6B — Thursday, April 6, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
When the “Rick & Morty”
surprise episode that dropped
last Saturday gave nod to a
long lost Szechuan McNugget
dipping sauce, the internet
blew up and “Binging with
Babish” was on the case to
try to recreate the mysterious
sauce.
Andrew Rea, the man behind
the hit YouTube channel has
carved out his own little corner
of the web cooking famous
dishes from movies and TV
shows. From the burgers of
“Bob’s Burgers” to the prison
sauce from “Goodfellas,” he’s
cooking his way through the
screen canon.
“Since before movie theater
snacks were a thing, people
were sneaking Baby Ruths
into movie theaters back in
the ’20s,” Rea said. “You can’t
go see a movie in a theater
without a box of popcorn or
sneaking in some goobers in
your jacket.”
Although his mother taught
him how to cook at a young age,
Rea’s background is really in
film. He didn’t go to culinary
school, but his love of movies
and television — fostered while
at film school — led him to
food.
“I’ve always loved television
and movies and TV and movies
always seem to love food,” Rea
said.
He started doing the show
accidentally. After investing
in a camera and light kit, he
found he had the perfect set up
for a cooking show and decided
to give it a go.
“I had just seen an episode
of ‘Parks & Rec’ where Chris
and Ron had a burger cook-
off, and Chris’s burger was
this list of bullshit foodie
buzzwords,” Rea said. “And I
was like ‘Would that actually
taste good?’”
In the episode, Chris cooks
a turkey burger with a papaya
chutney,
taleggio
cheese
crisp, micro greens and black
truffle aioli all on a gluten-free
brioche bun. So, yeah, basically
a mess of trendy, pseudo-
healthy food. Ron deftly beats
him with a beef burger on a
classic, white bun. In his video,
Rea cooks both, and he comes
to a similar conclusion. The
beef burger wins, but Chris’s
burger does taste as delicious
as Beyoncé smells.
“I had to take some creative
liberties,”
Rea
said.
“Like
taleggio, that’s an example of
where I know the writers were
just fucking around because
taleggio is a soft cheese and
there’s no way you can make a
crisp out of it, it’ll just bleed oil
and turn into a mess, I tried.“
Instead, Rea blends Fontina
and Parmesan to create a
similar funky taste to the
taleggio, but with a harder
cheese.
Rea
does
pretty
thorough research for most of
his dishes, synthesizing parts
from various recipes to create
something he thinks to be most
true to the source material.
“For ‘Inglorious Bastards’
’s strudel I was looking at the
oldest, Austrian / Viennese
strudel recipes I could get my
hands on to try to recreate
something that would have
been of that era,” Rea said.
Beyond
historical
and
textual
accuracy,
Rea’s
signature is to make as much
from scratch as possible, even
when it’s not necessary. He
grinds his own beef, makes
his own pasta and even made a
whole Thanksgiving dinner for
the “Friends” episode.
“There wasn’t really any
need for me to make an entire
Thanksgiving meal and make
every element as good as I
possibly
could,”
Rea
said.
“They like it when I’m a little
over the top I think.”
YouTube
is
the
perfect
platform
for
that
sort
of
over-the-top
content.
With
hundreds
of
super
quick
Tasty
and
Tasty-spinoff
videos
spamming
newfeeds
and timelines everyday, the
internet seemed to be the right
way to break into the food
entertainment world.
“YouTube
and
Internet
cooking videos in general are
the way of the future,” Rea
said. “This is a generation that
likes
compact,
information
rich entertaining.”
Rea was inspired by fast,
aesthetically pleasing style of
Tasty videos, but wanted to
make videos for people who
were more serious about cook.
“Let’s do this same thing
where
it’s
like
a
nonstop
barrage of information, food
porn and let’s throw a little
entertainment
in
there
as
well,” Rea said, “That’s what I
think people are after.”
The match Rea has made —
that of food and film — seems
to be one made in heaven,
and Rea hopes to develop the
channel into a fulltime career.
“I have a lot of ideas for
verticals
and
spin
offs,
different little show concepts
that I want to explore and as
soon as I’m able to make this
my full time job,” Rea said.
“Which I hope will be pretty
soon.”
In the meantime, he’s going
to keep binging on, well,
everything.
COURTESY OF ANDREW REA
A still of “Binging with Babish”
YouTube’s star ‘Babish’
now combines film & food
In an interview about his series “Binging with Babish,” Andrew
Rea talks experimenting and innovating on the small screen
Reflecting on MF Doom’s
nonsensical ‘Mm.. Food’
Food has become a focal point
of sorts for today’s hip hop elite.
Action Bronson styles himself
as much a rapper as he does a
culinary raconteur. Rick Ross
found himself on the forefront
of memedom thanks to his love
for pears. Hell, Drake has his
own brand of whiskey. It isn’t
that good, mind you, but it
exists, and that’s what matters.
That all being said, food’s
newfound hip hop limelight,
while bombastic, is the result of
years of rap’s old guard’s lyrical
love for food finally bubbling
over into present day — and
what emcee to best illustrate
one of the many virtues of the
genre’s relationship with food
than the erratic and enigmatic
MF Doom?
MF Doom is likely one of
hip hop’s most inadvertently
versatile emcees. After releasing
six different albums in a 10 year
period, one would think that
listening to his discography
could afford them a fairly solid
understanding of Doom’s ways.
It isn’t a terribly hokey idea — the
same could largely be said for a
variety of other rappers who
have been around longer than
Doom, but fail to boast as large
of a discography as he does. Yet,
if you attempt to compare any
one of his works against another,
you’re likely quick to realize
Doom’s
unhealthy
penchant
for
throwing
his
listeners
absurd,
aural
curveballs.
Boisterous production is often
nestled against lyrics that are
simultaneously
nonsensical
and bizarrely genius — lyrics
that Doom threads together
so cohesively that they have
a near percussive quality to
them.
Those
features
are
fundamental to Doom’s style,
but his application varies across
a dauntingly large spectrum —
but I digress. This isn’t a lesson
in Doom’s discography by any
means, but it is important to
understand the foundation of
the man’s crazed style before
taking a gander at a more
relevant example of his artistry,
in
this
case,
his
blatantly
culinarily-grounded caricature
of an album, Mm.. Food.
Just as its name suggests, the
record’s subject matter primarily
relies on food and references
to it. The masked enigma we
know and love finds himself
rapping about beer, snacks and
gluttonous desserts
over
and
over
again. It’s absurd,
absolutely. It’s also
slightly gimmicky,
undoubtedly.
But
the
fact
that
it
works so well in
spite of those facts
is a testament to the enduring
style that Doom so often touts.
A fan of double and triple
entendres, his use of references
to food often becomes a medium
for laudable insults (grounded in
his trademark clever wordplay)
to other hip hop contemporaries
— a skit on “Gumbo” memorable
mentions “Not perfect for every
situation but edible (w)rappers
could actually beef up your next
meal,” illustrative of the kind
of brute braggadocio layered
within his songs.
That being said, as much
as his lyrics gattle and his
production bounces, his songs
tread absurdist waters too — but
that’s not to say it’s a terribly
negative mark against Doom or
the album, either. Oftentimes, on
Mm.. Food listeners find Doom
exchanging lyrical cohesion for
aural excellence, touting his
bread and butter of memorable
one-liners juxtaposed against
kitschy, unconventional beats
— something his few guests
have a knack for doing as well.
The yet-to-be-unmasked Mr.
Fantastik holds the title of one
of the most memorable lines
on Mm.. Food, spitting “True
to the ski mask New York’s my
origin / Play a fake gangsta like
an old accordion” on the album’s
magnum opus, “Rapp Snitch
Knishes.” Isolated, many of Mm..
Food’s lines don’t seem terribly
noteworthy, but in the context
of the album’s instrumentation
and emotions, they come off as
masterfully constructed.
Why Doom grounds this
album so deeply
in food remains
as much of a
mystery as the
man himself. One
interpretation
is
that
when
listening to Mm..
Food, Doom’s use
of food anchors his artistry in a
way that allows him to construct
one of the genre’s more creative
and (laudably) absurd works.
His lyrics are vehicles to a
simple, singular message —
Doom is one of the genre’s best,
and he’s well aware of that
fact. He hammers that message
home by slapping together an
unnecessary backdrop grounded
in food purely to create an
album that’s humorously over-
the-top,
and
unwaveringly
(and
unapologetically)
self-
aggrandizing to boot. Who else
would do that but the very best?
That was probably a rhetorical
question he’s asked himself
multiple
times
over
when
putting together the record. Just
like he notes on the album, “It’s
about the beats / Not about the
streets and who food he about
to eat.”
ANAY KATYAL
Managing Arts Editor
RHYMESAYERS ENTERTAINMENT
Rapper MF Doom
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
ARTIST PROFILE
An exploration of the absurdity of MF Doom’s oft-forgotten record
MADELEINE GAUDIN
Senior Arts Editor
Basement Arts confronts
unspoken female violence
COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW
Recent play “Dear” questions nature of violence in womanhood
Set in a communal bathroom
of a college dorm, the play
“Dear” follows four women’s
encounter with violence and
how it affects their lives and
their womanhood.
“It’s really interesting to
see how verbal and physical
violence affects these three
women,” said Elle Smith, an
SMTD junior and director of
the show. “We simultaneously
hear
these
stories
of
the
atrocities
committed
by
other women who have been
sentenced to jail for their
crimes.”
The play considers how
the acts of violence by female
killers connect to the day-
to-day circumstances college
students face. Smith reflected
on the parallel between what
this play is exploring and how
audiences can relate to its
themes.
Four
women
—
April,
Francie, Greta and Hazel — are
the driving forces of the show.
“April
is
the
character
who
we
see
through
her
monologues,”
Smith
said.
“She is very pretty and very
girly and she is undervalued
because of that.”
April,
played
by
SMTD
freshman Christie Moyle, is a
progressive character; during
a two-week period and as time
passes, the audience is able
to witness how her character
evolves.
“She
ends
her
section
very
differently
than she begins
it,”
Smith
said.
Additionally,
Francie,
played
by SMTD senior
Zoey Bond, poses
a
contrast
in
personality, which
allows the play to
move through a
series of different
character
dynamics
and
interactions.
“Francie is sort
of the ‘Regina George’ type
character and as we get to see
more about her, we realize
BAILEY KADIAN
Daily Arts Writer
that
she
is
actually
quite
vulnerable,” Smith added. The
other two characters are Hazel
and Greta, the best friends of
April and Francie.
“Hazel and Greta are the
two sidekick type characters.
Greta (played by SMTD junior
Savanna Crosby) is Francie’s
best friend and she is constantly
looking for validation with
her friendships with other
women,”
Smith
said. “She [Greta]
loves to write and
is more sensitive,
but
when
she
is
aligned
with
Francie—she
can
bite.”
Meanwhile,
Greta’s
counterpart
Hazel, played by
SMTD sophomore
Megumi
Nakamura,
is
April’s
best
friend and “we see her as
she is reacting to the loss of
her friend, but she’s not as
victimized as she appears to
be.”
Smith
admits
that
the
casting process was difficult
because there were so many
women who brought different
elements to these roles.
“We had nearly fifteen girls
audition and it was incredible
to see so many young women
interested
in
this
play,”
Smith said. “They all brought
something very unique to the
table and it was definitely the
most difficult thing I have ever
had to cast.”
The play explores violent
acts as the central idea, while
thinking about other ideas of
womanhood, of men and the
power of unity.
“We are looking at how else
violence is expressed, if not
physically.
Thinking
about
these three women, what does
it mean when we are fighting
with each other? And not
standing
together?”
Smith
asked.
“Dear” also abandons male
roles when considering acts of
violence. The appearance of
men or discussion about them
is a rare occurrence in this play.
“There
are
few
men
mentioned in the play, and
when they are, it a strategic
mention of who they are and
the role these men play in
these women’s lives,” Smith
discussed.
Lily Houghton, the show’s
writer, gives a lot of flexibility
to the cast as they learn what
works and what doesn’t in
transitioning the piece from
script to stage.
“That’s part of the fun of
working with a new work—
something that may read really
well doesn’t translate to the
stage, but it was really fine in a
read-through,” Smith said.
This play aims to unite
and encourage women, while
illuminating important themes
in all of our lives, and, Smith
said, “It is important (that)
women come to see this show
to realize that we are stronger
together, rather than fighting
apart.”
MM.. Food
MF Doom
Rhymesayers
Entertainment
“Dear”
Studio One
Walgreen Drama
Center
April 6th, 7th & 8th
@ 8 P.M.
April 8th @ 11 P.M.