flies so high and feels no pain
this and that 2/24/25
My tennis buddy, actor Lawrence Monoson, learned that one of his old movies was playing at the New Beverly last Monday, so I tagged along to experience the goofy pleasures of 1988’s Dangerous Love, up on a screen for the first time in almost 40 years. Lawrence stars as an introverted young man who signs up for a (cutting-edge) video-dating service. When the women he dates start getting murdered, he becomes the prime suspect. It also stars the lovely Brenda Bakke, Peter Marc (Mr. Fran Drescher) Jacobson, General Hospital’s Anthony Geary, and Elliot Gould. Oh, and there’s a cameo by Angelyne. Lawrence claims to remember nothing about shooting this big-haired thriller, not even the Catalina Island boat-chase climax.
I also caught Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s entertaining chamber drama Armand at the AMC Burbank 6, starring Renate Reinsve as a single mother whose six-year-old son is accused of assaulting a classmate. It’s a little Big Little Lies, a lot God of Carnage , and very, very Scandinavian (there’s at least one modern dance sequence). Reinsve is building a resumé to put her in contention for the European arthouse actress of her generation. Watch your back Vicky Krieps.
I finished the second season of The Diplomat on Netflix. Creator Debora Kahn previously worked on huge hits by Shonda Rhimes and Aaron Sorkin, and there’s a lot of both showrunners’ DNA in the Keri Russell-starring political soap. But Kahn’s worldview is more curdled and her perspective on power more cynical than either of her mentors, which makes The Diplomat feel oddly satisfying at this particular moment in time. I wouldn’t exactly call The Diplomat smart, but it’s smart enough.
Read all about my bean adventures in the latest Back to the Garden, and upgrade to the paid tier to get my smoky vegetarian riff on Rancho Gordo’s black eyed pea stew.
Lunch this week came courtesy of Lucas Volger’s Substack, Family Friend, where he shared Hot Date! author Rawaan Alkhatib’s recipe for a date-laden, lemony Bulgur Mujadarra. I added some shredded kale to the arugula for extra greens and topped it all with a creamy scoop of Mimaw’s Kitchen’s labne.
Wednesday night I made Kendra Vaculin’s Spiced Chickpea and Spinach Pockets from the February issue of Bon Appetit. They’re tasty, but shaping and rolling and filling and baking is a lot of effort for what amounts to premade pizza dough, baby spinach, and a packet of instant chana masala.
Friday night was The Traitors, Next Level Chef, and thai takeout from The Silver Lake House (fka Leela Thai). I’m fully aware I only live three miles or so from Thai Town, but sometimes I crave the Americanized stuff, and The Silver Lake House does all the classics really well. The pad thai isn’t too sweet and has nice big chunks of marinated tofu, John loves the chicken massaman curry, and my absolute favorite is their almost custardy Spicy Eggplant with shrimp. Portions are big, so there’s enough for lunch the next day. The other perk of picking up from The Silver Lake House is driving right by Silverlake Wine. I got the unfiltered, jasminey Echeverria No Es Pituko Moscatel de Alexandria from Chile to sip with our noodles and curry.
As I was watching tennis Saturday morning I baked Justine Doiron’s Vegan Carrot Muffins for Two. Two muffins sounds like a good idea — you get a freshly baked breakfast and don’t have to negotiate your own willpower for the rest of the weekend — but if you’re going to take the trouble to make muffins from scratch, you deserve leftovers. The fresh ginger topping was great, but the slightly gummy texture of the muffins themselves (I’m pointing my finger at you, flax) had me pining for the neglected carton of eggs in my fridge.
Speaking of tennis (you’re not getting off the hook this week), the Middle East swing came to a close with big wins for the Russians, Andrei Rublev in Doha and 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, who won her first big title in Dubai Saturday morning. Andreeva played another up-and-comer, Dane Clara Tausen, in a classic variety vs. power battle of contrasts. Anyone who’s old enough to remember the late 90s slug-outs between Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport will appreciate the dynamic here. Andreeva is Hingis, able to hit any shot from any position and smart enough to know exactly which shot to hit when. Tausen is Davenport, bashing the ball from the baseline with her clean and deadly groundstrokes. After a couple years of consolidation at the top of the WTA (Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, and Elena Rybakina had been dubbed the new “Big Four” by a few overeager publications), the first three big tournaments of 2025 were all won by new champions: Americans Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova, and now Andreeva.
Do you guys ever listen to those Apple Music radio shows? I hadn’t really (one hour with the insufferable Zane Lowe was enough to put me off them forever), but I was looking for new music and I stumbled across Trailblazers Radio with Fancy Hagood. Hagood is an accomplished singer-songwriter himself, and what I like about his show is that it doesn’t make any distinction between mainstream Nashville and “alt” country. Good songs are good songs, and he plays them all. On the last episode he introduced me to Maggie Antone’s One Too Many.
It’s a classically ambivalent drinking song with clever wordplay that’s surely indebted to early Kacey Musgraves. But Antone’s plaintive voice reminds me more of another country Kacey, Kacey Chambers, who seemed about to break big in the early 2000s and then (I guess?) retreated from the spotlight. Chambers’ cover of Dolly’s Little Sparrow still gives me chills.
This week in Back to the Garden, a veggie burger recipe from a once promising food multi-hyphenate who suddenly vanished after a pandemic-era workplace scandal. See ya!