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Weekend Butler: Aretha Franklin. Meryl Streep. Bette Midler. Katherine Hepburn. Leonard Cohen. A spicy summer sauce. One unforgettable poem. And much more (hey, it’s a long weekend)
By
Published: Jun 30, 2022
Category:
Weekend
MY HEROES ARE HEROINES
My social media feed tells two opposite stories.
One is anger and whining from white men who have enjoyed lives of the most spectacular privilege in the history of our planet and don’t want to give any of it up.
The other is the story of my foundational friends, all of them women. They wept and shook their fists when SCOTUS ended federal protection for legal abortion. But that was a week ago. They’ve returned to multi-tasking, which isn’t surprising — they’re female, and life hasn’t dealt them single roles and straightforward days.
What impresses me about my foundational friends is that they’re about to add another task to their load, and to add those tasks locally, because they know the need there, they know the people there, they can see the results there. And I admire the clarity of their intentions. Defending abortion is only the visible mission. Personal freedom is the real issue, it’s what they’ve carved out, over decades, for themselves and their loved ones, it’s what can’t be bargained away.
When I was a kid, I admired home-run hitters. Now my heroes are heroines. On a holiday when we celebrate our freedom, I celebrate women who carry the torch.
“LOOKING OUT ON THE MORNING RAIN, I USED TO FEEL SO UNINSPIRED.”
The Kennedy Center, 2015. The honoree: Carole King. Among her greatest songs: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” To sing it: Aretha Franklin, who had, over decades, come to own it. She was 73 years old that night. Five years earlier, she was disagnosed with pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, which would kill her in 2018, but she hadn’t disclosed her illness, and it certainly didn’t affect her performance. As soon as she started to sing, Michelle Obama hollered. The President cried. (Lord, it felt great to write that sentence.) Carole King totally lost it — she was on the far side of verklempt. Halfway though the song, Aretha stood, threw her mink to the floor, and embarked on vocal runs that can’t be written, only enacted. Can an elite audience go wild? Yes, when the elite have just witnessed what has come to be considered the greatest live performance… ever. Enough words. Watch the video.
KATHERINE HEPBURN’S IDEAL LIVING ARRANGEMENT FOR ROMANTIC PARTNERS
“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”
BETTE MIDLER
On Twitter: “In case you need any further proof that certain states are waging war on women just for being women, 27 states tax tampons. That’s right, every month, in those states, you women have to pay extra for the “luxury” of using a FUCKING TAMPON!”
MERYL STREEP, 1975: “ONE SIMPLE DEROGATORY COMMENT COULD DERAIL MY DREAMS”
“In 1975, I auditioned for ‘King Kong.’ While I was there to be judged, the producer (Dino De Laurentiis) said in Italian to his son, who had organized the casting: “Che brutta! Why did you bring her to me? “I understood perfectly what he said, because I understand Italian. That was a really defining moment for me, that one simple derogatory comment could derail my dreams of becoming an actress or force me to roll up my sleeves and believe in myself. I chose the second one, took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m sorry you think I’m too bad for your movie, but yours is just an opinion in a sea of thousands.” And now I’ll go and find me a gentler tide.’
I have realized that only with time you can learn to be more of what you want and less of what others want you to be.”
IS THIS THE DATE NIGHT MOVIE OF THE SUMMER, OR WHAT? (YES, BECAUSE HE’S THE THINKING WOMAN’S LADIES MAN)
Leonard Cohen: “You look around and you see a world that cannot be made sense of. You either raise your fist, or you say hallelujah.” Cohen said, “Hallelujah,” and then sang it, and now there’s a documentary about the song: how he wrote it (and wrote it, and wrote it), how Columbia Records rejected it, how others took it up, and how it became his signature song. “HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” opens in selected cities on July 1. Here’s the release schedule. And how can you not watch the video.
A MORAL TALE (FROM FACEBOOK)
A young couple moved into a new house.
The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the washing outside.
“That laundry is not very clean; she doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better soap powder.”
Her husband looked on, remaining silent.
Every time her neighbor hung her washing out to dry, his wife made the same comments.
A month later, she was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line. And she had a new comment: “Look, she’s finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?”
The husband replied, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”
A DAUGHTER-APPROVED PASTA SAUCE
Helen is an arrabbiata connoisseur. Fortunately, this recipe is foolproof, so I make 4-star arrabbiata for her every time.
from Trattoria: Simple and Robust Fare Inspired by the Small Family Restaurants of Italy, by Patricia Wells
PENNE ALL’ARRABBIATA
Serves 6
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 plump fresh garlic cloves, skinned and minced
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
sea salt
28-ounce can peeled Italian plum tomatoes or a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes in puree
1 TBS tomato paste
1 pound tubular pasta
1 cup flat leaf parsley, snipped with scissors (optional)
In a large skillet, combine oil, garlic, crushed red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt. Stir to coat with oil. Cook over moderate heat. Remove from heat when garlic turns gold, but not brown.
If you’re using whole canned tomatoes, chop them before adding to skillet. If using pureed tomatoes, just pour into skillet. Add tomato paste. Stir, then simmer until sauce begins to thicken, about 15 minutes. Adjust seasoning.
In a large pot, boil 6 quarts of water. Add three tablespoons of salt and the pasta, cook until tender but firm. Drain.
Add the drained pasta to the skillet. Toss, cover, cook over low heat for 1-2 minutes to allow the pasta to absorb the sauce. Add the snipped parsley, serve in soup bowls.
“Traditionally, cheese is not served with this dish,” Wells notes. Gotcha.
Start the water and the sauce at the same time, dinner is on the table in 30 minutes, Wells advises. That’s including cooking time for the pasta.
Pro tip: If you put the sauce in the blender, you get the smoothest arrabbiata this side of…well, Rao’s.
POEM OF THE WEEK: THE HIGH PRICE OF MANHOOD
“The Replacement,” by Tony Hoagland
(thanks to Ann Medlock)
And across the country I know
they are replacing my brother’s brain
with the brain of a man:
one gesture, one word, one neuron at a time
with surgical precision
they are teaching him to hook his thumbs
into his belt, to iron his mouth as flat
as the horizon, and make his eyes
reflective as a piece of tin.
It is a kind of cooking
the male child undergoes:
to toughen him, he is dipped repeatedly
in insult–peckerwood, shitbag, faggot,
pussy, dicksucker–until spear points
will break against his epidermis,
until his is impossible to disappoint.
Then he walks out into the street
ready for a game of corporate poker
with a hard-on for the Dow-Jones
like this hormonal language I am
flexing like a bicep
to show who’s boss.
But I’m not the boss.
And there is nothing I can do to stop it,
and would I if I could?
What else is there for him to be
except a man?
If they fail,
he stumbles through his life
like an untied shoe.
If they succeed, he may become
something even I can’t love.
Already the photograph I have of him
is out of date
but in it he is standing by the pool
without a shirt: too young, too white, too weak,
with feelings he is too inept to hide
splashed over his face–
goofy, proud, shy,
he’s smiling at the camera
as if he were under the illusion
that someone loved him so well
they would not ever ever ever
turn him over to the world.
BONUS VIDEO: “YOU GOTTA BELIEVE”
Song by Norman Whitfield, sung by the Pointer Sisters, circa 1976
Animation by Nina Perry
Here’s the video.
