Gotham Diary:
Developing
17 January 2012
In The Descendants, Alexander Payne’s camera lingers over the pristine Hawaiian real estate long enough for you to get used to how beautiful it is and focus, instead, on just what “pristine” means. There is a lovely beach, but there are no bathers. There are no buildings. There is nothing but Hawaii. And you want it to be left that way. There are already more than enough seaside hotels, an obscene number of golf courses. At the very least, the 25,000 acres of King Trust land that’s up for development ought to be preserved in its wilderness until we figure out how to develop it less crudely than we develop things now.
Where do developers come from, anyway? Where they ought to come from is an advanced-degree program, and they ought to be licensed like doctors and lawyers. It’s not enough to pass laws that developers will prove adept at circumventing or even flouting. It’s not enough to mark parcels of land as untouchable. The very race of developers must be reformed.
***
After months of eyeing them in the butcher’s case at Fairway, I bought a half-dozen Italian meatballs. It turns out that three meatballs are enough for Kathleen and me; she can eat only one, and two fill me up. The meatballs are quite firm, and develop a nice crust when they’re browned in butter. (They’re easier to cut with a knife than with a fork.) And they’re deliciously seasoned.
Spaghetti and meatballs — how many decades have passed since I last had spaghetti and meatballs? Kathleen and I both recall the horror that came out of a can when we were children. Tubs of the stuff in school cafeterias. (And Kraft “parmesan” in green cans.) Then — nothing. As Italian food began to be taken seriously, spaghetti and meatballs was struck from the menu. It had to be. Even if it was prepared well, it reminded everyone of the bad old days. And it is actually a bit easier, if you’re starting from scratch, to make a good ragù bolognese.
So easy, in fact, that I’m sick to death of ragù bolognese. I can’t stand my sausage and mushroom ragù anymore, either. And I’m increasingly inclined to regard pasta puttanesca as a first course — a little goes a long way. I’m still happy to eat a heap of spaghetti alla carbonara, but Kathleen doesn’t care for it. So I’ve got to find a good recipe for marinara sauce, or something even simpler, perhaps. I bought a bottled sauce, put out by Silver Palate, to accompany the first round of meatballs; now that I’m sold on the meatballs, I need a better sauce.
***
I’m still puzzling over Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Why? That’s what I’m asking. When the movie was over, it was over; it left nothing. I had been duly engrossed in paying attention to its austere understatements, but all I felt at the end was “Thank heaven that’s over.” Meaning not the movie but the Cold War. How silly it was! How utterly adolescent-male. It all came down to loyalty or dis-, played as a game of three-card monte with guns. It seems to me that counterspies were cultivated simply as a means of forestalling the endgame. And for the British, playing the game had the additional urgency of signalling (with a lot of hand-waving) that the UK still mattered in global affairs. I do want to see the movie again, though.