Why Did I Watch This: 'The Idol' Finale

A new Frotcast, the 'Napoleon' trailer, and what to do with all those fresh tomatoes.

New Frotcast

The Idol aired its finale last week on HBO, and while I know it’s become fashionable for media to rag on this show, I can’t help but rag on this show. I have no idea why I finished watching this. I would not recommend it. Apparently there were supposed to be six episodes, but the suits at Warner Bros Discovery cut it down to five. We don’t know for certain what bits got cut out, but the show definitely teased some big arc in which Josselyn’s handlers bring Tedros down. In the end, rather than that being the climax, there was a time jump, followed by Team Josselyn (which is to say, the good actors in the show) cheersing champagne glasses and saying “Remember when we brought Tedros down?? That was so great!'“

Somehow they left out all of what should’ve been the good parts yet still left in some excruciatingly padded scenes of Tedros’s minions supposedly impressing a room full of music industry veterans with their “amazing” music. It reminded me both of the scenes from Full House when they would show the crowd laughing uproariously about Uncle Joey’s terrible stand-up, and also this scene from “Shame”:

Matt and I discussed it all on a Frotcast this week. Our guest was James Fritz, from The Frankie Quiñones show. I had to show Matt and James this clip from Shame, just to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated how insanely long it was.

There’s also a new Pod Yourself The Wire, with Alice Fraser from Tea With Alice.

Napoleon

In other news, Ridley Scott made a Napoleon movie. As a Dad Furious We Didn’t Get Any Master & Commander Sequels, this is probably my most anticipated movie of the year. If only it had that epic crawl at the beginning: Napoleon is master of Europe. The battlefields are now battlefields!

I wrote this up for GQ, and they even left my original subhead intact: “Joaquin Phoenix plays the little corporal in a new epic about a horny little tyrant with an unfaithful wife who would rather conquer the world than go to therapy.”

I was proud of that one. I was also curious about Josephine’s punk-rock haircut in the scene where she and Napoleon meet, and it turns out, that actually has a historical basis:

As for Josephine’s punk rock-chic hairstyle in the clip, the scene seems to be set at one of Paris’ bals à la victime (victims’ balls), supposedly celebrated in the days following the Reign of Terror. As Transcript described them, “The balls were something of an urban legend in Paris, with very little to no first-hand accounts of the events remaining today. Functioning as a tribute to the dead, the rumored gatherings had a specific dress code. Many women wore red chokers or ribbons around their necks, to symbolize the slice of the guillotine’s blade. Men and women alike had their hair cropped short at the neck, as the victims did before execution to ensure the blade would sever the head without any complications.”

Basically, the rich kids of France would chop off their hair, get dressed up as their executed friends and family members, and go have debauched parties together. Gotta love the French. Incidentally, Napoleon was actually from the Island of Corsica, where he grew up speaking Italian. His original name was the much more molto bellissimo “Buonaparte.” Which is to say: Hollywood is doing Italian erasure yet again.

On Twitter, quite a few people posted this shot from Get Shorty:

I would’ve loved to see Danny DeVito in his prime playing Napoleon. On the subject of Napoleon’s height, he was apparently 5’6”, “which was a little above average for a French man in the early 1800s” (presumably the same for a Corsican). Joaquin Phoenix is 5’8”, according to IMDB, which seems realistic enough.

Vince’s EZ Recipe Of The Week!

Vince’s Easy Tomato Sauce

It seems like my garden is a month behind schedule, thanks to all the rain in California this year, but after a good long wait and plants laden with green fruit, I’m proud to report that I am once again lousy with tomatoes. It’s amazing how fast you go from “when the hell are these going to get ripe” to “what am I going to do with all of these tomatoes before they go bad?”

The first thing I make with my ripe tomatoes is pan con tomate and pico de gallo*. Those are probably the best two things to do with delicious fresh tomatoes, but for those you have to be quick. The beauty of the following recipe is that you can take those tomatoes, and right before they’re about to be overripe, stick them in the freezer. Now you don’t have to be so quick anymore.

I can’t remember from which instagram account I learned this little trick, but it’s wonderful. The first step is taking your tomatoes and scoring the skin with a knife like this:

Now that you’ve scored the outside of your tomatoes like this, you can let them thaw for 5-10 minutes, and then you can just peel the skins right off like magic. Pretty cool, huh?

From there you can cut your frozen tomatoes into little chunks for your sauce. Obviously, the texture of frozen tomatoes isn’t going to be as good as with fresh ones, but for sauce that doesn’t really matter. This sauce is based on Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce. I don’t entirely love that recipe (I still prefer to sautee my onions, it’s no fun without that sauteed onion smell) but the simplicity of it seems well-suited to fresh ripe tomatoes.

Ingredients

5-6 plum tomatoes (or whatever kind you’ve grown), frozen, peeled, and chopped, as above
5-6 garlic cloves, smashed (I grew this garlic myself too, no big deal)
A knob of butter (call it two tablespoons)
About 1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.

Directions

Heat your butter and oil on medium. Fry your garlic to a light golden yellow and then add your chopped tomatoes. Simmer about 40 minutes, until the tomatoes and the butter start to separate, then turn off the heat and stir it back together.

It should yield enough for about a pound of pasta. It also makes a beautiful pizza sauce.

*For pico de gallo, I go 4-5 roma tomatoes, deseeded and chopped. About half a white onion, chopped. Two serrano peppers, chopped fine. Some finely chopped cilantro, salt, black pepper, and either three limes or a lime and a big lemon.