Dinner Party Animal

https://www.skirball.org/programs/dinner-party-animal-recipes-make-every-day-celebration

This is why I live in L.A.

People ask me if I'm moving to Colorado. NEVER! I love to ski, but year-round? Not for me. I've lived in small communities...everybody knows your name and has a preconception of your identity and...I'd rather be anonymous at the supermarket.

Now in the old days, before cable TV and FedEx, never mind the internet and Amazon, if you lived in the hinterlands...you might not be completely off the grid, but you could be a day or two or three behind, might even miss things completely. But today? The people in so-called flyover country are just as informed, just as hip as those on the coasts.

But they don't have the same cultural options.

Growing up in the suburbs I never thought I'd live in a city. We lived fifty miles from New York and went in frequently, but I had no desire to be there full time. As a matter of fact, I could have gone to college there, but that meant I wouldn't be able to ski as frequently...

But New York is completely different from Los Angeles. In New York, on the east coast, everybody's on top of each other, there's a constant jockeying for position, people letting you know they're smarter or richer or more pedigreed than you are. Los Angeles? It's a free-flowing society where where you went to college is irrelevant, and everybody is making it up as they go, and I love that!

Also, it's a giant suburb. Yes, the traffic is terrible and real estate prices are stratospheric, but if you compare it to Manhattan... No one owns this much property in Manhattan, where buildings spread vertically as opposed to horizontally, where you have common walls, where you're on top of each other, whereas in Los Angeles you have room to move. You can own a car...then again, I wish we had a subway like New York, it would be great to be able to pop downtown to the Crypt or to Inglewood and the Forum on a train instead of being gridlocked in traffic, but that's the price you pay. At least every act comes through Los Angeles!

That's another reason I live in L.A. Everybody in the music business has to come through at least once a year.

And there are the restaurants and ready access to anything you want to buy and...

Of course, the weather, but I'd live here even if it got cold and rained.

One of the great things about L.A. is the cultural advantages.

Now in Colorado, they have many more events than they used to, a veritable plethora, I've seen household names at the Vilar in Beaver Creek, but...not everybody comes through, and the left field events like Dinner Party Animal don't happen.

Felice saw a listing and bought tickets. 4 PM on a Sunday afternoon. Who has plans then? Sunday is a slow day, so okay.

So I was stunned at the number of people in attendance, I was trying to find out the exact hook to bring hundreds of people to the Skirball, which is just around the corner from where we live, with free parking and everything.

And they hit the stage and...

You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's, but if you are...

Well, actually if you are, you know there are much better places to buy rye bread, but...

We keep hearing we live in a Christian nation. As if homogenization is the goal. But it is our various tribes, the melting pot, that makes America great, all the different flavors. And being Jewish...

There was immediately a remark about the constant talking... These are my people!

I'm not saying you need to care, but it feels good to be in the pocket, amongst your cohort.

So what we had here were three roommates and a TV producer. Three guys and a girl. And one of the guys wrote a cookbook, "Dinner Party Animal." So I guess this was kind of a launch...

When Felice first told me about the event I thought it would be cooking and eating. Then I thought it would be a cooking demonstration. Ultimately, it was four Jews riffing. As if you were at their house.

It made me envious. I wanted to be involved.

And I could see the attraction to non-Jews, and why Jews do so well in the arts.

You see we've been persecuted for years. And we know we're tarred. But that does not mean we don't have our rites and rituals, that we can't have fun!

These three guys were talking over each other and cracking jokes (with Jenji Kohan occasionally adding flavor) and I said to myself, "That's not my life!"

And I wondered why.

Did I just not hold enough dinner parties? Was I just not invited to enough dinner parties?

Or was it my age.

I read somewhere that when you're seventy you don't need new friends. It's not like you're going to use connections for business purposes. Everybody's kind of settled and satisfied and it can be boring and scary.

And then you get a left field event like this.

Purely conversation. No plot needed.

What question was best to start a dinner party?

When was the last time you got into an argument with a stranger?

So many people I know want to talk to me about business, they're trying to get ahead, they're trying to be a good friend of mine (thanks Joni!)

But I just want to know how your relationship is going. Where you're going to travel next. About a good meal. The ins-and-outs of people you know. All irrelevant, but the spice of life.

This is why techies will never truly rule the world, because they've got no soul.

This is why Black people can be happy despite being oppressed.

This is why ethnicity is a badge of honor.

It's all about life. I've got mine, you've got yours...TELL ME ABOUT IT!


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