I Don’t Agree With Dave Chappelle and That (Should Be) OK

As the title says, I think that Dave Chappelle’s ideas regarding transgender issues are archaic. He is no longer the 20 year-old superstar renegade going against the against an unfair system. He’s almost in his 50’s now, a well respected staple in the comedy scene who has seen and experienced a lot of bullshit. 

His latest comedy special, The Closer, reflects this. As the last in a series of Netflix specials, Chappelle returns to old stomping grounds, primarily with Trans issues. As a comedy special, it is certainly his weakest. I thought a lot of the jokes were decent but they are not Chappelle at his best. His energy is somewhat tired, I would even say exhausted. 

Yet, I think that The Closer is more interesting as a portrait of a man who is reflecting on his time trying to navigate these issues and being honest in a way that I can appreciate. Is it the best rhetorical argument he has ever made? No, but I have found that true honesty hardly ever is. This is a person who has done the soap box debating in the past. With his comedy, he has been able to interrogate issues with humor and grace. 

In contrast, The Closer is messy and complicated, just like his feelings. If anything, his harshest critics are the same. I’m not here to tell you that their feelings aren’t justified. I’m a straight Asian man. In the supposed conflict between Chappelle’s championing of blacks and comedians versus the LGBTQ warriors fighting for their rights, I am at best a supporter of both and at the very least someone who walked into a bar in the middle of a drunk fight before I have had my first drink. 

Twitter is going off right now, calling Chappelle transphobic and disingenuous. I’m not sure if I agree with either of those statements. Chappelle has never been one to hate on any group just for existing. This is a man who lives in the middle of honky-tonk Ohio, full of white people as a black man who knows his history. Even with his jokes that supposedly put down trans people, it is easy to see that in a fit of emotion people forget that he has made jokes about everyone of every category. Whites, blacks, asians, gays, men, women, rich, poor, and everything outside and inbetween. 

I think his frustrations come more from when people band together and act as a digital tribal unit. With the internet, these voices become a force, sucking out the individuality and nuance that come from constructive conversation. Whether we like to admit it or not, our ability to tribalize gives us a sonic and psychic power that can make it impossible to find the humanity of it all. 

In terms of the accusations of him being disingenuous, I would say that is one thing Dave Chappelle has never been in his standup. Many people are pointing to the fact that he might be baiting people for attention. Maybe that is true. After all, he is a businessman now, no longer a naive kid but a stone-cold player who has cut up his niche kingdom in the entertainment world, playing the game on his own terms. 

Some people say that his story about trans comedian, Daphne Dorman, is nothing but a shield. They say that telling this story reveals Chappelle’s true nature as a phobic conman trying to hide his hatred and bolster his own position.

Yet, I felt the exact opposite. His anger at the death of his friend and the tears that wet his eyes told me otherwise. To me, this is a desperate rant of a man who is tired of the psychic powers that reduce the humanity of any group and the mental and physical casualties from those that have been caught in the warpaths. 

Again, I don’t agree with Chappelle on trans issues. He stated that “gender is a fact.” It isn’t. Biological sex is a fact. Sexual identity and orientation is a truth that goes beyond anything that can be explained by material means. Science is trying to figure out the neuro-science behind these things, but I am not going to pretend I am some expert. 

There are many people in the Black LGBTQ community who are also speaking out about these issues. They believe that Chappelle’s dialogue doesn’t include them in the discussion, despite being an intersection of the two communities. Again, I think Chappelle’s age is showing here. 

But what do I know? I’m just the guy on the sidelines of all of this, right? What I do know is that trans people know in their hearts who they are, just like I know in mine that we all deserve a chance at happiness. 

Chappelle knows this, too. He has already declared what he plans to say to Daphne’s child when they grow up:

“Son, I knew your father and he was a beautiful woman.”

Like most jokes, Chappelle infuses this line with his honesty. With this line, he acknowledges both his personal beliefs while acknowledging Daphne’s truth. Some might say he didn’t do enough and in some ways I don’t think so, either. Yet, these two people, despite supposedly being on opposite sides, had a real human friendship and acknowledged the beauty in each other.

Chappelle says in The Closer that people weren’t listening to him. I think it goes both ways. Both sides have run out of logic and are fighting a spiritual war with all they have left: humanity. That humanity can be both beautiful and ugly but right now, all I see is shrapnel. 

Maybe the saddest truth is that despite Chappelle addressing the LGBTQ community directly at the end of The Closer, it might have hit hardest with people like me. The people on the sidelines of the bar fight who are just trying to enjoy our drinks without spilling our own cups from the rough and tumble. I’m not angry, indifferent, or even a troll looking to egg things further. I’m just sad. Like Chappelle, I just want us all to laugh again.

After writing this piece, I saw this youtube video that really helps further contextualize my thoughts and even taught me alot about trans issues. It’s a bit long but highly informative. The youtuber is a trans woman that explains all of the nuance better than I ever could. I hope you take the time to check it out.

13. Smile for the Customer

The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.

One weekend when I was still a part-timer, Dick complained during a slow part of a shift that he needed more workers on the weekends.

“Don’t you have any friends?” he asked.
“Yeah but I don’t know if they are looking for jobs right now.”

He rolled his eyes and let out an ‘ugh’.

“Don’t your friends like money?”
“I guess not.”
“Well don’t you have a Facebook or something?”

I did but I didn’t really like posting on it. I only really had one for keeping in contact with certain friend groups and hobbies but I wasn’t usually audacious enough to post on my own wall for the world to see. I find that most people my age use Facebook to:

  • Document their digital or real-life dramas in a public diary (aren’t these supposed to be private?)
  • Complain about things that they have no plans to solve productively
  • Fish for sympathy for the consequence of their own actions

It was like witnessing a digital museum, every exhibit an example of humanity’s inability to communicate without looking like an ass. I’ve had enough of that in high school.

But as a favor to Dick, I posted the unofficial job listing. That same day, Christian dropped a comment. 

At the time, I barely knew Christian. I had met him several times at my University’s Poetry Club, which became known more for our after-parties than actual poetry.  

My first actual memory of him was during one of our poetry readings. I had finished sharing a piece I wrote and the floor was open for the other members to contribute feedback. Christian was the first person to speak. 

He said,
“I don’t like your use of the B-word. It is offensive and degrading to women who have experienced a long history of violence and discrimination from men.”

So, no. I wouldn’t say I liked Christian at the start. 

Still, he was the first person to respond so I sent him a private message with all of Dick’s info. That same weekend, he arrived, smile and all.

Christian made an immediate impression. He was tall, at least a foot and a half taller than me. His hair was silky brown yet also disheveled. Jean jacket with pins of various designs. He had a sense of style for sure.

He had the energy to match. Many of the customers liked him immediately. He had a kindness that was both boisterous and tender, genuinely interested in helping people leave the store happy. 

To the untrained ear, his “customer voice” was pretty similar to his regular voice (although I became pretty attuned to the distinction by the end of my career). Often it had a high pitch tone and energy. He also spoke with a cadence that felt at times like a sing-song. Looking back, this was probably another reason why I disliked him initially. Christian is something of a performer, having done plays and musicals so his theatrics are rooted in his personality. 

I wouldn’t say I have an aversion to performing. I am an artist as well. Yet, I’m also not one for kissing ass. I would much rather that people and their art openly mock me rather than give me a false sense of security. At least with the former, I know where I stand. 

I didn’t think my customer service was bad, especially at the beginning of my career. However, I don’t think I was ever exemplary, either. To do so would be too sickly sweet, like sucking body chocolate off an asshole.

I did tend to fold my arms and straighten my back, tilting my chin ever so slightly up. Later, one of the regulars said this made me look tense, even hostile. In reality, my back was just sore from bending over a table all day. If I was annoyed at someone (which I often was), I didn’t think I was presenting it so openly. 

My voice was also pretty deep. I had a reputation for it being loud, my throat producing depth, like the wobbles and blasts of electronic bass music. Bringing my voice up to a higher tone often felt more like a satire, like I was secretly mocking the customer (which I was, sometimes). I certainly didn’t like the way it made me sound.

Lou once brought this up. “Do you think you can sound a little nicer?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Like how one would speak to a customer. You know with a sense of grace. Like servers in fancy restaurants. Service.” 

Lou also had a cadence similar to Christians that was outwardly sweet. Then again, she was the boss so her tone had a distinct undertone that reminded me of a gangster’s threat: a warning disguised as a suggestion.

“I’ll try,” I said. I meant it, too but I was also uncomfortable with this performance I have been asked to partake in. 

“Good” she said. “And can you also smile a bit more often?”

This one baffled me at first because I thought I was smiling. In fact, I made sure in my mind to smile before every customer interaction. Yet, when I looked in a mirror later that day, I had to admit that she was right. Most people would have considered my customer face as intense indifference. 

I blame this one on my background. Traditionally, Koreans have a long history of treating every photograph like a mugshot. It’s probably a side effect of having a long history of dictatorships and oppression. 

Now, this trend is changing in the age of selfies and digital filters but personally, I have never been able to figure out how to smile on camera. After 5th grade, I stopped trying to look happy in pictures. Instead, I have opted to try minimizing how upset I look. Inadvertently, I have continued Korea’s cultural tradition of photographic stoicism in an age where people prefer to look happy about everything and nothing. 

A while later, I was talking to my mom about some of these concerns when she snapped her fingers. 

“You know where you get this from?” she said. “Your father.”
“Dad used to sell chocolate?”
“No, but he used to be in sales. Real Estate.”

I had a vague memory of my father being a realtor when I was about 8. I can picture him wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase. 

“Your father also never liked kissing up to people. He was supposed to talk up the place and butter up the folks. You know what his best line was as a salesman?”

I shook my head.

My mother relaxed her entire face so that the eyelids and the corners of her mouth drooped down into an expression that looked perpetually tired and certainly annoyed. She looked exactly like my father.

“You want the house or not?”
Her mimicry was spot on, having dropped several octaves, the tone made it sound like she was ready for a beer. 

“Damn,” I said. “So what did he do?”
“What do you think? he quit and got a certification in information systems.”

Even though I finished my English degree, I did have a similar option to go back to school. I could have gone back to school for another Bachelors’ or even a Masters but I had little interest in returning to that life. 

So, I stuck it out for another year and a half. In that time, I have come to document people and the way they act, in front of and behind the work counter. I can’t say it was always a good time (by the end, it often wasn’t). What I can say is that it was an interesting anthropologic exercise.

I was a zookeeper in a human zoo, the counter being a sort of safety cage that protected me from the Jurassic Park-like hostilities. These human dinosaurs often smiled, carnivorous and hungry. Their teeth cut into the chocolate, but their real chemical high was often the compliments that set off their egos. Sugar and power were two drugs we could serve back to back, like a cigarette after sex, coffee after cigarettes, and a free cab ride at the end to top it all off.   

By the end, I guess the reason the job chewed me up so hard was that my natural aversion to a world where I had to smile all the damn time. I think it’s one part of the Covid-19 pandemic that I appreciate: the normalization of masks. I can say words I don’t mean without the face to back it up. Even better, without their expressions to distract me, all I have to do is simply listen to people, scanning every line for truth and deception.

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12. Beating the Clock

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14. The Sandwich Shop Regulars

[Table of Contents]

Visual vs Written Stories

It’s funny because despite being an English major, I spent more time watching movies than reading. A part of it was the lack of a proper ADHD diagnosis but I’m also not particular to the traditional English canon. Burnt out from speed reading a bunch of books I didn’t care for, I didn’t have time to read much outside of my classwork. 

Now, I’m medicated and unemployed. Right now, time is something I have so I spent a lot of it trying to play catch up with the backlog I have accumulated for a long time. One year and 16 books later, I feel like I have a better grasp of the medium. I can’t say that I am much better at reading (which I do consider a skill) but I know enough to know that it has become my favorite narrative medium to create with. 

As an artist, writing provides the most egalitarian tools for narrative creation, construction, and manifestation, especially for an individual creator. 

It might not be as immediately appealing when compared to other forms of storytelling. Television, movies, and video games are also powerful mediums and I am not discrediting their artistic value. They can engage the senses, especially sight and sound (even touch if you consider the textual quality of sound provided by high-end sound systems).

Yet, there is a reason they call these works “productions.” They require companies and studios to manifest. They require a cast and crew: directors, editors, prop artists, set designers, cinematographers, audio specialists, and all the other hardworking roles that I can’t even comprehend or have time to list. Equipment, cameras, and lights alone cost small fortunes. Special effects require expensive sets and equally expensive computers to simulate and render entire fantasy worlds. 

This is not even to mention the social barrier of entry. Despite home video and prosumer markets allowing amateur filmmakers, it is still an expensive hobby. If you want to go mainstream, your only real option is to play a ruthless game whose main agenda is capital. There is a lot of time, money, physical labor, and resources that require even the most grounded of films. For example: ever consider how expensive it is to rent out a diner for a simple scene?

With writing, however, all you need are words and something to write on. There are options for doing this comfortably (I choose to use a tablet for drafts and a desktop for editing). Yet, it is still possible for anyone to write that draft with pen and paper. Twenty dollars can get you a nice journal and several pens. I have personally written several stories in this way and while it has fallen out of favor in my routine and practices, I still found it an enjoyable way to create. 

I have tried my hand at creating other types of art including video. I have tried collaborative projects. There are merits to these types of works for sure. Having the creative input of others is always welcome. Having the skill set of those outside your own can also be a wonderous thing. This process of collective contribution can create resonant works, there is no denying this. 

Yet, it can also result in a mess. Too many voices can drown out a vision into an incohesive or generic result. Especially for those on an independent or even amateur level, a lack of resources might require more time and energy from the artists. Single developer video games tell stories of how many sleepless nights it took to make their games. Bigger budgets might speed up the process, allowing for higher quality and quicker development. Even then, big triple AAA developers have been reported to abuse their workers into overwork (see Project CD RED). While the success stories are out there, there is also an equal number of reported disasters. 

There are benefits to these higher levels of production. With video and audio, creators can engage the audience with their immediate senses, making the process of sending narrative information more efficient. Traditional books, however, require a reader to essentially decode the meanings of the written words and interpret them as best they can. By contrast, this is far less efficient for an audience compared to simply seeing, hearing, or sometimes even performing the actions. 

Perhaps, this is the sacrifice that written stories make, one that is the opposite of more production-heavy mediums. While films require so many resources to present the story seamlessly to a viewer, writers require far less in their creation. In exchange, they ask their audience to take an active role in the creation. The reader’s minds become simulation machines, using the words of the author as instruction for each frame of these psychic films. 

That said, it isn’t like books themselves aren’t a form of production. Especially in the commercial space, they require editors, readers, cover artists, publicists, etc. These professional writers also have to cater to the whims of commercials in order to have a successful career. The digital age has also made books and written works more ambitious in their production. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a primary example in the published world of an experience beyond simple text. Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive Series also has a huge team of beta readers and artists that contribute to his work. Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck is a modern masterpiece of a multimedia project, its medium being the internet itself allowing for text, music, images, video, and even games. I can only imagine that this level of literary ambition will continue as time goes on.

I realize that I just played my own devil’s advocate. Yet, as someone who is still at the start of their writing journey, who also has ambitions in this multimedia possibility in literature, I feel the draw of traditional writing now more than ever. It is the most egalitarian of narrative creation. I don’t have to worry about all the little parts of these other mediums and rely (and hope) on the talents of others. At the moment, I can simply write. I will probably need the help of these talented others in the future. If my dreams for my stories come true, I will need to find editors, artists, musicians, beta readers, and many others that I simply cannot fathom at the moment. 

But right now, I am simply enjoying typing away at my keyboard. I am enjoying the process of getting lost in imagination and willing my characters, stories, and worlds onto a page. I am free to create with little to stop me. 

12. Beating the Clock

The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.

Eight hours is a long time to be doing anything. An eight hour shift at Lou’s primarily involved doing the following:

  • Make chocolate
  • Help customers
  • Stand

There is more to it but that is the jist. Doing this for an hour or even a couple of hours is not a big deal, but doing it for 8 hours can seem like a lifetime. 

The most immediate exhaustion comes from physical endurance. Craning my neck, cramping my hands, stiffening my back. It might not look like much for those who spend mere seconds passing by. Those who have lived it know that it is the equivalent of a monk practicing martial arts. The discomfort that the body feels is exponential as time goes on, not proportional. Patience and resilience are key. 

Sitting down for my half-hour lunch break was not much of a relief. It wasn’t enough time to rest the muscles that had tightened all over my body into a tense pain. Rather, it was more of impending doom, knowing that I still had time left on the clock before I had to stand again, get into a position, and get back to the assembly line. 

However, that didn’t mean that I didn’t try to find ways to find relief. I worked seven and a half hours. I tried to take lunch as late as possible, about 3 to 4 o’clock. That way, The other half of the shift would seem short by comparison. 

My other big moment of relief was my bathroom breaks. The job had no official break times other than lunch. I did drink a lot of fluids, however. I drank 2 or 3 cups of coffee in the morning and after that, either water or soda depending on how tired I was that day. 

I also tend to take a shit every day around noon. Right before or after the lunch rush, I will feel out the atmosphere. The Mill tends to be rather empty, the only noise coming from the radio playing a station on the PA or one of the other shop owners like Tara walking through the Mill. 

It is like a sixth sense, knowing that the needs of the people are settling while my need to take a shit builds within me. I tell Rick I’m going to use the bathroom, take off my apron, and walk out through the wooden gate of the L-shaped counter that wraps around the grilled cheese store. 

There is a bathroom in the eatery which I can walk to in about 15 seconds but I take a full minute to walk over to the West Side and use their bathroom. While the eatery bathroom is cramped and claustrophobic, this bathroom is spacious. The ceiling goes about 12 feet high. There is a handicapped bathroom that lets me shit in peace but on days where this is occupied, I don’t mind using the other one. What matters more is the size of the bathroom itself, big enough so that I can have someone in the other stall, at the urinals, or the sinks without feeling weird about it. 

On an average shift, I would say I spent at least an hour a day in bathrooms. I’m a quick shitter by nature but on average, I think most people need to take 10, 20, sometimes even 30 minutes on the can popping out a brown hoagie. I decided that if those with slow bowels could have the privilege, so could I.

That still left about 6 and a half hours of my day. 

The other big source of exhaustion was the mental component. After you learn the basics of making all the different types of products, the job itself is not too hard. Much of it is muscle memory. That may solve the issue of overcoming the skillcap, but this leaves newfound space in your brain to think about other things, forcing you to confront two truths regarding the job:

  1. The job is incredibly painful in the long term
  2. The job is incredibly boring

After overcoming the initial skill floor, I had a new problem to solve: if I wasn’t thinking about one of these truths, I was thinking about the other. 

As time went on, however, I found a way to deal with this. As a school student, I spent much of my time dreaming. By high school, my sleep schedule was already so bad that I spent every other period asleep on my desk. 

I would put my head down on my desk and used my folded arms as a blindfold. The voice of my teacher’s lectures became meaningless droning. Like how some people use a fan for white noise, I used the lectures whose content I had no interest in nor had the mental capacity to pay attention or comprehend.

Instead, I dreamt. Sometimes, they were regular dreams, where my mind fell deep into the various pockets of my subconscious, experiencing events, people, and symbols remixed into a medley of strange and entertaining occurrences.

Other times, I was awake, yet, the visions would continue. The images and events I experienced felt more real than the “real world.” Occasionally, I could acknowledge the voice of my teachers, acting as sonic anchors that reminded me of the various subjective layers of reality that I was wedged between.   

At the chocolate shop, I began using this method again, willingly hypnotizing myself into trance states. I would check the time between my “trips” and have a half-hour past when I felt like I had spent hours living my other lives. It became an effective way to speed up the relativity of my job’s quantum state, even if it wasn’t the most efficient. After all, I could spend many days living several lives in my mental realities before a single shift was over.

It wasn’t something I did consciously at first. It was as if my brain needed some sort of stimulation and it called upon an old psychic skill that I didn’t even really understand as a kid. It wasn’t until much later that I talked to Christian that I understood the implications of what I was doing. By that point, I was starting to live waking nightmares, both in and out of that dream state. After all, dreams tend to be reflections of thoughts both conscious and subconscious. The brain collects ideas like sponges indiscriminately soak in bacteria off the sink. 

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13. Smile for the Customer

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The Many Saints of Newark (2021) Review

“Fan movies” run a fine line. No matter the film, studios are concerned with making movies that can appeal to as many people as possible. It is why it is getting harder to make movies based on original stories. Adaptations and franchises have established brands with fanbases to market their movies. Still, they are always looking for ways to bring in fresh audiences. Filmmakers have to choose where on the demographic spectrum they are aiming for: the diehards or the newcomers.

It is why movies like The Many Saints of Newark are a hard sell to those who have not committed to all six seasons of the Sopranos. The HBO classic follows the tale of Tony Soprano, the mob boss of a New Jersey mafia family. In some ways, Saints is an origin film for the show’s main character. However, the movie primarily focuses on Dickey Moltisanti as the main subject, Tony’s uncle who passed away before the beginning of the show. Here, we see the supposed “Golden Age” of the mafia that Tony is always reminiscing about: an era before his time. 

I can’t say for sure how newcomers will treat this movie. The closest opinion I have been able to find is Jeremy Jahn’s review, who only watched the first season and still enjoyed it. I still say for those who have not watched the Sopranos in its entirety, this is not a film I recommend. The main and side plots are still enjoyable. Those who come from this camp will get an interesting mob film about a man wrestling with his profession and morality and how it affects his relationship with his family and friends. The movie is gorgeously shot, some scenes breathtaking. 

Still, I think these viewers will judge the standalone experience as a subpar gangster film when compared to the likes of the genre’s heavy hitters, notably Goodfellas and the Godfather. For those audiences, the missing context will surely take away from how good this movie truly is.

For the rest of you who have watched the entirety of the show and understand just how powerful it is, this movie is a love letter to all of you. There are many homages to the show, with direct references to certain events and stories of the past that further enrich the world of Tony Soprano. 

Dickey Moltisanti, played by Alessandro Nivola, is a compelling character with a reputation that proceeds himself. In the Sopranos, Dickey is talked about with a certain reverence, an old school gangster that is a prime example of a “made man” in the eyes of Tony. He is a part of the ruthless world of organized crime but Dickey also has concerns about the nature of his criminal culture and how it affects him as a person. After killing his father, Dick (played by the legendary Ray Liotta), over his abusive behavior toward his young stepmother, he spends the movie trying to atone for his sins. Rather than look toward the Catholic faith, he turns to his father’s long incarcerated brother, Sally (also played by Liotta). 

Casting Liotta in both roles is nothing short of brilliant. Liotta plays the duality of the roles with an equal sense of narrative duality that requires a lot of skill. As opposed to Dick’s violent arrogance, Sally is an introspective if grumpy lifer. Having been in prison since he was 25 for killing a made man, Sal has become a sort of ex-mafia turned monk living in isolation. He is wise after gaining time and distance from the lifestyle and acts as a voice of reason. In a way, he fills in the therapeutic shoes of Dr. Melfi from the original show. The dynamic that Dickey has with his father and uncle brings back the psychoanalytic element that is an integral part of Tony’s story.

The similar struggles of Dickey and Tony are not a simple rehash of themes. The young Tony Soprano played by James Gandolfini’s son, Michael Gandolfini, looks to Dickey as a father figure, one his own father is incompetent to fill. As an origin story, this is about one of Tony’s personal role models and how their relationship and history shape him as the ruthless mob boss. It is interesting to see how much Tony has inherited from Dickey. Traits, ideals, blessings, and curses. This influence is part of the main draw for me. Thinking about the relationship between the show and the movie is rife with Easter eggs for fans, further contextualizing Tony’s character. Fans should have much to enjoy as they dissect the film and search for connections as they revisit the show. 

The film’s cinematography also enhances the experience, reflecting Tony’s adulation for both Dickey and the era that he roamed the streets. Each frame is crisp, capturing a soft, idyllic image even during the most brutal of times. The lights of the streets and the sun have a certain warmth to them. Perhaps, this is simply the increased budget of a Hollywood film but I think that would be dismissive. After all, the Sopranos itself is considered the godfather of modern television, pioneering mature and quality storytelling in terms of both writing and production value. No, this is cinematography captures the cognitive dissonance of Tony’s idealized view of the past and the harsh reality about the true nature of the mafia lifestyle. 

Speaking of Easter Eggs, there is much in the way of fan service for diehards. The casting in particular is handled with reverence, all of the actors playing their television counterparts with grace. They have replicated the speech, mannerisms, and stylings of Livia, Sylvio, and especially Corrado (actor Corey Stoll perfectly recaptures Junior’s colorful vocabulary and inflections).

Michael Gandolfini as a young Tony Soprano is probably the most publicized casting of the film. Originally played by his late father, Gandolfini plays the pre-boss years with familiarity while adding a childhood innocence to the character. Here, he is a teenager getting into trouble. While his teachers acknowledge his high intelligence, his family seems to discredit everything about his hopes and dreams. All except for Dickey. We see Tony running novel and childish versions of the schemes his family runs and we see both the brilliance and naivety. It adds a meta-narrative element that I can’t help but further elevates the film to greatness. It also helps that Gandolfini looks so much like his father. 

This last point might seem to be a weak argument for the film’s quality. However, I was more than a simple critique when I watched the movie in theatres. I was a fan. More than anything, this movie is an example of what a fan movie should be. It honors the original show and rewards those who have a deep appreciation for the source material. 

The audience I watched it with reflected this. The new Venom movie was also playing that night. I am sure that those who watched it also enjoyed it. However, I can’t imagine they had the same resonating experience as I did. From the start, comic book movies have been designed to use the source material to make films for a broader, new demographic. It might explain why some comic fans find these movies to be somewhat hollow. That night, the theatre for this film was far from a full house but I preferred it that way. We all watched with a certain intensity, taking in every moment as we did the show.

I knew that after the lights went on as the credits rolled that The Many Saints of Newark was made for me and all of those who love the Sopranos. I couldn’t exactly articulate why I loved it at the time and wondered if my opinion was based on the biased love of the show. Perhaps, it still is. Yet, I am still thinking about the movie days later, even considering watching it again on HBO MAX. The more I think about it, the more I find to love it. 

11. Split Priorities

The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.

I remember a day when a customer kept coming up to Dick while he was in the middle of making chocolates.

“Can I have the number 5?” 

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah sure.”

With a grunt, he went into the kitchen to make the sandwich. I took off my own gloves and rang the customer up. After he paid for everything, he went to go sit down in the eatery and I went back to making some chocolate-dipped marshmallows. A few minutes later, I heard Dick coming out into the eatery area from the kitchen’s back door. 

A couple of words, muffled by distance. Dick came up to the counter, his face scrunched up and eyes wide, bulging out of his sockets. His mouth was puckered up, teeth clenched, tongue pressed firmly to the roof of his mouth. From it, I heard a combination of hissing and cursing.

“Everything cool?” I asked. 

“Mother fucker wants ketchup.”

“Oh.”

“He saw the ketchup packs up here but he wants it in a goddamn cup.”

“Ugh.”

He walked back over. I heard the cup of Ketchup being set on the table. 

“Thanks,” said the customer.

“Have a nice day.” Dick usually spoke in emphasized tones. Each word came with its own distinct pause and verbiage. It had the sinister playfulness of a carny and the underlying threat of a mechanic who had your car in one hand and your balls in the other. 

Usually, he had no reason to speak like this. That was just the way he spoke. Today, however, he was holding himself back. 

To most people, this exchange would be innocuous enough but I understood. At the end of the day, Dick and Lou were chocolate people. They became sandwich people by circumstance and necessity. Even when the restaurant was at its most successful, it was always running at a loss. It was the chocolate that paid the bills. 

One could look at it like Dick and Lou were running two businesses, one successful and the other failing. It was better to look at the Sandwich shop as a kitchen that had means to help supplement the rent. With that perspective, the Sandwich shop wasn’t the worst business investment, especially when considering that it was made in desperation.

Still, they were running two businesses. Even if it was a front, the rest of the world expected us to run the Sandwich shop with the same level of courtesy and customer service they would get anywhere else. Even if inconvenient, our actions there also reflected the chocolate shop.

The biggest pain is that helping people with sandwich orders is directly in conflict with making chocolate. Chocolate is temperamental. It requires specific timing, temperatures, and conditions to make a successful batch of anything. If chocolate was a person, they would be a diva, jealous of this new person that required our attention.

Staying away from the table for even a minute can result in a failed batch. If we left too long so the chocolate hardened and set at room temperature, it would bloom with a chalky cloudy texture. If the chocolate had become even a degree too cold, anything we dipped in it would also bloom. To avoid this, we had to reheat the chocolate. That meant waiting for several more precious minutes. Every time we had to help a customer, we had to take off our latex gloves and put on a fresh pair when we got back to our workstation. It added up in time and wasted resources. On the worst of days, you could tell how many sandwich orders we had based on the lack of chocolate on the rack was and the overfill of latex gloves in the.

The worst-case scenario was when we had finished helping a customer and returned to our work. We would find that the chocolate needed reheating so we did. We then put on new gloves. We would dip two or three items into the newly heated chocolate when an unassuming bystander would come to the counter and ask,

“Can I have grilled cheese?”

“Sure.” I would say. What else could I say?

That day, however, a customer came up a third time asking for some napkins. Then, a fourth time asking for a refill on his soda. On the fifth, they asked for a refill on the ketchup.

“Oh my god,” Dick said. He said it as a child annoyed at his friend. “Just use the packets.”

Stunned, the customer blinked several times, as if to wipe away the reality that had just taken place. 

“Do you always talk to customers like that?” She didn’t say it in the usual way a person reacts after being disrespected. Rather, it was a pure form of incredulity. 

“I do when they’re being annoying.” It was an insult but Dick also said it with a boyish charm. I imagined he used to talk to his teachers the same way. With this charm, I have come to the conclusion that it is a key factor in his attraction to trouble and ability to get out of it.

“Well, aren’t you afraid of people leaving bad reviews on your store?”

“Fuck no. I don’t care about Yelp. Plus, this isn’t even our main business.”

With a finger wrapped in chocolate and latex, he pointed to the store across the way. “That is.”

“Oh. Chocolate,” the customer said as if they had just forgotten everything.

“Yeah. Come on. I’ll show ya.”

Dick took off his gloves and tossed them in the trash can. He walked out the gate and the customer followed him to the store. In five minutes, she had bought 30 dollars worth of product. 

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10. Dick’s Cheese

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12. Beating the Clock

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Technology Has Ruined Child Innocence and I Can’t Help But Laugh…

Growing up, I missed out on the multiplayer shooter craze in video games. I never really spent too much time on Call of Duty or Counter Strike. My parents were one of those freaks that only let you play for 30 minutes a day. Despite being Korean, my parents viewed video games as little more than a toy, believing that 30 minutes seemed sufficient. Of course, the rest of us know that in the grand scheme of things, that is the equivalent of giving a constipated person 30 seconds to take a shit. It really isn’t enough time to do anything. 

This same mentality meant that my parents weren’t going to pay for a yearly service to play online multiplayer so missed out on the golden age of Halo. Even when I eventually got a PS3 (which had free online), I didn’t use the microphone to talk to my teammates. The television was in the living room, where my entire family spent the majority of their time, regardless of what they were doing. At the time, my parents also didn’t like anything considered foul language so I thought it was best to mute the angry screams of gamers. That meant that during my brief Call of Duty phase, I was a silent combatant, ignorant to the pleas of my allies and the curses of my enemies.

These things inadvertently led to my video game habits as an adult. I prefer single player stories and Role-playing Games. I like games that tell a story and I don’t want the hassle of trying to find other people to play with, let alone strangers. It has made me a non-competitive and anti-social gamer, for better or worse. 

It wasn’t until recently that I started using voice chat in video games for the first time. I had decided to get into virtual reality and bought an Oculus Quest 2. While I still spend most of my time playing single player games, one game that grabbed my attention was Pavlov. A Counter Strike clone of sorts, it is the most arcade-like VR shooter with a modern military theme. 

I think that a big part of the appeal for me is how much the game just feels like laser tag. As a kid, this was one of my favorite ways to spend a weekend or a birthday party. Really, VR is the perfect platform for shooters. If you can get used to moving around with the control stick without getting nauseous, you have a laser tag like experience with any sort of genre flavour, not just science fiction. In fact, I think many people into airsoft and milsim might be interested, especially since the cost of entry is lower than those hobbies, and we don’t have to worry about dirty cheaters who won’t call their hits. 

However, one thing I wasn’t expecting was how many kids would be playing. Perhaps my perception is distorted by my early memories of playing Call of Duty. I remember a lot of my friends complaining that there were always annoying kids playing online with their mics. I always dismissed this because at the time, we were also kids. Teenagers, sure but still essentially kids. It felt pretty hypocritical.

Overtime, I imagined that the demographic of people playing military shooters would be inline with people my age while younger kids would be into something else. After all, aren’t kids today playing Robloks and Fortnite? Colorful shooters with a larger than life imagination. Of course, I was wrong and ignorant. If video games have taught humans anything, it is that guns are nothing more than toys, no matter the paint job. 

When I play Pavlov, I feel like the Dad or the weird Uncle who is tagging along at his kid’s laser tag birthday party…except that none of these kids are mine. I would argue that some of these kids could use supervision. Many of them often scream and yell in obscenities. Along with being annoying, I do wonder if I am interacting with proto Incels. 

Of course, not all of them are bad. Mostly, they are silly in ways that only kids can be. Some of the new players ask me questions and I try my best to help them out. Although sometimes, this does end up revealing the generation gap even further.

“How do you get weapons?” someone asked me once.

“You click the analog stick and get a weapon wheel, like Counter Strike.”

“Like what?”

Exactly.

Along this spectrum of harmless and concerning, I have had interactions that lie in the middle, a strange morbid absurdity. I have had several kids come up to me and say,

“Look what I can do!” Then, point a pistol at their heads and blow red chunks of virtual brian matter from their skulls. This is followed by a high pitched giggle presumably from their virtual ghost.

I can’t help but let out a single chuckle out of shock. “That’s great kid,” I’d say.

Even when I make sure my tone isn’t overly enthusiastic(if anything, I sound uninterested), kids need very little encouragement to do anything they want.

I have had at least ten of these miniature nihilists come up to me while playing the game, with some variation of “look what I can do” before commiting virtual suicide. My favorite variation of this line was “this is what my stomach looks like after Taco Bell.” 

Of course, they respawn in a few minutes, laughing their asses off before doing it again to someone else. I imagine that some people, especially their parents, would find this somewhat horrific and disturbing. That said, they aren’t my kids, so I can’t help but be stunned at the absurdity. 

They can be pretty creative in thinking up new ways to kill themselves. One time, a player came up to me and asked,

“Permission to release grenades, sir.” He had his hand up to his hand in a salute.

“Uh…permission granted.” 

“Thank you, sir.” He plucked a grenade off his chest, pulled the pin, and dropped it in front of him. He gave me one last salute before his limbs burst from the explosion into several directions. Again, this was followed by a spectral laugh.

I sometimes wonder, if we as a species have gone too far. Maybe our children, with too much access to technology and knowledge have gained a nihilistic perspective on the world. A dissociation between virtual and physical spaces have given our youth a fearlessness regarding the reverence for life.

Maybe even more disturbing is the fact that I am not concerned. Then, again, these aren’t my kids. My anthropologic curiosity and more morbid sense of humor tell me not to be boomer and embrace the absurdity as virtual child soldiers laugh at their own suicide. 

10. Dick’s Cheese

The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.

At least, that is what Dick wanted to name the shop. The actual restaurant was just known as the “Grilled Cheese Grille” but most people simply called it “that Grilled Cheese Place” or simply “the Grille”. 

The original menu only had 6 sandwiches. By the time I arrived, the menu contained 13 sandwiches when I started working there along with a bunch of side options. The original 6 are considered staples. 

The 1st on the list was your classic grilled cheese and as the list goes on, there are variations like adding jalapeno peppers or onion, tomato, and spinach. As the list went further down, they become suspiciously more like traditional sandwiches. Reubans, roast beef, chicken salad. The twist is they all had cheese in them. A customer once pointed this out saying that it disqualified these sandwiches from being Grilled Cheeses.

“A grilled cheese is just cheese,” they said.

“Who gives a shit,” Dick said. “It’s grilled and it’s got cheese in it.”

The customer argued the point for a while but I never understood why they were so serious about the subject. It’s a fucking sandwich.

In contrast to the Chocolate Shop that Dick and Lou owned 6 feet away, the Grille was more function than fashion. There were no decorations for most of the year. In fact, they didn’t get an official sign to hang up until a year after I started working there. 

It was designed to be a deli of sorts. The open workspace was surrounded by an L-shaped counter that wrapped around sizable square footage. The space started with the refrigerated deli case that we used to store completed chocolate products. Next to that was the front counter for customers. At the Bend of the “L”, was a stainless steel counter behind a glass wall that went up to people’s necks. Here, customers could see someone actually make the chocolate while still keeping their germs shielded from the product. The other side of the “L” was the ice cream case, surprisingly popular all year round.

Behind the outer counter were more counters and stainless steel work tables. There were a variety of miscellaneous things: cash register, pens, sticky notes, straws, coffee, soda machine, utensils, disposable cups, etc. 

Next to the deli case was a door that led into the kitchen. The layout was like a snake, going in through the mouth, you could see the order counter on your right and through it the kitchen stove and sandwich station.  To get there, you had to walk all the way to the end of the kitchen then turn twice to the right around the partition. At this middle point, there was a back door that led directly into the eating area (kind of the butthole in this whole snake metaphor). Walk past the cooking area and it would lead into the back supply closet, then past Dick’s office until finally you got to the walk-in freezer. 

One would think that it would be filled with sandwich-making stuff. However, most of that was relegated to the sandwich-making station, the equivalent of a person sticking all of their office supplies in a single desk. Most of the place was dedicated to chocolate. The walls were lined with metal shelves filled with different-sized pots, pans, baking trays, forks, knives, glass pitchers, and kabob sticks. Then, there were specialty tools: tempering machines, mixing bowls, molding trays, and the guitar. 

In the back supply cabinet were different cookies and snacks to dip, various alcohols (for flavor, not recreation), spices, and sea salts. 

Based on the vast disproportion of priorities given to the two businesses, I initially thought the Grilled Cheese Shop was a front.

One day, I asked Dick, “So is the Grilled Cheese like a side business?”

“Kind of. Our original kitchen got flooded out.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, the kitchen used to be on Main Street but after the flood, we had to find a new kitchen. We already had a second shop here and the owner of the Mill asked if we wanted to use this kitchen.”

“I guess it all worked out.”

“Yeah, but the catch was that we needed to make some kind of food like an actual restaurant. So we picked grilled cheese because it’s the easiest thing to fucking make.”

Before Dick and Lou took the spot, the restaurant’s location was considered by some to be cursed because no business lasted longer than a year. Before it served grilled cheese, it was a burger joint (with a liquor license), a Mediterranean place, and an actual deli with actual sandwiches. 

The burger joint had been the most successful, even coming close to getting a liquor license before they ultimately closed up. Some of the other shop owners said that it used to be incredibly busy but it wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. Like the rest of the Mill, business only seemed to get slower with each new owner.

Not that this was an issue for Dick and Lou. For them, chocolate was their main game and they were at the top of it. After 20 years of business, they had an established customer base with a reputation for having the best artisan chocolate. Main Street, despite its flooding, was still popular for business. Online shipping also made it possible for them to sell anywhere around the world. The grilled cheese was simply a means to an end, a reason to use the kitchen. In that regard, the grilled cheese was a front, just not a criminal one. 

Still, Dick and Lou were forced to run two businesses. One that they had dedicated two decades to build, perfect, and honor. The other was like a child that the mother had dumped on a relative’s doorstep. Raising it was an obligation, strain, and burden.

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9. Learning Curve

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11. Split Priorities

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I Wish I Saw Tenet (2020) in Theatres

Compared to his commercial success, I’ve often heard very divisive things about Christopher Nolan as a writer/director. Among my own friend group, I am probably his most vocal supporter, with everyone else either considering him entertaining but overly ambitious to a fault or downright pretentious. 

While I am a fan of Christopher Nolan’s work, I have been rather cautious with every newer releases as of late. While some of his films have cemented their place in my personal rankings, his recent films have been somewhat of a mixed bag. Most notably, Interstellar left me wishing that he has as much talent in his emotional storytelling as he does in technical filmmaking. 

This is not to say that I think he is emotionless in his filmmaking. At his best, Nolan is able to carefully balance technicality and emotions with his artistic decisions in both, creating a cyclical conversation that compliments each other. Inception is probably one of my favorite films of all time precisely because of this reason. It’s just that as of late, there seems to be an imbalance of sorts. 

His latest film, Tenet, is about a secret agent caught in an international operation to save the world from a resource that travels temporally backward. In other words, while humans experience and perceive time forwards in one direction, this resource allows objects and humans affected by it to travel directly backward. 

I am being intentionally vague with the details because I want to present it the same way that Nolan presents his movies in the trailers. This is a quick elevator pitch that gets you intrigued enough to get through the door without compromising the surprises waiting in store.

If there is one thing that Tenet does, it surprises me. I’m sure I am not the only person in this day and age that often feels tired by what is presented to us. Even the stories that I thoroughly enjoy, I often find that I can guess the events before they happen. My natural inclination as a filmgoer demands that I practice a certain amount of suspension of disbelief as a ritual in immersion. This often results in my enjoying certain moments for their execution rather than their genuine ability to surprise. 

Perhaps, this is why I still try to watch every Christopher Nolan film in the theatres (global pandemics not-withstanding). His premises are always intriguing enough that they get me to buy a ticket. In some ways, he always offers something that made the purchase of that ticket worth it. Even Interstellar, which is a film I rank lower on the Nolan tier list, still has enough in it that warrants at least one viewing, especially on the big screen. 

Nolan’s usual trademarks are here. His love and reverence for classic spy thrillers (also present in Inception), a stylistic cocktail of vintage and modern aesthetics, exotic locales, architecture reminiscent of art deco science fiction, and an interesting twist that takes this otherwise modern thriller into an elevated state. 

However, Nolan’s weaknesses are just as present in Tenet as his strengths. Some people will not be a fan of his characters, who often act more as meta-commentary on film theory rather than people. As a result, Nolan’s dialogue can feel much more in service to explaining the mechanics of the film rather than as a way to explore the characters.

Nolan tends to balance interesting characters with a puzzle box of a film but in Tenet, he has decided to fully invest in the latter. If your interest is in that part of Nolan’s filmmaking, then Tenet might be exactly what you are looking for. He seems to have fully invested his efforts in making that mind-bending, cerebral puzzle-box filmmaking his primary focus. I would even argue that for some, the story and characters have always fallen second to this element and while again, I would say that Nolan’s best work balances these two parts, it might be a good way to judge whether you or not you will enjoy this film. 

Finally, the sound mixing has been a big point of contention since the film’s release. Many argue that it is mixed horribly and the actor’s dialogue is often inaudible. This is not the first time that Nolan’s sound mixing has been criticized (most notably Bane in Dark Knight Rises). While I can read a certain artistic reason for Tenet’s sound, I also admit that this is a part of the film that I found to be a mixed bag and I will probably be watching the film with subtitles next time. It is definitely an interesting experiment but not one that I ultimately care for. 

Not to say that these problems are not small or ignorable (I certainly think they are worth the criticism) and it will be enough to turn some people away from this movie. However, I am not “some people.” I am (biasedly) a Christopher Nolan fan. To me, Tenet is similar to Interstellar in that it is unabashedly Christopher Nolan with both his strengths and weaknesses worn unapologetically on his sleeves.

Unlike Interstellar, however, his strengths are presented here with an aggressive intelligence and it is undeniably entertaining. Still, some will find these elements of the film that I enjoy to be arrogant and pretentious.

Christopher Nolan has definitely found his rhythm as a filmmaker, for better or worse. At this point in his career, you have already made up your mind about his films. You should use these opinions as a metric to predict your potential enjoyment of this movie. While it is not his best film and certainly not without its problems, Tenet reminds me why Christopher Nolan remains a triumphant force in the world of cinema. When Covid restrictions lift, I will definitely be back in theatres for his next feature.

9. Learning Curve

The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.

“You can’t let the marshmallow tip like that. The chocolate is going to set with all those fucked up marks.” 

That was Dick. Especially in my early days at the shop, he was quick to point out all the things that I did wrong. It came from being a mechanic, I guess. With cars, if you fuck up, you might end up killing someone. With chocolate, that mortality is a slower burn in the form of diabetes. Even still, it never killed his attention to detail.

“And come on,” he added. “You’ve been working on it for 20 minutes already. I could have jacked off AND taken a shit in that time.”

He waddled back to the office. I took off my gloves and massaged my hands. The cramps were similar to when I wrote notes for class. I don’t know if it is the way I hold my pens and forks. I remember as a kid, my teacher’s told my my handwriting was too bold. 

I check the clock. It’s been at least a minute. I look at my marshmallows and see my first one has already started to set. The sides are a shiny, matte brown. There is a light coloring from the milk, giving it a mocha-tan color. If I don’t stick it in the fridge now, that beautiful matte finish is going to be covered in a dirty, chalky bloom. 

I brought the tray over to fridge and stuck it in there. As I came back out to the front, I checked across the way to the Chocolate Shop for customers. We were at the Grilled Cheese Shop, working on the stainless steel tables in the open, deli-like space. The kitchen here acted as both a sandwich grill and chocolate factory. 

Kai checked,too. Confirming it was empty, she looked over at me. A mom of 4 kids, she had a perpetual blank stare, as if the world had done enough to annoy her and this face was all that was left to defend her. In my first week of work, she barely said anything to me unless I asked a question about work. Other than that, she said a total of three different phrases: 

  1. Imma take lunch.
  2. Imma go to the bathroom.
  3. Imma go on my smoke break. 

“Imma take lunch,” she said, then took off her apron. As she was passing me to get through the little wooden gate, she looked over at my chocolate bowl. 

“Is that the chocolate you dipped the marshmallows in?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought he wanted those in dark, not milk.”

She was right. Dick had explicitly said that. 

“Fuck,” I said.

She shrugged. “You didn’t even make that many to begin with. Just stick the ones you made on the rack and make the dark ones.”

I nodded.

“I’ll be back in half an hour.”

I went over to the mini fridge and checked on the milk marshmallows. Still needed a couple of minutes. I went into the kitchen, got a pitcher of dark chocolate that had set into one giant, pitcher shaped hunk of chocolate. I heated it up in the microwave, returning it into its primordial, magma-like form. I brought it to my work table and started dipping. 

About 15 minutes later, I had finished the tray of about 15 marshmallows when Dick came out of his office. He stopped in front of me as I was on my way to the mini-fridge, his gaze scanning up and down the tray.

“You’re taking too long. See, some of these are already set.”

“Sorry.”

“And how come you have so few?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should have like 30 on a tray.”

“They keep tipping over and making a mess.”

He threw his hands up in the air and headed back to his office, stopping in front of the mini-fridge. He looked through the glass and opened the door with a frustrated jerk. He yanked out a tray of the milk marshmallows. My milk chocolate marshmallows, the ones I had forgotten about. 

“Damn it, Mouse!” he said.

“I’m sorry. I…”

“You can’t forget stuff like this! Now we have to hit them with the heat gun. For fuck sakes, if that doesn’t fix these, then their useless we can’t sell them.”

He tossed the tray onto a table. He was whispering to himself in quick, sharp curses as he went out the back door, surely for a cigarette. 

The next day, I was alone with Jimmy for the morning. A big guy with dirty blonde hair and beard. He always seemed to come in with a black polo and some device in his ear. It was skin toned and wrapped around the cartilage. With how many times he would ask me ‘what’, I assumed that he was using a hearing aid. 

He told me to work on dipping peanut butter cookies in chocolate. I had done this already during my first week and it was simple enough. The only tricky part was remembering to use the glass pitcher meant for specifically for peanut butter products (it was one of our safety measures so that we didn’t accidently kill anyone with an allergy).

Proud at myself for saving the potential life (or wallet; EpiPens aren’t cheap) of a customer, I went to work. For a while, I allowed myself to get into a rhythm. The shape of the cookies were oval, making them easy to balance on my fork. Dunk, lift, tap, and set on the wax paper. Easy.

I was halfway done with dipping the set when Jimmy came back from the back and looked at my work.

“You know you only dip half the cookie, right?”

I froze. My memory of last week hit me, like a usb dongle snapping into the port, the ping quickly blaring through the speakers. In this flashback, I was dipping the cookie with gloved fingers, only dipping halfway, wiping the excess off the edge of the pitcher bowl, then setting it on the tray. There wasn’t even a fork involved. 

Jimmy was right. I had fucked up. To be fair, this one the only item dipped this way. But still, my muscle memory had betrayed me and I had just wasted half the product. 

“Can we still sell them?” 

Jimmy put up his hands, lifting his shoulders and the edges of his mouth in a shrug.

“Dick and Lou are sticklers for consistency.”

Just then, Dick walked in through the Mill’s main entrance. He greeted us as he walked through the gates of the counter. As he took off his jacket he looked over my work.

“You know, you’re only supposed to dip half of those.”

“I heard.”

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8. Marshmallows

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10. Dick’s Cheese

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