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Bonding. Its something that women tend to fret about with men, as in "go and do your male bonding thing."

While I am sure men like me are essentially Pavlovian and conditioned to do what women say, it gets more complicated when I think about cars. I don’t need to bond with my buddies, but I do need to bond with my cars. This could be the reason I have had trouble bonding with my Benz.

I acquired this E550 a few months ago which made it neccessary for me to sell my beloved 530 HP Cobra and possibly even my Alfa Spider Veloce. I just can’t sit on that much depreciating iron and an increasingly depressed wife (I understand, honey).

Fortunately, things have changed.

While putting my Cobra up for sale on EBay this weekend, I came across a site for Drag Times "the world’s only quarter mile website." Lo and behold there was my E550 with a stock quarter mile time of 13.4. and 0-60 in 4.8 sec. That’s right in Cobra range (with Range Rover luxury to boot).

While I realize this entry is reading like a MySpace page full of vacuity and lacking in depth I must say I suddenly gained the respect for the Benz that I have always had for my Cobra. I felt so good about it that I went out and tested its rev limiter on a midnight jaunt out to Cantebury.

I can proudly say that in thrust I trust once again, and I thank Mercedes for letting me break 135.

By now, it’s fairly well established that Beowulf is an irredeemable,
gawd-awful film. As if moviegoers needed another reason to hate the thing, I
noticed something truly heinous about the animation: While the male characters were rendered in the
spirit of realism, left with fairly expressive human faces, the female characters
were idealized to the point of looking like wax figures. Did you notice the
constipated quality about Queen Wealthow’s face whenever she tried,
unsuccessfully, to crinkle her nose or furrow her brow? The filmmakers,
apparently, are terrified of the lines that form on a beautiful, young woman’s face whenever she,
you know, expresses herself. Sure, by the end of the movie they’ve tossed a few
crowsfeet onto Wealthow’s mug, but that’s only to point out how she’s
no longer fuckable.

Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is
quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a
little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too
solicitous for the order of the customer. He is playing, he is amusing himself.
But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is
playing at being a waiter in a cafe. There is nothing there to surprise
us."

— Jean-Paul Sartre, from Being and Nothingness

All fine dining has an element of theater, and fantasy: you
make believe you are in a bistro in Paris, the waiters pretend you are somebody
really important. Unless either the waiter or the customer takes themselves too
seriously, everybody knows it’s just play. The plot thickens a bit when
the guy who plays the customer is actually a restaurant critic pretending not
to be a restaurant critic, and the staff who play waiters and hosts are all
pretending that they don’t know that the guy at table four is a restaurant
critic.

Our waitress spotted
me the minute we walked in the door at Meritage, but I didn’t figure this out
until chef-owner Russell Klein (formerly of W.A. Frost) came up and introduced
himself at the end of the evening. In the meantime, we had a great time – great
food, smart service – and the very enjoyable sense that everybody involved in
the restaurant was having fun, and not taking themselves too seriously. Our
server, Mel,was prompt, attentive, and knowledgeable about the food and wine –
and at the same time quirky and funny, and seemed to be playing her role with a
wink. It is just theater after all.
Haven’t we seen you somewhere before, my wife asked? Yes, she waited on
us once at Toast – she remembered serving my wife, and she thought maybe I was
there too.

The dapper maitre d’, Ross, brought around a trolley to show
Meritage’s “cheese program” – a selection of five fromages, including a
Roquefort, a Tomme chevre washed in Muscadet, a Brie de Meaux, another flavored with walnut liqueur, and a Vermont cave-aged Shepard cheddar, each available for $5 an ounce. Mel confided in a conspiratorial tone that Ross had actually been
Mariah Carey’s private butler. Mel said this was not for publication, but when
I spoke to Ross later, he volunteered the fact, and said it was okay to
publish. In any case, he played the part perfectly, with just the right air of
gravitas. He also told me that his full title is maitre de fromage.

Meritage looks about the same as it did when it was A
Rebours, and it still presents itself as a French bistro. Klein got his formal
training at the French Culinary Institute in New York City, so when it comes to
cassoulet and coq au vin, (Tuesdays, $22) he knows his stuff. But he’s not
taking any of this stuff too seriously, either. Klein takes the idea of a
bistro and plays with it, subvert it, serving up matzo ball soup and a classic
American burger with fries alongside the foie gras and cassoulet, and offering
a matzo and nutella sandwich for dessert.

The food was delightful. Klein didn’t actually cook for
us – he spent the evening at a nearby
table, having dinner with his wife, Desta, who doubles as hostess and
bartender, and his mother, who was visiting from out of town. Good for him – he
has his priorities in order. The rest of the kitchen crew did just fine. I
started with one of bite-sized “amusements” – a tiny tuna tartare taco,
followed by a juicy 1/3 pound burger, enlivened with chopped onions and a dash
of Worcestershire, and a generous pile of fries on the side.

Vegetarian entrees often seem like an afterthought, but
Klein’s “composition of autumn vegetables” ($16) was an inspired combination: a
short stack of small pumpkin pancakes accompanied by a sunchoke frittata of
caramelized Brussels sprouts and carrots. Our other entrée was a winner as
well:– four large scallops, topped with toasted hazelnuts, accompanied by kale,
squash, white beans and a brown butter sauce ($25). Ordering scallops at local
restaurants seems to be a lot like Russian roulette, with about four chambers
loaded: most of the time, you get “wet-packed” scallops, treated with sodium
tri-poly phosphate, which makes them retain water (so they can be sold more
cheaply), but robs them of their sweetness. To judge by the sweet succulent
flavor, these were dry-packed.

We finished with a couple more bite-sized amusements – the
nutella matzo sandwich, and a tiny cup of espresso mousse. Next time, I’ll save
room for one of the more ambitious dessert offerings, like the warm chocolate
hazelnut cake served with a salty caramel ice cream or the chilled grand marnier
soufflee (both $7).

I’ve fallen in love with plenty of imperfect movies. There was Donnie Darko, a film whose haphazard, cross-genre narrative I forgave because it cut right to the core of how weird and perilous it feels to be a depressed teenager. And Benny & Joon, a sweet, just-shy-of-precious story that was redeemed by genuine filial warmth and Johnny Depp’s knockout Charlie Chaplin impersonation — good enough (I like to imagine) that the Little Tramp was probably up in heaven cheering wildly as they filmed.

John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes is just such a flawed but decent flick. Set in working-class Queens, it’s that age-old tale about midlife misbehavior and its resounding effects. John Updike’s Rabbit series, American Beauty, Married With Children — the zeitgeist is replete with examples. But there’s reason to make room for one more. Because Turturro’s Nick Murder (played by James Gandolfini) bares his soul in a way other anti-heros have not.

What’s his beef? Not entrapment or tedium or the chains binding him to a dead-end job. No, Murder is simply LONELY. Or more precisely — and in a human way, I think — he’s afraid of being alone. And in a scene very near the beginning of this odd music-smattered film, the stubbly bridge worker lets himself out of his squalorous, smoke fume-filled house to serenade the neighborhood with his sorry state: "Lonely is a man without love."

Of course, he isn’t without love. He’s merely stuck in the thirty-year slump of a long and encumbered marriage. And his wife, Kitty — Susan Sarandon, who is as lovely and foul-mouthed as she was 16 years ago in Thelma and Louise — is onto him. She’s a devout Catholic who uses the word "twat" as easily as she says the rosary. She knows her husband is fooling around. And chances are, she also knows why.

Egged on by his know-it-all friend, played by Steve Buscemi, Murder not only has an affair with a trampy, British lingerie saleswoman (Kate Winslet) who eats chicken in bed and invites him to "open her back door," he gets circumcised for her. And this is where the magic of Turturro comes in. Because he alone has put forth one fact of life that at least fifty percent of the population never understood: Grown men in long-term relationships still obsess over their oddly-shaped penises. . . .the same way women fret over their flappy post-pregnancy stomachs and widening hips.

Romance & Cigarettes is one extended explication of the male mind: Murder imagines his girlfriend dressed in red and shimmying through a burning house while firemen below wield their out-of-control "hose" like a powerful snaky phallus. He leaves the raising of his three daughters — creatures around the same age as his mistress who clearly bewilder him — to his wife. And he cowers in the presence of his mother, whose dominance is so emasculating it makes circumcision entirely beside the point.

The movie is very uneven. Its plot takes turns that are not only unexpected, they don’t, in truth, make much sense. This, likely, is why Romance & Cigarettes bounced around Hollywood for two years after MGM was bought out by Sony and wrote the film off.

I sympathize with the naysayers. This movie is raggedly written and refuses to stay put in one category: drama, comedy, muscial, or indie-style slice-of-life. Yet it’s saved not only by Turturro’s brash revelations about the male psyche, but also by a supporting cast that includes Mary Louise Parker, Christopher Walken, and the superb dowager Elaine Stritch.

In perhaps the most inconceivable "twist" on the story of this film, Adam Sandler intervened with studio executives and asked that his friend Turturro’s film be given a limited distribution. Thus, on the power of the mighty Wedding Singer, it was.

And I’m glad for that. Because thanks to Romance & Cigarettes, I may finally understand what’s going on in men’s heads.

Opening December 7th at the Landmark Edina Cinema.