Consume or Taste

Some of you may know that this year I have started on a diet to loose a lot of weight. So far it seems to be working (TK pounds and counting). Essentially it’s simply limiting my calories but I have also changed what I eat and even how. That started mostly out of necessity; I needed meals with fewer calories if I didn’t want to just cut my regular meals into a fraction of what I used to consume. So I stared eating more things I hadn’t before as well as developed a taste for things I used not to like. Examples? At home I eat spinach on nearly a daily basis and zucchini is now one of my top foods. For people that have known me a long time that is probably moderately shocking.

But I’ve also started to regard food differently. Quick lunches are no longer hefty sandwiches picked up at Wawa, or tempura called ahead for. Often it will be yogurt and a small bag of baked crisps. When I do plan ahead I can make myself something tasty like a thought out sandwich or a hummus plate, maybe some sort of chicken dish. But often lunch is just fuel.

And I’ve recently noticed that this has made me think about food differently. I recently returned from New Orleans where I would have gorged myself off my diet had I not also walked 4-6 hours each day. But eating down there made me realize that I no longer regard food with the idea of “eat”. Depending on the food I think of it in one of two ways: consume or taste.

When I have a quick lunch I just consume it. It’s mainly fuel to keep me going. If I need a quick snack like a cereal bar I consume that too. But when I get something like anything I had in New Orleans or when I make myself something really nice I taste it. And splitting up my meals into two mental categories has been the trick that has made my diet sustainable. If I went to lunch each day wanting something that was a pleasure to taste then I would soon grow disappointed on most days and probably would have dropped my diet by now. But I don’t have that as a goal. I just want to consume it and then enjoy the rest of my lunch break reading and talking to people. I’m much more likely to want to taste my dinner, when I can spend some time preparing it or mulling over a menu. Having one tasting meal a day keeps the joy in food, because I love food, but also lets me stay on my diet without feeling daily dissatisfaction.

There has been a good amount of compromise in my diet since I am now watching my calories. But like with writing I find that I work better when under some sort of pressure. I’ve experimented more in what I can put in my tasting meals. I find that some salads I consume (generic table salads) but some I have incorporated into tasting meals (arugula, spinach, sun dried tomatoes). Vinegar sauces have become much more common in my dinners. I have also deepened my romance with Sriracha sauces, both the more common pepper sauce as well as the garlic pepper relish. They add spice, flavor and essentially no calories. This is truly the food of the gods.

Maybe I’ll start posting some recipes if people want to know what I’ve been working on. I also welcome any healthful suggestions. But this post is really just for me to get the idea of taste vs. consumption out of me head and onto non-literal paper. It’s a concept I only just discovered I had been using and it’s been amazingly helpful. Maybe someone else will find benefit in it as well.

Hunger Games review

I left Hunger Games really liking it. There were some things that were slimmed down but I felt that not a lot of importance had been omitted. The main thing I felt was missing was a lack of scale to the nation. Instead of a whole country converted to districts it felt more like a city state with outlying villages, but I wrote that off because that scale doesn’t really enter the books in a meaningful way until the second installment.

But the next day I thought about it and felt that there really is a number of things missing from the movie.

Jennifer Lawrence is really good. I didn’t see Winter’s Bone but found her impressive in X-Men: First Class. Josh Hutcherson as Peeta was good enough, though he doesn’t hold the same “gentle giant” sense that the character has in the book. Here he’s a bit too small and his face too boyish. Perhaps that will make his character all the more shocking in the 3^rd movie but for now the casting choice seems too thin. The rest of the tributes work well enough though none of them are really given much material to work with. Rue essentially has two or three scenes, once of which is simply her hiding in the ceiling. It’s nice that Isabelle Fuhrman from Orphan got a few lines but the rest of Kato’s gang just seem like cruel muscle without any individual characters in there.

But as I said, there is a lot that’s smoothed over to the detriment of this movie. Woody Harrelson’s Hamish is serviceable but there’s no regret or even conflict over his role of mentoring two children in a Thunder Dome situation. He also makes alcoholism recovery look like a breeze.

Another character that is neutered, this one to an even greater extent, is Cinna. He doesn’t come across as calculating or subversive. He is more like a contestant on Project Runway that doesn’t listen to criticism from the judges than a counter-cultural radical as he is in the book. In the movie he’s a sympathetic shoulder and that’s why Katniss takes to him. In the books he makes it his mission to fight the establishment which is why Katniss finds strength in him as an ally.

Finally, there’s portrayal of Katniss’ romantic life. This is probably the most problematic part of the movie for me. The book is in first person which comes with its own set of limitations. For instance, in the books we only find out about District 11’s riot in the second book, long after it happens , because this is when Katniss finds out about it. Seeing it in chronological context in the movie made the seeds of revolution feel like they were planted instead of just being informed of something important later on. The upside of the first person narrative is that there’s no actual romance in the first book. The entire emotional engine of Katniss and Peeta is that she is being completely calculating about the whole thing. She feels nothing for him (yet) and so there’s a tension in their “romance”. Every action she takes to look kind and loving is a lie. The more Peeta keeps true to himself in the arena the more of a show she puts on for survival’s sake. In the film we see none of this and it’s quite possible that their interactions are nothing more than a teenage romance which weakens the very core of Katniss’ character. Gale barely figures into the story at all. In the books he’s a hunting mentor to Katniss; in the movie he simply tags along while she hunts and pines for her while she’s gone. With that dynamic chopped it’s is another layer of Katniss that is thinned out as well.

What bothers me is that in cultural context The Hunger Games is seen as a counter-Twilight series. Instead of the epically passive Bella you get the compartmentalized, driven Katniss. There’s a romance but it is started as an act and takes second place to the heroin’s role in the larger story of revolution. The movie can’t take that role though. While not nearly as socially repugnant as Twilight, there are too many similarities in the movies for it to find similar footing to the books. While not abusive in the same way as Twilight we are still given a couple made up of a pro-active and driven character and a passive, lovesick one (a formula I call the coward's romance since the only obstacles are self-imposed), with a third party looking in without enough emotional importance to truly make a tension filled triangle.

I think a fair way to describe the film is still enjoyable but on reflection perhaps less satisfying. I don’t know whether reading the books has helped or not. Reading them may have made me seen more faults in the movie, or it may have let me imprint emotional depth into it that wasn’t conveyed in the film version alone. I do not know if having read the series was a hindrance or a boon. But I have read them so I know that the world building increases in the subsequent installments and that the emotional connections established here are replaced with different ones so I do have that to look forward to. But part of me wonders if the story would be better served with a director with more vision.

On a scale of -5 to 5 I rate Hunger Games a 3.

Bad mojo on TV

Last night I did two things pertaining to TVs shows revolving around magic.

1. I gave up watching Grimm.

I have the last 9 or so episodes sitting on my hard drive and have never felt the slightest urge to sit down and catch up. That pretty much my new kiss of death for a show. If I'm in the mood to watch TV, see over 7 episodes of something that's unwatched and still feel like I have to options I give up. That's how Once Upon A Time bit the dust and it is how Grimm went.

2. I rewatched the (unaired, not picked up) pilot for 17th Precinct.

 It's a cop show (bear with me) set in a world where science and the enlightenment never happened because magic works so it was never needed. Instead of using fossil fuels and electricity buildings are networked with fire and plant life. The show is created by the guy that did the new Battlestar Galactica. The cast is pretty much the same people too. And all that was ever made was the pilot which was not picked up.

And it's really good. In one episode it establishes some good characters, some passable ones with potential, a great concept, an overarching conspiracy and some fantastic world building. Aside from the magic there are bits and pieces that hint at how alien their culture really is. While their version of technology is the pinnacle of environmentally friendly their system of justice is shockingly brutal. Sexuality and how the body is regarded is a lot more fluid. And of course there are the touches of religion that will be in any show Ronald D. Moore works on.

This is all done, mind you, in a single episode. It's not a wonder it didn't get picked up. Dense shows tend to get treated gingerly since they have trouble getting a large audience. So I'm not going to say "Why didn't this get picked up?!" What's depressing is that it didn't and a number of mediocre magic shows did. For a while the vogue in genre shows was dark, character driven science fiction. That seems to have ended with a whimper, the official date of death probably being the finale of Lost. Now that fantasy and fairy tales are saturating the market 17th Precinct  would have added a great depth to the genre. Watching it again reminded me that it's not a shock it didn't get a time slot, though it is a shame.