2B — Thursday, April 7, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
EPISODE REVIEW
The title of Sunday’s episode
of “Girls” makes cringeworthy
sense once you find out what the
plot driver is — an experiential
play that Adam (Adam Driver,
“Star Wars Episode VII:
The Force
Awakens”) is
in about the
Kitty Genovese
murder case
of 1964 in New
York City. The
play frames
Hannah’s
(Lena
Dunham,
“Happy
Christmas”)
discovery
of Jessa (Jemima Kirke, “Tiny
Furniture”) and Adam’s more-
than-friends relationship. The
shots of the play, which span
beautifully lit alleyways and
fire escapes, are the aesthetic
indulgence of “Hello Kitty,”
but they also highlight the
theme of the episode (not that
anyone involved in “Girls”
would admit to having themed
episodes). “Hello Kitty” is
about communication — or
more precisely, the sometimes
humorous and sometimes
bittersweet lack of it.
As always, everyone in “Girls”
is so wrapped up in themselves
that they can barely grasp
things that are right in front
of them — like the fact that
Hannah and Fran (Jake Lacy,
“Carol”) are horribly wrong
for each other, as seen through
their vastly different ideas
about how, when, where and
to whom it is appropriate for
Hannah to be flashing her
vagina (but maybe that’s just
me).
Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet,
“Mad Men”) takes a backseat
in this episode, as does Marnie
(Allison Williams, “Peter Pan
Live”) a little bit — although
Marnie casually dismissing
Adam and Jessa to Hannah as
their “second-tier friends” is
hilarious. This season of “Girls”
has seen Marnie rediscovering
something. I’m not sure what
it is — her voice, a measure of
independence, astonishing levels
of annoying self-satisfaction —
but it’s building to something
for sure. And Allison Williams
is doing a phenomenal job of
making you grit your teeth and
roll your eyes in exasperated
anticipation of it.
- SOPHIA KAUFMAN
B+
Girls
Season 5,
Episode 7
Sundays at
10 p.m.
HBO
By GIANCARLO BUONOMO
Daily Food Columnist
I had an odd dream the
other night, odder than usual.
I found myself standing next
to my mother in the kitchen of
my childhood home, without
any idea of how I got there. On
the granite countertop, there
was a large sheet of wax paper,
which bore four raw, skin-on
pork cheeks.
“We’re curing them today,
right?” I asked, as I moved my
hand towards one.
My mother slapped it away.
“We’re braising them today,”
she said. Without speaking
again, she heated an enamel
pan on the stove with some
olive oil and seared each cheek,
skin-side down, like she used
to do with chicken on Friday
afternoons when I was a child.
I heard the skin sizzle, and
woke up.
Freud thought that dreams
were difficult to understand
because they were the result
of displacement and conden-
sation, of real-life anxieties
expressed through vignettes.
“When in a dream something
has the character of a spoken
utterance — that is, when it
is said or heard, not merely
thought, and the distinction
can usually be made with cer-
tainty,” he writes in “The Inter-
pretation of Dreams,” “then
it originates in the utterances
of waking life, which have, of
course, been treated as raw
material, dismembered, and
slightly altered, and above all
removed from their context.”
In my case, Freud was right
about raw material, dismem-
bered and slightly altered. This
past school year, I have found a
new hobby: curing meats. Pork
cheeks, mostly, but also pork
shoulders and beef rounds. Off
in the corner of my dingy little
basement, I may have as many
as eight hunks of salted, spiced
meat hanging at one time. Each
piece of meat is tied with twine
and hangs on a coatrack pole I
liberated from my closet.
I began curing for simple
enough reasons. I like cured
meats, but they’re expensive in
Ann Arbor. I like cooking, and
wanted to try something more
advanced. I wanted to feel
more Italian. I wanted to do
something out of the ordinary.
The first cured meat I made
was guanciale, the salted, air-
dried pork cheek that flavors
many classic pastas in Rome.
Properly cured, it tastes like
pure pork, with fat that is
somehow both crunchy and
tender. I special-ordered two
cheeks from the local butcher,
and found a simple recipe
online that required neither the
addition of sodium nitrites (a
preservative which gives hams
and salami their cured flavor),
nor a climate-controlled cham-
ber. Salt, sugar, some aromat-
ics, the cheeks and time. Each
cheek resembled an irregular
slab of bacon covered on one
side by pink skin, with a few
bristles still attached. They
looked, when held at the right
angle, like cheeks. I placed
them in a plastic bag with the
cure for about a week, and then
hung them in the basement to
dry, with no idea how they’d
turn out.
I’ve never been so happy to
see mold. On the thirteenth day
of curing in my basement, my
pork cheeks each had a small
patch of white powder on their
skin-side, a sign that some air-
borne strain of the penicillium
genus had decided to make
their home there. Penicillium
molds can produce penicillin,
the antibiotic compound hailed
as a godsend in the twentieth
century for its curative powers
over both battlefield injuries
and gonorrhea. There wasn’t
any Nazi schrapnel or clap
floating around my basement,
I presume, but the dusting
of penicillium would protect
my meat from more sinister
microbes.
I was proud of my pork
cheeks. I would inspect them
daily, running my finger along
their surface, feeling them go
from tacky to crusty. I’d make
puerile jokes to friends who
came over (“Want to go to the
basement and see my meat?”).
I pored over recipes, trying to
find the perfect ones to gift
with my precious meat. More
than pride, though, I felt a
sense of awe. I had no real idea
what I was doing. I couldn’t
tell you what the ambient
temperature of the basement
was, or the reduction in water
weight over the weeks as the
cheeks slowly dried out. Those
friendly penicillium molds
could very easily have been
unfriendly ones. I was a food-
obsessed amateur at the mercy
of air and water and microbes.
After three weeks, I brought
a cheek home to my family for
Thanksgiving, wrapped gently
like a newborn. On the granite
counter in the kitchen, I cut
into the cheek and revealed a
shining core, mostly fat with a
comically small swoosh of pink
meat. We fried small pieces in
an enamel pan with olive oil, to
make a pasta sauce. They tasted
perfect.
I’m now on my third round
of curing pork cheeks. When-
ever I look at them, I feel a bit
happier. Not because I antici-
pate eating them, or because I
feel manly or sophisticated, but
because they’re a desire real-
ized. A small one, an ephemeral
one, but a desire that started
out as a thought and ended up
on my dinner plate.
I’ve thought a lot about
what my pork-cheek dream
the other night meant. Some
anxiety about the future, per-
haps. A fear of adulthood, a
dread of time, a sense of shame,
I’m not really sure. I have
many hopes for the future, but
whether they’ll be realized I
do not know. I think about this
uncertainty constantly and
uncomfortably. But I still have
my cheeks hanging in the base-
ment, a hope realized by noth-
ing but air and time.
***
Guanciale (cured pork
cheek)
Two pork cheeks, skin-
on (Order them at your local
butcher shop)
One half-cup of coarse
kosher salt
One half-cup of brown sugar
One bunch of fresh thyme
Four cloves of garlic, crushed
One tablespoon of crushed
peppercorns
Step 1
Wash pork cheeks under
warm water. In a bowl, mix
together the salt and sugar. Rub
the mixture vigorously into
pork cheeks, making sure to
cover them completely.
Step 2
Place cheeks in a large plas-
tic freezer bag. Add the thyme,
garlic, pepper and any remain-
ing salt and sugar, and place
bag in refrigerator. Allow to sit
for six days, turning bag over
every two days to redistribute
cure. The salt and sugar will
begin pulling the moisture out
of the cheeks.
Step 3
After six days, remove
cheeks from bag and discard
any liquid. Give the cheeks a
quick wash in warm water to
remove excess cure.
Step 4
With a sharp knife, punc-
ture each cheek near the top
and run a length of kitchen
twine through the hole, tying
it off to form a loop.
Step 5
Hang the cheeks in any cool,
dark place you have — a base-
ment, a spare closet, even a
garage. Place a pan of salted
water underneath them so
they don’t dry out too quickly.
White mold is beneficial.
Green or blue mold isn’t, and
should be scrubbed off with a
dab of vinegar.
Step 6
After three weeks, the
cheeks should have shrunk a
bit and smell like a delicates-
sen. Cut off the skin and any
yellowish fat, and the remain-
ing flesh can be sliced up and
fried like bacon, tossed into a
pasta or added to vegetables.
A pork adventure
with Giancarlo
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
By SELENA AGUILERA
Daily Arts Writer
Frankie Cosmos’s Next Thing
is an indie-rock album that
gets so personal and deep you
feel like you
personally
know the
band. You can
hear every
piece of the
members in
the music. It’s
constructed
so intricately
that every song is a malleable
piece of artwork, waiting to
be molded by your individual
perceptions and feelings, and
that’s why it’s so goddamn
beautiful.
Next Thing opens with
the song “Floated In,” with a
simple drum beat matching the
guitar. Greta Kline’s (Frankie’s
real name) voice chimes in
with its soft charm, singing “I
floated in and started livin” as
feathery synths begin to make
an appearance. This song sets
the mood for the entire album:
simplistic, yet emotional, with
lyrics that are pure poetry.
“Floated In” ends with Kline
asking, “What are you doin”
and “If I Had a Dog” begins
as it discusses common fears
and insecurities instilled in
everyone, with the lyrics “Am
I still so sad / Is that pretty
lame / Everybody says your
decisions are OK.” The angsty
confusion comes to a halt for
a few moments as the album
continues into “Embody”
where things get personal
as the lyrics reveal names of
specific friends and things that
create peace in Kline’s mind.
The album continues, with
each song becoming a new
favorite, as the sensual lyrics
complement the dreamy
instrumentals, making the
album feel raw and alive.
Kline’s soft voice projecting
dark feelings and confusing
depression embodies the way
people interact with their own
emotions perfectly.
Living in a world where
mental health issues aren’t
completely accepted, we find
that in multiple situations
we hide from our innermost
feelings out of fear of being
vulnerable. We try to project
somewhat perfect personas.
These projections are
embodied by the enjoyable
instrumentals in Next Thing
as the lyrics speak to true
emotions that are yanked
outside of our “perfect”
exteriors with every note Kline
hits.
During the tenth song,
“Sinister,” Kline sings
“Sometimes I get sinister /
Can’t always be like Arthur /
Sometimes I just feel sinister /
Can’t always turn to Arthur,”
displaying the confrontation
of feelings and the fact that we
can’t always feel OK, and that’s
OK.
The album also touches
on deep insecurities like
becoming an emotional burden
to someone, as heard in lyrics
like “Now that I know that
every time I get sad you just
hate me / You can go to sleep
and sleep it off peacefully /
I’ll be here all night feeling
totally fucked” from “Is It
Possible / Sleep Song.” In the
song, Kline depicts what it feels
like to want help, but to be too
scared to ask for it. This leaves
someone to deal with strong
emotions on their own which
can lead to self-deprecation
and maybe even the feeling of
worthlessness. These feelings
are depicted in the song “I’m
20” where Kline sings “I’m 20
/ Washed up already / I’d sell
my soul for a free pen.”
These emotionally infused
songs portray what dealing
with emotions feels like in
everyone’s head. It’s dark and
lonely, and it’s easy to get lost
unless we learn how to express
ourselves. Next Thing is an
emotional expression from
Kline to us, a conversation that
creates a deep connection with
the entity of its songs.
Next Thing continues with
an existential crisis presented
to listeners in under 20
seconds at the beginning of
“Tour Good.” Kline sings “I
don’t know what I’m cut out
for / If there’s anything” as
her voice fills with comfort
for the void that the crisis has
made. Kline gives reassurance
that thoughts like these are in
everyone’s brain, making the
pain left by them all the more
bearable.
All 15 songs on Next Thing
are three-minute-or-less pieces
of cathartic artwork. Greta
Kline never fails to project her
full self in her music through
Frankie Cosmos and that
brutal honesty gives listeners
something to connect with.
The elements composed in
Next Thing evolve together
to create an existential life
discussion that would be had at
3 a.m. on the swings at a park
with someone you love in just
under 30 minutes. It’s simple,
emotional and too beautiful for
words.
Dreamy Frankie C.
infused with truth
I was originally going to
review Andy Black’s “Stay
Alive,” but it was so bad that
I decided to listen to Alesso’s
latest single,
“I Wanna
Know.”
Now, let
it be known
that I’m not
the biggest
fan of EDM/
dance
music; I think it serves a
fleeting purpose as far as
music goes. Each EDM song
has a lifespan of a few months
at most before it vanishes
into an irrelevant abyss — I
personally don’t know of
anyone who still listens to
Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” or
Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t
You Worry Child” — in fact,
these may be the only EDM/
dance songs some of you can
name off the top of your head.
However, music isn’t
always about the ephemeral.
Sometimes it’s okay for a kind
of shitty song to be amazing
in that it captures a moment,
a time in your life. Thirty
years from now, I doubt
future generations will listen
to “Wake Me Up” or “Don’t
You Worry Child,” but if any
of us happen to listen to them
again, they’ll remind us of the
days when that’s all the radio
played.
And I think that’s the
purpose Alesso’s latest single
serves. “I Wanna Know” isn’t
a “great” song. It won’t stand
the test of time, the majority
of the world will probably
hate it and there’s no question
that it lacks substance and
creativity. But it’s catchy and
being “catchy” is paramount
in 2016.
With a staccato guitar
intro that eases into the
techno beat those Swedish
DJs have perfected so well, “I
Wanna Know” is the ultimate
summer jam. Perfect for
pool parties, driving with
your windows down or just
smoking kush with some
friends, Alesso knows how to
get you vibing. And with the
right remix this song will be
played at every club and bar
over the summer; it may even
be the song of the summer.
But that’s just it — it will only
be the song of the summer, if
that, because at the end of the
day it’s just not a great song.
And let’s be real, great songs
are all that really matter.
- DANIELLE IMMERMAN
B-
I Wanna
Know
Alesso
A
Next Thing
Frankie
Cosmos
Bayonet Records
HBO
BAYONET RECORDS
Is that Jessie from Toy Story 2??
DEF JAM
All 15 songs are
three-minute-
or-less pieces of
cathartic art.
ALBUM REVIEW