Eat the rich, and the rest too

*** Spoilers ahead ***

Eat the rich, and the rest too

The other night I watched The Menu (I know, I know, im a little late to the party), a dark comedy horror film starring Lord Voldemort and the girl from that show about Chess. Its about a group of people who travel by boat to this fancy restaurant on an island to have a multi-course dinner in all its glamor and glory. The guests are pretty obviously “bad” people, each with their own set of problems. Voldemort (The Chef of the restaurant) decides he is going to make them aware that they are shitty people, feed them, and then kill them all. Thats the movie from a thousand foot view; for those who haven’t seen it already.

The movie, like many dark-comedies, is different and should be viewed with your special pair of nonsense glasses, to help differentiate what is part of the plot and what is just messaging from the creators. On the surface, I think it fits right into the hugely popular category of film called fuck rich people movies. This category is so tasty these days because it’s relatable, it’s a large part of our discourse nowadays; given our economic issues, and also yeah, a lot of rich people suck. So, we’re barraged with shows like The White Lotus and movies like Parasite, Glass Onion, even Barbarian, the last film I blogged about. And there’s a lot to say about that category, its entertaining, but often self-serving. I feel like rich people love those shows; because who doesn’t love soaking it up in a little self-deprecation these days. It’s their way of giving back their riches, without giving back their riches. A proxy donation, if you will, through a relinquishment of pride.

Tyler the cook

The Menu hits on one unique idea that resonated with my life. There is this character Tyler, one of the restaurant attendees, who isn’t necessarily rich or corrupt, just extremely overzealous to be accepted in the cooking world. He deeply admires Voldemort (the Chef) to a point of absurdity, obsessing over spices, flavors, emulsions (whatever the hell those are? my cooking friends would know), etc. He has presumably spent days, weeks, maybe years watching The Great British Bake Off, reading online cooking blogs, recipe books, and famous cook interviews on YouTube. Yet when it comes down to it, he can’t actually cook anything himself. He has an overly pedantic approach to his craft, his hobbies, and life generally. This prevents him from actually doing the thing itself that he is supposedly interested in. Tyler eventually decides to hang himself because his idol rejects him.

I believe Tyler represents something gone awry in our culture, which is a compounding need for perfection (in the form of mastery over art) layered with insecurity. Importantly, our modern idea of ‘mastery’ is often times built upon a mountain of meaningless junk. Due to the plethora of information (and also bullshit) the internet has unlocked; anyone can become or at least claim that they are an expert at anything and everything. What has resulted is a lot of talking the talk but not a lot of walking the walk. To make matters worse, these beautiful things like cooking that are supposed to bring us joy, end up bringing us misery, jealousy, and despair.

While cooking is a great example, I’d like to use two examples that are near and dear to my life currently where I think this issue is prevalent; coffee and surfing.

Stirring the bloom

Someone at work told me the other day that sous-vide’ing coffee beans really brightens the flavor of the beans. I immediately wanted to back away from the conversation to the bushes like Homer Simpson does in the meme. I love coffee, and in past few years of enjoying it, I’ve been in dozens of conversations about things like:

• brewing contraptions
• bean processing techniques
• grinding methods
• flavor extraction optimizations
• water ratio adjustments

While its fun to nerd out about random crap with friends, sometimes I think to myself, guys, can we chill out a little? Like, I’m pretty sure the coffee my mom is making at home with her Mr. Coffee drip machine is often better than the $20 bag of beans I bought from that craft roaster. We over obsess the details, and forget about the beauty intrinsic to the thing itself. The hobby morphs into a contest of one-upmanship, used by the individual to feel special and differentiated.

It’s similar with surfing. Surf culture is full of guys that are more than willing to burn each other for taking out the 7’0” over the 5’10” board when its clearly “peaky and hollow” out. “The shorter board is clearly better given this 270 degree wind/swell direction; not to mention longboards are for sissies!“. Then it turns out neither of them could catch a wave in the first place; they just like to argue about who has the cooler board. And im not saying its not all in the details; I do believe its small things that makes life beautiful, but its also about motive.

There’s a viral video going around right now from 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper, of the record producer, Rick Rubin, admitting he owes his success to mere instinct; not to how well he can work a mixing desk. And yet I see people asking online all the time “What thing can I purchase to make me better at X?” A new coffee grinder? A new surfboard? A new software program? When I think the question should be, “How can I change my behavior as a person, to make me better at X?” Our materialistic view of improvement reveals our dissociation between the art and the artist.

My conclusion is, knowledge is fun but let’s not lose the script. Let’s pursue our hobbies in the interest of our own happiness; not to prove superiority or class over others. And also, let’s do. More than talk. Talk is cheap!