Of course I wasn’t here this past Tuesday where we discussed this Podcast portion in reference to the Danovich essay and the Danler excerpt, but I do have my two cents to put on this piece.

As for the beginning of the “Tough Room” podcast (although we weren’t supposed to listen to the whole thing) I started from 00.01.   Whether or not about Rosie Schaap or food all together, the central theme of this piece that echoes throughout is that notion of a meal being categorized by the way in which our emotions heighten it during the time in which we eat it.   In other words, its almost as if the food being eaten doesn’t matter how good or bad it is, but rather it is painted by the emotional experience we have eating it.  Although it isn’t mentioned for this assignment, the beginning of the piece talks about a “tough conversation” being had admits thanksgiving dinner.  The conversation regarded the outer appearance and possible generic features that led Osama Bid Laden to be considered attractive.  But, nonetheless the central theme rings true. In Rosie Schaap’s piece about her experience in the Bar Car as years younger than her peers, she speaks about her experience drinking painting the way she realizes others drinking in that very car.  While she tries to create her own business reading tarots in order to score herself a beer, it ends up nipping her in the butt the way that life does to an adult.  Her way of entry worked, “cultivating a look” that reached her audience, but the success of her idea darkened when she actually had a chance to talk with some of her clients.  The last client she speaks of is a man that is obnoxious and ultimately unimpressed by whatever she claims she can get out of her tarot readings.  However, when his tarots read negative and hit on tragic themes of life, the client breaks down and reveals certain parts of his life aren’t going smoothly.  Here, Rosie is able to realize that she isn’t cut out for this job that she is cutting herself out to be made for, and that she in fact isn’t ready for this adult world of confronting the hardships of relationships and reality.  Though they loved her youthful present and jokes, and though she loved to sound smart in front of stranger grown ups, she wasn’t ready to confront this world herself, and she never saw it again after that day, until she became an adult herself and reflect on her similarities to those people’s experiences.

*”It was gross but my kind of place”