A Palate Cleanser

Ingredients

• Walking a bulldog
• Running in 90-degree heat
• Walking into an empty apartment
• Running out of food
• Walking a fine line between authoritative & cool
• Running out of ideas

Instructions

Did I mention that one of the reasons why I'm speeding up this cookbook is because I'm running out of things to complain about? I'm going to pause for a moment to let those who know me well stop laughing.

We good? K. Quite frankly, I think I stopped complaining a while ago. I'd have to go back and check, but at some point I stopped complaining and started dispensing wisdom, thinly veiled as potential "disastrous" circumstances. If you're thinking that I'm thinking "Gee, New York isn't so bad anymore!", you can bite me. What it really comes down to is that whatever I thought was weird or upsetting 2 years ago is now unquestionably normal. Walking through and running into plainly boring and painfully typical, unexciting humdrum that's so undeniable it's almost unnoticeable. Impossible? Oxymoron? No-- it's New York.

Here's what I have left to "complain" about-- or, more in my own terms (as I don't like to think that what I've been doing is as basic and annoying as complaining), what I have left to vent about-- that's not so deeply personal or too intimate to speak of in this setting: because oh YEAH could I fill BOOKS with what I have left to vent, but not here:

- Bulldogs are stubborn and don't like a lot of exercise. UGH, I was so looking forward to being one of those cool New Yorkers who walk a dog through Central Park! GOSH, I guess this means less work for me to do at my new babysitting job involving a bulldog-- annoying!

- I had 8 days to myself in my apartment after my subletter left and my roommate came back, and it was a little lonely. MAN, space and privacy and quiet is the WORST! I hate leaving my stuff everywhere without consequence!!

- The sun is so bright in the summer and, since I run early in the mornings while I'm still wearing my glasses, I can't protect my eyes with sunglasses. FOR GOODNESS SAKES, trading eye comfort for general mobility is such a difficult compromise! Yeah, this summer I got to run for the first time in about 3 years and it's made me such a happier person, but at WHAT COST? SQUINTING?!

- Letting my kitchen run dry has limited the amount of food I can eat in a day. WOW, WHAT THE HECK, like I should ever have to learn how not to waste food or how to prepare cheap, bulk foods in advance! I HATE knowing that I can get by on much less than I thought! NO, one day I will NOT look back on this summer's severe money scrimping with a sense of legitimate accomplishment nor see it as a tangible and uplifting comparison of how far I've come! WHY!

- Gaining a middle schooler and pre-teen's respect is tough. GAHHHH, it's so FRUSTRATING that I am the first person to have noted this problem! SWEET HEAVENS TO BETSY, it's the most difficult part of my new job! My job consists of overseeing a 10-year-old, 13-year-old, and a bulldog named Penny, and she is NOT sweet and I DID NOT meet the family through a trusted personal connection NOR is the family down-to-earth and understanding AT ALL-- GRACIOUS ME, I don't know from WHERE YOU'RE GETTING THESE WILDLY UNSOUND ASSUMPTIONS! I thought we agreed that my jobs must ALL SUCK!

You get the point. 

I still have 9 recipes left. You will not disappointed. However, isn't kind of a major disaster if I end this cookbook with a few recipes of... positivity? Nay, success? 

Sounds fun. But let's not get too "glass half full:" I want to hear from you all one more time. Send me your gnarliest, worst, most grueling ingredients of chaos for one huge, really bang-out fest of negativity focused venting. That's what we love. That's why we're here. 

Email me at annaleighmarr@gmail.com with your ingredient(s) by Wed. Sept. 16th at midnight, in whatever amount, length, or hilarity. GUYS, your chance at FAME! Truly, though-- what better than a recipe full of diverse and nuanced collective shit? 

Oh; right. That.

TV Dinner: Sitcoms, Writing, & a Side of Philosophy

Ingredients

• Classic sitcom television
• A comfortable basement full of crafts
• "Friends"
• The Sims
• YA novels by Meg Cabot
• Storytelling classes
• Almost every 1/2-hour live-action comedy currently on TV
• Almost every stand-up special on Netflix and Spotify
• Unrealistic social expectations

Instructions

1. Grow up in a family that doesn't limit the amount of TV you watch.

2. In your formative years, read vigorously. Read what you want.

2. Spend your childhood playing games that encourage a God complex, build story-writing skills, and create unrealistic social expectations. (Lookin' right at ya, Sims.)

4. Choose one of the greatest sitcoms of all time to be the first TV show with which you fall head over heels in love. Space out the entire 10-season box set over a span of 6 years, planned so that you watch the series finale-- a culturally historic finale whose outcome you manage to keep secret from you the whole 5 years since the show ended-- of a show titled "Friends" with all of your very best friends a week before your high school graduation. Fail to recognize the overbearing significance you've placed on the emotional ending of your favorite show, about friends, watched with your best friends right before you're all about to leave each other.

5. Don't watch TV in college. Or much in high school, really. You've got more important things to do, and it will wait.

6. Take a storytelling class as part of your theatre major-- which is another way of saying, "use your already ultra-active imagination to add more narrative to your already dramatic and/or exaggerated life."

7. Binge only on the shows you truly love and care about during holiday breaks from college. This is how you'll find out who you really are.

8. Start watching (and listening to) everything once you're done with college. You've got a lot to catch up on! End up watching only what you like (remember, you've found out who you really are) within a week.

9. Listen to or watch as much stand-up comedy as possible, wherever you can find it. It provides great insight on the human experience. 

10. Read female writer/actor/improvisor/comedian memoirs that change your perspective on writing, women, comedy, and the world. Try to figure out how to meld Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler into one human... but don't stress when you can't think of one yet, because this list excludes your personal soul hero, Kelly Ripa, so it's pointless.

11. Watch the bad sitcoms because it's great to learn what doesn't work-- and they could end up Seinfeld-ing the shit out their show and become a sensation! 

12. Obsess over a new, fairly unknown sitcom because it's shot multi-cam and the 2 leads were already friends so their chemistry is insane and they shot a live episode that blew apart how you think about comedy and TV and they announced that their 3rd season will be entirely live. Realize that you've gained a vocabulary for sitcoms and lost a few days.

Fridays 8/7c, NBC: be there.
I'm not being paid by NBC but I'll gladly become a promoter if that position exists.

13. Ingest storytelling and comedy podcasts on the go. Inevitably start crafting your own story in your head when you take off your headphones. Get way deep in stand-up comedian Pete Holme's podcast "You Made It Weird," where, in the 3rd act, he always asks about God. Indulge in the fact that the comedians & actors getting interviewed are people, too-- kind of like how you're an actor trying to do comedy and you are also a person. You aren't trying to make people laugh all day, are you? No. You have opinions on death and God and family, don't you? Yes. You're seemingly super chill, too, aren't you-- aren't you?!?! 

Wha--... Pssh.

A few months ago, I'd tried to tell a close friend about my obsessive tendency to write in my head: when I walk around, I think of dialogue-- all day. I intricately imagine conversations between myself and other "characters of my life," people who I wish I had said or could say certain things to in real life but couldn't or can't. The only way I can fall asleep is by crafting feel-good scenes with pleasant people I know. I write so many romantic or relationship-based scenarios in my head that I worry if I'm confusing fact from fiction, altering my real life perceptions of people. It's exhausting, creepy, and generally unproductive, since I never even end up writing down some of the great dialogue I think of-- and, uh, yeah, there's some good stuff going on up there! It's almost subconscious and I can't stop.

She had no idea what I was talking about.

However, the other day I found someone who did-- because she does it, too! This friend asked, "Did you watch a lot of TV growing up?" YES. Oh, man, I have known that I have had a huge romantic comedy complex for years, but I never connected it to having a well-rounded television education!! My parents were not "screen time" parents (ugh), so my sister and I had, and still have, an incredibly healthy relationship with TV-- WOAH-K, I'm bordering on a whole 'nother topic you don't want me to get into.

I watched TV while I scrapbooked, crafted, and continued to be the all-around coolest kid in my school, all in my basement at weird hours of the day. This meant I watched tons of repeats, thus a score of old, educationally solid classics: Gilligan's Island, I Love Lucy, The Facts of Life, All in the Family, Family Matters, Three's Company, The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss, Cheers, The Nanny, Saved by the Bell; and also Sister Sister, Clarissa Explains It All, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, & Full House (reluctant to put it on the "great" list, but yet here it is). Plus, repeats of a lot of then-current, bad to mediocre shows: Reba, What I Like About You, 7th Heaven (admittedly not a sitcom but screwed me up just the same), Brotherly Love, According to Jim, 8 Simple Rules, damn Disney sitcoms. And, finally, just as important as the actual classics, I watched repeats upon repeats of contemporary classics: Boy Meets World, That 70's Show, Will & Grace, Scrubs, and, the holy grail of sitcoms, Friends. (You can disagree with me. That's fine. There are enough people to agree with me that I am ensured you don't count.)

(I am aware that "Seinfeld" is glaringly missing from that list. Please direct your anger to my parents and the Disney Channel.)

"Seinfeld" or no, my understanding of the world was largely formed by TV sitcoms. The shows listed above are only the shows I watched a lot of-- so there was even more TV watching going on. Everything I knew about sex came from "Friends," which was a pretty racy show for a 7th grader to obsess over. 

On "Friends," I learned people had sex on the first date. When I started watching "New Girl" almost 10 years later, I learned that you should expect it on the 3rd date. 

According to most sitcoms, you fall in love with your friends. Your best friends lives either in your building or on your block. You can consider it a relationship after one date. You know, super accurate conceptions of all types of relationships. Other than that, I got my life lessons from books. Up until required high school reading, I chose books much under my reading level but much on top of my favorite genre: romantic or situational comedy (obviously from the YA section, obviously the obnoxious rich girl series "The Clique"). Hey, in case you haven't guessed: I was shy and spent much of the time when I wasn't at theatre or choir rehearsal, piano lessons, or volunteering somewhere... at home. I was an introverted homebody who liked watching, reading, or writing stories. Some were in my head, but a lot were on TV. These stories shaped my social expectations-- emphasizing the romantic and the dramatic.

Another question my friend asked the other day was, "Did you play the Sims?" Um, was I ALIVE in the early 00's?! 

"I could go on for hours about how the Sims screwed me up," she said. Her words may have been "ruined my life;" I don't know, I don't have a great memory for extremes. Still, I totally get where she's coming from: for years, I created perfect, archetypal people in perfect houses with unlimited money (you know I used those cheats!!) and followed a formulaic sequence of events in order to get Person A to fall in love with Person B, get married, and have a perfect family. Whenever I didn't want them to be perfect-- because that's never interesting-- I'd write in conflict. I'd choose which dial to turn a little bit too far in the wrong direction. I was playing God. And when I wasn't doing it, I'd watch my sister do it, witnessing how every move she made affected her fictional world. Satirist and my best friend Fran Lebowitz says it best:

When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree... Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.

My friend (not Fran, the other one) and I communed about the annoyance and exhaustion of constantly writing and directing mini-plays in our heads. Strangely enough, we also agreed on a powerful yet maybe contradictory stance: creating a narrative for your life is stupid. 

Yeah. First got into this one through that 3rd act, "the God part," in Pete Holme's podcast. Creating a narrative for your life is unproductive, overly consuming, self-centered if not narcissistic-- overall not good. I know this because I do it! Everyone does it! It's where you're the star of the movie of your life, and since it's your life it's the most important movie in the world (your world). You think of others in your life as characters in your movie-- leads, supporting, even extras. Everything connects, so everything matters, no matter how small. For example,

Those 4 minutes late that you left from your apartment this morning landed you on the train platform at the exact moment for you to run into that guy from that party this past Saturday that you weren't even going to go to until you felt too sick to fly home for the weekend, and the only reason you got sick was because you drank out of a weird blind date's cup even though you knew he was coughing, but now you've got the Train Platform Guy's phone number AND you see it has the same zip code of your best friend, who actually set you up with Sick Blind Date Guy, since she's been encouraging you to take risks and meet new people-- like Train Platform Guy!-- and it's a sign, it's a sign, it's a SIGN, IT'S A SIGN, THANK GOD YOU HAD TO TAKE AN EXTRA LONG POOP THIS MORNING!!!

 

I... can't.

I admit I'm a culprit of the self-centered metanarrative, but now I at least recognize and squash it immediately. Finding out that the wallet I thought was stolen in New York City for 2 years, which I'd blamed for everything bad that happened in those 2 years, was probably never even lost but simply hiding on the M100 bus the whole time? That pretty much squelched narrative for me. Oh, and standing out in the middle of the ocean, balancing on tiny reef rocks at low tide on a beach in Washington? A stellar reminder that nothing matters.

 

"Nothing matters" isn't "I'm going to go jump off a bridge." It is "Not every little thing in my life is a big deal or greatly consequential. Whether or not I text this guy today or whether or not I quit my sucky day job next week, these reef rocks will still be here; and in a few hours they will be completely covered in water; and tomorrow morning they'll be here for a human to stand on, in the middle of the ocean. Whether I'm there or not."

So, I constantly write in my head but squelch any attempt to connect those scenes in a grandiose way. That's a huge step from the giant romantic comedy that I've for so long thought my life needed to be, thanks to my formative social education in TV sitcoms (and 7th Heaven). I really do watch only 1/2-hour comedies, so if someone can get me to enjoy watching movies or hour-long dramas I will pay them generous amounts of money/cookies. 

But, at the end of the day, isn't it great that I still sometimes see my life as a sitcom? Because I know that's what I want to write! And act in! Oh boy, am I no sketch writer; I will never be joke joke joke joke joke. And other than sitcoms or romantic comedies, I latch onto comedic essays, non-fiction, memoirs by female comedians. You know what none of these memoirs or books on romance do? Create narrative. These ladies do not weave together some fantastical, romantic psychoanalytic narrative to explain the people they are today. They hone in on the most entertaining, meaningful, hilarious, important, or accessible topics and moments, and, while these individual essays all speak to each other, they aren't dramatically attached. These women have some great perspective with a "don't sweat the small stuff" attitude. They focus on staying true to yourself, working hard, and loving large. Without heavy or unnecessary meaning. They, like the reader, just want to get to the good part: what's true. And that also tends to be what's funny.

I have no solution to this problem of writing in my head, except that maybe I should start writing it down. Strangely enough, that dialogue is actually more dramatic indie film than 30-min sitcom... I'll have to deal with that when I get to it. But I am looking forward to finishing these 52 recipes, not only to be done with this 26-month-long 12-month project, but also to end up with a bunch of small stuff that I personally find pretty funny-- and that adds up to a whole lot of nothing. 

Beach Liquids

Ingredients

• Capri Suns
• Deep Eddy's Vodka
• Carlo Rossi-style iced tea
• Warm beer
• A gigantuan mason jar full of: Chambord, whiskey, vodka, lemonade, Budweiser, and a splash of ginger ale 
• Atlantic ocean water
• ... um... Number 1...

Instructions

When you go to the beach in New York City, you should expect crowds. You should expect a commute. You should expect to hide your alcohol. None of this is off-palette for the daily grind of a New Yorker. But everything else? Delightfully unrecognizable.

I'd never beached before in NYC, nor had really anyone else in the gang of Northwestern theatre major thugs that invaded Rockaway Beach with me. But now we are experts. Because we've been there once. And we'd like to share with you wisdom on how to handle your liquids on the beach. Because we're really smart, and really wise, and we've beached. 

Shop like the cool Snack Parent at soccer games: Capri Suns now come in a fruit & vegetable flavor called Super V, so there is no reason why you shouldn't be picking up at least 2 boxes (1 original Capri Sun flavor, of course) of these bad boys to satisfy practicality, delicious fun, and nutritional needs during your beach stay. The intense amount of all-natural sugar also proves a valuable pick-me-up when you inevitably accidentally take the A express train to Lefferts Blvd. instead of Far Rockaways. By the way: When you board the A express train, which should take you straight to the beach, don't inevitably accidentally take the A train to Lefferts Blvd. instead of the A train to Far Rockaways. They are two different trains! Who-da thunk?

 

Keep drinks, food, your credit cards, everything in a cooler: Gosh, guys, warm clementines and grapes aren't much more fun than warm drinks. But there's nothing worse than picking up your bottle of beer from where you left it in the sand and receiving hot liquid wheat in your mouth. So how about we stick everything in the cooler and call it a day. I don't feel like I need to say this, but I understand and I recognize that how I feel isn't always what's right: You also have to pack ice with your cooler. When you bring a cooler, you must also buy ice. It's not enough the bring a cooler; it is enough to bring a cooler and ice.

Don't watch the skies for vodka; bring your own!: Deep Eddy Vodka has a lovely blimp with a lovely banner and an old-timey, 1950s-style pinup ad-- and, sure, his name makes you laugh. But you'd all much rather have your own supply of vodka to mix with the giant jug of Arizona Iced Tea you brought. Don't second guess yourself next time; bring the vodka, or else you'll talk about how you should've brought the vodka-- all day. All day, while Deep Eddy flies majestically above...

Pack cups, fool: Oh, so you did manage to remember the vodka along with your Arizona Iced Tea? Now, ow the heck do you suppose you drink it?! Cups are helpful, but if you're lacking the cups (and the vodka) and are wondering what to do with your lifetime supply of Arizona, never fear-- Northwestern theatre major alums are here. We know a little technique called "The Carlo Rossi" or "Carlo Rossi-ing" from our days drinking of $13 jug wine. With said jug-o-wine, and everyone sitting in a circle, one person wraps 2 fingers around the skinny glass handle and swigs from the spout of the jug itself. She then-- and this the important part-- keeps those 2 fingers gripping the handle and passes the jug to the next person, who wraps his arm around and under the original drinker's arm and takes over the tiny handle with his own two fingers. Make sense? Just remember the wrapping arms element and the fact that you're all swigging from a large, cheap jug-like container. You'll be fine.

Know your bathrooms like you know your heart: That means you probably don't have all the answers. You need to ask for advice. You might have to ask a stranger-- just do it! Learn as much as you can about the bathrooms-- where they are, where more are, mainly where the nearest one is-- because that's how you'll get through the day. Sure, a quickie in the ocean can relieve your pent-up frustration for a bit. Heck, it might even get you through a couple of hours. Yet, we all know that using nature's toilet isn't a permanent solution; you need stability. You need commitment from a trustworthy toilet. Convenience can only get you so far, until there's simply too much of yourself that you need to let out-- and the ocean, though easy, isn't ready to listen. And hey, let's remember: there are some people who can't go in the ocean-- and that's OK, too! Some people have a mental block that prevents them from fully opening up right away-- or at all-- to a peeing situation with which they're unfamiliar. Not everyone can do it, and they needn't feel pressured or "wrong." If this is you, you're searching straightaway for an actual bathroom and I guarantee you'll find it. I mean, almost everyone gets to one at some point. But perhaps we can all agree to get there quicker because it's really so gosh darned worth it. (We're drinking a lot of liquid.)

Mixology is a relaxing, educational activity to follow your day at the beach: While concocting cocktails on the beach can be super fun, sometimes you save your fanciness for afterwards. Who wants to pack more than a 6-pack to a beach an hour and a half away, anyways? Take your beach crew back with you to someone's apartment-- preferably one with an accessible roof, since you'll still be anti-indoors! screw walls! the moon counts as nature!-- and continue your day of revelry by playing chemist. Pretend you're in potions class at Hogwarts, or you're a mysterious and highly tipped bartender in Prague-- whatever helps you keep forgetting who you really are in this hard, hard city. And if today is about escape, what better way to free your mind than to mix a strong amount of Chambord, vodka, whiskey, and "any light beer" with... really anything else? (No, not anything else; let's respect our pallets here. Yes, this is Adult Jungle Juice; let's not forget.)

 

Oh, and hide your alcohol on the beach! It's illegal, guys! Seriously!

For the record, we didn't have any.

We also didn't swim 3 times on the surf-only beach, twice after being told not to. Nor did we take extensive costume measurements for one of our friend's upcoming regional theatre role, in the middle of the beach. The beach is whatever you make of it, children. You don't get many opportunities to be frivolous, carefree, and barely clothed on the dirt streets of New York-- at least not without feeling bad about it-- so drink in that fresh ocean air without the smell of smoke and garbage. And drink another water Capri Sun beer water for me.

What's Waa-Mu?