Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 37

The Masters, foot fetishes, the worst boss in America, recipes, 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 introduction post here and the entire archive of previous newsletters here.

Please, subscribe and share with a friend.

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A Tradition Unlike Any Other

The Masters is the best. I watched a ton of it this weekend. The competition got close Sunday, but it was never really in doubt. No one is better at writing about golf than Chuck Culpepper. With confidence and calm, Hideki Matsuyama ends Japan’s long wait for a Masters title. Check this lede:

With a feat of golf and weightlifting that ought to rate way up there among masteries of sports pressure, Hideki Matsuyama managed to win the 85th Masters on Sunday. He played the golf with dominance and then resilience, curbing his own near-crumble, and he did the weightlifting of the hopes of his sports-cherishing nation of 126 million without running off and hiding behind a pine tree, which might have been understandable.

The first men’s major title for Japan, a win of inestimable meaning for a country with feelings for golf that make reverence look puny, came after its 29-year-old hopeful refrained from panic when panic surely breathed through the Monday morning living rooms of his country’s 47 prefectures. In the genteel horror in which golf long has specialized, a yawning six-shot lead with seven holes to play at Augusta (Ga.) National Golf Club shrank all the way to two with three to play, in part because of Xander Schauffele’s four straight birdies and in part because Matsuyama’s approach at No. 15 went scurrying through the green and hurrying for a swim.

He bogeyed that, No. 16 and No. 18, but he launched steely drives on Nos. 17 and 18, and he performed his highbrow knack for scrambling from a greenside bunker on No. 18 with a 73 at 10 under par, one shot ahead of phenom Will Zalatoris and three ahead of Jordan Spieth and Schauffele, whose mounting hopes disintegrated on No. 16 with the first triple bogey of his 1,042 major golf holes. “My nerves really didn’t start on the second nine today,” Matsuyama said in Butler Cabin on the CBS telecast. “It was right from the start today and right to the very last putt.”

Wonderful.

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Best piece about a weirdo with a foot fetish

Shouts to Laura Basset and her very creepy admirer for this wonderful Interview With the Man Who Keeps Uploading My Feet to WikiFeet.

Back in the fall, I received an unexpected text from a man I had just started seeing. “Are u on wikifeet?”

Assuming he was joking, I laughed and said no. Then he sent me a link to my wikiFeet page. I had never actually heard of the website — basically an encyclopedia of celebrity foot photos for fetishists and foot enthusiasts — until that moment.

To be clear, I am not a celebrity. I have decent Twitter following from having reported on politics for over a decade, from tweeting jokes about politics and appearing on cable news sometimes. But I was pretty shocked to be looking at my own wikiFeet profile, which included my full name, birthday, and photos of me and my exposed feet, dating back to a family vacation in 2013. The images seemed to have been lifted from my Instagram page, which I keep public because I share my work and media appearances there sometimes. My feet had a very sad 3.5 out of 5 stars rating, which categorized them as “okay.”

The discovery was surreal; I wasn’t offended or unnerved, though I can understand why someone would be. I mostly thought it was funny, and posted a video of me wiggling my painted toes in a flattering filter to my story “for my fans,” as a joke. Within minutes, a screenshot of it showed up on wikiFeet.

So who did this? Let’s get straight to the Q&A with a man named Robert Hamilton, 58, from northern New Jersey.

Do you consider yourself a foot fetishist?  
Yes.

When I was about 9, these new people moved on my block, right? They were older girls. And they had their own pool across the street. We were playing this game, and they were like, “Well, we have to tie you up, because we captured you, you know? You’re the bad guy.” They tied me to a lawn chair, with my hands over my head and my feet tied down. And they started tickling my feet, and it just drove me crazy.

I think that’s what made me realize there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fun. I just didn’t feel like it was weird or anything. So I’m thinking to myself, Hey, what is the problem with this? This is who I am. I’m not hurting anybody, I’m not robbing banks. Just let it ride. That’s when I decided, Who gives a shit? 

How do you interact with wikiFeet? How much time a day do you spend on it? 
Well, for example, if I’m watching a movie with a beautiful actress that I like, I’ll go on there and check out her feet. Or if I’m reading a story about someone like you who I think is very pretty, I’m gonna go check and see if she’s on there. Because I’m curious, and I love feet.

How did you first discover my feet?
I can’t remember how I first discovered you. But I looked on Instagram and saw you on there and you had a lot of barefoot pictures, and I just followed you, that was all. I also like your dog. I like Pedro, he’s cool. Your feet are quite beautiful, by the way.

So why not just look at feet on Instagram, or screenshot them for yourself? What do you get out of posting them to another website?
You know, that’s a great question. I don’t really get anything out of it. I just like to share it. I mean, people like feet, like me, and you have beautiful feet, and I just put it on there. I just think I’m helping other people out. I mean, I do save some for myself.

There isn’t much of a community on wikiFeet. It’s not like people can heart the photos or whatever. Sometimes someone will send you a little note like, “That’s a good picture, thanks a lot. Good job.” That’s really it; you don’t really connect with anybody. I just like to share the picture with other people, I’m generous that way.

Like that one of you on the stoop in what was it, a flying-nun getup? And you were barefoot …

I was dressed as a handmaid for Halloween. You posted that one?
Yeah. Sorry. That was very sexy.

There’s more. As hard as it is to believe, it really gets more surreal from here.

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Podcast promo of the Week

Lots of good content coming to Mind of Micah this week. John Duda joined me for a conversation about sparkling water, reality TV, and much more. Part one is out now, and the rest of the conversation will be live this week.

Pictured: John and his artwork.

Also, “Top Chef” is back, and Brad Kee is joining me every week to break down each episode. Our first recap is available here on iTunes and embedded on Spotify below.

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Podcast Recommendation of the Week

Death at the Wing examines the shocking number of promising basketball stars who lost their lives in the 80’s and early 90’s. The podcast is hosted by Adam McKay.

At the dawn of the 1980s, the world was moving faster, the media was growing bigger, and greed was finally good. For the NBA, it was a chance to finally step into the spotlight. But all that wealth and stardom came at a deep cost.

This is the story of how basketball reflected a moment when Reagan’s America doubled down on some of its core values: selfishness, violence, and racism -- and the players who paid the price.

It’s really good. I recommend it.

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Worst Boss of the Week

I didn’t know the name Scott Rudin before I saw this piece. Sounds like a tough guy to work for. From "Everyone Just Knows He's an Absolute Monster": Scott Rudin's Ex-Staffers Speak Out on Abusive Behavior:

On a brisk Halloween day in 2012, the thin facade of normalcy at Scott Rudin Productions shattered. Literally.

At about 4:15 p.m. — more than 10 hours into a typical Rudin day that began at 6 and never wrapped before 8 — the Oscar-winning producer was enraged that one of his assistants failed to get him a seat on a sold-out flight. In a fit of fury, he allegedly smashed an Apple computer monitor on the assistant's hand. The screen shattered, leaving the young man bleeding and in need of immediate medical attention. One person in the office at the time described the incident as sounding like a car crash: a cacophonous collision of metal, glass and limb. The wounded assistant headed to the emergency room, and Rudin called his lawyer, according to another staffer there that Halloween afternoon. Everyone else huddled in the conference room, shaken. No one stayed until 8 p.m., with most of the staff heading over to a Times Square bar for a therapeutic drink.

"We were all shocked because we didn't know that that sort of thing could happen in that office," says Andrew Coles, a then-development executive and now-manager and producer, whose credits include Queen & Slim. "We knew a lot could happen. There were the guys that were sleeping in the office, the guys whose hair was falling out and were developing ulcers. It was a very intense environment, but that just felt different. It was a new level of unhinged — a level of lack of control that I had never seen before in a workplace." 

It somehow gets worse:

"He threw a laptop at the window in the conference room and then went into the kitchen and we could hear him beating on the napkin dispenser," says Rugo. "Then another time he threw a glass bowl at [a colleague]. It's hard to say if he threw it in the general direction or specifically at [the colleague], but the glass bowl hit the wall and smashed everywhere. The HR person left in an ambulance due to a panic attack. That was the environment."

At least this guy never threw a baked potato at someone’s head, right?

One recent Rudin assistant says the mercurial producer threw a baked potato at his head in 2018 for not knowing why someone from indie distributor A24 was in the lobby.

"I went into the kitchen, and I was like, 'Hey, Scott, A24 is on the way up. I'm not sure what it's concerning,' " he says. "And he flipped out, like, 'Nobody told me A24 was on my schedule.' He threw it at me, and I dodged a big potato. He was like, 'Well, find out, and get me a new potato.' "

Alright then. No more complaining about your boss, ok?

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Recipe Corner

Pernil-Style Pork Tenderloin

The fiance was out of town this weekend. She doesn’t like pork. I do. So I made this and enjoyed it. A lot.

Ingredients

• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder

• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

• 2 cloves garlic, minced or finely grated

• 1 teaspoon olive oil

• Juice of 1/2 lemon or lime (about 1 tablespoon)

• 1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin

In a large zip-top bag or bowl, make the adobo by combining the salt, chili powder, oregano, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice.

Pat the pork tenderloin dry, then cut 5 or 6 small, shallow slits into it with the tip of a knife — this will help the meat absorb the spices — and place it in the bag with the adobo. Massage the adobo into the meat until well coated on all sides. If you’d like, you can let the meat marinate in the refrigerator overnight or up to 1 day in advance.

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil, place the tenderloin in the center of the baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes. Using tongs or a fork, flip the tenderloin and roast for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees; the exact roasting time will depend on the thickness of the meat. Let it rest at room temperature for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

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Banana Pudding Cheesecake Bars

I made these yesterday. It seems like a lot of steps, but it was pretty straightforward. I’d share a picture here, but since I only take Dispo photos, they won’t be “developed” until after the newsletter is scheduled to go out. Sorry. I’ll share next week.

INGREDIENTS

1. Crust

   • 4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted, slightly cooled, plus more for pan

   • 2 cups finely crushed Nilla wafers

   • 3 Tbsp. granulated sugar

   • ½ tsp. kosher salt

2. Filling and assembly

   • 3 (8-oz.) packages cream cheese, room temperature

   • 3 ripe bananas

   • 1 (14-oz.) can sweetened condensed milk

   • 4 large eggs, room temperature

   • 1 tsp. kosher salt

   • 1 Tbsp. vanilla bean paste or 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

   • 2 cups heavy cream

   • ½ cup full-fat sour cream

   • ¼ cup powdered sugar

PREPARATION

1. Crust

   1. Place a rack in middle of oven; preheat to 325°F. Line a 13x9" or 12x8" baking pan with two pieces of parchment paper, leaving overhang on all sides. Anchor parchment to pan with metal binder clips. Stir Nilla wafers, sugar, salt, and remaining 4 Tbsp. butter in a medium bowl to combine. Press mixture into an even layer in bottom of prepared pan; it won’t hold together but will pack like a sand. Bake until toasted, about 10 minutes. Let cool.

2. Filling and assembly

   1. While the crust is cooling, beat cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on medium-high speed, stopping motor occasionally and scraping down sides of bowl and beater, 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and drop in pieces of banana, a little at a time, breaking up and incorporating completely before adding more. (Adding the bananas slowly helps blend them into the cream cheese.) Scrape down bowl and beater again, then beat 2 minutes on medium-high, covering mixer with a splash guard or kitchen towel to avoid spatter. Reduce speed to medium-low and pour in condensed milk; beat, scraping down bowl halfway through, 2 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition; mix in salt. For the silkiest cheesecake, strain filling though a fine-mesh sieve into a jug or pitcher, pushing through with a rubber spatula. Stir in vanilla paste or scrape in vanilla seeds and mix well.

   2. Knock stand mixer bowl or jug against counter a few times to release any trapped air. Let filling sit 2 minutes, then pour into crust. Bake cheesecake until 2" of edges are puffed and center wobbles slightly when pan is gently shaken, 30–35 minutes, depending on size of pan. Turn off oven and prop open door (a wooden spoon works well). Let cheesecake cool in oven 30 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack and let cheesecake cool completely. Chill until cold, at least 4 hours, covering with wax paper or plastic wrap after 1 hour.

   3. When you are ready to top cheesecake, beat heavy cream, sour cream, and powdered sugar in the clean bowl of a stand mixer with whisk attachment on medium-high until stiff peaks form, about 5 minutes. Spread topping over chilled cheesecake. Chill, uncovered, at least 1 hour before serving.

   4. Slice cheesecake with a hot, dry knife and serve cold or room temperature.

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Where else can I find Micah content?

• Podcasts: Mind of Micah, Back Door Cover, Too Much Dip

• Twitter: @micahwiener & @producermicah (Why two twitters? It’s a long story)

• Instagram: @micahwiener

• LinkedIn: @micahwiener

• Peloton: #badboysofpelly@micahwiener

• Dispo: @micahwiener

• Clubhouse: @micahwiener

• Email: micahwiener@me.com

Until next time, buh-bye.

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