Snark

I worry, sometimes, that I misrepresent myself in essay form as some kind of thoughtful, benevolent creature concerned only with the satisfaction of aiding my aging parents, providing home-cooked meals to the masses, and saving woodland creatures. I am inordinately fond of the cozy portrait, the tearjerker, and the hopeful, philosophical uptick at the end of a piece of writing. “In the end, maybe everyone just needs a hug.” Shit like that.

 

In truth, I am a highly judgmental, sarcastic, and superior snarker. If you play “Angry Birds,” you will understand that I don’t ever go for the direct bombing and decimation of, say, Don Rickles. I am not cruel and I do not exploit weakness that a victim cannot help. I tend towards the sneaky missile lobbed at the base of the structure that causes it to topple as if by magic. I see ridiculousness, excess, phoniness, and stupidity and cannot resist the urge to come up with the perfect one-liner to illuminate my observations. Of course this is all highly subjective – my personal distaste for the cliché, the “keen grasp of the obvious,” the country duck in the yard and the Precious Moments in the curio cabinet (well, and also the curio cabinet) is just that: personal.

 

The thing about snark is that although I enjoy that moment when I make a snide comment and the other cool kids laugh, it is actually just as unkind as “The People of Walmart,” which makes me laugh involuntarily, but which I ultimately find to be both sad and unkind. (There I go again, trying to make myself sound like the Jeanne d’Arc of the downtrodden. It’s like a tic).

 

Recently I posted a Facebook status about suppressing snark because a tidbit of ridiculousness came my way that was so juicy, so clearly begging for an Ann Nichols Smack down that I could barely contain myself. I had to, for a variety of reasons, but none of them was the right reason: that drawing attention to the flaccid intellect of another human being is just plain nasty unless that person has chosen to be a public figure. Sure, I can spin that to allow myself to snark with impunity – it may be argued, plausibly, that a Facebook status is public, and that putting oneself “out there” in that form implies a certain idiot-snarker social contract. It’s also possible, plausibly, to argue that small children are chattle. Neither is really the right way to go in terms of creating utopia, reaching Nirvana, or simply not being an asshole.

 

In response to my Facebook status, my kind friends rushed to say “don’t suppress it, let your snark flag fly!” For which loyalty, I love them even more. The thing is, and it’s a Big Thing, it’s good for me to learn to suppress snark. There are things that need to be expressed, things about potential harm to other people, and feelings that need the cleansing light of utterance and aftershock. Those things, held in, create ulcers and destroy relationships. Snark, on the other hand, is a parlor trick, a way to make myself appear clever at the expense of another. I love it with all my heart, that masturbatory flexing of the “superior” intellect, but as a human endeavor it has the structural integrity of cotton candy. It’s just. Plain. Mean.

 

So know this about me: I’m really not all that nice. If you’re in a restaurant in a ball cap, or wearing a hoochie skirt, I am judging you. I will not, however, say a word. Not one.

 

Resumes and 60 Minute Chicken

“Who am I, anyway?

Am I my resume?”

-A Chorus Line

It has recently come to our attention that in 90 days my husband may, or may not have a job. As the House Writer, I began immediately to work on resumes, cover letters, and all manner of beguiling a lifetime of hard and varied work into an irresistible nugget of information. No spinning or glossing is necessary in this case; the man has worked hard from the time he was driving a tractor illegally through the fields of the family farm. The work, the hard, complicated part of the thing is distilling the best of him using “action verbs” (as opposed to those other, non-action verbs) and using terms and jargon expected by the business world.

As I write about his work, and think again about the many things he knows, I think about how very odd, incomplete and schizophrenic my own resume would appear at this time in my life. As of 7:30 or so last night, I might have said something like “well, I gave up law to be a cook, and I’m not trained professionally but I’m really good at it.” Having come directly from putting 25 pounds of flank steak to bed in sealed bags of fragrant marinade, knowing that I would get up this morning and make 100 impossibly fluffy biscuits for strawberry shortcake, I was feeling pretty cocky. Plus, although this is somewhat embarrassing, I now own the black and white checked pants that are worn by chefs everywhere; wearing them when I work makes me feel like part of a tribe, a lineage that includes Escoffier and (regrettably) Guy Fieri.

By 8:00 last night I had done my job, worked on the resume, paid the bills, done the laundry, and flung myself on the couch to watch “Master Chef.” There were two challenges for the contestants, purportedly the 38 best “home cooks” in the country. Nota bene: since this competition was for “home cooks,” I smugly told myself that I couldn’t have competed because I am a PROFESSIONAL. Or something. At any rate, the first challenge was to establish that one could peel, core and slice an apple into pith-less, peel-less and uniform slices. This task was to be performed using a paring knife only, no swivel peelers or unit-tasking “corer” thingies. I was pretty sure I could have held my own on that one.

The next challenge was to make a chicken dish in 60 minutes. The time limit prevented any thought of braising or stewing, and the imperative of impressing three chef-judges by “respecting the chicken” made it pretty clear that, say, a rubber breast swimming in Campbell’s Cream of ___ with rice would not be a clutch play. I watched them scramble, the “amateurs,” and I became truly concerned about the fact that I would have failed spectacularly. I do not know 500 things to do with chicken in 60 minutes that would impress Gordon Ramsay. It would never have occurred to me to make a Chicken Etoufee using gizzards and livers, or to pound the chicken, roll it around Burratta and wrap it in Prosciutto. I might have done a passable curry, or something Italian, pounded thin and served with polenta or risotto, but I would never, ever have been able to do what those people did.

I worried it all night, my imaginary 60-Minute Chicken Failure. I would have been divested of my apron, sent home out the back door by way of the tomato crate props. And if I made a resume today, what would I say? Unlike my husband’s consistent, linear work history, my path is meandering. My tracks would lead mysteriously off the edges of various cliffs, only to reappear in yet another workplace. What would I say about what I do now? “Pretty good cook, capable of feeding lots of people at a time, doesn’t burn shit any more except for that uncooked ziti she dropped into the gas flame, totally untrained, no real knife skills, likely to be eliminated during ’60 Minute Chicken’ challenge. Lots of heart. Owns chef pants.”

Perhaps it’s a good thing that it’s my husband who is looking for a new job. I’d hire him, in a minute. He could probably even do something nifty with a chicken in an hour….

Not Hot Blooded

“Man it’s hot. It’s like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.” -Neil Simon, Biloxi Blues

People like me are not supposed to live anyplace where it gets to be 90 degrees. I know people, lots of them, who are thrilled when they can live in tank tops and shorts, spend days at the pool and “soak up the sun.” I am getting better about summer, really I am; I am enamored with the abundance of produce, the lightweight clothes, the longer days, the profuse foliage and the relaxation of schedules. When the mercury pushes above 85ish, however, I feel like someone has drained my blood in my sleep. I feel the lethargy of moving through deep, heavy water that slows my body and fills my brain, and my skin seems to be made up entirely of sweat and mosquito bites. I would rather, frankly, be shivering in a parka near the Arctic Circle.

I have decided that this difficulty with the “Lazy, hazy days of summer” is probably mine by birthright. On one side I come from a solid Scot/Irish bloodline, and the other is Hungarian and Russian. No one who contributed to my DNA lived anywhere where it was 90 degrees at any time of year, at least not until they were driven away by the absence of potatoes or the presence of pogroms. I am, therefore, programmed for the cool, the foggy and the snowbound life, a creature meant by nature to eat Yorkshire Pudding and Pierogen in a sweater somewhere near a roaring fire. Years ago, based on this uninformed but sincere anthropological analysis, I made a plan. On the hottest days, the days like today when I wake up and it is already 80, I simply adopt a different set of cultural influences. I choose places where the natives deal particularly well with extreme heat, and transform my frizzy, pasty self into a hot-blooded creature, a Frida Kahlo lizard with bright azure toenails sitting in the brightest patch of sunlight. I have, for purposes of my fantasy, created a kind of composite nationality that is about half Italian and half Indian .(In case you are rolling your eyes about the influence of “Eat, Pray, Love,” I hasten to assure you that this particular cultural Frankenstein was created long before Elizabeth Gilbert ever started her pasta tour of Rome. It is all mine, all mine, and Julia Roberts is not interested in playing me in the movie version).

The way this thing works, and it does work, is that I slow everything down and become languid and graceful. Rushing around is the cause of sweat and frizz. Gliding slowly I can imagine myself in a sari, walking through a crowded, cardamom-scented open air market choosing the best cauliflower for my Aloo Gobi. I cook spicy things when it’s terribly hot, and while I am cooking them I play ragas and Satayajit Ray soundtracks in the kitchen. I put a tiny bit of Nag Champa oil in my hair, clip it up, off my neck, and wear dangly earrings. It is still hot, really too hot for me, but I find great succor in a gauzy blouse, a fresh mango and a fan that turns my earrings into wind chimes.

My Fauxtalian ancestry is more informed by actual fact; I have never set foot in India, but I have spent time in Italy during the summer. I am interested not in the high-heeled, sunny, horn-honking blitz of a busy day in Rome, but in the practice of shutting everything down for a couple of hours after lunch in order to take a nap. It makes perfect sense, particularly when it is really too hot to stay awake, to close the shutters, turn on the ceiling fan and put a “chiuso” sign in the window until the sun pulls in its claws. One misses the killing mid-day heat, and works into the early evening, trading the hottest hours of the day for those that are cooler, quieter, and possibly aligned with Campari on ice. There is also, of course, the cooking – there is nothing better than a Caprese salad when the tomatoes are fresh, or a quick Pasta Pomodoro.

Today it is supposedly going to be 96 degrees, when all is said and done. I am off to work in my hot, hot kitchen with the fluidity of a Bollywood heroine and the philosophical acceptance of a Buddhist. At noon I will eat fruit and cheese and lie down on crisp, white linens until it’s time to head back to work. Call me Arundhati Funicello.