Sing it with me: "The best thingsss in life are freee!" That sarcastic statement originally sang by Barrett Strong, in a song later covered by dozens of now-more-famous-than-him artists who apparently recognized a great song when they heard one, is in fact, though humorous when taken in its context, wrong. And slightly ironic, given the overall message of the song ("Money (That's What I Want)"). The best things in life aren't free at all, not even the privelege of listening to an old Motown hit catchy enough to make even the most racially embittered wallflower want to shake hips to the rhythm of justifiably necessary greed.
But this isn't 1959 anymore. Nor is it 1998. But I will still relevantly (well, perhaps) use a nostalgic example to explain what the best things in life are (Strong, look at what I'm about to do here!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAOgWDLo--w. It's the key to life: money, power, respect; what you need in life: money, power, respect; when you eatin' right: money, power, respect... You'll see the light. Do your best DMX dog-bark, remember how witty Jadakiss's lyrics used to be before he started asking so many questions (lol, joke), and let's get on with this.
The best things in life, as it turns out, cost a bit of one or more of those three things that The Lox had Lil' Kim warn you about. Well then, shall we analyze these aspects of life? I suppose we shall.
MONEY.
Unless you have power, in the form of a gun to point at resourceful people, or respect, in the form of friendships with resourceful people, you must have money to get the items or goods that you, as a normal human being, enjoy. This sucks. Or does it? Anyone can obtain a small amount of money, sometimes by hardly doing anything worth anything. There's really no rulebook that says that strippers need to know how to dance, or dance well anyway. Virtually anyone can take their clothes off and be rained on, right? But what the world wants you to believe is that "nice" things cost more money. Well in many, if not all, instances, I say this is total bullshit. Let's examine the common liquor store... Well, whiskey is great. There are many tasty varieties, including Canadian Club which I had for the first time yesterday at my grandmother's house. It goes down so silky smooth with a distinctive taste of vanilla; seriously, very exceptional whisky (CC spells it without the "e"). And if I'm at a bar and want to keep things simple, I love sipping Jack D on rocks, or in other cases Jim Beam or Evan. Kelly Clarkson would rather gulp Chivas instead of dealing with the drama of a shitty boyfriend, and I can't help but grin like The Grinch when I'm drinking Crown with Coke and grenadine (or a new one I made over the weekend-- Bulleit Bourbon with Cherry Coke; I call it The Superb, and I had a few today before I switched to Moscato). But if anyone in the world will be totally honest, you know it's me, and I'll do it right now by saying that I would prefer, and not just when I don't want my wallet to break a sweat, to close my eyes and pull something from the bottom shelf. Well, let's be clear here. I don't literally close my eyes. What I'm saying is that my favorite whiskey is Kentucky Gentleman. You understand my point I'm sure, but you should take note that you should never, under any dire circumstances, drink Old Crow whiskey. Don't. I wish I could elaborate as to why you shouldn't, but I really can't. You just should not drink Old Crow. It's horrible. If you're taking my expert advice on whiskey, and your favorite liquor store doesn't stock Kentucky Gent, just do yourself a favor and walk out. I mean, unless you have money to spend. That's what we're talking about here, whether you have money to spend, or NEED to spend the money you have. Really it's all a matter of opinion, which kicks into obsoletion this entire paragraph up to this particular sentence. But no matter. Well actually, I was just about to decide to change liquor stores the other day (for lack of Kentucky G) when I noticed that they carry the favorite "hard to find" Moscato of a special ladyfriend of mine. With that rejuvinating appreciation in my spirit, I agreed to try a bottle of the shop owner's "favorite" bourbon, Bulleit (thus guiding me to the invention of The Superb). Probably obviously, he just wanted to sell me a $20-something bottle of whiskey, but hey, since I had discovered a regular stock of Castello del Poggio there, I was feeling happily lenient.
I guess basically the lesson is that you should never let a price tag convince you of a product's ostensible quality. And/or, don't let the packaging or brand make your decision for you. Product marketing has quite literally been worked to a science. There is a proven brain reaction that is now known as "sensation transference", which means that you subconsciously associate a product's worth with its packaging (or perhaps, brand name). One example I find particularly interesting is something I read in the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, in which the makers of Mellow Yellow adjusted the colors of the cans, adding just a slight percentage more yellow to the green color. The drink itself was not altered. Tasters noted a "more lemony" flavor and were displeased. Another example of sensation transference is how I hated the "changed" flavor of Coke when it had Harry Potter on the can, but how I and most other people in the world love Coke more when it has Santa Claus on there encouraging you to love life.
POWER.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Df9KU69TKQ
RESPECT.
In Boyz n the Hood, the hodgepodge collage of memories of John Singleton's early life before he directed Baby Boy and weirded us all out, Laurence Fishburne gives good advice to a young, before-his-career-went-straight-to-DVD Cuba Gooding Jr., "never respect anyone who doesn't respect you". Cuba's character Tre maybe or maybe doesn't ever take this advice truly to heart, but we can say for sure that this wisdom was lost on Gooding in real life, as evidenced by the character he was casted as in Ridley Scott's film American Gangster. Let's just give him Jerry Maguire and forget the rest, huh? Let's.
No one seriously respects me as a "food writer", but that's why I don't respect you, the reader. Perhaps the order of cause and effect is lost on us both, yeah? Maybe I'm the Cuba Gooding Jr. of the "food blog" world, living quite literally what Rodney Dangerfield said with ironic sarcasm: "I don't get no respect". Maybe I should take Laurence Fishburne as my father figure and adhere to his advice, but backwards and preemptively; if I respect others first, they may show me respect in return. But no, that doesn't sound like it would work, and I would be sacrificing my "edge", right? I'm probably right, since I usually am. Are we to believe that somewhere hidden among that long list of low-budget cheese-flicks that are scattered along the now neglected shelves of Blockbuster, Gooding has some undiscovered gem? With a boisterous laugh, I say to you, "No." So I am not the Cuba Gooding Jr. of this profession, and I'm not the over-publicized, cooky Tom Cruise either. I'm certainly not the Cameron Crowe, with his one single decent piece of work (well, let's hold onto that one before we finalize the decision, because I have actually never seen Say Anything, starring John Cusack, although, and this means nothing at all to any point I'm trying to make, I did share a high school with a pair of twins who are now in the emo band named after that film-- and I really love their song "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too", among others, but that one is my favorite). Maybe what I am is the underrated Jay Mohr, that guy you always hated until one day it all just clicked and you understood that you, in actuality, are a loving fan. So we're not talking about Jerry Maguire at all, as it turns out. We're talking about the Jay Mohr from the shortlived, underappreciated, ingenius CBS sitcom Gary Unmarried. So maybe we don't have to start out mutually respecting each other. Fuck your advice, Laurence Fishburne; besides, everything the Wachowski Brothers (now Wachowski brother and sister--yeah, really) paid you to say in The Matrix was vague, quasiphilosophical horseshit, sloppily scribbled together by those two Hollywood scam artists who really just needed an excuse to introduce bullet-time photography to the nerdy, jizz-on-anything-sci-fi population. In your defense, however, it would be hard for even them to write dialogue any more atrociously gag-inducing as the utter "bollocks" they tried to feed us in V for Vendetta. I hope George Orwell is haunting the shit out of them to this day.
So hell, as awesome as we would like to think 1998 was, it turns out that there is more to life than the treasures laid out in the song "Money, Power, Respect". Good food, good times, and collecting great memories, in my opinion which is always fact, are more important to one's life than all the money, power, and respect one could ever hope for, no matter how fun and slutty Lil Kim made it all seem. Even terrible food and awkward times can make great memories. I used to live in Barnesville, Georgia, next to an old crackhead named Ms. Ann, a 60-something year old black woman from Roberta (the only place in Georgia more country than B'ville, and there's your shout-out, KD) and I love and miss her with all my heart. No, there is no story here about terrible food, because oh my god that lady could cook the shit out of some "soul food". See, I would regularly do favors for her and drive her to the local crackspot in town, down at the end of an otherwise impoverished neighborhood known locally as The Hole. One way in, one way out. My first time parking down in the depths of The Hole, Ms. Ann told me to lock my doors, because, in her words, "white people aren't allowed in here". Wow, great. Unbeknownst to me as I waited in the locked car, Ms. Ann was inside the crackhouse trying desperately to convince the reigning D-boy that he shouldn't murder me, which is what he was planning to do. Awkward times, see? I became the only white male of that time period to be allowed in and out of The Hole without incident. In return for all these favors that maybe I shouldn't have been doing for Ms. Ann, she would often have a wrapped plate waiting for me of whatever she had cooked that day. And seriously, I wish everyone in the world could experience how amazing Ms. Ann's food was.
And/or awkward times...
Ms. Ann's commonlaw husband, Beau, was a somewhat mysterious fellow, a drugged-up Vietnam vet (remember your cause and effect) who had allegedly been to prison for killing a police officer. But hey, he was a solid good guy, and for the most part I trusted him. But then one day I walked into their apartment and he jumped out from behind the door and started choking me, saying "WHATCHU SAY?? WHATCHU SAY?!" After I managed to squeal some sounds that meant "I don't know what you're talking about!" he let me go and said he was kidding, all the while Ms. Ann bellowing uncontrollable laughter. Good food, awkward times, I tell you. One night I ended up having to sell Ms. Ann's own two rocks of crack back to her for twenty bucks, but don't take this as a moment of heartlessness on my part-- I like to think that she was actually teaching me some kind of widely-applicable dopedealing life lesson, because she kept saying "That's good, Jarred! I'ma teach you somethin'!"
Then she called me, Jeremy, and I think my lovely girlfriend at the time over, I believe on a New Year's Day (I hope so, because otherwise the entire purpose of this memory has been completely falsified), and fed us an almost traditional New Year's dinner, which Southern cuisine traditionalists know consists of black-eyed peas, cornbread, some type of stewed greens (mustard, turnip, collard), and a portion of a pig, which due to superstitious reasons is supposed to be a cut of meat "high on the hog". I knew this holiday meal's set-up since I was a child, having it numerous times prepared by my stepmother. Having this meal with poor black folk, I was to learn, was different, and in that sense, more rewarding to my Memory Gospel. Each part of the New Year's meal represents a specific outcry to Fate or God or something to bring you luck in that coming year, mostly in the form of monetary pleasures. Eating "high on the hog" goes along with this request for good fortune. Herein lies the difference between every New Year's dinner I've ever had prior to and after the dinner I enjoyed with Ms. Ann, Beau, and my friends. Ms. Ann cooked pigs' feet. Not very high on the hog, is it? But there's a lesson here which I think I have given over and over again, and it's about trying new things, living new experiences. You can eat the same old shit you have every year, "high on the hog", wishing for good fortune to come to you while you sit on your ass, or you can jump out there in the world, try foods you have never tasted, and let extraordinary people become integral parts of memories that you will never forget. Of course, the funny part is that if you drink like a fish like I do, or base an entire writing career on being hammered, the details may become a tad fuzzy. I can't exactly tell you what the pigs' feet tasted like, or the specific topics of our conversations, but what I remember is that we sat in Ms. Ann's living room, laughing with each other, passing around a dishtowel because there were no napkins, eating greasy pigs' feet, having overall a forever memorable experience. And check this out: an experience important enough for me to share it here in my "food blog", right? See that? I would give anything to eat pigs' feet with Ms. Ann and Beau again. I really would. No matter what form my autobiography should take, they will indeed have a place in it.
Money, power, respect... Fuck that. What makes life worth living is living life. Experience. Memories. Trying things (especially food and drink) never tried before, or returning to those experiences which bring about the most loved of memories. This is what makes your life so amazing.
Or maybe I'm just a crazed drunk with too many thoughts and a website.
