Game 17: Eileen Miller - Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Cake

The only option was to heat up my leftover spaghetti in between my thighs. My choices over the last year had led to this. It was entirely my fault.

In late 2015, I quit my job as corporate Office PA at Vin Di Bona Productions, producer of America’s Funniest Home Videos and not much else. The 3 hour round-trip commute from Echo Park to Santa Monica was wrecking my lower back and diminishing any will to write after work. I found a new gig the next year as a producer’s assistant, but the office was located on San Vicente and Wilshire, a food desert where the only options were McDonald’s and a bulgogi beef bowl spot. I was making $500 a week. When my bowels or bank account couldn’t take the beef barrage, I binged on leftover spaghetti. But my boss didn’t believe in microwaves, so I thought of an ingenious thermic solution. I put my roommate's cheap plastic container full of last night’s pasta between my crotch and let it warm up until my lunch break. I would roll calls all morning, careful not to pop the top and dump my lunch onto a carpet that hadn’t been deep cleaned in decades. At least nobody would see. I didn’t have any coworkers besides my boss. For a year and a half, I spent many 10 hour days all alone in that office, my only human interaction being hurried phone calls to pitch actors to uninterested casting assistants.

That’s where I sat when I received an email from Funny or Die that changed my life. A week earlier, I tweeted out a Splitsider article I wrote about comedian Jamar Neighbors. It got a fav from Sarah Silverman. That was a fun ego boost, but I didn’t dwell on it. A month later, I was hired as a researcher on Sarah’s new show for Hulu. And that’s the title I’ve held on several TV shows and movies ever since. My job on I Love You, America was perfect for me. I got to flex my lifelong passion for politics and my college degree in American history on a comedy show built around those topics. There’s so few opportunities to work in late night, let alone a politically tinged late night show, and I got to get in on the ground floor. Then it got cancelled.

A few months after I lost my job, I applied for another researcher position. All I knew was that it was NBA related. The email I got in return was straight up serendipitous. The show was an upcoming Showtime Lakers miniseries for HBO. And it was going to be directed by Adam McKay, the EP of I Love You, America! I was perfect for the job. The initial phone interview with the assistant went great. She said they were looking to hire quickly and set up a phone call with the showrunner for the next day, Sunday. I checked out Jeff Pearlman’s Showtime at the library and quickly reread that Bible of 1980s Lakerdom to prepare. The second call went smoothly, I thought.

Then I didn’t get the job.

Sidenote: If you’re an assistant, don’t call someone to tell them they didn’t get the job. Maybe this assistant was new and thought she was doing the polite thing. But when you’re waiting to hear back on a job, a phone call usually means one thing: You got the job! A phone call isn’t warmer than an email. If you need to tell someone that they didn’t get the job, send a two sentence email and send it freezing.

Boo hoo, I know. I didn’t get a job. So what? If you want a creative position in Hollywood, or in my case, the stepping stone jobs to those positions, you have to get used to constant rejection. But this one hurt a little more. Like ILYA, it felt like one of those moments I’d look back on as A Big Moment In The Life of Pablo Goldstein. And for a few days, it did feel like that. In reverse. I had blown a gigantic opportunity that seemed crafted solely for me and what I could bring to that writers’ room. But then I got over it. Within a few months, I landed some cool comedy gigs and a researcher role on a movie I can’t talk about just quite yet. I wouldn’t have been able to make these connections if I was stuck in Santa Monica doing deep dives into the LA Times archive.

And of course, there probably wouldn’t be a Goldstein and Gasol if they hired me. Was the creation of this project a subconscious venture to prove to myself that I was the right person for that job? Maybe a little bit. I wrote in an earlier post that spite is one thing that motivates me in my work. I’m talking about a little bit of spite, a healthy amount without resentment towards others. Not enraged psycho jealous type shit.

Spite can be a first class propellant if you know how to use it. Look at the 2010 Lakers. Winning the 2009 NBA Championship against the hapless Orlando Magic was fun. But it was supposed to be against the Celtics. Boston whooped our ass in 2008 and then had the gall to miss out on our rematch by losing in the Eastern Conference Finals to Orlando. The Celtics let that earlier failure stew in the Lakers’ heads for one more year, until we got our revenge in 2010. I can’t imagine another Lakers title ever matching that feeling triumphant feeling borne out of failure.

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Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Cake

¼ pound of butter

¾ cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 cups of flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

2 tablespoons milk

1 cup of sour cream

2 teaspoons of vanilla

6 ounces of chocolate chips

¼ cup of granulated sugar

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs until mixture is light and fluffy. Sift together flour and baking soda. Combine milk with sourcream. Into butter mixture, beat the flour and milk mixture alternatively until all is well combined. Add vanilla, then fold in the chocolate chips. Pour half the batter into a greased and floured pan. Mix together sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle half this mixture onto batter in pan. Gently pour remaining batter into pan and top with remaining cinnamon and sugar mixture. Bake at 350 degrees oven for 45 minutes checking for doneness.

This recipe from Sports Illustrated NBA photo researcher Eileen Miller intimidated me. It’s not the most complex recipe, but my two previous attempts at baking for Goldstein and Gasol -- Riley’s Roll and Steven Jackson’s upcoming “meranges” -- ranged from absolute disaster to ugly, but tasty.

But I’ve learned from my mistakes with those two bakes. For one, I MacGyvered an aluminum foil shield that I wrapped over my mixing bowl. No longer would my kitchen look like Scarface chainsaw scene but with cake batter instead of blood. Turns out I didn’t really need it until the last bit of flour. Still, when I successfully made the batter and got it into the baking tray without much trouble, I wasn’t even cautiously optimistic. My faith in my baking was non existent and even the sweet cinnamon sugar smell wafting from the kitchen couldn’t take me to church.

But then I ate it. Moist and spongy. I did it. I baked my first cake! I’m also someone who thinks pie is infinitely better than cake, so hit me up if you want some leftover cake.