Q&A

PastaLover from Pawtucket asks: Do you throw your spaghetti against the wall to see if it is done?
Dear PastaLover: Well, if you are going to ask me a question about cooking, I am glad it is about pasta. Anyone who knows me will tell you that cooking is not exactly my forté. However, pasta is among the three dishes in my cooking repertoire. The other two, by the way, are BLT sandwiches and anything with the word “Helper” in it.
The answer to your question is no, I do not throw spaghetti against the wall to see if it is done. First of all, there are far more efficient ways of testing your spaghetti, such as actually tasting it. Secondly, as a gay man, it is abhorrent for me to intentionally make a mess in the kitchen, or in any other room for that matter, for any reason. Throwing any kind of food at the wall would be as uncomfortable for me as wearing white socks with sandals.

Serious in Seattle wonders: How can I fix this hole in my heart?
Dear Serious: Wow. We are treading on dangerous ground with this question. My high-priced team of attorneys has advised me against dispensing actual advice. For example, were I to answer your question by telling you to volunteer at the soup kitchen and you were later to slip and break a hip while serving pork & beans one day, you could somehow find me liable for not only breaking your hip but for not repairing the hole in your heart.
So, I have decided to answer your question by advising you how not to fix that hole in your heart.
First of all, do not try to fix it with drugs. Sure, it feels good for a while, but in the end you wind up with three teeth, no friends, and turning $12 tricks in the back seat of an abandoned Impala. (NB: “herbs” are not “drugs”, in my worldview. But even “herbs” are really only useful for taking the edge off and making Uno Night at the in-laws less tedious, not for fixing holes in the heart.)
Second of all, hoarding is out. No matter how good it feels to buy an outfit in every color despite the fact that they’re all the wrong size, or how comforting it may be to admire the pile of plastic bags you’ve accumulated over nine years, you’ll probably end up either being evicted or featured on one of those local news stories headlined, “Health Officials Uncover House of Horrors”.
Be careful if you try to fix the hole in your heart with food. It’s OK if you love food and can channel it into something cool and positive like a totally hip food truck. But if you love food and you turn to food whenever you are stressed out or sad or bored, you will only end up with early-onset diabetes and a lot of really ugly outfits. Plus, if you’re not careful, they won’t be able to get you out of the house after you croak and they’ll have to burn it down around you like in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”.

Kurious in Killeen writes: Who was your favorite teacher?
Dear Kurious: Wow, this one really got me thinking. I would have to say that my favorite teacher of all time was Mr. Prody. I had him for AP English in junior year of high school and then in senior year I had him again for a course he had titled “Humanities Seminar”. Humanities Seminar wasn’t exactly a class. There were no more than 10 or 15 students, Mr. Prody’s idea of the “best and brightest”, I suppose. When class met, we would pull our chairs into a circle and then Mr. Prody would sort of introduce a topic and get the ball rolling, and we would spend the rest of the time just sort of talking and throwing ideas around the room. He used to smoke cigarettes in class (the world was very different in 1978), and since there were no ashtrays, he would line up all the dead filters on end along the edge of his desk, as he would signal the end of class by picking up the trash can and sweeping all the cigarette butts into it.
A close second would have to go to Mr. Iampieri, who I had for two years in Film Appreciation, one of the few Arts-related courses even offered by my Jesuit, college-prep oriented high school. Sitting in a dark room, watching fleeting images as they flickered on a screen in front of us, Mr. Iampieri taught me that the more you know about something, such as the craft that goes into making movies, the more you can appreciate it. This can be applied to many aspects of life.
Honorable mentions should go to Miss Lavin, whom I mentioned in one of my short stories, who taught me that “lesser” creatures have as much “right to the air” as I do, and Miss Robertson, who I had for first and third grades, who was the object of my first crush.
As I thought about my teachers over the years, I began to see a common thread among those who I considered the best. The teachers I remember, the ones who really left a mark on my life, were not memorable because they taught me a particular fact, or what to think. They were memorable for teaching me how to think.

Officer Friendly asks: How's Dooby today? : ) woof!!!!
Dear Officer: My dog Dooby is doing fine, thank you for asking. His second birthday is in about three weeks. I have mentioned before that I believe he is inhabited by the soul of a Laughing Buddha.
Dooby is highly energetic, and I mean that in a totally euphemistic way. It might be more truthful to say that he’s completely hyper. But if you strip all that away, forget about the jumping and the pestering and the insane running around in figure-8’s, and just look at the creature, I think you would see it too. All those things will go away with time, anyway. And what we will be left with is a dog, a little soul, who exudes nothing but love for everyone around him and nothing but absolute joy and enthusiasm for being alive; a giant smile surrounded by 80 pounds of beautiful dog.
That’s how Dooby is today.

The Wondering Wine Merchant wonders: Are you REALLY going to eat that?
Dear Wondering: The year is 1847. Young Thomas Smith is aboard the U.S.S. Carolina, heading for his home port of Charleston, which he has not seen in over three years, since arriving as a lone missionary on that tiny, unnamed island in the South Pacific.
The natives, of which there were only a few dozen, called the island “Dubidoo:, which simply means “little island in middle of ocean where we live and where there are many trees and fish and the rainy season lasts 4 moons”. He had not seen another white face since arriving at the island, which was disconcerting at first, especially for a white man from South Carolina in 1844. But before long, Thomas had realized that humanity is something which lies far deeper than skin level, and he was returning to America as a man with a completely new view on race and racial equality.
There had been no red meat on the small island, and for three years, Thomas had eaten only the fruits and vegetables which the natives could gather, along with many delicious and varied kinds of seafood which the fishermen brought in every day. He had not eaten a steak in all that time, not even seen one, until tonight.
He sat at the table in his First Class stateroom. A fine goblet of wine, a chunk of buttered bread, and a beautiful steak sat on the plate before him. His footman, called Lewis, stood impassively across the room, watching him. The sight, the smell of the steak assaulted his senses, causing his nostrils to flare and his mouth to water as he picked up the knife. Ravenous, almost mad with anticipation, he cut into the meat and watched the juices run down and across the plate, soaking in to the crusty bread. It looked so good. So very good and he’d been craving red meat for so very long. He raised his fork slowly towards his mouth and closed his eyes.
Lewis was the only native of Dubidoo who had ever learned English. He was also Master Smith’s sole convert to Christianity, although he converted more as a kind gesture to Master Smith than out of any real religious belief. Lewis was ambitious, compared to the other islanders. His thoughts took him to the strange, bold new world that was America. He knew that there was much more to life than the tiny island where he was born.
Lewis had never eaten red meat in his life. He had never even seen a cow, much less a portion of dead cow on a plate. He hoped he was masking his horror as he watched Master Smith raise his knife and cut into the flesh on the plate before him. Was it still alive? It seemed to bleed as Master Smith hacked away at it, his eyes wide and his tongue wildly licking his lips. As he raised the fork and the quivering piece of bloody meat towards his mouth, Lewis could think only one thing.

“Are you REALLY going to eat that?”