WHEN PSYCHIATRY DOESN'T HELP

Tim Hayward has been writing on the Drake’s website (no, not Drake the Canadian rapper).  

It’s actually an article about the Fergroni at St John, but before he gets to that he says, “When I order something as simple as a Martini, I don’t want something with a ‘flavour profile’ curated by a couple of blokes who once did something promising in the City, I want Tanqueray Export and Noilly Prat because that’s what Hemingway, Parker and the rest of the Algonquin crowd drank to get seriously fucked up.’

 

And here is a cartoon in the New Yorker by the beloved Ros Chast:

 

And here is what I think may well be the best cartoon in the history of the New Yorker, in the history of the martini, and very possibly in the history of the world, by Henry Martin.

 

 

METHED UP APPETITES

There was a great story by Victor Lodato in the New Yorker a couple of weeks back, titled “Jack, July.”  It was about a meth addict in Arizona (yes, William Shawn might have disapproved) who wanders around in the heat, “tweaking” as they say, looking for, in every sense of the word, comfort - not least in the form of food.

The story’s protagonist, Jack, has been more or less unwillingly seduced by Jamie, a middle-aged Mexican he met in a restroom, who cooks for him silver dollar pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate chips, “Could the man stoop any lower?”

Jack goes to visit his mother and thinks he should have brought flowers “or a burrito” and although his mother isn’t home he manages to make off with a stash of granola bars.

He recalls visits with his meth friend Flaco to a Mexican restaurant named Birrieria Guadalajara, where they ate everything, “even tongue.”  There is in fact a Birrieria Guadalajara in Tucson, and they do have tongue on the menu: I’ll bet they’re really stoked to find themselves in the New Yorker.

And finally, at the end of the story, Jack returns more or less unwillingly to Jamie and says, “I’m sort of hungry” and although the reader imagines Jamie might well cook him more pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate chips, the man doesn’t actually stoop that low immediately – he simply gives Jack some meth.

I know nothing about Victor Lodato or his life, how much autobiography or research went into the piece, but as a piece of fiction it all seems thoroughly plausible.

And now I see a news items about 23-year-old George Jacobson who went on a week-long drug binge at the end of September, beginning of October this year, in the town of Roy, in Washington State, which seems a nice enough place from the photos.

Jacobson walked around being crazy and wandering into various people’s barns and houses.  He turned up in one home where the female owner found him looking agitated and repeating the words ‘bad neighbor.’  The woman, trying to calm him down, asked if there was anything she could do for him, and he told her to make him a sandwich, which she did, though police reports don’t say what was in it.  Anyway it did do the job of calming him to some extent, and when the woman’s husband came home they put Jacobson in their car, and drove him out to the edge of town and dumped him there.

Low level mayhem still ensued including Jacobson going into another house, pulling a gun on the inhabitants, demanding that he be driven to the neighboring town of Rainier, 13 miles away, and on the way forcing the driver to stop at McDonalds so he could buy himself a drink.

When Jacobson was finally arrested, he told the police he couldn’t remember much of what had happened to him in the last week – except stealing a car and that a “nice man” had taken him to McDonalds.  And he told them that all this bad behavior was because he’d taken LSD which had sent him on a bad trip.  He said that meth was his usual drug of choice.

When it comes to meth I pretty much only know what I read, and what I've occasionally seen in Breaking Bad.  So to educate myself on the eating habits of meth users I went to tweaker.org and found something called “tom’s tweaker tips” – if there’s any irony in this, it's far too subtle for me.

Tom says, “EAT!  Preferably stuff that’s good for you. … Remember, food is FUEL. Soft/Creamy/Mushy textures that won’t be too hard on your stomach are best: Yogurt, for the good bacteria you flush out every time that you douche. Bananas, for potassium ??? which helps prevent/soothe muscle cramps. Refried beans & cheese, with a little Taco Bell mild hot sauce. Hey, it’s free! (Try Beano to prevent gas … nothin’ less sexy than a giant TexMex lube fart!) Mashed potatoes & gravy. Or just with some butter & a little garlic salt. Mmmm. Cottage cheese & fruit. Oatmeal & raisins. Peanut butter. Avocado. Hummus. Even just a couple of spoonfuls is better than starving your digestive tract. Comfort food. The point is to get something nourishing into your system. And don’t worry: Carbs don’t count when you haven’t eaten in three days.”

Well, tweakers in my strictly limited experience, certainly do look trim, if not usually very attractive.  It think it often has something to do with the teeth.

"JOE GOULD DRINKS AGAIN'

It being a rainy afternoon in Los Angeles, and as it so happened, the day before the Oscars, I watched the movie Joe Gould’s Secret, based on the book of the same title by Joseph Mitchell, op cit in this blog.  And yes, it's true, the real Joe Gould was considerably less winsome than Ian Holm, who plays him in the movie.

It’s a terrific movie, and I think one of the best I know about writers and writing, and the way they look for stories and characters that take them out of themselves and yet inevitably drive them back into themselves.  The script by Howard A. Rodman is wonderfully faithful to the book, and although it “opens up” the story you never feel, “Ah the screenwriter is opening up the story here.” Quite an achievement.

 No spoilers here, but in basic terms it’s the story of the relationship between Joseph Mitchell, a writer for the New Yorker, and Joe Gould, a damaged street character, sometime homeless man, sponger, more or less survivor, and in some important sense of the word, crucially, also a writer who is writing an “oral history of the world.”  For some reason this doesn’t make him happy or solve all his many problems.

One of Gould’s traits, depicted in both book and movie, was to go into restaurants and eat large quantities of tomato ketchup, sometimes poured into a cup of hot water, since that was “free food.”

                                                                                                 

A fair amount of drinking is involved in the movie, and there’s an extraordinary scene in which Gould and Mitchell sit together in the Minetta Tavern, in Greenwich Village, a real and surviving place, though revamped, and as many have said, a place that would surely not admit Gould today, and possibly not even Mitchell.   The Black Label Burger currently costs $28 at dinner, though just $27 at lunch.

In the movie Gould and Mitchell order beers with martini chasers.  I couldn’t find a still, but trust me it’s there.  I have never, ever seen this practice before.  Whisky chasers, tequila chasers, brandy chasers, sure, but not this.  It sent me back to the book – and there’s much motion of beers and martinis and Gould says as in the movie “I find that gin primes the pump of memory” – but (and it very well may be there and I just couldn’t find it) but beer with martini chasers is, I think, somebody’s inventions.  I wonder whose.

Unbelievably, or perhaps all too believably, I googled the movie and found it listed on screenit.com – a site that purports to protect children and maybe evenadults, from something or other.  It describes the movie in these terms, which in many ways describes the best parts of the movies:

ALCOHOL OR DRUG USE

Mitchell has a beer in a bar.

A person at poetry reading states that Gould doesn't show up for the poetry, but instead for the food and wine.

People drink at a party.

We see various bottles of liquor in another scene set in a bar where Mitchell orders a martini. The bartender then brings him and Gould two beers and two martinis. (yep, that’s the one.)

Mitchell has a beer while others also drink in a bar. Gould then takes Mitchell's beer as he goes into a phone booth, so Mitchell asks the bartender for another for himself.

Mitchell has a martini.

Gould has a martini, as do several women, while Mitchell has a beer.

A person pours liquor into Gould's mouth.

Gould has a beer and then collapses to the floor of a bar, indicating he might be drunk (especially since he later talks about having a hangover).

Mitchell and others have drinks at a party.

Gould drinks beer.

Gould drinks again.

People drink at a party.

BLOOD/GORE

We see some lesions on Gould's leg.

DISRESPECTFUL/BAD ATTITUDE

Gould is disrespectful to members of a poetry reading where he shows up just for the food and disrupts the proceedings.

A writer who is “disrespectful to members of a poetry reading” – lock up your children, America!

BETTER TIMES

Look, I don’t make this stuff up, I just observe, snicker and report back.   This week’s New Yorker asks, apparently in all seriousness,  “Has there ever been a better time to eat a sandwich?”  It’s in the Table for Two column, and it’s the opening line of a review of two Brooklyn establishments; Glady’s in Franklin Avenue, and the Court Street Grocers Hero Shop in Sullivan Street.

The hero place sounds just fine and that’s their nicely low-tech sign above, but Glady’s sounds like one helluva place.  The review recommends you start with a “custom cocktail” (aren’t all cocktails custom?) such as the Greenwich Sour: “flush with bourbon, lemon, Cointreau and Lumbrusco” (yep, really – flush indeed), followed by a bowl of pickled beet, radish, fennel, egg, and lamb pastrami with peach mostarda; then – and only then - it’s time for the sandwich.  They recommend the Brocc’Obama: grilled broccoli and ricotta, with collard greens and mustard vinaigrette on “squishy flauta bread.”  Has there ever been a better time to cry “enough already”?

Here’s a picture from the Glady’s website; it shows a sandwich but they don’t say what’s in it.

Such high fallutin jiggery-pokery reminds me of one of my favorite sandwich scenes.  It comes from The Odd Couple, the movie version with Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau, rather than the TV series, and of course it was a stage play before that.

Oscar Madison (Matthau) is playing poker with his buddies, and Neil Simon’s dialogue runs like this:

Oscar: I'm in for a quarter.

Murray: Aren't you going to look at your cards first?

Oscar: What for? I'm gonna bluff anyway. Who gets a Pepsi?

Murray: I get a Pepsi. 

Oscar: My friend Murray the policeman gets a warm Pepsi.

Roy: You still didn't fix the refrigerator. It's been two weeks now - no wonder it stinks in here.

Oscar: Temper, temper. If I wanted nagging, I'd go back with my wife. I'm out. Who wants food?

Murray: What do you got?

Oscar: I got, uh, brown sandwiches and, uh, green sandwiches. Which one do you want?

Murray: What's the green?

Oscar: It's either very new cheese or very old meat.

Murray: I'll take the brown.

[Oscar hands Murray a sandwich which Murray starts wolfing down]

Roy: Are you crazy? You're not going to eat that, are you?

Murray: I'm hungry!

Roy: His refrigerator has been out of order for two weeks now. I saw milk standing in there that wasn't even in the bottle!

Oscar: What are you, some kind of health nut? Eat, Murray, eat!

Ah, they don’t make sandwiches like that anymore.  Although actually I suspect that despite all the gentrification, there are places in Brooklyn where they still do.