remy remigio

I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road while on the road in India.  I absolutely loved it and devoured the story, and it has become one of my very favorite books.  Prior, I had never read something that inspired a desire in me to exert my creativity just in the way that was  written alone.  It has been an American classic for decades and connects with multiple generations of once-young, once-freer, once-idealist dreamers and adventurers… or anyone who ever day-dreamed of flaking-out and fleeing conventionalities.

This up coming November ‘On The Road’ movie is released with an amazingly fresh breakout main cast along with some more well-kmown and proven actors in more minor and quality supporting roles.  Newer recognizable stars Garret Hedlund (Tron) and Kristin Stewart (Twilight) landed the leading male role and largest supporting female role, while much less known Sam Riley plays the lead narrating character.  These young lesser-known leads are joined by an experienced ensemble cast including Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, and Terrence Howard.

Apparently this film has been trying to be made since 1957 and has failed to manifest until this last year.  Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to the film in the mid seventies and has been attempting to make the project work since, searching for the right script, cast, director, and budget.  Many different high-profile figures have been connected to the film development in the last thirty years, including actors such as Ethan Hawke, Brad Pitt, and Collin Farrell but all the previous project attempts ultimately fell through.  The current project is directed by Walter Salles who directed the 2004 Che Rivera Biopic ‘The Motorcycle Diaries.  Salles took on the project with very specific vision and qualifications, including creating a several week beatnik boot-camp for the cast to become indoctrinated with all of the politics, art, literature, and philosophy that they are portraying. 

TRIVIA: apparently in 1957 Kerouac wrote Marlon Brando asking him to take on the leading role of Dean Moriarty; but was rejected by the actor.

If you haven’t read it, do it. And then see it in November.

My fingers are crossed for it to be good… I have good feelings but you never know.

I went on and on about how much I loved 'Blue Valentine', this review sums it up...

Last night was the 83rd annual Academy Awards televised on ABC and, as I have every year since I was eight years old, I watched with a possibly inappropriate amount of celebration and awe. Every year since I was fifteen I have hosted an annual Oscar Party and did so with great success again this year. One year during an Oscar Party, my brother-in-laws’s sister was visiting from Oklahoma and had never really watched the Oscars. I happened to be sitting next to her when she leaned over to me and pronounced, “This is pretty much like the Superbowl, but for snobs.” To which I responded, “pretty much”.

This year’s Academy Award show, was nothing special in that the show itself was not incredibly spectacular. The hosts of the show, Anne Hathaway and James Franco, were chosen to appeal to a younger demographic and were successful, but were not successful in hosting in such a away that was more than functional at best. Both hosts are attractive, interesting, talented, and charismatic celebrities but the show was simply kind of blah.

Of course I still loved it. Even though the awards given were maybe the most predictable of any year that I can remember. Albeit, I had absolutely no qualms with the recipients of the major awards, but it was painfully predictable. For those that didn’t watch, and don’t care: Natalie Portman won Best Actress (Black Swan); Collin Firth won Best Actor (The King’s Speech); Melissa Leo won for Best Supporting Actress (The Fighter); Christian Bale won for Best Supporting Actor (The Fighter); Tom Hooper won Best Director (The King’s Speech); and The King’s Speech won Best Picture.

My award assessment: I agree, or am okay, with all of the award decisions overall. Collin Firth and Christian Bale were undeniably THE best in their category, and deserved their awards. Ultimately I wanted Natalie Portman to win for her awesome performance, but also really liked Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, and would have been fine with her winning if she had. Melissa Leo was terrifyingly good in The Fighter, and I think her oscar is deserved, but I really wanted Amy Adams to win for her performance in the same film. I like when the awards are given to people who take risks in their craft and are successful, and Amy Adams went against type and blew everyone away with her unexpected performance. Now, I would not have chosen The King’s Speech as the Best Picture. To me it was not the BEST. It was really good, but Best? I am happy that it won because it was truly between it and The Social Network which I would have hated to have won. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed that film, but in my opinion TSN is a an above average made movie about a trendy subject with very little substance. My first choice would have been The Fighter for its honest and well crafted storytelling about real people, or secondly Black Swan for its unprecedentedly creative and visceral moviemaking. But as long as The Social Network, which was favored to win, didn’t win; I am more than okay with The King’s Speech’s victory.

My only major disappointment this year: (other than Ryan Gosling being completely excluded from being nominated for his heart-wrenchingly brilliant and tragically honest performance in Blue Valentine!) is that Darren Aronofsky did not win for best director for Black Swan. I believe he really deserved that recognition for his amazing work on that film and was snuffed. Boo.

Best acceptance speech?: There were several very well executed speeches this year but my favorite was that of Natalie Portman. While Collin Firth was gentlemanly humor-full, and Melissa Leo was erratically and emotional colorful, Portman was the complete package; articulate, gracious, excitable, appreciative, sentimental, charming, and heat -warming. She is great, and she was pregnant. Go her.

I will conclude this assessment with my take on Top 5 Best Dressed:

(Keep in mind that I appreciate looks that are classic but a little different)

#5 Michelle Williams

#4 Cate Blanchett

#3 Mila Kunis 

#2 Hillary Swank

#1 Halle Berry

Until next awards season…

I feel like a real person.  I have a real job and I make real money; this is good.  And while almost everybody I know seems to be getting married (which never stops to boggle my mind every time I hear about another friend!) I am doing the single career thing, and luckily for me it is going well.  

Just as I started to feel bogged down by my work and unable to mentally wrap my mind around the pressure of all the food I am responsible for every day, and training new people at the same time… I got a little boost.  A raise to be exact.  The same day that I started thinking: “I am not getting paid enough for this” my boss sat down with me during my dinner break and thanked me for all my hard work and told me he would be giving me a raise, effective as soon as he could get the paperwork through.  Smart guy.  Suffice it to say, I concluded the rest of that shift with a second wind of energy and motivation. And a new pep in my step.  

Funny story: last week I was training this new line cook Phil.  Even though he is going to be a line cook, everyone gets training in prep so that everyone is capable of actually making the food that we serve.  Anyway, Phil is at least fifty, white, I’m guessing gay, and been working in the restaurant industry for over twenty years.  I learned this while sometime during the middle of the training shift when He asked me if I had been to culinary school.  I told him that I haven’t.  He seemed surprised and I shared that I planned on going within the next year.  I come to find out that he went to the same school that I plan on attending, twenty years ago, and that he has been an executive chef at multiple restaurants since then.  He is now here as a line cook because his last restaurant had to close and he needed work, any work.  Okay, awkward.  Here I am training a former executive chef more than twice my age. Eish.  But I try to not let it phase me.  He was very gracious concerning the circumstances, even when He asked how old I was, which in hearing the answer he almost fell over. 

Another set of responsibilities that I am being expected to master is that of learning and accomplishing our daily prep-inventory.  When I was told this last night, my stomach turned slightly.  Ah! I don’t want to %^@# it up!  But I cooly accept the offer and prepared to stretch myself.  So one of my managers, Kollin, taught me what to do and than set me loose.  I quickly feel in way over my head but like everything concerning this job, I just act as if I know what I am doing and pray to God that I don’t mess up too bad.  Especially because this is math! @#$% math!!  At one point as my brain hovered outside of my body that was counting 6th pans of portioned chicken in the walk-in fridge, I asked myself how the hell did we get here! Doing math!?! Why!!?  My dad was right, I do need math. Stupid numbers and their ways.

With stifled tears of exasperated frustration and hope, I concluded reading the national best seller ‘Zeitoun’ late last night, or early this morning.  

ZEITOUN is the story of respected businessman Abduhlrahman Zeitoun and his family, and their lives in New Orleans days leading up to, during, and the trauma following the devastating hit of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  It chronicles the series of events that led to the American government failing the Zeitoun family as both dignified citizens of New Orleans and as Muslim Americans in the wake of the national disaster.

As the tale unfolded and I was swallowed by enraged sorrow that blurred my ability to read the words on the page clearly, I had to put the book down and remember that it wasn’t just a beautifully well crafted story; these are real people!  What is written is fact, verified by the government, documented proof, witnesses, and the personal testimonies of Abduhlrahman and Kathy Zeitoun capsulated into the form of a captivating memoir by journalist Dave Eggers. 

I was continually impressed by the cool blend of the journalistic point of view woven throughout by the literary sentiment, creating an incredible sense of investment on the part of the reader.  ’Zeitoun’ is what documentaries could be if documentaries could really suck you in and make you care.  

No matter your political, religious, or social leanings, ‘Zeitoun’ is a compelling account of what can happen in the face of fear and chaos; even in America.  As citizens of the human race we are capable of, and should push our selves to, empathiz(ing) for different peoples and choosing to want to see them prosper.  Especially if America is what it is supposed to be.

Read this book.

It has been almost a total of two months since I started working for my restaurant and I feel like I am a winning contestant on a survivor reality-show.  I was one of five prep-cooks originally hired for this new venue, and I am now one of two remaining of those original five.  Due to a number of reasons (fired, quit, stopped showing up) they have left the island.  Since I know that my bosses love me and that my job is secure, what this means is that I am now the brains of evening prep.  And that has come to mean, I have to train, instruct, and scrutinize the performance of new hires.  Again, this is for a job I have had for less than sixty days.  

I. DWARFS

Imagine a Mexican Danny Devito, in a prep-apron and a note pad scribbling down your every word…  Meet Sergio, my new trainee!  He is at least in his late fifties, no taller than five feet, and has been working as a prep cook for over twenty years; also he is mustached.  And I am training him. I don’t think I need to share anymore about that.  You get it. 

II. JEWS

I like my job, I do it well, and I like helping my coworkers as I can.  From this I have good working relationships with most.  One waitress/barista in particular has become a real work friend, and we help each other as much as possible.  She’s running out of cookies or lemonade or cut limes… I’m there.  I’m thirsty? Bam, Janna is frequently inquiring to my hydration needs.  It’s beautiful.  The moment I met Janna I knew she was not from California.  Everything about her, apart from her San-Fran hipster-ish clothes, screamed EAST COAST!  Even the way she relates to customers and coworkers; it’s the “we’re all in this together” familiarity that we west-coasters don’t exude as a unified culture.  A few weeks in, I overheard her mention to someone that she is from Jersey. A-Ha! That’s it.  Seeing that she had piqued my interest, she asks if I’m Jersey too.  I explain that I am straight up Cali, but that my parents are total Jersey.  A few weeks go by, and one day while I’m refilling lemonade she requested, Janna asks me: “Remy, are you Jewish?”.  Yeah. Are you?  She Replied: “Yup! I knew it. I can always spot a fellow tribesman.”

Now We have had new hires in the front-of-house as well as the prep kitchen, and Janna has been training new people as well.  Most new hires happen to be hispanic with varying American cultural understanding and english comprehension.  Towards the end of an evening shift Janna rushes into the kitchen followed by a new hire, Omar, and makes a request. “Remy, is it cool if I have Omar sample the Hummus? He hasn’t ever had it!”  Yeah, sure. And I bust it out.  I spoon out a generous portion for Omar and Janna and I watch him as he shovels the creamy mixture into his mouth.  His eyes spread and fill with excitement as he pronounces his approval.  Janna and I look at each other with pleasure of the confirmation and begin, quite rapidly, giving Omar the lowdown of how it can be used, whats in it, and the people and heritage that call it a staple food. Omar licked the bowl clean and concludes: “that $#!% is good.” We responded: We know.

So I have not had that much desire to cook at home lately since I cook all day at work… But I finally found the incentive in the fact that I have been eating out way too much, since I haven’t really bought groceries, and that’s no way to live.  Well, I love pasta.  And its super cheap, yay.  In San Fran its incredibly easy to get ahold of fresh veggies and I have a little market a few blocks from me where I can get a lot for inexpensive.  Today on my day off I decided to stock up and get creative. So I did.  This is a simple and exotic pasta sauce that is pretty quick to make:

Creamy Tomato Bak Choi Pasta

1.5 Cups Red Wine (any)

2 TBS Minced Garlic

1 TBS Crushed Red Pepper

2 Small bunches of Bok Choy

1 Cup Half ‘N Half

.5  Cup Olive Oil

3 oz. Tomato paste (half a small can)

1.5 Cups (packed) Fresh Basil leaves (no stems)

2 Tsp. Salt (or salt to taste)

1 lb. Pasta

PASTA: I used Rigatoni but that is what I had. Linguini would be good, or Fetticini even better I think. Whatever you decide to use, place in boiling pot of water that has been salted and has 1 TBS of Olive oil to help avoid sticking. My mother taught me that ;) Once it is ready… you know what to do.  (note: mushy pasta is gross! Try to keep it al dente.)

SAUCE: Heat 1TBS Cup of Olive Oil in saute pan at medium heat, once hot place washed and chopped Bak choi in pan and saute briefly (1 minute aprx.) Add Wine to pan and raise heat to high while continually stirring Bak Choi, until wine reduces to half the amount.  Add Garlic, Pepper, and Salt and mix in.  Once Bok Choy appears tender and the leafy parts are somewhat withered, add Tomato Paste and the rest of the Olive Oil.  Return heat to medium.  Stir contents until the oil, tomato paste, and remaining wine have uniformly combined.  Bring to simmer and add the Half ‘N Half.  Stir until completely mixed. Turn off heat and mix in fresh basil leaves until they appear wilted. Pour over pasta, mix, and serve!

Liberation Dance Party Song.

Dog Days Are Over by Florence + The Machine

Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your loving, your longing behind
You cant carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
‘Cause here they come

And i never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
‘Cause here they come

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your loving, your longing behind
You cant carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
‘Cause here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run 

So, 2010 was a very self-discovering, self-reflective, emotionally and spiritually draining year for me.  Very timely, I feel like that is changing.   

In the past few years, inspired by my best friend, I have gotten into the habit of creating ipod playlists that musically communicate whatever season of life I am in.  Sometimes the songs have lyrics that are specifically meaningful to my life at the time, other songs have significance due to the association that I have with them, and still others have been chosen based on the tone or mood that they evoke in me alone.  Some point within the last year I started a playlist entitled ‘New Season’ after, very sadly, all the playlists that I had created in the previous years had been erased from my ipod.  The disappearance of old playlists was very saddening for me, being that I used to be able to go back and reflect on stages of life past and experience them musically.  Specifically, I was incredibly crushed to lose the playlist that I had constructed during my time traveling abroad titled ‘MOBILE’.  So ‘New Season’ has been growing in number of tracks and has been edited down to my liking, but I have been recently aware that it has been time to conclude it, but I have been without a finish that summed it all up.  The playlist includes personal favorites of my year such as ‘Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros’, ‘St. Vincent’, ‘Bon Iver’, ‘Yeasayer’, and ‘Annuals’, all having specific meaning.  

The reason I am writing about this is to talk about the finishing track, or really, talk about the joy and satisfaction of finding that song and being done with my year and my playlist; and the implications.  The song is one that has been out for a while, and is one I had heard and liked several months ago, but I hadn’t been able to really listen and absorb it until recently.  It has appeared in a movie preview and has floated around the indie-pop scene for the last year, it’s called ‘Dog Days Are Over’ by ‘Florence + The Machine’ and it is a perfectly appropriate conclusion to my list, being full of upbeat encouraging rhythm and empowering words that cause celebration and joy as well as a dance party in me.  

Today I met with a very good friend of mine for coffee.  This friend is someone who whenever we hang out alone we always enter into emotionally analytical and spiritually reflective conversations that result in confiding vulnerable truths about ourselves and listening to the other person’s experience of our junk.  This person is an amazing friend, and she is similarly grey in thinking and slow in judgement, and I always end up discovering a lot about myself or the situation by candidly verbally processing it over with her.  Well, today we hung out and caught up about our lives and relationships (plutonic, familial, romantic, and spiritual) and discovered something in speaking stuff out with her.  I have mentioned in previous posts my burnt/shriveled arm that is currently healing.  I spilling a boiling pot of water on the arm; played it down to diminish embarrassment and shame of it’s occurrence and the weakness it proved, as well as up-playing an appearance of competence and ability to not be affected by the unavoidable reality of the pain.  Hmm… how is this like my life?  The answer is, A LOT.  My right arm is an ugly depiction of how I deal in relationships up to this point.  With everyone.  Due to pride, inability to show weakness, desire to look stable, and not be the cause of someone else’s upset, I let my arm burn and suffer in silence until it begins to shed its covering, and people involved say, “Wow, I didn’t realize it was that bad!”.  But at that point there is a worse scar then there would have been if I had been honest about how I felt in the beginning.  This is how I have survived and lost relationships in too many occasions, and I am always left feeling burned.  I want that to be different, I am deciding.  

After we finished our coffee time I asked my good friend if she cared to join me in a private dance party to my liberation song, the concluding song to my New Season that makes me dance and look forward to the progress of the future.  And so she joined me in shamelessly thrashing and grooving to my current anthem of transition and hopefully, relational maturity.

DESIGNSPONGE pic of the week.

super cool ceiling.