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CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | February 8, 2011
When a man loves a woman, he tells his Twitter SEX continued from page 5
When orange attacks! PROLOGUE: Days ago, mere days ago, a Great White Ice fell upon Chicago and its various environs and lake ports. This ice, so merciless in its bevy, left the city beleaguered and useless, like a baby hobo, like a broken slinky floating in a bucket. And your Foodents, destined to write a food column on a reasonably timely basis, were troubled by the storm.
PICCOLO MONDO 1642 East 56th Street (773) 643-1106
FOODENTS RATING: (-8, 5)*
PART I: The Treason Begins “Yes!” said Evan, and he brushed a flake of coal from his rosy, rheumy, Roman nose. “Troubling indeed!” “O! Where shall we go to dine? What will be open during this, the very End of Days?” replied Ben. I wish more than anything, Reader, I wish that here I could say how old Evan raised his old, magus-esque neck and said, “Nowhere. Tonight we dine at home. We’ll pull up a fire and play some Mancala alongside it. The food will be warm.” But this is not what happened. “I know,” said Evan. “Let’s try that restaurant—(a wind rises)—that mysterious little den overlooking the Old Fairgrounds.” “Isn’t that the place conjoined to an orthodontist’s?” asked Ben naively. “Yes,” said Evan. “Yes, it is.” PART II: The Treason Began And so they walked. Foot raised, then lowered through the snow, ceasing not, slouching toward the restaurant that beckoned. Bang boom went their feet. Click click went the door of the restaurant. Flicker flacker went the lights—“Piccolo Mondo.” Their coats racked, and their snow brushed, Ben and Evan took their table next to an old lady with a cup of coffee, underneath a faded portrait of a spoon. Menus arrived. PART III: The Treason Begun A smiling and svelte man of autumnal years approached their table and forced them to eat some squid. Excitedly, Evan asked, “Grilled or fried?” “Grilled,” the man said. “I like that best.” And he laughed. The squid approached and landed at the table, the side portions swollen like four putrefying small Zeppelins, like four inflatable swim-aids for children. Striped and mottled like the tattooed finger of an ancient Cajun, like a veteran’s severed foot. “I am not edible,” said the squid. “Ah,” said Ben, chewing.
“Ah,” said Evan, chewing. Black sauce oozed from the bottom parts, as lukewarm as the squid was room temperature. Evan spat out the squid onto a napkin, and its rubbery remains were left there for the remainder of the meal: A constant reminder, but one that was by no means necessary. “Soup or salad?” asked the man, grinning with knowledge gone dark with the stain of age. “Freedom,” said Ben. “A new napkin,” said Evan. PART IV: The Treason Realized Orange was the only thing that was had that night. Plates brimming with orange, oozing like Nickelodeon liposuction, like a veteran’s punctured gangrenous kidney, leaking out pain onto the Earth. As the plates made their slow decline from the heights of their mutual friend onto the table, bits of orange fled from the plate, dotting the tablecloth with hints of disgust. “Bon appetit,” said the man, leaving, laughing. For Evan, the orange was called Gnocchi alla Vodka. The pasta, as the squid, was balloon-framed in kind, turning with the touch of a fork on a still, bracken pool of the orange. True to its name, the vodka was just as present as it would be in any failed love scene. It had yet to be cooked off. For Ben, the orange was called Pollo à la Gordon. The shape of this orange was the shape of a game of Stratego that both players had vomited on and then vomited on again. There were two fleshy armies of salt cleverly disguised as chicken breasts, divided by a thin band of ravioli, and sunk in a bottomless sea of orange bile. It was like the ugliest person ever if the ugliest person ever was your son. PART V: The Treason in You And so it was. The crime had paused and then quickly fell into their stomachs, remaining entombed. For how long? Who can say? As the Foodents looked back onto the warm din of Piccolo Mondo, of Vodka alla Orange and Orange à la Lumps, they felt reduced to a primordial ooze of universal repulsion. Unless you have tongue-less friends, friends that you hate, or orange grandparents, stay away. By God, stay away. Farewell, stay well, and eat well, Your Foodents
Eth is unsurprisingly reliant on it. Through what Ethan sounds like a painfully forced conversation, Ethan sou reveals himself as the notorious author of Sex with rev Strangers, a blog-based novel written about his Str heartless and raunchy sexcapades. Olivia, though hea keeping her distance, gains interest in the edgy but smooth 20-something. After realizing there is no Internet, TV, or other electronic escape, Ethan suggests that he and Olivia sleep together. Of course he wants to—the audience expects it, but we did not expect this older, wiser woman to give in to his flattery. At first she resists his advances: “I can’t do that!” she says. “We’re perfect strangers!” But when Ethan confesses that he is in love with her writing and begins to quote her last book, Olivia immediately takes up the mind-set of a giddy, naïve teenager and agrees to sleep with him. After a couple more days alone in the inn, Ethan is eager to read more of Olivia’s work and asks to read her latest novel. Here it becomes apparent that Olivia’s new book symbolizes her relationship with sex. She doesn’t want him to read her precious new book. She’s protecting herself because of the mixed reviews she received for her last novel. But, so far, aren’t mixed feelings all around her? Olivia met a younger guy whom she did not know at all, and she is uncertain about his sincerity. Yes, he seemed like an asshole, but he could have a poignant inner sensitivity that he has yet to reveal.
Despite her aversion to his vulgar disposition, she lowered her guard and slept with him…again and again. She also has mixed feelings for Ethan. She can trust him enough to sleep with him, but not to show him her book. The first act ends with Ethan leaving for L.A. with a promise to return to Olivia when she goes back to her apartment in Chicago. Contrary to my expectations, Ethan fulfills his promise. But other than that, the progression of the play becomes painfully predictable. Despite the conflict both between and inside the characters, it gets muddled in an unoriginal plot. The couple seems to switch roles completely. As Ethan tries to crawl away from his notorious reputation and Olivia jump-starts her writing career, their impulsive sexual adventures die down. Eason leaves the final scene open-ended with the newly engaged Olivia looking out the door, contemplating whether or not she will meet up with Ethan at a nearby bar. Will she settle for her predictably boring fiancé, or will she take a chance and run after the appealing man nearly 15 years her junior? The characters had much promise, but their progression on the stage just did not serve my expectations of a story that was described as one that would “speak acutely about the contemporary landscape of technological communication and the interpersonal relationships that construct authorial identity.” So what is the moral of the story? Maybe it’s just “keep your book shut.”
F E B R UA RY 1 0 T H R O U G H J U N E 5 , 2 0 1 1
THE T R AGIC MUSE Art and Emotion, 1700—1900
*Our ranking system: Our Rating System® is a mult-eye-dimensional modular restaurant system based around two axes: the self-explanatory “unexcellence/excellence” x-axis and the similarly self-explanatory “unfancypantsness/fancypantsness” y-axis. A coordinate pair will be assigned to each restaurant based on its rating on each of these axes. You’ll figure it out.
The Fun Corner. Solution for 2/4 puzzle Sudoku is provided by Laura Taalman (A.B. '94) and Philip Riley (A.B. '94).
Solution for 2/4 puzzle 5550 South Greenwood Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60637 smartmuseum.uchicago.edu Admission is always free.
Voices covers Off-Off Campus Look for the feature this week at ChicagoMaroon.com/Voices
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