Replacing Biden; Watching Wimbledon; Adding Za’atar.
I’m All Lost in …
what I’m obsessing about THIS week.
#38
Partly because I’m eager to share a few updates, and partly to prove I’m no dilettante when it comes to my madness, let me quickly revisit the status of a few obsessions that have made this list in the past. I’ll get to this week’s immediate passions momentarily, but:
First, I’m still enthralled with the book I posted about two weeks ago, Henri Murger’s hilarious 1851 novel Scenes of Bohemian Life. In the most recent chapter I read, Ch. 17, “The Toilette of the Graces,” Murger confirmed that these action-packed tales from the student arrondissements (the 5th and 6th arrondissements) are pro-city manifestos. After three of our discombobulated heroes (the Poet Rodolphe, the artist Mercel, and the composer Schaunard) save up enough money from their absurd commissions, including Schaunard’s gig playing the same piano scale over and over at the behest of a regal British lodger who’s at war with his upstairs neighbor over her noisy parrot, Murger’s bohemian artistes buy their respective lovers, Mimi, Musette, and Phemie, some fashionable clothes. Merger writes this:
As to Phemie, one thing vexed her.
"I am very fond of green grass and the little birds," said she, "but in the country one never meets anyone, and there will be no one to see my pretty bonnet and my nice dress. Suppose we went into the country on the Boulevards?"
At eight in the morning the whole street was in commotion, due to the blasts from Schaunard's horn giving the signal to start. All the neighbors were at their windows to see the Bohemians go by.
Second, going back to the very first installment of this weekly roundup (October 18, 2023), I’m still a Joanna Garcia fanboy. Garcia is the possessed piano teacher/TikTok persona who patiently yet passionately distills piano scores. In her most recent series of videos, she’s been doing a musical exegesis of Debussy’s Clair de Lune—”Are you ready? Listen for the depths…”—reverently explaining the mysterious thirds that shape the piece.
Lastly, I have not yet returned from my Blondie bender. Feeling the exact opposite impulse of that common urge to pare down a good double album into a great single-disc, I made a Spotify playlist combining Blondie’s 1978 release, Parallel Lines, with her follow-up, 1979’s Eat to the Beat (the album I blissed out about last week), and conjured an incredible double album out of these two separate ones. Call it Parallel Beat.
I also ordered the sheet music for Blondie’s first four studio albums, a set that includes both Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat.
Per a poem from my current manuscript:
The Thing About Getting a Decent Paycheck After 30 Years of Not
The thing about getting a decent paycheck after 30 years of not/
is you don’t have to worry about the $5 it costs to print sheet music./
We may not be the ones getting bar/
or bat mitzvahed anymore,/
but there is so much sheet music./
The curves of the capital.
Additionally, I also must say this: I’m alarmed and preoccupied with the nativist right’s creepy victory in France this week (though, I do agree with Paul Krugman’s observant opinion piece that MAGA is even worse than National Rally), which brings me to the first item on this week’s official list of obsessions: Biden needs to drop out.
1) Curiously, and grating to my Dem friends, I was giddy following Biden’s predictable debate implosion last week; in the run up to the debate, I decided there was no way I could bring myself to watch it (I have the texts to prove it) because it was obvious Biden would be tragically incapable of handling Trump’s wily cynicism.
In fact, Biden, who exists in some bygone moral universe scripted by Norman Lear circa 1978, has never been up to squaring off against Trump; I still believe Trump trounced Biden in 2020’s infamous can-someone-please-shut-off-his-mic? debate. I know no one agrees with me about that, but I believe the real reason Biden won four years ago was because of Trump’s tangibly inept response to COVID, not because of those maddening debate antics.
The NYT’s Michelle Goldberg kind of captured my giddy Thursday night feelings in her (among many columnists’ and ed boards’) convincing call later in the week for Biden to step aside.
The Democratic Party’s predicament is an awful one, but there was a cold, flinty relief in being forced to reckon with it.
I say “kind of” because there was nothing “cold” or “flinty” characterizing my reaction. For me, it was pure, euphoric relief.
And in addition to the relief, the Biden fiasco also created hope; something I don’t think Democrats have felt in well over a year. As replacing Biden became an increasing possibility over the course of the week—a possibility that Democrats have been secretly fantasizing about since shortly after Bruce Springsteen performed at the 2021 Biden inauguration—the idea that Democrats could suddenly have a fighting chance against Trump buoyed my spirits. (It’s no wonder Trump has been uncharacteristically quiet about his yuge debate win; he’s terrified the Democrats will go with someone different than Biden.)
Yes, an open Democratic party intramural per 1968 or 1980 can be a death knell for incumbents (Pat Buchanan’s insurrection similarly upended the Republican incumbent, George H.W. Bush I in 1992), but I’d offer this: If Biden eloquently steps aside and releases his delegates to a convention process (he can’t clumsily anoint Harris because Trump will flip the script and cry dictatorship), the Democrats’ ensuing and possibly messy selection process will offer a refreshing juxtaposition to Trump’s cult-like Triumph-of-the-Will coronation. An eventful Democratic convention (anti-Israel protesters included…which would play out even worse at a Biden convention) could offer an inspiring and instructive metaphor for the democratic form of American governance that’s on the ballot in 2024. (This week’s King George III Supreme Court ruling declaring presidential immunity certainly brought that point home and left me with the sinking feeling that if the Democrats lose the White House in November, January 6 may ultimately go down as America’s Beer Hall Putsch.)
But if Democrats bring town hall energy to the narrative, versus Republicans’ debasement at the Trump throne, I believe voters will get the American feels.
I’d also say this: If Biden does the right thing and withdraws and V.P. Harris emerges as the candidate, she'll bring Trump's sputtering racism and sexism to the fore in an apoplectic way that will be even more shocking than his routine “why-don’t-you-go-back-to-where-you-came-from” tropes to date; his stewing anger at being challenged by a prosecutorial , energetic Harris could turn off America’s mainstream voters.
Harris, obviously, comes with the plus of being a woman too at a moment when abortion rights finally seem to have electoral sway.
Will America really vote for a Black woman—evidently more problematic and toxic than a convicted felon? It’s certainly a legitimate question in the racist and sexist U.S.
Indeed, I’m not oblivious to the fact that Harris isn’t popular, but thank god Democrats are no longer playing oblivious to Biden’s electoral dead-end.
Trump sent a mob to hang his VP; Biden should step aside and nominate his VP for POTUS.
2) Speaking of bowing out, though, in this instance, not to my liking:
I was looking forward to watching Wimbledon this week. But then came Day 1’s Monday morning news that my favorite tennis star, World #3 Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus), had withdrawn at the last minute due to a recondite shoulder injury.
Of course, this speaks to the reason I’m drawn to Sabalenka in the first place: She was born under a bad sign; despite her jolly goofiness, she has a Charlie Brown/Peter Parker cloud over her head. Needless to say, I wasn’t surprised by the glum news. Here’s a text I sent to my friend Dallas on Sunday night:
Wimbledon starts tomorrow! Sabalenka has been struggling w/ injuries, so I’m not hopeful.
The Wimbledon disappointments continued. My second favorite tennis player, World #8 Qinwen Zheng (China), lost in the first round only a few hours later on the first day of the tournament to #123 Lulu Sun (New Zealand), 6-4, 2-6, 4-6.
With the year’s premier Grand Slam tournament now heading toward a predictable finals match between unbeatable World #1 Iga Swiatek and World #2 Coco Gauff (ascendant Gauff knocked Sabalenka from the #2 spot after the French Open at Roland Garros last month), I’m now committed to finding an exciting underdog to root for during Wimbledon. This prompted me to wake up at 3am all week, inevitably squealing with glee at the British-accent color commentary (“that’s a clever backhand, isn’t it”), and watch every WTA match possible: #11 Danielle Collins (USA) versus #127 Dalma Galfi, (Hungary); #4 Elena Rybakina (Kazakhstan) versus #72 Laura Siegemund (Germany); #10 Ons Jabeur (Tunisia) versus #161 Robin Montgomery (USA); #17 Emma Navarro (USA) versus former #1, now #113 Naomi Osaka (Japan).
Unfortunately, no one has netted my fandom like utter goofball Sablalenka (who has a hurricane serve by the way). I did find myself cheering for Montgomery, but she lost 1-6, 5-7.
I managed to take the court myself this week—not at Wimbledon, but at Volunteer Park in Seattle. Perfectly planned a week in advance, I reserved a court for this Wednesday after work (a great way to start to the July 4 holiday). I played a much younger! opponent who I originally met when I was hitting solo at the practice wall last winter. He was practicing his serve on the court next to me that afternoon and asked me if I wanted to volley. We seemed pretty well matched, and we’d been trying to set up a time to play ever since.
We took Court 3 at 5:30 under a lustrous sun this week and played a set-and-a-half before some other folks with reservations showed up at 6:45; it was busy out there with people who’d made reservations or were just hopeful walk-ons, all clamoring for courts. Feeling confident with my serve and successfully mimicking the passing shots I’d been seeing on TV at Wimbledon, I was winning 6-1, 3-1 (ad-in) when we had to give way to the next crew.
7/3/24, Lower Court #3, Volunteer Park, Seattle
A fantastic footnote, and another example of expert planning: I had a chilled chocolate stout in the fridge, and a Benzodiazepine (Lorazepam), waiting for me when I got home to my apartment. Appropriately, the Lorazepam was left over from my (recently RIP) Dad’s scrip, and so, I framed my good-drug evening as a celebration of Dad’s famous, and illicit, July 4 neighborhood fireworks shows of yore.
Chilled chocolate stout
3) Completely bored with oregano, I’ve started sprinkling the warm and grassy Middle Eastern herb Za’atar on all my meals: salads, black-bean burgers, spinach salad sandwiches, tofu scrambles, and (per this post’s previous-obsessions theme) my Soley’s green banana black pasta dinners.
A jar of Za’atar has been tucked away in my kitchen cupboard for 10-years; I think my serious (living-together) girlfriend from the 2010s, Hester, bought it in bulk in the aftermath of our 2013 Turkish expedition. The jar, labeled both Za’atar and thyme in faded handwriting (thyme is the American substitute for the Levantine herb), was more than 3/4 full a few weeks ago when I first noticed it and decided to sprinkle some on a scramble. This turned out to be a kitchen revelation.
Za’atar, which tastes as if black pepper came from a leaf, has now 100% replaced nooch as my go-to seasoning. And my supply is suddenly running low.
Lucky me, modern medicine confirms the beliefs of Jewish and Islamic philosophers from the Middle Ages: brimming with antioxidants and iron, Za’atar has magical health properties.
And Lucky you, the Za’atar options are not limited to the choices from my communard, vegetarian meal plan: Bon Appétit boasts 25 Za’atar-based recipes, including: Za’atar Roast Chicken with Tahini Green Salad; Lemony Chicken and Spiced Chickpeas; Fancy and Beautiful Tomato Salad; and Cabbage and Carrot Slaw with Walnut-Za’atar Pesto.