In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy (16 page)

FOODS I HAVE
A BEEF WITH

I have a strange history with food. I’m part owner of an Italian restaurant, and the food at Kimmel’s football Sunday is sometimes the highlight of my week. But growing up, I was a crazed raccoon and the world was my Dumpster. My parents didn’t cook. If they did prepare anything, it was shitty seventies health food like that natural peanut butter that doesn’t spread and just rolls on top of the bread picking up pieces of sprouted wheat. My mom was Chef Boyar-don’t. This is the woman who once gave out walnuts for Halloween. And my dad cooked about as well as he snowboarded.

When I was a kid, I’d stare at the snack drawer at my friend’s house the way Travolta stared at whatever was in the suitcase in
Pulp Fiction
. It would glow and I’d hear an angelic hum. My mom would never let food like that in my house. Everything was macrobiotic and tasted like gerbil pellets. In the seventies we were constantly bombarded with messages about how everything was bad for us. Don’t sit too close to the TV, microwave ovens will give you a brain tumor, white flour is the white devil. Yet not one word about the sun and skin cancer. We were constantly riding our bikes shirtless in the San Fernando Valley in the middle of summer. We would go to the beach armed only with a towel. Not one ounce of sunblock. My mom was part of the whole Age of Aquarius thing, and she took the “Let the Sun Shine” message literally. How could the sun be bad? The Incas worshipped it and, more important, there wasn’t a white male behind it. It wasn’t built by a defense contractor. That was the problem. Hot dogs and saltines were all the work of the Man, and anything an old white male produced was bad for you. White bread was the ace of spades in my mom’s deck of terrorist cards. Why was that the one that had the target on its back? Because it started with the word
white
and was associated with this country. But she never had a beef with pumpernickel. As if there’s any nutritional difference between pumpernickel and white. The difference was one piece looked like a slave owner and the other looked like LeVar Burton. I blame it on Richard Nixon. No one in my mom’s generation trusted the Man after him. Thanks, Dick. You ruined my childhood.

L.A. RESTAURANTS

Since this is the food chapter, I’ll start with something near and dear to my heart and my home: L.A. food, and how they’ve fucked it up.

Let me take you right through the menu. A guy who looks like a bi-curious waif model comes to your table and says, “Our soup of the day is pureed summer squash with a lemongrass reduction. There’s no dairy, no animal protein, no trans fats.” In other towns they tell you what’s in the soup. L.A. is the only town that tells you what’s
not
in the soup. It tastes like someone took baby food, put it in a sock, and dipped it in warm water.

If you went to Chicago and told them what’s
not
in the soup, they’d beat the shit out of you. They’ve got chunks of beef, a head of cabbage, russet potatoes, and a cow’s heart. I’m not vegan. I like the big chunks. That’s the fun part, when you hit an iceberg of animal floating around in a sea of broth.

Now, on to the salad. Who’s in the mood for lawn trimmings? If you hate beefsteak tomatoes or the crackle of iceberg lettuce between your teeth, then L.A. is the town for you. We have “greens,” which are essentially a pile of leaves covered with salad dressing so light and thin it looks like dew on a ficus tree. It’s “vinaigrette,” which is basically douche with a little olive oil mixed in. Here’s a quick tip when it comes to salad dressing: If light won’t pass through it, it’s good. Thousand Island, ranch, Roquefort. You could take a 120-watt lightbulb, dip it in Roquefort, screw it in, and finish developing your film. Salad in Los Angeles is more cud than salad. We all just sit there chewing like the cows we won’t eat.

Now on to the main course. If you like goat cheese, L.A. is perfect for you. We put goat cheese on our pizza, on our entrees, and all over our salads. I don’t know when this retarded vote went down but I wish I had been there to stand up and yell, “I hate goat cheese!” Have you ever had a slice of pizza and thought to yourself, “You know what’s missing from this experience? The pungent smell of goat as I inhale to take a bite.” Goat cheese smells like a goat. And the last time I checked, there were no goat-scented candles, air fresheners, or aftershave.

If you like Italian food, you’ve come to the wrong town. If you like gay Italian food, you’ll be in hog heaven. All you do is take the pasta, remove the meatballs and the red sauce, add pine nuts and attitude, and you’ve got L.A. Italian, my
paisan
. If you like authentic Italian food you can go to New York because L.A. doesn’t have a Little Italy. On the other hand, if you’ve got a hankering for some Ethiopian, we have a little one of them. How many other cities can boast they have a Little Ethiopia and no Little Italy? I don’t know how the “Little” sanctioning body works, but shouldn’t the big version of your “Little” have at least one building with a third story before you start franchising?

Who’d like a beverage? I don’t know about you, but one of my favorites is iced tea. Lots of caffeine, no calories, and the refills are free. L.A. used to serve iced tea; now we have passion-fruit iced tea. Passion-fruit iced tea tastes like someone boiled potpourri and stirred it with a scented candle. It doesn’t taste anything like iced tea. This is another vote I evidently missed in some sort of ill-conceived secret town-hall meeting L.A.’s been having. The insidious part of phasing out iced tea for passion-fruit tea is that regular iced tea is not even an option on the menu anymore.

I now make a point when ordering iced tea to ask if it’s real, regular iced tea. My wife, who’s typing this (Hi!!), will remember a trip to the Getty Museum for what was supposed to be a nice Sunday outing. We made reservations at the hilltop restaurant. As we were taking in the view of Los Angeles and I was pointing out the Crips’ territory versus the Bloods’ turf, the waiter asked if we wanted to order drinks. I ordered iced tea and then immediately asked if it was real iced tea. He assured me it was. Five minutes later I got a tumbler of something that tasted like a florist took a shit in it. I said to the waiter, “I thought you said you had real iced tea.” He said, “That
is
real iced tea.” It was at that moment I knew we’d turned the corner and lost the passion-fruit war.

Now I know a couple of you assholes are thinking, I like passion-fruit iced tea. That’s not the point. The point is it doesn’t taste like iced tea and I ordered iced tea. Iced tea is its own flavor, just like coffee is its own flavor. And if passion fruit is so great, how come there’s nothing else on the planet that’s passion-fruit flavored? Passion-fruit toothpaste? You ever see that on a store shelf? How about passion-fruit pie? How about passion-fruit yogurt? How about passion-fruit Jell-O? Obviously it sucks as a flavor if it couldn’t crack the Jell-O starting lineup. I know I sound insane, but I’m passionate about my hatred for passion fruit.

One more quick restaurant story. I was sitting in a restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard next door to the La Brea Tar Pits (reason 128 not to live in Los Angeles: We have a hole filled with used transmission fluid and we treat it like it’s fucking Mount Rushmore) and I was getting into my usual iced tea debate/argument with the waitress when she said, “You know, most people prefer the passion-fruit iced tea.” At that very moment a woman at a neighboring table who must have been eavesdropping, although to be fair I could be heard outside the restaurant, said to the waitress, “Oh, is it passion-fruit iced tea? I’ll cancel my order.” It was the proudest moment of my life, second only to the birth of one of my twins.

Now on to dessert. I know you’re wondering how L.A. can fuck up something as simple as dessert. I’ll explain. L.A. is a melting pot with culinary representatives that span the globe. Thai, Japanese, Mexican, Korean, Chinese, et cetera. All nations that do great dinners followed by some of the shittiest desserts ever devised. Anyone for deep-fried green-tea ice cream? Or flan? Let’s face it: The best dessert is American dessert. Warm apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. The problem is all these assholes have too much national pride to move over and let us handle the sweets. There’s nothing worse than going out and having a satisfying Mexican meal only to have it end with a churro. Hey Mexico, what’s up? You guys counting calories? Because I just ate a pillowcase of tortilla chips, two pitchers of margaritas, and a cow dipped in cheese. One of you dipshits can’t go on a pie run?

Now that your dining experience is over, it’s time to overtip your mattress (model/actress) and make sure you have some cash left over to tip the valet who undoubtedly moved your driver’s seat up so far it was on the other side of the steering wheel and stole the change and your roach out of the ashtray. Bon appétit!

P.S. One more thing about iced tea. The goddamn passion-fruit iced tea also fucked up the Arnold Palmer.

WATER

Every nutritionist for the last fifteen years has been extolling the virtues of H
2
O. You should drink at least eight full tumblers a day. That’s the key to weight loss. I’d love to see a chart from 1979 with average water consumption on one side and average weight on the other. I know as the water consumption goes up, so will the weight. We drink more water than ever, yet we’re fatter than ever. How can this be the key to nutrition and weight loss? And if another asshole gives me the speech about our bodies being 70 percent water, I’m going to make his face 100 percent fist. How much water do we really need to consume? I spent the better part of my youth running wind sprints on a football field in the San Fernando Valley during the dog days of summer in full gear with nary a bottle of water in sight. As a matter of fact, at that time they thought water was bad for you so they deprived us of it. And there wasn’t one fat kid on that football team. Except Higginstaller, but I think that was a thyroid problem.

Obviously it’s a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that preys on our obsession with health, our children, and body image. And when did water become an expensive part of every dining experience? Nine dollars for a bottle of flat or carbonated water times two or three if you have enough people around the table? I’d love to build a time machine, go back to 1974, and explain to my dad that we just went out to dinner and spent thirty-two dollars on water. By the way, there’s a handful of people I’m friendly with—Sarah Silverman comes to mind—who won’t drink the carbonated water. I can’t stand going to eat with those people because the notion of spending nine dollars for a bottle of water is mind-numbing enough, but when it tastes exactly the same as what came out of the hose bib in front of my mom’s house, it’s devastating. At least the carbonated stuff feels like I’m buying a beverage.

But here’s where the conspiracy part comes in. I’ve been out to dinner a hundred times with a table of eight or more when the waiter has come by and said, “Would you like to get started with some sparkling water, still, or just tap water?” And the person to my right says, “The regular flat water is fine.” Five minutes later the guy returns with four blue perfume bottles filled with the world’s most expensive flat water and starts pouring. I know he’s conveniently misunderstood the person’s request for tap water. And nobody is cheap enough, or bold enough, to pour it back into the bottle and say, “Take it back.” If the bar is where these restaurants make their money, isn’t this just a logical extension of that? I’ve gotten into loud, semi-embarrassing arguments with my wife when somebody at the table we’re out to dinner with says, “Flat water is fine,” meaning “free water from the tap.” But I see the dollar signs pop up in the eyes of the waiter, so as he begins to turn and head toward the kitchen, I say, “Excuse me, she was just asking for tap water. I know you think she ordered bottled water.” This then garners the groan from my wife: “How do you know what she ordered? Leave him alone. Why do you have to be up in everyone’s business?” Then I turn to the girl who ordered and say, “Did you mean still bottled water, or did you mean a glass of tap water?” That’s when my wife reenters the fray. To me: “Leave her alone. She’s not on trial.” To her: “You don’t have to answer that.” Now it’s on. I loudly announce this convenient misunderstanding is a multimillion-dollar industry. I know this is taking place in restaurants around the world every second of every day. It’s free versus more expensive than your average store-bought bottle of Merlot.

SPORTS DRINKS

At some point somebody realized kids were getting fat from drinking too much punch and soda. So we figured out another high-fructose-corn-syrup delivery system, which was sports drinks. Same calories, same coloring, same chemicals, but now everyone can suck them down with impunity because Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter drink them. This should be illegal. You shouldn’t be able to call something Vita-water and have it be calorically on the same par as fudge. If we don’t stop with all these health drinks, we’re going to explode. All these kids are walking around with neon-purple Gatorade. These colors don’t coordinate with anything in nature unless it’s on the chest of a hummingbird. And every sports drink needs to be EXTREME!!!!! The names of the flavors don’t even make sense. These are actual flavors of Gatorade: Glacier Freeze, Riptide Rush, and Arctic Rape. Okay, I made that last one up. What the fuck does a glacier or a riptide taste like anyway?

THE HOSPITAL

I went in to get hernia surgery a couple of years ago. It was the same procedure Dr. Drew underwent a couple of years before, and he promised me I would be in a lot of pain after the operation. I thought it would be physical pain—I didn’t know he meant emotional anguish after I woke up in the recovery room when I was handed the pack of saltines and a fruit-punch box. Twenty grand’s worth of surgery and you get forty cents’ worth of snack at the end, and it isn’t even good for you. I once heard a nutritionist say the worst food you could put into your body is a soda cracker. They’re just shortening, sodium, sugar, and white flour. When I was bitching about this to Dr. Drew, he said the reason they do that is that many patients’ stomachs are sensitive coming out of the anesthesia. I said, “I didn’t suggest we go out for Indian food. How about a fucking Wheat Thin and some OJ?”

I know it would be against hospital protocol, but Christ, if there was ever a time a guy could use a beer, it’s now. Plus, I’m sure a Sam Adams, from a purely nutritional standpoint, kicks the shit out of the grape punch and saltines. And I’m being driven home, so let’s party.