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HOLIDAY BUTLER: Two unforgettable videos (and a question for you), a Leonard Cohen confession, the best tennis book, the last word on Roger Federer, zucchini you’ll actually like… and I bail for a few days.
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Published: Aug 31, 2022
Category:
Weekend
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: TWO MUST-WATCH VIDEOS
Holly Gleason, author of the definitive book on women in country music and the inside word on all things Nashville, sent me her piece about “Wait in the Truck” and the video of the song. Yes, I know it fills 5 minutes. Just, please, watch it…and note your reaction. Question: were there other options?
The second video is a Heineken commercial from 2017. James Fallows found it. Call it “Let’s have a beer.” He writes: “A major academic research project finds the intervention that most successfully reduced partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes was watching this Heinken ad, I kid you not. The Heineken experiment is basically an argument for some kind of mandatory national service—its “ice breaker” and “bridge building” tasks show the power of doing something together as a foundation for connection, conversation, understanding.” Please watch it. Again, note your reaction. And…were there other options?
BONUS VIDEO: THE GORBACHEV COMMERCIAL FOR… PIZZA HUT
Yes. It happened. And it’s so sunny. Watch.
A LEONARD COHEN REVELATION: “I HAVE TO WORK AS HARD AS ANY STIFF, TO COME UP WITH THE PAYLOAD.”
“My immediate realm of thought is bureaucratic and like a traffic jam. My ordinary state of mind is very much like the waiting room at the DMV. Or, as I put it in a quatrain, “The voices in my head, they don’t care what I do, they just want to argue the matter through and through.”
“So to penetrate this chattering and this meaningless debate that is occupying most of my attention, I have to come up with something that really speaks to my deepest interest. Otherwise I just nod off in one way or another. So to find that song, that urgent song, takes a lot of versions and a lot of work and a lot of sweat.
“But why shouldn’t my work be hard? Almost everybody’s work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with the payload.”
RESEARCH FINDS HEALTH BENEFITS IN HIGH MORAL CHARACTER
Harvard researchers found that acting with high moral character is associated with a lower risk of depression — and may have cardiovascular benefits as well.
What was quite interesting was the association between delayed gratification and health outcomes. We found an association with depression, but also with anxiety and cardiovascular disease. In health studies we know that delayed gratification is good. When you think about health behaviors like smoking or drinking, if you can refrain from them, you can expect that it will be good for you. But we asked about the statement: “I am always able to give up some happiness now for greater happiness later.” There was no direct indication to health. It was about happiness, something abstract, but we found an association with health outcomes.
U.S. OPEN WEEK CALLS FOR THE BEST TENNIS BOOK…EVER
It is, of course, Levels of the Game.
On the surface, it’s an account of a single match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner in the semifinals at the U.S. Open in Forest Hills. But as the title suggests, a game — any game, at any degree of competition — is not just about competence. How you play is a revelation of character; how you play is who you are.
The biographical, historical and psychological passages are surprising. And thrilling — you will be amazed at what Ashe had to overcome, and who helped, and how it worked out. And the same for Graebner, though, of course, the challenges are considerably smaller. But what’s most exhilarating is when the strands merge, and you’re both in the match and inside the players’ heads. Like this:
Now the thought crosses Graebner’s mind that Ashe has not missed a service return in this game. The thought unnerves him a little. He hits a big one four feet too deep, then bloops his second serve with terrible placement right into the center of the service court. He now becomes the mouse, Ashe the cat. With soft, perfectly placed shots, Ashe jerks him around the forecourt, then closes off the point with a shot to remember. It is a forehand, with top spin, sent cross court so lightly that the ball appears to be flung rather than hit. Its angle to the net is less than ten degrees — a difficult brilliant stroke, and Ashe hit it with such nonchalance that he appeared to be thinking of something else. Graebner feels the implications of this. Ashe is now obviously loose. Loose equals dangerous. When a player is loose, he serves and volleys at his best level. His general shotmaking ability is optimum. He will try anything. ‘Look at the way he hit that ball, gave it the casual play,’ Graebner says to himself. ‘Instead of trying a silly shot and missing it, he tries the silly shot and makes it.’
U.S OPEN WEEK CALLS FOR THE BEST MAGAZINE PIECE ABOUT TENNIS…EVER
It is, of course, David Foster Wallace, in the Times in 2006, on Roger Federer.
This is how it starts…
Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re O.K.
The Moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do. We’ve all got our examples. Here is one. It’s the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There’s a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner…until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer’s scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi’s moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does — Federer’s still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there’s no time to turn his body around, and Agassi’s following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side…and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball’s past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi’s side, a winner — Federer’s still dancing backward as it lands. And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), “How do you hit a winner from that position?” And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of “The Matrix.” I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.
SLOW BURN OF THE WEEK
A story from Twitter
“Once I went to a party with my husband, full of people he knew from work but I didn’t.
A guy came up to us, turned to me and said, “You must be his wife.”
I turned to my husband and said, “You have a wife?”
Should’ve seen the guy’s face!
ONE FINAL ZUCCHINI RECIPE
from Canal House Cooking, Col. 1
SOFT ZUCCHINI WITH HARISSA, OLIVES, AND FETA
Serves 4–6
¼ teaspoon caraway seeds or a combination of fennel and cumin seeds
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons harissa paste
6 tablespoons really good
extra-virgin olive oil, plus a bit more for drizzling at the end
4 zucchini, sliced into thick rounds
Handful cured olives, a combination of oily and briny ones is nice, pitted
½ cup coarsely crumbled feta
Small handful parsley leaves, chopped
Rind of a quarter of a preserved lemon, chopped
Toast the caraway seeds in a small heavy skillet over medium heat just until they are fragrant, 1–2 minutes. Put the toasted seeds in a mortar and crush them with the pestle. Add the garlic and a good pinch of salt and crush the mixture into a paste. Stir in the lemon juice, harissa, and oil. Season with salt.
Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Add the zucchini and cook until very tender and soft but definitely not falling apart, about 5 minutes. Drain well, then put the zucchini into a wide bowl and gently toss with the harrisa vinaigrette while still warm.
Dress the zucchini with the olives, feta, parsley, and preserved lemons, finishing the dish with a good drizzle of olive oil.
