"Lady Bird" and the value of a pumpkin-spice soundtrack UPDATED

The Guardian review of Greta Gerwig's ah-mazing new movie, "Lady Bird," opens with an interlude about men. The reviewer - also a man, which is no crime - first congratulates Noah Baumbach on the "smart career move" of working with Gerwig (who is also his-as-in-Baumbach's partner), both because Gerwig is talented and because she offers insights into how it goes for the ladies: "He realized that without her voice, he would be yet another guy in his 40s trying to speak for women half his age. (Woody Allen would do wise to follow a similar path.)"

That intro is a disclaimer that suggests the reviewer will not get the movie itself, or not entirely. (A man certainly could get this movie, and this reviewer does, in places. Girls have, since forever, been identifying with protagonists of male coming-of-age movies.) Which is - and I say this as a tremendous compliment - a girl movie. It's a movie about being a girl. I related to it in the visceral way I did, not because I have any familiarity with what it's like to have the precise adolescence depicted - I was never a small-town girl dreaming of the big city, nor a Catholic school student, etc. - but because oh my goodness. Having just mentioned two facts about the movie clear from the first minute or so, it's spoiler time...

The longest winter

I'm as ready for this latest snowy End Times as I'll ever be, if a whole lot more prepared for End Times with refrigeration. Assuming the power doesn't go out, we're set for some time. I've gotten into the rhythm of an impending storm. Groceries, yes, but this time I'm psychologically prepared for this latest round of not leaving the apartment (with the exception of walking the dog). Having seen firsthand that it's just as cold and miserable in Brooklyn, I'm somehow less bitter about my own New Jersey hermit situation.

I have made peace with the situation, and am currently braising an enormous short rib, one that I brought home on NJ Transit earlier this week, as one does. It seemed the right thing for the weather. Every recipe for this seems to call for a Dutch oven, which I neither have nor have the space for, so this is full-on stovetop improvisation. It's stew, basically, but without flour. I first browned the rib in butter, which seemed very professional. I don't have tomato paste, celery, or - potentially more problematic - any broth of any kind, homemade or otherwise. I am, as the Slate cooking series would say, Doing It Wrong. But my impression is that slow-cooking beef in beer or wine, with whichever likely-candidate vegetables are at hand (in this case, carrots, an onion, garlic, and some fridge-dried thyme), can't lead to disappointment. One can always add more salt. How bad can it be?

I think we have, here, the title for the future WWPD cookbook: How Bad Can It Be?

Hermit fail

New Jersey - among other locales, it seems - is in for another round of snow-and-frozen-rain-pocalypse. The local news is providing regular updates on just how panicked we should be; the answer is, as always, very panicked. The town and the housing I live in are also keeping in excellent touch with reminders - rarely does a minute go by when everything doesn't ring or buzz in some capacity to announce that it's snowy and only getting worse. So many dangers! This road-skidding business is no joke, and makes 12 mph as scary as it was when I was first learning. And the falling wires and branches (and whole trees) one is meant to watch out for! But watch out how? Driving can be avoided - everything's closed anyway - but until this poodle learns to use the facilities... And then there are the little things, like how the trash bin outside has frozen shut.

There are also the even littler things - a certain completely inessential haircut trip to Williamsburg-and-environs that was meant to happen after I turned something in, which I've... turned in. (Although it's been so long since I've had a haircut that I keep getting comments on my 'new haircut' so maybe I should just go with it.) Also ever-so-slightly-smaller dream of driving to H-Mart in Edison, a dream duly replaced by the hope that the power doesn't go out (as it has elsewhere in town) and destroy whichever non-Korean groceries I already have.

Because my husband's away for this round of Weather, the main thing is not to go full-on hermit. So far this time I've found ways to avoid that, but give it time. Everyone who thinks they'd want to be alone in a pseudo-cabin in the woods indefinitely, reading and writing, with occasional breaks to walk a fluffy dog, I can attest that even for the relatively introverted, that eventually gets old. It's conducive to productivity, but it has its problems. I've had experiences like, my dreams will be populated by sitcom characters and people I only know/only see regularly on social media. Leaving the house has its advantages.

Questions of the morning

-How do you separate art from artist if the artist is still living? I mean this in a very pragmatic sense. If the artist's dead, it's simple enough. But won't a living artist, to go on producing that wonderful art that the world so appreciates, need to keep whichever lifestyle to which they (no one specific in mind, ahem) have grown accustomed? As in, there won't be any more art from this person if we don't keep supporting them. And if we liked their old stuff more anyway, we're still supporting the living person by demanding more, say, DVDs of "Annie Hall."

-Will it ever stop snowing? It's fine if the answer's no, but I may want to invest, as they say, in the appropriate gear. While not essential, it would be nice to sometimes leave the house.

Ina Garten, Edina Monsoon, and other role models

FreshDirect has arrived in the bustling metropolis where I live, and with it, two $50-off coupons per household. Between the $8 delivery fee, the lower prices on most items than nearby supermarkets, the implicit necessity of tipping, the eliminated need to drive to the store, the reduction in impulse purchases, and the need to reach $125 for the coupon to even kick in, I can't yet tell if this is, like, wise. But it's certainly appealing. It's freezing out, the roads are icy, and strip-mall grocery shopping in New Jersey is something like the opposite of perusing the Raspail organic market in Paris. There are, I suspect, no romantic photos of Ina Garten exchanging banter with someone from the bread department at Wegmans.

It feels very decadent, very Edina Monsoon, having one's groceries brought to one's door, but could well turn out to be the cheaper option.

But what I really can't tell is if it's quicker to choose groceries online or at the store. There's something frustrating yet freeing about not having to physically inspect each onion, when ultimately you're cooking them down regardless and one's as good as the next. So it ought to be quicker. But because you're at home - perhaps with several other windows open with actual work, it can be a procrastinatory sinkhole that, unlike other online shopping, feels deceptively practical.

Practical, that is, until you realize you've had the same FreshDirect window open for the past five hours, going back and forth to it whenever you need to clear your head. Three tomatoes or four? Or is that pounds of tomatoes? How did one tomato just come to over $2? (Actually, that turned out to be a very expensive tomato, which I then removed from the virtual cart.) And which cheese? Is camembert something you can buy sight-unseen? Should I be suspicious that this brand of it costs more everywhere else? When you go to the store, you walk through it and eventually you're at the registers, at which point you know you're done. This way, you enter and never leave. (I have, after several days, submitted the order, and am choosing to ignore the 'modify your order till 5pm' option.)

Drawbacks, then, are the strangely addictive nature of online food-shopping, but also the false promise of NYC-specific treats (striped bass - and all alcoholic beverages - seemed available, but no; dreams of bagels and pastries went unfulfilled), and the let's say Eurocentric aspects of the offerings. Not only is FreshDirect not, understandably, the Japanese supermarket I might want it to be, but rice paper, for example, is not happening. As an alternative, they recommend wax paper or parchment paper or something. The other drawback, of course, is the distinct possibility that with this as an option, and with basically all my work and entertaining these days being couch-compatible, I will never again leave the house.

Part II: Canadian tacos

There will also be a Part III. Till then...

Yes, there were tacos. If you're hooked on New York's Dos Toros, which was inspired by Bay Area taquerias, how could you not want to see the original. The question was: where?

As I've mentioned before, inspired by a trip to Tucson, discussions of Mexican food have a way of becoming authenticity-offs, with any place named on a forum being bland and overpriced food for white people, unlike whichever other place... which, in turn, someone else declares the very epitome of bland and overpriced food for white people. There's always real Mexican food somewhere else in the U.S. (in a different region, if you're in the Northeast; in a different city or neighborhood in the Southwest), but it's never the place being discussed.

It's like which-bands-are-cool, except for some reason the elusive entity is a national cuisine, and the answer would seemingly be to go to a place where everyone else is Mexican - no equivalent answer for indie bands. But the people having the Mexican-food discussion don't want to do that - they want to have been the first white people to have been to whichever establishment, and to then sneer at the later arrivals. They want the place to be discovered, so that they can complain about it.

This phenomenon exists alongside the more straightforward one of people who are in fact Mexican (or of any other background) thinking food that claims to be their cuisine but differs from what they grew up with has been made all wrong. It also, of course, suggests that even for people not of whichever background, authenticity equals tastiness. Which it does not.

Anyway, having read online, from NJ, about how every single taco place in the Mission is the real deal/a tourist trap, the absolute best/the absolute worst, I ended up going with the one everyone seemed to like, whose greatest crime seemed to be charging extra for guacamole. La Taqueria involved a wait but not a round-the-block line, which was a huge point in its favor. A very good meal - different from Dos Toros, but about as good.

The genuine article?

Then we ended up - without any advance knowledge of the place - at Tacolicious, in the Marina, or Lululemon District, which we saw a couple times because the bus went there. Tacolicious is apparently the Murray Hill of taco places, and I should apparently be ashamed of myself. According to someone on Chowhound, "Their food is overpriced and overrated and about as authentic as any Canadian taco." Inauthentic is an odd charge, though, as there's no pretense of strict authenticity. Much of the menu is fairly straightforwardly Mexican-inspired, and what isn't is very much California Mexican, which is, I'd think, a cuisine in its own right.

Putting lime on a Canadian fried-cod taco.

But there's no denying these were not merely fusion tacos but yuppified oned. They were also tremendously delicious - yuppified, but not haute-ified. Not bland and cream-sauce-filled as all cuisines get past a certain price point. Just yuppie ingredients (I had a local-cod taco that tasted like really great fish-and-chips fish) in otherwise ordinary-but-fresh tortillas. And the best guacamole I, at least, had ever eaten. Is $4 a taco (and a taco means two tortillas) excessive? By taco standards, yes. And it costs more than lunch prepared/consumed at home probably would. But by lunch-on-a-rare-vacation standards, or even just high-quality-ingredients-lunch-standards, not really. (Depends how many tacos you need, but with all those free chips, one might well be enough... not that I don't regret not getting all the fish tacos.) This was by such a long shot the best meal of the trip, a statement that will be all the more dramatic when you get to Part III.

Waiting in line with Carrie Brownstein, and other vacation adventures

So this ended up being a bit of a food tour of San Francisco. This fact may be not unrelated to the time spent prior to the trip - lots of not getting out of the house-and-dog-walking-surroundings in NJ, lots of running. This left me in shape enough to walk up ridiculous hills, and prepared to find just about any restaurant meal the best I'd ever eaten. Lunch on the plane had been a bag of pretzels. (Newark's finest.) I was ready!

Below is Part I of an overview. While overall my impression was whoa vacation big city OMG OMG fantastic, in the interest of providing information to the information-seekers out there, I will try to make this post less about my immense gratitude for having gotten out of the house, and more about the pros and cons of various establishments, with the disclaimer that I went to each of these just once. This means erring on the side of seeming more blasé about all this than I really was.

Sightglass Coffee: Am I suggestible? Yes. Gorgeous space. Similar experience to Rojo's in Lambertville or Colombe in New York. A big barn with above-average hipster coffee. Worth it more for the space, but good coffee all the same.

Ino Sushi: We were staying in Japantown, because that's where there was a centrally-located, reasonably-priced hotel, but reading up on the area, it seemed like maybe it's better not to go to a random place. As in, Japanese restaurants popular with the online food-obsessed community are mostly in other neighborhoods. Searching around, I ended up finding what I thought would be the San Francisco version of the place in Princeton that has - not sure how it's possible, but there it is - better sushi than I'd ever had in New York. A place with only sushi and lots of rules, evoking for customers that soup "Seinfeld."

And... while there were rules, including a complicated one regarding minimums, the food itself was ordinary. A tuna sashimi entree arrived and seemed like some kind of joke, for someone who might imagine that $19 worth of raw fish would be an ounce of the stuff. (Why does such an experience happen when traveling? I remember once ordering what turned out to be the world's most expensive cube of feta in DC.) And all the pieces of sushi were minute - a brave stand against American jumbo-fication of all foods, or a ripoff that few will dare call out because who (in a city like San Francisco, at least) wants to be that American?

But that seemed to be the place's gimmick - dealing with naive Americans for whom sushi is an exotic new arrival, and not something that's been readily available since, what, the 1980s, and long since made it to small towns far from the coasts. When the server/proprietor came over to me and explained what I could and couldn't put soy sauce on, the tone of the encounter was more patronizing than helpful. And while the tininess of the portions gave the impression of quality, the taste of the fish, not so much.

Mifune - commenter Aaron's recommendation - which we also ate at was probably the better deal, although I may have ordered wrong. (Long and uninteresting story involving two different kinds of fried tofu.)

Ferry Building Farmers Market: The main takeaway there was that people who live in California and can afford nice vegetables (a stop by a Safeway confirmed that this isn't all of California) are exactly as lucky as one might imagine. I looked at the array and thought of the Union Square Greenmarket, and how it's as good as it can be for not being located in a magical land of tomatoes, strawberries, arugula, etc., all of which look like they come from professional food photography.

But this was also an introduction to the lines. Blue Bottle Coffee, which also has outposts in New York, tempted me away from my no-food-I-can-get-at-home ("home" loosely defined) rule with the promise of a caramelized waffle. Soon enough, after my husband had already waited for a pastry at a different stall and returned, it became clear that this was not a line like any I'd ever encountered, except for airport security or Shakespeare in the Park. It brought to mind nothing more than the "Portlandia" brunch sketch. And then I glanced behind me on this line and saw none other than Carrie Brownstein, in line like the rest of us. (So pretty! So chic! So the reason I'm now going to buy dark-red lipstick.) She, however, gave up. I waited because I'm an idiot. The coffee was good, as was the waffle, but neither would seem worth that kind of a line. I also had a $3 wedge of local cheese, because vacation, and because I basically hadn't eaten dinner, so cheese and a waffle seemed reasonable.

I will now continue to ignore chronology and stick to the question of these lines. The next one, easily longer, was for Tartine Bakery. It had sounded good, and in an apparently (this was later confirmed) interesting neighborhood, so an impressively hilly bus ride later, we found ourselves on line on an otherwise residential block for the next... 45 minutes? It wasn't clear if this was the line for takeout or to sit, or indeed what was on the other end.

When my husband and I discussed the situation - definitely more amused than annoyed, discussing what leads to these far-beyond-what-one-ever-sees-in-NYC lines (the superior weather? the greater commitment to hipsters-make-your-food cuisine?) - we gave one of the two young women in front of us on the line an opportunity first to tell us some helpful things about how the place works (you can get your food to stay, but are not guaranteed seating), then to kind of generally roll her eyes at our rustic ignorance of how it goes in civilization. The lines, we learned, are how it goes in San Francisco. But it's OK because this bakery really is, she explained, that good. Better croissants than Paris, this woman assured us, and she, she made it clear, has been to Paris. I didn't get into the fact that I'm ABD in where to get the best croissants in Paris and elsewhere (Tucson being the Stateside winner thus far, and I say this having extensively croissant-toured New York), but had to agree that these smelled amazing.

The thing with spending a year waiting for a pastry after 10am when you've been up with jet-lag since 6:30 is that once you do reach the front of the line, you're seriously considering whole layer cakes. So there may have been some over-ordering, some subsequent schlepping of the remaining third croissant around San Francisco. But the pain au chocolat was quite good, as well as enormous. It was also oddly similar to (although a better version of) the ones I've made from scratch, which was a kind of vindication. The coffee (Four Barrel?) was fine. Did the line make the food taste better, or just make us order more? Unclear.

Later the same day, though, came the true line extravaganza, this for Bi Rite's ice cream shop. There were four different lines - one for soft serve, it seemed, but an additional three (technically three legs of one line) for the rest. This establishment doesn't get put in bold, because I never tasted the stuff. A long weekend away is only ever so line-compatible.

But just to conclude the main point here, which would be the lines. I've said before that I think faux-scarcity works as a marketing technique, which, well, it does. But does it actually make the food taste better? Once you reach the end of the line, do you just feel obligated to tell your friends that this is the best food of this kind you've ever eaten? Does the line end up making you more cynical, or is that my East Coast-ness talking?

But there was so much more food! Part II to follow.

In search of even-bluer America

I'm going on vacation! To San Francisco! For a few days! In a few days! While readers of WWPD might think I'm just another jet-setting grad student, it's been a long time since I've gone anywhere other than the nearby cities and towns, incredibly long if you don't count going away for a specific work or family reason (such as, for example, an imaginary Belgian in-law getting married).

So! Those of you whose experience of San Francisco goes beyond my own - I was there as a kid and have only the faintest recollection (apologies to my parents, who paid for and dealt with a kid - me - on what may have even been two such trips) - what's not to be missed? Also: what's not to be missed, burrito division. Food generally.

If this is at all relevant, I'll be staying in Japantown, partly because it's cheaper than going to Japan, and partly because that's where it's possible to be not too far from everything yet stay in a nice (from the sound of it) hotel. Also partly because the place one is supposed to stay - Union Square - seemed from Google Maps to be notable mostly for department stores, and not that there's anything wrong with department stores, but eh. (The Japanese mall, however...)

A jet- and poodle-lagged pedagogy post

In Heidelberg with husband and poodle. So I have not kept up with the thread following this post, and I'm way behind on Sunday Styles and the like. I have, however, seen the cargo areas of the Frankfurt airport - evidently two weeks before our arrival, they'd changed how one goes about picking up a pet, but hadn't told us, so that was a completely unnecessary - if not entirely uninteresting - trip to the parallel universe known as Cargo City Süd. (Even small dogs can't always come in-cabin. Inconsequential dog-welfare-wise, assuming the right breed and other factors, but unanticipated-cost-wise, bureaucratic-hassle-wise, something to consider.)

I have, however, read Flavia's latest post, about socioeconomic differences in students' classroom behavior. As usual, lots to think about. To highlight just one angle: student self-advocacy: "Most of us have probably noticed that while some students have no hesitation asking for extensions or extra help or other special treatment (sometimes justified, sometimes not) others are diffident and won't advocate for themselves even when they have a compelling reason." Indeed, although at this stage - having taught for three years and been in school for 300 - I've seen it more as a student than as an instructor.


But yes. There are certain students who come to a teacher to explain that they're really stressed and thus need an extension, and other who won't tell the teacher that, say, a parent just died, and will come in as if nothing happened. I have found it frustrating, as a teacher, that you can only give extensions/exceptions for students who've come to you with their problems, when for all you know the kid who always gets Cs - but who doesn't seem depressed or troubled in such a way as to allow you to ask how he is - might well be going through a worse crisis that he just hasn't told you about. Or - perhaps more poignantly, the kid who gets A-/B+ grades, and would be a star but for some crisis... that you don't know about, or have any way of finding out about. 


I've also, however, found it frustrating as a student when someone comes to a teacher with an utterly B.S. excuse (in one memorable case from pre-grad-school, a student who felt entitled to an A in a language class on account of having lived for a time where the language was spoken, a fact that somehow hadn't led to As on the assignments) and actually gets somewhere with it (as that student did, who went and got that A). As someone who was not raised to expect teachers to care about my feelings, who was never encouraged to take "mental health days" (or physical health days) or to expect to be able to forget my homework at home without consequences, that one could make a fuss about nonsense and get results has always struck me as unfair. To me, but also to students who had super-legitimate reasons to hand work in late, but still managed to get it in on time. 


On the other hand, it can seem self-defeating when a student with legitimate what-have-you fails to mention it, out of pride or cultural background or who knows. 


There's certainly a class distinction when it comes to self-advocacy, but in my experience, it's only a small number of the wealthy students thinking the teacher cares about their problems. I'd almost go as far as to say that there will be that kid in the class who expects sympathy for her hangover/his upcoming family vacation to Tuscany/her chemistry exam later in the week that will determine if she gets to med school so is it OK if she skips her Creative Writing assignments just these few times with no consequences thanks in advance? 


What leads to this attitude? Much of it could be innocuous, like when a student accustomed to life at a tiny private school (or homeschooling) switches to a large college. Just as it's not the instructor's job to know what other responsibilities/leisure activities each student in a 40-person class has that week, it's not the student's to understand that the instructor has 240 other students that semester. Sometimes it really will come as news to a student that a class of 40 will fall apart if each student has his or her own syllabus. But there are no doubt some upper-middle-class parents teaching their kids that the teacher is always wrong, and that the way to an A is complaining, not working hard. Other times still, kids pick up that message without having been taught it, simply by observing what gets results. As in, sometimes that which looks and quacks like "entitled" has no more profound explanation.

So. Self-advocacy can get grades changed, even without the proverbial threat-of-lawsuit-from-parents. But it's almost never something the top students engage in. The top students may also come from wealthier/better-educated family backgrounds, but they'll have been raised in in the Amy Chua "tiger mom" manner, which is to say, as if they were struggling immigrants, whether or not this bore any resemblance to their actual socioeconomic situation. Or they didn't grow up in the States, and so are unfamiliar with the nurturing, "American" classroom environment. Lots of people who make it to grad school were, not surprisingly, raised to get As without insisting upon them, and so are mystified, if not necessarily annoyed, by this kind of behavior.

Is the answer simply to be less indulgent across the board (with whichever exceptions for extreme circumstances), or to encourage all students to come by if they have a problem, as in, to actively reach out any time a student gets grade below an A, just to be sure that nothing external and unfair has stopped them from reaching their full potential? I suppose I lean closer to the former. I'm not confident that I'm in a position to rank my students' obstacles, let alone when I know I'll never have the full story. Many really tough life situations aren't ones a student - rich or poor - will want to tell a teacher. While I do hope students are getting whatever help they need outside the classroom, I think it's reasonable that they won't want to share everything in exchange for the possibility of an extension on some assignment, and thus am totally fine with students sharing, or not, according to what they're comfortable with.

Also, class background isn't always so transparent in a classroom setting, especially in this age of scrappiness one-upmanship. You can guess quite a bit by the type of school it is, but at schools with a great deal of socioeconomic diversity, it may well be your students/classmates with the least financial concerns whose financial concerns you'll hear the most about.

And finally, in terms of teaching not just the subject, but Life Lessons, a (good) boss will be understanding if there's a real problem, but will think less of you, perhaps stop paying you, if a non-problem prevented you from doing your work. But you also don't want to be too harsh, just to make a point. Flavia's approach - a strict policy on the syllabus, paired with an insistence that students in genuine crisis feel free to come to you to work something out - does seem the best way.

Adventures in mildly less provincial Mid-Atlantic-ness

Third trip to Philadelphia since the move, first with the "new" car. The best visit thus far. We started out at the Headhouse Farmers' Market, which turned out to be this, basically. Gorgeous displays of vegetables, and arranged like a Paris market, down a street rather than in a square. But not (too) pseudo-French. One "biologique" vegetable stand, and some cannelés, but mostly the usual. Outdoors, but covered, a plus given the heat.

No market is complete without a fine array of breads and a fluffy lap dog.

Green garlic! (And yes, a "graduate school of arts and sciences" tote bag at a farmers' market.)

Then we had pizza next to the market, at Pizzeria Stella. It was not only the finest pizza we'd had in Philadelphia, but also quite good in its own right. 

After that's a bit of a blur, what with the heat. Potentially violent areas, definitively historic areas, the house where soda was invented, or where the guy who invented soda lived, a bakery very concerned with soda theft (selling the variety they have to open for you, so that you pay first), and losing my sunglasses in a parking lot as we were about to leave the city. (What is it I'm always saying about "investing" in quality items? What I got for not following my own advice.) 

All in all, though, it felt as if we'd all of a sudden discovered that Chicago were a 45 minute (I exaggerate, but slightly) drive from the woods. Not as big or busy a city as New York, but there's much to be said for places where every last street isn't one you've been on at all, or thousands of times as the case may be. (The drawback of going to grad school where you hung out in high school. Astor Place, I know you too well.) Much like the car, it's new to me.