March 2006 Archives

About a year ago at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, some wonks presented a paper that concluded coworkers who share their music via iTunes form opinions about each other based upon the musical selections.

For those unfamiliar with the inner-workings of iTunes, there’s a feature that lets you listen to (but not download) music on other people’s computers within a Local Area Network (i.e. pretty much within any office) via a Shared Music tab.

Most importantly, the study found that employees used their shared music libraries to consciously portray an self-image, adding songs they thought would make them seem more cool or removing embarrassing ones. I admit that I did the latter at one point to shield others and myself from the potential uncoolness associated with my mighty collection of ’80s pop. But sometimes, one finds oneself thirsting for the synthesized drama of Cutting Crew, Bananarama or Glenn Frey.

Also, as you might expect, the study discovered that many people think their musical preferences are unique when in fact they’re not. As I like to put it, if your musical preferences are centered around CDs you bought online or in a store, then your preferences are unlikely unique. The only way your preferences are remotely unique is if your chief outlet for purchased music is wax cylinders proffered by some drunk with a hurdy gurdy on a street corner in Selma, Alabama.

Finally, the study says it drives people nuts when music is shared anonymously; people want to associate musical preferences with a face, presumably so they can mock it. The two people sharing music in my office today weren’t anonymous, but if they were or you didn’t know them, you probably still wouldn’t get a very clear picture of their personality judging them by the bulk of their musical selections.

My previous boss shares her music, and here are her top-five most-represented artists, with the number of songs in her library by each:

• 77 Steely Dan
• 42 Elvis Costello
• 28 Michael McDonald
• 25 John Fogerty
• 23 Paul Simon

O.K., so you know how old she is. (Answer: roughly as old as your Mom.) But Elvis lurking there like that is a sort of strange inclusion.

The only other music-sharer today was a girl probably in her late-20s that works on the magazines:

• 25 Billy Joel
• 25 Radiohead
• 21 John Coltrane
• 20 The Who
• 14 Bob Dylan

Again, all big names, but an intriguing mix.

If I shared my music, which I don’t, my top-five list would be:

• 46 PJ Harvey
• 33 The Rolling Stones
• 32 Sonic Youth
• 28 Madonna
• 26 David Bowie

Again with the big names, and expected from a guy with black plastic frame glasses, even if the bulk of my collection is comprised of one or two tracks by assorted and sometimes more-obscure artists.

So it doesn’t seem in the case of the two ladies in my office that they’re attempting to cultivate any cool via their shared playlists. I certainly don’t begrudge them for their Michael McDonald or Billy Joel, as I trust they would not begrudge my Madonna.

Remember that Simpsons where Homer’s on a diet and Marge gives him rice cakes (“You can put a little something on top for flavor”) and he stacks a bunch of food on top one of them and microwaves it?

Coincidentally, I watched that episode a day or so ago, and I was just looking at the packaging for my Quaker Salt Free Rice Cakes (“Satisfying Whole Grain Crunch!”) and in blue capital letters on the back is the warning DO NOT HEAT IN TOASTER OR MICROWAVE.

As I have neither a microwave nor a toaster, I can’t test this warning. So, what happens? Someone needs to try it for me, like that time Dave Barry put Pop Tarts in a toaster and held down the lever until they burst into flame.

Do rice cakes catch fire when you toast or microwave them? Do they get laser-hot, or a slightly less Satisfying Whole Grain Crunch, or what? The suspense is killing me.

Self-professed “rogue economist” Steven Levitt coauthored a book last year, Freakononics, that’s become quite popular (although at least one wiseguy disagrees with some of its key conclusions).

Levitt still teaches at the University of Chicago, so I thought I’d check what his speaking fee might be for our event in that city this summer. It’s $50,000, and that doesn’t include expenses. I had no idea sub A-listers charged this much. I mean, we’re a decently monied company and all, but that’s a wee out of our budget; we typically only grant small honorariums and cover travel and lodging expenses for any big-name headlining speakers we may procure.

The kindly woman at Levitt’s agency told me that instead, perhaps I would consider Levitt’s Freakonomics coauthor (and apparently the guy who actually wrote the book), Stephen Dubner. His fee? A modest $25,000.

My boss and I discussed our options and decided that we could instead just hire someone cheap with a dramatic voice to read passages from Freakonomics. Or we could take the Avenue Q route, get some stringy puppets and have a bawdy economic outlook onstage.

This guy is speaking at a real estate conference in Phoenix that my company is producing next month.

That site is more of a historical appreciation of Mr. Pollack, but he’s currently active in Arizona real estate. Oh, and is a drummer in a band (while still wearing his suit) and owns his own three-dimensional advertising museum. Writers such as myself are always mildly disappointed to discover that characters like this actually exist because it takes all the fun out of making them up.

He reminds one coworker of a cast member from Survivor, Johnny Fairplay. To me, he is Arizona’s version of the Donald and resembles a dragonslayer. A dragonslayer from the early ’80s.

I am supremely disappointed I will not be attending this particular event of ours to hear this gentleman speak or at least get a closer look at that hair and bask in its life spirit.

I spotted this recipe in the March 22 issue of The New York Times and made it tonight in my slow cooker. It was O.K. It could’ve used more spice. And it wasn’t very attractive, although not much is when it’s crammed in a ceramic bowl under high heat for three hours. Also, I think I just really don’t like pork.

The real pod people are the ones who claim Invasion of the Body Snatchers is some sort of metaphor for McCarthyism or Cold War Malaise or something. It was a B-grade horror film from the mid-’50s, which means it’s a B-grade comedy for the mid-’00s. Director Don Siegel himself, who’s been granted a dubious retrospective at Film Forum, never claimed he was making anything more than an alien invasion movie. The studio even imposed an awful flashback bookend, complete with wavy vertical-line fadeout and fade-in, to give it a happy ending; Siegel’s original cut had the aliens conquering the human race.

One of our receptionists who’s Hispanic kept telling me I needed to try a chimichurri from my friendly neighborhood taco truck and I finally did after my Found Footage Festival outing earlier tonight because my only dinner was a gallon of Guinness.

Like most street food, my chimi was cheap and tasty, with high sodium content and alcohol-absorbing power.

Chimichurris are the Dominican version of the fast-food hamburger: a large, thin and greasy beef patty on lightly toasted rectangular buns of thick and chewy pan de agua (“water bread”), slopped with lots of chopped onions and tomatoes, ketchup and mayo, shredded cabbage and chimi sauce, a sweet sort of watery ranch dressing. The whole business is bundled in foil and the size of an extra-large baked potato. I learned that if you want the works, it’s chimi todos, and that everyone’s got his own chimichurri recipe. I snacked this one down quickly because of its tastiness.

Apparently, you can get a chimichurri on most any street corner of Santo Domingo from stands like those in this city that peddle hot dogs, pretzels and kebabs.

that taco truck on Sherman

• Sherman Avenue at Dyckman Street
• Meal 11 of 52: a chimichurri ($3).

Do I love Brooklyn because of or despite the fact that every fifth girl has the haircut of Karen O? Is it fond memories from my unspeakable past? Or is it that I always seem to be drunk every time I’m over there?

I’m not sure, but the place lifts my spirits. In Williamsburg, at least, there’s a warm blend of youth, beauty, oddly Midwestern architecture, and the Manhattan skyline, the sight of which at night is like one of those dreams where you’re floating above your own body.

I was in town to catch the Found Footage Festival, which I first saw last summer on the grassy playground of an automotive high school. Tonight it was held at Galapagos Art Space, which is disguised as a dark bar, complete with an abstract, scrim-like artwork hanging over a large pool of water near the entrance, and small spotlights with colored gels over them in the restroom, so you feel like you’re peeing on the set of a Broadway musical.

The Festival is a combination of rummage-sale finds, industrial and in-house training films, exercise and instructional tapes, infomercials, smudgy dubs of home movies, religious shows and public access television, and other random bits. Like last time, two of the festival’s curators (who collect and edit the footage), Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, were onstage to banter back and forth between segments and interject Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary.

The footage was 95% new, opening with a perennial classic: Winnebago sales video outtakes starring Jack Rebney, world’s angriest RV salesman. There’s a short version online, but I must warn you that Jack has what you might call a potty mouth.

Another great sequence tied together unfortunate and surreal public service announcement tapes featuring celebrities, including Henry Winkler as the Fonz telling kids it’s “not cool” to be touched in your “special place,” Alvin & the Chipmunks and Alf warning against the dangers of smoking reefer and Beverly Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley cautioning against improper handgun usage.

The best was a disturbing but sincere how-to video from the late ’80s with instructions on how to hypnotize women into sleeping with you, if you happen to be a gawky gentleman in stone-washed jeans. The narrator for this video, who sits in a chair before a crackling fireplace, resembles Satan.

The internet stuff is spooky.

Kurt Vonnegut, November 5, 1995

If Murakami were so inclined or Cortázar alive, I’d want him to write a story about an internet that forgets, a living mind.

On this internet, blogs would shed entries as they aged alongside their author. Some text would grow small and indistinct, but certain passages in desert places would glow like embers in a dying fire. Language would be forgotten, sentences would decay, meanings would invert. Some passages would mesh and recur as dreams, while others would advance in time as déjà vu. Florid details of youth would be compressed into dry generalities. Searches would lead to inaccuracies and dead ends.

The internet now never forgets. It’s sometimes referred to as a hive mind, but other than its general unreliability for accuracy and penchant for trivia and frivolity, it’s like no mind I’ve ever known, expanding infinitely into distant inky reaches.

Tasty chili-from-Andie night! A different recpie than the last time: black beans (not canned), fake meat that tasted like real meat, red peppers roasted by putting them directly on the rangetop gas flames, cheddar cheese, the Colonel’s secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. And cornbread made the cowboy way, in a cast iron skillet over the fire. I mean, in the oven.

While I was over, I cropped some shots that Andie had scanned from square-format professional film (6x6-centimeter 120 film, I think), but that the local photo shop had muddled by including random bits of frame on the edges of the scans. I busted out my Photoshop skillz with some proportional cropping.

We also watched two episodes of My Name is Earl and I didn’t want to laugh but did anyway.

Here’s a doodle I found at a real estate conference in Philadelphia today.

This story from today’s New York Times blows my mind, that there could be a secret room inside the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the U.S., that had somehow become forgotten more than 50 years later.

Also, I am amused by the phrase “All-Purpose Survival Crackers.”

Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War

By Sewell Chan

For decades it waited in secret inside the masonry foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, in a damp, dirty and darkened vault near the East River shoreline of Lower Manhattan: a stockpile of provisions that would allow for basic survival if New York City were devastated by a nuclear attack.

City workers were conducting a regular structural inspection of the bridge last Wednesday when they came across the cold-war-era hoard of water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers—an estimated 352,000 of them, sealed in dozens of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible.

To step inside the vault—a dank and lightless room where the walls are lined with dusty boxes—is to be vividly reminded of the anxieties that dominated American life during the military rivalry with the Soviet Union, an era when air-raid sirens and fallout shelters were standard elements of the grade-school curriculum.

Several historians said yesterday that the find was exceptional, in part because many of the cardboard boxes of supplies were ink-stamped with two especially significant years in cold-war history: 1957, when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, and 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis seemed to bring the world to the precipice of nuclear destruction.

“Civil defense agencies were building fallout shelters all over the country during the 1950’s and stocking them with supplies of food and water and whatnot,” said John Lewis Gaddis, a historian at Yale and a pre-eminent scholar of the cold war.

“Most of those have been dismantled; the crackers got moldy a very long time ago. It’s kind of unusual to find one fully intact—one that is rediscovered, almost in an archaeological sense. I don’t know of a recent example of that.”

The Department of Transportation, which controls the bridge, has moved to secure the site while figuring out to do with the trove of supplies.

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been contacted to handle the drugs, which include bottles of Dextran, used to treat or prevent shock.

City workers commonly find coins or bottles when repaving streets, fixing water mains or probing sewer drains, said the transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall. “We find stuff all the time, but what’s sort of eerie about this is that this is a bridge that thousands of people go over each day,” she said. “They walk over it, cars go over it, and this stuff was just sitting there.”

The room is within one of the arched masonry structures under the main entrance ramp to the bridge, not far from the Manhattan anchorage. Three city officials gave a brief tour of the room yesterday—taking care to step gingerly over broken glass and fallen wooden boards—on the condition that the precise location not be disclosed, for security reasons.

The most numerous items are the boxes of Civil Defense All-Purpose Survival Crackers. Printed in block letters, on each canister, was information about the number of pounds (6.75), the number of crackers per pound (62) and the minimum number of crackers per can (419).

Joseph M. Vaccaro, a carpentry supervisor at the Transportation Department, estimated that there were 140 boxes of crackers—each with six cans, for a total of some 352,000 crackers.

The officials would not open any of the supplies because of safety concerns over germs, but Mr. Vaccaro said that one of the canisters had broken open, and inside it, workers found the crackers intact in wax-paper wrapping.

Nearby were several dozen boxes with sealed bottles of Dextran, made by Wyeth Laboratories in Philadelphia. More mysterious were about 50 metal drums, made by United States Steel in Camden, N.J. According to the label, each was intended to hold 17.5 gallons and to be converted, if necessary, for “reuse as a commode.” They are now empty.

For the officials who gave the tour, the discovery set off some strong memories. Judith E. Bergtraum, the department’s first deputy commissioner, recalled air-raid drills—“first it was under the desk and then it was in the hall”—at Public School 165 in Queens. Russell Holcomb, a deputy chief bridge engineer, remembered watching Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe at the United Nations in 1960 on television.

Several of the boxes in the room have labels from the Office of Civil Defense, a unit of the Pentagon that coordinated domestic preparedness in the early 1960’s. State and local governments often appointed their own civil-defense coordinators, said Graham T. Allison, a former assistant secretary of defense who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Dr. Allison acknowledged that fallout shelters would probably have been ineffective in the event of nuclear war but that the precautions were comforting.

“At least people would think they were doing something, even if it didn’t have any effect,” he said.

In 1950, the city’s Office of Civil Defense, the predecessor to today’s Office of Emergency Management, was formed to prepare for a possible atomic attack. In 1951, during the Korean War, floodlights and barbed-wire barriers were set up on and around the city’s bridges, and bridge operators were organized into defense batteries, as part of an overall civil-defense strategy aimed at deterring sabotage.

Mayor Robert F. Wagner, who served from 1954 to 1965, appointed several civil-defense advisers. In 1959, a federal report concluded that two hydrogen bombs dropped near the Brooklyn Bridge would kill at least 6.1 million people.

Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian at Columbia University and a former president of the New-York Historical Society, said he was curious about how the stockpile got there. “Is this a secret cache of supplies the city was trying to put together, without warning the community of a serious threat?” he asked.

“What surprises me,” he added, “is that we have all these little nooks—that in this huge city with people crawling everywhere, we can find rooms still filled with stuff, 50 years after the fact.”

In the mid-’90s, Philip-Lorca diCorcia toured the largest cities of the world, concealing his lights on the pavement and surreptitiously photographing crowds of people on the streets and sidewalks.

From 1999 to 2001, he took a bolder step for his series, Heads. Over a sidewalk on Times Square, he set up an arc of scaffolding affixed with remote-controlled strobe lights. As pedestrians passed under the rig, diCorcia, who was positioned across the street with a long lens, would focus on individuals and snap photos.

A retired diamond merchant from Union City, New Jersey was surprised to find his photo in an exhibition catalog last year and wasn’t happy, suing diCorcia and his gallery for taking his photo, exhibiting it and profiting from its sale, all without his permission. The suit was dismissed last month by a New York State Supreme Court judge who ruled in favor of artistic expression over individual privacy rights.

What’s significant about the case, according to New York Times photo editor Philip Gefter in his March 17 article “Street photography: A right or invasion?,” is that it’s the first to directly challenge the freedom to photograph in public. (Right-to-privacy laws vary by state; in New York, they prohibit the unauthorized use of a person’s likeness for advertising or other trades, but privacy rights are waived if the image is considered art.) Disturbingly, had this case succeeded, it could have frozen the sale and publishing of everything from Walker Evans’ late-1930s Many are Called series to Travis Ruse’s ongoing photoblog, both of which feature candid photos of New York City subway commuters.

It’s interesting that as one art form has (for the time being) received the legal nod to continue without permissions, another is being further ground out by the requirement of permissions: sampling.

Earlier this week, a federal judge ordered a sales freeze of the Notorious B.I.G. album Ready to Die. Although it’s from 1994 and the rapper was shot dead in 1997, the judge ruled that B.I.G. had used an “unauthorized sample” of the Ohio Players’ song “Singing in the Morning.” The suit was brought by the companies that control the Ohio Players’ recordings (as well as those of the often-sampled Funkadelic), companies that have been busy over the past five years filing hundreds of lawsuits to collect royalties over samples.

Of course sampling resides in a commercial domain and not the public domain of street photography. But as Lawrence Lessig has written, you’re allowed to quote from a published work and you’re allowed to take a few musical notes from a commercial composition for your own without permission—you just can’t take those same notes from a recording. In other words, Lessig notes, “life in the analog world is freer than life in the digital world.”

It wasn’t always this way. Sampling had its heyday in the late ’80s and early ’90s with the albums of pioneers like Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys. The latter’s 1989 album, Paul’s Boutique, boasted more than 125 uncredited samples from other commercial recordings, including those of two infamously protective groups, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

But lawsuits and out-of-court settlements quickly cut down the popularity and extensiveness of sampling. In one high-profile case of 1991, Gilbert O’Sullivan sued rapper Biz Markie over an unauthorized sample of “Alone Again (Naturally)” that a judge ruled amounted not to copyright infringement but criminal theft. The album was withdrawn and the Biz bitterly titled his follow-up All Samples Cleared. The prohibitive costs of “clearing” samples have created an environment where an album with as many high-profile samples as Paul’s Boutique would likely be impossible to release today, not that people haven’t tried.

How would I feel if I learned someone had photographed me in public, was exhibiting the photo and profiting from its sale? How would I feel if I was a musician and part of my song turned up in someone else’s? I don’t know. But surely potential limitations on street photography and further legal pressures on sampling have in themselves a chilling effect on art and our potential witness of beautiful images and sounds.

I had the Monday-only All You Can Eat special at Brothers BBQ in SoHo tonight, knowing well I’d be too full for seconds. But the price was right for a combo platter of four different barbequed meats and two sides.

Things started poorly when my server alleged the bar was out of Guinness. (Don’t bars prepare for St. Patrick’s Day runs on the black stuff?) They had nothing on tap stronger than Bud, so I had a pint of that anemic brew. My bread basket was an inspired mix of cornbread, sliced white bread and hush puppies, which I hadn’t eaten since childhood trips to Red Lobster were considered a special treat. But the selection was barely warm and the cornbread was just plain stale.

My meats weren’t much better. Again, in theory, it’s an excellently priced and well-varied mix: a large breast of barbequed chicken, spare ribs, pulled pork and beef brisket. As I’ve suggested in my many BBQ write-ups, I like saucy BBQ and this wasn’t saucy. The chicken, while moist and tender, had little flavor other than a vague smokiness. The spare ribs were greasy and the meat flavorless. The pulled pork was of the vinegar variety, which I’m not a fan of. Merely holding a tender forkful of the meat near my mouth was enough for the pungent vapors to open my sinuses. I had held out the most hope for the brisket, presented in large, well-sauced chunks, but the sauce had the exact industrial-tomato flavor of (I kid you not) SpaghettiOs. I’ve got nothing against SpaghettiOs, per se, but I don’t want my BBQ sauce tasting like ’em.

Not even my side dishes were appetizing. My mac-and-cheese was gummy and bland while my baked beans had no adherence whatsoever; they were more like beans plunked in a watery BBQ sauce.

Booo.

Brothers BBQ

• 225 Varick Street
• (212) 727-2775
• Meal 10 of 52: All-I-Could-Have-Eaten BBQ platter (Monday-only special) ($14.95) and a pint of Bud ($4).

It’s the emotional implications that make found photographs so fascinating. They look much the same as the snapshots that fill our own family albums. Yet cut loose from their points of origin, they become objects of deep mystery....

These unofficial images answer a persistent need to believe that photographs can still capture some essential, unvarnished truth about the subject. Where, even before the digital era, professional photographers were often shown to have manipulated images that might appear to represent actuality, amateur photographers can still be given the benefit of the doubt. Their directness, ineptitude, and lack of artifice become signs of reliability. The taste for these pictures is a measure of our enduring hunger to experience unmediated reality.

Rick Poynor, Print magazine, March/April 2006

I have ... determined to keep a daily journal in which I shall set down my various sentiments and my various conduct, which will be not only useful but very agreeable. It will give me a habit of application and improve me in expression; and knowing that I am to record my transactions will make me more careful to do well. Or if I should go wrong, it will assist me in resolutions of doing better. I shall here put down my thoughts on different subjects at different times, the whims that may seize me and the sallies of my luxuriant imagination. I shall mark the anecdotes and the stories that I hear, the instructive or amusing conversations that I am present at, and the various adventures that I may have.

[....] In this way I shall preserve many things that would otherwise be lost in oblivion. I shall find daily enjoyment for myself, which will save me from indolence and help to keep off the spleen, and I shall lay up a store of entertainment for my after life. Very often we have more pleasure in reflecting on agreeable scenes that we have been in than we had from the scenes themselves. I shall regularly record the business or rather the pleasure of every day. I shall not study much correctness, lest the labour of it should make me lay it aside altogether. I hope it will be of use to my worthy friend Johnston, and that while he laments my personal absence, this journal may in some measure supply that defect and make him happy.

James Boswell’s London Journal, November 15, 1762

The soda bread I made last night for our perpetual Patty’s Day party at work today was a hit. The photo above depicts what remained of the spread at 12:45 p.m., after the locusts had descended. What’s left of my soda bread is sitting on the tinfoil in the foreground. Many people said they liked it, but I think that was because this mouthy girl I work with kept telling people it was I who had baked it, after listing all the ladies who had made stuff, as if it was by some miracle that a guy could cook. Also, I don’t take praise well.

So thanks to Dana for the recipe, and happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone. Drink a Guinness for me.

Our department has some hardcore Irish in it so celebrations are aplenty on St. Patrick’s Day. Even at work, it’s a daylong feast of food, decorations and silly hats.

I was directed today to bring in food tomorrow so I emailed Dana in Dublin to get an authentic Irish recipe for “cookies or bread type items.” She responded with this one, supplied by an actual Irish lady who made it for Dana and her housemates.

I converted the heathen Celsius and metric system measurements to American and discovered that the recipe’s original call for “caster sugar” is the same as superfine sugar. (Then I found actual caster sugar at an Upper West Side grocer and bought it even though it was $7 for a pound bag.) Also, the original recipe called for butter but didn’t say what to do with it other than spread it on the finished slices; instead, I melted it and threw it on the dough before baking to enhance taste and browning.

Initially I was concerned that the recipe didn’t contain any baking soda as I thought soda bread would, but a hasty Google revealed three things:

1. Both baking powder and baking soda are leavening agents, which make bread rise.
2. Just like meatloaf, everyone and her mother has her own recipe for soda bread.
3. The reason you cut a cross in the dough is to let the fairies out.

I found other soda bread recipes with baking powder and not baking soda, baking soda and not baking powder, and some with both. Some had eggs, some didn’t. Some skipped out on the sugar. Others insisted on caraway seeds. And there were many passionate bids for specific dried fruits. I chose an even mix of Zante currants and unsulphured dried apricots, which I diced and floured so they didn’t stick together.

Other than the buttering, I stuck to the recipe and I think it was a success. It resulted in what resembles a small UFO-sized scone, which isn’t a bad thing by me. We’ll see how it survives a subway journey downtown and the judgment of my coworkers.

This girl in my department is getting married early this fall and started dieting in January. She’s always on top of her work so it’s not surprising she’s on top of this and not merely waiting until two months before the Big Day to start.

She’s also a driven, competitive individual, which helps. When she began the diet, she goaded me to reveal much I weighed. “I bet you weigh less than I do,” she would say, poking at me. But I sidestepped her question because I really don’t know how much I weigh, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell her because I don’t think the weight of a nearly six-foot-tall guy has any bearing on the weight of a woman of average height.

So she’s looked elsewhere for encouragement, banding with other dieters in the office to talk about whatever it is dieters talk about: maybe brag how little they ate for lunch or how they would garrote their own mother for half a Snickers bar.

My problem with all of this is she’s losing weight and looks great, but I’m not sure how to tell her this or even if I should. In this self-absorbed and litigious age, I rarely complement a coworker on his or her appearance, because even if I try the old “Oh, did you get a haircut?” I’m hit with a retort like “I just didn’t have time to blow dry it this morning.” And it’s not so much feelings of impropriety as it is my general avoidance of sweet nothings like “Good morning” and “How are you?” In summary, for me to say something like “You’re looking good” could imply:

1. She didn’t look good before.
2. I have an ulterior motive because I haven’t addressed her personally before.
3. I am a pervert and party to harassment.

Although I’m sure heath benefits are a component to why people diet, it’s really about looking better, isn’t it, particularly with swimsuit season fast approaching? So why shouldn’t I be able to complement her on her appearance? And would “You’re looking good” even be the right way to put it? It’s vague, although “Hey, you’ve lost weight!” doesn’t work, either.

Better late than never, I saw Good Night, and Good Luck tonight. George Clooney does a great job directing, capturing the bustling essence of a newsroom well and giving excruciating attention to the details of the period set design. I like how meticulously the character of Edward R. Murrow (played with unflappable resolve by David Strathairn) picks away in his televised commentary at McCarthy’s bluster until the senator is reduced, mumbling and bowed at his censure hearing, to deflecting questions like, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

There are some obvious parallels between the movie’s portrayal of McCarthyism and the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” elements of our current political climate, as well as the general state of TV today and Murrow’s public damnation of his own medium as fostering an insular world of frivolous entertainments:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

The modest tagline of Pick-a-Pita is “The best falafel place in New York.” New York magazine puts it more accurately and nearly as succinctly in a one-sentence review: “The best falafel you’ll find at the end of a loading dock.”

The magazine, which isn’t being entirely snide, classifies Pick-a-Pita among several “gold mines for good grub” on West 38th Street, a dingy swath of the Garment District that isn’t exactly teeming with linens and fine china during chowtime.

They’re not kidding about the loading dock, either. You walk down a dim alley directly off the sidewalk, back to one of those cheap white-painted aluminum storm doors found chiefly in the suburbs. Inside is a handful of tables and a brisk takeout business at the counter, staffed by a bunch of motormouthed, quick-moving lads in white paper hats who will address you as “boss” or “chief” as they snap up your order, dish out fresh tabouli and man the slowly rotating vertical spits of sliced lamb and chicken for the shawarma.

That’s what I had, the chicken shawarma. Oh, yeah. Nothing better on an unseasonably warm day (nearly 60 degrees!), particularly those chilled, fresh-spiced cucumbers.

Pick-a-Pita

• 247 West 38th (between Seventh and Eighth Avenues)
• (212) 730-7482
• Meal 9 of 52: chicken shawarma ($7.50).

Continuing the surreal theme of the day, I went to the Paul Klee exhibit Klee and America at the Neue Galerie, a converted mansion on the Upper East Side with a small permanent collection from the likes of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele on the second floor and four rooms on the third floor for the Klee exhibition. Spread through three of these rooms are 58 works by Klee, chiefly from the ’30s and ’40s when he was first being discovered in America. His champions included one of the twentieth century’s original Power Couples of art, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the latter of whom declared Klee the world’s greatest “child/poet.”

Ironically, Klee’s recognition in the U.S. came just as he felt he was gaining it in Europe. Nearing the cusp of his popularity there, he was dismissed from his Bauhaus teaching post in Germany by the Nazis, who had classified his work, along with most of the modern canon, as degenerate art.

The style of Klee is hard to nail down but he’s best known for what one of my art history professors in college called “subconscious doodles,” thin, strange stick figures and symbols he usually sketched in pen or pencil. While he adhered to these instruments, oils and watercolors as his core media, the surfaces on which he worked varied greatly: cardboard, cotton, canvas, wood, many types of paper, burlap (by itself and primed with other media, such as chalk), and black casein ground. Each leant a unique texture. The casein ground, for instance, brought the paint’s pigment, rather than its oil, to the surface, for a result akin to colored scratchboard. Combining watercolors and paste paint on cardboard, the color and texture of The Sick Heart resembles frosting on sugar cookies, while in Orpheus, watercolored cotton conjures the luminous swaths of color in a stained glass window.

Klee often used a technique (which he may have originated) called oil transfer drawing that gave his works gently shifting translucent hues, juxtaposed by his sharply drawn caricature. The famous Red Balloon (depicted above) is an oil transfer drawing and was described in 2003 by the Guggenheim Museum for its show From Picasso to Pollock: Classics of Modern Art:

He brushed a thinned oil paint onto one side of a piece of paper, then like making a carbon copy, he drew on the back of the painted sheet with a pen or stylus. The resulting lines have a feathered, smudged quality, as the artist stated, ‘saving transfer of my fundamental graphic talent into the domain of painting.’ Devised during Klee’s Bauhaus years, the oil transfer method was used for watercolors and oil paintings that are among the artist’s most idiosyncratically playful images.

I had an early dinner at the museum’s Café Sabarsky, which specializes in Viennese cuisine. I got the hearty Gulaschsuppe mit Kartoffen (goulash with potatoes) and Glühwein, heated red wine with spices, orange and cloves that smelled more pleasant than it tasted. Overall better than the stereotypical museum café fare of overpriced, uninspired sandwiches.

For after-dinner drinks and company, Andie invited me over to her apartment to join her, Eric, Katie and the girls’ parents, who are visiting this weekend. We had carry-out tiramisu from Carmine’s and reviewed the group’s adventures, which included a trip to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, Macy’s and the New York City Opera for the revival of Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, starring family relation Lisa Vroman.

Café Sabarsky

• 1048 Fifth Avenue (at 86th Street)
• (212) 288-0665
• Meal 8 of 52: potato goulash ($12) and mulled wine ($10).

I caught an early show of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet at Film Forum this afternoon. That’s one weird movie for 1986 and one weird movie still. It’s as if Lynch decided to make a film from 1950, particularly with Angelo Badalamenti’s string- and bassoon-heavy score during the first quarter, sunny suburban scenery and townsfolk, the cheesy aw-shucks dialogue of Kyle MacLachlan’s character, his girlfriend and her father the detective. Then he slowly blends in creepiness until wham! Dennis Hopper lands from a completely different movie 20 years in the future, expelling F-bombs, inhaling amyl nitrite and Pabst Blue Ribbon, and taking advantage of Isabella Rossellini’s Stockholm Syndrome with some masochistic intimidation, beat-downs and rape. The film is packed with seeds of Lynchian classics-to-come, obsessions of lumber, velvet curtains and plain-talking people with strange secrets prefiguring Twin Peaks.

I enjoy writing and I have a porous memory, two sometimes related facts that necessitate I have a notebook and pen always at the ready. I’ve been through a huge number of notebook sizes, styles and brands and never been satisfied. About a year ago I bought my first Moleskine¹ Pocket Notebook. (The first page of scribbling, dated Febrary 14, 2005, reminds me to check out Threadless and Digital Gravel for well-designed T-shirts, to “get keynote CHOF presentation for Jimi,“ and to give Tony Luke’s Old Philly Style Sandwiches on Ninth Avenue a try.)

Moleskine is a fashionable choice, but I was more concerned with the brand’s portability and sturdiness. I’ve had my share of dud notebooks: ones that were too thick or of an unwieldy size; flimsy cheapies that I had trouble holding open or laying flat when I attempted to write on-the-go; wire-bound models that unspiraled and nearly fishhooked me; perfect-bound types that contracted leprosy and shed pages; and varieties in which the ink ran at the first suggestion of rain.

I must admit, a year later and I’m impressed that my Moleskine has met the challenges I’ve thrown at it. It’s been dropped, stepped on, stuffed in all manner of bags and pockets, rained and snowed on, taken across the country and an ocean, even had pages unceremoniously ripped from it, and it’s made the grade.

The paper of the pages is thick enough to accommodate any manner of writing implement-not even a Sharpie will bleed through onto the next page. The oilcloth-covered cardboard covers haven’t warped despite being crammed in my back jeans pocket and sat upon. (It’s the perfect portable size.) The elastic band is a great feature to keep it closed and pages protected from the elements. The sewn spine holds the pages intact and allows the book to lie flat and mostly open when needed. The trademark secret pocket built into the inside back cover did get a small split, but I chalk it up to the constant removal and return of my indispensable Manhattan subway and bus map, a laminated 4-by-2.75-inch (when trifolded) Streetwise “Mini Metro.” (Available online and at some Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shops.) The end of the bookmark is frayed, but I can live with that; wear can be pleasant: the edges of the pages, like those of an oft-read book, have been worn smooth by fingertips. Great value, too: as I’ve mentioned before, New Yorkers can snag a standard 192-page Pocket Notebook for $9 at Pearl Paint.

My Moleskine is the Squared (graph paper) model, which I bought because I thought it would corral my spastic handwriting and save space. That didn’t happen. It wasn’t a deterrent, but I think I can stick with Plain or Ruled varieties now that the Squared one is pages away from reaching capacity. Thankfully, I have a backlog of Moleskines that I’ve received as gifts. On to more happy travels and fine writing with Moleskine notebook #2!

¹A word on pronunciation: moleskin, lowercased and without the trailing “e,” is a sturdy cotton fabric, such as that which covered notebooks of the same non-trademarked name at one time. It’s pronounced as you’d expect: MOL-skin. Andie and Katie, who both work at bookstores that sell Moleskine notebooks, say that’s how everyone pronounces the brand name. But here and there you’ll find references to mol-a-SKEEN-a: on Moleskine’s Wikipedia page, on the front page of the brand’s American website and from the sort of jerks who will “correct” the pronunciation of words like Porche. A person billing himself as a Moleskine customer service rep cleared the confusion on a Moleskine message board in April 2005:

How do you pronounce Moleskine? Around here we say mol-a-SKEEN-a, as the books are currently manufactured in Italy. However, the books were originally manufactured in France, so we also say c’est la vie to any way you prefer, as there is no wrong answer.

Now that I know the rest of the story, I’m sticking with MOL-skin, thanks. [back]

Here’s a new tip for airlines wishing to improve their on-time schedule. Let’s say a flight is bumped back an hour beyond the ticketed time. Instead of listing “Delayed” on the board and on record, list “New Time.” It’s all in the marketing! You didn’t want that 1:30 departure time, anyway; 2:30 has a much better ring to it. 1:30 is so “one hour ago.” It’s not a delay; it’s a new and improved time!

American Airlines pulled this stunt for my flight out of Miami this afternoon, then made us board the airplane and sit another hour for unexplained reasons. (I think it was because of high winds. According to Reuters, it wasn’t because of the well-publicized TSA ineptitude today at LaGuardia’s Delta Terminal, which supposedly only affected outgoing flights.) The icing on the cake was our captain’s apology for the “one-hour delay,” as if the hour before that one had disappeared in the three-cornered winds of the Bermuda Triangle

But when the cabin door was secured, the fun had only just begun. An hour after takeoff, we learned we had a Crying Baby On Board, and by the tiniest nuance of human voice, you could tell the child was responsible for its tantrum and not external forces like colic or inner ear pressure. You know how we’ve been told to never shake a baby? This one needed shaking like James Bond’s martini. That site I just linked to lists suggestions for coping with a crying baby. Here’s another tip: if you follow the “walk the baby around holding him/her close to you” tip, don’t do it repeatedly on a 757 full of cranky passengers after it’s obvious the child will not be silent as long as it has an audience. The baby screamed up and down the aisle, distressing people in its wake and causing able bodied men to catch each other’s eyes with a primeval look, the same look the guys on Flight 93 had, one that said wordlessly, “If we rush the mother now, we can take her down and the child.”

After an hour of crying, the Gods of Comedic Timing saw to it that the baby fell asleep followed shortly by a bing! and a flight attendant slamming onto the cabin PA system to tell us that the captain had turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. Lo and behold the baby woke up and relaunched its fit and I think at least a few people were wondering why the captain couldn’t illuminate some sort of “eject baby” sign so everyone on the left side of the plane could look out his or her window and watch a blanketed bundle arc gracefully over Delaware.

When the plane landed, the baby ceased its reign of terror. During our grim shuffle onto the jetbridge, someone turned on that soft departure music some airlines play over the PA. It’s usually generic New Age noodling, but this time I swear it was Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” played so quietly I could just make out the distinctive glockenspiel. It’s a lullaby of a song but with depressive-voiced lyrics referring to anarchy, chronic injury and death. It also includes the refrain, “No alarms and no surprises/Silence, silence,” which was about right.

I flew to Miami today on business and it’s only the second time I’ve even been to Florida. I see why people would want to come here for the sole purposes of drinking/fucking or waiting out death. It’s really quite pleasant. Warmth, huge puffy white clouds, palm trees, ocean breeze, spunky music. It’s enough to make you go all soft and pleasant. I’m down here for a two-day conference event produced by a big brokerage with lots of money and it’s being held at the same resort where Tiger Woods played and won during the Ford Championship on March 5.

Like most other white-collar businesses, my work is populated by middle-aged white men who get really excited about golf, and this is a golf haven. I hate golf because I am not good at it, nor do I have any desire to improve my standing. As my Dad would tell you, the first and only time I played a game of golf other than Putt-Putt, I hit more balls onto I-75 than any flat green surface.

These guys, who were mostly brokers, like sports in general. The keynote speaker was Don Shula and I watched the crowd literally lean forward in its seats to hear Coach, as they called him later during the Q&A session, talk about himself and pitch sports-success-as-business-success similes. He’s a dynamic speaker and his well-crafted jokes referencing events during his tenure coaching the Dolphins were funny, but I was left with the impression that he pulls the same speech from his pocket at all the corporate events he’s paid to speak at, complete with the insert company name here spot to personalize the thing, like the band that shouts out, “Hello, Cleveland!”

Since I’ve read Eats, Shoots & Leaves, I’ve been on the lookout for anguished English in Gotham. I’m just like Batman, except I’m seeking bad punctuation, grammar and spelling instead of crime, and I’m not so much fighting these errors as I am taking pictures of them for my own amusement and maybe yours.

Anyway, it comes as no surprise to me that much of the trouble is caused by ladies. Here we have a large incorrect sign overlooking West 34th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Of course, the Tannery House could mean what it has written, but stocking shoes exclusively for one lady, even if she’s Imelda Marcos, is a waste of precious shelf space in the high rents of this city.

I hate to bring attention to this next one because it’s in the Village outside my favorite barber shop, staffed by friendly Russian guys who ask in a thick accent if I want my usual “business-style haircut.”

But it’s even worse than the Tannery House boo-boo and not just because the Russians recently raised their prices from $9.99. It starts out fine with Men’s Haircut, then your eye drops to the fanciful Ladie’s. Unlike Lady’s, Ladie’s isn’t even a word, and it’s at this point that an English teacher would drop to the sidewalk and writhe in pain.

I’ve been to my share of author readings at bookstores, but it’s safe to say I’d never previously attended one where an audience member questioned the author’s degree of involvement with John Wilkes Booth’s vertebrae.

It was part of a query posed to author and NPR commentator Sarah Vowell tonight after her reading at the Borders on Columbus Circle. “This is the first time I’ve been allowed to read above 14th Street,” she said by means of introduction.

Vowell, who has a sharply intelligent and desert-dry sense of humor, knew immediately that the questioner, who had asked if the author had touched the assassin’s bones at Walter Reed, was misinformed: the medical center has a piece of President Garfield’s vertebrae, untouched by her, that was pierced by an assassin’s bullet in 1881. Vowell should know; she was promoting the paperback edition of her most recent book, Assassination Vacation, about the first three Presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.

She began by reading some passages from the book, pausing to interject comments. “I’m kind of an all-over-the-place kind of writer,” she admitted later, mentioning that she calls her frequent printed asides “shenanigans.” She had many verbal shenanigans during the reading, pausing to mention, for instance, that the soy milk that she added earlier to her tea (“because that’s how I roll”) had the same expiration date as that of Lincoln, April 15th. She also revealed her nickname for Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd, is “Jinxy McDeath” because of his presence at his father’s deathbed and his physical proximity to the assassinations of McKinley and Garfield. He was also indirectly responsibly for some cannibalism during a doomed Arctic expedition, she added.

After a reference in her reading to her Jimmy Carter keychain, she interjected that she had met him recently at an event because they share the same publisher. Comparing their one-sheet press bios, Vowell pointed out to him that “39th President of the United States” is a pretty kick-ass way to lead-off a resumé and that her own bio was slightly less impressive. “I guess you could still win the Nobel Prize,” Carter offered.

She wrapped up by reading a recent op-ed piece she wrote about giving readings of her books at bookstores and getting asked stupid questions. Then she took some questions and, sure enough, some were stupid. The worst was, “Why are you a writer?”

“To make money,” she shouted. “It’s my job.”

Painfully close to the terrible classic, “Where do you get your ideas?”, was “How do you pitch your ideas to your editor?”, asked by a book editor in the audience. Vowell said it’s simple: she picks her favorite idea and tells her editor. “He says, ’I guess that’s not too terrible an idea.’ And then we get cracking.”

Responding to another question, she said she didn’t include Kennedy’s assassination in the book, not because it’s been overdone, but because she’s not historically interested in that president, nor was she comfortable making snide comments about a man who still has plenty of direct relatives living.

Also, she is allergic to wheat.

I headed over to the Avalon nightclub tonight for a concert by Mogwai, five Glasgow lads that make long, rock guitar-driven suites, mostly without vocals. It’s updated prog rock, which I know can smack of wankery, but I’m a fan. For several years, their 2001 album Rock Action served as my favorite music to relax or fall asleep to, despite the electronic noise, sharp drums, distortion, vocoder bits and quiet-then-suddenly-loud structures. Mogwai songs are robot dreams of abandoned planets.

Getting past the security checkpoint at the entrance was fun. I had a run in with a large bouncer as he patted me down for illicit goods and I kept recoiling with snickers.

Bouncer [exasperated]: C’mon, guy, it’s Monday, I’m not even supposed to be here tonight.
Me: Sorry, man; I’m ticklish.
Bouncer: I’m ticklish, too, but not when another guy’s grabbin’ at me.

I didn’t know how to respond to this. I wanted to get into a discussion with him about whether tickle-response is physiological or sociological, but it was neither the time nor place, so I replied with a Jimi-style, “Right. Right.”

The venue was sold-out packed, mostly trendy 20-somethings, and the band played for an hour and a half. The setlist included two of the best songs off Rock Action, “Take Me Somewhere Nice” and “You Don’t Know Jesus.” (Like their name, which is a nonsensical reference to the critters in that movie, Mogwai pick random phrases as song titles). I saw at least three PowerBooks, including a spunky 12-inch pulsing with the Flurry screen saver, cracked open onstage and utilized for audio effects. The sound was loud, Pantera loud, but I’m not (yet) too old. As the band blasted, my scalp rattled and the electric guitar-generated breeze ruffled my pants. During one violent quiet-to-loud shift, you could feel the air sucked in by the amps and blasted back over the crowd.

Avalon is a converted gothic-revival church and couldn’t be much hipper, although with the cleanliness, red velvet curtains, waitresses in snug garb trawling for drink requests, bars on each floor and black lights, I felt residual elements of House of Blues chain-club cheesiness. Forgotten NY notes the original structure, the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, was built between 1844 and 1850 by Richard Upjohn, architect of the city’s grand Trinity Church. In the 1980s, it became the Limelight Disco and a deade later, the owner was busted for the rampant drug-dealing inside; under its new name, it’s been sanitized for clubgoing protection. The building’s architecture, however, hasn’t changed much at all. The exterior looks the same as it does in this photo from 1940.

For a peek inside, here are some photos from the firm that redesigned the interior. It still has the high gothic arches and wood parquet floors, although steel framework now supports a wide catwalk (great views of the stage and a way to avoid the packed dancefloor), along with several tons of rigging and lights.

Setlist from bright light !:

1. We’re No Here
2. Hunted by a Freak
3. Friend of the night
4. Take Me Somewhere Nice
5. Yes! I am a Long Way From Home
6. Travel is Dangerous
7. You Don’t Know Jesus
8. Acid Food
9. Folk Death 95
10. Killing All The Flies
11. Stanley Kubrick
12. Xmas Steps
13. Glasgow Mega-Snake

Encore

1. Mogwai Fear Satan

• If anyone can look good singing about in an all-white pantsuit, it’s Dolly Parton. Land sakes!
• Joaquin Phoenix did not blink once the entire night. Maybe it was the image of Ben Stiller burned into his retinas. Nice shameful one-joke physical comedy, Stiller. Although if anyone can look good prancing about in an all-green pantsuit, it’s you.

• Same with Will Ferrell and Steve Carell presenting the award for makeup while wearing some of it badly. O, physical comedy; you are so simple, yet bring so much joy into our hearts. “It’s called Pineapple Bliss.”

• Jon Stewart: funnier than the studio audience gave him credit for. Nothing can faze those air-conditioned stiffs, although there were several reaction shots of Jack laughing, which is really all that matters.
• Only two truly sacred cows seemed to get the electric prod from Stewart:
  1. Scientology: Cut back from commercial and we catch Stewart explaining to the audience “...and that is why I think Scientology is right, not just for this city, but for the country.”
  2. Steven Spielberg: Stewart claimed that, as a Jew, he couldn’t wait for what was next in the trilogy after Schindler’s List and Munich.
• Speaking of Jack, I loved watching him strut to the podium for his presentation. Those creepy-uncle shades of his be damned, the man is still cock of the walk.
• Frances McDormand is starting to resemble the third Cohen brother. I don’t demand women look like sugar and spice 24/7, but would it kill her to comb her hair?
• Producers shouldn’t be allowed to make acceptance speeches. We don’t care to hear what you have to say, moneybags.
• Robert Altman, with his rheumy eyes and heart of a 30-year-old woman, made some pretty freakin’ good movies (and Popeye), as evidenced by the retrospective clips that refreshed my memory before his honorary lifetime achievement award. I liked his “I’m not dead yet”-style comment and his contention that with his directorial freedom, he’s really only made “one long film” in his career.
• Well-deserved indirect honorarium to Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain, fleshed-out from her short story, won for Adapted Screenplay. Proulx was thanked by script co-adaptor and fellow author Larry McMurty, who noted she was present, but oddly, we got no cut-away shot. Irksome.
• Nice touch by McMurty thanking the booksellers of the world.
• Crash: didn’t see it; can’t comment. A surprise that it beat Brokeback for Best Picture, though.
• Nick Park, you big British nerd, with your giant bow tie and matching mini for Oscar. Glad Wallace & Gromit finally took the big cheese, as it were, for Animated Feature, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. (Although Nick did get Oscars thrice in the ’90s for the trilogy of W&G shorts.)
• More nerdery with the French guys who won Documentary Feature Oscars for March of the Penguins. They chirped, clutched stuffed animals and had one guy in their party who I thought was gonna pull a Benigni and start clambering over seatbacks.
• Favorite presumably Stewart-produced cut-scene: the Oscar campaign smear ads, especially the pro-Keira one, “Keira Knightley: Acting While Beautiful,” which congratulated her “for having the courage to act with cheekbones which may have been flecked with gold dust.”
• Awww. Reese in her Annie Oakley ballroom gown thankin’ grandma and gettin’ all corn-pone on us. A well-deserved recognition nonetheless: Best Actress as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line.
• Philip Seymour Hoffman, scoring one for the non beautiful people: Best Actor, for Capote. He was appropriately flustered while giving his speech and thanking his mom.
• Top lady hotness: my vote goes to Catherine Keener because unlike Alba (too much bronzer, dear?), Charlize, Keira or J-Lo, Catherine is foxy and wouldn’t seem adverse to hang out with you for billiards and beers.

• Best acceptance speech by far: Three 6 Mafia for Original Song, “It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” Talking jubilantly all at once and thanking everyone from The Lord to George Clooney, which are really one and the same in Hollywood.

Since the lengthy delay activating my home DSL service, Verizon has been showering me with reminders that I’m getting my first two months of service free. I think I’ve received a half-dozen brief form letters stating this fact. I wasn’t getting this much attention during that two-month span between ordering my DSL service and getting my DSL service. Maybe Verizon could cut its junk mail budget and fold some of that money into its wretched human-based customer service or its apparently too-small blue-collar workforce.

Today I received a Hallmark Business Expressions card in a pale violet envelope.

Inside, a scripty typeface thanks me for choosing Verizon Online DSL and that the company looks forward to serving me, by which I take to mean “sending me more misty-eyed notes.” A small single-sided card inserted into the thank-you card reminds me for the umpteenth time that “Due to the overwhelming demand for our high-speed internet, you experienced a delay in your DSL service installation” and that, once again, they’re sorry and are crediting my account two months.

This repetition is irksome. Maybe they think by blanketing me with thanks, my view of the company will shift and instead of badmouthing their poky service and terrible support at every opportunity, I’ll say with a far-away look in my eye, “Those Verizon guys aren’t so bad. They can admit it when they’ve made a mistake.” No deal, Verizon. I still hate you. There’s no apology for a two month delay in any service these days. What is this, Communist-era Soviet Union, where it takes a year for me to receive my refrigerator after I order it?

Auto parts supplier Dana Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection today and it made me think of my sister, whose name is also Dana but whom I’m fairly certain is solvent.

Dana the company is based in Toledo and so was my family a time ago, and Dana would get personalized swag from a family friend that worked there: Dana baseball caps, Dana message pads, Dana stuffed bears. Dana!

Then I got a postcard today from Dana, recently on holiday in Germany.

She wrote:

Hello from Germany! Apparently I got you a happy birthday postcard, but I just was amused by Muppets speaking German. Hope you are well. Love ya, Dana

Sure enough, the translation from German is:

Waldorf: I feel old!
Statler: What? You can still feel?

Congratulations, Oldie!

I partially cured my “I haven’t seen enough Oscar-nominated films” blues at Cinema Village tonight, where I saw a program of all five shorts in the running this year for Best Animated Short Film.

I’d never been to the theater before and flanking the entrance in the lobby were two non-uniformed, shoddily dressed gentlemen, either of whom could have been the ticket-taker. I took a guess and presented my ticket to the 60-year-old guy on the left, who was dressed in a grubby blue and black fleece pullover, baggy jeans, and sneakers. He politely declined and the guy on my right came to life and seized the ticket.

After I had taken a seat, the 60-year-old guy came in to introduce himself and the movies, which is when I learned he was Bill Plympton. My brush with movie celebrity: trying to foist a movie ticket upon a two-time Academy Award-nominated animator.

Despite the fact that he needed to improve his wardrobe and wash his hair, Bill seemed like a nice, unassuming guy. He mentioned the program had been padded out with an unannounced surprise tonight to include his most recent short, The Fan and the Flower, which was short-listed for Oscar nomination. “It’s not a typical Bill Plympton cartoon,” he told us. “If you’re looking for death and sex and violence, you’re not gonna see it.” After throwing a brief “animation doesn’t get the respect it’s due” pitch and a suggestion that we tell our friends about the series (done!), the shorts began.

First was the obligatory Pixar short, One Man Band. Yawn. I remember seeing Tin Toy back in the day and the technology flabbergasted me. Nearly 20 years later and Pixar’s style remains essentially the same: characters with giant ping-pong ball eyes, overly smooth, perfectly geometric surfaces and a clinical desperation to make an audience laugh at some physical comedy. It was not bad, but predictable and unfunny. I’m not totally jaded to Pixar’s recent shorts; For the Birds, winner of the Best Animated Short Oscar in 2001, is eye-cryingly funny to me. (It’s included as an extra on the Monsters, Inc. DVD, if you’re interested.)

A short similar in style to One Man Band was another nominee, 9, about a race of characters that resemble potato-sized burlap sacks with tiny headlights for eyes. A robotic cat-skeleton-like character is rampaging around and sucking their souls, but is outwitted by our protagonist burlap sack, 9. Too smoothly animated for my taste; more of those tracking shots and pullbacks that can only be accomplished with computer animation.

My favorite was Badgered, by a 28-year-old Scot, Sharon Colman, executed in a more traditional line art and watercolor-wash style. It’s about a badger trying to sleep-in despite constant noise from two crows in a tree outside his burrow. Then the military industrial complex comes into play and things get crazy-go-nuts.

The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation probably gained bonus points from Academy voters because of its celebrity association: John Turturro voices the lead character, a man reminiscing on the life of his abusive father as a form of revenge and closure. The animation is purposely childlike and abstract, and was a chore to watch. It was a great story but the style is too frenetic.

Exactly the opposite problem occurs in The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. Director Anthony Lucas renders a city in the skies featuring flying whirligig-like contraptions, built of levers, gears and spindly iron latticework and populated by a race of thin, Victorian-era silhouettes. Jasper the navigator, along with a mad professor and a salty crew, set to the skies to find a cure for a plague that’s been wiping out their population. Like in Alien, they come across a still-operable, deserted dirigible that seems to have been attacked by some sort of creature. And so on. Animation: stunning. Dialogue: purposely hokey. See the website for examples. It’s done chiefly in a journal-voiceover style and written like something out of H. G. Wells.

I wish The Fan and the Flower would have made the finalist list for nomination because I liked it a lot. It’s Plympton’s typical smoothly sketchy animation style telling the story of a ceiling fan that falls in love with a flower. Paul Giamatti narrates. It’s like a children’s picture book come to life and made me think of something Shel Silverstein would have cooked up, both in content and style.

I was in D.C. on business today and I stopped by the National Gallery of Art for Dada, the first major museum exhibition in the U.S. of the Dada art movement. (Interested New Yorkers, don’t fret: with some variations, the exhibit’s final stop is the Museum of Modern Art, June 18 through September 11.)

That there would even be a Dada exhibition is ironic because the movement was established to rebel against art’s conventions and pretensions. One of the first things you see upon entering is needlepoint (needlepoint!) by Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber, who picked up their needles and patterns because paint-on-canvas stood for “a pretentious and conceited” world, according to Arp. (The exhibit also features some stunning painted wood marionettes Taeuber designed and commissioned in 1918.) Along the same lines, Man Ray postured inventing a new art form with his Rayographs, conveniently ignoring the fact that they were exactly the same as photograms, which have existed since photography. Most famous was Marcel Duchamp’s promotion of everyday objects as artworks, and they’re all on display, ironically, as “reproductions” of the long-lost “originals”: a urinal, a snow shovel, a hat rack, an ampoule of air from Paris.

The work that consumed most of Duchamp’s artistic life and which became a touchstone of the Dada movement, The Large Glass, is represented only by a photo, a study painting and a small descriptive plaque, likely because the last time Large Glass was exhibited in the 1920s, the movers broke it. Duchamp enjoyed this serendipity and painstakingly glued the shards back in place, declaring the damage a new feature of the artwork. The Large Glass now rests, likely forever, in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

As an artistic and literary movement, Dada began in Europe in reaction to World War I. In fact, its branches in Zurich and New York City were specifically established by people who sought refuge from the conflict. In addition, if you haven’t guessed already, there’s a strong sense of humor, randomness and absurdity in Dada, extending through media beyond traditional art: poetry, film and music.

A short stairway leading from one gallery to another was printed, one instruction per step, with Tristan Tzara’s famous recipe for making a Dada poem:

Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.

I watched a few short films and liked Entr’acte [Intermission] (1924) written by Francis Picabia and starring Ray, Duchamp and friends. Entr’acte can best be described as a jolly murder and funeral procession, with a lot of slow-motion leaping. Throughout the exhibition’s halls, you can hear samples of abstract voice poems played through hidden loudspeakers. Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate (1922-32) is annoying, particularly because it loops infinitely. (Here’s a transcription of the lyrics.) I better appreciated his printed work.

Although Picasso popularized collage, Dadaists like Schwitters borrowed the technique for their own purposes. My favorites as shown in the exhibit were Prints from Merz Portfolio: 6 Lithos (1923), Schwitters’ assortment of letterpress prints and lithograph-collage combos. (MoMA has an example from the same year, although the color reproduction is completely washed out; fie to exhibits that ban photography!) Letterpress printing is a beautiful, now all-but-dead technology, and Schwitters combined it with freshly discarded materials he gathered from other people’s print runs: scraps of abstract patterns, bits of illustration and ads, and individual letters. You can directly trace Schwitters’ use of unusual cropping, overlapped and bunched elements, angled type and “severe” use of white space, directly to late 20th century graphic design and typography, especially the work of David Carson and his ilk.