Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 102
RIP Paulie Walnuts, New Yorker Cartoon of the Week, Diet soda is fine, Recipe Corner, and more.
Hello, and welcome to Micah’s Read of the Week.
This is a newsletter filled with things Micah Wiener finds interesting. Check out the archive of previous newsletters here.
R.I.P. Tony Sirico, aka Paulie Walnuts
A tribute to the famed ‘Sopranos’ character, who found his arc and made the TV gangster an icon
This obit has a great lede:
Born in 1940s Brooklyn, Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr. was raised in the tough East Flatbush and Bensonhurst neighborhoods. One of his brothers became a priest. Another became a stockbroker. Sirico chose a different path: low-level crime. That was partly out of necessity, he said. “In our neighborhood,” he once told a reporter, “if you weren’t carrying a gun, it was like you were the rabbit during rabbit-hunting season.” Armed robberies became his speciality, but he also roughed up bookies and engaged in the street violence that defined New York at the time. Sirico was reportedly an associate of the Colombo crime family during its wars of the 1960s and ’70s.
Perhaps it was an early sign of his acting prowess, but despite 28 arrests on his record, Sirico was convicted only twice.
The man later known as Paulie Walnuts did in fact do time in prison. That’s when his life changed.
After his release, he called an actor friend, who helped land him a role in the 1974 film Crazy Joe—naturally about the famed Colombo family caporegime. Later that year, he appeared briefly in The Godfather: Part II. Emboldened, Sirico began focusing on acting, taking classes and honing his craft. But more so than helping him with any scene work, he credited those sessions with changing who he was as a person. Most notably, that came when an early teacher leaned in and whispered to him mid-class, “Tony, leave the gun at home.”
“After so many years of packing a gun, I didn’t even realize I had it with me in acting class,” Sirico told the New York Daily News in 1999. “But when he told me to leave the gun home, he meant for me to also leave my former life behind, to be an actor.”
The Walnuts character was so authentic, believable, and memorable. And the hair—it’s impossible to discuss Paulie and Tony Sirico without discussing the streaks of silver on either side of his head.
They looked like a goose spreading its wings against a pitch-black night, or from a distance, a shiny Cadillac convertible. They harken back to a bygone era of dapper mafiosos, even if you’ve never seen anything quite like them before. They signified both class and a slight ridiculousness. Before episodes, he would style himself, spending hours with a comb and Aqua Net hairspray.
It was just one example of the many that highlighted the razor-thin differences between the real person and the fictional invention.
“There was an episode where they were going to Paulie’s apartment, and the set designers and producers were racking their brains to figure out what the apartment would look like,” Schirripa said. “They were going on and on. ‘What would Paulie’s apartment look like?’ Finally, somebody said, ‘The guy is the guy. Let’s go to Tony Sirico’s apartment.’ That wound up being Paulie Walnuts’s apartment.”
“There’s a very, very thin line between Paulie and Tony Sirico,” Sopranos writer Terrence Winter told Siegel. Sirico seemed to agree: “When I look in the mirror in the morning, I don’t know if I’m lookin’ at Tony or Paulie,” he said ahead of the show’s fourth season. “We got cross-pollinated.”
Paulie was the most comfortable, least ambitious snake in the Sopranos universe—able to survive many wars not because of any particular guile or skill, but because he knew how to stay in his lane. Sirico the man did the precise opposite, leaving the gun at home and changing the course of his life in the process. As a result, he did what was seemingly impossible 50 years ago, when he was sitting in prison, or even when he was first cast in the show: He went from mobster to mob-flick royalty.
Rest in peace.
New Yorker Cartoon of the Week
Podcast promotion of the week
I joined Stephen Pearse and the Collecting Real Estate podcast last week. It was a great conversation about real estate, lending, and the value of serving your clients. Give it a listen.
And if you want to have a conversation about growing your real estate portfolio or buying your first home, schedule a free home buying consultation with me today at micahwiener.com.
Diet soda is fine, and other food truths it’s time you believed
Here’s a quick piece disproving several popular and silly wellness beliefs.
Diet soda is totally fine.
There is zero evidence that diet soda is bad for us.
People have been trying to find problems with artificial sweeteners for decades, and they just haven’t. If you drink them in soda, or use them to sweeten things you make at home, keep on keeping on. It’s just fine.
Local foods aren’t better for the climate.
Intuitively, it makes sense that they should be! If your lettuce travels crosstown instead of cross-country, that’s a couple thousand fossil-fueled miles that don’t have to happen. But it turns out that transport is a very small fraction of the climate impact of food: less than 10 percent, most of the time.
Salad is a first-world luxury. A delightful luxury.
Let’s get one thing straight. Lettuce is a vehicle to bring refrigerated water from farm to table. If you have an intuitive sense that a food that’s 96 percent water is a waste of resources and a nutritional zero, you’re right.
Okay, that’s a little unfair. Salad isn’t a menace; it’s just a luxury. It uses too many resources for too little food to be a smart choice for either human or planetary health. It graces my table because I like it and because it can help me say no to seconds of lasagna. But that’s a solution to a first-world problem: too much food. The idea that we’re deliberately growing and eating food specifically because it’s low-calorie makes sense only in a world of overabundance.
Recipe Corner
Frozen Aperol Spritzes ('Fraperol Spritzes')
It’s only 110 degrees this week. Stay cool with a frozen cocktail, ok? I don’t care much for the “Fraperol” nickname FWIW.
12 ounces Prosecco, plus more for serving
8 ounces Aperol
8 ounces water
¼ cup orange liqueur, such as Cointreau
Orange wheels, for garnish
Whisk together Prosecco, Aperol, water, and orange liqueur in a pitcher. Pour mixture into 2 to 3 standard ice cube trays. Freeze until firm, at least 8 hours but preferably overnight.
Transfer prepared ice cubes to a blender; process until smooth and frothy. Pour into 4 wine glasses and top off with more Prosecco. Garnish with orange wheels and serve.
Grilled Butterflied Chicken With Lemongrass Sauce
Hanging out by the grill is better with a frozen drink in your hand. And this lemongrass sauce sounds like it would be a perfect hot weather condiment.
SAUCE
6 scallions, thinly sliced
3 lemongrass stalks, bottom third only, tough outer layers removed, finely chopped
1 2" piece ginger, peeled, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ cup vegetable oil
½ tsp. Aji-No-Moto umami seasoning (MSG; optional)
Kosher salt
CHICKEN AND ASSEMBLY
2 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1 Tbsp. cumin seeds
1 3½–4-lb. whole chicken, backbone removed
Kosher salt
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
Mix scallions, lemongrass, ginger, and garlic in a medium bowl. Heat oil in a small saucepan over high until hot but not smoking, about 2 minutes. Pour over scallion mixture. Let sit, stirring often to keep aromatics from burning, 5 minutes (scallions will sizzle, turn bright green, and wilt almost immediately). Mix in Aji-No-Moto seasoning (if using) and season with salt.
Toast coriander seeds and cumin seeds in a dry small skillet over medium heat, shaking often, until spices are very fragrant and slightly darkened in color, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a spice mill or mortar and pestle and let cool. Finely grind, then transfer spice mix to a small bowl.
Place chicken, skin side up, on a cutting board. Using your palms, press firmly on breastbone to flatten breast; you may hear a crack. This means you’re doing it right. Set chicken, skin side up, on a large rimmed baking sheet. Season generously on both sides with salt, then sprinkle spice mix all over, getting in every nook and cranny. (You may have a little spice mix left over.) Tuck wings underneath the breast. Chill, uncovered, at least 4 hours and up to 2 days.
Let chicken sit at room temperature 1 hour before grilling. Drizzle with oil and pat all over.
Prepare a grill for medium-high indirect heat (for a charcoal grill, bank coals on one side of grill; for a gas grill, leave one or two burners off). Place chicken, skin side down, on grate over indirect heat. Cover grill, placing vent (if your grill has one) over chicken so it draws heat up and over it. Grill until skin is lightly browned, 15–20 minutes. Turn chicken over and cook, still covered, until skin is deep golden brown and crisp and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of breast registers 160°, 20–25 minutes. Transfer chicken to a cutting board and let rest at least 15 minutes before carving. Serve with lemongrass sauce and rice.
Peanut and Watermelon Chaat
Watermelon salad szn.
2 teaspoons canola oil
1 cup lightly salted roasted peanuts
1 (4-inch) curry sprig
2 teaspoons chaat masala, divided
1 cup chopped seedless watermelon (about 5 1/2 ounces)
½ cup thinly sliced cucumber (from 1 small cucumber)
¼ cup finely chopped red onion (from 1 small onion)
¼ cup thinly sliced radishes (from 3 medium radishes)
1 medium-size serrano chile, seeded and finely chopped (about 1 1/2 tablespoons)
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (from 1 medium lime)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons cane syrup or sorghum
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high until shimmering. Add peanuts, curry sprig, and 1 teaspoon chaat masala. Cook, tossing constantly, until well coated and fragrant, about 30 seconds. Set aside to let cool until ready to use.
Combine watermelon, cucumber, onion, radishes, serrano, salt, and cayenne in a large bowl, and toss well. Add peanut mixture, lime juice, mint, basil, cilantro, cane syrup, and the remaining 1 teaspoon chaat masala. Remove and discard curry sprig. Toss gently and serve.
Did Micah practice yoga this weekend?
Yes promised. 60 minutes Sunday at Fairground with Kayla.
That’s 23 in-person weekend classes in 27 weeks this year.
More Micah
Podcasts: Mind of Micah, Back Door Cover, Too Much Dip
Twitter: @micahwiener & @producermicah (Why two twitters? It’s a long story)
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Eating less meat and dairy will save our planet!
Nice newsletter.