One thing you shouldn’t try when you run out of sugar, or so the culinary fates revealed to me this past weekend, is attempt to make your own using lemonade and a poor grasp of physical science. A powerful need for dessert struck around midnight on Saturday, and upon discovering an empty Domino bag I turned to the supermarket, only to find it closed. This left but a single option, the most perilous of devices in the kitchen: ingenuity.
“This can of Country Time in my fridge contains sugar. I need sugar. How do I get the sugar out of the Country Time?” I wondered. “Boil it.”
Gourmet inspiration like this would work in a vacuum, I suppose, with the lemonade magically evaporating in a wistful yellow cloud, leaving behind a bounty of sweet precipitate ready for collection. The way things shake out in the real world, mind you, basically involves a pot of lemonade refusing to boil and then, the moment you turn away, erupting into a charred mass of black despair.
The only edible goods that night were my hands, great was my shame, and the only thing that precipitated was an urgent need for steel wool, which naturally I didn’t have. What I located, much to my culinary redemption, was a box of Cascade. The stuff is intended for dishwashers, but paired with exasperation it becomes and surpasses steel wool.
Baseball is truly a contest of statistics because, statistically speaking, my love of the game lies somewhere between “not really” and “man what,” with a recurring average nestled deeply in the folds of yawning boredom. I enjoy watching tennis for its relentlessness, and I remember working concessions because football games were just plain kinetic, but baseball always seemed to involve lots of waiting.
Last week, however, I understood the excitement a little more. This education was aided in no small way by the fantastic view: row 12, right between the dugout and home plate, the Sox against the Tigers under an evening made for the sport. Let me temper this by saying I wanted to claw out my eyes and ears when, in no particular order, the one goddamn Queen song blared yet again, fireworks erupted out of Lord-knows-where because Lord-knows-who hit a home run, and the billboard displayed the player at bat in the tackiest way possible.
We’re talking plumes of fire and green, computery grids heralding each batter as if he were an agent provocateur in some crappy straight-to-video sci-fi movie, or maybe just an arch villain in Mega Man. But here’s what I learned. The pleasure is in the waiting. It’s in the tension wrought by two good teams, the pause before the crack of the bat, the ensuing roar of the stadium. You can feel everyone waiting for something to break.
Additionally, there’s the fear of catching a foul ball with your face after the Kiss Cam trains squarely on you, just as you drop your cinnamon churro onto Bruno’s bald pate in front of you. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Remember when I bemoaned the downfall of feature movies, the insufferable tendency of run times to languish up to two hours or more? The cure, if memory serves, was the DWeeD, an innovative format wherein films would be distilled into key points. I mean, really, who has the time or attention span to watch Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade and, say, something like Schindler’s List in a single month?
The DWeeD version, aptly titled Schindiana Jones, would seek out commonalities between the two flicks and give you the straight deal, all in a tightly packaged 45 minutes. The similarities are there, if only you’d look. Cars. Nazis. John Williams. Three in a row–theme. You could allot another few minutes for a clip of Leonard Maltin weeping in slow motion. Them’s the digs, no question about it. Sure, there was a time when we took our entertainment by spending hour after hour watching gladiatorial combat, but these days? One of the contestants better roll out of the gate pre-decapitated so we can vote already.
You know what, though? The DWeeD exists. It’s called TV shows on DVD, 40-minute bursts of media without interruptions and, assuming you’ve got the right show, chockity full of sharp writing and compelling characterization. Truth: ABC could schedule the emergency broadcast test for an hour and I’d praise it for ingenius pacing, such is the network’s recent track record.
Because Grey’s Anatomy, for whatever reason, makes me want to be a surgeon, if only for the duration of each episode. Maybe I’m detoxing after a run of anime, but I remember being thankful for the dialogue. It was like, “Hey! Someone’s lips just moved and I didn’t find myself nursing my temples.” I appreciate how they structure each episode. Most importantly, I like the liberal approach to the body count. Let’s say a patient can either a) miraculously live to bring you that warm, fuzzy feeling or b) die to further the narrative. You guessed it. Flatline.