As every cinephile knows, we go to the movies for all kinds of reasons, but escapism is probably the most common. We gather in darkened rooms to see an enhanced version of life where the people onscreen are better-looking, wittier, braver, more dynamic, and generally livelier than we are in real life. Movies give us a sense of what our lives might be like if only we were different people. Love stories epitomize this idealization as no other genre does because while some people might fantasize about being a soldier, a detective, or an uncatchable criminal mastermind, I think the Blues Brothers had it right: at one time or another, everybody needs somebody to love.
This is where the typical love story tropes tend to build up our expectations only to end up letting us down. No matter how much we might wish otherwise, let’s be real — not everybody finds somebody in the end. Maybe this is why stories about love lost are a lot more relatable than those about love found. However many times you’ve seen Casablanca, you still hope against hope that this time Rick won’t let Ilsa get on that plane and fly off into the rain with her husband, Nazi resistance be damned. It might not have worked out for those two in the end, but at least they were together for a little while and besides, they’ll always have Paris.
Many young people, even in the white working class from which my post-immigrant family was emerging, anticipated that we would enjoy a similar life. Black women and men entering civil service hoped for the same. Aging into adulthood held sunny promises. Aging-with-seniority would transform us eventually into “elders and betters.” That was an essential part of the American Dream.
But that was then, before 60 years of economic history revised these assumptions. Recently, I met with a surgeon, hoping to learn more about medical ageism — the under-treatment by clinicians of people they think are “too old” for surgery or chemo or radiation. But I never got the chance. As soon as I mentioned my book, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (2017), the physician said that he was a victim of ageism. Dr. Cushing, as I will call him, had been the head of his department, the supervisor of others, before his company took away that position, along with its salary and prestige. Only 60 in the Age of Longevity, he could have served many more years in that august role, as well as remaining an admired clinician. But, as he commented with surprising dispassion, he “cost too much.”
My primary 2019 resolution was to meditate, which may be the only concrete thing I share with Gwyneth Paltrow. I imagine that successful meditation will feel like a therapy dog taking up residence up in my cranium. But though I have tried using both an app and an accountability partner (whose concept of a “short practice” is 20 minutes, which is the Zen equivalent of asking someone who never cooks to try whipping up a “basic” apple pie) my current fidget-filled practice suggests that I have a long journey ahead. What I really want from meditation is just to spend less time anxiously dissecting the past or anticipating the future, and more time rooted firmly to the present-tense. I aspire to be able to achieve this without having to sit quietly with my eyes closed. Lifehacker thinks it can be done, and so does a PhD at PsychologyToday. Which is how I found myself, in the middle of the coldest weather that parts of America have seen in decades, achieving mindfulness by eating an ice-cream cone of freshly scooped Peanut-Butter Pandemonium from my local Stewart’s gas station.
“Until there’s a diversity of voices in the world of restaurant criticism, chefs are going to feel that only one point of view is being represented,” Rodell wrote in 2017. I would add that readers also notice. The homogenous old guard, focusing its coverage on fine or “elevated” dining — and the select restaurants outside of those spheres that it has chosen to hold up in order to maintain the pretense of a fair shake — while often disregarding everyday Caribbean, Asian, South American, Mexican, and African restaurants, sends distinct messages to white readers (here are places you’ll like) and readers of color (your spaces don’t deserve coverage beyond a cheap eats section). Restaurant criticism is fundamentally cultural criticism and just as our society isn’t a monoculture, our restaurant critics shouldn’t reflect one.