4B — Thursday, January 15, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
GIANCARLO
BUONOMO
“Home is where one starts from.
As we grow older / The world
becomes stranger, the pattern
more complicated …”
-“East Coker,” T.S Eliot
I’m nearing
the end of a
month-long
layover.
On
December
16,
I
flew
from Detroit
to
Boston.
And on the
evening
of
January
21,
I’ll
board
a
plane
in
Boston headed for Rome, to study
and eat and file this very column.
When my editors approved my
proposal to write pieces from
Italy, they mentioned I would
have a column due before I made
my transatlantic journey.
“Write
something
about
Boston!” they suggested.
A good idea, but harder than
one might think. Not that there’s
a dearth of word-worthy edibles
in Beantown — in fact, it’s the
opposite. I could tell you about
the perfect fried oysters I ate
at B & G last weekend, how the
crisp crust contained a nugget
of briny, almost molten meat,
how they were served in their
original shells. I could give you
my practiced rant about how
the pizza in Boston is actually
better than the pizza in New
York. I could wax poetic about
the sausage sandwiches with
peppers and onions that carts sell
outside of Fenway Park.
But after a few paragraphs
of that, I’m sure you’d get tired.
When I ran out of adjectives
and alliteration, there’d be that
dreaded
“So
what?”
Simply
describing the food scene of
my home city could only hold
your attention for so long. Good
food writing — good writing of
any kind — always starts with a
question. Here’s mine: Why did
the cold spaghetti I ate out of a
tupperware at 2 a.m the other
night taste so bad?
Sorry, I’ll back up a bit. I’m
not really from Boston, you see. I
actually hail from a suburb called
Concord, whose revolutionary
and literary lore you probably
learned about in high-school
history. I associate my house —
cappuccino-colored
exterior,
just down the road from a farm
— with food. I have many happy
memories of childhood dishes:
tomato sauce, roasted chicken,
stuff I ate every week as a kid and
By KAREN HUA
Daily TV/New Media Editor
We were in the depth of Janu-
ary freeze, and the barren woods
of North Campus were honestly
the last place I wanted to be in
the dark. With frozen fingers
and sweaty palms, I blindly felt
my way around Pierpont’s Wi-Fi
and
service-less
basement,
searching for this godforsaken
“reflection room.” I finally hap-
pened upon a reclusive and bleak
– but tranquil – room used as an
artists’ escape.
Jenny walked in just a few
minutes
later,
clearly
much
more familiar with the space.
She made herself at home, and
immediately colored the bare
walls with an animated energy.
As she detailed her passion proj-
ect, it was clear her ambitions
were lofty, grander than her
petite stature suggested she was
capable of.
I first heard about Jennifer
Larson when I attended the Uni-
versity’s Lightworks Film Fes-
tival this past December, where
her trailer won the Best Docu-
mentary award. Larson gradu-
ated with a degree in Screen Arts
and Cultures shortly after the
premiere, and now devotes all
her time to expanding her docu-
mentary trailer into a formidable
full-length project.
Though film is her principal
medium, Larson also has exten-
sive photography and graphic
design portfolios called “The
Larson Lens.” She has worked
on dramatic and comedic shorts
before, but she considers docu-
mentary her forte – pieces that
intertwine shots of people in
their fields with interview clips
from community members. By
combining action scenes with
poignant
commentary,
Lar-
son aims to bring awareness to
inspiring, real-life stories she
believes are worth sharing.
Growing up in Royal Oak,
Larson always had an eclectic
array of interests, but she was
certain she would make a living
out from her creativity. Though
she never took any art classes
beyond middle school man-
dates, she rooted herself in the
University’s School of Art and
Design. It was at her Sophomore
Review at the end of her sec-
ond year, that professors saw a
different spark in her – a spark
they declared bluntly as, “You
belong in the film school.”
On a shaky whim, she trans-
ferred into LSA’s Screen Arts
and Cultures program, even
though she was taking a risk so
late into her college career. Over
ARTIST
PROFILE
VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily
Univeristy alum Jennifer Larson chronicles the Cooley Reuse Project.
IN
FOOD COLUMN
Home is where the
hunger is
time, she smoothly transitioned
from her art background to pro-
duction design in film. Soon, she
made a larger discovery in her
new field.
“I very much enjoy doing the
artistic side of things, but my
passion is still with documen-
taries … I’m very committed to
sharing stories and messages,
especially ones that aren’t given
enough attention by the media,”
Larson said.
Appropriately,
her
current
passion project is to film the
progress of the Cooley Reuse
Project in Detroit – an endeavor
set to span the course of the next
five years.
Nicole Pitts, the project’s
creator, stumbled upon Cooley
High School – a magnificent
building
of
Spanish-Renais-
sance exterior and terribly
dilapidated interior – acciden-
tally. In 2010, the school was
unfortunately closed due to
lack of sufficient enrollment
and budget. It is now Pitts’
mission to raise the funding to
purchase the property – then
fully revive and remodel it as a
community center, which will
include job training services,
gym facilities, mixed-income
residential housing and other
resources for the Detroit com-
munity.
CRP
is
primarily
Nicole
Pitts’s project, but it is Larson’s
job is to follow and document
the process and progress. Her
connection with Pitts traces
back to her early adolescence,
as Larson’s mother and Pitts
are colleagues at Oakland Com-
munity College. Larson and
Pitts have known each other
for about 10 years, and just last
year, Larson latched her own
project onto Pitts’s.
As Larson puts it, “(the CRP
is) going to help rebuild the
community, bring more power
to it, give more opportunities
to people in that area who don’t
feel like they have anyone to
reach out to. They don’t know
where to go to get on their feet –
to be more successful.”
As a filmmaker who cares
deeply about Detroit, Larson
knows there is a whole city of
unique options she can high-
light on film. However, what
initially attracted her to CRP
was not only Nicole Pitts’s cha-
risma, but a proud sense of duty.
Larson explained, “I feel
like (Detroit’s) my home. It’s
an underdog city that is por-
trayed in a grossly negative
light … The particular stories I
want to tell are the ones that I
think will have a positive influ-
ence … Nicole Pitts and her
Cooley Reuse Project are defi-
nitely something that should be
known at least by the people of
the Detroit and Michigan area.”
It’s this dedication to her
passion and her personal proj-
ect that is tremendously inspir-
ing. Larson plans on releasing
the documentary in three sepa-
rate 30-minute segments: the
pre-development, the purchase
of the property and finally the
completion’s effect on the com-
munity. As advised by one of
her SAC professors, she intends
to package her completed film
on Seed and Spark, an online
forum for independent film-
makers to share their passion
projects.
Larson has since become an
integral CRP member, as well.
She has thus far used her per-
sonal funds and equipment to
fuel her own project – without
even a Kickstarter campaign
to buttress her financially. The
scope of the project is a hefty
one – one most fresh post-grads
and budding filmmakers would
not immediately commit to.
“(My film) shows the people
in Detroit … coming together
to make something better for
themselves, to benefit further
generations – and to help bring
back the phoenix rising from
the ashes,” she says.
Larson’s
upcoming
mis-
sion is a trailer event to bring
a swarm of support out to vol-
unteer on Martin Luther King,
Jr. Day this year, where she and
Pitts hope to clean the outside
of Cooley High School to make
it safer even before it opens to
the public. Slowly but surely,
she will aid in making the
revival of Cooley High and the
completion on her film both a
reality.
“Apathy is a huge problem
in our youth and in our soci-
ety today,” she said. “One of
my goals as a filmmaker is to
make my spectators active…
I’m
hoping
that
something
they take away will be a spark
… something that drives them
to … make a change, to be more
involved in their community.”
Even in her language, it is
clear
artistic
thought
runs
through her every nerve – and
empathy is a quality so genuine
to her character. Larson holds
up her coffee cup to help visu-
ally demonstrate a metaphor.
“Say my coffee cup is a soda
can … and you try to open it and
the tab pops off … Something
is only as strong as its weak-
est point,” she explained. “The
weakest point would be Detroit
and this situation in America,
and … it’s important for – even
if you’re in California or New
Mexico or Arizona or wher-
ever – you should care about
Detroit.”
“I’m hoping that
something they
take away will
be a spark.”
still do now. I liked the leftovers
even better; there was always
something sinfully illicit about
heating them up late at night.
Much of modern gastronomy
is, paradoxically, sentimental.
Great chefs — even ones who
use liquid nitrogen and make
foams — often create dishes that
reheat
long-frozen
memories.
Thomas Keller, whose French
Laundry was once named the
best restaurant in the country,
used to make miniature grilled
cheese sandwiches with tomato-
water
soup.
David
Chang’s
Momofuku Ko (two Michelin
stars) serves fried apple pies
with
miso
butterscotch
for
dessert, a refined version of the
McDonald’s classic. Countless
other
chefs
dish
out
these
Proustian moments, and there is
no shortage of customers eager to
experience them.
I assumed, then, that chowing
down on my cold spaghetti would
be full of delicious nostalgia.
When the sweet sauce, thickly
caked on the spaghetti, hit my
palate, it would fire some well-
seasoned neurons and flood me
with halcyon feelings. I would be
14 again, having a snack before a
long Friday-night sleep.
But therein lies the problem.
It’s probably fun for a 40 year old
to be reminded of their favorite
food when they were 14. At 20,
in that anxious layover between
adolescence and adulthood, it
wasn’t fun to feel like a teenager
again.
Why?
Because
that
spaghetti tasted so simple, so
comfortable, so easy. In a forkful
of pasta I had regressed, and saw
how easy it could be to do that
over and over and over.
Maybe I was alone in this
feeling. I associate my house
— my whole childhood — so
strongly with food, but then
again, my parents spent a large
amount of time and money
cooking and shopping and eating
with my siblings and me. Did
others have such good memories
of eating at home? I made a
simple survey, and sent it out to
scores of friends, asking if the
food at home or at school was
better. I checked a day later, and
83 percent of them had chosen
“home.”
Students like myself are in a
bit of a half-sour pickle. Most
of us hope when we leave for
college we’ll transition from the
kid version of everything to the
adult version. Sleepovers with a
pilfered 12-pack will be replaced
by keggers. A rigid curriculum
will be replaced by classes you’re
actually interested in. Singles are
finally stretched into home runs.
It’s rare that I meet a college
student who misses high school.
And yet, most of us miss the
food of our childhoods, and aren’t
that excited about “eating like
adults.” At an age when many of us
so desperately want to, and often
need to, forget the practices of our
youth, food is the one thing that
we often don’t want to change.
But because food is so infused
with the essence of childhood,
the simple act of eating can bring
many of us to a state that we
struggle to move out of.
The other night, I was roasting
a chicken with some garlic and
herbs. I remember being small and
getting on my tippy-toes to place
my nose near the oven, to breathe
in the wonderful, exciting aroma
of ingredients transforming into a
meal. This night, I hunched over
and inhaled the fumes, like the
oracles of Ancient Greece, hoping
they would tell me something.
My chicken needed to cook
longer.
Buonomo is still waiting for his
chicken. To help him pass the time,
email gbuonomo@umich.edu.
THE D’ART BOARD
Each week we take shots at the biggest
developments in the entertainment world.
Here’s what hit (and missed) this week.
Design by Gaby Vasquez
Jenny From the Bra
Jennifer Lopez enjoys nip-slip at Golden Globes.
I’ll Take You to Neverland
Allison Williams receives analingus
in season premiere of “Girls”.
Destiny’s Child
Instagram pic instigates
Beyoncé pregnancy rumors.
Good Weed, Bad Bitch
2 Chainz owns Nancy Grace in debate
on marijuana legalization.
Zoey 911
Fucking badass Jamie Lynn Spears
uses knife to break up Pita Pit
brawl.