5 things On My Mind: Hatched, 'The Bear', bad truck drivers, and choice
Let's get a few things straight, pals and readers.
I have a proposition for you, friends. If I happen to end one of the hundreds of sentences in this article with a proposition, don’t hold it against me. We’re all slaves to school work and grammar rules until we get off this rock, but it’s a dick move to point out pointless fixes in an article published on a site entitled, “Ramble On.” (Talking to you, Pat G.)
-What else is a dick move? Going slow off a light change just to slow the ten cars down behind you, and tossing a fan’s baseball for “amusement.” That’s what Zack Greinke did on Sunday to a Kansas City Royals fan after he was asked for his signature. Imagine all the times he’s had to sign his name on takeout orders, home purchases, and whenever Zack shops at the pout store. So, one extra signature was too much. That’s being a dick. As Rich Buffa often says, “be kind or don’t be a dick. Choose one.”
-Here’s another pack of untamed animal control employees on the loose that need to be tranquilized soon: Rage monsters on the road who happen to drive large trucks. It could be the fact they’re putting $150 dollars into their gas tanks every week, or the fact that they bypassed all the other affordable and long-lasting vehicles for the biggest truck in the lot. These Triple-A semi-truck wannabes travel on highways, speeding around the lanes like there’s a free donut at the end of their route waiting for them. They drive like their wife just told them the dinner and sex train is leaving very soon.
If there’s one thing we control, it’s how we drive. Take a moment, analyze your own, and be better. We all suck at one aspect at driving; let’s not suck at most of them.
-In the meantime, get Hatched on Gravois. St. Louis residents will know the Quincy Street Bistro restaurant location has experienced two lives already just off Loughborough and Gravois Road. But this new place bridges the gap perfectly between old fashioned diners and the modern day brunch spot. They use homestyle coffee mugs instead of the same design for each customer.
Short story long: the owners, a father and son duo, inquired about the price of mugs and found them to be too expensive. $40 for 6 of them. So they purchased hundreds from Goodwill, mugs from all walks of life and countless kitchens. It’s like reaching up into grandma’s cabinet and finding eight different styles. Instant comfort for a customer.
The food is delicious, filling, and modestly priced. After finding out their egg quesadilla meal had run out, I opted for an old fashioned skillet with a Mediterranean twist. The eggs were draped over the mound of hash browns, red peppers, olives, and cheese. There were three legit pauses-the time where you put down the fork, gulp coffee, and reassess your earlier agreement with your stomach-during the meal.
The coffee is classic diner blend; not burned or extra special, but drinkable when paired with some food. The servers are nice and attentive without being clingy. You’ll leave full and will be back.
The kitchen and how it’s run has been the basis for several TV shows and movies, but Hulu’s The Bear gets it right with game casting and a lived-in feel, the same vibe one gets after they walk into Hatched.
-Jeremy Allen White may be forever known as the resourceful yet conflicted Lip Gallagher from Showtime’s “Shameless,” but he brings that soulful resistance to new ways and methods to his “Bear” character, Chef Carmine Berzatto. When we first meet him, he’s a Michelin Star chef classically trained to run a kitchen who is suddenly back at his family shop in Chicago, trying to rescue a failing business in The Original Beef.
A restaurant centered on Italian beef sandwiches or anything that can be encased in a long bun, “Carmy” wishes to revitalize it, striking the balance between fine dining and the working class. What if you walked into the Philly steak shop around the corner, and realized it had a Gordon Ramsay type flinging orders with the word “chef” being said and shouted all over the room?
Throw in a hefty amount of family dysfunction and drama, and you have “The Bear,” which thrives on White’s internal and restrained acting approach. Sure, his chef screams and instructs often in this eight-episode series, but it’s the quieter, more inquisitive moments with his Carmy that the actor makes sing. There’s a clear reason why he is not working in a three star restaurant and instead enforcing a "French Brigade” type regimen at a meat sandwich shop: his brother unexpectedly committed suicide, leaving The Original Beef to him and his chaotic cousin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).
The episodes are all around 30 minutes, and the show carries an aesthetic that could be spotted on a network show, but the bones and internal parts all belong to cable television dialogue and how people really operate. You don’t know what’s going to go wrong at The Original Beef, but you know the writing and acting is solid and keeps you invested. Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, and Lionel Bryce all make supporting roles stand tall.
More than anything, you believe in the kitchen and its personality. There’s no forced romantic subplots and what happens seems natural to the characters and their world. Also, a little Jon Bernthal once again goes a long way.
-One final thing. Taking someone’s natural choice away is stupid, but fucking with women and their bodies is the beginning of doomsday.
Think of it as Pandora’s box, but multiplied by 75,000 amps of holy shit madness. The reversal of Roe vs. Wade is awful, pointless, and a terrible invasion of a woman’s personal rights to what she was born with. How stupid and tyrannical do you have to be in order to mess with human beings who can create life?
It’s not like the government gives two shits about the kid after it’s born. As George Carlin said, it’s from inception to birth, and then they tell you to get fucked. So, understand this is a clear power play by the Supreme Court, whom a few of its members were appointed by Captain Fuckstick, Donnie Trump. Yep, Old Man Biden didn’t vote all of those asshats into power. Trump did.
The guy who stood by as a riot of the Capitol took place. The guy who was impeached twice. The guy who broke up a peaceful riot to pose with a bible. The guy who took a big DUMP in the White House, and left it for us to smell for four years (or longer). The game show host who found his way into the biggest house in the country, and screwed everything up.
But this goes beyond a President; it stretches all the way to the heart of what is sacred and what is just in our lives. I will forever be PRO choice. This country is overpopulated and on a trajectory for a purge, but let’s attack what a woman decides to do with her body. We don’t know if she has personal reasons, tragic or health wise, to make that choice. We don’t have all the details, but let’s dish a take on it like we’re analyzing a baseball box score.
It’s ridiculous and has nothing to do with legal or illegal; it has to do with right and wrong. Imagine where we’d be without women on this planet. Now, imagine if men were told what they could do with their bodies. Put those two together and see what you get. Chaos. Reversing RvW is like picking up our world and putting it on an unwanted carousel ride through the ugliest parts of our nation’s past. An endless carousel ride through hell.
If you do support the reversal, what the fuck is wrong with you?