GIMME! Vol. 1: Tom Cruise, The Bear, Scientology, TikTok Chunks of Burnt Cheese
Welcome to GIMME!, a greedy little newsletter on consumables: food, art, movies, music, and anything else you've been gobbling up.
And here we have the inaugural issue of GIMME!, a monthly newsletter for the passionate consumer. If we all must occupy the same late-stage capitalist consumerist nightmare (I’ve looked into it and it is sadly mandatory until greater advances are made in the field of virtual reality, or possibly until we elect the right Democratic presidential candidate), we should at least consume with gusto and thoughtfulness and a discriminating eye…or ear, or set of taste buds. You get it. Consider this last paragraph a metaphorical dinner triangle. Ring ring, come ‘n’ get it!
This month’s issue features a rant regarding newly-minted Emmys darling The Bear, along with an essay from writer and St. Louis native Sean Tiffin. Sean recently followed up beating literal cancer with an equally impressive feat: launching a career in soft rock. His late 2023 debut music video for “A Haunting In Venice (In Memphis)” has quickly become my favorite piece of A Haunting In Venice-related media, narrowly edging out the film A Haunting In Venice:
When Sean is not busy reinventing the genre, he excels at film criticism (and runs a truly excellent Letterboxd account). For this month’s newsletter, he was kind enough to offer his two cents on Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (née Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One), widely regarded as one of the top 100 cinematic events of 2023. Take it away, Sean!
The Tomcruiseological Magic of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
by Sean Tiffin
I’d never seen any of the Mission: Impossible movies until I watched all seven of them this past year and while there are more urgent needs in the world than plugging that very popular and successful film series, I wanted to take a moment to advocate for the latest, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One—which, rather unfortunately I think, got a bit lost in the shuffle in the film conversation of 2023. For one thing, it underperformed at the box office to an extent that they’re pushing Dead Reckoning Part Two to 2025 and are apparently going to rename it to something other than Dead Reckoning Part Two, I guess to remove the association with the relative financial failure of Part One, meaning that there will just be a movie called Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One and then the next one will be called Mission: Impossible - Killshot Harbor or whatever. Quite the mess. Especially considering that the film’s underperformance seems to be attributable to bad luck with release timing in relation to the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, which I think is a shame because Barbie and Oppenheimer, despite getting plenty of attention, are ultimately two movies that are, at best, pretty good, whereas Dead Reckoning Part One is a masterpiece on its own terms, which of course are Tom Cruise’s terms and no one else’s.
What I love most about the progression of the M:I series is watching Tom Cruise build a world and make himself the god of it. This, I feel, sets a very inspiring example for all human beings. In some shape or form, this should be the life mission of the individual. Be born into a cruel, meaningless world with no rules, pick out the elements you like, ignore the rest, and construct your own reality that functions as an extension of your best, most idealized self. This is what Tom Cruise has done, brick by brick, with the Mission: Impossible franchise. He reminds us that our destiny is ultimately in our hands. You’re 5’7? That’s fine. Make yourself 30 feet tall on a silver screen. Don’t cast anyone else in the movie who is shorter than you, and if you do, have them always be sitting down anytime they’re appearing in the same scene as you. I imagine for these movies at this point there’s probably even a pretty strict sub-5’10 height limit for the extras for scenes where Tom Cruise is walking through a crowded airport, etc.
You don’t need to look any further than the opening credits of these movies to glimpse the extent to which Tom Cruise has taken total control of the reality of the universe of the franchise. The opening titles on the new one are like: “Tom Cruise presents . . . a Tom Cruise production . . . in association with Tom Cruise . . .” The first four movies of the series are each directed by a different big-name director, but the most recent three are all directed by some guy you’ve never heard of named Christopher McQuarrie. If you look up Christopher McQuarrie, all of his credits are Tom Cruise movies, so it’s pretty easy for me to believe that Christopher McQuarrie is just an alias and that these movies are actually just being directed by Tom Cruise. Makes a little too much sense.
In Dead Reckoning Part One, which is the best of the series to date, which is really saying something, Tom Cruise has leveled up to where he is like a warlock mindreader. The very fabric of reality is his Play-Dough. He makes James Bond look like shit. He makes David Blaine look like David Blaine. The plot of the movie is that there is this, like, all-consuming algorithm that has become sentient (so the singularity, I guess, per my understanding of what the singularity is) called the Entity, which has taken over human free will basically and is now running everybody’s shit. It has permeated everything, world governments, the banks, etc., to where it can no longer be assumed that any given person’s motivations are independent of the will of the Entity, and nobody can be trusted. Basically everyone has become a slave to the Entity, which uses people as pawns by manipulating their weaknesses and desires against them. Not Tom Cruise, though. He rejects the false idol that is this AI bot, his individual humanity is too strong to be bent, actually even at all. He says fuck the government, fuck the IMF (Impossible Mission Force), and fuck anyone else who tries to stand in his way. He goes rogue-er than he’s ever gone before (and keep in mind that he’s gone really rogue many times), and becomes a fully free agent, operating on Tom Cruise terms and Tom Cruise terms only. Finally!
In a year where artificial intelligence has challenged the value of humanity in an alarmingly real way, Tom Cruise sends a vital message to the people of the world: “Fuck you. I am Tom Cruise. No one and nothing else could ever be Tom Cruise or even close. Now get the fuck out of my way, or else.” And then as a viewer, in order to parse out this message to bring value to your own, real life, all you have to do is swap out ‘Tom Cruise’ for your own name, and boom: you have become incredibly empowered.
Do you think that artificial intelligence could ever cook up a Tom Cruise? If you think that you think that, I don’t think that you really think that, and neither does Tom Cruise.
I cannot advocate for the Church of Scientology at all, because I’ve seen the documentary. But I do believe that if Tom Cruise were to rebrand it as, say, Tomcruiseology, it’s very possible that he could take over the world, for he’s as legitimate a god as any, and realer than all. I lived in Los Angeles briefly a couple years or so ago, quite literally in the shadow of the big blue Scientology HQ. I got coffee from the coffee shop across the street from it multiple times a week. And I was never tempted to go in. But that was before I watched the Mission: Impossible movies. Long before that, when I lived in St. Louis (I live in St. Louis again now, but before I did, too), I delivered Jimmy John’s sandwiches to the Church of Scientology a couple of times and I always thought it was funny that they had a Top Gun poster in the lobby. But I’m not laughing now. I really get it.
In conclusion, as if by some Tomcruiseological magic, I took a break about halfway through writing this to look at X.com and the first thing I saw was a fresh headline announcing that Tom Cruise has just now inked a deal with Warner Bros. to “develop original & franchise movies which he’ll star in. He will get an office on the WB lot with his production company.” Of course he will.
Combining the precision of a brilliant tunesmith with the passion of a great soul man, Sean Tiffin is among the most promising new voices in alternative country music. He currently resides in St. Louis.
I Have A Bone To Pick With Hulu’s The Bear
by Me, Maureen Monahan
A show called Hulu’s The Bear recently cleaned up at the Emmy Awards, television’s biggest night. This is great news for fans of The Bear, which, according to a conservative estimate, number between roughly 11-13 trillion in the greater Los Angeles metro area alone. But I myself have never watched The Bear, even though people insist it’s amazing, or maybe because they insist it’s amazing. This could be pure contrarianism, like it was for me with Game Of Thrones, which, while highly recommended by everyone I knew, I also stubbornly resisted watching until I finally, reluctantly hopped on the bandwagon several years late—and, of course, enjoyed it, just like everyone else, until the final season, which I thought was bad, just like everyone else. Then I spent a few more years stubbornly resisting reading George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series, until I broke down and read them all last year and, well, let’s just say that now one of my most-listened-to podcasts on Spotify is one called “History Of Westeros” where they do things like break down minute details of Robb Stark’s will and delve into the history of the Free City Of Pentos. All that to say, I could be wrong about The Bear; maybe one day I will finally watch it and enjoy it so much that I also read the five 700-page high fantasy novels it’s based on.
But as of now, I haven’t watched The Bear—not in its traditional form, anyway. I have, instead, consumed some of it the modern way: in totally out of context, one-to-three-minute chunks on TikTok, my favorite app that ruins my life every day. And I keep seeing the same little chunk of The Bear, a chunk which baffles and disturbs me.
The chunk (feels wrong to call it a “scene” in this form) involves a character named Richie played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the actor formerly known as “Marni’s music and sex partner from Girls.” One can gather that Richie is a little abrasive and uncouth and generally unsuited for a customer-facing restaurant job, but the chunk in question shows him in an important moment of character development. It’s a moment of triumph where, having found himself employed at a different high-end Chicago restaurant that is not the titular Bear (the mechanics of this plot development unknown to me), Richie learns important lessons about hospitality and how to go above-and-beyond for restaurant guests. His breakthrough comes when he overhears guests at Very Fancy Restaurant bemoaning the fact that their trip to Chicago is almost over, and they never got a chance to try Pequod’s deep dish. Richie overhears this and, after some quick thinking and cheffy replating, presents them with a plate of just that: Pequod’s deep dish. Except it looks like this:
Now what the hell is that?
First let me say: Pequod’s is legitimately good, as is deep dish in general. Frankly, I find tiring the little routine Chicagoans, or pretend-Chicagoans (guilty), have adopted to insist that, actually, no one in Chicago eats deep dish, or really likes it, and that the real Chicago pizza style is tavern-style thin crust. Which, fine, tavern-style pizza is good! But so is deep dish. Except for Giordano’s, which is bad. The tavern-style supremacy argument strikes me as a very pick-me attempt at fitting in with New Yorkers, when, in my mind, tavern-style and deep dish are two sides of the same distinctly Midwestern coin: one is for snacking alongside cheap pitchers of light beer, one is for restoring you to life from the blistering cold, a warm and heavy stomach-blanket to see you through hibernation. You can’t eat deep dish, or tavern-style for that matter, standing up on a Brooklyn sidewalk. They aren’t portable. They’re inside foods. Good for them!
Anyway, I used to live walking distance from Pequod’s in college so I know what I’m talking about. But even if I didn’t, you could consult myriad blogs, food shows, even Pequod’s themselves and come away knowing one thing: that the whole point is the burnt cheese crust. That crust, which is what sets them apart from even other good deep dish places, is the result of throwing a shit ton of mozzarella all along the edges of the pie before baking, so that the crust is adorned with a beautiful lace collar of burnt cheese.
The crispy cheese, however—again, that which makes Pequod’s good—is conspicuously absent from what Richie serves the guests. His chef boss seems to have taken a cookie cutter and punched out small flower-shaped pizza filets from the middle. There is no outer crust to speak of, let alone any crispy cheese. It’s like promising a tourist a Chicago-style hot dog and serving them a plain boiled dog with no toppings, no bun, and the hot dog skin peeled off.
I’ve watched enough Top Chef hopefuls sweat their way through any season’s requisite “make this un-fancy food fancy” challenge to know there could have been ways to make it work. Off the top of my head, they could’ve saved some of that caramelized crust and crumbled it into a streusel, or compressed it into a decorative crisp. Or, hell, they could’ve simply served a slice of Pequod’s pizza on a plate. After depositing his mushy pizza filets, as Richie walks away from his table beaming with pride at his newfound hospitality skills, we hear someone at the table gush “Better than New York, right?” Utterly absurd!
Though it might be one tiny scene—chunk!—amid what’s most likely two seasons of peer-recommended, multiple-Emmy-winning excellence, I think the Pequod’s treatment encapsulates my hesitations about watching The Bear. As a show, it is so decidedly Chicago-themed, so purportedly a champion for Chicago and its restaurants both Michelin-starred and hole-in-the-wall, that to biff it on something as simple as Pequod’s strikes me as pathetically disingenuous.
Although, what do I know? My Chicago gastronomical experience peaked when I became enough of a regular at Cheesie’s that the employees at learned my name and gifted me a special Cheesie’s slap bracelet entitling me to 15% off with each visit (I know you’re wondering, so: my order was always a Caprese, add fresh jalapeños, side of ranch. This was back when Cheesie’s was still a dive the size of a hallway, before they made it “““““““““““““““nice”””””””””””””””” and expanded into Wicker Park).
And, to be fair, I have no idea how that episode ends, or even what happens in the very next scene. Considering this, it hit me: could it be possible that I’m doing to The Bear exactly what The Bear did to that pizza? Maybe my TikTok chunks are no different than the soggy flower-shaped chunks of pizza Richie so proudly serves his guests. Maybe I’m missing out on The Bear’s best parts. Considering this, it hit me: that’s unlikely, due to the nature of TikTok. It’s a never-ending highlight reel that drills the good parts of everything directly into your skull. The scene is played as a brilliant moment of culinary reinvention, a triumph for Richie meant to cast its warming feel-good glow onto the audience. It’s soggy crust disguised as burnt cheese. That’s why it’s on TikTok.
Still, I’m left wondering how the episode shakes out. Maybe the guests politely push their soft pizza flowers around on their plate until dessert, something like a cardamom-scented balloon, finally arrives. Maybe they storm the kitchen, clobber the offending chefs over the head with the giant tins of Garrett’s popcorn they bought downtown earlier, and greedily eat Pequod’s crust from the garbage. Maybe the Health Department arrives and shuts the place down for the actual health code violation it is to serve food from a different restaurant. Maybe Richie sings Taylor Swift for some reason. I’ve looked into it and there’s literally no way of knowing.
My biggest critique of the bear, being part of the Chicago restaurant alumni all the scenes when they are in the actual restaurant kitchen at their location, other locations for inspiration. Never is there a one "insert Latino ethnicity" dishwasher. This very important job in the restaurant industry is very well known for a gateway for H.S. teens (graduated or dropouts) to find a job that can lead them to a stable career. Second group are immigrants who come from "insert Latin American country" that are looking for steady income and usually have an in with an ex or current employee of that restaurant. When Carmy is going through the kitchen and yells at dish for not having pans set for service and Drew say's yes chef. This brief moment takes me out of the show. Drew is from Rogers Park but his family live in Evergreen Park so if he really wanted a job he would work construction with Uncle Pat and cousin Simon Kelly. This is not a Chicago restaurant.
Thanks for plugging my Letterboxd
That scene in the Bear is about the only scene in the show that I didn’t think sucked, because it shows how Richie, a hothead moron douche piece of shit who has no good qualities at all, actually has slightly more than 0% value as a person. Thanks to your analysis here, I realize now that that scene actually sucks too and that the Bear fully sucks. Feels good to be able to hate 100% now, since I was basically there (I didn’t finish season 2 and prob won’t)