Pour Me A Story, Vol. 15
feat. Anjali Bhatt, historically good TV show themes and more
greetings folks, and happy “second-last Friday in January.” time sure flies when we’re, well, doing everything we can possibly do to stay safe and stay on top of things in these uncertain times. thanks again for opening this dispatch; I hope I make it worth your while.
if you’ve been rocking with Pour Me A Story since the very beginning, or its earliest pre-newsletter iteration on Twitter, you may recall that the initial concept was to give a forum for regular folks to celebrate their wins or good news in a conversational setting similar to how you might sit at the bar and tell the bartender about your week, an interaction I miss (from both angles!) about the Before Times.
it’s evolved somewhat since then, particularly since my mother rightly pointed out something I had never really considered in a forest-for-the-trees kind of way — that I certainly know some very interesting people. I think that’s been just as much of a driving force creatively over the past few weeks: introducing you, the readers, to some incredibly interesting people from all walks of life whose individual paths have crossed mine in some way, shape or form. I hope you’re enjoying meeting them!
Anyway, We Have Company
this week’s special guest comes to us all the way from Washington D.C., where she cooks and makes good tweets and runs social for a think tank that’s much more important to our country as a whole than the ol’ sneaker salesman over here. introducing Anjali Bhatt!
AC: hey there Anjali! how goes it in the nation's capital this fine Thursday?
AB: fine, i think—heard there are some national guard peoples here. i've left my home maybe three times this week, for liquor/corner store runs, and last night to run out to my back porch to see the fireworks that were set off on the national mall for katy perry (i mean, joe biden).
AC: katy perry -- change we can all get behind! so glad she's finally getting the power of the executive branch. how are you personally feeling now that there's a new butt in the big chair?
AB: mostly relieved that it's not an orange butt anymore. we already lost the chance to have a peaceful transition of power, and this is like, the most centrist person power could be transferred to. a lot of the deep-seated issues in america will not be solved by the biden administration. having a government that's not openly hostile towards marginalized groups is like, the bare minimum, and enough people are treating it like this is the best thing to happen to america that i'm worried we're just going to stagnate because politics will be "boring" again. things like economic inequality will continue to fester because there won't be enough calls for actual systemic change. but i mean at least the horse is out of the hospital.
AC: "the horse is out of the hospital" is both an expression I've never heard before and an absolutely beautiful analogy, so I'm grateful you shared it with me. and let it be known that I absolutely agree with you here. I'm gonna take a left turn at this juncture because I don't wanna invite you to chat on the newsletter then make it a bad depressing time. you are an absolute whiz in the kitchen, and seemingly every week you're sharing some gorgeous meal photos. where did your love (and talent!) for cooking start?
AB: omg its a bit! you gotta watch this:
anyway.Ii went to college when i was 17 (did you know i LiVeD iN eUrOpE) and one of the things those wacky frenchies do is they don’t have dorms or dining halls. so i had to learn how to cook for myself pretty quickly. that first year was a *lot* of nutella and baguette and burnt rice and undercooked chicken (i was raised vegetarian so cooking meat was and still is kind of weird and gross!), but i've been cooking since then, and really, i realized that if you cook well, you get to eat well, and that’s what we're all tryna do, right? especially later in college, i spent a lot of time in classes searching up recipes and learning...almost about like, the science of cooking? like how fats and starches and stuff interact and change with heat, what kind of substitutes you can use without screwing something up, stuff like that. i put together a lot of "what do i have in my college fridge" meals, which were honestly pretty impressive given the wack ass ingredients i had. since i graduated and have a real job and apartment now, i can afford better ingredients, and it’s a good way to Do A Thing—i call it "involved cooking" aka i have to use both my hands and my whole brain and can’t be doomscrolling or whatever. especially recently with...the world...it’s a good way to force myself to log off and focus on something real in front of me. also it impresses people so that’s always fun.
AC: you make a super good point there. I cook but I'm fairly uncreative and time-poor now with parenting and All Of This, but it definitely is a nice way to disconnect now and then and focus on something that isn't on my phone or computer. the science aspect of things is really fascinating too. what's a meal you've cooked that absolutely exceeded your expectations?
AB: oh that’s a fun question. not even a meal, really, but there's a category of vietnamese dipping sauce/condiments called nước chấm, there are lots of variations so this is in no way #authentic, but what i do is basically a mix of fish sauce, lime juice, salt, sugar, minced garlic, and some kind of chili oil or paste, and it’s just so...flavorful? it's good with meat, rice, fresh veggies...lots of stuff, and it really adds a punch since a lot of the flavors are pretty strong, but they go together really well. i could drink that stuff.
AC: I feel as though I can taste it just by reading the ingredients? we're big condiment users in this house and I think I would like to attempt making this one. or these ones. you mentioned studying in europe which, first of all wow. is there any place in particular you're yearning and burning to visit once it's safe to do so again, around 2093?
AB: kazakhstan and uzbekistan. i think central asia is such a fascinating place, the -stan countries really haven’t existed that long, and the entire region has been fought over since like, genghis khan. there are influences from east and south asia, the middle east, europe—i think the whole silk road thing (which, fun fact, was never actually a road) is really cool, plus the nature/landscapes look phenomenal. i also want to go to china and iran, but unfortunately for various political reasons, that doesn’t seem super wise anytime soon (iran is more dangerous as an american woman moreso than china, but still, i don’t want to be a clueless american in china at a time when the US-china relationship is so fragile).
AC: oh yeah that's a totally understandable concern! safety is paramount, and especially in countries where oUr GoVeRnMeNt has helped stoke tensions. I feel the same way about Russia, I'd love to see it but at the same time...yeah, safer to stay home and look at photos for now. okay last one and I'll let you get back to your busy day! this is where you get to plug something important or cool or thoughtful or that you enjoy or whatever. sky's the limit!
AB: u know what!! i’m gonna be shameless and plug my own instant graham (@anjali.jpg) cuz i like photography and i miss going places and taking pictures and also i have been so close to 1k for so long i might die of lack of instant gratification from meaningless social media numbers!! and then also everyone should follow @womenphotograph on twitter, they do a really great job of highlighting female and nonbinary photographers and photojournalists.
AC: well if everybody who subscribes to this (including my parents) follows you, I think we can get you over the line and then some. this newsletter may not bring fame or fortune but I think it can muster eight IG followers. thanks a bunch for sharing some time with me today!
AB: yayyy i appreciate you!! thanks for doing this with me 🤗
Got A Blue Moon In Your Eyes
this week we started watching The Sopranos, the HBO drama that brought the slang word “gabagool” into the popular lexicon. I’ve seen the series once, back in 2012 or something, and Alex has never seen it, so we figured we’d wade in and see how we went.
for as long as I’ve been watching HBO series — from the days of downloading episodes in Australia on BitTorrent to the past few years of being an upstanding, paying subscriber — I’ve generally lived by the rule that the title themes are near-on unskippable. I remember hearing a rumor years ago that HBO spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on the cinematic title sequences that kick off every episode. I don’t know how much truth is in that, but they truly are works of art (Six Feet Under won a goddamn EMMY for its title sequence). so how could I possibly skip it?
of course, it was also difficult to skip past them because it’s only recently that it’s been easily achievable on streaming services to do so. Netflix introduced the “skip intro” button around 2017 and it was finally incorporated into an HBO platform with the emergence of HBO Max last year. I still feel as though it’s a disservice to the product to brush past them, but as I’ve mentioned in this space before, TV time is of the essence. we’ve got around 90 minutes between dinner and peak exhaustion to watch the tube, and we don’t wanna waste two of those minutes hearing the same theme song again.
anyway, it got me thinking about my favorite TV show themes, specifically from the Home Box Office network, but one big-studio one sneaked in there too. in no particular order, they are:
The Wire (seasons 2, 4, 1, 3, then 5 in that order, since they all change)
The Sopranos
M*A*S*H (which also changes through the years and seasons)
True Detective (season 1)
Entourage (which I haven’t watched since the early 2000s, but it’s a good sequence)
there’s a squillion more HBO series with killer title sequences; this list has a lot of them (although I’d ignore the rankings, that site is bullshit) and here’s a handy Spotify playlist with more.
Worthy Consumables
for almost the entirety of the almost-three years we’ve lived together, Alex and I have had a simple weekly ritual that takes precedence over most other activities: Scary Movie Sunday. she’s a longtime horror movie fan, especially the classics of the 80s and 90s, while I like more modern flicks. between the 63,000 streaming channels, the only problem is that we’re spoiled for choice.
Scary Movie Sundays look a little different now that we have to work our viewing around baby naptime schedules, and it doesn’t happen every week now, but we still manage to find time now and then to cram in some creepy cinema. last weekend we watched three movies (due to it being a long weekend and all), and strangely enough I realized the third one ended up being a thematic mish-mash of the first two.
they were:
Don’t Breathe, a tale of some small-time burglars breaking into the house of a blind veteran and getting more than they bargained for;
The Visit, a tale of a creepy old couple who aren’t what they seem which I rank among M. Night Shyamalan’s best work; and
The Owners, which takes the hapless-burglars (and a late-in-the-piece plot twist that I won’t reveal) trope and combines it with the psychos-disguised-as-kindly-old-folk narrative for a weirdly coincidental finale to Scary Movie Sunday/Monday.
if you’re into horror flicks but haven’t seen any of them, I’d recommend the first two. the third one was fine but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.
Parting Note
well I’ve had the theme from The Sopranos firmly ensconced in my head for the duration of me writing this edition, so that’s what you’re gonna get here. no regrets.
thanks as always for sharing some of your day with me; it’s always appreciated. if you enjoyed this edition or another one, don’t forget to tell your friends, family and loved ones all about it. and if you’d like to get in the interview chair or know someone who more folks should be introduced to, don’t hesitate to drop me a line. until next time!
— adrian ✌🏻
Season two of True Detective was polarizing but the theme song fuckin SLAPS