13) RAO'S > EVERYTHIN: SPLURGE

Worth every penny!



I am in the final stages of packing my suitcases. I'm only wearing boxer briefs, in the dead of winter, so I'm freezing as I collect my miscellaneous socks and underwear, shove my brand new Hoyas and Redskins hoodies into my bag and contemplate my mental checklist (I had not quite reached the Pat-Down stage). Then my mother enters the room. It is normally around this time in the process, a few hours removed from departure, that she suggests I take some of the copious leftover food from the holiday celebrations back on the plane with me. I'm grouchy because I stayed up too late and I can't find my phone charger. I grumble that I don't want any of the leftovers, and even if I did, I can't fit anything else in my bag. Neither of those statements is true; as soon as I get back to my apartment I'm going to devour that lasagna, and we both know that with some minimal rearranging I could fit a lot more stuff in my bag, and like so many other things that I'm capable of doing but haven't done, it comes down to the fact that I haven't tried hard enough.

Among the food items that I take along with me (lasagna, brownies, gingerbread people, a block of my favorite horseradish cheese), she includes a jar of Rao's Homemade All Natural, Premium Quality Arrabiata Fra Diavolo Sauce; we just call it Rao's (rhymes with cows, at least how we said it.). "Mom, you beautiful bastard! I am unworthy of your love." I think to myself. I can't show how pleased I am with this discovery, because that would mean that she wins and is right as always, but on the inside I'm doing a Tiger Woods fist pump, because Rao's is unbelievable. I packed it safely away deep in my luggage between some of my thicker clothing.
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I never learned how to cook, mostly because my favorite food, pasta, requires no cooking. I'd imagine most chefs or anyone that knows their way around the kitchen wouldn't consider dropping dry linguine into boiling water, or placing an Italian sausage on a pan "cooking". But while I'm no expert, I am very particular about my pasta. For instance, I only do linguine or penne; Fettuccine is too thick to slurp, and I refuse to touch "angel hair" because I think it tastes like slime. I also know that the secret to any great homemade pasta, more important than even the pasta itself, is the sauce.

 

Thin and gross. I won't eat you.



I'm convinced that I'm the first person ever to buy a jar of Rao's; I was in high school I think, perusing the sauce aisle as my mother waited at the deli counter. I glanced over the mid-shelf stuff indifferently, the safe Barillas and Bertolli's, the lumpier Classicos, and the incomprehensible Newman's Own. At the time this was the sauce bracket in which my family operated. My earliest memories are of us as Prego family, which was fine as long as it wasn't Ragu, but as we grew as a family our tastes grew as well. And once again we were at a sauce-roads. We needed something to shake things up, and then I saw it, on the top shelf holding dominion over all other sauces, with a laughable $9.99 price tag on it. At first I was outraged, a ten dollar jar of tomato sauce? Where do you get off?! Even more shocking was the Rao's was parked on the high end shelf between one sauce endorsed by Francis Ford Coppola and another by Paul Sorvino, two Italian American film legends, and their sauces were cheaper than Rao's! When my mom found me I showed her the jar. "Ten dollars?" she said dubiously, "Well this better be the best damn tomato sauce in the world".



 Pauly and Frank got nothing on Rao's.

I've never been to Italy, so it's hard to prove Rao's world ranking. I do know, without a doubt, that it is the best tomato sauce you can buy in a store, and frankly I would put Rao's up against any of your favorite Italian restaurants (for any LMU people reading this, C&O's too). There are several different varieties of Rao's, but the Arrabiata is in its own league; it's one of the few Arrabiata's I've enjoyed where I didn't need extra pepper flakes, Sorvino and Coppola notwithstanding.

The fiery kick is what you come for, but the texture and consistency are what set it apart. To appreciate this element of Rao's, you have to understand the cheaper brands. Most of the cheaper brands tend to be way, way too thick, which can lead to clumpy, uneven distribution and, worst of all, burning.  Ragu is notorious for burning quickly, among its many other inadequacies.  Rao's has a balanced and delightful simmer about it, and because of its superior fluidity and bold flavor only a small ladle is required. With bland Ragu and the like, you can't even taste it without piling it on, which goes against the principles of subtlety that one should always follow with tomato sauce.

Since that fateful day in our local grocery store Rao's has been part of the family. We can't ever go back, so we keep an emergency arsenal of around ten jars in our pantry at all times. It is a staple of my Mom's Christmas lasagna. My grandma had a spaghetti recipe she hadn't altered in decades, until we found Rao's. You can make it into Bolognese, throw some sausages in it, seafood, shellfish, whatever you want. You can achieve your Barefoot Contessa dreams today! For ten bucks, well...

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Now I'm unpacking, warmer, but still grouchy after a particularly nauseating flight and cab ride. I open my suitcase to only to find a sea of red; my Rao's, God bless it, has exploded.

Panic sets in as the prospect of laundering my entire wardrobe becomes very real."No one told me this would happen!" I whisper to myself pitifully.  Thankfully, I suppose, I find out that the sauce has miraculously avoided all of my clothing...except of course my brand new Hoyas and Redskins hoodies, which were ruined (The damaged hoodies proved to be an omen. Both of my teams would lose in embarrassing fashion the following weekend. I blame myself). I had lost my beloved Rao's, but it could've been much worse, and as I cleaned up the mess and licked my fingers clean,  I was just glad it wasn't Ragu.


RAO'S > EVERYTHIN

12) The Pat-Down > EVERYTHIN: COPING WITH LOSS



Throughout most of my life I've lived with a feeling that I was missing something. The feeling is as permanent and reoccurring as a first memory; it hums and clacks and sputters in the background of my life's work like an obsolete machine. I've lost so much, become so used to that dissonance that wakes me up before my alarm goes off in the morning, before the sun is up. Now I've learned the patterns. I drum them out calmly with my fingers at my desk. At one point there must have been panic and anxiety, because most people feel that way with loss. Now I just get on with my day, confident that I'll just as soon forget about whatever it is that is not there.  I've realized that some of us have a talent for loss, a trait born not out of habit but in our genes. People like me know that with time, whatever substance that is within us will absorb the memory of the loss. Some people were made to remember. I was made to forget.

Also, the fact that RAZR is so thin really makes things more difficult for me. It has a ton of cool features, but the one I love the most is the "Fall to the Deepest Crevice Between the Couch Cushions" app. You can't turn it off. In fact, the battery it doesn't even need to be on for the app to work! Droid does, indeed, do.

Cell phone, wallet, keys. The three items any person needs to function at an adult level in 2013. If you're like me you're content with knowing where two of those things are at one time. The third one is in the pockets of the jeans I wore yesterday, or in my car, or on the sidewalk next to your car. Or in the keyhole of my apartment door, adjacent to the crazy old lady who thinks I stole her ring.

People don't think so, but I try my best to keep track of my belongings. I am interested in self improvement. I know I'm an organizational wreck. I want to do something about it! So I have developed a frequent "wallet, keys, cell phone" Pat-Down that has increased my efficiency particularly in my pre-work morning routine. The casual self-grope, if done effectively and often enough, can eliminate the possibility of losing your "Big 3". And  while I'm alone I'm usually fine; It's when I see people I haven't seen in a long time or who know me well that I freeze up, that I forget to do the Pat-Down or just perform lazy, sloppy Pat-Downs. It's too much pressure! And next thing I know I'm calling Bank of America to cancel my debit card.

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"Floor four"

The voice of the elevator wakes me up. My neck hurts, because I'm using my wallet as a pillow. I'm also in the hallway and my mouth tastes like dirt and plaque. But why?

"Somebody call a locksmith?"

"Yes" says a tired voice, the voice of my roommate. Then I remember everything. The beers and then the cab and then some sweet beverage with liquor and wine and then a frantic, unsuccessful search for keys, and then another cab, and then a wish that we had left the door unlocked. Now a headache and a locksmith.

I also remembered that we were with friends; a couple who my roommate knew from high school that had graciously contributed Longboard Ales that evening. They were visiting  from Santa Barbara and had planned to stay the night on our couch, or at the very least inside our apartment. They were now sleeping soundly, a blonde girlfriend in fishnets on her boyfriend's lap by the fire escape.

I stand and brush myself off. I can't be angry at my roommate.  I had left my own keys behind for the evening, trying to eliminate the high probability of losing them, because I lose everything. But part of me relished that, for once thank god, it was the other guy who fucked up. For once I was helping him retrace his steps, calling the cab company in vain for his keys.. It was his frustrated voice trailing off in half sentence for the past several hours, a flabbergasted inflection that I am quite familiar with  "I don't know where..." "I coulda sworn there were..." "No I couldn't have left them..." "Where the fuckin...". My keys are on the kitchen table. I know it for a fact.

"I can't pick this lock", says the locksmith, without having even moved within twelve feet of our door. He was unlike any locksmith I had ever seen, although I suppose the only time I have ever interacted with one was when I locked myself out of a storage unit in Westchester. I remembered a rotund, sweaty white guy with a beard, and that he was nice enough to explain to me exactly why he was making me pay a fortune. That was a locksmith. This guy was Aladdin in patent leather shoes and an expensive peacoat; he looked like he just walked out of a club except he was holding a toolbox. "If it was any different type of lock I could pick it in literally three seconds. I'm going to have to drill it."

My roommate and I share a look. "How much is that going to cost?" he asks.

"$367.00"

"Uh...what?"

"Dude let's just wait it out", I say. Luckily the security at our apartment complex has back up keys available, for a fee of course, for just such occasions, but they inexplicably weren't available until 6 AM. Plus we weren't about to wake up the whole building with a power drill at 3 AM, and something about the indifference in Aladdin's tone tells me that he knows that too. "Can't afford that."

"Ok so you'll just have to pay the cancellation fee", says Aladdin, pulling out a ticket. He jots down a number and hands it to me.

"$167.00?" I ask, the number adding do the grimy taste in my mouth.  My roommate snatches the ticket away from me to see for himself.

"When I called  the lady said it was $19 for you to come and check it out", says my roommate, his voice rising.

"This is emergency service, and after hours service, so there are additional fees". The tone in Aladdin's voice was matter-of-fact and infuriating. "It's all standard."

"You want us to pay you $170 for showing up at our door and not doing anything?" My roommate's shake starts shaking uncontrollably, "No. No. I mean no. I'm not doing it. I'm calling your fucking manager, because this is bullshit, and because fuck you". He's still quite drunk; if he were a different type of guy he might've tried to fight Aladdin, but instead he steps out onto the fire escape with his iPhone.

I stand sheepishly beside Aladdin as we listen to my roommate, endowed with new purpose, rant at the dispatcher, explaining unnecessary details of the evening ("it was my friend's birthday, and we were all having this great time, and playing all kinds of drinking games")  referring to the locksmith as "this fucking asshole/douchebag/motherfucker". I suspect my roommate thinks we are out of earshot, but our walls are paper thin.

Aladdin's staring daggers at me, "Bad things happen to bad people" he whispers, taking a seat on the floor and pulling out his phone. "You're too cheap to get back into your apartment, and your friend is the biggest piece of shit I've ever met.". It's clearly an overreaction, but like a coward I let the insult slide.I step outside just to escape the awkwardness.

It's a chilly morning. My roommate hunches sadly over the railing, the last reserves of his energy now spent. He turns and sees me.

"What did that fucker say?"

"Nothing."

"My phone died."

"Mine too"

"I was thinking that maybe I could climb over to the window." he says. The closest window to our apartment is about 10 feet from the fire escape, four stories up.

"I don't think you'll make it". I'm almost ready to restrain him, because I almost believe he'll try to make the climb anyway. He'll do anything to get back into this apartment.

"This never happens to me"

"Did you do the Pat-Down?

"I always do the Pat Down!" he says, exasperated. He taps hopelessly at his deceased phone. "Dude, how the fuck am I going to get around?"

"We'll figure it out." I say, and as he looks again to make the impossible leap "...let's go back inside"

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After additional arguing and ad hominem attacks we end up giving Aladdin sixty bucks just to leave, and a few minutes before 7 AM security finally shows up. They apologize for the delay and mercifully end our ordeal. We wake the sleeping couple, who, polite like old friends, jokes about the whole thing and won't hear any of my roommates apologies. They settle on the couch as I make a beeline for my bedroom. Out of curiousity I stop in the dining room, just long enough to realize that my keys are, in fact, not on the dining room table, and that I have no idea where they are. But the hangover is setting in so I'll figure it out later.

11) BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO > EVERYTHIN



I got sucked into Deadwood on Sunday. I've now become accustomed to cranking out a half seasons of HBO Go on the weekends, carrying my open laptop computer with one hand to various rooms in my apartment, relishing the experience of an unbroken story, and in the end wondering where the first six hours of my day went. Truth be told I did a lot of other things while watching Deadwood; I cooked breakfast and futilely pawed at my guitar and then ate breakfast and checked my Facebook. Deadwood was the compelling background noise I needed, and later if I find I'm lost somewhere in the plot  I could go back whenever I wanted.

When I left my apartment at around 4 I didn't plan to end up walking out of the last Blockbuster on Earth with two DVDs in a bag. My original destination was Coffee Bean and my original purpose was simply to be a human being in the outside world, if only for an hour or so. I strolled through my apartment complex towards Wilshire, and I remembered too late that the Coffee Bean I thought was on Wilshire was actually in the opposite direction on 3rd. So following a tried and true method of finding a coffee shop in any major city, I simply walked in one direction until I came across a Starbucks, which took all of four minutes.

With my white chocolate-whatever in hand, I stepped around a homeless woman counting her change and back onto the sidewalk. Then I saw the sign, the dying company's name written in big yellow letters, and I thought someone had forgotten to take it down. But when I turned onto La Brea and peered through the window I found ten or so people browsing through the aisles. EVERYTHING MUST GO, EVERYTHING ON SALE commanded a banner hung over the doorway, and a flip chart counting down the days until the end read "47 DAYS". I didn't have much else to do, and I was intrigued by the prospect of a good deal.

Jaw-Achingly Mediocre

Inside was gloomy, emptying. The walls were essentially bare, with no movie posters and decorations of any kind. The two employees, a guy and a girl, acknowledged me noiselessly as I entered. They looked to be about my age and, when not dealing with the customers, their eyes were glued their phones. There was a point when it benefited them to chirp "Welcome to Blockbuster" or something as customers entered, but now I suppose that time has passed.

I gravitated towards the XBOX games first. Not much to say about these. The pickings were slim to say the least. NBA 2K11 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, identified with masking tape labels, were the highlights of the woeful selection. I didn't even glance at the Blu-Rays since I don't own a Blu-Ray player.

The DVD section was the most depressing. The rack had been picked clean; the shelves had decayed into a historical record of Hollywood's trash sequels (Mean Girls 2), flops (Pluto Nash) and generally bad ideas (I've never seen so many copies of MacGruber in one place). Horror films, per usual, were the worst offenders. They had an entire section to themselves, each featuring a possessed Caucasian child or lazily-conceived monster. On the price labels $12.00 had been crossed out for $8.00, and then $8.00  had been crossed out for $7.00; in the horror aisle there was a  special handwritten green sign that simply read "Some Exceptions Included" (read: "Make Us An Offer"). Another section nearest the register housed DVDs without boxes. I thought this was similar to how supermarkets put cheaper items like soda and candy near the check out line so people will buy them impulsively; it was surreal seeing  What to Expect When You're Expecting beside Casablanca share a $3.00 price tag in the bargain bin. I kept walking through the aisles over and over again looking for some hidden gem. Eventually I grabbed a copy of Attack the Block (OVEREVERYTHIN), only minimally scratched, and, inexplicably amongst twelve copies of a Jack Black film I'd never heard of called Bernie, I found Beasts of the Southern Wild. After I had completed the transaction and was halfway out there, I turned back towards the two employees; they looked at each other with hopeful grins. "Two more! Yay!" beamed the girl with the black pixie cut, despite their looming unemployment, offering her male counterpart a small fist bump before returning to whatever she was watching on her phone.

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There was a Blockbuster less than five minutes from my house in Maryland; like seemingly all closed Blockbusters the sign is still up. As kids my sister and I ran like maniacs through the aisles, astonished at the number of selections and salivating at the sugary snacks. We would run until we simultaneously collided into whichever parent drove us, and argued loudly, as we still do, in favor of our choice of movie and the candy we would share. It mattered a lot more then because once we picked a movie we were stuck with it; that was our Saturday night. And, whatever we decided on, we watched more intently, without checking our social network, and stayed up to finish it even though we were succumbing to Dominos-induced food coma. These days if the movie sucks all you have to do is adjust in your seat, click the exit button, and try again. Or just throw on Deadwood and pass out. It's so convenient.


BLOCKBUSTER > EVERYTHIN.