In the second episode of Kitchen Table Gaming I entertained some friends with drinks and treats over a game of Commander. I led them off with an adult beverage made with tomatillos and vodka (although it is pretty refreshing without any alcohol). It was inspired by the desire to have a lighter, more refreshing brunch alternative to the traditional Bloody Mary. Even though Tomatillos are not actually tomatoes (they are a giant gooseberry, apparently) I thought the bright, fruity flavor would be perfect for the job. I had already made a cucumber cooler with mint and vodka over the summer and decided to combine elements from that and from the basic shape of a Bloody Mary into this summer brunch drink.
It occurred to me that it is hard to call a drink that is green a “Bloody” anything. There are many theories to the titular figure of the Bloody Mary including a waitress who worked at a Chicago bar called The Bucket of Blood, the actress Mary Pickford, and Queen Mary 1. I chose to go with the matriarchal origin because I liked being able to call this the Bloody T’Pau, named so after the Vulcan matriarch from the original Star Trek episode “Amok Time.”
Bloody T’pau (Makes 6 drinks.)
Ingredients
1 lb Tomatillos husked, rinsed, and destemmed
1 large English Cucumber peeled
1 fistful of fresh Cilantro
1 Jalapeno pepper seeded and deveined
1/2 cup of water
1 lime zested and juiced
Salt
Vodka
Ice
Celery stalks for garnish
Let’s Make the Drinks
Rough chop the tomatillos and cucumber and add the them to blender or food processor. Next add cilantro, jalapeno, juice and zest of lime, and a generous pinch of salt. Puree it all together and add water as needed to loosen the mixture.
Empty the contents into fine strainer over a bowl to collect the juice. Press the pulp around with the back of a wooden spoon or spatula to force as much juice through as possible. You can reserve the juice for several hours before serving but be sure to give it a stir first.
Fill highball glasses with ice and celery stalk and pour juice about 2/3 of the way up the glass. Add vodka and swizzle it around with the celery. Bendy straws are optional. You can also rim your glass with a cayenne infused salt for a spicier take. You can also garnish with some pickled jalapenos.
In the second episode of Kitchen Table Gaming, I make cocktails, sliders, cookies and ice cream… And cream my guests in a game of Magic: The Gathering!
The Commander community’s Dan Brown and GGsLive founder Rashad Miller join me to play a game of Commander. Each of us brings a very different deck to the field of battle. Mine is basically an Innistrad Block draft deck made possible by the lovely Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.
Recipes in this episode of Kitchen Table Gaming:
Bloody T’Pau – My take on a Bloody Mary. Because my Bloody Mary is green instead of red, we go with the Vulcan naming
Falafel Sliders – We do something a little different with these sliders. “Much better than the Hot Pocket I had this morning.” -Dan Brown
S’mores to Plowshares – A cookie-and-ice cream ode to the Magic: The Gathering staple
The full recipe for each dish will be available here on Fetchland in the next couple of days.
Here’s the second episode. Spoiler Alert’s David T. Wright filmed it. Matt Ferrando helped with it. I did all the cooking. Enjoy!
I have gotten into the habit of saving up shows I want to watch for the purposes of a good binge. I saved up half the third season of Orphan Black before diving in. Hannibal was already canceled before I even took my first nibble of what is (for) now the final season. Sunday nights at 9pm has been the only non-sports appointment television running right from Game of Thrones and into True Detective. Having a week to ruminate about the episode, lament the lack of water coolers in your life, and really think about what you just watched is a completely different experience than letting episode after episode crash over you without time to breathe. (I just started watching Mr. Robot on USA Network and I think I am going to try sticking with the weekly schedule as it seems to have lots of theorizing that can be done between episodes.)
Having that time to think about last week’s Night Finds You left me in a week-long version of Eddie Izzard’s wonderful bit about Engelbert Humperdinck. He tells the audience that he just learned that the singer had died. The audience murmurs a little uncomfortably and Izzard lets them off the hook telling them that he is not dead. He then proceeds to vacillate back and forth, including a good 30 seconds of hysterical head shaking, nodding, and eye rolling as he flips back and forth on the fate of the erstwhile Arnold George Dorsey.
My first instinct after the end of last week’s episode was that Detective Ray Velcoro could not possibly be dead due to the billing Colin Farrell has received for the show. Second reaction was a full frontal flashback to the radical pelvectomy that Casper received from a close range shotgun blast. The show has used flashbacks of Velcoro as a young officer already and they utilized multiple timelines extensively in season one. It seemed perfectly reasonable that he could be dead but still be featured prominently for the next six episodes. Multiple people I spoke with — including a good friend who works at HBO — seemed to think his character might actually have been killed which, of course, forced me into the opposite position because I am a contrary jerk. Back and forth until last night when we would finally find out…
I wrote that last week’s episode felt like an ode to James Ellroy. This one started out positively Lynchian with a blue-lit lounge performer — Jake La Botz credited as Conway Twitty — singing Twitty’s cover of Bette Middler’s The Rose. Sitting in a booth is Velcoro but the dream-like setting of the night club makes it seem like he is dying, in a coma, or —
OH MY GOD IS THAT FRED FUCKING WARD!?!
Regardless of how anything else resolves itself this season I am in for the long haul if there is the promise of more Fred Ward. If you are not familiar with his work you should immediately stop what you are doing and watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (spoilers; the adventure also ends there as well), Tremors, and — most importantly — Miami Blues, one of the greatest dark noir comedies ever made, based on the book by the magnificent Charles Willeford.
I will resist the urge to shift topics to the work of Willeford — possibly saving it for a future Fetchland piece — and get back to the booth where we find that Ward is playing retired cop Eddie Velcoro, Ray’s dad. It is not obvious at first as Ray looks down at his bruised knuckles while Eddie tells him that he has his father’s hands.
“My father made me nervous,” says Ray.
“Maybe you were already nervous. Maybe you lacked grit.”
Eddie sneers in the way only a disapproving TV dad can muster talking about Ray getting shot to pieces. Ray takes in the oddity of the situation and the surroundings. “Where is this?”
“I don’t know… you’re here first,” answers his father as Ray looks down at his own bloody chest. The live performance fades into a more hollow rendition squeaking out of a clock radio. The clock reveals that is 7am and Ray is laying on the floor of Casper’s fuckpad where the man in the bird mask left him last week. There is still a chance he could be dead but after a moment of stillness he gasps to consciousness and rips open his shirt in the cop-show classic “I was wearing a vest” maneuver. He was not but his torso is pocked with shot and largely intact.
He reveals to a livid Bezzerides that the shotgun blast were “just” riot shells, the type cops use, and he only suffered a couple of broken ribs. Bezzerides heads into the crime scene and gets into a jurisdictional shoving match with Lieutenant Kevin Buress (played by James Frain, who has fallen into a dead last in the hide-my-accent power rankings).
Next up is the Semyons who are trying to get pregnant via IVF. Jordan is trying to entice Frank into a cup via her mouth but he pushes her away and pulls up his trousers. He insists “that” has never happened to him before. Stress can affect a man’s performance and he acknowledges plenty of it in his life at the moment.
“There is no part of my life not filled with live-or-die importance. I take a shit and there is gun to my head saying ‘make it a good one, don’t fuck up’.”
Frank pushes away from Jordan’s attempts at intimacy and they go down a well-worn road of blame with Frank extolling the virtues of his motility, implying that the fertility issues must originate with her. Jordan is quick to point out that his equipment is pointing in the wrong direction for that to even matter and flings the plastic cup at him before storming off.
“Suck your own dick!”
Bezzerides and Woodrugh get some alone time and she scores the first smile I think we have seen out of Woodrugh through the first three episodes. She is sending him out to canvas local prostitutes and wants to know something about his celebrity run-in from the first episode. He bristles immediately and makes it clear he has no intention of answering any questions about whether or not he did it. Bezzerides was actually just going to ask him if his new found notoriety from the appearance on the TMZ homepage was going to interfere with his ability to do his job. In fact she thinks he should sue to the would-be Lohan when all of this is done. There is a moment of connection between them and Woodrugh is even able to tease her about her ever-present e-cigarette. It was the first time Kitsch gets to anything but glower from the back of his closet and it was a good moment to see him in some other light than just his struggles with his sexual identity.
Velcoro confronts Semyon about the shooting, and who else knew about Casper’s house, over a pint glass of water in the same booth from the opening scene. No booze for Velcoro who wants to hold onto his anger and not dull it with alcohol. Semyon is not comfortable with the new-found bark of his Vinci lapdog.
“There’s a certain stridency at work here. I am going to chalk it up to you getting blasted.”
“I’m apoplectic.”
“I’m feeling a little apoplectic myself.”
Woodrugh and Bezzerides are greeted at the door of Mayor Chessani’s Bel Air mansion by someone they mistake for his daughter Betty but who turns out to be her stepmother Veronica. She is wearing a rumpled party dress, has tousled hair and makeup that is beyond a smokey eye — let’s call it a smoggy eye. The two cops push past her into the house and begin asking questions about Casper while she takes a hit from what she assures them is a medical marijuana balloon bag — what is it with this show and vaporizers?
While Veronica purrs at Woodrugh, Bezzerides begins to explore the house. She sees pictures of the mayor with various high profile politicians alongside a life-sized cardboard cutout of his wife in a bikini. She is rummaging around his desk when she hears a noise and rushes towards the sound. Upstairs she finds Betty Chessani sitting quietly in a room. When asked if everything is OK Betty just closes the door on her. Betty is played by Emily Rios who is a veteran of many hour long dramas — most notably Breaking Bad and The Bridge — and I trust/hope that she will get more/anything to do in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile a naked woman plunges into the pool just outside the terrace doors where the mayor’s wife and Woodrugh have been talking. We see that she has been tossed from a balcony by Tony Chessani, the mayor’s son whom he was lamenting about last episode. Bezzerides confronts Tony who is putting on a gang accent that she sees through immediately. Tony confesses that it is a put on and that his job as an “event organizer” calls for him to play different roles. He throws them out with the threat of his father’s lawyers and increasingly bad accents.
“How many times do you expect to be paid for the same thing?” pleads Bart Sallis. a contractor who bought his business from Frank, who now wants 25% every month from Bart despite that not being part of the original deal.
“Things change. They changed for me they can change for you.”
Frank is back to his transplanted Chicago mobster roots. He makes it more palatable by explaining he can keep the teamsters and electrical workers from walking off the job. He can keep the note from being called in on the loan underwriting the project. To make sure he being ultra clear he also points out that he knows where the family lives and where the kids go to school. Bart acquiesces but only if he can get some concessions on the electric crews and receive weekend deliveries.
Bezzerides reports back to her overseers on the contents of Casper’s safe deposit box which included articles of incorporation and a stash of blue diamonds. Her superiors are much more interested in hearing about Velcoro and whether or not he could have staged his own shooting. The state wants to prosecute a crooked Vinci cop and they have their sights set on Velcoro. She should do whatever it takes to get them leverage on him.
“He’s a man for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I am not saying fuck him but maybe make him think you might fuck him.”
The language in Vinci is even coarser than it is at the State Attorney’s office where the Mayor will only refer to Bezzerides as “that cunt” after she barged in on his wife and kids. Woodrugh appears to be spared his wrath but the Mayor will not be happy until Bezzerides is running a yogurt stand instead of investigations. Velcoro tries to extract himself from the investigation but he can’t get away. The mayor, the police chief, and his lieutenant all want him to wrap up the hooker angle on the Casper murder ahead of the State investigation into their department. He should not worry about any land deals. Nobody is going down over any land deals.
“You could just drink out of the bottle.”
We get bonus Fred Ward scenes with the old man struggling to get a shot glass to his lips without spilling the contents while his son drops off a bag of weed. Ray notices an empty spot on the bookshelf where his father’s lucite encased badge is supposed to be. He fishes it out of the garbage despite Eddie protests that there is no PD anymore. Ray grills his dad about the Vinci brass who used to be on the job with him in LA before they left to set up shop after the riots and OJ trials.
Things are not going well for Semyon whose deal with Osip is slipping away. Frank is tired of playing nice and tells him not to let the door hit him in the ass on the way out. As he glowers out at his wife sitting alone on the casino floor he wonders if perhaps Osip had some hand in Casper’s death. To make matters worse for Semyon not all his men are accounted for and one of them — Stan — later turns up murdered. Semyon needs an outlet for all his frustration and calls for a meeting of all the usual suspects at Santos’ club.
Woodrugh is hanging with one of his Blackrock buddies drinking beer, watching motocross and talking about letting sleeping dogs lie. Except that maybe his buddy doesn’t want to deny the past. He begins to reminisce about time they spent together in a village separated from their unit. Woodrugh gets visibly upset and does not want to talk about it. He throws his buddy down to the ground to end to the discussion while someone who looks an awful lot like Dixon takes surveillance photos of them from afar.
Back at investigation HQ Velcoro lumbers in despite his best efforts to get kicked off the task force. Pictures of a Cadillac license plate the night of the murder lead them to a film set that Casper was a producer on in exchange for California tax credits. Velcoro befriends a set photographer who relates a story about Casper and the director attending a “wall to wall pussy” party.
Woodrugh is working the local prostitute angle to no avail when he meets a male hustler who recognizes Casper’s photo from the club Lux Infinitum, Santos’ place. Despite *ahem* only wanting the tip, Woodrugh realizes he will need more from the informant to get anything resembling a lead at the club.
“They probably wouldn’t even let you in. This angsty cop drama you are rolling.”
Bezzerides and Velcoro are at his house when his ex-wife and her current husband (sitting in the car) shows up. She tips him off that State investigators called on her to ask about extra cash or perhaps about the death of the man who attacked her. She offers him $10,000 in cash to walk away from his custodial claims on Chad but he tells her to put the envelope away. Bezzerides was listening from just inside the door. She steps back into the apartment before he can see that she was spying on him. She asks if everything is okay and seems to be developing some sympathy for him — earlier in the episode she appraised him as a burnout to her superiors.
At Lux Infinitum Woodrugh and Semyon bump into each other and have a stare-off with Woodrugh coming up short. He requires multiple double scotches to talk to another hustler who has performed with a girls for Casper. The thought that this man could have sex with a woman is a source of discomfort for him. And his response does little to assuage Woodrugh who needed a little blue bill to hook up with butterfly girl in the first episode.
“You do girls?”
“In a pinch…with the right medication.”
It turns out the girl the hustler hooked up with is Tasha — the same girl that Santos introduced to Semyon and led to Casper’s hideaway. She works expensive private parties but has not been around in a while.
While Woodrugh continued his investigation upstairs Semyon was downstairs with Santos and the assorted criminals who run woman in the local clubs. He hands out pictures of Casper and demands that he is told anything that any of them hear about him. Santos crumbles the photo and sneers that Semyon “ain’t that thing no more…what you used to was.” He declares the meeting over but Semyon grabs him by the lower lip. Santos is eager to fight and begins to take off his jewelry.
“You can leave your rings on. It won’t matter to me.”
Santos lands a few shots but Semyon lays him out and, with one hand holding him down by the neck, proceeds to remove his gold grill with a pair of needle nosed pliers.
Bezzerides and Velcoro investigation from the movie set has led them to the front door of someone with access to the caddy who has quit the production. Before they can ask anything significant they hear a crash and the whoosh of flames. The Cadillac they were searching for is around the corner and has just been torched. They pursue a masked person fleeing from the scene across a homeless encampment and onto the freeway where Velcoro dives to save Bezzerides from an oncoming truck. The arsonist escapes in the aftermath while Velcoro — who had multiple broken ribs from the shooting — groans on the ground. Bezzerides thanks him for saving her life but when he asks what the state police have on him — if she wants to really thank him — she says she knows nothing.
Frank returns home and Jordan is up waiting for him. She asks if he want to make up, to talk, as he fixes a drink at the bar and dumps a fistful of gold teeth in the trash.
(If you have watched the first episode of Kitchen Table Gaming then you have already met one of my oldest friends in Paul Yellovich. In addition to carrying a tube of cookie dough with him at all times Paul has given over no small portion of his life to watching martial arts films. Like me, Paul grew up in New York where these films were shown on the Drive-In Movie most weeks on Channel 5. In the 90’s our group of friends starting digging into the canon of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, and Tsai Hark — among others — and would venture into the cavernous Sun Sing Theater under the Manhattan Bridge to watch the movies on a big screen while eating pork buns and being serenaded by fornicating cats.
In 2000 Paul got his first DVD player and he went down the rabbit hole of martial arts films the way I went down the Magic: The Gathering rabbit hole a few years prior. He has since collected more than 2000 films — and watched more than half of them — and for years maintained a web database on alternate titles for martial arts films. In his own words, he is nuts — but in the best possible way.
I still love the genre especially with the luxury of having my experience curated by Paul. And now you have the luxury of that experience as well as Paul brings us his Top 8 martial arts fight scenes of all time — BDM)
Top 8 Fights in Martial Arts Movies by Paul Yellovich
So BDM said, “Give me a Top 8 of the best fights in movie history.”
I said,” Kung Fu/Martial Arts? Weapons, no weapons?
Then he said, ”Your choice.”
So I started making a list. Problem is after a while I felt I had a lot of apples and a couple of oranges. So I decided to make this a Top 8 Martial Arts Fights in Movies.
Don’t get overly concerned with the order, we are all friends here.
VIII. Alley fight from Martial Club (1981) Gordon Lui vs. Wang Lung-wei
Your kung fu is no good. You must go to Shaolin!
From the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio and legendary director Lau Kar Leung, starring legendary martial arts superstar Gordon Lui comes… an ok movie. Which happens all the time; amazing fights in mediocre films.
This scene screams old school. Rivals pause to call out kung fu styles as they move along an impossibly twisty-turny, narrowing alley. An alley built for no other reason than to be another character in this scene.
VII. End Fight from Hong Kong Godfather (1985) Bryan Leung & Norman Chu vs. Wang Lung-wei & The Rest of the World
Who the hell’s going to clean this mess!
Wang Lung-wei walks out of the alley in Martial Club and goes on to direct this dull movie. But if you made it till the end you were rewarded. Sometimes it’s not about subtlety. Sometimes it’s about an obscene amount of bad fake blood, wholesale murder, a million stuntmen, and falls that make your back hurt.
VI. Old Vs New School fight from Pedicab Driver (1989) Sammo Hung Kam Bo vs. Lau Kar Leung
A beautiful dance of violence!
This is the equivalent of the Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly dance scene from Ziegfeld Follies. Few have had the impact Sammo Hung Kam Bo and Lau Kar Leung have had on Hong Kong action films. This scene is about a clash of styles. Lau Kar Leung is old school and Sammo Hung Kam Bo new — new being the 1980s. And that premise gives us kung fu comedy that isn’t cringe-worthy.
V. Castle fight from Wheels on Meals (1984) Jackie Chan vs. Benny “The Jet” Urquidez
Is that the killer from Grosse Pointe Blank?
This is new school martial arts. Gone are the silly costumes and animal styles. Now we have awful 80s clothes, more stuntiness, and more of a western boxing influence. Not that Bruce Lee didn’t give that to us a decade before, but this is the 1980s and Jackie was king.
IV. One Take fight scene from Tom Yum Goong aka The Protector (2005) Tony Jaa vs. The Editor
Let’s do it again.
When BDM was in Thailand years ago he asked me if there was anything he could bring for me. I wanted a dvd of Ong Bak. You see, Tony Jaa was going to save us. Save us from the crappy martial arts films of the later 90s. Save us from cheap CGI and pop stars who couldn’t fight. He was the new Jackie Chan. But after The Protector he stumbled.
The gimmick of this scene is the single shot with no cuts. The action is a little more tentative and slower than what we usually get from Jaa. But who cares. I would have hated to be the guy that screwed up that take!
III. Alley Fight from SPL aka Kill Zone (2005) Donnie Yen vs. Wu Jing
Who brings a baton to a knife fight?
Kill Zone is a depressing film with an ending so brutal and controversial it didn’t make it to some countries. This fight is brutal, mean, bloody and to me a little painful to watch. I want to say it’s more realistic, but let’s face it, you’re never going to see two guys in an alley doing this in real life. Let’s just call it raw and less choreographed.
II. Dojo Fight from Fist of Legend (1994) Jet Li vs. A Dojo
A guy walks into a dojo…
You either love or hate this film. The hate may come from the fact it is a remake, one of many, of Bruce Lee’s classic Fist of Fury from 1972. The love? Jet Li always looks cool. And when he’s tying his shoe at the end…
I. 3 Masters are revealed from Kung Fu Hustle (2004) 3 Masters vs. The Axe Gang
Best of the best!
Kung Fu Hustle is Stephen Chow’s love letter to the films he saw growing up. I had heard people say Kung Fu Hustle might be the greatest kung fu movie of all time. Actually I’ve said that myself.
When I thought about why I find this scene worthy to be on this list I thought I’d discuss the music. I love it. It takes it to another level. But then I thought no, I love this scene because it’s heroic.
Three masters come out of hiding to save the people of their little crappy town.
Heroes. That’s what makes a great martial arts fight. We root for the hero. We want them to win. Winning sometimes means literally cutting the other guy to shreds. Sometimes it’s just showing how much better of a fighter they are.
Listen to the latest episode of Top 8 Magic in which Brian David-Marshall and Michael J. Flores are joined at the intersection of Chinatown and Little Italy by Level 2 Judge and fellow-podcaster Chris Lansdell. Topics of discussion included playing in tournaments as judge, the (then) impending NBA draft, and some advice for players to pay keen attention to when they have to speak with a judge. (Hint; it is often the cover-up more than the crime that leads to extended time away from competitive Magic.)
I could not be more excited than if they found the actual Ark of the Covenant. I received an email from Bing Luke today with the following link in it. He knew that I had been searching for this WPIX promo to Raiders of the Lost Ark for years to no avail. He reached out to someone at Tribune Media — as had many other New Yorkers who vaguely remembered the comical lyrics to the Indiana Jones theme song — who finally wrote back to him that they had unearthed this treasure that was created exclusively for WPIX in New York.
You can read all about how the video was unearthed as well as the actual lyrics on the WPIX website. Good luck getting the lyrics out of your head once you have heard them!
This is a top down cookie design. I had the name in mind before I knew exactly what the cookie would turn out to be. I wanted to capture the cinnamon-grahaminess, the toasted marshmallow, and the gooey chocolate bar quality of the cookout treat. While I normally don’t use Hershey’s chocolate as my chunk of choice in my other cookies I knew they were essential for this recipe. I found that the snack sized bars broke into perfect little identifiable pieces. I managed to find a whole wheat graham flour and made my first attempt that included molasses and nutmeg in the recipe. I also mixed the marshmallows into the cookie dough.
While the first attempt was semi-successful the cookie came out too gingerbready with the spice from the molasses and the nutmeg. More critically, the marshmallows that were inside the cookie just evaporated into nothing and undermined the structural integrity of the cookies. These were not load-bearing cookies.
For this second take I just went entirely with brown sugar, instead of using a combination of molasses, white sugar, and brown sugar, and eliminated the nutmeg. I also froze my mini marshmallows and placed them on the surface of the cookie since those were the only ones that survived from the original batch. I froze them first to give them just a little more time in the oven to maintain their shape throughout the baking process.
They turned out exactly the way I wanted and i look forward to making them again on an upcoming episode of Kitchen Table Gaming.
S’mores to Plowshares Cookies (Makes 12 large cookies)
Ingredients:
2 sticks unsweetened butter
1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/4 cup whole wheat graham flour
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 snack size Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bars
60 frozen mini-marshmallows
Time to make the cookies:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment whip together softened butter and brown sugar for 2 to 3 minutes. Add in the egg and let the mixer go for 7 or 8 minutes, scraping down the sides with a rubbed spatula as you go. Add in all the dry ingredients and vanilla and mix until combined.
Using a 1/3 cup ice cream scoop portion out 12 cookies onto cookie sheets lined with parchment or Silpat baking mat. The cookies will spread out considerably while baking so you can only fit 6 per sheet. Flatten the scoops gently with the palm of your hand so they are 1/2″ thick discs. Break each of the snack size chocolate bars into four pieces and nestle them into the top of each cookie. Press four to five of the frozen marshmallows in as well.
Chill the cookies in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or freezer for 10 minutes before putting them in the oven for 18 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool — but not too cool as you they are best eaten with slightly gooey chocolate and marshmallows. You can reheat the cookies for 5 to 10 seconds to in a microwave oven to get that gooey S’mores sensation back.
My partner-in-crime if off to Italy with his life partner and progeny until after the Fourth of July weekend. I should be able to muddle through a little bit of HTML until then (maaaaaaybe) but the real blow is the absence of Katherine which means two weeks of True Detective recaps fall on my shoulders. You can find Katherine’s take on the first episode elsewhere on this site (although unlikely via a hyperlink in this recap since I really don’t know what I am doing) and she was cautiously optimistic about where it was going.
My takeaway was how much the first episode reminded me of a James Ellroy novel. Colin Farrell doing his best accent-suppressed take on the trainwrecked Bud White, Taylor Kitsch jamming his secrets into Danny Upshaw’s closet, and… well there is no analogy for Rachel McAdams’ character since you don’t get a POV woman in an Ellroy novel until Kay Lake’s chapters in Perfidia. That comparison might not be there but there is zero chance that W Earl Brown isn’t a Buzz Meeks stand-in and the dildo-laden crime scene that is Casper’s home is pretty much every dildo-laden crime scene in the first half of Ellroy’s career. More Ellroy tropes would follow this week.
So where does NIGHT FINDS YOU find us?
As the episode opens with Vince Vaughn’s Frank Semyon laying awake and talking about water stains with Kelly Reilly’s Jordan Semyon I visualized one of those focus groups they trot out during election season to judge how the candidates fared during a debate. Each member of the group has their hand on a perception analyzer dial and they turn the dial right when they feel favorably toward the candidate and they turn it left when they don’t.
Vince Vaughn, in the immortal words of Dr. Peter Venkman, buried the needle in the opening. I just kept wondering how this scene would have played out with any other actor — hell, any other Vince, was D’Onofrio too busy? — but especially kept thinking about how much better Pizzolato’s dialogue sounded with McConaughey delivering the lines. I also wondered if there was any way Vaughn could unjam that needle from the left-most position.
We move from the water stained ceiling to the acid stained eyes of Casper on the coroner’s table. We also get a glimpse of the wreckage of what was once his junk — taken out with a point blank shotgun blast. File away for later how devastating a point blank shotgun blast can be. While Frank Velcoro, Ani Bezzerides, and Paul Woodrugh are getting the rundown from the coroner they are also given conflicting missions from their various higher-ups at the city, state and highway patrol bureaus. Bezzerides is put in charge of watching Velcoro, Velcoro reports back to Semyon and the mayor, and Woodrugh just wants to get back on the bike.
Semyon discovers that he has been left out in the cold by Casper with an under the table deal now undocumented. Five million dollars, earmarked for twelve parcels below Monterey, is not only missing but the price for those parcels has gone up. Semyon has also liquidated assets to get in on this deal and is suddenly willing to strip away his businessman’s veneer to claw his way back into the equation.
“My business partner takes my money and gets torture-murdered and what? I’m waiting on the Velcoro burnout to make like Rockford?”
Was that the needle unwedging itself from the left-most position?
We get some more insight into the players as we meet Woodrugh’s mom, played by Lolita Davidovich, in her trailer park getting her big, strong son to peel the skin off her KFC while deriding his ex-girlfriend as fat. Bezzerides and Velcoro start investigating and begin to take measure of each other while discussing vaping and robot fellatio. Bezzerides grills Mayor Chessani about Casper’s known associates while Velcoro plays along but ultimately cuts things short when her arrows start getting closer to the mark.
The task force is headquartered in what appears to be an airplane hangar where W. Earl Brown’s Teague Dixon is trying to help Woodrugh understand why he was so really so upset while getting hit on by a guy at the bank. Velcoro shows a glimpse of some real Rockford instincts pointing out that Casper’s regular bank withdrawals coincide with blank days on his calendar but he can’t stay to follow up as he has to meet up with his son to give him a new pair of sneakers.
I am always happy to see Abigail Spencer, who has had recurring roles on Mad Men and Suits and was stunning in Rectify, and I hope she gets more screen time as Alicia Brune, Velcoro’s ex. She is not happy with the way he brass-knuckled down on the father of Chad’s classmate’s father over the stolen shoes. Sole custody is the only solution that Alicia can find to keep Chad from Velcoro’s lack of decency and he responds by threatening to burn the city to the ground but the threat of a paternity test quickly backs him down.
Semyon comes to the aid of a man on the receiving end of a bump and beatdown under the freeway and he glibly lets the man know that he must have done something to piss someone off like writing a book on Vinci sweatshops. Vaughn gets the needle past 9 o’clock in this scene.
I mentioned James Ellroy earlier and there is no moment where the the similarities to the LA Quartet ring more true than when Bezzerides and Velcoro pay a visit to Casper’s botoxed psychiatrist played by Rick Springfield. As they walk through the clinic we see patients recovering from plastic surgery and I can only imagine they are working girls being cut to look like Veronica Lake. After putting up some token resistance about doctor patient confidentiality, Springfield gives up some details of Casper’s treatment. He had a weakness for young prostitutes but was making progress at the time of his death.
“There are kinds of secrets in the world all kinds of truth,” says the doctor as he makes the connection between Bezzerides and her father’s work with the Good People. Bezzerides wants nothing to do with talking about the past. Velcoro has no such reluctance as he basically fesses up to killing the man who raped his wife and being in the back pocket of Semyon as a result along with his assorted bad habits. Bezzerides does not like to distinguish between good and bad habits which seems like a fine time for Velcoro to ask about her knives.
“Fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands. Man of any size lays hands on me he is gonna bleed out in under a minute.”
Velcoro reveals that the reason they have been thrown together to investigate this crime is to fail but he won’t explicitly tell her exactly how compromised he is. Meanwhile Woodrugh and his butterfly-loving girlfriend break-up over a TMZ piece about his alleged blowjob shakedown from the previous episode. He heads downtown to smoke cigarettes and drink straight from the bottle while watching male hustlers get in and out of cars.
Semyon finds Casper’s fuckpad (another Ellroy trope) and points Velcoro in that direction while dangling a police captaincy in front of him but it holds no interest. Semyon reminds him that there are not many options for him other than a life in prison or doing what he is told to do.
“Everybody’s got the one option, you want it bad enough.”
My life has led me in a non-traditional job direction and I rarely regret that except when there are watercooler moments on television like the closing scene from this episode. Velcoro follows Semyon’s lead which is the where the murder clearly took place, only to get shotgunned twice — the second time point blank to the torso — by a man in a bird mask.
We have already seen the evidence of what a shotgun at this range can do to a man’s pelvis and it is hard to imagine how he can survive. Farrell certainly does not appear in the trailer for next week’s episode but we do hear someone discussing the crime in the context of “one of my detectives gets shot” and not in the context of “killed” so maybe there was a rock salt load in the shotgun or Velcoro was wearing a vest. Either way, I will be back next week, hand on the Vaughn-dial, to recap.
(This dish has its roots at a long ago gaming marathon when a small group of us (including Paul Yellovich who helped me relay this story on the first episode of Kitchen Table Gaming) played the Judge Dredd board game for more than the span of 24 hours. When we were done playing we had eaten everything there was to eat in Paul’s house and had less than $13 to muster between us. (It stands to reason that if we could stay up all night playing games we did not have jobs at the time.)
That money was spent on a stack of frozen pizzas, a package of hotdogs, a bag of Sabrett’s red hotdog stand onions, and a two-liter bottle of off brand root beer. In the end we would decide that the best way to consume our bounty was by rolling up the hot dogs and onions inside the cooked pizzas and washing the mess down with the soda. When I set out to update this recipe for KTG I was stumped until I saw a package of Dufour Puff Pastry peeking out from the back of my freezer.)
I like to make my recipes from as-scratch as possible but have not been willing to take the dive into making my own Puff Pastry yet. Especially when the Dufour brand one is so perfect. Lots of the bigger name brand versions use vegetable shortening but this one is made the way Julia Child intended — with real butter. I am sure you can use whatever Puff Pastry is available to you and this will be yummy but I get the Dufour at Whole Foods and it is totally worth going out of your way for and should in no way be limited to making this.
Puff pastry is a perfect vehicle for any number of savory and/or sweet foods from making personal Beef Wellingtons to apple tarts. I have done appetizers for more than a few family gatherings with it and never repeated a recipe twice. We had great heirloom tomatoes at the market last summer and I topped my pastry with thin slices of them nestled in an arugula pesto. Another time I made a fig and olive tapenade which was layered on puff pastry with thin fig slices and dotted with goat cheese.
Here is what I did to make these tarts but you should not let my imagination limit you any way:
Root Beer Caramelized Onion and Sausage Tart
Ingredients
4 thinly sliced Vidalia Onions (or any sweet onion if Vidalias are not available)
1 lb of Italian Sausage removed from its casing
6 oz pure cane sugar Root Beer.
2 tablespoon Honeycup brand honey mustard (sorry to be so brand specific with this recipe but I am addicted to this ingredient)
1 package Dufour Classic Puff Pastry
2 cups shredded gruyere cheese
1 cup shredded pecorino romano cheese
2 teaspoon chopped thyme (fresh or dried)
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon of water
Salt and pepper
Cut and pastry
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a sautee pan cook the sausage over medium-high heat and break it up into smaller crumbles with a wooden spoon as you cook it. Remove pan from heat and set aside. In another, larger pan start cooking the onions in the olive oil with some salt and pepper. Whisk together the root beer and honey mustard. When the onions start to soften and turn translucent you can add them to the pan and toss the onions to coat. Continue cooking until the mixture has reduced and begun to caramelize with the onions. Add the sausage, pan drippings, and thyme and stir until they are all incorporated. Remove from heat and set aside.
Flour your work surface and lay out the chilled puff pastry. With a floured rolling pin you can quickly smooth out any of the folds and then cut into six even pieces with a sharp paring knife. Place your pastry pieces on a silpat or parchment lined baking sheet and dock the center area with a fork. This will ensure that the sides will puff up but the center will provide a nice flat basin for your topping. You can also take trimmings of the puff pastry and “build” four walls, using a little egg wash as glue, along the perimeter of the pastry for an even more dramatic boxy presentation.
Spoon the sausage and onion mixture into the center of the pastry and top with the two cheeses. Brush the edges of the pastry with the egg wash and put the tray in the refrigerator to chill again for about 30 minutes. It is essential for puff pastry to be cold when it goes into the oven so that the many layers of butter are not melting together. I have gone ahead and not rechilled my puff pastry with mixed results in the past.
Bake the chilled tarts in the oven for 22 to 25 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and firm to the touch. A little fresh grated cheese never hurt anyone when serving.
Serves 6 to 12 depending on whether or not you slice these in two. Sometimes it serves 3.
(“Sushi Grade Nachos” is another one of three recipes from the first episode of Kitchen Table Gaming, published earlier this week, here on Fetchland.)
I am pretty lucky to have an insane Japanese supermarket near my house that not only carries Japanese produce but also has a pretty ridiculous selection of cheap, fresh seafood that they will slice up for you into perfect pieces of sashimi. I have gotten a whole tray of otoro (fatty) tuna there for less than one piece of otoro sashimi at high end restaurants in New York.
I have no idea what led to the creation of these individually plated nachos but it certainly started with me finding a piece of whole wasabi root in the produce section. Somehow I decided that this should be paired with otoro and blue corn and sesame tortilla chips.
Sushi Grade Nachos
Ingredients
2 ripe avocados
1 bunch scallions, chopped
4 tablespoons freshly grated wasabi root (you can use prepared wasabi paste to taste if fresh is not available)
1 lime, zested and juiced
10 shiso leaves, minced (can use handful of cilantro if shiso is not available)
20 pieces of sashimi (tuna, salmon… whatever is fresh and good)
20 blue corn tortilla chips
Time to make the nachos
Scoop the avocado into a large bowl and mash with the back of a fork. Add in the zest and juice of the limes, wasabi root, and the minced herbs and continue mashing until almost all the chunks of avocado are gone.
Scoop one tablespoon of wasabi guacamole onto each chip and top with a piece of sashimi.
