The Secret Life of Groceries: a book review

On a whim I picked up Benjamin Lorr’s investigative journalism book, The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket, and walked away with a newfound respect for the people who allow us the modern miracle (dark as it may be) of having almost unlimited food options in every grocery store in the western world. We forget that the grocery store as we know it is a fairly new invention, coming into being last century and used as propaganda to bolster support for capitalism. That food is as inexpensive and as abundant as it is, is indeed a miracle when considering the course of human history.

But oh, the price we pay for such convenience and abundance. Lorr doesn’t resort to preachiness, pointing an accusatory finger at greedy Americans. In fact, he willfully acknowledges all the benefits of today’s grocery stores, while highlighting many of the downsides of the grocery industry, particularly as it pertains to the challenging lifestyles of many of the people who devote their careers to meeting consumer demands. Lorr spends significant time with the people who make it all possible: the founder of Trader Joe’s (Joe Coulombe), a Whole Foods employee manning the seafood counter, a female long-haul trucker, an entrepreneur trying to get a new condiment onto grocery store shelves, a man who’s spent years on a shrimping boat. Lorr shines a light on the people we take for granted, and does so in a caring, meaningful way. Hearing directly from his subjects as they share stories about their often-difficult lives, I felt not only sympathy for them, but gratitude that they make my comfortable life possible.

Surprisingly, The Secret Life of Groceries isn’t a call to action in the obvious sense. Lorr doesn’t end the book with “five things American consumers should be doing to make the world a better place.” He actually does the opposite, offering little more than a shoulder shrug at our current plight, conceding that there is virtually nothing consumers can do in their purchasing habits to change the system. Rather, “any solution will have to come from outside our food system, so far outside it that thinking about food is only a distraction from the real work to be done. At best, food is an opening, like any maw, that might lead us inside.”

What about buying organically certified foods? Or products produced from cage-free chickens? Or going vegan? Of this, Lorr writes that seals and certifications “promise us that moments of individual action can create a type of change that in reality only institutional forces like labor laws, unions, and trade deals can begin to approach. They allow us to purchase our ideals from others without ever having to enact them on our own.”

Perhaps not the message readers would like to hear, but also kind of refreshing. It’s not going to stop me from buying 100% recycled paper or using canvas bags, but I get it: my actions aren’t solving the problem; they’re making me feel good. Lorr concludes, “…we have got the food system we deserve. The adage is all wrong: it’s not that we are what we eat, it’s that we eat the way we are.”

If for no other reason than to get a better understanding of all that’s involved in the global industrial food complex, I highly recommend this book.

When Musicians Don't Want You To Like Their Songs

Last week on the podcast 1000 Greatest Misses, my co-host and I praised a song by Mike Viola called “She’s the One” from his very first EP back in 1985. Viola has had an impressive career as a songwriter and producer, but he doesn’t think much of that early release. He caught wind of our episode and wrote a response about his “crappy EP” and how he threw away about fifty copies of it years ago.

And look, I can totally get how he might not be proud of that first effort anymore. 1985 is a long time ago, and he may not even recognize the person he was at the time and probably thinks the songs pale in comparison to what he’s written since. Fair enough. Hell, I’ve done thirteen albums over the past 31 years, and I don’t believe my 1992 album is all that good. I get it.

But I have been approached after a show I’ve performed in and been told how good my keyboard playing was, and even when I don’t agree with that person’s comment – even if I think I kind of flubbed up my performance – my response is always the same: “Thanks for much. I’m glad you enjoyed the show.” It would be foolish and rude of me to say, “This concert was for shit and I played like crap.”

Viola could have just responded, “Wow, that was a long time ago and I hardly remember the song, but I’m glad you dig it,” but he instead basically told us that we were idiots for liking his song. To which I say, “Hey, you’re the one who wrote it. Don’t blame us.”

A similar thing happened to an entire audience back in 2002. Anyone who was in attendance to see Elvis Costello at the Chicago Theatre that year will remember that he was in a surly mood that evening. After a couple of songs, he snarled at the audience and announced, “Anyone who wants to hear ‘Veronica’ can fuck off right now.”

Few artists resort to such buffoonery, but many accidentally achieve the same results in a more subtle way by dismissing a song or an album. Paul McCartney has dismissed the Wings album Back to the Egg (which is silly, because the album rules), Phil Collins has dismissed the Genesis album …And Then There Were Three (also good), and Rush has dismissed the song ”Tai Shan” explicitly, and the album Presto a little less explicitly. And I get it: those may be songs or works that the artists no longer identify with. But they have fans who identify with those works, and when a musicians says – in effect – that a song is crap, it’s a dig at any fan who happens to like it.

I think artists everywhere should be careful about how they approach their past efforts and recognize the love that fans send their way. Look back on missteps not with regret but with mild amusement, and for goodness sakes, when someone praises you for a composition you wrote, just say “thank you” and move on.

The Best Picture Nominees

Ten films are up for best picture this Sunday at the 95th Academy Awards, and for many years I’ve made an effort to see each nomination, though there have been a few exceptions. I didn’t see Black Panther in 2018, The Joker in 2019, and this year I’m not going to see All Quiet on the Western Front or Avatar: The Way of Water, as I’ve heard the former is like watching the first brutal 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan for an unrelenting 147 minutes, and I feel like I’ve already seen Avatar, as it’s basically like the original from 2009, except with water (or so I’m told).

On the app Letterboxd I mark movies that reach me in a significant way – ones I’d either like to see again or that really moved me or excited me or made me think. Some years are duds: in 2021 only two films I saw rose to that level: The Worst Person in the World and King Richard. By contrast, 2022 was a very good year, with six of the 27 films I’ve watched to date (and I hope to see a few more soon) making the cut for me: The Fabelmans, TÁR, Triangle of Sadness, I Want You Back, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. 

Of these six, the last is my favorite movie of the year. Marcel blew me away. It was funny, touching, impressive looking, thought-provoking, surprising…it was everything I want in a movie. And funnily enough, Jenny Slate – the voice of Marcel – is in two of the other films I loved in 2022: Everything Everywhere All at Once and I Want You Back, the latter a solid romcom on the same plain as two other good ones from recent years: Palm Springs and Long Shot. I would be happy watching any of those three films on a Saturday night.

There are people who love to hate on Steven Spielberg (yeah, Amy Nicholson, I’m talking to you), but I certainly don’t understand where it comes from, aside from maybe jealousy or a sense that Spielberg has gotten enough accolades and it’s time to make room for some others. While I get that sentiment, and I understand that people are upset that Jordan Peele’s Nope didn’t get the recognition it supposedly deserved (I haven’t seen it), The Fabelmans is an excellent movie. It also had what I consider to be among the worst previews I’ve ever seen, offering a series of out-of-context shlock that made the film seem like nothing more than a boy finding himself through his love of filmmaking. Nothing could be further from the truth. The film is about the destruction of a family. That’s its essence, and it tackles it beautifully and with much more heart and nuance than, say, Marriage Story, which I found to be laborious despite its wonderful performances (Scarlett Johansson deserved the Oscar for that one).

Everything, Everywhere All at Once was a great romp – creative, frantic, impressive, funny – except for the hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-message near the film’s climax. Aside from that, this was one of those exhilarating movie-going experiences that I was happy to see in a theater.

I’ve already blogged about TÁR, and I wrote, “…while I may not rush out to watch Todd Field’s TÁR a second time, I can’t stop thinking about it. And really, what more could you ask of a work of art?”  Well, since then I’ve decided that I do want to watch it again, along with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Add it to the list!

As for Triangle of Sadness, it wasn’t perfect, but it was an entertaining commentary on social class, with a tad less subtlety than Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 masterpiece, Parasite. Like, no subtlety at all with lots of bodily fluids! But still, it was a fun, suspenseful watch, and I marvel at how smartly Woody Harrelson has managed his career. Who would have thought when he made his Cheers debut in 1985?

Of the six films I loved in 2023, four were nominated for Best Picture, and one was nominated for Best Animated Feature. So which do I hope wins?

For Best Animated Feature, despite how much I love Marcel, it’s not as much an achievement in animation as it is in filmmaking, and I can’t deny the visual triumph of Pinocchio. I also unobjectively support Puss in Boots: The Last Wish since my daughter is listed in the credits!. It also happens to be a good movie. Any one of those three winning would be okay by me, but I wish Marcel had been nominated for Best Picture. It’s that good.

For Best Picture, my favorites are TÁR, The Fabelmans, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. I believe the latter is amazing but moderately flawed, while the first two are just about perfect. Everything Everywhere… is going to win and that’s cool by me, but if I had to choose one I think I’d go with The Fabelmans.

Regardless of the outcomes, 2022 was a damn good year for movies, and I have yet to see Living, Aftersun, White noise, Armageddon Time, Causeway, She Said, Babylon and After Yang. Since winter and spring theatrical releases are historically subpar, I’ll have to spend the next few months catching up on last year’s releases. Here’s hoping 2023 eventually rises to the occasion.

The Space We Occupy

There was once a time when I could fit virtually all of my worldly possessions inside my ’85 Tercel.  When I made the trip to grad school in 1992, I even folded a mattress in half and wedge it into the hatchback, and for the next two years I slept on that mattress placed directly on the floor. Aside from my CDs and books, I had little else. Life was grand.

A few years later, when my wife and I moved into an apartment, then a larger apartment, and then our first home, much of our free time was spent purchasing items to fill the newly allotted space: a dining room table, an entertainment center (remember those?), dressers, coffee tables, couches, cribs and toys. Regular trips to furniture stores didn’t seem burdensome – it was a fun and rewarding experience to build our home lives together – but since those early days of adulthood, the frenzy of purchases has waned, with only an occasional tweak to freshen up the place.

We’ve now been living in our second home – an 1800 square-foot bungalow – for over twenty-two years, and a house that once sheltered a family of five is now inhabited by just my wife and me, our adult children living on their own. You would think that with three fewer people our home would suddenly seem enormous. Not so. The desire to occupy space with objects has been replaced by a different kind of desire: to occupy every square foot of our home with ourselves, as if we suddenly realize that our wings had been confined while raising children and now need to spread wide and reach into every square foot of our home, filling space the way our furniture once did, voraciously, insatiably.

My wife and I have our favorite spaces for everything: a space to listen to music and a space to play music. A space to watch most TV, another space for me to watch football.  A space to read for my wife, a space to read for me.  A space to sleep if we’re both resting peacefully, another space if one of us is snoring. A space to eat when it’s just the two of us, another space when we’re entertaining. All three bathrooms – one on each floor – are utilized, especially since late-night necessities arise with far greater frequency in our sixth decades. The only room we don’t occupy is my son’s old room, primarily because it’s still officially his room, decorated as it was the day he graduated high school, but soon that space will be fair game and we’ll remodel it for some other purpose. What exactly? Who know, but I guarantee that we’ll find something to justify absorbing this space.

Today when we have visitors, the house suddenly feels small, because these people are, um…IN OUR SPACE! What do you mean I can’t use this bathroom?  But I wanted to read in this chair, not that chair. I was about to make breakfast and you’re standing in my way.

How did our parents do it, raising families of four or five or six in a three-bedroom ranch?

If my wife and I are lucky, there will come a time when we have to downsize, discard items, and take with us only our most important possessions as we move into a one or two-bedroom apartment. Will our wings feel confined then? Or will we by then have figuratively clipped them, truncating our desire to stretch freely and inhabit multiple spaces? I hope the latter, but I fear that of all the challenging transitions we endure in a lifetime, this last step may be the hardest.

A New Rock and Roll Podcast

A little late to the podcast game, but what the hell! My music-obsessed friend and I are starting a podcast called 1000 Greatest Misses, shining a light on 1000 undiscovered, obscure, and underappreciated songs that hit all the marks but failed to chart. On each episode and Christopher Grey and I will feature five power pop, AOR, heavy metal and new wave songs from the seventies and eighties, most of it curated from radio compilation vinyl records that aren’t available on any streaming service.

I met Chris as I began buying records in the 00s after a twenty year hiatus. He and his business partner Pete owned a record store called Platterpuss and they would host warehouse sales from time to time. I dipped my toes back into vinyl, making purchases every six months or so. My, how times have changed! Just yesterday I perused by record purchases in 2022, and…well…my habit has grown exponentially. Don’t tell my wife.

But hey, if anyone has a serious problem with vinyl, it’s my podcast partner Christopher Grey. I’m not going to get into numbers here, but let's just say his basement is currently unavailable for a makeover.

Chris and Pete’s record store is now called Cheap Kiss Records, a regular stop on my record shopping rotation in nearby Villa Park, Illinois (as well as online). After accumulating many radio station compilation records over the years - most of which have that one “gem” of a tune that never got properly recognized - Chris decided that it was high time to share his fruits of his labor with the rock and roll world. I hopped on the bandwagon and here we are, ready to rock the planet with forgotten music.

Our introductory episode is complete (and should be available shortly on your favorite podcast app), and in short order we’ll record our first proper episode. More soon…