the most ravenous kind, and they devour anything that has to do with art, literature and music. 

Their love of the American songbook, R&B and rock n’ roll is insatiable. And what they learn from them — doo-wop flourishes, country-western twang — dazzles. Their debt to Elvis and Dylan is bottomless.

The book is overstuffed with factoids, from the deep influence of Timothy Leary and LSD on the mid-career John song “Tomorrow Never Knows” to Paul asking George Martin for the kind of biting strings from the film “Psycho” for “Eleanor Rigby” — a masterpiece that Paul wrote at age 23.

It also doesn’t shunt on the group’s tour escapades, drug dabblings, interpersonal jealousies, and other gossipy gum drops. The book gleams with facets. Even at this early stage, Lennon and McCartney feel like brothers. My brothers. 

“John & Paul” is marvelous musicology, mind-blowing and wads of fun. It is my book of the summer, and I still have yet to reach “I Am the Walrus,” “Get Back,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and, with terrible longing, yes, Paul’s heart-yanking “The End.”

Living in a vacuum

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Housesitting at my brother’s place and the biweekly cleaners are whirring, whooshing and wizzing their arsenal of electrical contraptions, a cacophony of vacuums, dusters and busters. 

It’s a racket, and the animals shudder and hide. I won’t see them for a good two hours. Then they’ll re-emerge with bristled fur and indignant scowls. The word balloon above their collective head will read: You S.O.B.

Who, after all, is partial to the rambunctious suckery of the vacuum cleaner? It’s a veritable monster, roaring, devouring.

I’m more a Swiffer guy. That gauzy glide across wood and linoleum, affably gathering dirt and dust, soundlessly, like cotton candy. But rugs and carpets demand plugged-in hardware, and there goes the neighborhood.

Right now, a cleaner is banging a handheld duster against the wooden window blinds and it almost evokes Latin percussion. A drummer, I’m tempted to pull out my cowbell and a tom-tom and fashion some dance jams. But suddenly there are multiple flushes from the bathrooms and a buzz has been decisively killed.

Obviously I could split this joint, go to a cafe to write, see a movie, vandalize some Teslas. But it’s too warm and I can manage the madness for a couple noisy hours. 

Yet I feel a little odd sitting about while they clean around me. On an ancient episode of “Seinfeld,” Jerry riffs about being home when the maid comes and gets all embarrassed that he just as well have cleaned but, you know, you’re here and all, and he offers a wincing apology and a pained shrug.

This isn’t like that. This is my brother’s abode and I’m but an innocent bystander. I’m on good, first-name terms with the lead cleaner, Delsy, and we banter a bit and joke about the animals. Then she hits the “on” switch and my brain rattles in its tiny pan, and I either leave or tolerate it. Today was the latter, as noted. I don’t know where the hell the pets are.

Delsy is cool. A young mother from Guatemala, petite with a helium voice, she once polished the wood floors so well that I slipped on my ass and about broke in half. That’s a compliment. She’s good. And when I’m there, she’s sweet as can be. She has the laugh of a cartoon elf. 

She runs a mean vacuum, scouring the carpets and attacking the stairs. She even sucks the sofa with that terrible tube. It’s all good, if benignly violent. 

And then it’s over and Delsy and crew politely exit, while the animals skulk out of hiding, wanting nothing more than to bite me. 

Stuff, etc.

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One of the cats died recently. He was kind of the rotten cat, the one that shreds up the carpet, craps where he feels like it and was extra aloof, like an Aviator-wearing rock star who hates giving autographs. Anyway, we’re saddened and miss the ornery fellow. I’m not sure what to do with his ashes: urn them nicely or chuck them over the fence at the squirrels. 

I don’t trust social media as far as I can spit. If I had a girlfriend, I’d ask her, quite nicely of course, to get off that shit.

Voyeurism is the opiate of the masses, not religion. Think about that for about four seconds.

Just guess who I think embodies all of these descriptives: racist, greedy, venal, petty, megalomaniacal, misogynistic, heartless, rankly sophomoric, vulgarian scum. Bingo.

I’ve planned a trip to Mexico City for November, but I’m so traveled-out right now, the whole thing sounds terrible. Five months is far off, so I should be refreshed by then. Thing is, the weather runs in the mid-70s to 80 in November and I’m barely any good over 70. I hate the heat; I’m a San Francisco wuss. I read that t-shirts and shorts are frowned upon in Mexico City, and I’m not a fan of them either. It sounds like when I was in sweltering India and everyone was swaddled in jeans and long sleeves. I wore jeans with t-shirts and I sweated like swine. Drenched. Two showers a day. I don’t want any of that crap. Maybe I’ll push the trip to December. Or January. Or never.

What I’m reading: “Demon Copperhead,” Barbara Kingsolver’s gritty, funny, unsparing ode to Dickens’ “David Copperfield.” The novel won a Pulitzer last year and rollicks with knockabout wit and wisdom and with more than a dash of social commentary about the sorry state of many of our states (opioids, poverty, detox). The damn thing’s a cinder block so it’s taking me forever to plow through, but it’s worth it. The title character, a teenage boy, both tart and talented, is one for the ages. He’s like a super smart Pig-Pen from “Peanuts”: brilliant but with a cloud of flies and dust buzzing around him. It’s his lot. But he’s one wily fighter, a scrappy, red-headed hero (hence “Copperhead”) in a bedraggled, Dickensian wasteland.

The cat died; the dog thrives. Cubby the wonder mutt needs a bath and a haircut and those crunchy, coagulated eye boogers extracted, but otherwise the aging fella is in fine fettle. OK, he’s been doing the occasional “revenge pee” in the dining room, meaning when he feels abandoned he’ll whizz on the rug when no one’s around. Stealth urine is as bad as any urine, but it’s worse, because you know the scruffy rascal’s doing it with a puckish glint in his eye.

Green with ennui

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The Chicago River is a goopy green, a mossy Monet, the emerald algae cast of a veggie power shake. As I spluttered down its tributaries last week on a boat tour highlighting the city’s ample architectural gems, I noticed the murky waters as much as the man-made wonders. I’m dorky like that.

Of course, Chicago actually dumps green dye into its giant river on St. Patrick’s Day in a festive gesture of verdant overkill. To my eye, the river hardly needs it. It’s already an “Exorcist”-ish hue of those minty Shamrock confections served at McDonald’s around St. Patty’s, the ones I loved as a kid but that I would probably barf up now.

What was I doing in Chicago? Nothing. And everything. And yet nothing. Just kicking about the Windy City — those storied gusts are a billowy reality — to cash in some flight credits that were soon to expire. I hadn’t been to the city in seven years, and I enjoyed it the first time: Millennium Park, the Art Institute, a foodie tour, the thickets of neck-craning architecture, a terrific play, actual cooked pig face at award-winning restaurant The Girl and the Goat. 

I’d be fibbing if I said last week’s visit lived up to the one in 2018. This was a journey of diminishing returns, and I’m not totally sure why. The weather, wind and all, was sublime. The food, from tortellini filled with lamb cheese at Monteverde to the double smashburger and Red Snapper cocktail at hip gin joint Scofflaw, met Chicago’s lofty culinary standards.

But something was missing. When I glance back at photos from the previous trip I see discovery, the shock of the new, a frisson of excitement. Looking at the few pics I took this time around I see ho-hummery, just another big bustling city — one crunched and ravaged with road work on every block, potholes and the plain pits. 

Chicago lost some of its sizzle. My highly acclaimed “luxury” hotel was worn, calling for renovation and more accurate PR. (It sold Pringles in the lobby shop.) I kind of shuffled through the two marquee museums, one of which, the Art Institute, boasts masterpieces of world eminence, hoping the good paintings would come to me, instead of vice-versa. A few did, many did not.   

But the few-days journey wasn’t a total bust. Peaks include my feast at Monteverde restaurant, whose server couldn’t have been more zealously attentive and helpful; a walking tour of indoor architectural pearls (which I almost ditched, I was feeling so listless) that knocked me out; the invigorating American Writers Museum, wondrously clogged with words words words; that Scofflaw brunch of burger and cocktail; and a factory tour of the Goose Island Beer Co., with deep pours of complimentary suds. 

Still, oddly, overall, my mood remained a shriveled azure. I was down. Now I ponder the big spearmint Chicago River, shades of grass and Tiffany glass. 

And I think, with Kermit in mind: It’s not easy being green. It’s also, I might add, not easy being blue. Blue like Lake Michigan, that oceanic mass kissing a faceted, world-class city, the one where I was doing nothing, and everything.

The Chicago River dyed Day-Glo green on St. Patty’s Day, like battery acid.

The drudgery, and joy, of writing

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Last month or so, I was reading a terrific book about the making of the classic movie “Chinatown” titled “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood,” by Sam Wasson, and I had to grin at this quote from legendary screenwriter Robert Towne: “So much of writing is trying to avoid facing it.”

That’s hardly the most original thing uttered about the writer’s penchant for procrastination and craven dread of the blank page — Hemingway summed it up: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — but it was a reassuring reminder that cooking up stuff for a readership, a nervously performative act, isn’t always a joyride, or particularly easy. It can be a grind. It can be depressing. It can sap the soul. 

But it can also be exhilarating and, when things are flowing, a blast. Well, let’s not get carried away. How about … satisfying? Said great journalist Russell Baker: “I’ve always found that when writing is fun, it’s not very good. If you haven’t sweated over it, it’s probably not worth it.”

I don’t know how you reconcile that dichotomy, the yin and yang of good and rotten, delight and drudgery, but they seem to jibe. There’s a fruitful friction. Good days, bad days, middling days. (That last line? Lazy writing. Bad writing. I left it there as a specimen of what can go wrong.) 

I always want to write, but once I sit down and face the empty page that sneers, “Go ahead, try and fill me,” I tend to constrict, choke, unless I’m especially inspired and know how I’ll begin and where I’m (generally) going. Those days are the exception. Right now, I’m winging it. I had that Robert Towne quote in my head and started riffing. (Help!) 

There’s no map. There’s only this: Get it down. The prose may be raw and bloody — embarrassing, eye-sizzling — but the ideas matter and the words, those painstakingly chosen few, will be chiseled out of the viscous blob of verbiage. Editors are helpful at this stage, and I’ve worked with many who have saved my prolix ass. But here on this free-floating blog I’m on my own. I am judge, jury, executioner. And I probably should have executed that sentence. 

Point is, writing, like any creative endeavor, is a messy enterprise, hard to do but at times truly rewarding (I have ten journalism awards that bear that out, he crowed). You have to dive in head first, and toil to make a splash. Taking pride in your work is mandatory — read tons, write multiple drafts, and use spell check for chrissakes — the only way you’ll do anything worth a damn.

First you must conquer that blank page, which requires actually facing the music, not dodging it, as Towne noted. I’m working on a writing project that I approach tentatively, with baby steps, not because I’m indolent but because I am, frankly, a little scared. 

There’s a cure for that. It’s simple yet courageous: Sit down, stare at the page, and bleed.

You must win the staring contest with the blank page. Despair is likely. So is reward.

No baloney about Bologna

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Strolling and gawking among the glass-encased medical curiosities, from a face smothered in smallpox pustules to deformed conjoined twins, I was thinking of tortellini. Specifically, tortellini in brodo, stuffed pasta curls boiled and served in a zesty meat broth. Dinner. Yes. That’s what I was thinking.

I was at the Museo delle Cere Anatomiche — the anatomical museum — in Bologna, Italy, last week, and not even the bulging tumors and gleeful spreads of glistening guts could suppress my appetite for the city’s star cuisine. 

Tortellini in all its shapes and sizes, broths and sauces, is but one of the celebrated dishes in Bologna, which is renowned as Italy’s rightful food capital, or “La Grassa,” the well-fed or, more directly, the tubby. It’s one of the reasons I chose to go there. That and twisted, amputated limbs.

And, well, pasta bolognese. And Parmesan. And the world’s finest balsamic vinegar. And, naturally, Mortadella, which would almost pass as American baloney (Bologna, baloney — you see?) if it weren’t for the spots of white fat that marbles the Italian variety, as well as the way it’s sliced, paper-thin, like prosciutto. Oscar Mayer can only weep in shame.

Tortellini in brodo. Pasta ‘bellybuttons’ swimming in hearty meat broth.

It was a foodie trip, based in the region of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy. The area’s medieval capital of Bologna is the seventh most populous city in Italy, and a mere thirty-minute train from Florence. The region boasts the city of Parma, known for Parmesan cheese and Parma ham, as well as the headquarters for such auto royalty as Ferrari and Lamborghini.

But sports cars don’t impress me — they’re like appliances, refrigerators or blenders, no matter if they’re painted a neon-pee yellow and can go 200 mph. So I skipped them for Modena, a small city (that has a Ferrari museum) best known for opera and balsamic vinegar (and, OK, Ferrari). 

The ancient, rustic region is where I booked a long lunch and balsamic “experience” that happened to take place deep in the wintry countryside on a sprawling family estate where mom, dad, son, daughter and cousin each produce their own balsamic vinegars, totally artisanal, completely blue ribbon. To reach the marketplace, a balsamic must be officially approved in strict quality control tastings by experts. These folks pass with a neat, and humble, familial pride. 

I was with a genial group of about ten fellow travelers. We feasted. Salumi (a spread of Italian deli meats), Parmesan of various ages, ricotta, risotto, quiche and more. We drizzled homemade, world-class balsamic on all of it. There was wine, too. Stuffed, we easily got our money’s worth (about $90). A long, edifying tour of the balsamic-making process — like wine, it’s made of grapes — preceded the pig-out. Ask me about the thick, tangy, reddish-brown liquid and I could likely answer with cocky erudition. 

Back to the university town of Bologna — it was more than I expected. My hotel was a twenty-second lope to the main city square, the yawning Piazza Maggiore, the kind of history-encrusted space that has you marveling as you sip a beer at a sidewalk cafe. 

The centerpiece is the Basilica of San Petronio, a stunning slab of Italian Gothic whose construction began in 1390 (the facade remains unfinished, the slackers). I can do a full-blown travelogue here, but we know how that goes — like listening to someone carry on about their “crazy” dream last night. Really, it was mostly about the food, and a breathtaking cocktail bar, Le Stanze Càfe, designed with real ancient frescoes, where I had lovely libations as I drank in the dazzling decor. 

I will say the anatomical museum, filled with miserable disease and morbid delights, created specifically for university medical students (yet it’s free for anyone), was a highlight of my stay. Human anomalies, freak shows, mystifying medical malformations, the two-headed, the three-legged, the Elephant Man fascinate me. It’s not amusing; generally it’s appalling. But curiosity is piqued, wonder is conjured, pathos pours forth. I kind of love it.

Thing is, I might love tortellini more.

Meat and cheese plate during a food tour in Bologna. That’s Mortadella on the left.

Pasta bolognese, a signature dish in Bologna. Noodles topped with beef, pork, wine, carrots, etc. Dynamite.

At the anatomical museum. Don’t worry. They’re made of wax.

Quote of the day: Trump? Thank these numbskulls

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 “In recent decades, young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally. Among women matriculating at four-year public colleges, about half will graduate four years later; for men the rate is under 40 percent. This disparity surely translates to a drop-off in the number of novels young men read, as they descend deeper into video games and pornography. Young men who still exhibit curiosity about the world too often seek intellectual stimulation through figures of the ‘manosphere’ such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.” — David J. Morris

Quote of the day: travel’s travails

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“When I finally arrived at my door, I was thinking about the willful blindness of travel. We must forget the aches of travel — the discomfort of the middle seat and the tedious crawl at border control; the missed trains and the bad meals; the slog from the airport. You un-remember those things and elevate the happy memories because if you didn’t, you would never travel again.” 

— Paris-based writer Caitlin Gunther

Pill pals

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I’m an anxious person, shaky and fretful, and when anxiety gets the best of me, I pop a pill. I hold out as long as I can before grabbing the amber prescription bottle, but when the physical jitters and mental goblins won’t blow off, then it’s time for Clonazepam. Swallow, wait, ahh.

Sort of. But the meds — those sedatives, so tiny and pink they’re almost cute — can blunt the edge, like sanding a jagged thumbnail on an emery board. Magic? Hardly. Mellow? Kinda. 

I’ve blabbed about this, my fun, adorable neuroses, on these pages before. But it’s been a long time and things evolve. 

No. No they do not. 

I’m exactly in the same place I was in 2020, or, for that matter, 2010. I remain a quaking Jell-O mold, gulping pharmaceuticals to stanch dramatized grief. Get a therapist! you scream. Exactly a dozen therapists later, starting at age 13, I’ve sworn off them. They’ve been as helpful as talking to my dear Aunt Gladys, who’s deaf in one ear and has narcolepsy.

Meditation has been my most recent move. Like many novices, my frantic, hamster-wheel mind — Did I pay that bill? Should I call her? Do I have a brain tumor? — has so far derailed any quality concentration, but I’m working on it. Anything to snuff my mind’s overactive orgy of tripe and trivia.

The tiniest shard of unresolved thought can keep me up all night. So angst often translates to sheet-tearing insomnia. I will toss, turn, cuss up a storm. I finally convinced my doctor to prescribe me Xanax expressly for insomnia, as it is worrisomely habit-forming. (A previous doctor scoffed, “That stuff is crack.”) 

My sleep success rate with Xanax so far is about seventy percent, which I consider worthy of confetti and party horns. Yet when it doesn’t work, look out. My pillow becomes a cloud of fluttering feathers. I chew it. 

I take other meds for mental “stability” (insert: laugh track), but the anxiety tabs yield the most direct effect. The other ones are like background Muzak, a calm, ubiquitous hum. In thirty minutes or less, my low-dosage Clonazepam is like a mental muffle, quieting the chaos. (I’ve also tried cannabis gummies, but they just make me woolly and irrationally hungry. A whole box of Kraft Mac & Cheese, at midnight — not a good look.)

As I travel a lot, I’m blessed my anxiety is rarely a stowaway; it was never issued a passport. I’m sure that’s because I’m relieved of quotidian complaints and overblown worries, transported to a scrubbed reality. I’ve written: “In my travels, my angst all but evaporates. I am unshackled, life’s daily detritus dispersed by an existential leaf blower.” 

I don’t need the pills in, say, Paris, though I bring them along for backup in case life kicks in and I start pacing and perspiring through the hallowed halls of Musée d’Orsay. 

Who needs all this? It must stop. It’s not so easy, of course. I’m resigned to being wired this way, though nostrums like meditation and mindfulness and all that cognitive crap pave avenues of mild hope.

Meantime I have the sweet companionship of Clonazepam, itty pink pills that chirp, “It’s okay, pal. I’m here to soothe the dread and iron out life’s pesky wrinkles.”

I’ve heard it all before. Almost daily. I don’t believe a word of it.