Quote: (09-16-2017 10:45 PM)Veloce Wrote:
There could be a lot to say about this. I watched the video, and while these dudes are of course hell for all the obvious reasons, I can't really say that I dislike them.
For one thing, as you know, the food they make is really f'ing superb; it's rare for food to look consistently good on film or in still images -- they tend to deaden it and make it seem inert or precious -- but it does here. Not only is it good, but it's the kind of food you can eat day in day out without thinking twice about it or ever getting tired of it. You just shove it down your throat and barely notice how excellent every last bite is -- which is very nearly the best way for food to be. It doesn't hurt to be in SoCal and have the world's freshest ingredients near to hand all year round, but even so to deal out this kind of day-to-day excellence is not a small thing, and as long as these dudes keep doing it and doing it well, one has to tip one's cap to them; anything less would be rank ingratitude.
What's even more important than this is to see the genuine
glamour -- there is no other word for it -- of the LA locales and surround where these characters kick it out. What ultimately saves them from the rot of real weakness and the kind of effeminacy that cannot be forgiven is the shrugging greatest-city-in-the world conviction and even arrogance that is belied by their seeming -- and even actual -- Cali laxity and faux-surfer politesse. There is not one ounce of the
provincial in them, in a way that is only possible to the inhabitants of the world's true capitals at the height of their power; something that you could see, sidelongedly, in the mien and in the very gait of an 1890s Parisian or a 1970s New Yorker. They inhabit these vistas and their ways of moving about them with an indubitableness that is entirely unconscious and which commands one's respect, however grudgingly it may be given.
Lastly, one notes, too, that even though almost all females shown in the film are very nearly worthless, there is one very brief shot of an LA Latina -- almost certainly a Mexi -- dancing in the scrum that in a flash overwhelms one's brains and balls with the sexual possibilities of the place, all the sly moist quim that lurks inside those beautiful, sprawling, low-slung structures that go on for miles on end. Again, there is a special juice that adheres to greatest-city pussy, an imprint and a sexual charge that one may love or hate but that cannot be denied. LA is that city right now, the glamour capital of America and therefore the world; and as these somehow already
post-hipster doughboys pile into their van and traverse its streets, they know to the bottom of their nascent paunches that they are a part of that strength and center of energy -- and that is the true secret spice that gives the entire fat pita of their aspect a taste which one is ready to sign off on when it's all said and done.