The Old Style

2011-02-10T22:44:00.001-05:00

My Funny Valentine

Just in time for Valentine's Day, I make my debut on Leite's Culinaria with this goofy essay on, um, Prandicles.

2011-01-21T16:29:00.023-05:00

Drink [Dot] Think

I'm super-excited to be reading at the next Drink.Think: a showcase event for drink writers:

Come thirsty to Drink.Think, a writers’ showcase to be held on Tuesday, March 1 at 7pm, at Jimmy’s No. 43 at 43 E. 7th St., NY, NY (at 2nd Ave.) Free admission.

Come out, enjoy an artisanal ale, and hear drink and food writers read from their work about beverages – the first spoken-word event dedicated to celebrating what we drink!

Curated by wine and spirits writer Kara Newman, participants include:

Annia Ciezadlo, author, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War
Nora Maynard, cocktails and spirits columnist for Apartment Therapy Media’s The Kitchn
Lisa McLaughlin, editor, Food Republic
Anne Mendelson, culinary historian and author of Milk
Dania Rajendra, writer and culinary student
Robert Simonson, wine and cocktail writer
WR Tish, wine writer and humorist
Jason Wilson, Washington Post spirits columnist and author of Boozehound
Dave Wondrich, author of Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

2010-11-01T23:09:00.007-04:00

"The End is Near... The Signs Are Everywhere."

This past weekend I took my first trip to Washington, D.C. I'd been wanting to visit D.C. for a long time and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive" seemed like a good pretext.

Standing there in the Mall that afternoon was a little like attending a rock concert, except that the crowd was much more quiet and civil. Case in point: Someone about ten feet in front of us was holding a really large I'm really an Angrophile sign. Someone about five feet behind us was complaining that it was blocking their view of the JumboTron. A note requesting that the sign be lowered was passed forward through the crowd. The sign was accordingly lowered.

At 5'5-1/2", I could barely see the JumboTron at all, but I did enjoy the people- and sign-watching. Here are some of my favorites:


There were quite a few self-referential signs like this yellow one on the left.

Yes, the signs were all refreshingly free of spelling errors.

Friendly, mild-mannered signs such as this one were also quite common.


This one was sheer brilliance. I looked up Mark 11:12-14 when I got home: "12And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: ... 13And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. 14And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it."		"

2010-10-25T14:12:00.017-04:00

Cocktails & Film; Taxidermy & Ghosts

This past Saturday, I presented my workshop "Classic Cocktails, Classic Film" at the FilmColumbia festival in Chatham, NY. I'd gotten to know the town a bit during my residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts, and was really happy to be returning, and to be seeing the festival's - and the colony's - powerhouse of a director, Calliope Nicholas, again.

The workshop was held upstairs at the a Welsh pub on Main Street, the Peint O Grwr. Panelled in dark wood and decorated with ancient swords, skulls, and taxidermy (some highlights: a polar bear guards the main entrance, an alligator presides over the steps to the upstairs, and a cat serves as ladies' restroom attendant - see pic below), the place has a bit of a gothic feel.

And this is all with very good reason: When I asked the pub's proprietor, Tom Hope, whether the building had always housed a bar, he smiled and said it used to be a funeral parlor. Apparently bodies were embalmed in the very spot I was to give my talk. He also said that a ghost - the spirit of one of the undertaker's employees - often visited in the afternoons (my presentation was at 3:30pm), and that I'd know his presence by a telltale whiff of cigar smoke.

I don't know if the ghost dropped by or not. But if he did, I hope he enjoyed the film clips.

(If you'd like to read more, the local paper covered the event, with pics, here.)

2010-08-11T17:28:00.012-04:00

Submit to Venus

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be serving as one of the judges for Venus Zine's 1st Annual Photo Contest Sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago this September. A quarterly print magazine focusing on women in music, art, film, fashion, and DIY culture, Venus Zine is also a great place to hang out on the Web (www.venuszine.com).

The deadline for entries is September 17, 2010. Prizes will be awarded in five categories: Street Fashion, Music/Concert, Travel, Portrait, and Food. Submission is quick, painless, electronic, and--best of all--free.

If you know any photographers, please encourage them to submit!

2010-07-19T19:12:00.009-04:00

House of Blues

What is it about brilliant blue kitchens? You might remember the peacock blue of Ragdale House...and the deep turquoise of Edna St. Vincent Millay's kitchen. Well, here's another: last week I did a photographic tour of the glossy blue kitchen at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens.

2010-04-21T12:55:00.018-04:00

Classic Cocktails, Classic Film: The Sequels

This summer I'll be developing a couple of spinoffs to my Classic Cocktails, Classic Film class at the Astor Center:

2009-12-14T17:15:00.008-05:00

New for 2010

I'll be participating in a panel, "Powerful Potables" (all about beverage writing), at The Roger Smith Food Writers' Conference on February 13, 2010.

I'm also looking forward to returning to the Astor Center March 5, with my workshop "Classic Cocktails, Classic Film."

2009-09-11T11:38:00.014-04:00

Flora and Fauna

A few of us at Ragdale have been meeting at 6:30 am every weekday morning for RunSwimRun club. I'm not usually a morning person, but it's so inspiringly beautiful here, I can't help myself. We run 2 miles through a quiet residential neighborhood to Lake Michigan, swim for a bit (it was too cold in August, but September brought warmer temperatures, go figure), and then run back. And there have been a few surprises along the way:

RUN: While stretching on the front porch before our run yesterday, we spotted this young deer eating apples from one of the trees in the front orchard.

SWIM: And then, less than half an hour later, while swimming in the lake, we saw a small furry beast paddling by. My first reaction was Otter! and R's was Aquatic Squirrel!, but we eventually (and more reasonably) ID-ed it as a muskrat.

RUN: Running back, I noticed what looked like a huge styrofoam ball sitting in one of the flowerbeds across the street from Ragdale. Ghostly white, with a smooth, pristine surface, it looked man-made. It struck me as a little strange, just sitting there like that in the dirt, but I didn't think anything more of it until I saw similar ones in the woods near the Meadow Studio. Coyote repellant? Giant mothball? I had to know. I asked around at dinner time, and was amazed to learn from one of the other residents that it was in fact a Puffball fungus. (Tasty when fried in butter, I'm told.) I went back and took a few pictures of the critter this morning:

Now that I know what it is, it doesn't look like styrofoam at all, but more like a giant white button mushroom.

Here it is with my hand so you can get a sense of scale!

And here's a beauty shot of the garden where it lives.

2009-09-08T13:44:00.018-04:00

Puppet Love

"Oh my God, Puppet Bike is stalking Nora!" That's what my friend Amy said when I met up with her at the Chicago Cultural Center last Saturday.

I'd first encountered Puppet Bike the previous weekend during a quick trip into Chicago and had posted about it on facebook. M. Cyberkrunk and I had been strolling along Michigan Ave. and stumbled across the team in action. I was totally smitten. And now, here it was again, right outside the Cultural Center on Randolph. Parked and shuttered, but still most definitely Puppet Bike. Wait, I should probably tell you what Puppet Bike is...

Here they are, captured mid-performance on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf55ji3oHTk

And here are a couple of pics I took outside the Cultural Center:

Puppet Bike is the ultimate traveling show: The theatre sits on the back of a 3-wheeler bike, and the sound system, I hear, is solar-powered.

And here they are, dancing to Buddy Holly that first time I saw them, captured a little blurrily with my RAZR cellphone camera. The bunny spotted me snapping his pic and pulled out an iPhone of his own and started to take pictures of me. I couldn't stop laughing.

Check out their site. Bios of all the puppets and much, much more....

2009-09-07T06:33:00.008-04:00

Moon Walk

It was a full moon on Friday and the prairie was hung with mist. It all took on a deliciously eerie glow. A group of us went on a walk at around 9pm. I took a few pictures, but they look nothing like what I saw. My kingdom for a tripod!

A spaceship has landed. Or is that Melissa's Meadow Studio?

2009-09-06T10:43:00.011-04:00

Visuals

I'm back for a residency at Ragdale, in a big push to finish the novel. I've decided to document my stay through photos and limit my online words to a just a few captions:

Notes from the field. The "sleeping porch" off my room, with the prairie visible behind. One of many magical spots here.

Man vs. Wasp. There's a yellow jacket nest in the wall of the house just outside my window, and the place is literally a hive of activity. Cold temperatures have slowed things down a bit, but I can still sometimes hear some buzzing as I write. The other day, an exterminator showed up with a big metal stinger of his own. I'm trying to keep a neutral stance in this battle, but I do admit I have a soft spot for the black and yellow team.

2009-04-08T18:28:00.013-04:00

Shaking Winter at the Millay Colony

Last month I returned to the Millay Colony for the Arts for a week as part of the organization's "Winter Shaker" program for alums. While I was there, I put together a photo-tour of Edna St. Vincent Millay's farmhouse kitchen, which had been drastically made-over and written up in Ladies' Home Journal in 1949. You can read the piece here at Apartment Therapy Media's The Kitchn. Right now I'm working on an article for the colony's newsletter about how I spent the rest of my week. Stay tuned...

Update: My Millay newsletter essay can be found on the cover of the Spring 2009 edition here.

2008-12-31T18:58:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year!

This is a card that was just re-sent to me by my cousin Caitlin in honor of the occasion. It's a replay of the image sent out by our great-grandparents nearly 100 years ago in Trinidad.

Thanks Cait!

2008-11-04T16:42:00.007-05:00

I Happen to Like New York

I've always found New York to be at its most beautiful this time of year. The sticky haze of the summer has finally lifted, the leaves are turning, and there's a crisp kind of energy in the air.

But wow, this year, it's electric.

First there was the NYC Marathon on Sunday with crowds in the tens of thousands turning out to watch, cheer--and run. And today, just two days later, the crowds are returning for another, much bigger event: Yes, the presidential election.

I've been in the midst of strangers--lots of them--for both events this week, and it's been a great feeling. I ran the race, made calls for Obama, and voted alongside some big-hearted strangers. Yep, I happen to like this town.

2008-10-13T20:11:00.014-04:00

Words the Dog Knows

From the department of It's All Very Exciting:

My good friend and fellow Ucross resident J. R. Carpenter has just published her first novel, WORDS THE DOG KNOWS. To celebrate the launch of the book, we're having a joint reading at KGB Bar on October 23. I'll be there reading from my work, along with fellow Ucrosser Karen Russell, and fellow Conundrum author, Corey Frost. If you're in town, I hope you can join us. It's going to be fun! Here's the invite:

KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street, NYC
Thursday, October 23, 2008
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
FREE

J. R. Carpenter’s long-awaited first novel Words the Dog Knows follows the paths of a quirky cast of characters through the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. Theo and Simone set about training Isaac the Wonder Dog to: sit, come, stay. Meanwhile, he has fifty girlfriends to keep track of and a master plan for the rearrangement of every stick in every alleyway in Mile End. He introduces Theo and Simone to their neighbours. He trains them to see with the immediacy of a dog’s-eye-view. Words the Dog Knows isn't a story about a dog. It's a story because of a dog. Walking though the the jumbled intimacy of Montreal’s back alleyways day after day, Theo and Simone come to see their neighbourhood and each other in a whole new way. For more information about Words the Dog Knows or to order, please visit: http://www.conundrumpress.com/nt_carpenter.html

J.R. Carpenter is a two-time winner of the CBC Quebec Short Story Competition and a fellow of Yaddo, Ucross and The Vermont Studio Center. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and her electronic literature has been presented internationally. http://luckysoap.com

Karen Russell is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, ST. LUCY’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES (Knopf). Karen’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Zoetrope, among others. She is currently at work on a novel.

Corey Frost is the author of MY OWN DEVICES: AIRPORT VERSION (Montreal: Conundrum Press). Corey has performed his stories at Lollapalooza, The Perpetual Motion Roadshow, and at festivals around the world.

Nora Maynard is a winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts Chapter One Competition and a fellow of the Ragdale Foundation, the Millay Colony, Ucross, and Blue Mountain Center. She is a columnist for Apartment Therapy Media’s The Kitchn, and is completing her first novel, BURNT HILL ROAD.

2008-09-23T14:19:00.033-04:00

Writing Ragdale

I had an incredibly productive and restorative 4-week stay at Ragdale and somehow managed to keep up with my 50-miles-most-weeks marathon training schedule at the same time. So I'm happy to say my plans went very, very well. But a couple of unexpected things also came out of the experience:

In conjunction with Ragdale's upcoming fundraiser, I got interviewed for a local magazine, Forest & Bluff. (I did a kind of crud-tech scan of the pages and posted them on Picasa--the text is legible if you use the magnifying feature...I think...)
I put together a pictorial tour of the vintage kitchen at Ragdale House for the website I write for, The Kitchn.
I became a founding member of an organization sure to go down in history: The Ragdale RunSwimRun Team. A couple of us met weekday mornings at 6:30, ran two miles to Lake Michigan, splashed around for a bit, and then ran the 2 back. Almost enough to make me into a morning person.

2008-08-15T13:59:00.005-04:00

Now Do This...

I returned to Ragdale yesterday and am settling in for a four-week residency. I am elated. It is even more beautiful than I remembered. I brought a small stack of books with me - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, and My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor - but I'm also looking forward to stumbling upon some unexpected treasures hidden in the shelves here.

As soon as I got my laptop wifi set up in my studio, I, out of habit (addiction?), opened my browser and started looking at the various pages I always look at during the day. I have a simple web program called Now Do This tabbed as one of my homepages. I started using it recently to remind me of various tasks that need to be done. The advantage (for people like me) is that they display one by one, as they come, and then disappear one by one, as they go. No big list to distract and overwhelm.

But now that I'm away from regular life with its regular and erratic tasks and chores, there's only one item on my list: WRITE.

2008-06-30T22:16:00.005-04:00

Cross-Training

Today is Day One of the 18-week training program I've started in preparation for the NYC Marathon November 2nd.

I'm taking things up a notch this year by doing two speed-training classes a week instead of one (at least for the current 10-week session) as well taking a few private sessions with a coach in order to fix some nagging problems in my form. This year I'm hoping to peak at 50 miles a week (I ran 31 last week as a "base"). Oh, my aching carcass...

Meanwhile, in my capacity as a cocktail columnist I've been to a hands-on cocktail-designing workshop, a premium cachaca tasting, and a restaurant/housewares empire co-launch event all in the span of a few days--with a couple more looming on the near horizon.

Do these two "regimens" go together? Well, so far so good, but I'll keep y'all posted...

2008-05-30T16:29:00.012-04:00

Visuals

The other week, some friends invited me to a benefit auction for Artists Talk on Art. Who would have guessed I would actually come home with something?

I placed my first bid ever in a silent auction for this 1978 Chris Cristofaro silkscreen (I got it for a song!), and it just came back from the framer's (that cost me an opera at least.....). But I'm very happy with the finished product.

Meanwhile, my friend Johnna MacArthur sent me this link for her new video poem, SEEKER:
....And the shiso project is really taking off, with new sprouts appearing every time I look:
I think the evening calls for one of these:

2008-05-28T14:52:00.008-04:00

Shiso Fine

My head feels like a foggy mess right now, crammed full of half-baked ideas and shoddy, shaky plans.

But meanwhile on the windowsill, my shiso seeds have sprouted! (I especially like the guy on the left, who's still wearing his outgrown seed hull with pride.)

2008-04-29T00:44:00.006-04:00

What Was That Unforgettable Play?

"What is that unforgettable line?"
-Happy Days (the Samuel Beckett version)

I took a class at U of Toronto back in 1988/89 where we read all of Samuel Beckett's plays. And I liked them. Even the ones I didn't like. (What I mean by that is I liked ones like Waiting for Godot and Happy Days so much that I liked the others too because they were all cut from the same cloth, and they seemed to, somehow taken all together, hold each other up.)

In January of this year, for my birthday, I saw Happy Days--a British production, imported to BAM in Brooklyn, and I was still in love. It was still just as funny as I remembered--and as devastating. But what had changed for me was that the ideas in the play seemed so much simpler now, and it was kind of satisfying --and humbling at the same time--to remember what it was like to try to get my head around them 20 years ago.

And so I was excited to hear about Endgame coming to BAM. John Turturro, Elaine Stritch, (and some guy from The Sopranos whose name I can't remember, but to tell you the truth I never watched it anyway....). We went this last Saturday, for a preview. But while I remembered every inch of Happy Days, the only thing I remembered about Endgame was the trashcans--and oh, maybe the wheelchair...oh, but I forgot the stuffed dog. Same ideas as Happy Days, same sense of humor, but somehow dry. And I found myself getting restless, waiting for the play to end...

What I think I mean to say is: Now that 20 years have passed, I only like the plays I like.

2008-04-04T15:11:00.007-04:00

Straight Up This Week...

Liquid flowers.

2008-04-01T06:47:00.027-04:00

Things Fall Apart

If this doesn't forever brand me as an eccentric, nothing will, but yesterday I spent over 2 hours gluing together a broken piece of bark I acquired last fall in upstate New York.

I don't know what kind of tree it came from, and my notion that its delicate lace work of holes were made by a woodpecker is just a romantic guess (insects and disease are probably more likely candidates), but this piece of weather-beaten bark is one of the most beautiful sculptures I could hope to own.

It was hanging on my friend Tania's studio wall at the Millay Colony when I first saw it. I asked her if she made it (the installation she was working on at the time consisted of panels painted to resemble birch). No, she found it just as it was while walking in the woods. Wow. (Ok, I was hinting.) Weeks later, on our last day at the colony, she asked me if I wanted it. I carried it home on the train, apart from my other baggage, cradled in a paper bag.

Back in NYC, I hung the "sculpture" up in the bedroom over a light switch. It showed well against the white wall. A friend said it looked like an African mask. But then, the other day - it weighs next to nothing - as the light was flicked on, the bark crashed to the floor.

Smithereens. Some small, some large. Powdery and brittle. But I couldn't quite bear to throw them away. I put them in my desk....

This morning my fingertips are are still speckled with black bark bits in Gorilla Glue, but the sculpture is back on the wall - and just a little more, let's say, wabi sabi.

2008-03-07T16:32:00.006-05:00

Straight Up

After taking a mini food-writing vacation, I just started a new column for Apartment Therapy Media's The Kitchn. It's called STRAIGHT UP and it's--you guessed it--all about cocktails. There are still a few bugs in the site's archiving system, so you'll notice a few duplicates, but hey, at least nothing's missing.

2008-02-18T20:06:00.004-05:00

Every Four Days or Every Four Months...

I was at the laundromat the other day, a place that's both full-service and self-serve, and one of the women working there said "four t-shirts, four underpants, and four pairs of socks!" I turned to look as she slid the tiny pile into a laundry bag and knotted it at the top (actually, halfway down the bag). "That's it," she said, "the whole laundry."

I turned back to watch my clothes tumbling in the dryer and she said: "Once I had one, all socks and underwear, 56 pounds." She smiled and shook her head. "It was 132 pairs of underwear. I counted! I didn't count the socks."

2008-02-13T21:52:00.011-05:00

Be My Valentine, The Old Style Style

"I hope you slide down the banister of love without a splinter."

[Valentine cutout and pencil-written quote from my mother's childhood autograph book, Cleveland, OH, ca. 1949.]

Tomorrow night (Thurs., Feb. 14, 8pm) I'll be reading two short non-fiction pieces at Happy Ending Lounge at 302 Broome Street, as part of the Mr. Beller's Neighborhood Reading Series. Also on the bill will be Laren Stover and Meakin Armstrong.

Although the venue's in keeping with the St. Valentine's Day theme (it was the former location of a massage parlor of the same name), my stories are only peripherally so: the first one concerns highschool nostalgia at a Psychedelic Furs concert twenty years after the band's heyday; the second one partial nudity and personal embarrassment at a Chelsea storage facility.

Hope to see you there!

2008-01-25T17:48:00.000-05:00

Line of the Week

"Mitt Romney looks like an American president in a Canadian movie."

-David Letterman, January 24, 2008

That is SO bang-on. (I think you have to be Canadian to fully understand.)

2008-01-12T17:15:00.000-05:00

Line of the Week

"Are you okay? You look like you're beyond meditating."

-Random guy touching my arm after The Fred Lebow Classic (5-mile race) in Central Park this morning

2008-01-08T10:54:00.000-05:00

Odds and Beginnings/Ends

Did some great residencies at Ragdale and Millay last fall, but along the way, somehow got out of the swing of blogging. So please bear with me while I play some quick catch-up since my last post:

On the Internets

"The Celluloid Pantry: The Final Wrap-Up" Yes, it's true, after 2 years and nearly 100 films, I'm finally retiring The Celluloid Pantry. My last post went up today. A milestone for me for sure. (In the meantime, I'm cooking up something new....)

"Strange Bedfellows": a piece I did for Mr. Beller's on a Psychedelic Furs concert at BB King's, developed from a blog post I did here on The Old Style about a year ago. Fun.

Works on Paper

The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries. This was just released by Greenwood in November. I contributed articles on "Frozen Food" and "Post." I wrote them over a year ago, in a neutral, encyclopedia-style voice, so it's a strange experience re-reading them now. They don't quite feel like they're mine, which, I think, is as it should be.

In Other News

I've taken up streaking. Yes, the running kind. (Ok, what this means is I now run every single day, even if it's just a mile or two.) I've done this for a solid week now and it's working out really well--shorter distances, and fewer decisions to make (like will I fit in a run today or wait til tomorrow? Now the answer's both.)

The Writers Room. I just joined this "urban writers' colony" and this is also working out really well. Just a room full of people quietly writing, but I like it a lot. It gets me out of the apartment, and keeps me out of trouble. I'm eventually aiming to go there every day (yes, streak).

2007-11-12T17:03:00.002-05:00

Away in a Manger

I've just settled in for a month-long writing residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts. It's prime "leaf-peeping" season here lots of orange and red and yellow and we just got our first snow the other day. I'm working out of a renovated barn that Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband ordered from Sears as a kit and assembled in the 1920s.

2007-10-17T14:39:00.001-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry....

This week we take a look at cheap hooch, burgers from Hawaii, and other foods that never were.

2007-09-15T09:26:00.001-04:00

The Prairie School

I'm trying to keep inside the enclosure. I just settled in for a writer's residency at the Ragdale Foundation and am making a serious effort to keep my distance from the outside world. This takes a little imagination--as it should--because really, it's all in my head.

Ragdale is the old arts-and-crafts-style estate of the architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, located in Lake Forest, Illinois, part of, I'm learning, "Chicagoland." If I step out the front gates, I realize I'm in a lush suburb with trim lawns and monumental houses and a downtown business district less than a mile away.

So I slip out the back way instead, onto the prairie. It's 50 acres of open land, edged by forest, cut through by a winding creek. The place is full of goldenrod and long, dry grasses with wide pedestrian paths mowed through. I'm doing my marathon training there. The ground's still soft from the rain, and I run over sharp little deer tracks pressed into the mud. I listen for birds and do my best to filter out the faint traffic sounds from the road on the other side of the trees.

Back in my room, I try to keep my internet use to a minimum. I'm reading instead. House by Michael Ruhlman. A memoir about a renovation in Cleveland, with parallels to the novel I'm writing now. I might not blog again until I get home.

2007-08-28T12:16:00.000-04:00

Chow (by)Line
and other Food/Film Fun

Lots of food/movie stuff today:

My piece on 10 Great Pizza Moments in Film went up on CHOW.com last night.

The Celluloid Pantry piece on the poignancy of baby carrots appeared this morning.

....And on the small screen....I'm kind of slow-moving today because I stayed up til 2 last night (I missed the 10pm showing) to watch the Tony Bourdain "No Reservations" segment on Cleveland. Marky Ramone was there (damn, I knew I should have included Rock n'Roll High School in that pizza piece, but with Fast Times and all, I needed more variety--sorry, Marky), and Michael Ruhlman, and so was Harvey Pekar. (My mom knew Harvey back when she lived there in the 50s, because, well, she always knew all the weird people. I remember how freaked out she was when he started doing Letterman in the 80s.) It was a fun show with lots of play-acting: tasting liquid sugar goop from the old pipes in a former Twinkie factory; restaurant meals involving fluorescent cole slaw, brown gravy and piles of orange cheese; drag-racing; and, of course, cartoons.

2007-08-27T15:37:00.000-04:00

Bronx Audio

The audio from my June 2007 reading and Q & A at the NYPL's Bronx Library Center with Lynn Lurie is now up on myspacetv.com:

Burnt Hill Road reading

Q & A

A little crackly, but enjoy!

2007-08-27T14:46:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

Holly Martins: I guess nobody really knew Harry like he did...like I did.
Major Calloway: How long ago?
Martins: Back in school. I was never so lonesome in my life until he showed up....Best friend I ever had.
Calloway: That sounds like a cheap novelette.
Martins: Well, I write cheap novelettes.

--The Third Man (1949)

Best movie ever.

2007-08-21T21:42:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

This one was sent to us by a friend. I'm told it comes from Roger Corman's deathless classic, Bucket of Blood.

Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art!
Burn gas buggies, and whip your sour cream of circumstance and hope.
And go ahead and sleep your bloody heads off.
Creation is, all else is not.
What is not creation is graham crackers.

Truer words were never spoken. Thanks, Phil.

2007-08-15T15:10:00.000-04:00

A little behind on the bloggin'.....

Though writing elsewhere. Hope to be back soon. In the meantime here's this week's Celluloid Pantry post. It concerns olives, short fingers, and gin. Enjoy!

2007-08-08T13:14:00.000-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry....

This week's post concerns robot chefs, fish-flavored juice boxes, and fennel.

2007-08-08T12:48:00.000-04:00

Partners in Crime

Here's what a couple of my artists' colony buddies are up to right now:

If You're in L.A. Tomorrow Night.....

Check out The Battle of Wounded Me, a one-woman show that cowgirl comedienne extraordinaire Heather Le Roy wrote while we were at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow together last spring. (You'll recognize Heather as the small human standing next to the 68-foot white concrete Jesus here (last pic down).)

If you want to make a virtual visit to a sleeping Montreal....

Check out les huits quartiers du sommeil, an amazing web-art project by J.R. Carpenter (who I photographed photographing turkeys at the Ucross Foundation the day before Thanksgiving last year). Soon after she left Ucross, J.R. went on to Yaddo, where, during a long bout of insommnia, she wrote about nothing but sleep.

2007-07-31T16:31:00.001-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry...

This week's post concerns cabbage-patch lawyers, dumpster-diving, and expired cheese.

2007-07-28T15:30:00.001-04:00

"Eureka Springs" and "Hells Angels"

Not that I'm complaining, but it's recently come to my attention that most of the traffic this site's been getting comes from Google searches for "eureka springs and hells angels." (I don't just mean one or two inquiries here and there--no, it's more like a solid and consistent dozen a day.) It's all because of a post I did a while back featuring photos taken while in residence at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow.

So a word to all you Google searchers: I wish I could be more helpful. Please accept the above photo of bikers taken in the neighboring town of Beaver, Arkansas, as a gesture of my goodwill. And if there's anyone out there who wants to create a "Eureka Springs and Hells Angels" website, I encourage you. There really is a demand for one.

2007-07-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

--Philip K. Dick

2007-07-26T23:03:00.000-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry...

This week's post concerns snails, wine dispensed from water coolers, and Orson Welles.

2007-07-26T22:00:00.000-04:00

Stories and Legends from the Far West

I was cleaning up my desk today--dusting, rearranging and not writing--and rediscovered something I picked up at a bookstall in Monmartre last summer: a 1951 edition of Contes et Legendes du Far-West. It's a kid's book with cool monochrome illustrations and terse descriptive captions. Something about cowboy stories told in French in the 50s fascinates me. (Is there some vague Existentialist connection there?)
Also on my desk were some rocks and a couple of pine cones that had been collecting dust since my own visit to the West last fall. I ran them all under the kitchen tap and the stones began to sparkle. The Ponderosa pine cones began to give off a faint foresty smell. I put everything back and sat down at my desk. But something was different about those pine cones. They had been "open" when I rinsed them--their scales were all wide apart and I could peer right into the core. But now they had tucked themselves back together tightly. They'll open slowly again, I'm told. It was the moisture that caused it--an internal expansion. But I like to think they were reactivated by the book.

2007-07-18T18:03:00.001-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry....

This week's post concerns gossip columnists, raw oysters, and plaster lawn jockeys.

2007-07-17T12:28:00.000-04:00

James Konrad, February 24, 1947-July 13, 2007

Goodbye to a good friend.

2007-07-10T12:14:00.001-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry...

This week's post concerns Van Halen, miniature bread, and big meat.

2007-07-05T15:29:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"We are passionate about lunch communication. The lunch is a good day pastime."

-Slogan on plastic bento box.

2007-07-03T10:40:00.000-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry...

This week's post concerns POWs, potatoes, and the Fourth of July.

2007-07-01T15:20:00.000-04:00

Kill Your Darlings?

Or just re-purpose them. Last fall, as part of the ongoing "Your Stories" feature at The Rambler magazine, there was a call for writing inspired by this striking photograph by Byron Barrett.

I had something ready already--a scrapped Prologue from an early draft of BURNT HILL ROAD, and I was glad to rescue it from the cutting room floor. Photo and text now appear in the May/June 2007 issue of The Rambler. You can check them out here.

(Best part is, I now have my very own print hanging above my desk. Thanks, Byron!)

For more fun with photos...

Visit The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy, an ongoing John Cage-inspired Web project matching found pictures with one-minute texts. Readers are invited to post their own spur-of-the-moment, photo-triggered stories in the comments section. Try it. It's fun.

2007-06-30T00:04:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"I love this dinky town."

-Burt Lancaster (on NYC), The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

2007-06-27T21:10:00.000-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry....

This week's post concerns barbecue, toothpaste, and fitting into corsets.

2007-06-27T18:05:00.001-04:00

Roman Legionnaire Salad

I made a fennel-grapefruit salad for a party I went to last Friday and was struck by the bulb's extraterrestrial-ness. Turns out this particular recipe goes all the way back to the Roman legionnaires, who were vegetarians until the barbarians invaded. Who knew?

Roman Legionnaire Salad
(serves 4)

2 fennel bulbs, sliced
3-4 blood oranges (or 1 red grapefruit), supremed*
1/2 red onion, chopped
olive oil

Combine all ingredients and serve with freshly ground black pepper.
(*To "supreme" the citrus fruit, slice off the top and bottom of the fruit, cut along the sides to remove the peel and pith, and then remove the segments from the remaining membrane.)

2007-06-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

The Eighth Sign

I now have a cell phone.

2007-06-22T11:13:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"I can never sleep after I've been shot up, either."

-Richard Erdman, Cry Danger (1951)

2007-06-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

Over at The Celluloid Pantry...

This week's post concerns censorship, soldiers, mirrorballs, and lemonade.

2007-06-17T22:37:00.000-04:00

Watching Television in the Park:
A Story in Ten Possible First Lines

“Now we’re going to try a cover of one of our oldest songs.”
--Tom Verlaine, Central Park SummerStage, June 16, 2007

It felt strange: Entering the park that time on a Saturday afternoon, I’d usually be dressed in running clothes.

Once we were in, waiting became its own destination like lying on the beach: an hour or so spent people-watching and drinking Corona from a plastic cup.

The older man in tube socks, shorts, and a killer whale t-shirt looked a little like a Bill Murray/Charles Nelson Reilly hybrid, and I was touched to realize the young man in tweed might have been his son.

The younger ones were bookish and I strained to spy on titles: 50 Greatest Stories stamped from the Brooklyn Branch Library, Marguerite Duras, Hemingway, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Dragons of Zynth were the surprise of the afternoon: all fur and feathers and trippy-moody-thrash.

The Apples in Stereo had two keyboardists, but my eye was ever drawn to the first one’s polyvinyl Elvis cape flickering in the breeze.

The sky was blue, gray, and black, and my arms were slick with sunscreen and rain.

Tom Verlaine’s extended “Marquee Moon” solo was like a filibuster pushing us past 7:00, and you could tell exactly what was going on from the man with the cell phone’s face.

I think that was Patti Smith smiling behind over-sized sunglasses and the low metal gates.

2007-06-10T12:46:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"I was listening, listening to the rain
I was hearing, hearing something else"

-Television, "Marquee Moon"

I hope to hear/listen to this when they come to SummerStage next Saturday.

2007-06-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

Telling Stories/In My PJ's

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and many of them involve P.J. Clarke's:

A couple of them are here in this Celluloid Pantry piece from the other week.

This one concerns vodka and Richard Harris.

And after someone's big birthday bash on Sept. 10th this year (yes, you heard it at THE OLD STYLE, mark your calendars), there are bound to be more.

2007-05-24T01:27:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"It was his story against mine, but of course, I told my story better."

-Humphrey Bogart, In a Lonely Place (1950)

2007-05-21T21:01:00.000-04:00

Heaven n'Hells Angels
(Last look: Eureka Springs/Beaver Lake, AR)

In case you're wondering--fourth one down from the top--that's Cerberus.

2007-05-15T12:11:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"If it turns out that there IS a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

-Woody Allen, Love and Death (1975)

2007-05-14T22:18:00.000-04:00

Hogwild
(Eureka Springs, AR)

Can you spot the razorbacks?

2007-05-14T17:33:00.000-04:00

How the Dundee Marmalade Jar Got on the Blog

This strip was sent in to THE OLD STYLE by a reader with an interest in photography. The Dundee marmalade jar (kind of an icon for this page) is just barely visible on the far left of each of the frames above (click for enlargment), holding pens and pencils, even then. Sugar bowl--the goal of the expedition--is on the far right. And yes, that's me on the same dining table that we have in our NYC apartment now.

2007-05-13T00:44:00.000-04:00

Out on Highway 62

Late afternoon Thursday we set out on a mini field trip to run the trails around Lake Leatherwood. Getting there would have been more than a full hike in itself, so we took the car H. borrowed from a friend in town: a cobalt blue Chevy Spirit hatchback (a.k.a. Bessie) with over 250,000 miles on her. She takes a while to warm up. The hills are especially hard on Bessie, and Eureka Springs is a hilly place.

We made a wrong turn somewhere and had to ask for directions at a motel with a sign out front that said "Wanted: Soulmate, Female, Inquire Within." I made a feeble excuse to wait in the car while H. went to the office to ask for a map.

We finally found Highway 62, and started a misguided course down the road towards Pivot Rock (my bad). We asked for directions at the gift shop there. The sky was darkening the whole time. (No, it wasn't just the gray cloud of exhaust that was following us.) Dolly Parton was playing on the radio.

When we finally reached Leatherwood, the clouds looked serious. We were determined to run anyway--but about one mile in realized we had to turn back. The trail was beautiful but rocky and uneven--a real challenge--and loud claps of thunder had started rumbling through the trees. We made it back to the parking lot just as it started pouring. We guzzled down some bottled water as the windshield began to sheet with rain.

The storm continued through the evening. I stayed up til 2 writing a grant proposal. Something about the rain on the skylight in this studio helps me get things done. I looked again at the vintage postcards tacked up on my bulletin board, the Eureka Springs ones I bought right after arriving here: Lake Leatherwood, Highway 62, Pivot Rock.

2007-05-09T01:47:00.000-04:00

Overdue

There's something strangely old-fashioned about borrowing a book from the library. Shouldn't be, but it seems like something left now to either the very young or the very old. You know, The Poky Little Puppy or endless shuffling through dog-eared magazines.

But after dinner tonight, feeling restless and overfed, that's just what I ended up doing. I started walking and soon found myself at the Carnegie Public Library, where I browsed a bit and picked up some books I've been meaning to read, both by Laurie Colwin.

On the way back to the colony, this was the scene:

library books tucked under my arm
tree-lined street
dusk
woodpecker tapping in the background
American flags hanging from porches
man ruminating in a rocking chair
lazy dog on sidewalk

Still waiting for the seamy David Lynch-style underbelly to appear. I have over a week....

2007-05-07T21:16:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken."

-M.F.K. Fisher, "How Not to Boil an Egg" in How to Cook a Wolf

2007-05-07T12:33:00.000-04:00

A Storied Place

It was the Books in Bloom Festival here this weekend, held at the Crescent Hotel, just up the hill from the colony. A day of readings by local and imported authors, served garden-party style. The hotel/festival provided colony residents with tickets to their lavish brunch, which included, among other things, a chocolate fountain.

I'd been to a number of larger bookfairs before, but this one was small enough that I actually got to talk to a significant portion of the people there as the afternoon unfolded. Afterwards, fellow WCDH resident, H. (a writer/actress/comic from Hollywood) and I headed to the hotel's 4th floor terrace for some refreshments.

[A little background: The hotel is said to be full of ghosts. Formerly a hospital, later converted to a large, mansion-like inn, the place has atmosphere. (A boy on a tricycle a la The Shining would not look at all out of place cruising down its narrow Victorian hallways.) The restaurant where we got our hot (later retrofitted to iced) coffee is called Dr. Baker's Lounge--named for the physician who ran a the place as a cancer hospital from 1937-9. The hotel is now also the site of a swanky modern spa, and hosts quite a few wedding parties (Eureka Springs has a pop. of 2200, but there are over 4000 weddings here every year--some of them out-of-towners, I figure)]

We watched a marriage ceremony from our bird's-eye-view outdoor table, and tried to keep our soiled paper serviettes and plastic cups from blowing down onto the happy couple. The menu carried a 19th Century hospital theme, complete with grainy old photos and quaint, sometimes queasily medicalized names. Not too many vegetarian options, so I had the "Turning Green" (caesar salad).

There were a lot of comings and goings on the terrace, and we eventually joined a table of writers (and one editor) from the festival. As it grew dark, and the 7-story white concrete Jesus began to glow luminously pale on the hillside, talk turned to a variety of topics, including: Melungeons, ghosts, tire irons, and Gore Vidal.

Selected Stories

(I don't want to give the wrong impression--there was lots o' joking and laughing, but that kind of thing tends to evaporate as I sit here trying to pin down the specifics. Today I mostly remember the weightier stuff.)

H: Was the target of some serious road rage on the LA freeway just weeks before getting to Arkansas. After she honked at a car in traffic, the four women in it pursued her, cornered her, and threatened her with a baseball bat.

A: On the subject of police corruption: says it has its place in the world, buffering us from absolutes. Without it, he never would have gotten out of Romania.

K: Told about her work with battered women in Missouri. Because of the work she's done, rape victims can now be treated in small county hospitals in the region. Prior to that they were turned away and sent to private practitioners. Sexual assault was considered "family business" and therefore none of theirs.

D: Said the terrain here is so rocky and unforgiving, it would often take several generations to clear a plot of land. Mentioned also the "Blue Men" a fabled ancient race of people who are said to be still living scattered in the hills and are sighted from time to time.

L: Talked about her shock years ago on watching an adult baptism. Also the criminal chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans.

H: When the conversation turned to the 68-foot white concrete Jesus, said she would like to make a pilgrimage up the hill to offer him the kosher dill from her plate. (We're going to go see the Great Passion Play next week. Sounds like a plan....)

2007-04-30T23:42:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"Time moves in its own way in the middle of the night."

-Haruki Murakami, After Dark

HM's latest comes out in the U.S. in a week. Can't wait.

2007-04-29T09:15:00.000-04:00

They Always Find Me

I left my studio door open this morning while I was saying goodbye to another resident. This guy snuck in when my back was turned.

2007-04-27T23:41:00.000-04:00

Carrying a Torch

Where's Hellboy when you need him?

I was wearing a dress and an apron and holding a blowtorch. The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs were playing from my MacBook. The windows were propped wide open to weaken deadly fumes.

I had made all the custards the day before and poured them into 50 tiny ramekins, where they chilled and set overnight just like they should. The crème part was done. Whew. But now for the brûlée-ing!

I set about sprinkling the custards with sugar to be caramelized. Problem was I couldn't get the torch to light.

Things I learned today about crème brûlée:

1. When lighting the torch, you have to hold the match at exactly the right angle or, by some strange reverse law of physics, the gas from the torch will extinguish the match.

2. When caramelizing the sugar, you have to hold the torch at exactly the right angle or the torch will extinguish and you will return to step 1.

3. If you're too careful, you'll mess things up.

4. If you're too confident, you'll mess things up.

5. If you mess things up, it's ok anyway.

6. After making 50 of these things, you've done everything right and everything wrong, and you're an old pro.

2007-04-26T16:23:00.000-04:00

Dead Letters

I picked up some postcards of local attractions yesterday. But I bought them at an antiques store. The cards are at least 60 years old.

Most are still blank, though yellowed. One of them, however, "Pivot Rock" (top, right) was addressed and written in pencil, but never stamped or sent:

"Carol J. Steele, Mokena, Ill.: Dear Carol, Having a fine time swimming 3 times a day it is pleasantly cool. Love, Barbara"

I have half a mind to drop it in a mailbox and finish whatever unfinished business it represents. Think I'd need an antique stamp.

2007-04-25T20:09:00.000-04:00

Some Things I Saw on Spring Street
(Eureka Springs, Arkansas)

2007-04-25T00:32:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"Tourists, like armies, travel on their stomachs."

-Vincent Price, A Treasury of Great Recipes

2007-04-24T22:18:00.000-04:00

Loaves O' Fishes/Swimming Upstream

Ever go to the supermarket and suddenly look down at your shopping cart and realize what a bizarre impression your particular combination of purchases might make on a stranger? Well last Thursday my cart contained: 6 jumbo cans of salmon, 6 lemons, a bunch of parsley, a 1-pound box of saltines, and a dozen eggs.

Let me explain.

On Saturday, The Culinary Historians of New York was to present an all-day symposium on the long-forsaken and almost forgotten "America Eats" project, which was put together by FDR's WPA during the late 30s and employed otherwise unemployed writers to document American food (more on that here). Because I'm on the program committee for the Culinary Historians, I was enlisted to cook up some 1930s food as described in the original materials. Beef BBQ and glazed ham were on the historically accurate menu, and so were salmon loaves. Since I don't eat beef or pork, salmon seemed like my best bet.

But I had never eaten, let alone baked salmon loaf before (although while I was growing up my mother did make a mean meatloaf out of ground round, egg, crushed cornflakes, Worcestershire, and ketchup--this was long before her macrobiotic days). The salmon loaf, so far as I could tell, was a kind of variant, with fish instead of hamburger, and crushed saltines standing in for cornflakes. How hard could it be? Okay, I'd make the salmon loaf--or loaves, rather--all six of them.

I found a 1936 recipe from the online archives of The Christian Science Monitor. The article, "Doubling Up on Baking," offered advice to housewives dealing with the sweat-inducing demands of cooking dinner entrees and dessert for the family during the heat of summer (this was of course long before air-conditioning). The solution was to load up the oven in the early hours of the morning and bake several dishes at once. (Did I mention I'm glad I'm not a 30s housewife?)

This brings us back to my shopping cart. Once I had rounded up all the ingredients, I did a test run--a single salmon loaf. I wasn't sure how it was supposed to taste, but mine seemed a little on the dry side. I made the necessary adjustments (the recipe said bake for 45 min-1 hr, so this time I reduced the cooking time).

To make a long story short, I made 6 more of them in 2 batches of 3, and they were, well, edible. But, hey, that's pretty good for salmon loaf.

2007-04-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

On the Road Again

I'm just settling in for my stay as American Egg Board Fellow at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. The kitchen in my writing suite is huge and gorgeous and stocked with equipment that would never fit in my NYC setup.

I have my Gone With the Wind Cook Book (published by Pebeco toothpaste company in 1939), and A Treasury of Great Recipes, written by Vincent Price in 1965. I'm all set.

Making crème brûlée for a crowd of 50 on Friday. (Beats salmon loaf, I'd say.)

Stay tuned...

2007-04-15T16:43:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee"

-e.e. cummings, Chansons Innocentes

2007-04-15T16:04:00.001-04:00

Bronx Cheers:
Chapter One (and Two)

After some technical snags involving hardware (broken), software (none), and wherewithal (lack of, mental, mine), the first two chapters of BURNT HILL ROAD are now up on the site.

What used to be Chapter One, but is now Chapter Two, just won the Chapter One Award from the Bronx Writers' Center/Bronx Council of the Arts.

Confused? That's ok. Me too. I'm still endlessly rearranging the furniture. But in the meantime you can read both chapters here. Or come listen to a portion at the Bronx Library Center on Saturday, June 9, at 1:00 pm.

2007-04-10T08:41:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"I don't like crooks. And if I did like them, I wouldn't like crooks who are stool pigeons. And if I did like crooks who are stool pigeons, I still wouldn't like you."

-The Thin Man (1934)

2007-04-08T17:46:00.000-04:00

Hot as Hell

My husband thinks I have a crush on Hellboy. Maybe I do. He's flame-resistant, talks like a hard-boiled detective, likes pancakes, candy bars, and cats. He makes no apologies, but files down his horns to fit in. One of my first loves was the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz after all.

2007-04-02T19:28:00.000-04:00

Multi-Tasking

Today I broke a glass by dropping it on a plate, and broke a plate by dropping a glass on it. I swept them up together.

2007-04-01T14:26:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"Head pains hit her at the end of the day. They came with a shining, an electrochemical sheen, light from out of nowhere, brain-made, the eerie gleam of who you are."

-Mao II, Don DeLillo

2007-04-01T14:11:00.001-04:00

The Puffy Coat

After spending four frozen weeks with Karen in Wyoming at Ucross last November/December, I know this sight well. And now the readers of the New York Times Style section do too.

Go Karen!

2007-03-20T17:13:00.000-04:00

Oh, the Humanity!

Bert just calls em like he sees em.

2007-03-19T16:15:00.001-04:00

Line of the Week

"God, you people work just like the mob! There's no difference."

"Oh, there's a big difference, Mrs. de Marco. The mob is run by murdering, thieving, lying, cheating psychopaths. We work for the President of the United States of America."

-Married to the Mob

2007-03-19T15:51:00.000-04:00

Blame Canada

Think hard. You've heard it. A cold front from Canada. The meteorologist will sweep the board smugly with his pointer. Not from Upstate, or Vermont, or Alaska (why not Alaska?). But Canada.

Because we all know Canada is cold.

It gets into the bloodstream. Into the collective unconsciousness. Americans cross the border at Fort Erie in August with skis strapped to the roofs of their cars.

Oh, the persecution of it all.

2007-03-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

Line of the Week

"She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up."

-Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Bogart's deadpan is priceless.

2007-03-10T18:26:00.001-05:00

Opening Lines

Burnt Hill Road

I'll be putting the first chapter up on my site in a week or two. But in the meantime, here's a preview:

"There's a cement path in the backyard that leads to nowhere. It starts out from the porch with purpose, running parallel to the old fence, across the ragged lawn. But then it stops dead, close to nothing, as though it suddenly lost its nerve."

2007-03-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

Line of the Week

"Oh, you're a bad pony. And I'm not gonna bet on you."

-David Mamet, House of Games

Always liked that one.

2007-03-04T21:38:00.000-05:00

Adventures in Art-Sitting

It's a large canvas, 3 feet by 6--too big for a cab, and carrying the thing 22 blocks on a windy day would have been like flying a kite.

We were a little apprehensive about getting it on the bus this afternoon. Heads turned as we made our way to back to that unpopulated spot between the two cars--that circular, segmented platform that swivels each time the driver makes a turn. Problem was, the circle kept swivelling.

But now that we've got it home, I'll tell you, it's a beaut. It--an acrylic by Janusz Jaworski--isn't really ours, though. We're lucky enough to be art-sitters. Just watching the little tyke til his parents get a little more free wallspace.

2007-02-26T16:31:00.000-05:00

Funny-Sad Food

I can't explain it, but back when I was at U of T, I had a professor who used to pensively sip soda through a straw in a waxed paper Pepsi cup while he talked about poetry. The sight of it practically brought tears to my eyes. (Oddly, I don't think a Coke cup would have had quite the same effect.)

In the spirit of this memory, and with a grudging nod to the Oscars, The Celluloid Pantry's taking the form of a round-up this week: Funny-Sad Food.

2007-02-20T22:25:00.000-05:00

Soft Cell

I always figured I'd get one when I needed one, but that I probably wouldn't need one until I got one. That's as good a reason as any I've never had a cell phone. These past few days, though, events have conspired.

I saw the second mobile-phone-related incident coming a long way's off, so it was easy to be prepared--and dismissive. But the first one came out of nowhere and knocked me for a loop. It was a Thursday around 2 pm, and I still hadn't gotten much of the day's work done. I had just run a bunch of errands, basically just checking off the really easy stuff on my list. It was cold, damn cold, and I dreaded taking off my gloves to fish for my keys. Turned out it wasn't necessary.

The lock to the front door of my building, I was somewhat startled to notice, was already occupied. Someone had apparently stuck a key in it--and snapped it off. I made a few half-hearted attempts to pull the fragment out with my nail, but I could tell it wasn't going to go. Nothing to get a grip on but a tiny, jagged edge. . .

I won't bore you with too many details, but the Super works from next door and took some finding, pliers didn't do the trick, no one in our small building was home to buzz the door open, and it was a long, cold wait for the locksmith. I spent a good two hours wandering local stores like a warm but embittered zombie--checking back at the building from time to time, but leaving disappointed. Yes, a cell phone would have come in handy (but in the end, it still wouldn't have gotten me in).

Second time, though, just last night, a phone really would have opened some doors. I was going to a dinner party a friend's--a reunion of some pals from Ucross, and S., who was hosting, explained that her buzzer didn't work, but that we should call her and she'd come down to greet us. I figured I'd find a phone booth. I even set aside some quarters for the job. Trick was finding a working pay phone on Mott Street...

So you'd think after all that--stacked on top of ordinary day-to-day prompts like missed streetcorner meetings, sudden ideas or changes of plans, and the puzzled looks I get saying "no, only landline"--I'd hurry up and get a cell phone already, but even now I can feel myself settling back into complacency. The universe is sending me a message, but I'm letting the machine pick it up.

2007-02-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

First We Take Manhattan...

There's only so much you can see/do/eat/drink in a weekend, but I think we did a pretty fine job:

Friday

Bitterly cold, but we walked everywhere anyway. Saw more, and SD got his smoking in. Our midtown, crosstown trajectory:

Tal Bagels (yes, he added sauce Americaine)
Cocktails and fries at the Monkey Bar
Rockefeller Center (deftly deflected scam artist)
Soup at Pam's Real Thai Encore (SD went outside to smoke and we could see him through the window dancing. When he got back we asked if the techno music playing inside was piped outside. No.)
Arctic chill on walk home
Ali G and white wine

Saturday

Took the 6 down to Union Square. Walked from there to:

The Strand
McSorley's (so busy they were lined up on the sidewalk at 3 in the afternoon. Wasn't meant to be.)
CBGB's. RIP
Lombardi's for pizza and red wine
Chinatown, where we saw a bucket of live frogs
Bizarre police state/colony we stumbled on at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge
Back uptown for errand at Crate & Barrel. SD went straight to the cocktail section and laughed at the Rimming Sugar
Pointed at but didn't touch $2000 port at Sherry-Lehmann
Sushi Seki. Wow.

Sunday

Scrambled eggs with sauce Americaine for breakfast
Taxi to American Museum of Natural History (someone's feet were sore): Cosmic Collisions (amazing), Gold (don't bother), Uma Thurman (showing her kids stuff in glass cases while wearing a parka), 400 live butterflies in a room full of orchids (one landed on SD. Recommended.)
Home for Japanese potato chips, Manhattans and Brick (if you haven't seen it, see it; if you have, see it again)

2007-02-09T17:41:00.001-05:00

Playing Ketchup

It's been a busy, though, at the same time, strangely uneventful week. Result: I've been without the will and the way to blog for a few days now. That's all about to change. The fabled SD has just blown into town from Illinois (by way of London, Ont, by way of Sarnia, Ont.) and just tasted his first New York bagel. He put ketchup on it.

Stay tuned.

2007-01-28T14:53:00.000-05:00

The Other Side

Last night we felt like going somewhere different so we went to the movies. Not that watching movies is something unusual for us. But instead of the couch, this time we went to the theater.

Pan’s Labyrinth was playing a few blocks away. But instead of staying east, we’d see it west. There was a restaurant we wanted to go to beforehand on W49th, Pam Real Thai. But the lineup was already spilling out onto the sidewalk. So it was two blocks south to Pam Real Thai Encore.

By the time we finished eating, it was too late for the 8:30 show. But if we caught the 9:45, there’d be enough time for a drink. We walked down 9th and hit 42nd before we knew it, and settled on BB King’s across from the theater. We didn’t want to pay the cover for the mainstage, so went next door to Lucille’s.

When we got to the theater, it was chaos. Two sets of escalators—a steady stream of traffic up, down and crosswise, the buzzing of a hundred voices, each talking about something different on one of the 25 screens. But we found Cinema 1, and sat close to the front. When the lights went down, it was the only place to be.

The movie combined two worlds, constantly overlapping. When it was over, it was like being shaken from a dream. As the house lights came up, so did the theater’s chaos. A woman behind us said, “I don’t get it. Which part was real?”

2007-01-19T23:12:00.000-05:00

Contagion

Now I'm it, damn it. Didn't these childhood games once have something to do with the plague? (Or am I just thinking of "Ring Around the Rosy"?) Anyhoo, I got this from M. Cyberkrunk and must carry on:

1) Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I'm an evangelist.

2) Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music.

Television, "Marquee Moon."

3) Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue.

Vertigo

4) Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief.

David Bowie. (I won't explain.)

5) Name a work of art you’d like to live with.

The Noguchi fountain at the Metropolitan Museum. It moves without making a sound.

6) Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life.

"Happy Days" by Samuel Beckett. More and more. ("The old style...")

7) Name a punchline that always makes you laugh.

"You should've seen the other guy."

Over to you, Bert(olucci)....

2007-01-14T12:19:00.000-05:00

If You Take the A Train...
or Quest for Roti

We didn't take the A, but the 6. But with a little walking it got us where we needed to go. Over the past few weeks my roti jones had reached an intensity nearing Harold and Kumar proportions. But let me backtrack a bit.

The first time I had roti I was working for a law book publisher in a suburb of Toronto. Lunch options were limited. There was just one cafeteria in the building, with nothing but highway and industrial park for miles around (the area was the old hunting ground of Paul Bernardo, the Scarborough Rapist, before he went on to bigger and more horrific things). Sometimes I'd get around to packing a lunch, but usually I'd just go to the cafeteria. The food there followed a predictable weekday evolution: roast chicken on Monday, chicken curry on Tuesday, chicken salad on Wednesday, chicken soup on Thursday and Friday. It was bleak.

But once in a while the production editors in Specialty Practice would get together to organize and carpool an outing. Kathy, who had moved to Toronto from Trinidad, had an idea: "Let's go to Roti Hut." It was the beginning of a new big thing.

If you've never had roti, I guess the quickest way to describe it would be it's kind of like a West Indian burrito. It's a curry (usually chick pea and potato, but it can also be mixed vegetables, chicken, conch—or even goat) wrapped in an incredibly delicious homemade wheat flour "tortilla" (okay, it's nothing like a tortilla and it's called a roti "skin") that's thin and soft and hot and layered with ground split peas, giving it some contrasting grit. The best way to eat it is with your fingers, tearing off a piece of roti skin and scooping the curry up.

I soon discovered there were roti shops dotted throughout Toronto. The city has a big Trinidadian population, and during all those years of student bagel and pizza-slice-eating, roti, which still typically goes for about 5 bucks for an incredibly huge portion, had been sitting there right under my nose.

New York, I'm afraid, is not as lucky. Which brings us back to last night. In all our routine travels through Manhattan (midtown, downtown, the Village, East and West—even Battery Park), not a single Trinidadian restaurant. Lots of Jamaican and generic Carribbean, but you'll never find any roti there.

And so we got on the 6 train and went to Harlem, a thing, in our close to ten years here, we hadn't done enough. I'd been reading good things about Roti Plus on Frederick Douglass and 125th and they all turned out to be true. Good, fresh roti skin, and not quite as heavy and greasy as you get in some places. The room was cosy, and the roti was served with real cutlery on china plates (roti shops are usually super casual takeout places with fluorescent lighting and Styrofoam containers). My fingernails got good and stained with curry. I had my first ginger beer in over a year.

Oh yeah, and afterwards we went to the Zebra Room of the incredibly fabulous Harlem Deco landmark, the Lenox Lounge, to hear the Houston Person Quartet, but that was really just the icing on the cake.

2007-01-12T13:30:00.002-05:00

I Am the Egg Woman

I just found out I've been awarded the 2007 American Egg Board Fellowship for culinary writing for a residency at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. I'll be there four weeks this spring working on a book based on my The Celluloid Pantry columns.

2007-01-08T16:18:00.000-05:00

All the Names

Billie Maynard Jankowski
b. October 1994, Toronto; d. January 8, 2007, NYC

We called her Billie after Billie Holiday, Whitelaw, and Jean King, but she also went by:

Billie Bonker
Bonko Head
Billie Bee
Bilbo Baggins
Billetta
Bilhelmenia Dubois
Billsers
Bills
Sargeant Bilko
Rocky Bilboa
Billiecat

She is missed.