The old saw doesn’t cut it: it is indeed possible to be too rich and too thin. At least if you happen to be talking about food and the movies.

I’m a foodie. Most everyone knows that and, in any case, it’s way easy to spot the rounded contours of my lust. I’ve been known to slam to a stop on the freeway because some Mom-and-Pop looked better than average, worth a try, oh hell, it’s almost lunchtime anyway….

What a lucky kid was I. For whatever reason, maybe because I was the youngest and too small to run away, my grandmother plucked me on top of a kitchen chair and taught me how to cook. The lessons and the food never stopped. Until she did. And then I simply took over her kitchen duties.

When I was in college, my best friends had keys to my apartment so they could sample whatever I’d made that day, no matter the hour. (I thought I had a lot of friends, now I suspect I just happened to know a lot of hungry people.) I should have become a chef, but that didn’t seem like a guy’s option back then. So I became a filmmaker. Oy, some choice….

We turned to food last night because it’s my birthday, choosing one of Minneapolis’ finest. No cracks, please – we ain’t all lutefisk and pot luck dinners out here in the flyovers. By fluke (and some of the best theatre in the world), there’s an unending array of serious food in this town. And this was truly a world class eatery.

Was the food good? Well, yes, but, oh forgive me, TOO good. Flavor on flavor on flavor until my taste buds didn’t know when to quiver or where to surrender. They screamed with delight until they were exhausted. Each bite was wonderful; in combination overpowering. I didn’t want the next mouthful, I didn’t need it. But, hell, at twenty bucks a tiny tasting plate, I soldiered on.

And that brings me to the movies. It’s summer so we are going to endure the openings of Catwoman-87, Rocky-142 and god only knows what else we’d hoped to never see again. Each comes packed with effects, action, adventure, explosions, crashes, car chases, boat chases, bus chases, bicycle chases, up stairs, down stairs and, on rare occasion, even a wee bit of acting.

Our eyes and guts go agog with it all. Every movie is as fun as a roller-coaster and about as meaningful and stomach-wrenching. Still, at twenty bucks a screening (no sense in missing the popcorn and soda), we soldier on. With apologies to Wallis Simpson, it’s just all too rich and too thin for its own good.

So much screaming, yelling, shooting. Good guys leap from tall buildings, bad guys die (only to be replaced by more bad guys who used to be good guys who we thought were bad guys), clothing is shed (discreetly, of course, in our new Victorian era) and heroes are made and lost and made again.

Macbeth must have been coming back from the megaplex when he opined that it was full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Too rich, too thin.

I miss those good, simple, stomach-warming foods that makes my mouth water with anticipation at every bite. I miss good, simple, heart-warming movies that make my brain quiver with anticipation at every scene.

Real food and real films aren’t about things that insist on screaming and banging pots against pans to get my attention. They’re about refining reality and squeezing it down to its essence. Until you can see Truth.

I can’t see a damn thing at the movies these days because my eyeballs are spinning too fast. And my stomach still aches from last night’s unending indulgences. Oh, I ache for things that are clean and simple and pure.