Double Feature #6: Reboot
Let's all act like it's not a big deal that I took over a year off.
Hello! It’s been an absolute minute. I took an unintentional hiatus because I could never think of good enough topics. But as it turns out, the concept of “good enough” is fake! So I’ve decided to stop trying to be “good” at all, which I think will ironically make this project a lot better. (Or at least it’ll exist a lot more.)
As part of that, the format will be changing slightly. Now the eponymous “double feature” in each newsletter will be one thing about food and one thing about a piece of media. They probably won’t ever be related! Just two things: one food, one media. To me, this sounds like a more fun space to play around in. I hope you’ll stick around for the ride!
Also, very quickly, while I’ve been away from newslettering, I made a podcast with my good pal Isaac Benavidez. It’s called Dinner With Pop, and it’s about our journey to get dinner with San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, and I’m very proud of it. Subscribe on Apple or Spotify.
Okay, now that I’ve got the housekeeping out of the way, let’s get into it!
I made: Chili
I have no strong feelings about chili or how it should be prepared. Some people have an almost religious fervor about whether or not beans should be included, but I don’t really care. Most chilis I’ve had were good. Growing up, my parents would make chili using Wick Fowler’s 2 Alarm Chili Kit, which is a box of pre-measured spices that you add to two pounds of ground beef and a can of tomato sauce. It’s good! It’s spicy and hearty, and pairs excellently with the Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix for a tasty quick meal.
The only truly bad chili I’ve had was some recipe for vegetarian chili I found early in my preparing-my-own-meals career, which called for a can of beans, a can of corn, a can of tomatoes, and very few spices (red flag). It ended up tasting just like a can of beans, a can of corn, a can of tomatoes, and very few spices. I don’t recommend it!
The best chili I’ve ever had was on a ski trip with my family. I don’t care much for skiing because I’m bad at it, and at my skill level, sliding down a frozen mountain on two planks of wood feels like playing Russian roulette but instead of there being only one bullet, the gun has five lethal bullets and one bullet that’ll only severely maim. All that aside, this trip was different because there was a lodge halfway up the mountain where each day for lunch my family and I would order chili in bread bowls. I don’t even remember much about the chili itself, but eating a bowl of hot chili followed by most of a loaf of sourdough bread partially soaked in chili spices really took the edge off of having to defy icy death all day. We’d also each get a bag of Peanut M&Ms and to this day I maintain that meal as one of the best entree/dessert pairings in the history of food.
Despite all of my apathy toward chili, last week I decided it had been a long time since I’d done too much work in service of making the best version of something I only kind of care about, and set out to make J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Original Texas Chili Con Carne Recipe.
Like the other chilis I’ve eaten: it was good! It turned out like a very thick, rich, nothing-but-beef stew with great depth of flavor. The fish sauce and apple cider vinegar add a little bit of umami punch, really bringing everything together in a nice way. I do wish it had been spicier, but that might be partly because I forgot to add the chipotle peppers/adobo sauce, which is one of those cooking mistakes that will haunt me for far longer than it’s worth being haunted by. Next time, I’ll remember to add the chipotle peppers, I might add an extra chile de arbol, and I’ll serve it with Peanut M&Ms for dessert.
I watched: For All Mankind
In the first issue of this newsletter, I ranted and raved about the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso. It’s only fitting that in this reboot issue, I rant and rave about another Apple TV+ show, season 2 of Ted Lasso For All Mankind. Light spoilers for the first few episodes ahead!
For All Mankind is a period drama focusing on NASA’s manned spaceflight missions and the race to the moon. Except in the pilot (as in the first episode, not astronaut), the USSR puts a man on the moon before the good ol’ US of A. The entire series from that point on functions like a mesmerizing cascading domino display, each moment pushing the events of the show further from the events of reality. For example, later in the first episode, NASA follows up the Soviet landing with a successful (but rocky) moon landing of their own. Then in the second episode, the USSR punches back and puts the first woman on the moon, leading NASA to then recruit an all-women class of astronauts.
As an aside, my early impression of the show, based only on trailers and marketing materials, was that the entire premise of the show was women taking center stage in the space program. It is a crucial part of it, but For All Mankind has more to say than “what if NASA but girlboss.” (IMO, this was another disservice done by the Apple TV+ marketing folks, who also had me convinced that Ted Lasso would be the stupidest show on Earth.)
And as a second aside, For All Mankind also does what few television shows dare to do: depict the city of Houston on screen. All of the show’s astronauts live in Houston and report to work at the Johnson Space Center, home of NASA’s Mission Control Center. The show actually shoots in LA, which isn’t groundbreaking at all—productions shoot LA for any location under the sun, it saves studios tons of money. But it’s funny as someone who grew up in Houston and now works in TV production in Los Angeles, because I get to do the Leo pointing meme at what’s supposed to be the exterior of Johnson Space Center and is actually a lower-tier studio lot where last month I had to load a production office’s worth of computer equipment into a U-Haul van.
For All Mankind does a lot of exploration into identity in the 70s and 80s, through its characters bumping against being or not being the kinds of people society allowed (and still allows) to exist in the public sphere. And that bumping, against each other and the power structures at NASA/in the United States government, further contributes to the domino effect that makes up the central drama of the show. Every seemingly small decision made by each character balloons out in surprising ways to alter the fabric of history. Bedroom melodrama dovetails into high-stakes, suspenseful space thrills so often that it becomes somewhat predictable. But it doesn’t even matter because it’s very compelling to see just what brand of lunar nailbiter will arise out of last week’s domestic dispute, and how that will all in turn affect the next week’s Senate hearing.
Of course, this wacko cause-and-effect chain in the show’s alternate reality reflects the actual history of our actual reality. History is made by people, all of them fallible, and all of them just kind of making it up as they go along. It’s somewhat soothing to see this play out on screen, while here in the real world we’re living through the most “make it up as you go along” time there’s ever been.
Our current chaos was born of billions upon billions of seemingly small decisions, and now here we are, in the throes of the nth wave of a pandemic, with a congress and administration who cannot govern, temperatures rising, and corporations trying to force us into virtual reality business meetings. On the show, the characters (mostly) solve their problems in gripping, intense space action scenes reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. In the real world, we’re just on the couch watching, hoping someone can do it for real.
We did it! Thanks for reading! Subscribe and get more of my rantings about food and media delivered straight to your inbox.
Thank god you’re back! 🙌🏼
Hurray! Heee's baaackkk!