The Sushi Closet
This amount of sushi costs more than my car.
On a scale of ‘Not flaky’ to ‘The flakiest’, people in LA
tend to fall more on the croissant and pie crust side. I’m not saying that
everyone in LA is a flake – hell, I’m not even saying that the flakes are bad
people – but only in LA have I spent an entire hour alone in a bar waiting for
someone to show up, or been stuck in traffic on my way to meet someone when
they text me and cancel our plans a full 15 minutes before we were supposed to
get together. That’s just how it is – a lot of people here are like the crust
on Hot Pockets. They’re like Kellogg’s cereal. They were made with a lot of
grated butter mixed with flour. Do you get it? Do you get the jokes?
There is one thing I’ve found, though, that no young LA
professional will flake out on. It’s an expensive, sometimes pungent substance,
oftentimes green in color, and it’s thoroughly ingrained in the culture of
Southern California. Yes, that’s right – I’m talking about sushi.*
*This double entendre would probably work better if sushi
wasn’t in the title of the update.
People in LA will be habitually late and crap out on plans
at the drop of a hat unless your plans involve the consumption of sushi, in
which case you can count on your companion being well ahead of schedule and
dressed to the nines, eagerly rubbing his or her chopsticks together in
anticipation and muttering the names of the various rolls on the menu with the
manic intensity of a bit player on The Wire.
At work, for example, we have this thing called Sushi
Friday, where everybody goes out and gets sushi on Friday. But this isn’t just
some halfassed tradition – it’s basically law. Friday is the day that we eat
sushi, and it’s so heavily ingrained in company culture that people actually
strategize and discuss their hour lunch break up to three days in advance.
One time, everybody was jonesing so hard for sushi that we
did Sushi Friday on a Wednesday. And then we did it again on Friday. I’m pretty
sure this is exactly what LA ad agencies were like in the 1980s, only it was
cocaine.
Honestly, though, I really don’t get what all the fuss is
about.
To be clear, this isn’t like Dubstep, where I both don’t get
what all the fuss is about and also view it as a cancer upon our society that
needs to be wiped out in order for humanity to progress. I enjoy sushi – I
think it’s tasty. One of my friends is having a birthday party at a sushi place
tomorrow and I’m really excited to go eat some sushi and have a good time. I’ve
got no problem whatsoever with sushi or the consumption thereof.
That said, maybe I’m missing something, because I really
can’t understand why people are so fanatical about it. I mean, people are militant about sushi. I know minimum
wage earners who won’t bat an eye at dropping $20 on a sushi lunch. People here
talk about sushi the way Paul Ryan talks about Ayn Rand, or the way I talk
about boobs: With immeasurable, almost creepy enthusiasm.
I always feel sort of behind the curve when I go get sushi
with the office guys, because sushi consumption has about as complex a
preparation ritual as heroin injection* – right away everybody is pouring soy
sauce into their personalized dish and mixing in wasabi and rubbing themselves
down with hot towels like on an airplane, and I’m still trying to figure out
how to use chopsticks.**
*I only know that from the scene in Pulp
Fiction, Mom.
**Look, with all due respect to Japan and sushi, forks are
far better eating tools than chopsticks. You don’t see me using a VCR just
because I want to watch Swingers.
Whatever. Not the point.
I don’t know – is there something I’m missing? Quality of
sushi certainly isn’t an issue; we routinely partake in some of the finest
sushi that Burbank has to offer, and again, it’s certainly tasty, but it’s not
something that I fantasize about in my spare time.
On the other hand, I don’t get why people aren’t as obsessed
with Indian food as I am – particularly the ubiquitous $8 all you can eat
Indian lunch buffet, which is 100% guaranteed to have you in a food coma before
you’re even back to the office. All the elements of a true American culinary
phenomenon are there: A low price (way lower than sushi!), an unlimited amount
of food (way more unlimited than sushi!), a buffet (I’ve never heard of a sushi
buffet, which is probably a good thing)… I guess the only stumbling block is
that there’s no beef, but lamb is a kickass replacement – it’s The Other Red
Meat.
Every time I try to pitch Masala Mondays, or Tandoori
Thursdays, or The Five Day Saag Paneer-aganza, though, it gets shot down –
India, for its 1.2 billion people and its colorful, goofy film industry, just
can’t seem to get a leg up on Japan.
Maybe it’s just differing tastes – or maybe there’s
something wrong with me. Much like sushi, I like The Beatles, but I’m not
fanatical about them the way everyone else is,* nor is everyone fanatical about
Pink Floyd the way I am. I like Star Wars,
but not as much as Battlestar Galactica;
the rest of the world feels differently. And as long as we’re making
confessions, I wasn’t crazy about Inception,
either.
*That said, I totally
get the fanaticism surrounding The Beatles.
I go to great lengths to not be perceived as a hipster, so
having these feelings inside of me is kind of difficult – I don’t want to
suddenly look like I’m too cool for the current hip food in America. So I
remain in the sushi closet – save for the part where I just posted about it in
great detail on the Internet – and cross my fingers that either I’ll start
loving sushi, my coworkers will start loving Indian food, or sushi places will
at least start putting forks out on the table so I can quit fiddling around
with those fucking chopsticks.
Truman Capps totally loves Forrest Gump,
though.