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Weekend Butler: E. Jean Carroll. Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. Arsène Lupin, gentleman burglar. Hurray for the Riff Raff. Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese. Elon Musk.
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Published: Jan 24, 2024
Category:
Weekend
E. JEAN CARROLL
Donald Trump was found guilty of forcing himself on E. Jean Carroll (photo, above) in a Bergdorf’s dressing room in the mid-1990s. Despite this, he continues to insist that she’s “not my type” and that he’s never met her. The other day, Trump posted 40 times in less than an hour on Truth Social that he’s innocent and that Carroll has used a lie to win a $5 million judgment against him. Now, having defamed her a second time, he’s in court facing another multi-million-dollar judgment. I see no point reprinting Trump’s comments on Carroll. I see considerable merit in granting her something like equal time:
Alina Habba (Trump’s lawyer) pressed Carroll during cross-examination on whether she “enjoyed all of the attention.” Carroll responded, “This is not the kind of attention I enjoy,” as her lawyer rose to object. Speaking over both her lawyer and Habba, Carrol continued: “But once I spoke up — I wanted people to know that a woman can speak up and win a trial. I wanted people to know. It was a major victory, and I wanted people to know. I don’t want to be quiet now. I’m 80. It’s not right to try to make women be quiet. It’s been going on for too long.”
LEONARD COHEN
On Yom Kippur in 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. There is a tradition in Israel that when troops are engaged, musicians travel to the front lines to perform for the soldiers, but when Cohen rushed from Hydra to Israel, he intended to volunteer on a kibbutz — he’d help with the harvest while others went off to fight. How little he knew: it wasn’t harvest time. He could be more useful, he was told, if he’d entertain the troops. He balked. He had no guitar, his songs were sad, he was a pacifist. His objections were brushed aside. He was drafted into the musicians’ brigade. In the 19-day war, Cohen lived with soldiers, slept on the ground, ate combat rations, sang for as few as a dozen men, then rode in a van to the next gathering, performing eight times a day. “I came to raise their spirits,” he said, “and they raised mine.”
“Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai” is a short book, just 200 pages. But this little-reported episode makes an important point: the Yom Kippur War was a major event in Cohen’s life. He wrote two great songs: “Lover Lover Lover” and “Who By Fire“and returned to Hydra with renewed energy. [To read my review of the book on Head Butler, click here. To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
ELON MUSK’S GAME, ELON MUSK’S RULES
A friend posted on X: “Hamas has to be destroyed.” X responded: “Your post was detected by our systems and has had its visibility limited for violating the X rules. Specifically: We have determined your post violated our rules against Violent Speech.” My friend’s comment: “So saying that a violent terrorist group must be destroyed is now a bridge too far for Elon Musk.”
HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF
Play “Alibi” once, you’re in danger of playing it many, many times. The lyrics don’t suggest an easy situation. “Cause you don’t have to die if you don’t wanna die. Maybe I got something left that is worth a try, But I’m not gonna be your alibi, this time.” That’s one hand. And on the other: “I love you very much, and all that other stuff.” What’s going on? You’re smart. Consider the title. Figure it out. Or just get behind the music.
THE WEEKEND BOOK: “ARSÈNE LUPIN, GENTLEMAN THIEF”
Arsène Lupin — to generations of European readers, he was the French Sherlock Holmes. Well, better than the Brit detective. Holmes was on the side of the law, a stodgy enterprise. Lupin was a burglar. A gentleman burglar. A burglar with wit and style. It was a thrill to watch him work. [For my review, click here.]
REUPHOLSTERING AN OLD CHAIR
from Billy Oppenheimer: Before he was the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the White Stripes, Jack White was a chair upholsterer. He says: “When I was upholsterer, sometimes you’re not inspired to reupholster an old chair. It’s just work, and you just do it because you’re supposed to. And eventually, you look at it and you say, ‘That’s good, that’s pretty good.’” In unholstering and in songwriting, White explains, the inspiration lags behind the confront. “Not every day of your life are you gonna wake up and the clouds are gonna part and the rays from heaven are gonna come down and you’re gonna write a song from it. But if you just get in there and just force yourself to work, maybe something good will come out.”
“I CAN SCARCELY BID YOU GOODBYE, EVEN IN A LETTER. I ALWAYS MADE AN AWKWARD BOW.”
Those words appear at the end of John Keats’ last surviving letter, written in November of 1820 to his dear friend, Charles Brown, just two months before the 25-year-old Keats succumbed to tuberculosis.
MARCELLA HAZAN’S BOLOGNESE SAUCE
After the death in 2013 of Marcella Hazan, the cookbook author who changed the way Americans cook Italian food, The Times asked readers which of her recipes had become staples in their kitchens. Many people answered with one word: “Bolognese.” Ms. Hazan had a few recipes for the classic sauce, and they are all outstanding. This one appeared in her book “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking,” and one reader called it “the gold standard.” Try it and see for yourself.
Yield: 2 heaping cups, for about 6 servings and 1½ pounds pasta
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 tablespoons butter, plus 1 tablespoon for tossing the pasta
½ cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
⅔ cup chopped carrot
¾ pound ground beef chuck (or you can use 1 part pork to 2 parts beef)
Salt and Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup whole milk
Whole nutmeg
1 cup dry white wine
1½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
1¼ to 1½pounds pasta
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the table
TO PREPARE THE SAUCE:
Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in the pot and turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring vegetables to coat them well.
Add ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color.
Add milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating — about ⅛ teaspoon — of nutmeg, and stir.
Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, add ½ cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Stir to mix the fat into the sauce, taste and correct for salt.
Toss with cooked drained pasta, adding the tablespoon of butter, and serve with freshly grated Parmesan on the side.
