American English, Italian Chocolate

by Rick Bailey

  Around the corner from where my niece lives and works in Pesaro, Italy, is a Pascucci coffee bar. Pascucci is a brand, a roaster, a franchise. Kind of like Starbucks. Only different. “Ricky,” she says one day, “you have to try it.” I do. And I say it’s great. When I’m back in town a year later, I try it again. Still great. More to the point: same great. Up the coast, in Santarcangelo di Romagna, my wife and I find a Pascucci bar. It’s a sunny day. We sit outside under an awning, at the edge of the big piazza, and have coffee. My espresso, great. Her macchiato, great.

  It turns out the Pascucci coffee bean works, the torrefazione, is located just a few miles from both Pesaro and Santarcangelo. It’s also just fifteen to twenty miles from our apartment in San Marino. I might say to cousins or friends, “Hey, one day, why don’t we drive over to Monte Cerignone and check out Pascucci? You know, have a cup of coffee?” I might say that, and I know what the response would be.

  No.

  Along with Pascucci, there’s another coffee outfit right in Pesaro, called Foschi. I might ask cousins and friends: “Have you ever been there?”

  No.

  Part of this is temperament. An American will drive a long distance to go to the source. This explains the American winehead’s willingness to make the very long, albeit scenic, trek to Montalcino to drink wine he buys down the street at home. Part of it is just an Italian’s sense of the old normal. There’s good wine everywhere. The Pascucci bar is a two-minute walk. You go to Pascucci or Foschi or Saccaria or Segafredo or Caffè Nero, all of them roasters, all of them franchises, and every time you go, the coffee tastes good.

  I’d say great. A great that is normal.

  A few years ago I had dinner with a plumber in Tuscany, at the edge of Chianti country. We started the meal with a cheese plate. On the plate were slices of sheep’s milk cheese, pecorino fresco. It’s a soft, mild cheese. You might daub a little honey on it or just have it plain.

  “There’s nothing like this in the states,” I said.

  “It’s good,” he said.

  I took a bite and smiled. “It’s great,” I said.

  He shook his head and pointed to the road we had driven to get to the restaurant. When he was a kid, he said, up that road, next to his house was a farmer who had three sheep. They grazed on a hillside behind the farmer’s house. Every year the farmer made the pecorino from those sheep’s milk. He held up a slice of cheese and examined it. “This is good, but it’s not great. It’s hard to get great anymore.”

  In 2008, the producers of Parmigiano-Reggiano formed a consortium to guarantee quality of the Parmigiano cheese. (Mario Batali always refers to it as “the king of cheeses.”)

  These organizations are called DOCs: Denominazione di origine controllata, a label you also see on some Italian wine. The consortium regulates ingredients, production, and aging. Cheeses that conform can claim the name Parmigiano-Reggiano.

  Some time ago I was reading about the DOC’s impact on the cheese. The cheese is good, the food writer said, it’s very good (I’d say it’s great), but there are no longer those surprise cheeses, the ones that come along every five to ten years, mind-blowing cheeses, for example, that taste of fall or spring. You just get good cheese.

  In this case, I’ll take good. Pecorino fresco, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pascucci espresso. Good every time. I’d say they’re great.

  Italians stand and slam an espresso. They may look at a newspaper for a minute and exchange a few words with the barista or patrons. But the coffee? They drink it hot and fast, and then they go. The bars they frequent are down the street from their house or workplace. Americans are more inclined to taste, to experience the coffee, finding fruits, textures, complexities. Here’s the Owl’s Howl roaster description of that coffee: “This blend displays a deep, honey-like body, with notes of ripe berry, chocolate-covered cherry, and sweet candied lemon.” This is coffee you study.

  Giorgio Milos, a master barista for Illy brand coffee in Trieste, drank espresso all over New York a few years ago, trying to gauge similarities and differences in the coffee. “Americans,” he observes in Salon, “are creating their own traditions, such as making espresso with single-origin beans—i.e. beans that come from one farm or estate, to highlight the characteristics of that place—while Italian espresso is made from blends that often include some lesser-quality—i.e. Robusta—beans. In Illy’s blend there are no fewer than nine bean types.”

  Third-wave is our wave, and this is not your father’s caffe americano. The standard weight of an espresso shot in Italy is seven to eight-and-a-half grams. Astro is pressing and expressing nineteen grams. I’m not sure what they’re up to. It’s a bomb blast. Whatever they’re up to, it’s a step in the right direction. I’ll drive all the way to Astro for a Detroit coffee bar experience, fifteen minutes from work, thirty minutes from home. I’ll take my time and try to learn about flavor profiles. I’ll sip and dream of Italy, happy to be in Detroit.

  16

  Wisdom Teeth and Encyclopaedia Britannica

  He says he’d like to keep his teeth. It’s no surprise. They’ll be a curiosity to photograph and display to friends on Facebook. Then they’ll probably end up on a shelf, little remarked upon, collecting dust.

  Right now, minus two wisdom teeth, my son is propped up by a couple of pillows on the couch. He holds a pink plastic dish to his face and drools a gooey pink mix of saliva and blood into it.

  “How do you feel?” I say.

  He gives me a nod, his chipmunk cheeks distended by gauze pads putting pressure on the vacancies.

  “In a few hours,” I tell him, “you can have a pain med.” Then an hour later, the nurse said, a couple of Tylenol. Or was it Motrin? I can’t remember. “Don’t spit,” I remind him.

  On the way to the oral surgeon that morning, we discussed different kinds of patients, those who disappear into a dark room and want to be left alone (his sister and I), and those who prefer to suffer demonstratively on the couch and want to be taken care of (he and his mother). He gave me a list of foods and beverages to add to the list of foods and beverages suggested by the nurse. I leave him now, pillowed, his face blackening and bluing, to go get soft provisions, liquids, and narcotics.

  I’m just pulling into the pharmacy parking lot when I hear an announcement on the radio: Encyclopaedia Britannica is calling it quits.

  A set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica weighs 129 pounds and costs $1,395. In its heyday, Britannica sold 120,000 sets a year. The shortest entry was logged in 1771: “Woman: The female of man.”

  We had a set when I was a kid, in a custom-built bookcase, on a shelf above the World Book Encyclopedia. World Book, the spatial arrangement seemed to suggest, was kids’ stuff. It was the gateway reference book. You had to work your way up to the Britannica.

  They might as well have been on the roof. I wasn’t going to use them. For one thing, they were so heavy, and the volumes had sharp corners that stabbed your belly and legs. For another, the print was small, the pages were thin, and the language was dense and impenetrable and British. Once or twice I consulted them. I decided I was going to read up on philosophy, but I let that go. Too many pages, too many unpronounceable Greek names, not enough pictures. I read up on the Amazon after I saw Tarzan and the Amazons on Saturday morning television and became interested in piranha fish. (What was Tarzan doing on the Amazon? I wondered. And how can there be more than one Amazon? Questions I did not answer by not reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica.) In the interest of self-improvement, I consulted the pages on human reproduction, which Encyclopaedia Britannica made about as thrilling as philosophy. Not as many pages (good), unpronounceable Latin names, not enough pictures (bad).

  For a parent, it must have been comforting to own the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was like having a piano in the house. There was at least the theoretical possibility of your children improving themselves. An old, out-of-date set of encyclopedias, like a crappy, old piano, could have that effect. Why don’t you give a few piano les
sons with Mrs. Bell a try? Why don’t you read up on electronics?

  Out-of-date was no problem, except when the supplements came. Those slender oddball additions Britannica felt obligated to mail out when new knowledge was discovered—who wanted those? They were ugly. They lacked heft. Here we had all the knowledge we would ever need, all red and leather-bound, all gold lettered and alphabetical, and then Britannica sent us those updates.

  Encyclopedias prepared you for the real work you would do when you got to school. They were like a life preserver, keeping you afloat before you got to the lifeboat, which I guess was the school library.

  Right. When I went to the library, I headed straight for the encyclopedias. Our World Book at home had white covers; the ones at school had red. But they smelled the same, and unlike the Britannica, whose print was cramped with accuracy and erudition, you could copy from World Book without eyestrain.

  I don’t remember a teacher ever asking me—or anyone, for that matter—did you really write this? Water pollution, here you go. Gettysburg, got that subject covered. Edgar Allen Poe, yeah, I’ve been reading up on him a lot lately. If I had gone to the library and traced some Monet water lilies for art class and turned them in to Mr. Perry, he would have vivisected me on the spot (he also taught biology). “Do your own work,” he would have said. But you could turn in pages and pages of plagiarized writing, and none of those teachers seemed to care.

  Looking back, I wish just once I’d copied from the Britannica. Maybe that would have rung their bell, violating a code of honor originally written in blood that had dried and become the color of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s cover. “Wait a minute,” they might have said. “This reeks of Britannica.”

  When I get home from the pharmacy, my son is leaned over sideways, drooling more of that gooey pink mix of saliva and blood into the pink dish.

  I hold up the white pharmacist sack, rattling pills inside. “How do you feel?”

  He shakes his head. Not good. “Did you get me that coconut water?” he asks.

  I did.

  Frankly, I don’t get this coconut water thing. It’s a new elixir I know nothing about. (Though I imagine Tarzan must have given Boy coconut water when he had his wisdom teeth out.) I pour a glass of it, roll an opiate from the pill bottle into my hand, and then stop. First food, the nurse said. Then pain medication. I give him a choice of pudding, pudding, or pudding. He decides on the pudding.

  It could be teachers were simply in awe of kids who would sit in the library, or at the kitchen table at home, copying long passages from the encyclopedia on whales or the Battle of the Bulge. It was, after all, work. Hard work. Almost as hard as reading and thinking. And maybe they believed there was actual benefit in wholesale theft of the original language. In classical times, students practiced the art of declamation, memorizing and reciting classical speeches. In so doing, they learned about the techniques and skills of famous orators. So when Mrs. Mann or Mrs. Ault or Mrs. Kaufmann looked at writing that was a stylistic reach for me or Randy Glazier or Raymond Robishaw, maybe they thought, There they go, declaiming again.

  Today no such work is required. Hold down the left mouse button, drag the mouse over the words you want. Copy. Paste. No fear of hand cramp. No threat of carpal tunnel syndrome. Look, ma, I’m writing. It’s just that easy.

  The pain med, it turns out, doesn’t do much. My son sinks lower on the couch. Every so often he drools a gooey pink mix of saliva and blood into the pink dish. He loses his sense of humor. He stops talking. I remember that he should take Tylenol—or was it Motrin?—an hour after the narcotic. While he suffers, I do what any parent today would do. I Google the name of the pain med, linked first to Tylenol, then Motrin.

  This is progress. It would never have occurred to my mother to consult World Book on a question like this. And I’m pretty sure she felt the same way I did about Britannica. But then, in the pre-information age, she would have listened to the nurse and remembered which medication turbocharged the opiate.

  On one site I learn that if I give him Tylenol, he will overdose. On another I learn that if I give him Motrin, he might die.

  “It hurts,” he says.

  “Want some more pudding?”

  “Mmmf.” He turns up the TV and says, barely audible, “Good part.” He’s watching Nicholas Cage watching an iguana.

  The phone rings. It’s the oral surgeon’s office. How’s the patient doing?

  Motrin does the job. He sinks still deeper into the couch, expectorates a few gouts of blood into the pink dish, and sips coconut water.

  Why wisdom teeth? I wonder, lining up puddings in the fridge.

  It’s really two questions. Why do we get teeth we don’t want or need? And what’s wisdom got to do with it? I doubt I would pull down an encyclopedia to answer these questions. But while the patient sleeps, I open my laptop and educate myself.

  17

  What’s Up with Dramatic-Value Vomit?

  My wife and I tuned into House of Cards the other night. The scheming Underwoods, Francis and Claire, are being systematically thwarted in the third season. Francis, now President, is asked by his party not to run for a second term. His offer to the solicitor general to accept his nomination to the Supreme Court (and please don’t throw your hat in the ring to become a presidential candidate) is rebuffed. Then he is humiliated by visiting Russian President Petrov, who kisses the first lady full on the mouth at a State dinner. And ruthless Claire, the Netflix Lady Macbeth, who would like to be ambassador to the United Nations just in case her husband flops as pres, sasses a senator at her confirmation hearing and loses the vote 52–48.

  The Underwoods are not accustomed to losing.

  When ever-devious Claire asks her husband for a recess appointment, Francis first says no (he knows her motives), then says yes (his ambition and habit of outfoxing the opposition are too strong), and finally stalks out of the room, leaving Claire happy, surprised, and flummoxed in the White House kitchen.

  In the throes of powerful emotion, Claire does what many TV and movie characters do these days. She goes to the sink, lowers her head, and tosses her cookies.

  Really, must we vomit? What is this ridiculous trope in modern American film?

  We’re not talking good-natured Stand by Me projectile-cherry-pie vomiting for laughs. This is dramatic-value vomit. Joe Queenan, writing for the Guardian in 2002, lists the following films with vomit scenes, some with multiple vomits: Reservoir Dogs, Speed, Hard Target, Vincent and Theo, Blue Velvet, The Godfather, Part III, The Firm, A Perfect World, Memento, The Virgin Suicides, Requiem for a Dream, Almost Famous, The Sixth Sense, 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless, The Whole Nine Yards, and Three to Tango.

  That was 2002. Since then, dramatic-value vomit has snowballed. It’s everywhere now, in movies, in TV dramas. Male, female, it’s an equal opportunity gesture. The idea is you get to know the character’s interior by finding out what she had for lunch. Your husband is leaving you? Pull up the wastebasket and un-eat. Lost the family savings in an investment scam? That calls for a histrionic horf. Can’t pay the mob the money you owe? Time to talk to Ralph on the big white telephone.

  Granted, there is medical literature on stress vomiting. Dr. Tracy A. Dennis in the department of psychology at Hunter College cites powerful emotions, such as anger, shame, fear, and delight, as possible triggers of stress vomit.

  “When we’re angry,” he notes, “our heart rate increases, adrenaline flows, blood pressure spikes, and we ‘see red.’”

  And then comes gastrointestinal distress, and possibly, emesis (vomiting). Vomit literature also treats cyclic vomiting syndrome, a malady affecting 2 percent of school-age children and an increasing number of adults, and emetophobia, or fear of vomiting, which afflicts up to 1.7–3.1 percent of males and 6–7 percent of females. Vomit lit also refers, at least in passing, to an atmospheric death metal band named Emesis, with such hit songs as “Moulded Blood,” “Sacrifice, the Flesh,” “Bring Your Slasherhook,” and
“Raped in the Crypt.” Guaranteed to produce a headache and, in some listeners, induce vomiting.

  So stress vomit, not to be confused with flu- or migraine- or pregnancy- or motion sickness– or alcohol- or death metal–induced vomit, is a thing. But how did de-fooding for dramatic effect become so pervasive?

  You have to wonder if there’s a checklist of devices that writers, directors, and producers consult, to which dramatic-value vomit has been added.

  Car chase?

  Yup.

  Exploding car crash?

  Got it.

  Character talking to himself in the mirror?

  Check.

  Run out of bullets and throw your gun at your target?

  Missed that one.

  Obligatory shower scene?

  Is there a movie made these days that doesn’t show a character standing in the shower, water splashing on his or her head? Steam rises around them, signaling deep conflict, confusion; water gutters in the drain, signaling water—and hope or love or faith or resolve—going down the drain. It’s like a time-out. Hang on, viewer. We’ll get back to the movie in just a minute.

  My first recollection of a shower scene, after Alfred Hitchcock’s in Psycho, is from The Big Chill. In the opening scenes of that movie we see Glenn Close sitting on the floor of the shower. Steam rises around her, signaling confusion. But wait, that’s not all: the Glenn Close character is weeping. The shower scene means something; it’s there for a purpose. And Hitchcock puts poor Janet Leigh’s character in the shower not for a pause but to set the scene for the next dramatic action.

  A few months ago I watched part of Enemy, a murky film with Jake Gyllenhaal as a Toronto professor confronting his doppelgänger. His look-alike does a number on him. Should he follow himself? Should he reach out and make contact? What does all this mean? Gyllenhaal’s character is so conflicted he has to shower twice in the first forty-five minutes of the film. Something told me, as I was changing the channel, that dramatic-value vomit was in his future.