Products |
Weekend Butler: Charlie Warner’s Late-Life Triumph. The Dalai Lama’s birthday. The movie opens October 20; read the book now. Jailing a 3-year-old. How to tell if you have privilege. A song. A poem. A meal. And a wish: stay cool.
Published: Jul 06, 2023
Category:
Weekend
CHARLIE WARNER’S LATE LIFE SURPRISE
Charlie Warner (photo, above) died on June 8. He was 91. There’s a terrific piece about him, in which the people he mentored say thanks. First among them: Bob Pittman. Charlie saw something in Bob when he was 19, hired him, promoted him, and helped him become programming director of a new thing, MTV. Pittman: “There is zero chance I’d be here today we’re it not for Charlie Warner.”
Charlie and I were colleagues at AOL. We were neighbors in New York. In the last decade, six friends cooked elaborate dinners on New Year’s Eve; if I was in town, that date was in ink on my calendar.
The line on Charlie is “teacher” and “mentor.” It’s not the whole story, not nearly. The truth is that for all his success and influence, very few people — really, maybe only Julia, his wife — knew that ebullient Charlie saw himself as failed Charlie. Simply, he wanted to be a “creative” and write a novel or play or movie that expressed a talent that was all his own.
In the last 18 months of his life, Charlie got there.
He had an idea for a play: Hitler commands Freud to visit him. They talk, they debate, Freud helps Hitler’s niece understand who she’s dealing with. Charlie did his homework; the stack of books on his table would have killed him if it toppled.
Charlie needed a mentor. He looked to his most talented friend who wrote plays — that would be me, only because he knew no other playwrights — and we began: he’d do a draft, I’d send my comments. We did this maybe a dozen times. He wanted to quit once or twice. I reminded him of some wisdom I’d read: “The walls exist to tell other people when to stop.”
Charlie didn’t stop. He didn’t finish his play, but so what? He scored an end-of-life, third act triumph. Very rare. Just like Charlie.
THE DALAI LAMA’S BIRTHDAY
August 6: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is celebrating his 88th birthday. He says he hopes to live to 100, and perhaps longer if he can still serve humanity. But at some point, he will die, and if he is like every previous Dalai Lama, he will reincarnate as a small child. That reincarnation is the subject of my recently completed novel, “The Next Dalai Lama.” It is also the idea that the book explores: namely, are we blood-and-bone, here just once, or do we return, again and again? In a quote that begins my novel, the Dalai Lama is not ambivalent. “Death? No big deal. Just a change of clothes.”
TWEET OF THE WEEK
“If you’ve never had a Supreme Court case decide if you have the same rights as others… you have privilege.”
SICK HEADLINE OF THE WEEK
Police officers jail their toddler for struggling with potty training. from the Washington Post: Two Florida parents who are both high-ranking police officers are under investigation after admitting to putting their 3-year-old in jail because he was struggling with potty training. Lt. Michael Schoenbrod of the Daytona Beach Shores Public Safety Department brought his son to jail on back-to-back days in October, placing him in handcuffs the second time, according to an interview captured on body-camera footage from a Volusia County sheriff’s deputy. Schoenbrod told a caseworker at the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) that his fearful toddler promised he would not soil himself again. “He was crying,” Schoenbrod said, according to body-cam footage obtained by The Washington Post. “I was getting the response I expected from him.”
THE BOOK TO READ: “KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON”
The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone. The director is Martin Scorsese. The film opens on October 20. Here’s the trailer. Here’s a link to The Times review. To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle download, click here.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: MARRIAGE VS. A LOVE AFFAIR
“A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you’re giving to the relationship. And if you realize you are in the relationship just as the other person is, then it becomes life building, a life fostering and enriching experience, not an impoverishment because you’re giving to somebody else … This is the challenge of a marriage.”
WEEKEND MUSIC
Passenger, “Let Her Go.” Lyrics thoughtfully provided as subtitles. Intense. Accurate. The kind of song you forward late at night when you can’t stop yourself. Click here.
THE WEEKEND RECIPE
Goat Cheese and Dill Dutch Baby
from the Times: This savory Dutch baby is made by pouring a light, eggy batter into a heated pan of hot melted butter. The herb-flecked batter begins cooking on contact, and when baked, puffs and crisps and develops a tender, custard-like center. Adorned with crumbled goat cheese, fresh dill and crunchy watercress, this is also finished with a drizzle of honey plus a sprinkle of lemon juice. When served as breakfast or brunch, this one-pan meal is about as quick and straightforward as you can get.
6 servings
1cup crumbled plain goat cheese
½ cup chopped fresh dill, plus picked fronds for garnish
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lemon
Coarse kosher salt, such as Morton
Ground black pepper
1 cup/135 grams all-purpose flour
8 large eggs
¾ cup whole milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups watercress leaves with tender stems, or other tender greens such as spinach or arugula
1 tablespoon honey
In a small bowl, combine goat cheese, ¼ cup dill and 1 tablespoon oil. Zest lemon over mixture, season with a pinch each of salt and pepper and let sit to marinate.
Heat oven to 425 degrees with a rack in the lower third. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Add remaining ¼ cup dill and stir. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk. Whisk wet ingredients into dry until just combined.
Melt butter in a heavy 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Let it cook until it smells nutty and browns, about 5 minutes, swirling the skillet so that butter coats the bottom and sides of the pan.
Pour batter into the hot buttered skillet and spoon half of the marinated goat cheese into the center of the batter. Bake until puffed and golden, 20 to 22 minutes.
To serve, cool the Dutch baby slightly in the pan, 5 to 6 minutes. Top with watercress and dill fronds. Spoon remaining goat cheese on top and drizzle with honey and remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Slice the lemon and squeeze a wedge over the greens. Serve immediately.
