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The Moth Radio Hour: Moth Eaten: Adventures in Food
00:53:37
A special live edition of The Moth at Cooper Union in NYC, “Moth Eaten: Adventures in Food.” Best-selling author Adam Gopnik and his wife have an ongoing battle about the proper way to cook meat; celebrity chef David Chang shares his anxiety about rece...
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- [00:01]
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- [01:50]
Jay Allison
From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is true stories told without notes in front of a live audience. In this program, all our stories come from a Moth event held at Cooper Union in New York City with the theme Moth Eaten Adventures in Food. You'll hear stories from the renowned chef and restaurateur David Chang, comedian Lisa Lampanelli, and our first storyteller, the writer Adam Gopnik. All the tellers were asked, what would your last meal be? And Adam said, my mother's baked rice pudding. Here's Adam Gopnik live at the Moth on stage at Cooper Union.
- [02:38]
Adam Gopnik
Thank you. I'm going to tell the same story that Lincoln told when he was standing here. The great thing about food, which is our subject tonight, food, is that food so quickly becomes everything else. Every mouth taste that we ever have becomes a moral taste very quickly. You taste something, you think you like it, and instantly it becomes a Moral principle. Children, if you have them, are like that. They taste something and say, ew, that's yucky. And you say, well, I really like it. Ew, you're yucky, you're gross. God reasons in exactly the same way. Somebody gave God a pork chop once to taste. And he said, ooh, this is terrible. Anyone who ever eats a pork chop again is a horrible sinner and has violated every rule that I've made. Mouth taste speaking become moral tastes very, very quickly. In our experience, food becomes everything else. And I come from a long line of people who really, since the Diaspora, have been arguing about food. Long marriages, long, mostly contented, happy marriages. But at the heart of every one of these marriages in my family, there's some argument, some fracture where the moment where a mouth taste has become a moral taste and where people break apart. You think about my Uncle Ron and my Aunt Rose, for instance. They spent most of their life through about 60 years of marriage having the same argument about food. That is, my uncle Ron insisted that the reason they give you large portions at restaurants is. Is in order to charge you more. And my Aunt Rose insisted that the reason that they charged you more at restaurants was because they had given you such large portions. And they carried this argument along like a Becket play from Philadelphia to Florida and then into the hospital where my Uncle Ron had his vocal cords removed and would say, the reason they charge.
- [04:58]
David Chang
You more is because they want to.
- [05:01]
Adam Gopnik
And they trick you with a large portion. She said, no, Ron, that's not the reason at all. People carry these arguments on. My grandparents had a. Now there's a weird thing about my grandparents. I have to explain in order to explain their argument, and that is that I introduced my grandparents when I was about two years old and I only have one pair of them because when I was about two, my father's father. Now follow this. My father's father met my mother's mother and they divorced the other spouses and they married each other. That's a true story. They did. So I only had one set of grandparents. And as a consequence, because my father's father was just like my father, only a kind of old immigrant guy, and my mother's mother, just like my mother, I had a kind of tune version of my parents who lived in another neighborhood. And they. To give you some idea, my grandfather ran a little grocery store. He cared about nothing but food. He was a butcher. He managed to chop off all of his fingers in his lifetime. And his name was Al. His name was Al, but he called his Store Benny's Market because he thought it sounded much classier than Al's Market. He and my grandmother had one fight, the way my uncle and my aunt did throughout their lives, and that was about the language of food, because my grandfather came late to this country and my grandmother earlier, and she would never explain to him what important food expressions actually meant. When he was 88 and I was visiting him in Florida, he took me aside and said, there's something no one will explain to me. And I've been waiting for someone to explain to me for 70 years. What do people mean when they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too? What else are you supposed to do with your cake? And this had been troubling him for 70 years. Finally, he had a grandson with a PhD in English, and he wanted to know what it meant. My parents argue about food. My parents have the same argument about food. My mother's a wonderful cook, and every time they argue, my father says, every night, myrna, please don't serve me another dessert. Please don't serve me. And she does, and he eats it. Once again, mouth taste becomes a moral taste. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk to you about my marriage and the fight that we have, my wife Martha and I here, we've been married a pretty long time now, and we have had one fight, one moment when mouth taste becomes moral taste through all of that period. And it is that she, And I say this with some shame, likes everything well done. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful girl. Young girl. Met her when she was a teenager. And when you meet somebody for the first time in that way, you don't really believe it. When they say well done, you think that it's a kind of sophisticated joke. You, you know, it's like when somebody tells you that they were a Donny Osmond fan. You think that they're. It's complex kind of irony that they're talking about not an actual taste. And she would say, well done. When I would. We would go out to a restaurant in Montreal. She'd say, well done. And they'd bring it to her, well done. And I smiled and I thought, we'll get past this. Because when you're young and you're in love, everything is rare anyway. Just as when you come to New York, everyone is Jewish in love, everything is rare. Well done is rare. Long cooked is rare. You can't have something that's not kind of wonderfully bloody inside. I came from a family where rare was A very important moral category because it marked your readiness for adventure, your taste for exploration, your appetite for experiment. And she came from a family where it was just the opposite. Well done was the significant moral category. And I didn't really believe that she believed in this until I went for a cookout at her parents place and her father was doing hamburgers. And I said, oh, that looks good. And he flipped the hamburger over and a minute went by. 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 45 minutes. Months and years went by before he was ready to serve this thing. And, you know, I realized it wasn't just about the immigrant experience. Why do we like things rare? It's about sex. It's about sex. Pink is pink. There's simply no way of denying the association. Pink. Red inside is red. And it is. And it simply is. And that when you're offering somebody something rare, you're offering them your sexuality, and when they reject it, they're rejecting you. They are. We got married anyway, and I continued to order these things. And then it became a little more severe when we had children. I should explain that we have a kind of somewhat inside out marriage because, though hardly a masculine person, she does all the masculine things. She keeps the books and she drives the car. I don't drive and I do all the cooking. And I'm the one who sits in the front seat and works the radio and the CD player and tells the kids that we'll be there soon, don't bother your mother while she's driving. And I do all the cooking. And so I would prepare things, make things for her, and she would sort of COVID it up and move it around. And then I realized that she was propagandizing our children to like things well done. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, what's wrong with that? Why make a fuss about something so trivial? But you're not married to someone who likes things well done. And you don't understand the depth of pain and dismay, this feeling that you're violating everything that should be happening when you have a piece of protein on your plate. That piece of protein should still have some of the tang, the residuum of where it came from. It shouldn't be turned into a hockey puck of plainness. And when you're teaching your children that, you're teaching them to be afraid of life. You're teaching them to live and eat like old immigrant people. You're depriving them of their fundamental connection to nature. That's what those two words, well done, does to your children's soul when you insist on it time after time. So how could you help but be angry and you're trying to stop it? I love this woman. She's wonderful and she likes things well done. And it makes you furious. One day I went to the fishmonger's and I brought home tuna, beautiful sushi quality tuna. And I did it the way the tuna should be done. I did a kind of tuna au poivre where you put a lot of peppers on top and you saute it and you make a little cognac and creme fraiche sauce.
- [12:07]
Audience Member
Wonderful.
- [12:07]
Adam Gopnik
Way much better than steak au poivre tuna au pav. And I served it to the three members of my family. My wife, my son, my daughter. And it was just properly pink inside, just properly pink inside. I put the plate of tuna down and they all three cut into it and they all three did that horrible kind of rear back thing. Oh, this is undercooked. And I snapped. I rose from my chair and I did this terrible, terrible thing that happens in American sitcoms from the 60s. I grabbed my coat and I went towards the door. I never had done anything like that before. But there was my fish, my manhood, being turned away by my entire family. My wife intercepted me. Martha intercepted me at the door and she said, with a kind of vehemence that I had never known her to possess, even in childbirth, she said, you are going back and you are finishing that fish. And recognizing that I had no choice, I put my apron back on and I finished sauteing the fish until it was indistinguishable from the kind of tuna you get in a can, which is exactly what they wanted. But we both recognized that that moment about five years ago was a pivot moment, a hinge moment. If you're married, you know those moments, you back away from those moments and you say, we can't go there. If we go any farther in that direction, we'll end up apart. And I noticed that from that night on, when we went to a restaurant, Martha began to use an extraordinary word that she had never used before that's essential to the continuity a marriage. That word was medium. And the beautiful thing about the word medium is that it's a double voiced word. You say, the waiter comes in that perky way and says, and how will you have that man? And you look your husband in the eyes and you say dreamily, medium. And then you say, the waiter, well, medium, well, right. Or you can say medium. There's always a pivot that you can do to get where you want. It's an inherently ambivalent expression because there's no such medium well. And she could say it. And I made an adjustment too, that was just as deep. I decided that I would just stop sauteing things. I would remove this whole rare, well done issue from our marriage. And I started to braise everything. Seven hours in a pot in a 200 degree oven. Because. Because when you braise everything, the issue of rare and well done evaporates from your world and it's replaced by another issue. And that is tough or tender. It's either tough or it's tender. And if it's tender, it's good. And in those two words, medium tender, we found the renewal of our relationship because that's what every marriage seeks to be. We start off in the wonderful, blazing, raw intensity of sauteing and broiling and work our way to the beautiful tenderness of the braise in the stew. And that's in those juices. We renew our vows. And the good thing about it, as I wish I could go back and say to my Uncle Ron and Aunt Rose, is that the secret is that, as Tolstoy knew, all happy marriages are alike and all unhappy marriages are different. Because in every happy marriage, you argue about the same thing over and over and over. And in every unhappy marriage, you find a new thing to argue about every night. That's why it's good to have the one argument. And you find out as I wish. I told my uncle and my aunt that though there's no free lunch or free dinner in a marriage, there's no way that you can avoid the cost. Though you always pay more if you're married to the right person, the portions always get larger. Thank you so much. Take care.
- [16:39]
Jay Allison
That was Adam. God. Adam has been a writer for the New Yorker since 1986. He's the author of the Table Comes first on Family, France and the meaning of food. You can find out more about the moth@themost.org we'll be back in a moment with a story about Michelin stars from the chef and owner of Momofuku. David Changing the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by prx.
- [17:30]
Lisa Lampanelli
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- [18:02]
Jay Allison
Tchfix.Com this is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. This is a live storytelling event called Moth Eaten Adventures in Food. And our next storyteller is David Chang, the executive chef and owner of the Momofuku Restaurant group in New York City. When asked the question of the evening, what would you want for your last meal? David said, just butter. Here's David Chang live at the mall.
- [18:37]
Audience Member
Hello. So a couple years ago was winter 2009, and it was a day I will never forget because we had a certain guest that came in and his name was Jean Luc Naray and he was the director at the time of the Michelin Guide. And he came to eat at Momofuku Co. Momofuku co is a 12 seat restaurant. It's on 10th street and First Avenue. It's very bare bones, plywood walls. The year before, he had awarded us two Michelin stars. And to this day, I still haven't quite reconciled what that means. And anyway, he was coming into the restaurant and we've cooked for a lot of critics, a lot of dignitaries before, but for whatever reason, the whole, the whole just. I don't even know what it was in that day. We just felt that things were just off. Things were odd. We were. We're nervous, and we're never nervous. Like when a critic comes in. I mean, we chant to each other, kill, kill, kill, kill. You know, we want, we want the critic or whoever that we're trying to impress to leave the restaurant going, holy. What just happened? That was unbelievable. And this guy's not even a critic. He's the director of the Michelin Guide. And it is a guide that was created because of the tire company. It was to create places to eat in France. And it's over 100 years old. And it means the world to chefs in France and in other places in Europe. And they decided to open up the Guide in New York and a few other places in America and controversial in America. It hasn't been around as long. So the stars don't mean as much to the general public. But as a chef, as a cook, I grew up under chefs, where the Michelin Guide and the star system meant everything. I would go into work on the day the red book would come out and you would hear about French restaurants that I had no idea about gaining a star or losing a star. So you finally Got the pattern that, okay, this is something important. And Momofuku company, we serve just about anything. We serve Japanese food. There's no real ethnic boundaries to what we serve. We just want to serve something that's delicious. But regardless of whatever we serve at Momofuku, we're grounded in French tradition. And I would say almost all of Western cuisine is grounded in French tradition. And if that's the case, every time we cook something and every time, you know, Chef Keller, Thomas Keller from the French Laundry said it best. When you make a hollandaise sauce and you're over the stove and you're making your liaison, and you make it right, you're going back in time, you're making the same sauce that all these French cooks have made. All these cooks have done the same thing. And you share this moment. If you do it right, it's a beautiful thing. I didn't understand it until very recently. So the Michelin guide meant everything. And if any chef tells you they don't care about the Michelin guide, they're full of because they either have a stance against it or a stance for it. And as a cook, I didn't expect to ever get a Michelin star. And they grade on a three star system. Even if you're included in the guide, it's an honor. One star is awesome. It's great in its category. Two star means it's worth a detour. Three star means you're at the pinnacle, you are at the top, and it's worth a special occasion. And three star basically means if you're going to eat there, you're going to expect the best meal of your life. So two star, you're sort of in between good and amazing. So we were dealing with the burden of sort of being the custodian of two Michelin star restaurant at Momofukuko, something that we didn't really ever contemplate or think about. We sort of dreaded the fact that we had to carry it. It was an honor. But a very influential chef called me and said, this is the highest honor a chef could receive. And I didn't want this honor. And it was a terrible feeling. But knowing the history of the guide and knowing the history of the culinary profession, it's something that I had to carry and not just myself. Everyone at momofuku ko. So this day, it was winter in 2009, Jean Lucnaire comes in with a dining companion, and nobody wants to sit in front of him or cook in front of him. Momofukuko Is very. It's like a diner, you know, but we're not serving short order fries and pancakes and burgers. I don't even know how to describe the food. We do. We just try to make something delicious, simple, but deceivingly complex. And that day I was working Canape station, and they sat him in front of me, and he's a very pleasant guy, very nice, and I just. I never get that nervous ever. But I just lost all composure. I became extraordinarily paranoid about the food. I became, you know, I lost the ability to think straight. And maybe that actually happened, I don't know, because I sort of blacked that whole moment out. But, you know, we start serving him a barrage of canapes of crudo, of a black peppermint biscuit, a fluke and buttermilk Santa Barbara uni. And then he drops this question. And he was trying to talk to me throughout the meal. And I was, if you've been to Coe, we're not the most loquacious bunch because we're trying to focus on the food, not talk to the guest. And it's not because we're mean or not. We were more concerned about getting the food right. And I was trying to talk to this guy, and he gave me this question, and he said, well, David, this is the first restaurant I've ever awarded two Michelin stars to that I've never eaten at. So immediately I'm like. He's like, well, I don't need to eat here because I trust my inspectors. The Michelin guide is notoriously famous for their inspectors that go anonymous. And they go multiple times, and you have no idea when they come in. And when he tells me that, I'm just like, oh, my God. Okay, we have to. What do we do? I wish I could turn the volume to 11, like Spinal Tap or something. But we had nothing. You can't serve him anything different than the person to the left or the person to the right. And, you know, you just have to believe in the food that you're serving him. And I just felt no confidence in the food. And I knew the food was good. We knew as a group the food was good. But I was preparing this dish, and I just felt sort of embarrassed when I dropped it to him. Like, I felt like a fraud. It was a dish, a pasta course that we were serving at the time. It was chicken snail sausage with hand torn pasta. And when you explain it to somebody, it sounds sort of weird and terrible, but I think it tasted pretty delicious. And, you know, we take the hand torn pasta after it's been cooked, and we roll in a little butter, add a little chicken jus, some feene herb, a little minced mint, and we cover it in some crispy chicken skin. And there's obviously this chicken snail farce inside. And I just felt embarrassed giving him this dish. I don't even know if he even liked it. But the entire time he's eating and there's discourse between myself and Jean Luc Neuret is happening. He's barely eating his food. You know, they're not large portions, but he's eating a bite or two bites. And you have to know that this is an open kitchen. If it was a closed kitchen, it would have been so much easier, but I still would have seen the food come by. Every chef wants to see the food come by. You want to see empty, clean plates. Nothing is worse when you see plates come by the dishwasher and it's full of food, it is the most disheartening thing. And you know, somebody messed up and ultimately you have to put the blame on yourself. And I couldn't get a read on this guy. And he's talking to his dining companion and they're whispering to each other, so it's only making me more paranoid. What's going on? So around fish course, the fish course comes around and it's halibut and almond milk. Really simple dish. But again, they barely touched it. And I asked, is there something wrong? And he says, oh, his dining companion was a vegetarian. We would have definitely provided something for her, but it just didn't happen. And she wasn't eating anything. He wasn't really anything. So again, the whole mood of the line, there's three of us, is just. We're just as low as humanly possible because you can see what everyone's doing, and we're just nervous. And then, you know, I think it's right around the meat course. We're serving him, you know, a 48 hour cooked short rib at the time. And he asked me this question I will never, ever forget, because it sort of messed me up in the head forever, you know. And he's a really nice guy, very suave Frenchman. He said, hey, David, you know, again, I'm like this far away from him. I'm very close. He's like, david, well, you have two stars. Do you want three Michelin stars? In my head, I was like, what kind of evil monster are you? Because if I say, you know, I'm happy with two stars, that's going to Just seem that I'm, you know, lazy. And we don't want. Because you have to understand, if you're a two star, just assume that you're shooting for three stars. I'm really content with two stars. I mean, I don't even think we deserve two stars. And we got two stars right off the bat. And nothing would make me more unhappy than to get three stars because all you can do is go down and you have to. You know, there's about five restaurants. Masa, La Bernardin, Jean Georges, Danielle, per se. Three Michelin stars in New York City. There's probably, I think, eight in the entire United States. And you have to really be on your toes all the time. Not that I don't want our restaurant to be. Not that I don't want us to serve the best food in the world. We want to hold ourselves accountable to the highest standard. But if I say, yeah, you know, we want to get three stars, then I feel like I'm telling him we're overly confident. And then if I say, no, we want to go to a one star restaurant, I'm totally screwed. I don't know what to say. So I said something along the lines of, you know, we're going to. We're very happy that you rewarded us with two Michelin stars. We want to represent the guide very well. You know, we're going to try very hard to improve every day. I'm just buying time to say anything that we want. Three stars. And I said, we're going to try to get better every day. Maybe one day we'll get three stars. And that's when I really realized that things had changed a lot for myself and for everyone that worked at Momofugu. And it was asking the question, were we cooking for ourselves? Were we cooking for the diners? Because that's initially what we started to cook for, was to make delicious food for people that wanted to eat something tasty. Now I had to ask this sort of question. Were we cooking food for awards? Were we cooking food for everything that I didn't believe in? And I wish I could tell you that I've learned from that experience, but that's not the case, you know, because this is the. The Michelin guide is coming out again. And it's coming out in like three weeks, the first week of October. And I think the chefs in this Michelin guide were masochists. Because we look at this, we look at this guide and we wait to see who's going to be awarded a star, who's going to drop a star and to tell you that I don't care would be a total lie. I care very much and I'm deathly afraid we're going to lose a star. So thank you very much.
- [32:59]
Jay Allison
That was David Chang. David's first cookbook, Momofuku, was a New York Times bestseller, by the way. A week after telling this story, David found out that his restaurant kept its Michelin stars. All the stories you're hearing in this hour are available at the iTunes store. You can find out more about the Moth and pitch us a story of your own@themost.org Our final story is coming up from comedian Lisa Lampanelli. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by prx.
- [33:34]
Lisa Lampanelli
No matter where we are in life, there's always something new to learn. That's why Moth listeners love the Great Courses Plus. The Great Courses plus has hundreds of video lectures presented by award winning professors on so many topics like history, psychology, science or learn about new interests like cooking, yoga or writing creative nonfiction. You can get unlimited access to learn about anything you're interested in. Stream these engaging courses anytime, anywhere from your own pure enjoyment. If you haven't signed up for the Great Courses plus yet, do it today. As a Moth listener, you'll immediately get a free month of unlimited access to all their lectures. Start your free month today. Sign up@thegreatcoursesplus.com moth remember thegreatcoursesplus.com moth from.
- [34:29]
Jay Allison
PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. You're listening to a live storytelling event from Cooper Union in New York City with the theme Moth Eaten Adventures in Food. Our final storyteller is comedian Lisa Lampanelli and her answer to the question, what would you want for your last meal? Was one of everything. Duh. Here is Lisa Lampanelli live at the mall.
- [35:03]
David Chang
All my life I've had two addictions. The first one is food. I'm Italian. If you're Italian, you're addicted to food. If you're Italian, you eat till there's a death. But I didn't even eat just normal typical Italian food like meatballs and sausage. I was a middle child, so I'd show off by eating weird. Like I'd get limes and eat the whole thing. I'd eat sticks of butter. Sadly, this behavior caught up to me in college and I gained the customary freshman 40. And honestly, throughout the next 30 years, I lost and gained over 300 pounds. My other addiction was men. Now, bad enough I ate bad food. I dated the junk food of men. There was Andy, whose favorite book was the Fountainhead. Yeah. There was Pete, who gave himself tattoos in jail. And of course there was I'm not Gay Anymore Ross. Really? If you're not gay anymore, how come we're not making out and we're watching Annie get yout Gun, the limited edition. One day I met Frank. When I used to play the clubs in New York City. I'd always notice there was this old, old model Cadillac driving around the block, right? One day, the car stops, door opens with a big squeak. And out walks this comedian who was named Big Frank D'Amico. I saw in an instant why they called him Big Frank. Frank was £400. I am not exaggerating. To put it in perspective for you, that is 17 Sarah Jessica Parkers. He gets out, and it's really cute. He has on a leather vest. So I say to him, hey, I like your. And without missing a beat, he goes, yeah. There are no cows left in Pennsylvania.
- [37:20]
Adam Gopnik
It's so cool.
- [37:21]
David Chang
Like, the guy can laugh at himself. So I'm loving it. He asked me out, and I have to say yes because guess why? Ends up he had been driving around the block for a month waiting for me to come out. And nothing says love like stalk.
- [37:38]
Adam Gopnik
Oh, it was great.
- [37:41]
David Chang
I said to myself, wait a minute. He's been stalking me. That means he thinks I'm cute. Maybe this dieting bull is wrong. Maybe we could be that fat, happy couple that I've always dreamed about being. He likes me the way I am, and I'm not gonna talk him out of it. Me and Frank would go out and let me tell you something. He wasn't technically in the mob, but he had that Tony Soprano swagger, you know? And the mob is very sexy. Women love that. We like to feel like a guy could kill us in our sleep if we get out of line. One day, he even leans over to me and goes, hey, if you ever need something, don't worry about it. I'm connected. I'm like, yeah, you're connected to a fork. You fat. But you know what's cool? He laughed at it. He could laugh. His skin was as thick as his neck. We had so much fun. And then I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God, this guy combines my two addictions. He's a guy and he has the food thing. So we had to move in together. Frank was like, one stop shopping. He was like that store in the country, you know, the One that sells ice cream and live bait. It's kind of disgusting, but it worked for me. So we lived together for like a year, right? And everything's going good. And one day Frank says, oh my God, my toes bothering me. I look down and it is blackish green and scaly and freaking disgusting. So I go, you're going to the doctor right now. Get in the car. And he goes, no. And I go, get in. We go to the doctors and the doctor says, dude, you have advanced diabetes. That toe has to come off. Oh my God. We're on the way home. It's total silence, totally tense. And I go, you know what, Frank? I'm gonna be a team player. We're both gonna lose weight. I'm cleaning out all the cupboards. Nothing with sugar is gonna be in that house. Frank looks at me and he goes, you know what? I decided what I'm gonna do. I'm giving up soda. And I'm like, soda? He's like, yeah, it's got a lot of sugar in it. And I go, yeah, so does everything else in the house. Ya. And I'm Frank, you know what? I am a woman with very high standards. I have a seven toe minimum. And you're getting dangerously close. I mean, here's a guy who's getting things cut off and yet he's only willing to make a tiny change. And then I thought to myself, I'm being delusional all along. This idea of the fat happy couple is not going to work. One day I'm flying home from a gig and I hear the stewardess come on the intercom and she's making those announcements, right? And she says, if you're traveling with someone who's dependent on you, make sure to put the oxygen mask on yourself and then on them. And I'm like, wow. If I was traveling with Frank, I literally would have to physically help him put on that mask. And that's what I had to do in life. And I couldn't do it. He wasn't going to work on himself, and I could not see myself helping myself if he wasn't in the game. When I got home, the plane landed, I didn't unpack, and I moved out. Frank honestly was really a gentleman about it. I said, hey, we gotta split up. He wished me the best, and he goes, you know what? If you ever need somebody, I know a couple of guys. And I'm like, yeah, Ben and Jerry, you. So now that I had broken up with him, I gotta do something drastic. I'm like, okay, I really have to work on myself. This is no good. So I think rehab. So I go, oh, that seems to help people. So I Google food rehab and up pops this joint called Rosewood Ranch where they help you with food issues, right? I'm like, call my manager. I said, can I have 28 days off? She's like, why 28 days? I said, well, I seen the movie with Sandra Bullock and it's very impactful. So she says, you can go May 16th after Carnegie Hall. I forget that Wickenburg, Arizona in May is 115 degrees. Yeah. People are like, oh, it's a dry heat. Yeah. Really? So's an oven, but I don't want to put my freaking head in it. I get all dressed up because I want to show up in rehab. Kind of cute, you know? So I put on this sundress that I found over to Target and then I jiggle a lot. So I wore my Spanx. Now, for you straight guys, Spanx are these things, these industrial strength girdles and tights that squeeze you in so you don't jiggle. It is the fat woman's equivalent of a bald guy's comb over. So I show up, I'm sweating my ass off. I get out of the car, but thank God I arrive right in time for dinner. So the nutritionist meets me and she's like, this is Bridget. She's going to show you how to eat. And I'm like, have you freaking looked at me? I'm ahead of the game. But the one thing I notice about this chick Bridget, she is totally thin. She looked beautiful. And I'm like, wow, I'm not going to get attached to her. She's clearly here on her last day. So we go into the dining room and it's this huge, huge banquet table. Like Thanksgiving, you know. We walk in and I look down this long table and it's one chick skinnier than the next. I gotta be in the wrong place. I'm the only fat here. I sit down, I'm a little shaken. I looked to my right and I said, so what are you in for? She goes, I'm anorexic. I'm like, what are you in for? Bulimic. I choke down my little paltry amount of food. I'm about to get up from the table and go sulk. And all of a sudden, a girl across the table, table for me. She goes, meal processing time. I was in at a 2 and I was out at a 7. I'm exactly where God wants me to be. What she's talking about is the hunger scale. See, you have to say how hungry you were when you started on a scale of 1 to 10, and how satisfied you were at the end. Right then I'm exactly where God wants me to be. Is an affirmation. Now, I, for one, I'm sorry, I've always found affirmations total bull, because they just make you feel worse because you know what you're saying to yourself ain't true. Honestly, if you have to look in a mirror and say you're pretty, chances are you're freaking ugly. So everybody's going around the table and, like, it's closing in on me. It's my first day, and I don't know what to say. So I picked these random numbers. I'm like, I was in at a three, which, I'll be honest with you people. I was in at a six because I was smart enough to stop at Wendy's on the way there. And I go, I was out at an eight. And then I go, I can do this one meal at a time. See what I did there? I took the AA phrase one day at a time and adapted it to food rehab situations. Well, those little skinny girls, they grasped their bony little hands in glee and they clapped. It was my. And I was already a headliner in rehab. So bright. I'm about to get up and finally escape. And the whole table in unison, I swear to God, yells, rosewood cheer. I do what it takes. I am worthwhile. I persevere. I face my fears. Woo. Boogity, boogity, boogity, boogity. Gotta do it, gotta do it, gotta do it. Dit, dit, cha cha. Yeah. I was like, where am I? I'm with an entire room of afters. And I'm a before. No one here is gonna get me. They clearly all drank the Kool Aid. I run to my room and I'm like, guess who will get there and totally understand is Frank. I call him up, I get his machine, and I leave a voicemail. I'm like, frank, you ain't gonna believe where I am. Call me back. It got worse every day. These people tested me all day. 5:00am Equine therapy. We have to go with a horse and lift a hoof. I don't know why. And that horse. It's 5am he's taunting me. And I'm hungry with that feed bag. He's looking at me. Then we get to go to the gym. Now, let me tell you something. A lot of these girls are over exercisers. They're not allowed to work out a lot. So they can work out for only 20 minutes. Well, I made the mistake of being on the treadmill 25, and I got yelled at in front of everybody. And I'm like, listen, over exercising is clearly not my issue. Then we got to go to the pool. Now, listen, I know this is politically incorrect, but I don't care. Anorexics look freaking awesome in bikinis. I was so jealous. Every day I felt so out of place, you know, I'd be there in my one piece Delta Burke swimsuit. It exists. They sell them at Lord and the Tailor, right? I make it through 21 days, and it was one of those trying days that I seriously was about to go off a ledge around dinner time. It got even worse because I noticed that I had lost my serenity rock. Now, a serenity rock is where they give you a rock when you're in the joint and they give it to you and it says something happy on it like peace and dream. And I know it sounds corny, but I swear to God, I used to feel in my pocket when I felt doubt. And I'd kind of remember why I was there. Well, I'm really upset. I go out to the smoking pit. I don't smoke, but all the cool girls are always in the smoking pit. So I go out and I'm bummed about my rock. And I'm telling the girls there, and I said, you know what? Maybe I could spin this into a positive. Maybe I should come out with a line of rocks of my own that say stuff that I'd really say to people. You know, they could say, like, you're worthless, total loser. That's not your real father. And out of nowhere, this one girl goes to me, don't be funny in here. They don't like it. They know you use humor to hide your feelings. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute. I can't eat. I'm an insult comic. I can't make fun of anybody. I can't even make anybody laugh. I can't be myself. How am I supposed to work on myself if I can't be myself? I'm like, okay, made it through 21 days. I have had it. I am so out of here. I run to my room and I'm like, I gotta leave. I start packing and I start thinking about Frank. And I go, you know what? Why didn't that fat bastard call me back? I call him up again. Nothing. I check my voicemail. No message. I'm totally pissed off. I'm like, what's he mad at? He should be calling me. Oh, we found out. I talked about him on the Tonight Show. Big deal. Couple of fat jokes, whatever. Let it slide off. Okay, so I'm totally upset. I go to my email box and I see there's one email in the whole box. It says, Big Frank D'Amico died June 1st. There was nothing else I could say. I shut off the computer. I closed it. I got into bed. I pulled the covers up, but not before I set my alarm. I had to get up at 5am I had a date with a horse. Thank you everybody.
- [52:19]
Jay Allison
That was Lisa Lampanelli. Lisa is known as comedy's lovable queen of mean. Her one woman show is called Bring Back the Fat Chick. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth. The stories in this hour were directed by Katherine Burns, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. The rest of the Moth directorial staff include Sarah Haberman and Sarah Austin Janess. Production support from Jenna Weiss Berman and Brandon Echter. Special thanks to Padma Lakshmi. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ru West. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Stefan Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Vicki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, ferdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange. Prx.org for more about our podcast. For information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themault.org.