An ersatz Disneyland

So I was reading this very real news article from the Sioux-City Journal that has drawn attention for the unintentional Onionesqueness of its prose. For those of you too lazy to click through, it's a slightly breathless article about how the citizens of Sioux City, Iowa, are very excited that they finally (finally!) have an Olive Garden opening up in their fair city. First question: how the hell did it take this long for the Olive Garden to get around to opening a branch in Sioux City? Second question: how dare the commentariat make fun of the residents of Sioux City for being excited about an Olive Garden? Now, admittedly, the Olive Garden is a shitty restaurant with bland-ass food and commercials that make it seem as if non-self-hating-Italian-Americans would actually eat at an Olive Garden. But as someone who loves the equally ersatz but much more delicious Macaroni Grill, I say we have to take a stand. People who are all like "Oooh, I'm all fancy and I demand authenticity from my restaurants and I get all uncomfortable in places that share an enormous parking lot with the Ruby Tuesday and the Outback Steakhouse" are... well, actually, they're my parents, and they're very nice people in a lot of ways. They prefer that their food not be developed by the good folks at the Institute of Food Technologists, which is fine, if a bit quaint.

But, the problem is, if you live in Los Angeles and you're really going to insist on authenticity in all things, you're going to miss out on a lot of awesome stuff. You could still eat at burrito trucks, I guess, and you could drink at Del's (but not on fucking karaoke night! Related post for later: why I hate karaoke so much). But then someone is eventually going to be like "Hey, I need to go buy some mass-market casual clothing that projects a comfortable familiarity with clam bakes, G&T's, and playing with golden retrievers whilst ensconsed in weathered dinghys" and you're like, "That's fine, but for myself I need to ride a make-believe choo-choo train for approximately 50 feet!" and then you both look at each other, smile, and say "Of course, The Grove!". This happens to me and my girlfriend all the time. Actually, mostly it happens to my girlfriend, and then I am a person who hates fun, so I'm all "I haaaaaate The Grove, please don't maaaake me".

For non-Angelenos, The Grove is a "retail and entertainment complex", sort of like a cross between an upscale outdoor mall and a movie set, with false-fronts to each store that collectively are meant to suggest... I don't know, actually. I want to say Venetian villas, but that doesn't seem accurate? Regardless, it's a big fake"experience" that must have suggested "class, but at a discount!" to some focus group; it comes complete with cobble-stone streets and footbridges and fountains and piped-in Sinatra. Also it has a choo-choo train for reasons that escape me. It is the sort of thing that Jean Baudrillard would have had a lot to say about if he hadn't apparently died of typhoid several years ago (btw, typhoid? wtf? That's some Anne of Green Gables shit right there). In short, deep down I am my parent's son, and The Grove is not my favorite place.

But! On a recent excursion to The Grove with couple friends Tammy and David, we ate at a magical place called Morel's French Steakhouse and Bistro. We actually ate on the first floor, which I guess is the bistro part. Imagine, if you will, that the producers of Saved By The Bell decided to make a special "study abroad" episode in gay Paris, and at the very last minute they informed the set designer that they needed an "authentic Parisian bistro" for an important scene where Kelly Kapowski is seduced by a Frenchman in a beret, and the set-designer (I imagine her as a chain-smoking, mid-fifties, bleach-blond, overtanned badass) managed to knock one out at the last possible minute using only materials that she had on hand. You can almost hear her in the background quietly mumbling "shit ass motherfucker suck dick assholes" etc.

So the decor, not so much. Neither the wait-staff, who are authentically Parisian in that they are not terribly motivated to be good at their job (also they have white smocks on!). So what did I like so much? Well, their croque monsieur was fucking delicious, if not very authentic. It used chicken instead of ham, but apparently croque monsieur is like a classic cocktail: variations on a theme are expected and welcomed. All I know is, things with melted emmental and baked-on Bechamel sauce are fucking delicious.

And if you're still Quixotically looking for authenticity in this place, I can also recommend their selection of fine liqueurs. They have them all! Galliano, Benedictine, Tuaca, Chartreuse, just a whole bunch of liqueurs. If I remember correctly, I thought about getting a glass of Chartreuse but decided against for some reason. For those who've never had it, Chartreuse is delicious and about as authentic as something can get without being like a granite boulder or something. The color is named after it, that's how OG Chartreuse is. The Carthusian monks who make it in have been around for like 900 years. If you saw Into Great Silence, apparently those are the same dudes (I haven't seen it yet, that shit's been number two on my Netflix for like a year because the next disc of the Wire keeps getting bumped up).

My point, then, if I actually have one, is that even in the most false and derivative place in Los Angeles (The Grove beats out Universal CityWalk for this title by a slim margin - Universal CityWalk is the ersatz Disneyland of my title, a place my parents would just refuse to set foot in. My mother would describe it as too loud, both visually and auditorially. They have giant flaming guitars, shitty live bands, and a giant neon-rimmed King-Kong dressed up according to the season - currently I believe he's wearing board shorts and sunglasses. I imagine the message is "Hey, this gorilla likes to have a good time, and so do we! And we're betting you do too! We're not all snooty like that other retail-and-entertainment complex across town!" Actually, in between the cracks that place is pretty fucking real, we saw some straight-up hookers plying their trade by the Hard Rock Cafe last weekend (we were there for the IMAX - see what I mean about the awesomeness you'd miss out on if you insisted on authenticity?) Also the restaurants at CityWalk are pretty downscale - think Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, which, speaking of simulations, is a fucking restaurant named after two characters in a movie from the nineties - am I blowing your mind yet? How about this, then: the only time I have ever been on a real movie set (i.e. a true falsehood), it was a wrap party that they held on the fake New York street on the ABC lot. It was kind of a weird experience, having a block party on a fake block. You're all chilling, having a beer, standing in the middle of the street, thinking "Hey, it's kind of weird how I'm here in the middle of the street and I'm not worried about getting hit by a car!" like you usually do at a block party, but then you're like "Oh, wait a minute. Fake block." - so I was there courtesy of my roommate Amy for a wrap party of her show, but, get ready to have your mind blown, guess what band was playing that wrap party? The Lieutenant Dan Band, a band fronted by Gary Sinise and inexplicably named after the movie character that he played in that self-same 90's movie).

To start again: even in the most false and derivative place it is possible to find things which are not simulations of some other thing, which were not created so as to suggest some aspirational lifestyle to a focus group, but rather exist because some monk hundreds of years ago tried a strange liqueur recipe that had been given to him and found that the unusual mixture of herbs produced something quite wonderful. Sometimes I worry that eventually all of experience will become a simulation of some other, more distant experience, which will in turn eventually be lost. Chartreuse helps to remind me that there are limits.