randominnyc

The Terrible Sonnet

2007-02-07T20:08:00.000-05:00

I know attachment is the deadest end,
Yet oftentimes I dwell on things gone by,
And rend my soul to nothing one can mend,
And think on those to whom I've said, "Good-bye."
There's one who's sorely missed as days do speed --
Dear friend, you were, well lov-ed in your time.
Oh! Nothing can assuage my deepest need,
And nothing will e’er exculpate the crime:
To leave the grapes untended on the vine;
To end the race before it has been won;
To pour the juice before it can be wine;
To let the harvest spoil in the sun.
Oh, Arch Deluxe, you never had the chance
To amble out and join in on the dance!

Josh Groban of the Apocalypse, No. 4: "I am Strong"

2007-02-02T19:10:00.000-05:00

The Grups Award #4

2007-02-01T20:31:00.000-05:00

The Grups Award (for generalizations that seem astute but aren't) hasn't been given in a while, but it's mostly been due to my own laziness, not a lack of eligible articles, people, and publications. Today I'm awarding a Gruppy to a trio of film critics: Anthony Lane of the New Yorker, Stephanie Zachariak of Salon, and Keith Phipps of The Onion's AV Club (though Mr. Phipps's award-winning comment is from a piece in Slate). Why are they collectively winning a Grups Award? For gloom-and-dooming movies because of a perceived bad year in 2006.

Anthony Lane:

My saddest moment in a movie theatre came a month ago, when I screened “All About Eve” to a bunch of acquaintances, one of whom came up to me at the end. “What happened?” she asked.

“Well,” I replied, “Anne Baxter got the award, and Bette Davis sat there all steamed up, and George—”

“No,” she said, tapping her foot, “what happened to movies like that? Movies with four great parts for women and lines you want to quote? Where did they go?”

No idea, but they sure as hell aren’t coming back.

Stephanie Zachariak:

The loss of an artist like Rpbert [sic] Altman would be difficult to bear in any year. But his loss cuts even deeper because he came of age as a filmmaker in an era when people could still be galvanized by movies, when there was time to refine our likes and dislikes, to parse our passion for or ambivalence about a picture before the next weekend's wave would roll in. We don't need more movies in our lives. We need more time, a commodity that's in short supply for almost everyone I know, to be able to catch at least some of these movies on the fly and define for ourselves which ones really matter.

Keith Phipps:

I saw a pattern of settling into acceptable mediocrity in 2006, and it worries me.

Sigh. Oh, those glory days! When were they again? The gone-for-good fifties, Mr. Lane? The galvanizing seventies, Ms. Zachariak? Apparently even 2005, according to Mr. Phipps, was so vastly superior to 2006 that we should all drown an eye unused to flow for the golden age of cinema which apparently ended just last year.

Now, I'm no big city film critic (audience: "Ooooooh!"), but I find it very very hard to believe that any year that gives you movies like "Idlewild," "Children of Men," "Idiocracy," "Pan's Labyrinth," "Borat," and "The Proposition" could be defined as settling into mediocrity. In 2006, there were plenty of daring, personal movies (both successes and failures). And speaking of "Children of Men," I had quite a nice conversation after seeing the movie with the people I saw it with. As I do with, you know, most movies I see. And a movie that causes us to "parse our passion"? I had to practically wear ear plugs to avoid walking into a conversation about Borat -- and at least some of them had to be high-minded enough to count as "galvanizing." Yeah, movies still make people talk about movies and refine their tastes.

(If Zachariak wants movies to do more than that -- the word "galvanizing" is troubling to me -- I feel the need to point out that film, like all media, does only what it can. It would be nice to think that "M*A*S*H" and Bob Dylan ended the Vietnam War, but it didn't happen that way. At the beginning of "Slaughterhouse Five," Vonnegut writes that when he told a friend he was writing an anti-war novel, she replied that he might as well write an anti-glacier novel [but I suppose we'll be able to judge the effects of a pro-glacier movie with "An Inconvenient Truth"]. I remember a play, I think by Ed Napier, where a character makes fun of Berthold Brecht's "alienation effect," saying, "Well, look how good it worked on the Germans." I don't think she meant it like that -- that movies should affect social change -- but I started rambling and couldn't stop myself. So there.)

Now, on to "All About Eve" and it's quotability and the fact that it's never coming back. I thought about "All About Eve" and after I sorted "Sunset Boulevard" from it in my head, the only quote I could come up with was, "Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride." Then I thought, "Wait a second? That doesn't seem right. This seems like a 'play it again, Sam' moment." Hmm. So I looked at the IMDB memorable quotes page and saw that I'd misremembered it. "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." I also saw that I did not remember ANY OTHER LINE from the movie. This isn't proof that the movie isn't well-written, but, well, it just doesn't have the place in my relatively smart, relatively thoughtful brain that Anthony Lane imagines it should. And why should it? It's an artifact from another time. Reading the memorable quotes, they feel stagey and weird. Now, T.S. Eliot took great pains to remind us that the present's artistic endeavors are only possible because of the past, and I agree with him, but times and fashions change and works of art are at least partially a product of their times. Why aren't there movies like "All About Eve" anymore? For the same reason that in fifty years movies like "The Big Lebowski" or "Eternal Sunshine" or "Three Kings" (or, or, or) won't be made anymore: shit happens.

If I were a less thoughtful person, I might be inclined to despair over the lack of good film criticism "nowadays," but that's not the case. All that happened is that three critics, while going over their year end lists, got struck by bouts of getoffmylawnism brought on by a year of seeing mostly mediocre, forgettable "entertainment." Well, too bad. Go watch "Sullivan's Travels" and do your job: review movies, not the state of movies (that last bit goes for you, too, David Denby).

Josh Groban of the Apocalypse, No. 3: "There is no Life"

2007-01-31T20:04:00.000-05:00

Google Image Definition: "Performance Art"

2007-01-29T22:50:00.000-05:00

performance art: [noun] People standing around in various states of dress, sometimes in black and white, usually holding their arms at odd angles.

Used in a sentence: Everyone was happy to see that this time the performance art was in color and naked from the waist up with hands crossed out in front awkwardly.

Josh Groban of the Apocalypse, No. 2: "Oh My Soul, So Weary"

2007-01-22T23:20:00.000-05:00

Josh Groban of the Apocalypse, No. 1: "Sometimes I Think I Glimpse Eternity"

2007-01-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

[placeholder: repitition repitition repitition]

2006-12-31T19:54:00.000-05:00

Pizza Quest: Roundup #1

2006-12-26T07:41:00.000-05:00

[Here are reviews for a few pizza places I've been to recently. All of them will be added to the Pizza Quest pages. Click here for the entire list.

PINCH - Park Ave. b/w 28th and 29th
*1/2

I ran in one night and grabbed a slice...or, uh, quadrangle or whatever the appropriate pizza unit would be to describe six inches of pizza thing (PINCH stands for "Pizza by the Inch," so you order a number of inches off of a big slab of pizza). Dude. This is not good pizza. The crust was insubstantial (not thin - weirdly airy and fall apart-y), there was too much damn cheese, and the sauce was weirdly sweet. I finished it and thought, "That's the best Ellio's pizza I've ever eaten." If I were in a more charitable mood, I might try to spin that as a compliment. Feh.

Sullivan Street Bakery (Hell's Kitchen location) - 47th St. b/w 10th and 11th
**** (but it doesn't matter)

The bread at Sullivan Street Bakery is one of my favorite foodstuffs in the world. And so is the pizza. The pizza -- thin, crispy, and square, served room temperature with no mozzarella -- is made out of deliciousness. They offer only a few varieties, but all of them are excellent. The potato and rosemary is my favorite (the thin sliced potato gets crispy around the edges and tender in the center), followed by the marinara (tomato sauce, and, err, that's about it). The problem is that while amazing, these slices don't scratch my pizza itch. Meaning, if I think to myself, "I could go for a slice," a slice of Sullivan St. pizza won't satisfy me half as well as the crappiest slice from Mr. Super Crappy, himself, Famous Ray. It depresses me to say that, but I still love you, Sullivan Street Bakery. Please don't be mad at me.

Mariella's - 8th Ave. b/w 56th & 57th
*

Oprah's friend Gayle was sent on a quest for the best pizza in America. She went to three places - first, the one she went to in college, second, what is oftentimes called the best pizza in the US (Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, AZ) , and third, Mariella's Pizzeria in New York (at the suggestion of her driver). This was a quest in the same way that purchasing boneless chicken cutlets is hunting. I'd had Mariella's a couple times and had literally no memory of it, so I decided to give it another chance. This is far from great pizza. In fact, it might not even be good pizza. The sauce was way too sweet and had too much oregano in it. The crust was tough and chewy. The cheese blanketed the pizza completely. Actually, blanket is too gentle a description. The cheese suffocated the pizza like a plastic bag. I also got a white slice (mozzarella and riccotta) and it was even worse. Bland riccotta and that layer of mozzarella without even bad sauce to break things up. There are several better pizzerias within a five block radius (John's on 58th, Sacco's on 8th, even the two Angelo's -- one on Broadway and one on 57th), let alone the entire city. While people having irrational love for a pizza place is nothing unusual (*cough*salandcarmines*cough*), this is particularly disappointing because Oprah's word carries, I hear, some weight. And so, Oprah viewers will come to New York. And those tourists will go to Mariella's. And they will think that's what good, NY pizza tastes like. Don't believe the Oprah-generated hype.

Totonno's - 2nd Ave. b/w 80th and 81st St.
**1/2

Tara and I had nearly the same experience at the uptown Totonno's as at the 23rd St. location. We ordered a half-plain/half-sausage-and-garlic and it was good, but not great. It's like a blurry photocopy of the original in Coney Island. The same kinds of tastes - - coal oven, good cooked sauce, fresh mozz, same taste to the crust. Yep, it's the same kind of pizza (Genus: Totonnus), but not charred enough, and just not plain ol' amazing enough (Species: Underwelmicum). As a bonus, they do have signs up making fun of the pizzeria next door that sells pizza by weight. I can't remember them exactly, but it's sort of like, "Why the hell would you buy pizza by weight?" Okay, I'm exaggerating. Slightly.

Pepe's - Bridgeport, Ct.
***

Yes, yes. I know the original Pepe's is in New Haven, and, yes, I know I haven't been there...but I was in Bridgeport. What do you want? Cunningham took me and Tara to Pepe's, where the pies are irregularly shaped, sliced into narrow wedges, covered in strange toppings, and ginormous. Oh, and they're pretty good, too. It was in the same pizza family as Modern Apizza and Sally's (unsurprisingly), but was a bit better than either. Again, the crust wasn't charred on the bottom the way I like it (though it was a coal oven, what gives, Connecticut?), the cheese was slightly overcooked to my tastebuds, and it was a bit chewier than I prefer, but it was quite good. We got a small white clam pie (excellent) and a large (meaning: huge) pie split between plain and bacon (good). Bacon? Yeah, bacon, pancetta's unruly, nitrite-filled cousin. The bacon was a bit much, I have to admit, but the pie was pretty tasty. Bridgeport, like New Haven, also has a line to get in. We waited a good half-hour early on a Saturday evening. While waiting we looked in on those who were already eating, comfortable and warm, and felt deep stabs of envy. So, if you want good pizza and an opportunity to break the tenth commandment, head to Pepe's in Bridgeport!

Randominnyc Explainer

2006-12-21T22:37:00.000-05:00

Slate's Explainer apparently can't answer all the questions it receives, especially those of somewhat dubious validity. Anyway, instead of mocking Slate, I've decided to pitch in, to shaaaaaare the looooooad.

Q: Why do train whistles at night always sound lonely and mournful? Not so in the daytime.
A: Because train whistles are made from unbaptized babies and unbaptized babies always sound sad at night because that is when they feel their separation from the Almighty most acutely.

Q: Lasers are now powerful and small (at least I think they are), so why don't our troops carry laser guns?
A:Because lasers can't go through overturned tables. Watch GI Joe, people.

Q: What would happen to the stock market if a meteor impacted the earth? What would happen to the global markets and the U.S. market? Say a meteor hits inside U.S. borders and takes out two states.
A: The price of Meteor Insurance, INC would likely go down somewhat.

Q: How clean is bar soap in a public bathroom? Is it "self-cleaning," since it's soap? It seems like a health hazard to me.
A: What Five Year Plan are you currently living under that there are still bars of soap in your public bathrooms?

Q: Why do humans die so young? In biblical times, people lived for several hundred years; now living to 100 is considered a long life. What happened?
A: Why do leprechauns no longer hand out gold? Why didn't that genie grant my wishes? Why doesn't Sparkles the Unicorn come visit anymore? The answer: Fake shit doesn't happen.

Q: Just suppose, one day someone wants to sell you an old gold bar. You don't know if it belongs to any treasure, and you can't find out if there is any reward for it, if it was a lost treasure. How would you go about melting it and selling it? The same would go for a gemstone about the size of a dinner plate. How would you go about selling it? If you're living in a country that is corrupt and you cannot trust the government, or anyone else, what can you do?
A: HELLO. I AM THE PRINCE OF NIGERIA. PLEES SEND ME YOUR GOLD BAR FOR TO GET MY TREASURE OUT OF THE COUNTRY.

Q: What is the richest religion? Scientology has a lot of Hollywood stars and I think they actually make their members give money, but Catholicism is a very old religion with its own country. Also, Islam has a lot of members but I don't know about their money situation.
A: Scientology is that friend with the nice apartment who misses his credit card payments. Catholicism is your aunt with the house in Westchester who gives out pennies on Halloween. Islam is that guy who works weekends as a cab driver even though he doesn't have a taxi license.

Q: Are UFOs confirmed to be from other Alien Planets?
A: Yes. That "U stands for Unidentified" thing is a fucking smokescreen.

A Random Idiot on the Internet Tells you his Favorite Music of 2006. Now Pay Attention.

2006-12-07T07:45:00.000-05:00

Hoo-ray!

- Tom Waits - "Orphans" As good as everyone says. If not better. Weird. Eclectic. Pitchfork called it a "shadow best-of." That's pretty true.

- The Thermals - "The Body, the Blood, the Machine" Angry, tuneful, witty. What else does one need?

- Justin Timberlake - "FutureSex/Lovesounds" This album is made up of only good things. Like sex. And Michael Jackson when he was cool. And Prince. I listen to it all the goddamned time.

- Neko Case - "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" I can't stop listening to this album. Her voice is so good. The songs make weird, unexpected turns.

- The Gothic Archies - "The Tragic Treasury" Took me a few listenes to really enjoy it. And not every song is great...but what's great is great in all the ways I want it to be. Witty. Dark. Rhyme-y. Stephin Merritt is made of smart.

- Sufjan Stevens - "The Avalanche" "Oh, it's just leftovers?" True. But so is that Turkey sandwich on the day after Thanksgiving. And they are both FUCKING AWESOME.

- Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - "Ballad of the Broken Seas" I feel like I shouldn't like Mark Lanegan. Pretentious, meet portentous. Now make a baby: it's Mark Lanegan. "What a cute baby!" -k

- Thom Yorke - "Eraser" Thom sounds lonely. In a good, pretty way. Maybe he misses Radiohead. Nah, he's just sad.

- Arctic Monkeys - "Whatever People Say I am" So, so good. Did this come out last year? Whatever. They deserve all the love they've gotten.

- Mountain Goats - "Get Lonely" Yes, it's sad. And it's not quite as good as The Sunset Tree. But it's still really good.

- The Scissor Sisters - "Ta-Da" Maybe I shouldn't like this. And maybe I shouldn't eat all the leftover Halloween candy. But I do.

- Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - "Rabbit Fur Coat" Pretty voice + Good songwriting = Very Good. Bonus: Twins!

Close!

- Yo La Tengo - "I am Not Afraid of You and I will Kick your Ass" I loved the title. Then I just kinda liked the album. Now I quite like the album. Not sure how this is going to wind up.

- Decemberists - "The Crane Wife" Haven't listened to it enough. But when I do, I enjoy it.

- Solomon Burke - "Nashville" Sometimes I like you. But then sometimes you're boring. Be less boring.

- The Black Keys - "Magic Potion" I like the songs, really like them, but can't remember any of them. Know why? 'Cos they sound like all the other Black Keys songs. It's time to make like the White Stripes, Other Rock/Blues Duo, and start experimenting.

- Drive By Truckers - "A Blessing and a Curse" Some really good songs ("Aftermath USA," Gravity's Gone"), but too many that don't do enough for me.

- Tenacious D - Soundtrack It makes me laugh more than it should. And some of the songs are so spot on that it's amazing. And Dio sings on the first track. But it's still not an album.

- The Raconteurs - "Broken Boy Soldiers" Did I like this as much as I thought I did?

- Howe Gelb - "Sno Angel Like You" Haven't listened to it enough, but enjoy it when I do.

- Outkast - "Idlewild" Ridiculously uneven. Pretty damn weird, too. And yet, enough of it sounds enough like Outkast to make me happy.

- Gnarls Barkley - "St. Elsewhere" I loved you. But we drifted apart. It's not you. It's me.

- Bruce Springsteen - "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" I tried. It's nice and all. It runs on...Folk Power!

- Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Show Your Bones" I liked the first one a lot. This one, kinda "meh."
- Sparklehorse - "Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain" Haven't listened enough. Not as good as "It's a Wonderful Life," but good. I think. Maybe.

- The Hold Steady - "Boys and Girls in America" I like you, but I'm not in like with you. But I'll give you another try.

- Bob Dylan - "Modern Time" You set the bar too high on "Love and Theft" (and "Blood on the Tracks" and "Highway 61 Revisited" and...). This album is good...but definitely not great. Actually, not even sure on good. I haven't listened to it in over a month, except for "Nettie Moore."

C'mon!

- CSS - "Cansei Se Ser Sexy" I do not understand the appeal of this band

- The Strokes - "First Impressions of Earth" Do better. I still enjoy the other two albums against my better judgment. Make me like this one, too. And not just "Juicebox."

- Scott Walker - "The Drift" This album makes me want to cry. In fear. Why do people like this? Terrifying. Like crying-while-eating scary.

- Flaming Lips - "War Against the Mystics" I happily listened to this for a while. And then it started annoying me. And then it just seemed loud and bad. Is this how the rest of the world feels about the entirety of the Flaming Lips' output?

- Nellie McKay - "Pretty Little Head" I gave Nellie McKay the benefit of the doubt last time. And then this happened. When it's not boring, it's annoying. Go make a real album, hippie! (Note: Nellie McKay isn't a hippie.)

- Destroyer - "Destroyer's Rubies" Why are you so loved?

- Pearl Jam - "Pearl Jam" Sounding like you did ten years ago does not a "return to form" make.

- Jerry Lee Lewis - "Last Man Standing" Should be like Johnny Cash's American Recordings. Instead, it's like Santana's duets albums. Poop.

- Elvis Costello & Allain Toussant - "The River in Reverse" Good intentions don't make good albums.

- Neil Young - "Living with War" See: "The River in Reverse"

- Christina Aguilera - "Back to Basics" You, madam, are no Justin Timberlake.

- Beck - "The Information" I cannot hum, remember, or quote a lyric from a song on this album. It makes me sad to say that. Now I have to go listen to "Midnite Vultures" and cry while dancing.

TV on the Radio - "Return to Cookie Mountain" Everyone loves you. I listened to you again last night. You leave me cold.

Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler - "All the Roadrunning" Pretty. But sleepytime pretty. Someone's mother loves this.

David Gilmour - "On an Island" You are not Roger Waters. And now, you sound like his dad. Or my dad. Or...if Jimmy Buffet had played guitar on "The Wall," he'd make an album like this. Basically: there aren't enough bad metaphors to describe how lame this album is.

Wild Card!

- Various - "Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys" Do you need an album of pirate songs? No. But should you download Baby Gramps "throat singing" on "Cape Cod Girls"? Probably not, either. Why is John C. Reilly Singing on this? And, not badly?

- Various - "Plague Songs" Songs about-kinda the plagues in Exodus. Cody Chessnutt's "Boils" is a keeper (refrain: "BOILS!"). As is Rufus Wainwright's Katonah [if only for shouting out the Taconic Pkwy]. Westchester in the HOUSE! Whoops.

- Various - "Harry Smith Project Live" Uneven and probably unnecessary. But watch as David Johansen's version of "James Alley Blues" trumps Wilco's. Also: Nick Cave approaches his scariest with "John the Revelator." Not as scary as Scott Walker's "Drift," but scary. Oh, and Lou Reed's "See that my Grave is Kept Clean" is great.

Someone call the OED

2006-12-02T19:32:00.000-05:00

"I hope it was a lot," Tom said with a thin and charmless smile. "I hope it was at least a thousand [zombie-type things that were killed], and I hope they slow-cooked them. I find myself thinking of some restaurant chain or other that used to advertise 'broasted' chicken.'[...]"

-from p. 276 of this edition of "Cell" by Stephen King.

At first I thought I'd spotted the first reference ever to the word broasted in a work of fiction, and was happy. Turns out, broasted has appeared in numerous books according to a Google books search. While most are books on food and/or travel, there are several in fictional works. The two that stand out are Stewart O'Nan's Speed Queen, and Still Life with Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Now, Child and Preston are probably, next to Koontz and Crichton, the closest thing to King's competition in the blockbuster horror-ish thriller category, and O'Nan's book's plot apparently centers around a manuscript being sent to a writer called "The King of Horror" (that's what Amazon says, anyway). Also, I'm pretty sure King blurbed O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying. Where am I going with this. Nowhere. Except we can now safely say: horror writers love the word broasted.

Finally, for those interested in knowing what broasting is, no, it is not baking + roasting or broiling + roasting (or, as Mr. King suggests, slow-cooking). It's the brand name of a pressure-frying process. One makes broasted chicken in a broaster brand pressure fryer using broaster brand seasonings (an aside: it seems that KFC, at least originally, pressure fried its chicken). I sampled broasted chicken in Indiana at Rachel's Hi-Way Cafe in Alexandria. We saw about 156 restaurants boasting of broasting, and I finally whined enough that we pulled over and ordered some. Before we pulled over, Tara said, "It's just gonna be fried chicken." She was right, but left out the fact that it would take twenty-five minutes for a single order and be styrofoam-meltingly, mouth burningly hot when we finally tasted it in the car. Slate took on broasted chicken here. And, if you'd like to find out firsthand that, yes, it's just fried chicken, you can click here and search for a location near you. But don't.

Possible Titles for Negative Reviews of the Bob Dylan/Twyla Tharp Musical

2006-11-01T22:49:00.000-05:00

Here at randominnyc, we strive to be helpful. That's why we've created a list for theater critics who want to pan the new Bob Dylan/Twyla Tharp musical "The Times They Are A-Changing," but aren't familiar enough with Bob's oeuvre to really get a good dig in.

-It's Alright, Bob (It's Only Broadway)
-Shelter from the Stage
-Things Have Changed. Not for the Better.
-You Threw it All Away
-It’s Not All Over Now, Baby Blue…It’s Just Intermission
-There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here
-Oh, Mercy!
-I Don’t Believe You (Twyla Tharp)
-Chimes of Crapdom
-The All-White Jury Agrees: This Show is Terrible!

[with zick and ravitz]

Six Word Story

2006-10-28T15:28:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of this Wired Magazine feature I give you my own six word story (with apologies to Ray Bradbury):

Once, books were printed. Now? Burned.

Heading to Hollywood: #6

2006-10-15T21:38:00.000-04:00

The CONTRACTOR, oh, where should I begin?
Blueblocker shades? The beard used as a chin?
The seven inches of expos-ed chest?
The hopeful-hopeless comb-over (the best!)?
So many points there on that tasteless chart
That pointed to a sad and wounded heart:
"That fuckin' bitch," he said with great ado,
"If I see her, I tell you what I do."
He ne'er finished that thought, got too choked up.
"Fuckin' slut. Fuckin', goddamned whore, coked up
Ev'ry day and then, what? She gets it all.
She's laughin' now, yeah, shoppin' at the mall
On my motherfucking Roosevelt dime."
Oh, love's a cliff! The meek, they dare not climb!
"I'll show her, though," he said it more than twice,
"The sun, the sand, the girls. Shit, this sounds nice."
He planned on making cash with swimming pools,
"A great biz: take your time and milk the fools.
'I'm sorry, lady, hit shallow bedrock.
You want it quick, you can just suck my cock.'"
Where was he from? Westchester? Manhattan?
No, sir, from that island they named Staten.

[To head to the Intro and Contents for "Heading to Hollywood" click here.]

Heading to Hollywood: #5

2006-10-01T16:48:00.000-04:00

There was a guy, was just about my age.
Figured when he arrived he'd be the rage.
He was a RAPPER, called himself G-man,
And claimed Snoop knew his stuff and was a fan.
I know 'cos he was working on a line
Describing how he'd headed out to find
The fame the five buroughs had denied him.
It was terribly mean and deadly grim.
And also premature, if you ask me,
I'll say it but not claim it's quality:
"You bitches think you know me, suck my dick,
I never showed you nothing, you a trick.
Think I should owe you something, get in line,
Your shit is ugly, fucker, mine is fine."
Yeah, that's what I remember as the best,
(And I won't bother to repeat the rest -
Most all his rhymes, they had an awful slant,
And I was never sure just what they meant.)
I know that I'm supposed to think it's art,
But I prefer that music have some heart -
I'd rather Dylan, Pearl Jam or the Dead
Than any lyric that the rapper said.
Vernacular! Give shit a fancy name
And some claim it and Dante are the same.

[To head to the Intro and Contents for "Heading to Hollywood" click here.]

Southhampton: kitsch

2006-09-27T07:39:00.000-04:00

Tara and I stayed in the Hamptons on Labor Day. Southhampton, to be exact. We stayed in the greatest house ever. Look!

Heading to Hollywood: #4

2006-09-25T23:09:00.000-04:00

I can hear what you're thinking it's so clear,
"He said it was awful, and yet look here:
Two pretty girls...he thinks he should complain.
This is hell? Only pleasure, no real pain?"
Don't worry friend, the bus it was jam packed
With freaks and oddballs and others who lack
The basic skills possessed by you and me
To sit and drink and talk and simply be.
There was this guy - NEUROTIC to the core.
Always yapping: a monumental bore.
"Excuse me sir," this is just how he spoke,
"Excuse me, but I think the toilet's broke."
You know, first it was too cold, next too hot,
Never happy with that which he just got.
He said that he was rich, but couldn't fly,
A bump or dip would make him scream and cry.
I wished he'd left that nonsense in the air;
He'd hear a noise and like a siren blare.
"Oh, what was that? I think we blew a tire!"
I quickly grew to hate this new town crier.
He wore thick glasses and a mustache wisp,
He spoke in a real high-pitched, whining lisp.
Why would someone like that take such a trip?
What was so important he couldn't skip?
His dad was dying, that's what he said,
Needed to see him before he was dead.
I felt a bit of sadness at his plight,
But mostly I just couldn't stand his sight.

[To head to the Intro and Contents for "Heading to Hollywood" click here.]

Heading to Hollywood: #3

2006-09-23T23:19:00.000-04:00

The goddess who was sitting up ahead.
The legs up to her ass, the bleached-blonde head.
There are girls you should bring home to mother,
Her, you would bring home for something other.
(In fact, it really might not be so bad
To keep her out of reach from dear old dad.)
If deified, what would her domain be?
The sun, the moon, the fields, the tranquil sea?
She'd tell you to stuff your past'ral notions,
N'also flush your soporific oceans.
I think she'd be the queen of pounding beats,
Of fishnet stockings worn with schoolgirl pleats.
Ah, she'd be the keeper of metal poles,
Stilettos pointing out from women's soles.
She was a STRIPPER, a gorgeous one who
Had figured she should try out something new.
She was going to give mod'ling a shot,
To see for once if she had "it" or not.
I don't know if she did, but she had me,
And if she'd pitched it, I'd have drunk the sea.

[To head to the Intro and Contents for "Heading to Hollywood" click here.]

Heading to Hollywood: #2

2006-09-21T21:58:00.000-04:00

And so we'll start with her, Ms. Riot Grrl,
The UNDERGRAD so certain of the world.
Priv'lege, she could spot from miles away
From Bennington or Sarah Lawrence, say.
She was headed West for some good reason:
To shame the latest crook for some new treason.
Don't stand so close to her, you could get sued;
All pins and politics and attitude.
"Sleater Kinney, who's that?" I mutely thought,
"Someone who'd been imprisoned, maybe bought?"
And yet, despite her efforts she was cute,
Pink hair, ripped jeans, Sontag: a sexy brute.
Too bad she hated me right off the bat
When I kinda stared a touch too long at...

[To head to the Intro and Contents for "Heading to Hollywood" click here]

Heading to Hollywood: Intro

2006-09-20T22:02:00.000-04:00

It's 1995. Kurt Cobain is dead, yet grunge is still king. The flannel industry might as well be printing money as checkered shirts. The dot-com boom is ramping up, and jokes about hanging chads are half-a-decade away. And I, lil' k, am a high school student. And in Mr. Greco's English Lit class we read the prologue and a story or two from The Canterbury Tales. Our assignment: write our own prologue to a modern day Canterbury Tales. Being a nerd, I do it and get a kick out of it. Two years later I go to college and sell my prologue and flannel shirts for drug money and a copy of Bob Marley's "Legend."

That's not true, but I did lose the prologue and have always wanted to rewrite it (or redo it anyway, because I don't remember much of it). So, here's what I'm gonna do: At least once a week (hopefully), I'm going to post a bit of what I'll call (for now) "Heading to Hollywood." I will do my damnedest to write it in heroic couplets (more or less) and swear (scouts honor) to try to make it dirty and stupid.

Oh: and as this is being written as I go, it will also be rewritten on the fly. So, minor changes will likely sneak in here and there.

All additions will be linked to on this page.

Prologue:
No. 1 - Opening
No. 2 - The Undergrad
No. 3 - The Stripper
No. 4 - The Neurotic
No. 5 - The Rapper
No. 6 - The Contractor

Heading to Hollywood: #1

2006-09-20T21:59:00.000-04:00

The Port Authority, you know it, right?
D'ya know the types you see there 'round midnight?
I'll let you know the truth since we just met,
There's two: the desp'rate and the des-per-ate.
Yeah, I hear bitterness there in my voice:
It was years ago, and without a choice
It comes back to me. The sour Greyhound smell.
The still sourer people - God, was it hell.
"Hell is other people." That how it's put?
That is pretty close to true, I guess, but
Truer still: Hell's a bus that only could
Leave from New York and go to Hollywood.
Ah, bartender, another, si vous plais.
Oh wait. What was I just about to say?

It left at midnight, that awful, reeking bus,
And bleary-eyed we stumbled on. All of us,
I think, believed that we would find new life.
(New job, new love, new start...a new ex-wife.)
We'd cast our foolish plans and petty schemes
There on that sunny coast made up of dreams,
(Yes, yes, I know it's a bit of a cliche
And yet for certain dreams, the only way.)
What dream was mine, you wonder? We'll get there.
First ev'ry tale should have a maiden fair.
Mine has two: there's a harlot and a shrew.
I like to hear the bad news first, don't you?

[To head to the Intro and Contents for "Heading to Hollywood" click here.

Other Things Justin Timberlake Considered Bringing Back before he Settled on Sexy:

2006-09-18T21:18:00.000-04:00

- Crystal Pepsi
- The "u" in "flavour" [US only]
- LBJ's Great Society
- Helen of Troy
- The Latin Mass

[placeholder: from the miss teen usa pageant]

2006-09-15T07:35:00.000-04:00

[laughing is not a hobby.]

Other TV Show Political Groups

2006-09-01T22:48:00.000-04:00

The media is going crazy for "South Park" Republicans. Here are some other groups that the media hasn't mentioned.

- "Deadwood" Greens
- "Captain Planet" Right-to-Lifers
- "Blossom" Whigs
- The First Eight or Nine Seasons of "The Simpsons" Libertarians
- "20/20 Downtown" Socialists
- "Cop Rock" Democrats

[review what i wrote]

2006-08-21T22:23:00.000-04:00

Click here to read my review of The Thermals' "The Body, The Blood, The Machine."

Teenagers who listen to

2006-08-08T19:00:00.000-04:00

Everyone is talking about this study, and how it suggests that teenagers who listen to sexy music are more likely to have sex. But no one is discussing the other results:

- Teenagers who listen to The Arcade Fire are more likely to own ironic clothing.
- Teenagers who listen to U2 are more likely to care about stuff...and things.
- Teenagers who listen to Frank Sinatra are more likely to make it past the first round of American Idol, even thought they don't really deserve it.
- Teenagers who listen to "The Big Chill" soundtrack are more likely to actually be my parents.
- Teenagers who listen to unsexy music are more likely to have unsex.
- Teenagers who listen to Elvis Costello are more likely to complain about his recent, genre-hopping work.
- Teenagers who listen to The Grateful Dead are more likely to be living in a past that they never experienced.
- Teenagers who listen to John Mayer are more likely to write bad poetry about fucking unicorns or some other lame shit.

Things that Need an International Standards Group, No. 1: Ratings

2006-08-07T07:36:00.000-04:00

If you open up Time Out NY, you may be surprised to find out that they give up to six stars in their reviews. Six. Six Stars. Then you have the Times Dining section, which, on a Michelin-like scale gives up to four stars, but getting one means "good" (Confusingly, readers on the website rate on five star scale, with completely different meanings. Look here. See!). New York Magazine gives five stars...but is also on a Michelin-style scale (where, in typical New York Magazine form, five stars equals "ethereal, almost perfect." Almost! Ha! Like: "Nothing could live up to the Platonic ideal of what a restaurant should be."). Then you have movies, which are usually up to four star reviews...except when they aren't, Netflix with five. There are also only three possible states to two thumbs: two up, two down, one up/one down. But one of them belongs to Roeper, so you can immediately ignore it. The other belongs (or belonged?) to Ebert, and you can just read his (up to four star) reviews. Rolling Stone has up to five stars for everything (including terrible albums by great rockers). Then you have the up to 10.0 review offered by Pitchfork (Art Brut's most recent album got an 8.9. Eight-point-nine. That's just fucking priceless). The up to 100 review for most game magazines. The much-cribbed three-star Michelin guide. Metacritic, which converts everything to "out of 100," anyway. The helpful, but not quite objective Allmusic with up to five. And the Village Voice...with letter grades - for music, anyway.

I propose: An International Standards Group for all criticatorial services. I also propose that said group force all publications to either adopt a standard four star or Michelin three star rating system. What most of these places refuse to acknowledge is that a four star review means something (and not just in a 4/4 = 100 kind of way). It has a certain cultural meaning. "This is a four (or three or two or one) star movie" makes sense to me. "This is a five out of six star movie" does not make sense. Dear critics, at your core, you provide a service. Don't make my understanding of your service more difficult than it should be.

[placeholder: mystic, ct]

2006-08-03T08:12:00.000-04:00

Spam Biography: Beulah Ali

2006-07-31T22:19:00.000-04:00

[Spam Biography: a biography is produced based solely on the fake name attached to a piece of mail that winds up in the Spam folder of my gmail account.]

Beulah Ali was born Beulah MacAlister in Belzoni, MS in either 1897 or 1898 to a farmer named Padrig MacAlister and his wife, Meaghan. She would later describe her childhood as "Small people living small lives in a small town. It was alright." In 1914, she won the title "Miss Saw Mill" and was sent to Cologne, Germany to represent American industry in the 1914 World's Fair (The infamous "Werkbund Exhibition," in which the first German-designed tanks were "jokingly" pointed directly at Serbia's table and sole representative - generally considered a small, but important incident in the run-up to WWI.). While there, Beulah met and fell in love with Jacques "Scimitar" Ali, the knife juggler at The Ottoman Empire's "Healthy Man of Europe!" Pavilion. As war broke out around them, Jacques and Beulah fled to his native Paris (Jacques was a French citizen of aristocratic extraction who had been hired by the Ottoman Empire for his robust mustache and willingness to change his last name) and were hastily married on the steps on Notre Dame.

Unfortunately, Jacques was drafted and sent to the front within weeks of their arrival in Paris. Beulah eked out a living by singing in clubs at night and weaving bandages for the war effort during the day. As the war dragged on, Beulah became well-known for her cabaret act, a set of self-penned songs in a mix of English and French that detailed - in quite explicit language - how happy she'd be when her husband returned from the trenches. She recorded "That Shot'll be Heard 'Round the World" in August 1918, on the eve of Allied victory. It became the unofficial anthem for the end of hostilities and the homecoming of millions of soldiers. Unfortunately, her own husband, Jacques, perished on the battlefield days before the Armistice. Beulah never recovered. She wrote and recorded a handful of songs after receiving the news, but destroyed the masters before they could be released. "They were my love letters to Jacques. I didn't want anyone to hear them," she said.

She retreated from the world, living in a small apartment in Montmartre off royalties and the kindness of a still appreciative public. She died in 1942 while working on her first new songs in over two decades. Only "Vichy Victory," a scathing critique of French collaborationism, was released. While suppressed, it became popular abroad and among the resistance. At her request, her body was interred in her family's cemetery in her native Mississippi. "Since I can't be with Jacques," she said, "Mississippi seems as bad as anywhere else."

Time Out...Time Out NY

2006-07-28T07:31:00.000-04:00

This summer, Time Out NY has thrice (thrice!) gotten me to buy it with an interesting looking cover story. The first promised "Food Getaways." Now, when I think "Getaway," I think short, easy (e.g., "Go to Philly, and hit these ten spots over a weekend to become a cheese steak connoisseur."). They were, instead, offering advice on full-fledged vacations (e.g, "Fly to North Carolina, rent a car, drive two hundred miles to a strip of restaurants that's BBQ Heaven."). Since, I'm not sure if getaway really has the connotation of being quick and easy, I let it slide. Then, I bought an issue that promised interesting "staycations" in New York City. Y'know when I should have known that it was not going to be great? When it had the word "staycations" on the cover. Anyway, most of the "staycations" were kind of hectic and jam-packed (one would do a lot of subway riding) and fairly expensive...and kind of lame.

Last week's issue's cover says: "Why didn't we think of that?! How to make New York better by stealing the best ideas from other cities." I looked up, read that, and thought, "Hey, that's interesting." And I bought it. And most of the ideas are kind of bad. Or at least not needed. So, I'll provide a rebuttal for their top five bad ideas.

1. Downtown Minneapolis has tubes connecting buildings, so pedestrians stay warm in the winter.
Bad idea because: Minneapolis has a population of less than 400,000, and it has a longer, harsher winter. In other words: suck it up. The cost of building sky tubes to accomodate the millions of people in Midtown Manhattan including commuters and tourists for a (relatively) mild winter seems like it would be gigantic. Also: have you been to Yankee Stadium and walked through the tube that connects the parking lot? That shit is ugly.

2. We need something like London's Hyde Park, where people can stand on a soapbox and make fools of themselves.
Bad idea because: If you want to exercise free speech in NYC, make like the Black Israelites or Moondog and find a busy intersection. We don't need a publicly sanctioned, tourist-ridden spot to do it.

3. Herring is a popular snack in the Netherlands. We need herring as a snack food in New York City.
Bad idea because: You looked around NYC and decided that what it needs is herring? What? What! Herring? Fah!

4. Paris closes down an important road, fills it with sand on the Seine, and creates a beach. We should do that on the FDR.
Bad idea because: Maybe not a bad idea, just a really, really unnecessary one. Paris is landlocked. It's like 3 hours from the ocean (according to google maps). New York is not. Coney Island. Rockaway Beach. Orchard Beach. Knock yourself out. Wait: the French do this in August. Aren't the French famous for taking the month of August off? Meaning, wouldn't traffic be a million times worse in NYC, because not everyone is on vacation. I change my vote: bad idea. Bad idea.

5. We need a Waffle House!
Bad idea because: Don't you want to at least pretend that New York is special? That it's an individual place? You're suggesting that what New York needs is the regional chain that you visited when you were hungover in college? C'mon! Go to a diner or a coffeeshop.

This leads me to my real problem with the article. I'm not one of those "New York ain't New York if it ain't dirty" people, but New York is not just the sum of its parts. It has a character, and the people who wrote the article, in several places, just didn't account for that. This is worrying, because they, working for a publication that covers New York, should be best informed as to what makes New York special, and how it can be improved. Look at it like the Galapagos: New York evolved diners and coffee shops to fill the same evolutionary niche the Waffle House does in the South. Enjoy them. If you want to kill off all the finches by importing competitors, go for it, you heartless wretch. I don't.

[placeholder: mao's little, yellow arcade fortune]

2006-07-25T20:39:00.000-04:00

[placeholder: tickets! tickets! tickets!]

2006-07-24T06:59:00.000-04:00

Spotted at 'disiac on 54th nr. 9th.

2006-07-16T22:07:00.000-04:00

-Huh.
-What?
-What's...uh...What's that?
-Up in the tree?-Is that a?
-It is.

-It's a chair.
-In that tree.
-Weird.

Junk, junk, idiocy, bill, junk.

2006-07-14T08:11:00.000-04:00

[Mail's here. Junk, junk. I've been pre-selected for an American Express Gold Card. You don't say. Fancy.]

[Aah. Tara's been pre-selected as well, looks like. Very exclusive. Wait a second.]
Me: Hon'?
Tara: Yeah.
Me: Take a look at this.
Tara: Ha!
Me: Where'd they get Pecanpie from?
Tara: Uh, that's my password for pretty much everything.
Me: I think you should change it.

Internal Monologue: Mayor Bloomberg Takes a Sunday Off and Bums Around

2006-07-13T21:39:00.000-04:00

Good morning, New York City! Oh my, it's 12:05. Hmm. Good afternoon, New York City! Capital of the World. Time to take a shower in water consistently rated among the best of major American municpalities. Or should I? C'mon, Mike. Nothing to do today. World is your oyster. You can just sit around watching golf in your underwear. Plenty of people do that. Hmm.

I live in and efficiently manage the greatest city in the world, and I'm going to squander a day off in front of the television? No, thank you.

[Showers.]

Okay, now what? 1 o'clock already. Hmm. Is it lunch or breakfast? Hmm. Never been a big breakfast person. But I do like coffee. You can have coffee at lunch. No law against that.

New York is the greatest city in the world to have lunch in. Get out there and eat some lunch!

Or perhaps I'll order lunch from one of the many exquisite places in this neighborhood, and have it delivered, likely by a member of one of the outstanding immigrant groups who have made New York, the bustling, thriving metropolis it is today. And I'll eat it and then I'll do the Times crossword puzzle. What a perfect way to spend an afternoon in the city with the biggest heart in America.

[Orders. Eats.]

Three letters. "Like an ostrich." Not today, my friend. E-M-U.

[A half hour later.]

Who knows this stuff? These words exist only in crossword puzzles.

[Puts puzzle down. Turns on the TV.]

Only 4 o'clock. Five hours till the Sopranos. Oh, no, they're done, aren't they? Not back for months. Dangit. I should work a Tony Soprano thing into a speech.

That's a dumb idea.

Rudy could've pulled it off. He prosecuted those guys. And his last name was Giuliani. Stay on target, Mike. Efficient management. That's what you're about. You efficiently manage the most vibrant city in the world.

[Flips idly for a few minutes. Settles on golf. Falls asleep]

[Wakes up.]

7 o'clock. Okay, Mike. You can do this. Just relax in front of the television. Just watch.

[Flips around for a moment.]

[Reaches for planner.]

There's gotta be something going on tonight. This is New York, Dangit. Nothing? Nothing. No dress gala? No museum opening? A car wash? Nothing. Jeez-louise.

I'll go see Superman. Everyone knows Metropolis is really New York. They shot in Australia, though. We're practically giving streets away to film crews, and they went to Australia to shoot Superman. Sheesh. Both Spiderman movies shot here.

[Flips around for a moment.]

Oh, heck, I'll go see Superman.

[placeholder: naked atms]

2006-07-13T21:36:00.000-04:00

The Grups Award #3

2006-07-11T07:48:00.000-04:00

Aaah, The Grups Award. For its illustrious history click here. It's given to ideas and articles that at first glance might seem insightful, but in reality are simple overgeneralizations. Today's Gruppy goes to New York Magazine for this article about happiness. It is filled with generalizations that are drawn from studies that may or may not be rigorous -- the first thing mentioned, which the author uses to tell us that New York City is an unhappy place, is an online test called the Authentic Happiness Inventory. Now, I'm no big city statistician, but because it's self-selecting, this has all the authority of an AOL "Is Brangelina pregnant? Yes/No/Maybe" poll. The doctor even says so: "But please appreciate—and this is a formal disclaimer—that these are not representative respondents." But the article still spends like the first four paragraphs on it, then mentions it a few more times.

It's a lazy, tangent-filled wreck of an article. It dips into the author's personal life before flying through some summaries of studies, before making a few more generalizations and "big picture insights." Then it makes it New York-centric, with some snark, before reversing its position and doing everything all over again. It is, in one convenient location, all the things that bother me about New York Magazine. So, it's winning a Grups award. Here's my running commentary on the article. Feel free to go page by page, and shout these things out, Mystery Science Theater style.

p. 1
- A self-selected group of people logged on and took a test. There is no significance to this test, as the group was self-selected, and, as admitted very small in some locations.
- What is this test, anyway?
- Stop talking about this test.
- The number of people who sign up for a class at Harvard is also not significant. Maybe it's an easy A.
- Wait, how can it be a recent phenomenon if that Smiles guy wrote a book in 1849?
- Has "positive psychology" existed under other names?
- Oh, wait, as self-help books?
- Describing the interest as "explosive" conveniently allows one not to cite a single real number.
- Name-checking Malcolm Gladwell does not make you Malcolm Gladwell. And he kind of has nothing to do with this.
- How is studying happiness a "boomer phenomenon" if all those Harvard kids are interested in it?
- Aaah, putting the pieces together. Self-help=dot com; George W.=positivity. I hate this magazine sometimes.

p. 2
- I still haven't don't know what the Authentic Happiness Inventory is or how it works, but it and its inventor, have been mentioned several times.
- "To wade into the literature on happiness is to wade into a world of control groups and volunteers, questionnaires and ratings scales, cases of the fortunate and cases of the medically extreme." I think you mean: "To wade into the literature on anything related to any trend in any social science is to..."
- A bunch of statistics and studies that aren't synthesized in any way. Or: "I did my homework."
- Wait, a lot of these studies are from before 1998? Umm, why are you still pretending this is a brand new field?

p. 3
- Some generalizations that may or may not be based on rigorous studies.
- "Because our imaginations are limited, we can be disappointed by the things we covet most." I don't think limited is the right adjective there. I don't think limitations have much to do with "being incorrect" in this situation. Wouldn't a limited imagination be more likely to lead you to things that would make you happy? Instead of dreaming about a house made of gold, you'd dream about the new CD you were going to buy.
- "Like most New Yorkers I know, I can’t imagine living in most other places in the world." This statement is a fakey generalization. "No, look, I was only talking about the ones that I know."

p. 4
- "Yet New York, as surprisingly neighborly a city as it is, is still predicated on a certain principle of atomization." I need numbers on this. I need you to demonstrate that New Yorkers have fewer friends and less social interaction than non-NYers.
- "Then there’s the question of the hedonic treadmill, such a demonic little term, so vivid, so apt. Isn’t that what New York, the city of 24-hour gyms, is?" Mixing figurative and actual treadmills is not cool.
- "More charitably put, one could say that New York is a city of aspirants, the destination people come to to realize dreams." Have you considered the notion that if - if! -NYers are less happy than the rest of the country (something you haven't proven), then maybe NYers would be even less happy in the places they came from. Maybe NYers are people who are, say, made unhappy by their families? You're pretending like the same set of inputs makes people happy in exactly the same ways, which is the most consistently annoying thing about this article.
- Based on a comment by Barry Schwartz, you're imagining that NY creates unhappy weirdos, instead of the other way around. Meh. I need more than a comment by Barry Schwartz.
- What's the jam story have to do with anything? I remember reading about food studies that suggested that one simply can't keep more than 7 or 8 tastes specifically in mind. Simple confusion is not the same as being paralyzed by choice ("Wait, did I like Jam 19 or Jam 16?"). Or unhappiness.
- "Yet most of us insist that New York is the only place we’d be happy, just as parents insist their children are their greatest sources of joy." Dammit, you have to back that "most" up. A lot.

p. 5
- And now, you contradict everything you wrote. Y'know I used to do that in college when I realized I only had three pages of a five page paper.
- Writer, please stop implying psychology focusing on pathology was/is a bad/incomplete thing. Do you criticize surgeons for not removing the appendixes of physically healthy people? Making sure that schizophrenics don't go crazy and kill people is more important (I think) than making sure a guy who's already happy gets nominally happier. In fact, that psychologists can focus on this, shows how far the pathology side of things has come, no?
- This guy's peddling self help books? Umm, didn't you say this was different from self help?

p. 6
- "(In fact, happiness researchers frequently use the equation H = S + C + V, or happiness equals our genetic set point plus our circumstances plus what we voluntarily change—a tad too reminiscent, for my taste, of a certain “Far Side” cartoon: “Einstein discovers time actually is money.”)" That's nothing like that Far Side cartoon. Umm. What the fuck?
- The English Patient? Where are you going with this?
- "Some of us are Hanas, some of us are Kips." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Seriously. Did you just tell me there are two types of people in this world? You did. You didn't say, "There are two types of people in this world," but that's really what you said.

p. 7
- Stop writing about yourself.
- "Like every religion, movement, and interesting idea, positive psychology has its own creation myth." Someone needs to have all of her generalizations taken away from her.

p. 8
- "There’s an untold distance between knowing happiness and knowing about it." Umm...yes? You can put just about any thought/idea in that sentence. Poverty. Hunger. Sunlight. Hunting. Fishing. William Shakespeare. Peanut Butter.
- "And sometimes, to our blinking incomprehension, that distance can only be measured in the space between this life and the next." Oooh. [inhales] Oooh.
- "Until extremely recently, happiness wasn’t even a value, much less an inalienable right. Instead, it was something one got to experience only in death, after leading a virtuous, and often self-denying, life." What? 1) It isn't a "value" now, either. 2) It isn't an inalienable right (cough*pursuitof*cough). Are you really suggesting people weren't happy before 1998? Or 1776? Or...what?

p. 9
- I knew you'd get to the depressed = realist study! It's mentioned in that "Lincoln was depressed" book.
- Ah, and we end on a snarky note, naturally. "A psychoanalyst might even call him conflicted."
- Blech.

No Pictures Comix Presents: The Adventures of Second Wave Gentrification Man

2006-07-10T07:30:00.000-04:00

["Making Neighborhoods Less Threatening!"]

[Wall Street Financial Analyst Mike McMichaels walks into a loft party thrown by a neighbor he ran into at D'Agastino's in last week's issue.]

Neighbor, looking suitably bohemian: Hey, glad you could make it...uh...I'm sorry I completely blanked on your name.

Mike: Oh, Mike. And you are Kurt, right?

Neighbor: Yeah.

Mike: So, what's the occassion?

Neighbor: Oh, just one last party. My landlord's raising the rent, so I have to move out. He's going to divide this space up into apartments.

Mike: Really? Do you know what they'll go for?

Neighbor: What? Uh, no.

Mike: This is a great space. [beat] I bet you had a great deal on it. [beat] "New York" said this neighborhood was "Up and Coming," but I wish it would already "Up and Come!"

[Neighbor glares at Mike.]

Mike: Is there a good place for coffee around here?

Neighbor: There's that little place on the corner, next to the dry cleaners by the subway.

Mike: I know that place. I mean, like, y'know... [trails off]

[Neighbor glares some more.]

["Later that evening..."]

[Mike is walking down the street, and spots a homeless man.]

[He looks around to make sure there's no one else, then looks up in the sky.]

Mike: KAAAA-Ching!

[A lightning bolt descends from the sky and turns Mike into Second Wave Gentrification Man. He looks pretty much the same as Mike.]

[He walks over to the homeless man, and shoots gentri-beams from his eyes.]

[The homeless man turns into a squirrel who cocks a curious head at Mike, then hops away.]

[Mike walks up to a gated storefront. He waves his hand over the gate and it disappears, revealing a sign that says "Pollo Azteca."]

Mike: Not in what has only recently become my neighborhood.

[More gentri-beams.]

[The sign changes to read "Dandelion Cupcake, Co."]

Mike: That's better.

[The End.]

Randominnyc Klassik Kut

2006-06-23T06:59:00.000-04:00

Randominnyc will be be on hold for the next week. In the meantime, enjoy this classic post from the turn of the (20th) century.

An Imagined Conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Thackery Walpole St. Clair:

Mr.: My dear!
Mrs.: What? What is it?
Mr: I do believe there's a roustabout over there.
Mrs: A roustabout? Oh, it is! What shall we do?
Mr.: I'm going to call for that burly Irish fellow they have patrolling the neighborhood. Officer! Officer!
Officer Houlihan: Faith and beggorah! Hi-diddle-ee-dee!
Mrs.: What is he saying?
Mr.: Don't worry, that's just the way these people talk. Officer, there's a roustabout over there.
Officer: Oish! [sings] When Oirish ois are smoilin'! [runs off toward the roustabout, club in hand]
Mrs.: That certainly was trying!
Mr.: It's like medicine, dear.
Mrs.: How so?
Mr.: You see, the cure is often worse than the disease.

[end]

I need toothpaste, and I don't have time to cross the street

2006-06-21T07:47:00.000-04:00

I'm juuust about positive that the Duane Reade under the scaffolding (across the street) is set to close, but it's now been about a month since the bright and pretty one opened, and they're both still there. Two Duane Reades directly across the street from one another. Huh. (This is on 57th and Broadway.)

Signmakers of America, C'mon!

2006-06-21T07:23:00.000-04:00

I've almost accepted the overuse of apostrophes (Make Hundred's of Dollars a Day from Home) and the use of quotation marks for emphasis (We "Beat" Our Competitors Prices), but I can't stand by and watch another punctuation mark be abused. "Within" does not have a hyphen in it. C'mon.

randominnj: Cape May

2006-06-20T07:22:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, Tara took me to Cape May, NJ. She said I was being "cranky" and an "asshole," and that if I didn't relax she was going to "stab me" with a "fork." So, we went, and had a really nice time. How we got there: a Greyhound to Atlantic City, and a NJ Transit Bus from Atlantic City to Cape May (yes, we stopped and gambled for an hour). If you own an automocar, you take the Garden State Parkway to the end. Here's a map. It's far away. While the Greyhound was fine, the NJT bus was filled with disturbing people. We heard a woman leave the following message on her, um, boyfriend's answering machine: "I'm just wondering what happened last night. I thought you wanted me. If you just want to be friends, that's okay...but I want my money back." Aaah, beautiful New Jersey.

A pretty, tree-lined street. There are quite a few of these. And everything will look all nice, American flags will be flapping gently in the breeze, all will be right with the world, and then:

Wham. A house painted like prostitutes live there. I have no idea what this is about. When I mentioned it to someone upon returning to NY, she said that they're called "painted ladies" and it's a thing. Whatever. So, if you go and you see houses made to look like houses of ill-repute, remember, that's the way they're intended to look. The above one is actually kind of tame, as it's only two or three colors. There were several that had so many different colors on them that my eyes bled. We had to go the hospital. It's called Painted Lady Syndrome (PLS) and it happens to a lot of first-timers in Cape May.

This is the beach. It was quite nice looking, but as it was pretty chilly, we didn't go in the water. Along the beach there is skeeball to be played and silly prizes to trade tickets for. I cashed in for a rabbit's foot. I think it's a real rabbit's foot. It makes me kind of sad.

Tara and I went whale-watching. We watched no whales. They couldn't find any. But. We did see a whole lot of dolphins, which was pretty thrilling. Dozens of them surfacing from the water at a time. This picture makes it look 96% less thrilling than it actually was. I also got a nasty sun/wind burn. Remember, white people: sunscreen.

A view from the (lack of) whale watching boat of Wildwoods. What is Wildwoods? It's where message lady ("I want my money back") was headed. I think it's like the Ur-Jersey Shore. Mini golf + rides + alcohol. Four young Irish guys who had traveled from New York City got off the bus at Wildwoods. They came from Ireland to spend some time in Wildwoods. They left New York to spend some of their visit...at Wildwoods. Guh?

This seems to sum up Cape May. It's kinda trashy, but it's also wicker. Here, have some.

This place is located on the pedestrian mall (some restaurants, 72 ice cream shops, a bunch of Cape May T-shirts), and it creeps me out. "Rowr, come a little closer, kids, I want to fucking eat you." Have you read Stephen King's Dark Tower books? "And be a happy choo-choo train until the day I die." It's just so wrong-looking.

This was among the last things we saw in Cape May. We were waiting for the bus when one of us noticed this on a beam at the station. Eric did 12 pull ups there. Apparently, among the lace and skill cranes there are teenagers. And they, like all teenagers, are bored.

HOWTO Ride a Greyhound (Bus)

2006-06-19T08:12:00.000-04:00

[I've taken a few Greyhound buses in the past few weeks. In a weird way, I kind of love them. They are completely and utterly off the cultural radar, and they're totally utilitarian. There are so few things like that. Also: I'm cheap and don't drive. Anyway, riding Greyhound does have its pitfalls. Here's how to minimize them.]

1 - Rework the way you quantify your time. People will be all, "It took us four and a half hours to drive here" and you'll be all, "It took me six on the bus. I'm sad." Bullshit. They had to drive for four and a half hours and you got to read and sleep for six hours. If someone randomly gave me six hours to read and sleep, I'd thank them.
2 - Put your wallet in your front pocket.
3 - Traveling by Greyhound is cheap. You will be placed in a bus with an odd collection of working stiffs, college students, and the insane. Oh, and one (1) family with numerous small children. Where am I going with this? Several places. But first: try to ride with someone you know. If you are alone on the bus, the person you sit next to, might be one of the insane. And they'll want to talk to you. Remember, you're going to be on the bus for a while, and what might start off as "This guy is awesome. I am going to have the best story," will quickly turn into, "I hate my life." Which brings us to:
4 - Bring music and headphones that block sound. Nope, iPod earbuds won't do; they'll allow you to hear the weird little kid sitting behind you repeating "Mommydaddy, mommydaddy" for hours at a time. If you want to get fancy, you can get the noise canceling type. I have a pair of Sony headphones with soft (rubber? silicone?) buds that seal my ears up. They are awesome. As a bonus, if you do get a seat right next to a crazy person, you can put them in your ears and ignore him.
5 - Also: Sit near the back of the bus. The closer to the back of the bus, the less likely you'll be seated in front of someone who doesn't have an indoor voice, and who projects forward so everyone can hear them. This gets a little complicated because: 1) the seats in the very back do not recline; 2) the further back you sit, the closer you'll be to the restroom. Before you commit to a seat in the back take a good, long sniff.
6 - Bring more music and reading materials in more genres than you think you'll want. Getting antsy on a bus is the worst thing in the world. And then you turn into the shifter-guy who can't get comfortable. Sometimes switching the type of reading material or music I'm consuming makes my brain less twitchy.
7 - Bring a sweatshirt. It's like a towel in the Hitchhiker's Guide - it has many uses. Okay, it has two: You can keep yourself warm when a sadistic driver turns the A/C all the way up, and you can ball it up and use it as a pillow. Remember: there is nothing as bad as that feeling when you lean your head directly on the window of a moving vehicle (vibrations, vibrations, BUMP).
8 - Set your phone to silent. This will make your life as well as everyone else's better. If it rings and you're on the verge of sleep...it's going to wake you up. And then you're going to do that weird sitting dance while you get it out of your pocket. It's just not worth it.
9 - There is a difference between comfortable and uncomfortable jeans. Know it.

[placeholder: alien urination]

2006-06-15T07:42:00.000-04:00

[taken by Franklin in Tricase Porto in the Puglia region of Italy]

Bronx Cowgirl - No. 7 [blue]

2006-06-14T06:54:00.000-04:00

Hypothetical Cape May, NJ Conversation

2006-06-13T06:48:00.000-04:00

- Hello, Evelyn.
- Hello Marjorie.
- I see you have the Vacancy sign up. A little late in the season for that, isn't it?
- Oh, well, it's just the small room.
- The one with the fire ant problem.
- That was twelve summers ago, and you know it.
- Well, anyway, I'm full up.
- That's nice. You're also a husband stealing whore.
- Better than being a frigid bitch.
- Have a nice day.
- You, too.

You make me sick

2006-06-12T08:05:00.000-04:00

[picture from the menu at a chain restaurant]

Let me guess, you're starting with our onion dippers, then having one of our sinfully good half-pound burgers, and you're going to finish it all off with a simply decadent brownie sundae? I'm right, right? I'm totally right. Okay, then maybe you should not have one of our awesome triple-thick shakes with your meal. Just an idea. Maybe you should try something just a smidge healthy. I mean, it's lunch, for the love of God. You're going to eat again in like three hours. Also, would it kill you to walk somewhere? Like, once. Okay, okay, here it is. Step 1: Have a delicious smoothie. Step 2: Do a situp. Jesus.

Pizza Quest: Introduction

2006-06-08T08:23:00.000-04:00

The Pizza Quest started about two years ago as an attempt to eat at the best pizza places in and around New York. It's been an off-and-on event, as my free time (and capacity for my own foolishness) waxes and wanes. It remains sadly incomplete (we still haven't been to Staten Island or Franny's in Brooklyn.), but there's plenty here. So, enjoy, the fruits of the labor of a roving band of idiots (sometimes as few as two, sometimes over a dozen) who ate their way around New York (except for Staten Island. Dammit!).

Just so you know, writeups are grouped by geography (as you can see) and within that are presented simply in the order in which the places were visited.

Oh, and while I didn’t originally rate places, a couple people requested ratings (they really are helpful), and so here is how this highly scientific system works:

* = Famous Ray’s
** = Wouldn’t mind having in my neighborhood
*** = Worth a subway ride
**** = Worth a subway, a bus, a ferry, whatever, just get there.

Manhattan Below 14th St.
Manhattan Above 14th St.
Queens
The Bronx
Brooklyn
Westchester
New Haven
Mail Order Chicago

Pizza Quest: Manhattan Below 14th St.

2006-06-08T08:19:00.000-04:00

Arturo’s on Houston –
**

The decor: The walls are filled with paintings (by Arturo, and available for purchase), pictures of Clark Gable and others, a vaguely Mayan looking calendar-ey thing...airplanes hang from the ceiling, the pianist (pianist!) cranks out background music, the bathroom has a bathtub and a chalkboard in it...It's as if someone had detonated a kitsch bomb and Arturo's was ground zero. Whoever you are, Arturo, I salute both you and the black velvet paintings that almost certainly decorate the walls of your home.

The pizza lands in the middle of the pack. We ordered two pies. The first, a fresh mozzarella-half plain/half garlic left us underwhelmed. The mozzarella had an odd, unpleasantly pungent aftertaste. The sauce was okay (Ted found it lacking, I found it alright). The garlic had the same "not-really-fresh" taste as V&T's. The crust was okay (the cheese was a bit watery and some pieces of the pie didn't hold up to it), there was some nice charring (sometimes a bit too much), and a pleasant greasiness in the rim of the pizza. The pizza was also sprinkled with black pepper (a first), which was generally appreciated, and gave the last bites a nice little kick. The second pie was plain mozz-half pepperoni/half sausage. Neither topping was great. The pepperoni was extremely mild; the sausage (crumbled), had disturbing little chewy bits in it. Shudder. The cheese was okay, with a thick layer applied directly to the crust with the sauce spread on top and around it. Again, the pizza finished well, with the peppery, crisp and chewy outer crust.

John's on Bleecker –
**1/2

Four people, two pies (one half-plain/half-garlic, one half-sausage/half-pepperoni).

If I'm not mistaken, John's is among the first round of pizzerias in New York City to open after Lombardi's (which was the first in the US), opened by a pizza-maker who got his start at Lombardi's (Patsy's and Totonno's were also founded by former Lombardi's workers). Pizzas are cooked in a coal-fired, brick oven, and their crusts are very close in style to Patsy's: extremely thin, crispy, and near-flaky, with nice charring (though, a bit too much on some slices). The sauce and cheese were where I felt the pies faltered: the mozzarella was a bit bland (applied, again, directly to the crust), though it had some nice charring and bubbling (not too much), and the sauce was a little too sweet-tasting (I'm preferring, by a large margin, the simple crushed tomato sauces most places have been offering up). The garlic was very good, large chucks (not overpowering), the pepperoni was alright (thin, not greasy, but without enough spiciness for me), and the sausage was excellent (crumbled up, great, strong fennel and herb taste). I'd rate it below Louie and Ernie's, Matt and Tara disagreed with me (saying that Louie and Ernie's crust was too thick, closer to a corner slice joint). Brian agreed with me. I win.

Afterwards we stopped next door at "Cones" a gelato shop. When asked what the difference between gelato and ice cream, the proprietor bragged, "It's made with milk, so it has 20% less fat." This is not something you brag about, as far as I'm concerned. You might as well brag that it’s made with 20% less love...still, it was pretty tasty.

Joe's Pizza on W. 4th St. –
**1/2

Five of us made it to Joe's Pizza near W. 4th. I wasn't particularly impressed with the place: it looks like a standard slice joint (actually, like a substandard slice joint), and I feared a repeat of Sal and Carmine's (an okay slice place that, due to some shared dementia, numerous people have elevated to the status of "the best"). Happily, my fears were unfounded. We faced a brief moment of panic when we realized that Joe's does not serve alcohol, but persevered: We ran into a nearby deli (We tried three before we found one with alcohol. What's wrong with that neighborhood?), grabbed some booze, listened to a fey, gerri-curled guy yell at the cashier, "Don't you curse me! Don't you curse me!", paid, and returned just in time for the first pie (Opening the bottles proved to be another challenge, and required the following: try to open on cheap table in pizzeria, give up, run outside - bottle wrapped in an ultra-classy brown paper bag - open bottle on side of telephone booth, if telephone is in use try the gate to the store next door, when store owner comes out to investigate banging noise, run inside, poor beer into cup, drink, when cop enters pizzeria to buy an Italian ice, try to "act cool.")

The pizza:

Two pies. One regular mozzarella/half-sausage, one fresh mozzarella/half-pepperoni. They were some good pizza. Thin crust (the fresh mozz pie thinner) topped with a pretty thick layer of the regular mozz, or thin blobs of the fresh, and a tart tomato sauce. Plain ol' pepperoni (though sliced very thin) and relatively thin-sliced, peppery sausage. The group was impressed, with a split decision on the cheeses (I, along with Matt and Pete, go fresh, which had a slight crispiness to it, Jaimie and April went plain, which, they said, worked better with the sauce). Complaints: crust was a little "floppy" particularly on the fresh mozz pie, and cheese, while tasty, wasn't great (completely acceptable, but didn't bowl me over). This was a very good "standard slice" place.

Una Pizza Napolitana, 1st Ave and 12th St. –
****

We went to this absolutely tiny (maybe 25 people can fit?) pizzeria on what was one of its first days open to the public. It showed. Not so much in the pizza (although on one pie there were areas of the crust that only the very charitable would refer to as charred rather than burnt), but in service: we waited an hour-and-a-half for our first pies. But, first night jitters and all…I am willing to forgive this. Especially because this place has a lot of potential; they seem committed to creating excellent pizza from remarkably high quality ingredients. They only offer four pies (all just 14 inches across) – all containing some variation on: buffalo-milk mozzarella, tomato sauce, fresh cherry tomatoes, olive oil, and basil. We had three pies, split among four people. Two Margherita (cheese + sauce), one white with tomatoes. The crusts were thin, crisp, and flaky, the cheese ridiculously good, the whole thing sprinkled with sea salt (which gives the crust a happy salty crunchiness) and a huge amount of olive oil (which gave the pie a tasty olive oiliness to me, and a greazy greasiness to others). While I am excited by the prospect of returning when they’ve worked out the (relatively minor) kinks, my three fellow pizza-eaters were less impressed. And that is why I hate them.

Update:

I returned with Tara and Jen several months later, and I have to say, this is among the best pizza I have ever eaten. We ordered three pies, then mixed and matched as we pleased. The buffalo mozzarella sort of opens up as it cooks, releasing liquid as it melts. This, when coupled with the olive oil drizzled on top, makes the pizza slightly soggy in the center, but the crust, expertly charred and crisp from the wood-burning oven, holds up. When you've nearly finished your pie, you can use the last bit of crust to mop up this deliciousness. Then the choir of pizza angels kicks in. I had two beers with the pie, but walked out feeling slightly drunk from the pleasure of just eating something so damned good. Bonus: The owner/pie man is tattooed in the extreme, they run all the way to his fingertips.

Lombardi’s, Spring St. –
**1/2

I’ve now been to Lombardi’s about five times, and it always seems to be a shrug-a-thon. I hate to sound dismissive of the first pizzeria in America, but I continue to get just plain good pies at a place that should be killing me every time I go there. Why is this? The most common factors pointed out are a lack of care and too many pies being made (the two are, of course, linked). Basically, Lombardi’s has capitalized (under owners unrelated to the family who founded it) on the fact that it was the first, and has turned itself from a pizzeria into a tourist destination, adding on a new seating area and cranking out more pies than the ancient (and beautiful) oven can reasonably handle. I wish I weren’t so negative (on one visit, the crust was downright exquisite – that’s right, exquisite – and none of the ingredients they use are less than good), but I speak from a place of disappointment. I want the first to be the best. Or at least number two or three. Instead, it goes to the middle of the pack.

De Marco's, 146 Houston –
**1/2 for the good pies
No stars for the bad one

What was ordered:

"Square pie" - half plain/half pepperoni
Round - Plain
Round - All sausage, half garlic

The reason we went to De Marco's is because it's a kinda-offshoot of the legendary DiFara's in Midwood, and as we were sitting there, eating slice after slice, all I could do was rain on everyone's parade. "Oh, this is good. But at DiFara's this would be a million-billion times better." And it is, hyperbole aside, true. The first two pies we got were very good. The square was a bit thinner than a Sicilian pie, the round, thicker than places like Patsy's (similar to the style at, yes, DiFara's). They were messy (not a bad thing) and topped with a huge amount of cheese (aged mozz, a way-too-small amount of buffalo mozz, and a sprinkling of grana padana), very good, thick pepperoni slices, and a tasty, lightly-cooked sauce (I got a nice fresh basil taste from it). Unfortunately, they fell apart as they sat; the crust was no match for the ingredients, and, yes, the forks and knives came out. But still, De Marco's was placing pretty high ("It's no DiFara's, but...") when pie #3 came out. I can honestly say that I think it had the worst crust of any pizza I've ever gotten from a pizzeria. It had almost no rise to it and tasted chalky. The nearest comparison I can make is to frozen pizza. Bad frozen pizza. Dense and gross frozen pizza. To make matters worse the garlic didn't taste cooked so much as dried out. I don't know what happened (cold oven?) but we were severely disappointed. Unfortunately, it is safe to say that (as of now) De Marco's is no DiFara's.

Luzzo's on 1st b/w 12th and 13th
**

I don’t care too much about service at a restaurant (particularly a pizza joint). In fact, I kind of enjoy the crankiness of the servers at places like Totonno's and Johnny's, where the attitude seems to be "The pizza's so good, you don't need to like us." This cranky-but you-love-us vibe was not in effect at Luzzo's: the service alternated from simply bad (bathroom out of order, a long wait for the check) to the bizarre (At one point Matt and I ordered beer. The waiter came back with one for Matt and said to me, "Give me a minute on yours." Ten minutes later, he came by with mine. Where did he go to get my beer? What happened in those ten minutes? What’s going on?). The pizzeria has a coal oven and was installed over the bones of Zito's, a bakery, only a few months ago (because of the damn, stupid environment this is the only way to open a new coal oven pizzeria in New York). I had pretty high hopes, and the pizza pretty much met them. It was a thin crust pie that was extremely light, only a little smoky, and not particularly crispy, but very good. Cheese was a choice of either buffalo or fresh mozzarella (the buffalo had a nice, full flavor to it), the sauce was light and sweet, with a little oregano bite to it. The "salami" listed on the menu was actually pepperoni (pretty good), and the sausage was extremely tasty and flavorful (lots o' fennel, no scary gristle bits in it). They were very good pizzas that were slightly different from the typical ultra-crisp New York, coal-oven slice (Patsy’s, John’s). Also, the owner/pizzaiolo came over to us for no good reason and gave us a big slab of pizza bianca (parmesan, herbs, salt, and olive oil were the only toppings). The service almost sank the place, but the quality of the pies and the good humor of the owner make me feel like this place merits another visit further down the line when they’ll have had more time to adjust to their newfound popularity.

Pizza Quest: Manhattan Above 14th St.

2006-06-08T08:15:00.000-04:00

Angelo's on 57th –
*1/2

I wanted Angelo’s to be great. It‘s located only a few blocks away from my job, and it was the first place we few, we proud, we Pizza Questers hit. While I’d love to tell you that the Quest got off to an auspicious start, that lives were changed, taste buds enthralled, pizza enjoyed, all this, unfortunately, was not so. Five of us sampled two pies (one plain, one half pepperoni/half sausage), and were unimpressed. This was, even early on in the quest, judged to be severely substandard pizza. Though made in a coal oven, the crust was thick and doughy, not thin and crispy, and exhibited no signs of charring or blistering. The sauce was weirdly pasty and overly sweet. The mozzarella, while fresh, was merely okay. Cheers to: fresh basil on the pies (fresh basil, I’ve realized, makes me happy all out of proportion to its actual worth), sausage removed from its casing and crumbled on the pizza. Jeers to: everything else, frankly.

Patsy's in East Harlem –
The good time: ****
The bad times: **1/2

Eight of us made the trip to East Harlem to eat at the original Patsy's. First the stats:

Round One:
1 - Plain Mozzarella
2 - Fresh Mozzarella

Round Two:
3 - Pepperoni and sausage (fresh mozz)
4 - Fresh Garlic (fresh mozz)

Round Three (The dessert pizza):
5 - All peppers (sweet, fresh, red) and black olives, half with Portobello mushrooms (plain mozz)

Yep, that's right, five pies for eight people, eaten over about two hours.

Reaction: The crust was incredibly thin, charred and nicely blistered, light and crisp (some found it a little too thin, I wasn't one of them). The fresh mozzarella was terrific, the plain (meaning: aged) mozzarella (which I favored, slightly) was also excellent, a little chewy, with a nice tanginess. The sauce, according to our waiter Victor, "is just what comes outta the can, crushed tomatoes with a little basil that's in there," was simple and excellent (similar to Nick's). The sausage and pepperoni was a nice combo, the pepperoni spicy and thin, the sausage thicker and a little sweet. The fresh garlic, perhaps surprisingly, might've been the favorite (little globs of garlic that seemed to have been soaked in olive oil). The veggie pies (Victor: "You ain't gonna find Portobello mushroom in any other pizzeria in this city.") were excellent, although the toppings proved a bit too much for the crust (just barely). This is truly great pizza.

Highlight of the evening (besides the pizza), our waiter Victor, who liked telling us what to eat, the history of the ownership of the name, his favorite color. When he brought the final pie out, and saw that two of the ladies with us wouldn't be joining in, he berated them lightly, "We have three guys who come in here and eat a whole pie each of them. It's so thin..." before turning thoughtful and forgiving them, "You did have a lot of toppings." He gave us the history of the place ("Sinatra used to have pies flown out to California, Vegas from here."), told us that the other Patsy's in Manhattan don't have a coal oven and aren't owned by the same people, ("They pay a licensing fee."), and that the owner forced Grimaldi's to change its name from Patsy's when they started opening pizzerias in Jersey ("They said, 'You can have Brooklyn, okay, but you can't open up places in Jersey.'" Why was Jersey too much? I don't know.).

Update: I’m sad to say that the next two times I went to Patsy’s (both on Sundays), I was disappointed. The service was spotty, pies showed up after having sat for too long (meaning: not hot enough, and not nearly as crispy as they need to be), and the pies themselves were nothing to write home about (the outer crust on one of them was downright weird looking – as if it had ripped and then been squeezed back together). C’mon, Patsy’s, you’re better than that.

V&T’s Pizzeria in Morningside Heights –
*

As the four of us made our way out of V&T's Pizzeria in Morningside Heights, we were stopped by a homeless fellow who bummed a cigarette and then proceeded to rattle off vague and creepily memorized horoscopes based on our birth months. The salient part of mine (or, rather, the only part I understood and retained) is that I am smart. This made me feel better, as I've been called an idiot more than once since starting the Pizza Quest. Seriously, would someone who wasn't abominably stupid in some fundamental way devote a significant part of his time to compiling a list of pizzas, eating at them, and writing them up? Better not to think of it. Better to believe Homeless Guy. Then, again, Homeless Guy did refer to the well-dressed white man who entered V&T's as we finally broke away, as "Billy Dee Williams." He, clearly, is not the most perceptive human being in the world.

Anyway, the pizza. The crust was thick, but crisped (in an almost "fried" way) that was kind of pleasant. The sauce was neither sweet nor fresh tasting, and the cheese (plain mozzarella) was ample and inoffensive. The toppings were terrible. The pepperoni was oily and tasteless, with no nice pepperoni "bite." The fresh garlic had the unpleasant taste of pre-minced garlic (y'know the jar you buy at the store type, meaning: not actually fresh-tasting). The fried eggplant, though considered the specialty, was bland and added little to the pizza except bulk and chewiness. On the (very, very small) plus side: the crust did stand up to all the toppings. Why this pizza is rated highly by anyone is beyond me; it’s boring pizza (made less boring by the fact that they serve Peroni). It was really just a notch above the slice you'd grab in an average NY parlor...bland, doughy and a little-too-sweet without the toppings. With the toppings, it might actually be a notch below.

Sal and Carmine's on B’way and 102nd –
*1/2

Six of us made it to Sal and Carmine's (recently named the number one slice joint in Manhattan by the Post), on Broadway and 102nd. We ordered two pies (one plain, one half-pepperoni/half-sausage), and took them over to Riverside Park -- as 1) the place was tiny and 2) they wouldn't let us drink there. While being accosted by one particularly aggressive squirrel, we consumed two severely underwhelming pies. They weren't bad...they just weren't great. They were in the vein of a regular New York slice (not necessarily a problem, Louie and Ernie's is as well), with a thicker crust than Patsy's, et al., a thick layer of cheese, and a sweet, cooked tomato sauce. The biggest problem was in the doughy, floury crust. This led Tara to posit that the reason our pies weren't great, was because Sal and Carmine's is a "slice place," meaning that when the pizza sits out and then when is reheated, something happens. Intrigued, but unconvinced, I ordered a plain slice to test the hypothesis...and the slice was much, much better. Much crispier, with slight browning on parts of the cheese. It was just plain better, and so I say: Tara, you were right – but it’s still not great.

Totonno's on 2nd Ave. and 26th –
Not to be confused with Totonno’s on Coney Island
**1/2

Before I reached this offshoot of the original Coney island Totonno's on Friday night, I had been alternately fantasizing about a place in Manhattan that makes pizza as good as the original and forcing myself to lower my expectations (usually by thinking about the lackluster pies served up at DiFara's offshoot De Marco's). When I got there, however, I saw something that made my heart soar (yep, soar): "Coal-fired Brick Oven." I could barely believe the sign, but when I looked in the window, there it was. A big, glowing pile of coal heating the pizza oven. So, everyone arrived, we ordered, and we ate. And it was good. Just good. The best take was (I believe) Brendan's: "The top of this pizza is great." He was right. The cheese (fresh mozzarella) and sauce were delicious, the crust of the pies (one plain, one half garlic and sausage/half pepperoni) was merely okay. The rim of the crust was downright unspectacular. I actually left pieces of crust on my plate. We all enjoyed our meal (the pitchers of beer helped), but I couldn't help but be disappointed. A coal oven is supposed to make great pizza, dammit! And yet it keeps not happening.

Sacco’s Pizzeria, 9th Ave. and 54th St. –
**1/2

To be honest, the pizza quest hasn’t hit Sacco’s, but I feel like mentioning it, so, umm I am. This is the most modest of the pizzerias, a tiny joint with a counter and a couple of tables. The first time I walked up to I was both repulsed by and attracted to it…repulsed because it is almost literally a hole in the wall, attracted because there was a good line of people ordering pizza. So, what did I find when I confronted this line? A really great New York slice of pizza. The plain is just plain ol’ good – very thin, a little crisp, nice tart tomato sauce, and a tasty aged mozzarella. It’s something in the vein of Joe’s on Carmine (though just barely not as good), but with smaller slices and less facility with add-ons (my advice: keep it simple, go plain, ignore toppings and the Sicilian). In the midst of coal vs. wood and salami vs. prosciutto, Sacco’s is a simple New York slice that tastes just right.

PINCH - Park Ave. b/w 28th and 29th -
*1/2

I ran in one night and grabbed a slice...or, uh, quadrangle or whatever the appropriate pizza unit would be to describe six inches of pizza thing (PINCH stands for "Pizza by the Inch," so you order a number of inches off of a big slab of pizza). Dude. This is not good pizza. The crust was insubstantial (not thin - weirdly airy and fall apart-y), there was too much damn cheese, and the sauce was weirdly sweet. I finished it and thought, "That's the best Ellio's pizza I've ever eaten." If I were in a more charitable mood, I might try to spin that as a compliment. Feh.

Sullivan Street Bakery (Hell's Kitchen location) - 47th St. b/w 10th and 11th -
**** (but it doesn't matter)

The bread at Sullivan Street Bakery is one of my favorite foodstuffs in the world. And so is the pizza. The pizza -- thin, crispy, and square, served room temperature with no mozzarella -- is made out of deliciousness. They offer only a few varieties, but all of them are excellent. The potato and rosemary is my favorite (the thin sliced potato gets crispy around the edges and tender in the center), followed by the marinara (tomato sauce, and, err, that's about it). The problem is that while amazing, these slices don't scratch my pizza itch. Meaning, if I think to myself, "I could go for a slice," a slice of Sullivan St. pizza won't satisfy me half as well as the crappiest slice from Mr. Super Crappy, himself, Famous Ray. It depresses me to say that, but I still love you, Sullivan Street Bakery. Please don't be mad at me.

Mariella's - 8th Ave. b/w 56th & 57th -
*

Oprah's friend Gayle was sent on a quest for the best pizza in America. She went to three places - first, the one she went to in college, second, what is oftentimes called the best pizza in the US (Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, AZ) , and third, Mariella's Pizzeria in New York (at the suggestion of her driver). This was a quest in the same way that purchasing boneless chicken cutlets is hunting. I'd had Mariella's a couple times and had literally no memory of it, so I decided to give it another chance. This is far from great pizza. In fact, it might not even be good pizza. The sauce was way too sweet and had too much oregano in it. The crust was tough and chewy. The cheese blanketed the pizza completely. Actually, blanket is too gentle a description. The cheese suffocated the pizza like a plastic bag. I also got a white slice (mozzarella and riccotta) and it was even worse. Bland riccotta and that layer of mozzarella without even bad sauce to break things up. There are several better pizzerias within a five block radius (John's on 58th, Sacco's on 8th, even the two Angelo's -- one on Broadway and one on 57th), let alone the entire city. While people having irrational love for a pizza place is nothing unusual (*cough*salandcarmines*cough*), this is particularly disappointing because Oprah's word carries, I hear, some weight. And so, Oprah viewers will come to New York. And those tourists will go to Mariella's. And they will think that's what good, NY pizza tastes like. Don't believe the Oprah-generated hype.

Totonno's - 2nd Ave. b/w 80th and 81st St. -
**1/2

Tara and I had nearly the same experience at the uptown Totonno's as at the 23rd St. location. We ordered a half-plain/half-sausage-and-garlic and it was good, but not great. It's like a blurry photocopy of the original in Coney Island. The same kinds of tastes - - coal oven, good cooked sauce, fresh mozz, same taste to the crust. Yep, it's the same kind of pizza (Genus: Totonnus), but not charred enough, and just not plain ol' amazing enough (Species: Underwelmicum). As a bonus, they do have signs up making fun of the pizzeria next door that sells pizza by weight. I can't remember them exactly, but it's sort of like, "Why the hell would you buy pizza by weight?" Okay, I'm exaggerating. Slightly.

Pizza Quest: Queens

2006-06-08T08:10:00.000-04:00

Nick's in Forest Hills –
**
Eric and I ordered a half plain/half pepperoni (fresh mozzarella). While a huge step above Angelo's (very fresh mozzarella, nice, bright tomato sauce, fresh basil), the crust wasn't quite there. Though charred and blistered, it wasn't crispy enough (from hell's heart, I stab at thee, zoning restrictions on coal ovens!), and, frankly, there was too much of it (toppings ended way too close to the center of the pie...I like crust and all, but c'mon). Happiness: Cheap beer. Split decision on: The pepperoni. It was too damn thick for me, and reminded me of the pepperoni "chunks" one finds on a frozen pizza. Eric didn't mind it, but, then again, he's an ignorant savage.

Thirty-One in Astoria –
Pizza: **
Other Pizza-like thing: ***

I was afraid I'd tricked everyone (including myself) into a crazy, two-hour subway ride into some desolate warehouse district in Queens, but it was only half hour to a commercial area in Astoria (Hooray for geography!). I'd been expecting something along the lines of a cliched trattoria (murals, miniature replicas of Michelangelo's "David," Venetian plaster, etc.), but instead we were confronted with something that looked like, umm, Pax ("But I don't want to 'Make my own salad.'"). After a minute of confusion, we were led to the back of the restaurant - a sparsely decorated dining room with wine bottles and photographs on display and no murals (It did have a killer soundtrack - including a Spanish language version of the Laura Branigan number "Gloria"). We wound up eating four pies among us (even the large pies were fairly small). Two were "regular" pizza. Meaning: crust, sauce, cheese, toppings (in that order), and were good, but not exceptional (we had one Margherita and one with sausage, peppers, and onions). The sauce on both pies was an excellent "plain" sauce (barely cooked, crushed tomatoes), the cheese was a pretty good fresh mozzarella. The Margherita came with plenty of fresh basil and a crust that, while tasty, didn't really stand up to the toppings (knives and forks made an appearance). The "busy" pie's crust, weirdly, held up much better. There was a split decision on the sausage (I liked the fact that it was somewhat plain, with a nice pork flavor; Jorge was unimpressed).

The other two pies caused some debate. Though listed as "Foccacia," they were not the greasy, doughy type I think of, but something closer to a split and stuffed Roman-style pizza bianca. The first one we had was this airy, crispy crust stuffed with robiola cheese and drizzled with truffle oil (we badgered our waiter to give us something to compare robiola to when we ordered, but he would not. The closest analog is cream cheese - but not as dense, gummy, or overpowering). It was delicious, rich and oozing with cheese. The second one added prosciutto and arugula. Also delicious, though Matt said the cheese and truffle oil were so strong that it overpowered the additions; I disagreed. And now the debate: Does this count as pizza (someone derisively threw out the word "quesadilla")? It was round, flat, it was bread, it had Italian ingredients in it (but not on it)...eh? My feeling: If Chicago counts, so does this...but it doesn't count as "New York Pizza."

Random things: 1 - While the menu says "wood-burning" the prominently located oven is clearly gas. The good news is that it appears to be ceramic and the temperature display said it was over 650 degrees inside. This is a good hundred degrees hotter than a standard pizza oven (and a good hundred or two hundred degrees cooler than a coal-fired one). 2 - The pizzas on display in the front are Roman-style, meaning, long oval pies sold by the inch...the pies we got when we sat down was your standard round ones. 3 - On the subway, the PR guy for the restaurant heard us discussing the place, and gave us business cards on which he scribbled his initials. He claims we'll be able to get free wine with them if we go back (digression: the wine selection was small, but very reasonably priced). While I'd like free wine, I'd kind of prefer that he was just a crazy person who stole a bunch of business cards from the restaurant. We'll see.

Update: Thirty-one was gutted by a fire shortly after we ate there, which is terrible. I include the review, because (apparently) the same food can be had at Da Ciro in Manhattan.

Pizza Quest: The Bronx

2006-06-08T08:07:00.000-04:00

Tosca, Throgg’s Neck, the Bronx –
*1/2

I had high hopes. High, high hopes. Tosca, built (it seems) on the remains of an old bakery in the Bronx is the only coal-oven pizzeria in the borough (it’s actually a full-fledged Italian restaurant). High hopes. They were dashed. Tosca, which has a kind of silly “modern” fanciness to it (“No, you’re not freezing your ass off in the Bronx, you’re in a vaguely cheesy restaurant in Miami…Miami….Miami….”). Now, it isn’t bad pizza – Tara and I got a white pie and a margherita pie – but it wasn’t great. The crust, which should be a thing of beauty if it’s coming out of a coal oven, was dry and brittle. The cheese (fresh mozz) was pretty good as was the sauce…but, meh. Again, it seems, a coal oven is nice, but skill, care, and a good recipe are more important.

Full Moon, Giovanni’s and Café al Mercato on Arthur Avenue, the Bronx –

Full Moon: *1/2
Giovanni’s: *
Café al Mercato: **

I hadn't felt the need to take my father's criticisms of the Pizza Quest™ to heart ("You're an idiot," "I can't believe you're still doing this," "Seriously, you're an idiot."), but on Saturday he raised a valid question. You see, he called, and when he found I had a cold, suggested that I stay in bed all day. When I informed him that, no, I was heading to Arthur Avenue to eat pizza he argued, "With a head cold? You can't trust the results of this. You have a cold, you won't taste anything." It was, I admit, a dilemma. The plans had been set in motion, but I wasn't in top form. Should I encourage the group to continue on without me? Should I take special care to discount my opinion and let others dictate the e-mail?

In the end, I decided thusly: I lived off Arthur Avenue and ate at these places for five years, what I can’t taste I’ll fake.

Full Moon (one pie, half-plain/half-pepperoni)

A doughy-but-tasty crust, with cornmeal on the bottom, was, really, the highlight of the pizza (the cheese, sauce, and pepperoni, was all just “good.”). Frankly, that's all I've got. Never was there so much shrugging when confronted with a pie, until we headed to...

Giovanni's (one pie, half-margherita/half-sausage)

Another lackluster pie, without even a crust to be happy about. Though we ordered a pie with fresh mozz, we didn't think that would be literal. Meaning: It was basically a regular pie with a couple pieces of fresh mozz thrown on top of the aged mozz. The sausage was unique in that it was cut lengthwise into very thin strips. Everyone was basically saying, "Meh," when the check arrived. That one pie cost almost $30. Add in a couple $4.00 beers, and you have perhaps the most expensive and least satisfying pizza on the list.

In between the two places we stopped in Cafe al Mercato, where we split a slice of their "sort-of-Sicilian" pizza. Not nearly as doughy as regular Sicilian, topped first with a thick layer of mozz (fresh, but not great), and then a simple crushed-tomato sauce. It tasted and smelled heavily of oil and was, by far, the most enjoyable pizza of the day.

But it wasn't really NY pizza, and so it is, in my opinion, a shame that "New York's Real Little Italy" as the Bronx Tourism Board hawks it, doesn't have any "Real New York Style Pizza." It’s got some pretty good slices, but nothing to go out of your way for, unfortunately. My advice: If you take a trip to Arthur Ave. bypass Full Moon and Giovanni's, and spend the day grazing, moving from shop to shop buying bread, ravioli, sausage, and other assorted goodies (we had some raw clams on the street, and I bought a dried mozzarella with fresh butter in the middle – that's right, cheese with butter in it, a combo I hope will be as self evidently brilliant to future generations as peanut butter and jelly is to our own), before winding up at one of the decent-to-excellent Italian restaurants in the neighborhood.

Mario's on Arthur Ave., the Bronx –
***1/2

Our last trip to Arthur Avenue ended in disappointment. One of us got a parking ticket, all of us felt like we'd been had by the claims of great pizza in the Bronx's Little Italy. But, we returned, and ate some very good pizza at Mario's. The weird thing about Mario's (besides the decor that hasn't changed since 1952, and the pictures of semi-celebrities hanging up, and our waiter who bore an eerie resemblance to Vince Vaughan, and the photocopied reviews present at the table and, and, and) is that they don't really want you to eat pizza there. While all the reviews hanging up make mention of the fantastic pizza, the menu claims that only an "appetizer pizza" exists. I quizzed the waiter. Waiter (Vince Vaughan): "You can have pizza as a meal before 4:30. After that you can only have it as an appetizer. I don't make the rules, so don't blame me. In my opinion though [beat] this is the best pizza in the country. I'm serious." While I wouldn't go that far, this was some seriously good pizza, probably the best I've had in the Bronx. We ordered two pies (they were delivered with just the right amount of time between them), one plain (at Vince's urging) with aged mozzarella, one with fresh mozz - half-pepperoni/half-garlic. The cheese was extremely good on both, the crust was excellent - crisp and light but still substantial, the sauce was pleasantly tart and simple, the garlic was in the form of gigantic half-cloves. Extremely, extremely good pizza. Except for the pepperoni; very thin slices with almost no bite that dribbled unpleasant oil over their half of the pie. Afterwards, a walk through the market, a visit to the cheese store, some pastries and coffee at Egidio's. In other words: an extremely pleasant day. Just be sure to get started before 4:30.

Update: Went back to have pizza at 2:30 on a Sunday. We were told we’d have to order something else. We got fried calamari. It was really damn good, but the whole thing is just insane.

Louie and Ernie's in Pelham Bay, the Bronx –
***

Matt Devoe and I went to Louie and Ernie's (which had recently been crowned the best in the Bronx by the Post). We ordered a half garlic/half sausage (plain mozz). It has a thicker crust than Patsy's or Johnny's, with no charring, and some chewiness (in a good way). The nicely crisp crust stood up to the massive amount of sausage on it. There was a good, fairly thick layer of mozzarella, smaller pieces of garlic spread evenly over the pizza (Matt prefers these little pieces, I prefer the big chunks). The sausage was amazingly good (out of the casing, nice and sweet). It was very good pizza in the "standard New York slice" vein. Regrets: I didn't save room for one of the calzones they were deep frying (deep frying!) a few feet away from us. Strangeness: It's not the prettiest girl at the dance and is located in the basement floor of a house – we saw feet and a lawnmower from our table. Ambience be damned!

It should be noted that neither Johnny’s in Mt. Vernon nor Louie and Ernie’s have a coal oven, and yet both make very good to excellent pies, whereas the coal oven pies at Arturo's and Angelo's were both deeply unsatisfying. Perhaps the idea that coal ovens are necessary for great NY-style pizza is nothing more than a myth?

Update: Returned and ate one of those fried calzones. Have one. The dough gets sweet and oily…like eating a ricotta filled zepoli. That’s a good thing, in case you were wondering.

Louis Seafood Restaurant, Throgg’s Neck, the Bronx –
*1/2

That's right, it says seafood there in the name, but, according to a couple of guys from Throgg’s Neck, it serves the best pizza in the Bronx (you can request the style of pizza: thin crust, well done, crispy. Thicker, medium-well, etc.). According to me: not so much. It was merely okay. It was close in style to Sal and Carmine's with a thick layer of brown, bubbling cheese over a "cooked" sauce and a fairly thick crust; the sauce was enjoyable, with a pleasantly heavy amount of oregano. The crust, unfortunately, was the pizza's downfall, winding up hard, dry, and chewy. If in the area, just go to Louie and Ernie's (it's five blocks away, fer godsakes).

Patricia’s Pizza and Pasta, Morris Park, the Bronx –
**1/2

If there’s been one constant in the pizza we’ve eaten on the quest, it’s that there’s an unspoken and (pretty much) universally understood cheese to sauce ratio somewhere out there, a platonic ideal every pie man naturally aims for and usually hits. It just is. When you order a “plain” (or a “cheese” or a “Margherita”), whether it’s cooked with coal, wood, or gas, whether it’s cheap or expensive…you’re getting a baseline amount of sauce and a complimentary amount of cheese (there’s wiggle room, but y’know what I mean). The Margherita at Patricia’s is the first pizza place we’ve gone to that seems to have unilaterally decided to call the whole delicate balance of cheese, sauce, and crust into question. It comes with a blanket of fresh mozzarella applied directly to the crust, and only a few splashes of tomato sauce (a lightly cooked, mildly sweet sauce) on top of that. And you know what: I kinda liked it.

Baked in a wood-burning oven, the crust was moderately thin, but pliable, and arrived with moderate charring and a fragrant smokiness. The cheese was fresh and very good (and, as I said, plentiful). The pies, called “Minis” were as large as some of the regular pies we’ve had. At first, I loved the overpowering cheesiness of it, but after a couple of sauce-free bites, I began to appreciate balance. It’s very good pizza (top third, probably), and for cheese lovers a sure thing, but ultimately pizza is more like bowling than ‘Nam: There are rules.

Update: You can order extra sauce, but there’s a tradeoff as the crust can get soggy at the end. It’s still a good pie either way.

Coals, Pelham Bay, The Bronx –
***

Coals is not a regular slice joint. Nor is it a regular fancy-shmancy place. Nor is it a regular pies-only coal-fired, etc., etc., place (which the name sort of suggests). Coals has grilled pizza. The extremely thin dough is placed atop an extremely an extremely hot (the owner said upwards of 800 degrees) grill for a few moments, flipped, sprinkled with ingredients, and served. The product is unlike any other pizza I’ve had (though it shares some of the traits – charring, flakiness – of places like Patsy’s and Johnnie’s), but is still a different beast. It’s crisp, thin, tasty, and has a pleasant saltiness. My complaint is a simple one: the method of cooking leads to a somewhat sparsely topped pie, and occasionally, the toppings are more warm than hot. Now, this isn’t really a complaint, as the results have all been delicious, and the toppings have all been good – aged mozzarella, a simple, tangy sauce, a dusting of romano (I’ve stayed away from the “nontraditional” toppings offered – corn and the like). But if you’re looking for a layer of sauce topped by a layer of cheese, be warned: you’re not going to get it here. Also: you should get a whole, large pie for yourself – you won’t have leftovers.

Does this “count” as NY pizza? To be honest, I’ve almost stopped asking myself such questions. Almost. So, no it’s not NY Pizza, but…C’mon! It’s good. Have some. Fine then, don’t.

Pizza Quest: Brooklyn

2006-06-08T08:04:00.000-04:00

Totonno’s on Coney Island–
****

On Saturday ten (10!) of us made our way to Totonno's Pizzeria in Coney Island. We took over two tables ordered numerous pies, and were rewarded with, in my opinion, The Best Pizza I've Ever Eaten. The crust: Thicker than Patsy's, terrifically charred. The sauce: More of a traditional "sauce" than the simple crushed tomato at Nick's and Patsy's, but not pasty, sweet, or overpowering. The cheese: Very fresh mozzarella with a bit of parmigiano (Eric thought the parmigiano a bit too much); the mozz is placed directly on the unbaked crust, the sauce over and around it (leading to nice areas of only cheese and crust). The toppings: Plain, pepperoni (excellent, though Eric thought it a bit oily), sausage (some complained it was too thick, Pete could've used more fennel), and fresh garlic (spread evenly over the pie). All in all, in my opinion, the best pizza thus far. Pleasantly salty, wonderfully charred…just terrific. Great, great pizza. (Also, as you eat here pay attention to the way the pizza tastes as it cools. Things happen, and, in this humble eater’s opinion, it gets better).

And then, afterwards, a ride on the Cyclone, a walk down the boardwalk, and a two-hour subway ride home. It was worth it, this is pizza worth traveling for. Plus, you can shoot paintballs at a real live human being afterwards. True, we didn’t “Shoot the Freak,” ourselves, but the option was there. God Bless America.

Grimaldi's in Brooklyn –
**1/2

Seven of us made our way to Grimaldi's in Brooklyn (basically underneath the Brooklyn Bridge) to try what is considered to be among the best pizzerias in the city. We ate four pies (Yeah, I had five slices, what of it?), but in our defense, Grimaldi's is a thin crust, coal-oven pizza in the vein of Lombardi's/Patsy's/John's (This, somewhat, justifies that fifth slice, no?). Here are the pies:

1 - Plain: Merely okay fresh mozzarella (extremely low moisture, slightly chewy and stringy, not creamy at all), a simple crushed-tomato-style sauce on a very thin, but not very crispy, crust (there was minimal charring, but some nice puffing and blistering). The whole thing was topped with a shot of dried herbs, and several fresh basil leaves (applied before the pie goes in the oven, so they are cooked, unlike most places that use basil).

2 - Sausage and Pepperoni: This was by far my favorite pie. The sausage (crumbled) was spicy (who likes fennel!?), and the pepperoni was incredibly tasty, slightly thick, and nicely crisped from the oven.

3 - Roasted Peppers and Fresh Garlic: Very good roasted peppers that, unfortunately, completely overshadowed the fresh garlic on my slice (Jen claimed that all the garlic was on her slice. This poor garlic distribution upsets me. A lot.)

4 - Half Ham/Half Olives: I was excited by the prospect of ham (my third pork-product of the evening), but was severely let down by this slice (as were all the other ham-folk). Near microscopic ham cubes dotted the slice, and were almost unnoticeable in the mouth. The olive-eaters faired better, with actual whole, black olives (the consensus was positive on that side of the table).

The evening ended with a nice stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan, and the following conversation:

"There was just nothing great about it. It was all good, but none of it was amazing. It had no one thing that made it amazing or really interesting."

"It was like pizza-by-committee. No risks. It was like the difference between a good cook and a chef."

"This was clean pizza. Totonno's is a dirty pizza...Di Fara's is a filthy, filthy pizza. Grimaldi's was a clean pizza."

DiFara's in Midwood, Brooklyn –
****

DiFara's gets crowded early and stays crowded. One guy, Dominic De Marco makes the every pie (with love and care) and it takes him quite a while. I called to try and figure out what was the best time to go, and had the following conversation:

Him (heavy Italian accent): DiFara's.
Me: Hi, are you open on Sunday.
Him: Yes.
Me: Is there a good time to come in?
Him: Eh, hard to say.
Me: You're busy all day?
Him: Yes, pretty much. I mean, you order toppings, it'll take longer.
Me: We'll just have to wait?
Him: He-he-he, yes.

Of course, this only made me want to go more

We headed out to Midwood (not as bad a trip as I suspected), walked into DiFara's, and immediately ordered a two pies (one regular, half-plain/half garlic, one square, half-plain/half-pepperoni). Despite the horror stories of hour-long waits for pizza, everything went smoothly (This was during the RNC, so perhaps all his patrons were out protesting? Suckers!), and we got our pies in, say, fifteen minutes or so. While everyone had their favorites, it was when I bit into my third slice (a regular, plain one), that I thought: "This is it," and realized I was eating the best pizza I've ever had. And a pizza that was different from most of the others; at the other places I've liked, the pies have had three great elements (cheese, sauce, crust) that seem somehow separate, DiFara's has a slice that is perfectly balanced, with all the elements working together. It was just amazing. The crust is slightly thicker than standard New York variety (it's closer, apparently, to Neapolitan style), the sauce seems to be a simple cooked one, and the cheese...well, Dominic Demarco (the owner and pizza-maker), puts three mozzarellas on his pies (it seems – can’t find a straight answer): Buffalo milk mozzarella, fresh full-fat cow's milk mozzarella, and an aged mozzarella, before topping off the pie with a liberal dousing of olive oil. He also offered us a (paper) plate of freshly grated grana padana to apply to our slices. A note on the square pies: though I kept referring to them as "Sicilian" while I was there, they are not nearly as doughy or thick, and are only a bit thicker than the regular round variety. The big difference is that they are cooked in greased pans, which does amazing things to the crust. It was just great pizza.

Note: There’s no alcohol served at DiFara’s, but you can bring your own.

Update: I've gone back to DiFara's four or five times since, and have always had to endure THE WAIT. Yeah, what everyone says is true: It can take an hour to get a pizza.

Pizza Quest: Westchester

2006-06-08T08:03:00.000-04:00

Johnny's Pizzeria in Mount Vernon –
****

I'm pretty sure that one of those universally acceptable principles is the idea that parents should want the best for their children. Of course, what "the best" means is largely up for grabs. Some choose such nebulous and unsatisfying concepts as instilling "values" or a "work ethic" as the best. From an early age, my notion has always been more concrete, say, things like candy or money. So, when we went to Johnny's Pizzeria in Mt. Vernon, a scant seven or eight minutes from the house in which I grew up, I was shocked both at how good it was (oh, is it good: Tara rates it the best she's had, I put it very near the top) and by the fact that I'd spent the first eighteen years of my life thinking that Crestwood Pizza by the train station was the way pizza should taste when an astonishing, far-superior alternative was located only ten minutes away. How could this abuse occur?

I decided to confront my mother with this charge, assuming that she'd plead ignorance. The truth was far more disturbing.

"I went to a great pizza place last night."
"Where?"
"Johnny's in Mt. Vernon."
"Oh, Johnny's! I've eaten there a thousand times!"

It wasn't ignorance; they simply didn't care. Sigh.

Anyway, now that I've outted my parents as the selfish ogres they are, I can talk about Johnny's. Eight of us (mostly newcomers), had four pizzas: Plain, half-pepperoni/half sausage and mushrooms, fresh garlic, half pepperoni/half plain. Incredibly thin, crisp crust with light charring. A thin layer of plain mozzarella (no fresh on the menu, so far as I could tell), topped with a thin layer of simple tomato sauce. The toppings were excellent (I didn't manage to grab a slice of sausage and mushroom). The garlic was strong and tasty, with large chucks sprinkled evenly over the pizza, and the pepperoni was a little on the thick side, and was spicy and not oily. Minor complaints: I'd love to try fresh mozzarella on it, our fourth pie was not quite as crisp as the others. Bonus: The cheapest place so far, easier to get to than you'd imagine (30 minutes on the Metro-North, a ten-minute walk from the station), and has a review from 1975 hanging up. Extra Bonus: I saw an albino squirrel on the walk from the train.

Update: returned a couple weeks later with a different group of people. Result was the same. Damn fine pizza.

Update Update: I've been back several times, and it's been consistently great.

Pizza Quest: New Haven

2006-06-08T08:01:00.000-04:00

Sally’s –
**1/2

Modern Apizza –
**

It’s an old saw: You like the pizza you grew up with. If you grew up in Chicago, Chicago-style is your favorite and New York will never really compare. I disagree. I grew up with “NY slice joint” pizza, but my favorites have a bit of a Neapolitan edge to them (DiFara’s and Una Pizza Napolitana) or are made in a coal-oven. Some might call this splitting hairs (it’s all in the New York family), but I don’t think so. These are distinct entities, and love of one does not predicate love of the other. Also: Are we supposed to believe that this only applies for pizza or am I supposed to, for example, forever hunger for the hamburgers (gigantic, nearly round affairs with a coat of Worcestershire sauce) I had as a youth? Because I don’t -- give me flat and crispy any day. This is all a preface to the following: I wasn’t crazy about New Haven pizza.

Tara, John, and I headed to New Haven following a wedding in Norwalk and snagged lunch at Modern Apizza and dinner at Sally’s (My suggestion of a post-dinner pie at Pepe’s was met with groans and scowls. Whatever.). The pies were similar. Both places had irregular, large almost-circles, cut into extremely narrow wedges. While cooked in a coal oven, the bottoms of both crusts were pale and not very crispy (the outside crusts had some decent charring, Sally’s moreso). The only signs of charring on the bottom crusts were from the semolina used on the pizza peel (the ball bearings that allow the pie to roll into the oven) – basically there was a burnt grit clinging to the bottom of the pie. My biggest complaint was the cheese. It had been cooked till brown, and didn’t so much top the pizza as pave it over. In the sauce department, Sally’s wins (pretty handily). It had good tomato flavor and hadn’t dried out as much as Modern’s. We also split a small clam and garlic pie at Modern. It was good, but suffered the same crust problems as the “plain” (in New York parlance, or “cheese” in New Haven-ese). I really wanted to like New Haven pizza; it’s the oldest American pizza tradition outside of New York, it’s located close enough that I could convince myself I to travel there every few months to have it, and all the cool kids like it. And yet…not so much. Sorry, New Haven, I’ll be back to try Pepe’s when my knowitallism kicks in, but I won’t be happy about it

It should be noted that Tara and John had a far more positive view of the pizzas than I did. Tara even put it in her top five. She is clearly insane.

Pepe's - Bridgeport, Ct.
***

Yes, yes. I know the original Pepe's is in New Haven, and, yes, I know I haven't been there...but I was in Bridgeport. What do you want? Cunningham took me and Tara to Pepe's, where the pies are irregularly shaped, sliced into narrow wedges, covered in strange toppings, and ginormous. Oh, and they're pretty good, too. It was in the same pizza family as Modern Apizza and Sally's (unsurprisingly), but was a bit better than either. Again, the crust wasn't charred on the bottom the way I like it (though it was a coal oven, what gives, Connecticut?), the cheese was slightly overcooked to my tastebuds, and it was a bit chewier than I prefer, but it was quite good. We got a small white clam pie (excellent) and a large (meaning: huge) pie split between plain and bacon (good). Bacon? Yeah, bacon, pancetta's unruly, nitrite-filled cousin. The bacon was a bit much, I have to admit, but the pie was pretty tasty. Bridgeport, like the New Haven location, also has a line to get in. We waited a good half-hour early on a Saturday evening. While waiting we looked in on those who were already eating, comfortable and warm, and felt deep stabs of envy. So, if you want pretty good pizza and an opportunity to break the tenth commandment, head to Pepe's in Bridgeport!

Pizza Quest: Mail Order Chicago

2006-06-08T07:59:00.000-04:00

Lou Malnati's - Chicago
No stars, because I can’t really judge, but I’d order it again.

I was ready to dislike Chicago-style pizza. It seemed like, well, the Cubs of pizza. It didn't merit the intense frothing-at-the-mouth craziness that I could easily muster for California-style (the Red Sox, if you will), because, well, it's barely pizza. I mean, it's cute that they think it's a real, grown-up pie and everything, but, c'mon...you need a fork-and-knife to eat it. Steak: fork and knife. Pizza: hands. It's science. So, it was basically a whim when I ordered four pies online from Lou Malnati's (Why, if it were merely a whim, did I order four pies? One - Shipping per pie is a lot cheaper with four. Two - You don't know me very well, do you?). The pies (plain, sausage, pepperoni, and supreme) arrived parbaked, packed with dry ice in a Styrofoam cooler two days after I placed my order. Tara and I had the plain one first, and much to my surprise we liked it. Quite a lot. Tasty chunks of tomato and sauce topped a massive oozy slab of mozzarella cheese. The crust was flaky and buttery and the pie had a heavy sprinkling of parmesan. Really, really good.

There are problems, however (I imagine most of these disappear if you are actually eating your pizza in Chicago). First, it's hard to tell when it's done (it arrives pretty much golden brown). I wound up simply pressing my index finger into the center of the pie till I burned myself. Also, I kept insisting on eating it with my hands. I scowled at it, broke it into pieces, told it to "act like a pizza," but no: fork and knife it was. Sausage came second and was less enjoyable. They roll out a sheet of sausage in between the cheese and sauce layers. While perhaps tasty at one point in its existence, the sausage wound up tough and chewy. Also, the pie stuck to the bottom of the tin (I haven't figured out why). Pepperoni proved better than sausage, but not really a match for the straightforward pleasure of the cheese pie. Finally, the supreme (sausage, pepperoni, mushroom, onion, and green pepper), which suffered from the same tough sausage as pie #2.

The verdict: It's pretty good. I'd take Malnatti's cheese pie over a few of the pizzerias we've been to and both of the places in my neighborhood, but will skip the sausage in the future. It is, however, something of a Pyrrhic victory for the Second City: It was good, but I wouldn't trade styles with Chicago for anything.

Free Concert Update:

2006-06-08T07:51:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 6-17-06 - Saturday Looks Good to Me, Mobius Band, Human Television, and Meneguar
2pm-6pm, East River Amphitheater

[You can view the complete, updated list here.]

Music + Video, No. 7

2006-06-06T08:49:00.000-04:00

Why do you not like The Gnarls Barkley? Perhaps you haven't heard it, yet? Yes, no? Listen: Is good. Watch original here. The Cee-lo/Danger Mouse Rorschach Video. You like, yes? No. Perhaps you like better this here. Is The Gnarls Barkley on Conan. They wear the slippers and robes. They sing slower.

What, you still don't like?

The name?

The name is silly.

That is all. You do not like name?

You silly. You silly.

You like now.

Et tu, Stephin?

2006-06-05T07:58:00.000-04:00

I've tried to make it a point to not be one of those people who gets all "Sellout! Sellout!" when a favorite artist dares dirty his or her hands by engaging the marketplace. I remember reading this essay/response by Dave Eggers about the idea of selling out and thinking, "Okay, that makes sense," and making a conscious decision not to worry about artists "keeping shit real." Since I read that (it must have been college), the entire culture seems to have decided not to worry, either. Songs from bands like Subpop's The Shins and Iron & Wine turn up relatively frequently in commercials or as background music on MTV, Dylan did a Victoria's Secret commercial (you can watch him leering here), and Devo has engaged the corporate world head on (click here, warning: audio starts playing immediately). And frankly, this didn't really bother me: Subpop's current lineup seems to have quite a few bands looking for mainstream success, Bob Dylan's Victoria Secret commercial seems kind of like another joke from an inscrutable artist, and Devo has always been made of 99.8% pure irony.

But I saw something on TV last night that got to me. It was a commercial for Cesar dog food featuring the bouncy opening of "I Think I Need a New Heart" by The Magnetic Fields. The Magnetic Fields are a product of Stephin Merritt, who seems to say whatever comes to mind, and have little care for what happens (here's a recent article on Merritt, and how some things he's said have lead to charges of racism). By most reports, Merritt is a nightmare to interview, as he'll ignore questions he thinks are stupid. He's smart as hell, his music is quirky (in the sense that it's made with its creator's quirks on full display), and he makes music that is pretty far outside the mainstream. And said music is now being used to hawk dog food.

I think I finally understand why people get annoyed at artists "selling out." It's not that I'll be unable to enjoy the dog food song anymore (seeing it in the commercial has made me listen to it two or three times, and it's still a very good song), it's that it makes it clear that an artist I admire is human. I like to think that Merritt lives in a bare, white-walled studio apartment, sleeps on top of a pile of 78s he bought at garage sales, and subsists on a daily crust of bread. His only income is from fans who press bills into his hands when he walks down the street. He's being evicted, because the neighbors can't get through the camp of journalists outside his building, waiting to capture him saying something "controversial." But that, clearly, isn't true. It's not that I want him to be poor, it's that I want to believe he's an artist purely for the sake of his art. I want to believe that he's not engaging the marketplace in any way, when in reality, every time he releases a record (even if it's on an indie label), he's doing just that. And the dog food commercial made it clear: Stephin Merritt sells music for a living. I shouldn't be mad at him for it when I'm lucky enough to be a consumer, too.

Link #3: Pixies + x = Awesomeness

2006-06-02T08:17:00.000-04:00

What would songs by The Pixies sound like, if done by other artists? Like this.

Prince doing "Hey," is my favorite.

[Thanks, Roger, and mefi.]

Link #2: Best Toy Ever

2006-06-02T08:11:00.000-04:00

From this line of toys at FAO Schwartz, we have this guy:

Albino Squid - Friends With You Collection

Albino Squid is a jerk. He is a useful friend in that he reminds you how not to act. If you are a jerk, rejoice, you’ve met your new teammate. He wants to kick the butt of all your competitors and help you rule the world. He is the solution to all your problems.

This product recommended for 7 yrs and above.[Thanks, Charlotte]

Link #1: Mansquito!

2006-06-02T08:07:00.000-04:00

The best movie "review" ever. Mansquito.

[Thanks, David]

Bronx Cowgirl - No. 6 [red + sun]

2006-06-01T07:48:00.000-04:00

Free NYC Summer Concerts

2006-05-31T07:31:00.000-04:00

This is for 2006, for 2007, click here.

[This is a list of free summer concerts in New York City that seem interesting to me. I will update this page periodically. I will not be attending all, or even most of these. If I've missed something - I'm sure I have - please tell me.]

Thursday, 6-1-06 - A NY Bluegrass Tribute featuring Ricky Skaggs
7PM, Castle Clinton*

Friday, 6-2-06 - Super Furry Animals
7PM, South Street Seaport, Pier 17
[Why don't I like Super Furry Animals as much as everyone else does? It's noisy. It's pop. I like both of those things.]

Sunday, 6-11-06 - Bettye LaVette
4:45, Madison Square Park, part of the Big Apple BBQ
[Soul singer. See her. Eat BBQ.]

Tuesday, 6-13-06 - Eels w/Smoosh
7PM, World Financial Center Plaza
[Eels are pretty great. They played Letterman in pajamas.]

Wednesday, 6-14-06 - Ralph Stanley w/Tres Chicas
7PM, Rockefeller Park
["O, Death! Ooo-oooo, Death!" I love "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?"]

Saturday, 6-17-06 - Saturday Looks Good to Me, Mobius Band, Human Television, and Meneguar
2pm-6pm, East River Amphitheater
[I honestly only know Saturday Looks Good to Me...but they're kind of awesome. Phil Spector-ey, lo-fi, Indie rock.]

Saturday, 6-17-06 - Rhett Miller (of Old 97's), Teddy Thompson, Ollabelle
4PM, Central Park summerstage
[Honestly, most interested in Ollabelle. Young(ish) folks singing old timey music. Their debut album had two Blind Willie Johnson songs on it. Who does that?]

Tuesday, 6-20-06 - Son Volt
7PM, World Financial Center Plaza
["Livin' right is easy, what goes wrong yer causin' it." Jay Farrar was in Uncle Tupelo. He started Son Volt; Jeff Tweedy started Wilco. Jeff Tweedy got weird, he stayed the same.]

Sunday, 6-25-06 - Canada Day featuring Feist, Buck 65, Jason Collett
3PM, Central Park Summerstage
[I saw Feist open for Bright Eyes. She's pretty good. And Mushaboom is a great song with a neat video]

Friday, 6-30-06 - TV on the Radio, etc.
6:30PM, Prospect Park Bandshell
[I saw TV on the Radio once. Kinda Meh about them. But I think it was at Siren Festival. So it's not really fair to judge.]

Sunday, 7-2-06 - Seu Jorge, Jose Gonzalez, etc.
3PM, Central Park Summerstage
[Yes, I only know him as the guy from "Life Aquatic." Hate the game, not the player. Wait.]

Tuesday, 7-4-06 - Belle and Sebastian
3:30PM, Battery Park
[They're lovably sad Scottish sprites. With the best song about Mike Piazza ever. How many songs are there about Mike Piazza? A million.]

Thursday, 7-6-06 - Mates of State
7pm, Castle Clinton*

Thursday, 7-13-06 - Okkervil River
7pm, Castle Clinton*

Thursday, 7-13-06 - Yo La Tengo
7:30PM, Prospect Park Bandshell
[Saw them at Battery Park last year. They're pretty great. Eh? Eh?]

Sunday, 7-16-06 - Siren Festival
Noon-9PM, Coney Island
[Gigantic Crowds? Yessir. Indie Rock? Yessir. Bad Acoustics? Ya-huh.]

Thursday, 7-20-06 - Sugar Hill Gang
7PM, South Street Seaport, Pier 17

Thursday, 7-27-06 - Hold Steady
7pm, Castle Clinton*
[Franklin says they're great in concert. I like their CD. Sort of like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band all banged up and dented to hell.]

Thursday, 7-27-06 - Dracula w/Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet
7:30PM, Prospect Park Bandshell

Friday, 8-18-06 - The Box Tops ft. Alex Chilton
7PM, South Street Seaport, Pier 17
["My baby, she wrote me a letter." Alex Chilton is - more famously? - also the leader of Big Star. Love him.]

Friday, 8-25-06 - Ted Leo + the Pharmacists
7PM, South Street Seaport, Pier 17
[I saw Ted Leo at Siren Festival a couple years ago, and loved him. He's great. You'll love him, too.]

*The Concerts at Castle Clinton require you to pick up free tickets (limit of two per person) at 5PM on the day of the show.

You should verify these times/dates before going. It's a long summer, thing's change, sometimes it rains:

Big Apple BBQ
Celebrate Brooklyn
Central Park Summerstage
East River Music Project
River to River Festival (World Financial Plaza, South Street Seaport, Bryant Park, inc. Castle Clinton)
Siren Festival

An Open Letter to the Critics Who Gave X-Men 3 a Good Review

2006-05-30T08:08:00.000-04:00

Dear Critics Who Gave X-Men 3 A Good Review,

Why did you give X-Men 3 a good review? You said things like it is “terrifically entertaining” (Joe Morgenstern, WSJ) and that Brett Ratner “sure knows how to put on a show” (Elizabeth Weitzman, NY Daily News). Why did you say these things when they are untrue? Right now you, Critics Who Gave X-Men 3 A Good Review, are probably saying to yourselves, “Oh, great, another Internet fanboy who’s upset because Magneto’s helmet is a different shade of purple in the movie,” but you give me too much (or too little) credit. One needn’t compare this movie to the comic or even to the first two movies to know that it is bad; X-Men 3 is bad on its own terms. This is a movie that has a character move the Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz to move a group of, I don’t know, fifty to three hundred people there, instead of, say, taking a boat. This is a movie that makes it terribly unclear whether there are fifty or three hundred people standing on the Golden Gate Bridge when this happens. This is a movie where the Golden Gate Bridge starts moving in the daytime and lands in the daytime, but a shot later, when people start walking off the bridge, it’s nighttime. And those problems are all in one five minute sequence. And you praised it. Why did you praise it when it is so bad?

The movie is a mess, a big, dumb, empty-headed mess. Problems are created to be resolved seconds later. Characters’ relationships are never clear. The geography and timeframe of the movie are both severely confused. It’s ugly and garish both in the way it looks and in its morality. It’s poorly edited. Halle Berry is in it. The script is constructed out of the clichés they left out of other movies (the president says both “May God have mercy on us all,” as well as “They want a war, we’ll give them a war.“). And it looks cheap.

And you gave it a good review. And a million-billion people (including me) went to see it this weekend based at least in part on your good review. Why did you do this? This means that, partially because of you, another, likely even worse X-Men movie will come out in a couple of years, and then maybe another. And then, the franchise will be dead, and people will say things like, “Comic book movies are big and dumb, like ‘Batman and Robin’ and ‘X-Men 5: The Final Solution,’” instead of, “That was a surprisingly good, well-made comic book movie.” Do you want this to happen?

Just wondering,
randominnyc

PS - I hate you.

Helpful Comments from Tom Waits to Contestants on American Idol from the Aborted Episode Where he was Supposed to be the Guest (Manilow Filled in)

2006-05-25T20:45:00.000-04:00

- To Elliott on performing "Make it Rain" - "Just keep your hands at ten and two. Then let go of the wheel."
- To Kat on performing "Train Song" - "You're shooting pool at a joint on Hollywood Boulevard and you realize you left your front door open. When you come home, the place is overrun with strays. Dogs. And ladies."
- To Chris on performing "Cold Water" - "Sing it like a baked Alaska."
- To Pickler on performing "Ninth and Hennepin" - "You remind me of a girl I took shop class with at Roosevelt High in San Bernadino."
- To Paris on performing "Shore Leave" - "Singapore is no place for a girl like you. Make it count."
- To Taylor on performing "Earth Died Screaming" - "I like your dancin'. When you dance during this song, think about never having pumpkin pie again."

The Dave Hill Explosion!

2006-05-25T10:39:00.000-04:00

Last night, I saw the Dave Hill Explosion at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater (I've only been there a couple of times, and I keep forgetting how awesome and awesomely cheap it is - $5!). Dave Hill is a comic, and the Dave Hill Explosion is his kinda talk show. He "dances" to his theme song. He interviews people. He acts sort of like Chris Farley in that SNL skit where he interviewed Paul McCartney. His guests last night were Malcolm Gladwell of "Blink" and "Tipping Point" fame, Walter Schreifels of the Gorrilla Biscuits (whom I've never heard, because hardcore scares me), and Fred Armisen. Fred Armisen was introduced as and came out dressed as Saddam Hussein (a salt and pepper beard, a suit, and a white shirt), pointed at everyone, played the guitar a little and talked like a Cockney rock singer for the entire interview. The exchange I enjoyed most (from memory, certainly not verbatim):

Saddam: I like New York, yeah. But it's more of a winter/autumn city, y'know? Summer - it's just brutal, yeah.
Dave Hill: Wait, isn't Baghdad hot?
Saddam: It's not so bad with the air conditioning.

Dave Hill also played this commercial. I laughed out loud, but the audio is probably not safe for work.

Schmaltzapalooza

2006-05-25T08:24:00.000-04:00

So, last night's season finale of American Idol might be the high point for lowbrow TV. It was kind of like what I want Vegas to be: over the top and deeply stupid, but rigidly professional. Anyway, at some point in the past year, two things happened:

1 - It became totally respectable to go on American Idol (Prince and Mary J. Blige performed).
2 - Clay Aiken turned into Harold from "Harold and Maude".

Bronx Cowgirl - No. 5 [red + white]

2006-05-24T07:27:00.000-04:00

An Imagined Phone Conversation

2006-05-23T07:25:00.000-04:00

[An imagined phone conversation between Gael Garcia Bernal and his agent.]

Agent: Hey, Gael, how's it going?
Gael: It's okay.
Agent: Great. Did you get those two scripts I sent you?
Gael: Eh...which ones?
Agent: Well, one, is a romantic comedy about Hispanic-American life with massive crossover potential, and the other one is really creepy with lots of kinky sex and absolutely no mainstream appeal.
Gael: Oh, yes. Yes. I read them both...
Agent: So, any interest?
Gael: Yes. I am interested in - uh - the first one.
Agent [surprised]: Oh. The first one. Oh! Uh...great! Great! I'll give 'em a call.
Gael: Wait. The first one was the kinky sex one, right?
Agent: No, Gael. The first one was the romantic comedy.
Gael: No, sorry. I don't want that one. I want the kinky sex one.

[Beat.]

Agent: Of course you do.
Gael: I read the kinky sex one first, so I had that in my head as "the first one."
Agent: Gotcha. I'll give them a call.
Gael: Thank you.
Agent: Can I ask you a question?
Gael: Of course.
Agent: Uh, do you hate me?

[Gael thinks for a second.]

Gael: Yes. I do.
Agent: Good. To. Know. Thanks. Have a good one.
Gael: You, too.

[The End.]

Amusing T-shirts Spotted at Saturday's Mets/Yankees Game

2006-05-22T07:18:00.000-04:00

- Our Bleachers Have Beer
- I Root For Two Teams: The Mets, And Whoever The Yankees Are Playing
~~- Vote for Pedro~~
- Jeter Drinks Wine Coolers

An Imagined Conversation

2006-05-21T15:53:00.000-04:00

[An imagined conversation between Paul Auster and Jonathan Lethem.]

Auster: I love Brooklyn.
Lethem: I love it, too.

[Beat.]

Auster: I think I love it more than you do.
Lethem: No.
Auster: Yeah.
Lethem: Why?
Auster. I don't know. You seem conflicted about it.

[Beat.]

Lethem: "The New York Trilogy" is overrated.
Auster: "Fortress of Solitude" is pretentious.
Lethem: Did you just call me pretentious? That's rich. "Hey, pot, kettle's on the phone for ya."
Auster: Your prose is purple.
Lethem: Yours is dumb. Oh, oh, excuse me: Hemmingway-esque.

[Beat.]

Lethem: Why do we fight like this?
Auster: I don't know.

[Beat.]

Auster: I wish the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn.
Lethem: Me, too. Wanna go to Coney Island?
Auster: Sure.

[The End.]

City of New York - Semi-Archaic Spellynge Division

2006-05-21T15:50:00.000-04:00

[city of new york stadia division she stadium]

[placeholder: so that's what latin america looks like]

2006-05-19T06:35:00.000-04:00

[placeholder: if i knew you, i would love you]

2006-05-19T06:32:00.000-04:00

[devoe with the assist]

Music + Video, pt. 6

2006-05-17T08:46:00.000-04:00

I wrote about how much I loved seeing Bettye Lavette in concert here, and just noticed that a video of her on Letterman doing Dolly Parton's "Little Sparrow" is available here (warning, a Realplayer video will immediately begin playing). Also, she'll be playing June 11th (Day 2) of the Big Apple BBQ according to Brooklyn Vegan.

Bronx Cowgirl - No. 4 [straw hat]

2006-05-17T07:42:00.000-04:00

The Proposition

2006-05-16T07:54:00.000-04:00

I saw "The Proposition" last night. All the reviews I've read stress how violent the movie is, and they are completely right to do so. It's not just violent (especially not in the arch, violent-in-quotes way that most action movies are), it's brutal. There were several scenes that made me grit my teeth and squint. There were several others where a good portion of the audience inhaled sharply. The sound effects alone are severely repellent in several scenes. It's a disturbing movie. And it's also really, really smart, and very good. Roger Ebert compared it on his show to "Blood Meridian," Cormac McCarthy's excellent and grotesque novel about, to quote the succinct Amazon review, "bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s." While "The Proposition" takes place in Australia, it inhabits the same moral universe as McCarthy's book. Life is nasty, brutal, and short.

But where the oft-quoted Hobbes had at least a minimal faith in the ability of government to make life better, "Blood Meridan" and "The Proposition" have none. It's one of the basic tenets of Post-Colonial thought that in colonizing, whatever "moral authority" a liberal, democratic nation has at home is lost. Basically, you can have universal suffrage and freedom of the press, but when you try to take it on the road, you're going to wind up with blood on your hands; your freedoms at home become empty shells when you violate them overseas. Literature has been telling us this since at least "Heart of Darkness," (hell, "Candide" satirized this impulse - among other things - a hundred-plus years before Conrad.), and yet we can always use another lesson. There's a wonderful exchange between two characters (The names are elided as it may lead you to figure out something minimally spoiler-ish.):

1: They're hanging Mikey come Christmas.
2: When's Christmas?

I think it's a brilliant bit of writing. The fact that the government is going to hang someone on Christmas (take that, Prince of Peace!) is telling, and the idea that one could lose track of when Christmas is is amazing. But this little exchange also highlights what some see as a problem of the movie. Written by Nick Cave, it's more than a little portentous, but, to me, it's the sort of movie that makes a virtue of being un-subtle. Everything is graphic, everything is overblown, everything is "about" something. When I was completely submerged in this grandiose storytelling mode, I lost myself in the film's repugnant worldview. I've read reviews that put this film in the same area as "Unforgiven." That, to me, couldn't be more wrong-headed. In "Unforgiven" every hooker comes complete with a heart of gold, and there are no bad people, only badasses. Here, even the shopkeepers are capable of evil...or at least capable of being complacent in the face of it. There's no joy (shameful or otherwise) in the killings in "The Proposition," and no one to root for, either. There's only disgust at the violent, miserable state of the world. Captain Stanley, played by Ray Winstone with an odd, affecting softness to him, says at the beginning, "I will civilize this land," and it sounds like a boastful imperial promise. A few minutes later he repeats it, and it sounds hollow. It's meaningless and impossible; it's a worthless notion, and he knows it. A civilization that arises from such misery is tainted at birth, by being born.

Hypothetical Sufjan Stevens Albums - No. 12

2006-05-15T08:20:00.000-04:00

Tennessee by Sufjan Stevens

1 - A Self-Guided Tour of Graceland (in Portuguese)
2 - Riding Around in Circles With Red Grooms
3 - You've Got To Drive Through Pigeon Forge To Get To Dollywood
4 - See Rock City
5 - Vanderbilt O! Vanderbilt
6 - Burning Lynchburg For The Charcoal
7 - The Ghost Of Johnny Cash Roams the Hendersonville Kroger Parking Lot
8 - Looking Down From The World's Fair Needle, All I Saw Was Orange
9 - They Aren't Kidding About Prince's Hot Chicken
10 - Who Set Fire To The World's Largest Wooden Bucket In Murfreesboro?
11 - We All Live In A Parallelogram Universe, How 'bout Y'all?
12 - Good Roads To Bad Schools
13 - Twenty Bucks Says Andrew Jackson Would Have Kicked Davy Crockett's Ass
14 - Let's Go Caving! Blue Springs! Camp's Gulf! Scott's Gap! Watch Out for the Bats!!!
15 - The Chattanooga Choo-Choo, or, Why Can't We Just Go To the Aquarium? pt. 1
16 - Pat Boone, the Real Bell Witch
17 - The Tennessee Valley Authority Wants You To Turn It Down or, Lights Out In Lebanon
18 - The Seven State Songs
19 - My Favorite Part Of Nashville is the Nekkid People In The Roundabout
20 - The Bellsouth Batman Building Watches Over Us or, Bruce Wayne Makes the Right Call

[from John Brassil and his daughter Jil]

For the rest of the hypothetical Sufjan Stevens Discography, click here

[placeholder: block]

2006-05-05T07:17:00.000-04:00

America: The Good Parts Version

2006-05-04T21:15:00.000-04:00

1 - The Velvet Underground
2 - "Profiles in Courage", and the controversy regarding its authorship
3 - Sly and the Family Stone
4 - "Jaws"
5 - 24 Hour Supermarkets
6 - Ty Cobb and the "krauthead incident"
7 - Catfish
8 - "The Wizard of Oz"
9 - Johnny Cash
10 - Disney World
11 - The fact that we didn't get around to making the "Star Spangled Banner" the official national anthem till 1931
12 - The fact that the we stole the melody to the "Star Spangled Banner" from "To Anacreon in Heaven"
13 - "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service"
14 - Independent minor league baseball
15 - "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe
16 - The sound of Orson Welles hitting bottom
17 - The Garrett Morris/Chevy Chase interview sketch from Saturday Night Live
18 - LL Cool J
19 - The 18th Amendment & the 21st Amendment
20 - A Frosty at Wendy's
21 - The Interstate Highway System
22 - "This Machine Kills Fascists"
23 - “The Godfather" and "The Godfather II"
24 - Roberto Clemente
25 - Flagpole sitting
26 - The false start followed by laughing on "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream”…plus the rest of the song
27 - Mike Tyson
28 - Buster Douglas
29 - The Chrysler Building
30 - The lyrics to "You're the Top"
31 - Emily Dickinson
32 - Immigration
33 - Benjamin Franklin
34 - Google
35 - The music of Stephen Foster
36 - "Pet Sounds" by The Beach Boys
37 - The Western
38 - Walker Percy
39 - Frederick Law Olmsted
40 - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
41 - Get Your War On
42 - Drive Thru Liquor Stores
43 - "Double Indemnity", in particular Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity"
44 - The fade
45 - The Shakers
46 - Flying over the Grand Canyon
47 - Philip K. Dick
48 - American pro sports teams being “World Champions”
49 - P.T. Barnum
50 - Terry Gilliam
51 - Edward Hopper paintings, and, yes, that includes "Nighthawks"
52 - Noah Webster and his spelling reforms
53 - Bourbon
54 - Robert Heinlein as a respected political theorist
55 - Hank Williams (Senior only)
56 - Andy Kaufman
57 - Oyster Po’ Boys
58 - Rat tails
59 - Ralph Bakshi
60 - “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis Presley
61 - The Sears Tower
62 - Ambrose Bierce and his "Devil's Dictionary"
63 - Walker Evans
64 - Showers with decent water pressure
65 - "Long Day's Journey into Night" by Eugene O'Neil
66 - "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens
67 - "The Simpsons"
68 - "Appetite for Destruction" by Guns N Roses
69 - Javelinas
70 - Laura Ingalls Wilder
71 - "Dr. Strangelove"
72 - Blind Willie Johnson and his astonishingly sad biography
73 - Ranch Dressing
74 - Tod Browning's "Freaks"
75 - The Triple Crown
76 - "He's a Rebel" by the Crystals
77 - Stephen Sondheim
78 - Mad magazine back cover fold-ins
79 - Hobo chalk graffiti
80 - The Millerite Movement
81 - T.S. Eliot’s anglophilia
82 - Muscle cars
83 - Lee Marvin
84 - The Sons of Lee Marvin
85 - Royal Crown Cola
86 - Air conditioning
87 - Alcatraz
88 - The back of the bag recipe for Nestle's Tollhouse Cookies
89 - Beyonce
90 - "Everyday" by Buddy Holly
91 - "Seduction of the Innocent"
92 - William Petersen
93 - Morrisey's Hispanic fanbase
94 - Stax and Motown
95 - Soul music not on Stax or Motown
96 - "Blazing Saddles"
97 - The puns on "The Flintstones"
98 - Matthew Barney went to Yale on a football scholarship
99 - "Evil Dead II"
100 - The Ponzi Scheme

[devoe and franklin with the assist.]

Music + Video, pt. 5

2006-05-03T22:13:00.000-04:00

Jenny Lewis is the lead singer of Rilo Kiley, a rock/country/pop act that is pretty great (you can watch the video for the kind of upbeat "Portions for Foxes" here). Her voice has an odd quality to it, where it sounds like she might cry - just a little - at any moment. So, she's done a solo(ish?) album called "Rabbit Fur Coat," which is much more country and much slower moving than most Rilo Kiley stuff (or the recent stuff, anyway). And she went on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic to promote it. And KCRW put it (like all other performances) up on their site here.

The performance is a little uneven (maybe it's the album), but it's always pretty and her voice holds it all together.

[placeholder: cab a nice day]

2006-05-03T22:04:00.000-04:00

Bronx Cowgirl - No. 3 [green + fringe]

2006-05-03T22:01:00.000-04:00

Music + Video, pt. 4

2006-05-03T21:37:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you hear something so dumb that it goes through dumb and comes out the other side as profound. Maybe not profound, but awesome. "I Want You So Hard (The Boy's Bad News)" by The Eagles of Death Metal is one of those things. I [heart] it. Eagles of Death Metal is one of those bands made up of people who may or not be in other bands that may or may not be more popular than this band at any given moment (I'm looking at you, New Pornographers). Anyway. The video for "I Want You So Hard (The Boy's Bad News)" has the same dumb/brilliant ratio as the song, itself.

You can watch a Windows Media Version here. Or look here for other options. Or you can watch them perform it live on Leno here with two drummers. Two drummers!

Also, doesn't the lead singer look kind of like the guy in the coffeeshop in New Hampshire from the Sopranos? You know who I mean.

[placeholder: internets]

2006-05-03T07:55:00.000-04:00

Shake Shack

2006-05-03T07:17:00.000-04:00

[The Shake Shack wait as internal monologue with occasional conversation.]

It can't possibly be worth the wait. What if it is? Look at all these people. Maybe they know something. This is why everyone voted for Kerry in the primary. "They have to have a good reason. Surely, the good people of Iowa have their reasons." But this is only a hamburger. Not the presidency.

[A Hispanic woman comes up and talks to Tara. Tara looks at me and says, "She was asking if it was free. I told her, 'No. Just hamburgers.'" You can almost see the woman thinking, "Crazy gringos."]

This line doesn't move fast. If anyone ever says, "Yes, but the line moves," I'm going to say, "But not very fast." There are way too many little dogs here. And way too many people with T-shirts for obscure bands. Oh, I'm wearing a Tenacious D shirt. Does that count as obscure...enough?

[Tara says, "I'm going to get a Jamba Juice," and does. We are now getting refreshments to wait on a line.]

I am looking at a Wendy's. There is a Wendy's across the street. Could this possibly be 45 minutes and ten dollars better than Wendy's? I just don't get getting all excited about a good burger. You can make a good burger at home pretty easily. Fries are a bitch, true. But a burger isn't like pizza. Pizza takes, like, a particular set of skills. And hours to make. Waiting 45 minutes at a pizza shop would make sense...'cos it's still, like, five times quicker and a hundred times easier than making it yourself. Okay, maybe it wouldn't make sense, but DiFara's is still worth it.

[We get to the front, I order, I tell them "Kevin H."]

That's a little annoying, homespun-y nonsense. "You're not just a number to us. You're Kevin H. We're going to hang out all the time, Kevin H." Ach! There's another line. I have to wait on another, smaller line, now? I get it, everything is fresh...but you can hypothesize how many burgers to put on the grill. You're a restaurant. You're doing this on purpose, Shake Shack. Creating artificial scarcity to increase desire. It's been so long that we are now approaching the point where it would almost be impossible to be worth it.

["Kevin H.!"]

Finally.

["How is it?" "It's good." "The fries are just okay." "Yeah." "Mine's really good." "Yeah, mine's really good, too. But not like life-changing." "It's good, though." "Yeah." "I don't know if it's worth 45 minutes." "Mine's good." "The shake's really good." "What is it?" "Black and white. Want some?" "Nah."]

Don't believe the hype.

[placeholder: lightning jesus]

2006-05-02T19:53:00.000-04:00

[thanks, dawn]

Zagat on Your Mother

2006-05-02T07:11:00.000-04:00

Your mother, it seems, is "so fat" that one often finds her quite literally sitting "around the house." This, combined with her "ugly" looks, makes some wonder whether or not "Halloween came early this year." Regardless, she's quite popular due to her "hardware store" pricing policy of "five cents a screw," and frequent vistiors complain that when one visits her bedroom one is likely to find "a line around the block." Be prepared to wait.

Secret Baldwin Conversation Revealed!!!

2006-05-01T06:58:00.000-04:00

Anonymous Tipster Brendan McDonald of Brooklyn writes in with the following, a randominnyc exclusive:

Apparently one of Alec Baldwin's co-stars in the Broadway production of "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" left the cast because Baldwin "created an unhealthy and oppressive situation." As reported in The New York Times, Baldwin admits to having punched a wall on one occasion, but claims it was because the lack of air conditioning in the theater caused him to sweat profusely, making it difficult to see. That was the extent of Baldwin's comments to the Times, but I managed to pull a few strings and obtained this exclusive transcript of Alec Baldwin's official response to the incident (delivered backstage to the cast and crew of "Entertaining Mr. Sloane"):

Let me have your attention for a moment.

So you're talking about what? You're talking about, bitching about that wall I punched. Some son of a bitch doesn't want to act. Somebody doesn't like what I'm selling. Some broad high-tails it out of here and so forth. Let's talk about something important...

Put. That Tony. Down. A Tony's for actors only. Do you think I'm fuckin with you? I am not fuckin with you. I'm here from Uptown. And I'm here on a mission of mercy. 'Cause the good news is you're all fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting with tonight's show.

Oh. Have I got your attention now?

Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months performances. As you all know, we lost our first actor today. Anyone want to be the second one? Second one gets stabbed with a set of steak knives. You get the picture? You laughing now? You can't close the show you're in, you can't close shit, you ARE shit, hit the bricks pal and beat it 'cause you are going out!!!
You see this watch? You see this watch?

This watch cost more than my salary for Pearl Harbor. I made a movie with Jim Carrey last year, what did you make? You see, that's who I am. And you're nothing. Nice stage manager? I don't give a shit. Good character actor? Fuck you. Go home and play with yourself. You wanna act here? Close!!

You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this how can you take the abuse you get during a matinee?! You don't like it leave. I can go out there tonight with the materials you got, get myself fifteen pay-to-play offers! Tonight! In two hours! Can you? Can you?

I'd say break a leg but you wouldn't know what to break it with if I told you. And to answer your question, pal: why am I here? I came here because Scott Ellis asked me to. He asked me for a favor. I said the real favor. Follow my advice and fire those fucking actors because a loser is a loser.

Facts about Coca-Cola Blak:

2006-04-30T17:34:00.000-04:00

- It comes in a small, glass bottle.
- It costs $1.85.
- It is supposedly a combination of coffee and Coca-Cola.
- It has a deeply unpleasant, disturbingly strong caramel flavor.
- Despite its name, it is at least as brown as regular Coca-Cola.
- If it were a person it would stay at a party while the host is cleaning up and not offer to help.
- I will not be giving up my morning Diet Coke for it.
- People who make buckets of money thought Coca-Cola Blak was a great idea.
- Spelling reform advocate and playwright George Bernard Shaw would partially approve of its name, because it removes the redundant "c" in "black," but would suggest that the Coca-Cola company hasn't gone far enough, and that "Koka-Kola Blak" would be more consistent.

[placeholder: that's some good adolescent humor]

2006-04-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

The Amen Break

2006-04-27T23:39:00.000-04:00

A thing that makes you realize how little you know about music: here. Dry, but really, really interesting (warning: video + sound in link).

And wiki has a nice little summary here.

[Fairly certain Roger sent me the video some time ago, but may have seen it on Mefi. Whoever did it, I thank you Internet, for all things good and nerdish.]

[placeholder: i want to live in a factory in the south bronx]

2006-04-27T20:22:00.000-04:00

Bronx Cowgirl - No. 2 [bumblebee]

2006-04-26T21:47:00.000-04:00

[three blocks away from home]

2006-04-26T20:22:00.000-04:00

Okay. Wallet. Yep. Keys. Yep. Plane Ticket. Yep. Okay, good. Good to go. I locked the door. I packed my toothbrush. Toothpaste. Bag's in the trunk. John's watching Fry. Gave him the ear medicine. Okay. Oh, shit! The iron. No. I didn't use the iron. I didn't cook anything. I didn't turn the oven on. Everything is cool. Cool. Okay.

[...]

Back door! Back door? Yep. Good. Locked it when I took out the trash.

[...]

I forgot something.

[...]

Shit. Oh, dammit. Fuck. Dammit. Shit. I didn't

Dammit! God. Fuck. Now I have to turn around. Shit. Fuckshit. Dammit. Shit. Agggh. Goddammit. I'm such a fucking idiot! Fu-uck!

Things That Make Paula Abdul Cry

2006-04-25T21:24:00.000-04:00

Tonight on American Idol, Paula was moved to tears by Elliott Yamin's performance. Here are some other things that make Paula cry:

- "Terms of Endearment"
- The song of the humble bobwhite
- Flashing yellows at intersections
- The ending of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"
- Nutmeg
- Dwelling on her own mortality

Whiskyfest 2005

2006-04-25T19:58:00.000-04:00

Gluttony seems to be getting attacked from all sides these days. There's always the standard Christian aversion to it, but recently we've been informed (yet again) that having too many choices does not lead to happiness and that we (Americans) have a tendency to fetishize, well, anything we can. Apparently, we no longer value simple enjoyment, and in our constant search for "the best" we've managed to lose touch with that which is really good. Meh. When confronted with this line of thought, I like to recall Wallace Stevens's dictum: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream." In fact, I'll do Mr. Stevens one better "...and you should really ask him if you can try every flavor."

This was my mindset when I stepped into Whiskyfest 2005, a virtual Baskin Robbins (times four or five) for adults that was held in the Marriott in Times Square a few months ago. Two friends and I forked over $95 each for the pleasure of wandering from table to table (over fifty all told) trying sample after sample of whisky (or "whiskey," if you prefer - the "e" is common in the American and Irish spelling of the word) for about four hours. None of us come close to qualifying as aficionados. I would place us all squarely in the "eager beginner" category; we each have three or four bottles at home, we like to drink it, and we want to taste a whole lot more of the stuff.

We came up with four rules for the night:

1 - Eat beforehand. Food would be served there, but it couldn't hurt to get something in your stomach.

2 - Drink plenty of water.

3 - There are buckets at every table: use them. The point is not to get drunk, but to taste as much whisky as possible. Drink enough to make a judgment and dump the rest. Seriously. I mean, unless it's really good or something. Or, you know, you just want to drink it all. Okay: Don't get too drunk.

4 - Don't drink anything you have already tried. Unless it's really good, or, you feel like it or whatever.

We entered the ballroom, holding our goodie bags (a copy of Malt Advocate magazine, a small glass with "Whiskyfest 2005" etched into it, two little hotel room bottles of booze, and a small book with a map of the tables and space to write reactions), and immediately became bewildered. Any notion we'd had of where to begin evaporated. Scotch or bourbon? Which Scotch, which bourbon? We wandered for several minutes, open-mouthed and dumb, skimming tables but unable to take a taste for some reason. We eventually settled (for no good reason) on the Isle of Jura table, which was manned by a smiling older gentleman in a kilt. We approached and I snuck a look at his nametag: Willie Tait. A Scottish guy named Willie. My brain immediately turned into a Simpsons quote generator ("What do ya mean, there's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest?!" "Willie hears ya, and Willie don't care.")

He handed us each a small pamphlet explaining the different whiskies from the Isle of Jura. "There are tasting notes here for each of them, but you can ignore them...It's all what you get out of it. Your individual palate's response to it." He turned his pamphlet to a map of Scotland and pointed.

"Here's Jura. It's next to Islay. Do ya know what the best thing about Islay is?"

We all shook our heads "no."

"Ya can see Jura from it!" He laughed and we joined in, then he squinted one eye, looked around and said, "Oh, he's a mean bastard, isn't he? And he hasn't even had a drink yet." I typically don't cotton to people speaking of themselves in the third person, but Willie pulled it off. He then went on to explain the differences between Scotches from Jura and Islay. Islay Scotches are much smokier. We tried the three different Scotches at the table (a 10 year, a 16 year, and one called Superstition, which was far smokier than the other two). The 10 year - the most straightforward of the lot, was my favorite. This is why I am an amateur. "If you want to get a sense of Islay," Willie told us, "try the Laphroig over there." We thanked him, happily, and headed for Laphroaig (pronounced "la-froyg").

"Willie is awesome."

We tasted Laphroaig (too smoky for me, almost "mesquite-y"). We made our way to Suntory, and much to my amazement the poster behind the table said "It's Suntory time." I giggled. It also said, "(c) 2003 Lost in Translation." While I felt like neither an ennui-ridden, aging actor, nor a disaffected, youthful nymph after drinking them, the whiskies were quite good. A note here is necessary: Where advanced drinkers would likely have been able to tell if a whisky had been sitting in its casks for a day too long, or had been smoked for 30 seconds too little, our amateur responses were essentially: 1) "Wow, that's amazing." 2) "Yech, too [blank] for me." 3) "That's weird...but good." 4) "Yep, tastes like whisky."

We went up to the empty Lombard table, and were met by a stone-faced guy. We looked at the selection, waiting for Stone Face to break the ice. When he didn't, my friend asked, quite innocently, "So, uh, which of these is your favorite?"

"That's a ridiculous question," Stone Face replied.

"Why?"

"'Cos it depends on when you're drinking it. It depends on why you're drinking it. You have a few girlfriends...which one of them is your favorite?" On one hand, Stone Face had a point. On the other, Stone Face was a jerk. And not just a jerk, but a jerk who puts together poor metaphors. And a jerk who is supposed to be acting as a salesman. We tried some of the whisky. It could have tasted like ambrosia (the food of the gods, not the dessert) and we wouldn't have liked it. You're a jerk, Stone Face.

This brings me to the three types of whisky pourers at Whiskyfest:

1) Pretty girls in little, black dresses.

2) Knowledgeable people who work for the distillery.

3) Salesmen who are very excited.

There are of course hybrids (pretty girls who are quite knowledgeable) and subcategories (distillery employees who are jerks; distillery employees who are nice).

The hall was grew more and more crowded, and we had to stand in line to get to the tables for samples. Who crowded the hall? Middle-aged white men in good suits (I did spot a few women, a few minorities, and a few hipsters. The oddest sociological observation I can make was that the crowd was also very Jewish. Guys in yarmulkes were common, and there were even a few men in Orthodox dress). We wandered and tried the varieties of rye whisky that were available (Old Portrero, Michter's) and generally enjoyed it, but felt that it wasn't for everyday drinking. It was very "bright" tasting, and not anywhere near as "peppery" as I had assumed it would taste (Rye, it should be noted, seems to be making something of a comeback. It should also be noted that since Rye is a variety of whisky, Don McLean's Prom-ending anthem is both annoying and redundant.). Penderyn, the first and only Welsh whisky in a century, was interesting - both straightforward and quite delicious (and the Type 2 manning the bottles was extremely helpful). Michter's "American Whiskey" was very, very good. Then A Type 1 poured us massive amounts of a $500/bottle Scotch (the amount poured generally had an inverse relationship to the price of the whisky). We were giddy, then drank it, and my response to it, I am ashamed to say, was "Yep, that tastes like whisky." A 20-something Type 3 in a velvet (!) suit poured us three varieties of Speyside. He looked and acted like Max Fisher from Rushmore. Where's Bill Murray at?

We took a break.

We sat down at a table outside the tasting area with two gentlemen who didn't object to our presence. One got up, and the other introduced himself as a "real horse's ass when it [came] to whisky." At first I figured he was a novice like us, but it was just the opposite. He was a horse's ass because he was obsessed with whisky (like the way some of those people in Into Thin Air just needed to climb Everest. Except they died. And they served as a handy metaphor for man's hubris.). He was wearing a salmon-colored shirt and had a vague twang in his voice. If I had to assign a label to him, it would be "Rich Nascar Dad." We leapt on him for information, and he supplied it mostly by mocking our pedestrian tastes (I'd been downright awestruck by how good a John MacDougall single cask whisky had been. His response: "John MacDougall's a good guy, he's worked at a lot of distilleries, but I don't know if this stuff he's got coming out with, uh, the guy in the kilt is really worth it.")

"Did you guys try Suntory?" Salmon Shirt asked.

"Yes..." I said, unwilling to give away my opinion for fear of being mocked.

"Those Japs are doing really great things. I'm being facetious; I'm not racist. Really good things, though. Oh, and if you're not into, y'know, categories where it has to be single malt...it has to be from this specific place. You should try Compass Box, that guy is doing some great things with blends."

"Oh," I thought, "He's an anti-snob snob." We had in fact tried Compass Box and liked all four of the whiskies we'd tried (Hedonism, in particular). I was both happy that I apparently had somewhat refined taste, but also a little upset that I liked the same thing as Salmon Shirt, whom I was finding more distasteful with each passing moment. He quizzed us on what we had at home, and when one of us described Maker's Mark as his everyday whisky, Salmon Shirt responded, "I like Maker's Mark. Take some of that wax, put a dot on your forehead, pretend you're an Indian."

Sigh.

We re-entered the hall for a final circuit, and found a few more whiskies we liked. A Glengoyne 16 year Scottish Oak and several of the Glenmorangie 12 year olds. They're finished in different kinds of casks for very different effects - burgundy and sherry were my favorites). We tried good Irish whiskey (Clontarf and Knappogue) and Irish whiskey that did nothing for us (Tullamore Dew). There was an announcement: "We've found a cell phone." A pause. "We've also found a set of keys." "Someone drove to this, and they're giving him back his keys," I thought. The crowd was getting drunk(er). As I washed out my glass at the Glenrothes ("Yep, that tastes like whisky.") table a massive and massively drunk man thrust his glass at me for me to pour some water into it. When I hesitated at his rudeness he said, "We're all in this together." Hmm? I poured the water and didn't make eye contact.

The night wound down and our taste buds grew exhausted. We returned to the Isle of Jura table to get Willie to make us laugh again. It was an attempt at artificially bookending the evening (our own, mild version of "doing a cattleya;" Proust would not have appreciated it), but it misfired happily. Instead of Willie, we got the distillery manager for Isle of Jura. While he did not joke around, he did take a good five or ten minutes to explain why we were tasting what we were tasting. He explained the importance of the barrels used, the stills, the amount of smoke. It was a crash course in what makes Scotch Scotch. A CNBC cameraman shot us as we listened. I did my best to look studious, but I cracked a slight smile when I imagined a voiceover saying, "Whiskyfest attracts all kinds...from the rich and well-dressed [shot of someone rich and well-dressed], to the poor and ignorant [shot of me and my Old Navy khakis]." The distillery manager finished up, and we finished our last whiskies of the night. We exchanged handshakes and thanks with him, retrieved our coats, and staggered (though not too badly) out into the Manhattan night.

"This was," one of my companions commented, "one of those rare moments when the event lives up to your expectations of it." Take that, Barry Schwartz.

Fictional Art/ists

2006-04-24T21:03:00.000-04:00

Fictional art/artists that I wish were real:

- "Unterwelt," the made-up Fritz Lang film in Don Delillo's "Underworld"
- All the brilliantly weird, non-starter stories from "if on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino
- "The Three", the Hollywood movie from "Adaptation"
- Pink, the singer in Pink Floyd's "The Wall"
- The first, famous-making novel in "Wonder Boys"
- Kilgore Trout

Fictional art/artists that I am glad will remain fictional:

- William Forrester from "Finding Forrester"
- The novel from "Sideways"
- Stillwater from "Almost Famous"
- The long, unfinished novel from "Wonder Boys"
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Jack Driscoll and any and all plays by Jack Driscoll from the new "King Kong"