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Military Justice Is to Justice As Military Music Is to Music

I would like to interject here that I've now eaten tofu, and it isn't that horrible. In fact, it's not horrible at all. What you need to get your head around is that it is not meat, and it isn't pretending to be, even if you're more or less using it as a meat substitute. Purchased in a plastic carton sheathed with a plastic peel-back layer in the grocery store (I'm tickled that it's nestled amidst the real vegetables, nowhere near the meat counters), you have several choices, including silky, firm and extra firm. Not unlike pantyhose. Also vaguely kinky. "I'll take the ... extra firm tofu, Gerardo." (In another aside, I was jarred when the vegetable section began watering itself as I walked by the other day. All of a sudden, the sprinklers turned on and spritzed the veggies. Is this a technology that we needed to come up with? What if you were trying to get close to a tomato and suddenly – spsssst! – you'd have gotten a good dousing. And somebody's wet head dangling over my fresh veggies makes me want to run right back to the tofu.) 

So here we are, with the tofu. I'm still trying to determine if it's the same as "bean curd," a popular (and roundly rejected for mere Goldilocks relation/similarity to "crud" reasons) phrase on Chinese menus. I think it is. But there's a local Chinese restaurant which serves "Sesame Tofu," which I ordered on a whim not long ago, thinking if it was horrible I'd learn, and for $5 for a quart, you can't really go wrong. That won me over – I'm now a Sesame Tofu fanatic. It's not just big chunks of a white, vaguely soft substance – they've got some kind of sweetish dark sauce over it, and it's vaguely crunchy, too, as if it's been fried. Put that on rice and add some broccoli and I'd take it over pizza. Sometimes. Since I enjoyed that so much, I finally got around to buying some Extra Firm Tofu the other day in the supermarket, got it home, and looked at it a while. It really wasn't any worse looking than goat cheese, which I'd seen in plenty of Greek food stores, swimming in its own watery juices. Tofu was just more evenly textured. If you poke it, it yields, then returns to its old shape. I ended up making tofu burgers (there was a packet of seasoning you could buy in the store's tiny organic section) and they were nice and tasty. Not like hamburgers, but filling and tasty. I used it in a more raw state by frying it up with some teriyaki sauce and vegetables. It ends up tasting like whatever it's bathed in, or soaking in, or nearby, so you don't have to worry about a bad taste. You just have to resign yourself to a lot less resistance on the teeth than meat gives.

So. I wanted to eat at Better Burgers, so I decided to pair it up with a viewing of In The Bedroom, the Sissy Spacek/Marisa Tomei flick that's getting a lot of good Oscar buzz. Although it's about a young man having an affair with an older lady who's estranged from her (turns out to be) murderous husband, who then kills the kid and sends the kid's parents into a downward spiral, the phrase "in the bedroom" is not about sex in, well, the boudoir. It has to do with lobster traps, which the father demonstrates early on as they're out pulling in the traps. (They're in Maine; everybody in Maine apparently has to live on the ocean and go fishing, unless you're trapped in a Stephen King book.) As it turns out, the traps are set up so the lobsters can get in but can't get out. They call the inside of the trap (as I recall) the "bedroom." The father points out that when you get two males in there with a female, one will try to snap the others' big claw off. Or at least do him damage. The metaphor's nice, if a bit heavy. And has nothing to do with the final third of the movie. The film is actually quite good; it doesn't overstate or underscore everything that's going on, and you genuinely feel the anguish of the parents, particularly when they're told by the prosecutor that the murderous husband might only get sent away for a few years on a manslaughter charge. I've watched so much Law & Order, though, that I can also see the prosecutor's point of view – I mean, if you can't prove murder, you're lucky to get him put away for manslaughter. Not everybody who kills someone else can get killed or locked away forever themselves. So I was thinking about that, too. I was also made strikingly aware of the ways a younger kid (he's about to go to college – I think he's probably 18) sees an affair with the older woman (who has two kids, with whom he gets along with incredibly well) versus how all the true adults around him see it. So there was a lot good there. (Oh, and Better Burgers was very tasty. I got the tuna.)

What I need to keep in mind about going to the movies in New York City on a weekend evening (Friday counts) is that no matter how long the movie's been out, everyone in the whole rest of the city also goes to the movies on the weekend. Like we don't have a billion other things to do in New York City. I went to the AMC 25 "E-walk," a misleading and useless name since there's very little walking involved. The building is actually a very old movie house that they've gutted – and before construction got going, actually shifted a few feet East, a process documented by several local newscasters. Structure aside, the building resembles more of a very slow amusement park ride than anything else. There's a massive LED list of films and showtimes outside of the theater, which is hard to read because every single New Yorker has said to his or her friend/significant other "I'll meet you outside the theater," so it always feels as if all of the movies have emptied out at once on to the sidewalk. Once you manage to squeeze your way in, the line to get tickets is massive, but for this trip I thought ahead and bought tickets on the Internet, so it only took a minute or two to get them printed out. But then ... ah, then ... how do you get to theater 14 out of 25? Here's how you do it: An escalator. You pass over and around the cafe/restaurant below, where you could have eaten if you'd known about it but Better Burgers was better. Then there's another escalator. You pass by big flat-screen TVs showing previews of Beauty and the Beast and the new Mel Gibson film, Signs. Now you're on the first level of theaters. But you're in 14. So it's time for another escalator, which you have to walk across the building to get to. Then you're on the second level of theaters. Which also ends before 14. So it's another escalator up. And they're all as wide as one individual, so you can't even do the "shift right if you gotta stand; shift left if you're walking up" unspoken rule.

Finally you get to 14, and it's really swank inside. The seats all have tall high backs (nobody's head blocks your view) and they're plush and red (if a little worn in places) and rock. Literally, they rock. The screen is enormous, despite that it's only one of 25. But then ... even for a little arty film like In The Bedroom, you can't forget the, uh, enthusiasm of the crowd. It is New York, after all. Though eventually everyone settled down, when the advertisements – don't get me started on the freakin' advertisements in the theater; not the stupid "Movie Trivia" slides interspersed with local "Joe's Blinds and Window Treatment" ads – start up, they're enough to make even Buddie wince. It ain't a rock show, you know? So the audience starts howling that it's too loud. 

Before all of that happens, I get to witness this exchange:

Couple passes by me, leaves one seat between me and her, and she takes a seat, coat draped over her lap, holding a large bag of popcorn. Man is still left standing.

Man: "Make sure you turn off the cell phone, honey."
Woman (clearly irritated): "I will, as soon as you take this bag of popcorn."

The venomous "honey" which might have been appended to her comment is left off. And I'm reminded again of how fun it can be to go to the movies alone.

So. Sound goes down, movie goes on – and this was a first; we had to suffer through two identical previews of the insufferably stupid-sounding Nicole Kidman/Ben Chaplin forthcoming picture, Birthday Girl. As if someone as fine-looking as Ben Chaplin would ever, ever, ever need to order a mail order bride from Russia. (Oh, see previous rant/entry for my thoughts on that one.) Give me a break. So there are two of the same preview! Movie starts, we all laugh, we cry, we are moved. Movie ends, we get up to leave.

But there are four sets of escalators to go down first. And we've all gotten out at once. And you almost can't get off at the bottom of one escalator without dodging the cattle – er, other moviegoers – ahead of you who haven't been able to find room to get on the next escalator. If I'd ever had claustrophobia, that would have been the place and the time. Quite silly, and took far too much time to get out of there. In the meanwhile, however, I was treated to watching teens on their turf, talking to each other about the movie. One young woman saw the Signs preview and started getting all giggly and silly. "Oh .... Joachim," she sighed, craning her neck back to see the rest of the preview. I'm sure Mel would be thrilled to know he's been replaced in the hunk category by Joachim Phoenix. Man, I miss River sometimes. That was one beautiful boy.

In other thoughts ... the link of the day is here –

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=sherwin20020109

Nothing like a good sense of the sardonic. It amazes me that anybody thinks military tribunals are a good idea, but the best part of the article is the title of the book referenced: Military Justice Is to Justice As Military Music Is to Music. Heh. 

Ugh. Here comes Monday....