The Second Law of Thermodynamics

"The law always wins," -- retired FBI agent  Steve Moore,  not square enough not to know better.

If we grantt sufficient levels of cognitive awareness behind the assertion, all humans have coping mechanisms for those compartments lacking in emotional fulfillment, and my relationship to the family who ran the Golden Lake Chinese take-out on the cross grid at 20^th and Market Streets was one of those, though points of reference are clandestine and otherwise relatively infinitesimal, as thin  as gruel; clandestine because it often involved the envelope of darkness in the depth of night, sometimes barreling my mobility device in a rush of motor parsing our fortuitous lower atmosphere, with its prevalence of nitrogen and the lesser one twentieth amount of oxygen most complex organisms need to keep hemoglobin enriched and flowing; Infinitesimal because I was simply a responsible customer not truly overtaken by culinary aesthetics one might find in a late eighties avant garde parable like Tampopo, a niche film, forever endeared to me, but let us condemn the impatience which never gave Juzo Itami enough credit for the absolute joy of life she embodies, whether it be through gangsters in their last moments discussing pigs guts or saving an old man choking to death at a noodle counter. Golden Lake was more hit or miss with indulgent carbs than a true gateway into the glass encased globe of cultural diversity. The restaurant was nothing more than a ground floor conversion of Philadelphia’s industrial era row homes, as you can see from the photo, and as is usual for powerchair dependence, braving the one step up with a left turn to enter into the well trafficked linoleum was a hazard, so the children met me at the partitioned glass door, or their mother, less often the men, men whom would not tolerate my queries to them in American English, always for the sake of an article, in this case something along the lines of an assimilation antithesis given the sinews and reticent, warded off nature of Chinese and Korean social groupings within American urban environments. Egg foo young, indifferent or enthusiastic, we have transposed it into generic expectation, kilograms of steamed rice which hold their shape, a nearly rubbery omelet entrapping pork, shrimp, onion rims, perhaps caramelized, the type of takeout which threatens the poor into a stoic acceptance of nutritious cardboard. We’ve all been in one place too long if these are the threadbare locomotions we’ve left to mourn.

Taiwanese Mushrooms

Interesting, is it not? Chiang Kai-shek casts a long shadow, buried so deeply that he is finessed into the violence of the culinary arts, but Taiwanese and mainland China's social norms aren't all that different. The island may be more fluid, speculatively less corrupt than the lying hatchet men in Beijing, but it boils down to the same thing: Homogeneity and repression under male dominion for the greater good, and though it is an entirely different subject, it may be why Japanese pornography is so outlandish, riddled with abuse of prescription drugs: Western promiscuity and permissiveness is an indigestible element, so Asians go at it when it comes to sexual stimulus. If Europeans vanished tomorrow no one would notice. China and Japan and the Vietnamese would pick up where they left off, easily able to absorb millions more in atrocities, and we can root for the Emperor from the owner's box at the right hand of heaven.

Eat Drink Man Woman was viewed intimately a very long time ago, illutrative of the fact that Ang Lee is a loving optimist who finds good karma possible for all. Seeing it again wasn't needed, but did remind a terrorist that aesthetic excellence is redeemable, worth striving for, and can even halt the decline of sensory deprivation from grief. Like Tampopo, it gives misanthropic energies a place to rest, even if no armistice was ever signed after the Communist takeover. The Republic of Taiwan should exist. It does not because the United States simply doesn't want the fight, as it slowly declines into not being able to wage a serious conflict with the PRC, and the Politburo plays a clever waiting game.

If China becomes the dominant global power toward mid-century, then it becomes a game of Waterworld, and Jinpings's successors will resort to tea worker exports, a last resort, collectivism defeated against a dead ecosystem.

Barter Economy

My favorite foreign release is Tampopo, and if I torture myself into buying the DVD and then selling it back, or Amazon gets the instant viewing rights, or in longer odds, it plays on my broadcast channels, it is ripe for dissection, however much I might wish for a photogenic memory, this is not one of my gifts. Culling the vignettes I can recall is not entirely satisfactory, though it might startle some of you that a film like this gives me a rare light-hearted delight, a sense of resolution that allows me to hold out, surviving gravel lungs and all, inclusive of supporting the Japanese if they harbor any future hope of continuing to humiliate China. If the boys of WW2 had played their cards with more acumen, Mao might not have ever had the opportunity to lay the mainland to waste.

Let me roll back a prior hostility slightly: Douglas's A Solitary Man turned out to be a wicked enjoyment, a rare moment when I could set aside my antagonism toward the actor and relish his deconstructions. This film is a subtle amalgam: a more incisive war of the Roses absent the poignant finality, an inside commentary on long winding A list twilight, and a softer, if still edgy, Falling Down, which I've mentioned is Michael as the anti-hero that I liked; but Falling Down slams the brakes and winds itself up in law and order moiety. A Solitary Man refuses this safety catch, and is stronger for it, such that may lend itself to future use.

I should not be posting, but my lungs have nearly reset, and depending on how much I catch up, we'll return to The Brothers Rico shortly. Off to bed.

Seafood Risotto

I ate as soon as I woke today, putting an end to that particular drama, if only because I heated up a risotto with a nice helping of fish, seafood, and it made two meals, recalling the early sequence in Big Nightwhere Tucci's lone customers are baffled by the seafood risotto that Shalhoub's character would see as a metaphysical victory for the culinary arts. I ain't quite sure what it is about my hard-fuck love for this film, perhaps nostalgia for basically fictional constructs, but it involves inimitable qualities: I equally would have needed a culinary education on the miraculous properties of risotto as a rice, just as the couple and I would have also indulged in an unschooled query over the lack of shrimp, or mussels in the shell.



Love is a many splendid thing. Be patient with me until next week, and understand that my penetrations take time, even if I may not have the luxury to complete them, entirely.

Big Night is not a perfect metaphor, and corollary relatives like Tampopo have a slightly better infused aesthetic sense, but nothing makes me long to be fully Roman more than this quiet masterpiece, which is just a shade off, by that much, with a made for television look.

Please, be kind, and come fetch me back to Tuscany. Spastic only longs for a small glimmer of happiness. Ciao!