Celebrities have more fun

I know a guy who is a genuine, bona-fide rock star. Not a rock star in the sense that you might call an acquaintance with enviable taste in clothing, fashionable friends, and a charismatic nature a rock star. Rather, he's a rock star in the other sense-- you know, the sense where you regularly play rock and roll to thousands of screaming fans who try to tear your clothes off. He attends parties with people like Janeane Garofolo and David Geffen. He knows David Bowie personally. He claims to be the wealthiest person I know, and, with a few exceptions (none of whom are self-made), he probably is.

When you get out of the car, no one   feels the need to take pictures

Of course, we all know that money, power, and the adulation of tens of thousands do not bring true happiness-- true happiness can only come from good friends, inner peace, and spiritual satisfaction. Indeed, my friend the rock star is, at his core, still the same frightened little boy who was bullied for his lunch money, who constantly craved approval from emotionally distant parents, and who cried himself to sleep every night because he thought he'd never fit in. Wealth and fame have not brought him happiness, only more worries and insecurity.

No, I'm just kidding. My pal the rock star is happier than a pig in shit, and who can blame him? He has enough cash to do whatever he wants, he gets constant reinforcement and approval from everyone around him, and he gets laid pretty much at will. I have no idea what his childhood was actually like, but if he was bullied in school, I'm sure he takes some comfort in the fact that those same bullies are now pumping gas into his Mercedes, and whatever his parents might have been like, if they weren't stellar, he's in an excellent position to tell them to ram it.

The fiction that the rich and famous are as unhappy (or more so) than you and me is a convenient balm for the vast majority of us who are poor and obscure. We gleefully seize upon the troubles of the glitterati as proof that celebrities have the same problems as the rest of us. And that may be true. However, when a celebrity splits up with her significant other, she jets off to Nice for a few months to sort things out. You wind up on a reluctant friend's couch watching the "Will and Grace" marathon.

It's true that many of the young and famous have died tragically. However, in most cases the so-called tragedy was directly attributable to a surfeit of hedonistic opportunities at which the rest of us can only slaver. Janis Joplin might have been unhappy as a rock star, but she still had a hell of a lot more fun than she would have had as a waitress at Denny's. How many of us get to do face-plants into piles of cocaine the size of a Christmas ham, crash our own private jets, or drive expensive cars into swimming pools just for the hell of it?

I'm not denying that there are risks associated with the wealthy, successful celebrity lifestyle. There are risks associated with any profession. But as occupational hazards go, I'd take the rock star's risk of contracting syphilis from Tyra Banks over the steel worker's risk of falling into a vat of molten slag any day.

Take, for example, my own case: do you think I'm writing this because of a deep and personal need for self-expression? That once I've gotten all my thoughts down on paper, I couldn't care a fig as to whether they're published and read? No way, pal. I'm writing this because maybe, just maybe, it will help me to become a reasonably well-known writer some day, making my name enough of a household word that I'll be able to get a table at Red Lobster with no reservations on a Saturday night-- which, incidentally, is about the highest level of celebrity to which a writer can aspire. If there's one complimentary courtside seat at the Lakers game and both Saul Bellow and David Arquette want it, who do you think is going to be be wiping off Kobe's sweat by halftime?

Refried blog

Remember what I said last time about nobody reading the blog? Well, it's probably true. That's why this week, I'm going to post an article I wrote for that magazine I've been bitching about, the one that gave up after three issues, Tribe.

I'm doing this for two reasons. First, I sort of like the article, and would like to have somebody read it, and even though no one reads this blog, the article will still probably find more readers here than it would have in the pages of Tribe, which no nobody ever read, ever. Second, while I hope people will start reading the blog agin, they haven't yet, so I'm going to be alternating new with recycled material till I feel like there's someone who'll care that some of the content is repurposed (though I doubt I would; as long as there's something here, and it doesn't suck, who cares when it was written?)

Anyway, here's the article. If you're reading this and want to complain that I should be posting stuff that's brand new and created specifically for the blog, write to me and let me know.

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Dollars and gravy

Usually, this space is devoted to variations on the theme of dining out-- after all, Portland has no shortage of restaurants and bars to talk about, and going out to eat is inherently more interesting than sitting at home eating cold Chef Boyardee ravioli straight out the can with a fork-- which, frankly, is what people like you and me tend to do when there's no one around to be horrified by our appalling dietary habits. But in general, we like our meals prepared one way: by somebody else. Somebody else doing the shopping, somebody else enduring the tedious slicing, dicing, sautéing, and pureeing required to turn raw groceries into piping hot entrees, and best of all, somebody else dealing with the washing up while we linger over our postprandial coffee drinks and wait for the waiter to bring our check.

Which brings us to the one flaw in this otherwise idyllic scenario: In a perfect world, the piece of paper brought to one's table at the conclusion of a satisfying restaurant meal would be something soothing and inconsequential, such as, say, a pastel drawing of a child playing at the beach. In real life, however, that piece of paper is your bill, and if you've made pretty free with the appetizers and the wine list, don't be surprised when you find that you've run up a tab roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Belize. Dining out, for all its virtues, can quickly run into some pretty serious money, which is why even the most cosmopolitan among us must occasionally bite the bullet and eat in.

Oh, I grant you, some people like to cook. Some people like to break through the ice with a hatchet and swim in a frozen lake on New Year's Day. But this article is directed at those of you for whom cooking at home is primarily a means of stretching your cocaine-depleted bank account until payday; those for whom any visit to the kitchen lasting longer than the time it takes to grab one of your housemate's beers out of the fridge is an odious and unwelcome chore. You're cooking at home because you're broke, and you don't like it.

This burrito thinks you suck

While I can't help you enjoy being broke, I can help you take some of the sting out of feeding yourself on the cheap. See, if you're like most people, when you're broke, you eat broke food. You know what I'm talking about-- ramen noodles, boxed macaroni and cheese, microwave burritos, Totino's Party Pizzas at 4 for $5. That's broke food, and it sucks. Not only is unappetizing in its own right, but every bite reminds you that you're a broke-ass, microwave-burrito-eating, 1983-Toyota-Tercel-driving chump without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Being low on cash is bad enough without having your dinner sit there and make fun of you about it. Screw you, Mr. Talking Burrito. You're not so tough.

Anyway, the real way to avoid the humiliation of eating broke food is to learn how to cook and become one of those culinary whizzes who can turn three packets of Taco Bell hot sauce and a watermelon rind into a stunning seven-course meal complete with fish course, dessert, and one of those giant centerpieces made out a huge block of ice carved into the shape of a swan. Realistically, though, you're not going to do that. What you can do, though, is learn to make-- get ready-- gravy.

Oh, I know what you're thinking-- Smith has finally snapped. All those years of bathtub crank have taken their toll, and now he's really gone off the deep end. Well, you're wrong-- most of that crank was made in a nice, clean 5-gallon bucket from Home Depot, and, more to the point, the secret of gravy (or, more precisely, what those in the food business call a "basic white sauce") can save your ass in the kitchen, and I'm going to tell you how.

First off, the ingredients are undeniably cheap: flour, of which one 5-pound bag purchased for $1.50 or so will basically last you for the rest of your life; butter (or margarine, if you really want to cheap out), which you may actually already have lying around; and milk, which-- okay, you'll probably have to buy some milk. Just get a pint, though, because it'll probably go bad before you get around to using it again.

Now, find a skillet. Even you have a skillet. Melt a tablespoon or so of butter (about twice what you'd use to butter a slice of bread) in the skillet over low heat. Keep it moving so it doesn't burn.

Now comes the only tough part: mix a heaping tablespoon of flour in with the melted butter. If you had your act together, you'd have a whisk to do this with, but you don't, so just do it with the back of a fork. Mix it evenly so you have a nice, smooth butter-and-flour paste. Congratulations; you've just made a roux, you French chef, you. Keep stirring the roux and slowly add up to a cup of milk. As the milk heats up, the mixture will thicken into an extraordinarily bland gravylike stuff, which is your white sauce. Just make sure you stir constantly, or it will burn and get lumpy and vile. You'll probably want to salt it, after which your low-budget kitchen magic can begin.

You can melt grated cheddar into this stuff and make cheese sauce suitable for broccoli, asparagus, or Brussels sprouts. Add some hot sauce, too, and you'll have chili con queso dip. Use parmesan instead of cheddar, throw in some garlic and herbs, and pour over noodles to create fettuccine alfredo.

Substitute bacon grease (or grease from cooking any meats) for the butter and you'll have actual gravy. Use it to liven up those crappy instant mashed potatoes, or dice up some of those little packets of thin sliced corned beef, dump them in the gravy and pour the whole mess over toast for what your mom calls creamed chipped beef on toast. Guys in the army use the more poetic name shit-on-a-shingle, but either way, it beats a smart-mouthed burrito made in a factory in Duluth. Bon appetit, and don't say I never did anything for you.

Blog night is on Tuesday

When I was in New York City covering the Republican National Convention (which sounds a lot more glamorous than it actually was, since I wasn't even credentialed to get inside the damned Garden), I discovered to my mild horror that there were a few people who actually read this blog. Probably not any more, of course, since I haven't posted here in months, but still.

You may recall that in our last episode, Marty was working on the first issue of the new Portland monthly Tribe. Coincidentally, Marty has now just finished working on the last issue of the Portland monthly Tribe. That's right; after failing to turn a profit after three months, the publishers of Tribe have given it up as a bad job.

Never mind that even top-notch heroin dealers usually don't break into the black until six or seven months into the business; Tribe's backers apparently assumed that after three whole issues, their only financial difficulty would be finding a jobber willing to haul away all the soiled and crinkled banknotes that were deemed too shabby to bother the nice folks at the bank with.

I suppose it's become clear in this little tirade of mine that I think that mistakes were made. A lot of people put a lot more work into the project than I did, and those people were promised 18 months in which to make the thing work. I've started papers before, and that sounded about right to me. Three issues to establish a reputation is, frankly, ludicrous.

The point of all this is that without Tribe to kick around anymore, I think I'm going to start posting to the blog again. If I can't think of anything clever or bitchy to say, I'll run old crap I have lying around that you probably haven't seen. I'm going to start with short posts like this one, hopefully every Wednesday morning. (Ha.) If anyone seems to be paying attention, I'll start expending more effort-- or at least raiding the Marty's Greatest Hits cookie jar.