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.

