I’ve only skipped one CPAC since 2006, the one crashed by Borat and COVID. My challenge every year, as a reporter who knows this scene, is separating what’s new and interesting from what’s new and trivial. That was easy this year, once I spotted the six booths that various anti-CCP networks had paid for. No cause was better represented at the conference; the feeling was a bit like the Macy’s that used to anchor the mall moving out and being replaced by a Five Below.
But this isn’t a work blog! It’s a leisure blog, for a week very light on leisure. I ran through the week and, as of Sunday afternoon, was off work, given the time I’d been denial about needing to pack a bunch of stuff into boxes. I’ll try to do a few interesting things to break up that monotony this week, because you deserve something to read about.
The Best Thing I Read: Self-help books are still doing it for me. Penn Jillette’s “Presto” was a fun, rough read, written like the guy talks, and indulgent on a few details I didn’t care about. Didn’t matter; it’s a very convincing memoir of the food reset he did (now) ten years ago, and how he found an achievable goal weight and settled there.
I’ve been experimenting in that zone myself, and found a couple of Jillettes’s ideas - well, the ones translated from his eccentric and correct nutritionist easy to repeat. One was considering that I’d had some meals for the last time. Plenty of good tastes were lodged in my memory. If I thought about it for a second, I could taste an old fashioned from Daily Donuts, or movie theater popcorn so soaked in butter that putting the bucket damaged the fabric of my jeans. So why ever have them again?
There’s a lot more to Jillette’s reformed thinking about food, and the most important bit requires living on a single unseasoned staple for two weeks, so I bracketed the hard stuff to do after our move. Other reads: Ted Giolia’s “Music” and John Scalzi’s “Redshirts,” a history of manufactured sound since the prehistoric era and a goofball reality-bending comedy that won the Hugo.
The Best Thing I Saw: “The Company of Wolves,” Neil Jordan’s second film, which has the single most revolting werewolf transformation scene ever attempted. The were-man’s skin comes off; a skinless horror screams and pulsates; the horror turns into a skinless wolf. This was more than I needed to see one week after “Possession,” but there’s a little cult around that movie, and I never hear about Jordan’s.
The Best Thing I Ate: Humiliatingly, the kale with shallots and garlic at Bon Vivant, where Margarita and her friends and a couple of my friends went for dinner after birthday cake across the street. Kale cooked with so much salt and flavor that I’m sure I can’t have it once I copy Penn Jillette’s diet.
I liked the mall line though I will say in the malls near me that have kept their Macy's, the malls themselves have managed to replace every other outlet with clothing stores. Progress is apparently replacing book stores and comic shops that have bootleg dvds in the back with every version of a more expensive jc penny's.
Weight loss is brutal especially if you're the type who likes food. Always appreciated Penn jillette (or really any magician; it's a tough craft!) and maybe there is something to never reliving those good food memories irl. Everytime I think about dieting though I'm reminded of something I thought when Jose Canseco's memoir came out: they should let normies take hgh. I'm a sucker for most trek related stuff so I'll definitely give redshirts a look.
The kale sounds cool, gotta try that. I do have to say this is a lot, I dunno how much downtime you got having to cover a massive thing like cpac (i imagine its like having to cover comic con or coachella) but it seems like you got to do some stuff. Good on you.