April 2006 Archives

If you’re a fan of landscaping, topiary and lush gardens of flowers, shrubs and trees, each of which has one of those little name placards posted near it, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is your place, friend.

I was there for the first time today for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. It is a marvel to walk under richly scented canopies of cherry trees in full bloom, showers of petals catching on the wind and cascading around you, like you’re in a commercial for a feminine hygiene product. There were many people there: frisky young couples rolling around on the grass, families with rambunctious kids in tow, burnouts kicking about a hacky-sack, old people moving slowly, amateur photographers aplenty and a handful of geishas. It was beautiful, but I can only take so much mingling with nature. All those blossoms started to look the same and I could feel my body flooding with histamine. Not even the lazy, sun-dappled landscape could whisk my mind too far away from the crowds and the fact that the garden seems to be located directly in a flightpath of JFK.

I decided I wasn’t taking the long haul to Brooklyn without making something else of my trip, so I stopped by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Rose Cinemas to see Friends with Money.

Like director Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking and Lovely & Amazing, it concerns relationships and talking about relationships, this time around with a middle-aged-woman flavor, meditations on aging gracefully, and the help and hindrance money can bring.

Jennifer Aniston costars as the one poor friend who’s a housemaid, obsessive over her ex-boyfriend and Lancôme skin cream samples; she’s not bad although she seems to reprise her role from The Good Girl. Otherwise, it’s a fine leading cast, with Catherine Keener as a screenwriter whose husband ignores her, Frances McDormand as an angry, angry woman who argues fiercely with people who cut in front of her in lines and steal her parking spaces, and Joan Cusack as the most-moneyed friend who’s somewhat shallow and only slowly realizes she doesn’t actually do anything.

I stopped by Tishman Auditorium at The New School tonight for a free literary event produced by The Believer magazine and PEN American Center.

Host John Hodgman was the epitome of the unreliable narrator, which is to say The Believer/McSweeney’s signature style of humor, welcoming everyone with non sequiturs and lies issued unemotionally as fact (“like PEN, The Believer was founded in 1921 in London”). At one point, he got the audience to repeat what he claimed was a credo from Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, part of which involved promising to sharpen one’s teeth at night.

Ben Marcus introduced the first speaker, British-born visual artist Matthew Ritchie, with an unrelated discourse on the character of Ejlert Lövborg from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.

Ritchie then gave a talk about...I’m not sure, really. Something to do with the creation and expansion of the universe, physics, philosophy, abstract expressionism and earthworks, world monuments and the disaster films of Charlton Heston, supplemented with PowerPoint slides.

Samantha Hunt, who reminded me of one of the women from Saturday Night Live’s Delicious Dish sketches, moderated a panel of writers talking about politics in their books, also touching on the ideas of self in fiction and doppelgängers. Two of the writers offhandedly mentioned that they had doubles; Yiyun Li said hers was Winnie the Pooh.

Salman Rushdie read a passage from his most recent novel, Shalimar the Clown, dedicating it to Ralph Newsome, a presidential aide in Joseph Heller’s novel Good as Gold who contradicts himself in the second half of nearly every sentence he speaks. “I feel the benign spirit of Ralph hovering over us,” Rushdie said.

I’ve never read Rushdie before, but at least Shalimar sounds like a wicked farce on war and politics. (I’m thinking it wasn’t a coincidence that he chose a Heller quote.) Rushdie has a wholly engaging reading style, with eye contact and a clear, strong voice that gets caught up in the action when it should.

The program listed the event concluding with a segment of Okusama Wa Majo, a Japanese version of Bewitched, subtitled by Lemony Snicket and several writers from The Daily Show. Instead, we were shown an Errol Morris clip, produced in his signature white-backgrounded Interrotron style, of Donald Trump explaining the meaning of Citizen Kane in a way that’s impossible to tell whether he’s being serious. (I think this was an excerpt of the short film Morris produced for the Academy Awards in 2002.)

It was a strange evening, a jumble of often intriguing and unrelated stuff, but so is The Believer, which is part of the charm.

I called 311 for the first time earlier this week and I was pleasantly surprised that it worked for me. It’s a general-purpose, 24/7 New York City question line for people who need to discuss matters with a human, instead of fucking around with Google for half an hour to retrieve, say, a plain English explanation of how Alternate Side Parking works. The stereotypical 311 caller is peeking out from behind her blinds while speed-dialing about shady looking characters hanging about the block, garbage on the sidewalk or noise disturbances, all of which are legit reasons to call; 311 is often billed as the non-emergency 911. But the kindly operators are at the ready to help answer any NYC question.

I was calling because my apartment building came under new management effective April 20th, along with a notice that my rent was going up $53.20 a month. Although 311 wasn’t able to answer why, they gave me the direct number for the specifically named New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, Office of Rent Administration, helpfully adding that the office wouldn’t open until 9 a.m. There someone answered my question right away: owners of a rent-stabilized apartment like mine can’t raise rent during a lease unless it’s provided for in that document. Usually, those reasons are if the owner makes major capital improvements, but even then, the owner must obtain written consent from the tenant or get DHCR approval.

But the sharp fellow I spoke with at the DHCR correctly guessed where the increase was coming from: “Was the previous owner charging you preferential rent?” he asked, referring to the difference between the regulated rent and the actual rent paid, otherwise known as a rent concession. I was unsure. When I got a chance, I checked my lease. Why, that document is a treasure trove of information! For instance, did you know that at least 80% of the hardwood floor in my bedroom is supposed to be covered with rugs or carpeting? I sure didn’t. It also turns out I signed a rider to pay $53.20 less than the legal rent. I do vaguely recall discussing this with the landlord at the signing and I’m still not sure how I was able to swing a sweetheart deal (my charming self? my witty bons mots?). But unfortunately the rider states the concession is not only temporary, it doesn’t apply under successive owners. Hey, it was fun while it lasted.

Three Times is not a movie to see after a hectic workday wherein you’ve just flown back from Boston. I picked this film because I vaguely recall reading a gushing review of it. The structure of it certainly appealed to me: directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou, it features Chen Chang (of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame) and Qi Shu playing a different couple in love within a trio of vignettes taking place in China in 1966, 1911 and 2005.

But the movie runs long and feels even longer than its running time: each vignette takes roughly 40 minutes, but the mostly static takes stretch out at a leisurely pace, nothing much happens and there is little dialog—in fact the 1911 segment has effectively no dialogue, featuring instead updated versions of old-time “dialogue cards” intercut into scenes. There are beautiful subtleties, like the couple at the end of the 1966 segment holding hands as an expression of their bottled-up feelings for one another. And I liked how a few key elements, including a love letter (in the 2005 segment, it’s a text message on a cellphone), recurred in all three timeframes. But these moments are far between the lengthy scenes of mundane or repetitious activity. I can appreciate artfully slow movies, but this one was too poky for even me.

Time Out New York magazine released its annual apartments issue this week, and as soon as I saw that the lead article contained featurettes about neighborhoods “On the Verge,” I got a tingly Selsun Blue sensation that I knew what one of those locales would be.

The article never specifies what these neighborhoods are on the verge of, but the implication is gentrification and/or popularity, at least among us fools that want to and can barely afford to live in New York City. I paged through the excited callouts for East Harlem (where my pal Kelly lives), Hunter’s Point, Sunset Park and Bushwick (um, that one’s “Over the Verge”). Last and least, was—that’s right—my very own Inwood.

The brief summary gives a typical crack about how far uptown it is and the length of the ride (“30-minute commute to 59th Street on the A train”). I’ve noticed no one ever mentions that the 1 and A trains that stop in Inwood are supremely reliable and that if you factor in delays and related shenanigans associated with, say, the L to Brooklyn, commutes like that one end up as long as my “way north” trip.

The Inwood blurb also describes the fancy area west of Broadway as mostly “prewar apartment buildings, some with Art Deco touches.” My neighborhood east of Broadway is summed up as “a bit more run-down,” which is code for “not a lot of whitey” and “there isn’t a Starbucks there yet.”

A strangely matter-of-fact comment closes the piece: “Another gentrification indicator: the emergence of a visible gay population.” Not in my part of the neighborhood, apparently, unless gay people are now letting their small dogs shit on the sidewalk without cleanup. Although I swear that after I read this article, I was suddenly seeing gay people everywhere, including the guy sashaying down the sidewalk with his laundry basket and another fellow who resembled a tall version of George Michael.

I flew to Boston this afternoon for a conference tomorrow and on my flight out of LaGuardia, the pilot’s name was Spud. And the flight attendant’s name was Odessa. But the funniest part of this was that the co-pilot’s name was Dennis.

The express train from 96th Street downtown was running late this morning, and as I crammed into a car, I thought I’d work out a brief but non-cliché phrase to describe of the situation. Clichés may be easy, but they’re lazy; there are so many words to choose from, why settle for the most common combinations? I often find myself making up word games like this to pass the time. Neither Shortz nor Sudoku satisfy me; Boggle and Scrabble aside, most of my word and logic games are played in my mind.

My first free-association on that subway car was that we were packed in like sardines. (It’s good to cleanse the system first by flushing out the obvious ones.)

Then I thought peas in a pod was a humorous choice because it’s also a cliché, but one used to describe friendly proximity. Is a cliché no longer a cliché when it’s used against type? Or it is too knowingly ironic? Maybe a qualifier is needed to signal that it’s a switchup: angry peas in a pod is pretty funny.

How about candy in a piñata, which covers the buffets and jostle of a crowded subway car? Mud wasps in a hive? I like bowling pins in a sack. That sounds appropriately uncomfortable, if you’re a bowling pin. But is a subway car too little like a sack? Inside either, it can be dim and disorienting, I suppose. Maybe gravel in a can, or something else in a hard container. Although I think that “can” and “capsule” have been used before to describe the cylindrical metal subway car before, as in “an air conditioned can hurtling underground.” I’m long off the subway and still wondering who we were and how we were smooshed into that car. It’s the name of my game, playing parlor tricks with words.

A related hobby of mine is to collect fresh phrases I happen across, or as Emerson put it, to “select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph.”

My collection spans the past 10 years or so in a small clothbound journal. At first I thought I was merely compiling quotations, but much of what I have qualifies as a phrasal thesaurus.

There are marvelous turns of words. In a poem mourning a dead friend, Pablo Neruda could have written, “He was a great guy. I miss him and the fun times we had together.” But what he ended up writing was, “His smile was my bread.”

I have many others from lesser known writers, on things as mundane as spilt gasoline (“the fractal stain petroleum leaves in water”), the surface of an old painting (“web of fine capillary-like cracks”), a pet resting (“a cat pours his body on the floor like water”).

Then there’s Carl Sagan, who once asked his readers to imagine the universe as an unbaked raisin cake. “Worse analogies have been made,” he hastened to add.

The war on cliché: it’s what writing is about.

As I paced the housewares aisle at Kmart tonight, I decided that blenders are like toothbrushes: the base technology, which in both cases is exceedingly simple, has never changed. But that hasn’t stopped marketers from making up additional “features” as a point of difference or so they can re-sell the item to the same consumers multiple times.

The store must have had 20-some selections and my mind whirred with speed options, pitcher styles and button layouts. The one I ended up with, a Hamilton Beach model for about $40, I chose simply because it was fire-engine red. Well, and it had a glass pitcher, which I think would be more durable than a plastic one.

I bought the blender for making another Moosewood soup recipe I got off their site, reprinted from the 1987 cookbook New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant. I made it mostly without substitutions or additions, other than omitting the parsley garnish. And curiously, in the version of the recipe on Moosewood’s site, dill is mentioned in the steps but not the ingredients list, so I threw in two tablespoons, fresh and chopped, and that seemed about right.

It’s a rich and hearty soup. I’m normally not a fan of cream-based soups because they resemble mud-like pabulum. But this one has flecks of orange from the carrots, tiny pieces of potato skin, and bits of fresh dill.

You could use cream to make the recipe richer (I used 2% milk, which to a skim-raised fellow like myself is cream), but the blend of cream cheese and cheddar cheese don’t fail on the creaminess front. If you’re all about cutting down on fat, the recipe’s authors note you can substitute Neufchatel cheese, which is lower in fat than cream cheese, but has a similar taste and creaminess.

In a reprise of last weekend, Jimi invited me over for waffles again, only this time I was ready to accept. It was a perfect brunch for a rainy Sunday. The waffles were rich and delicious although The Man said the texture was a bit off: too chewy and not as good as the previous batch. The only change to the recipe was not including the egg yolks, so that may have been the culprit. I thought they were mighty tasty, though, especially when served with fresh-squeezed-into-a-carton orange juice, sausages from Whole Foods, a mix of fresh strawberries, blackberries and blueberries, and some “lite” pancake syrup that Jimi didn’t remember purchasing and thought may have been in his apartment before he even moved into it. Afterwards, the lads packed up to head out to Javits Center for the New York International Auto Show, but I declined, as I’m no big fan of motor vehicles.

On the weekends, no self-respecting New Yorker wants to mingle with the sidewalk-clogging Canal Street tourists, with their maps, bootleg designer handbags and body fat, but I made an exception today for Taste of Chinatown.

Mmm-mmm! Can you taste the excitement? The fourth since October 2004, Taste of Chinatown is a giant neighborhood street fair with crowds, entertainments and, most importantly, 50+ restaurants, bakeries and shops peddling sample plates of their food and drink for the flat fee of $1 or $2.

A map and menu are provided online and one is wise to consult both beforehand because all street food looks tempting when you’re standing there, on the street. After practically leaping from the congestion on Canal, I arrived on Mott, the street featuring the most food choices. I quickly located the famous Peking Duck House because it was the only food station with a 30-minute-wait line, even though it was 1 p.m. and the festival had only just begun. There was a smaller line I briefly queued into until a fellow in chef garb announced that everyone who thought he was standing in the Peking Duck Line was actually standing in the Duck Bones Line. That line remained short.

Back in the correct line, I entertained questions from passers by, mainly “What’s this line for?”, followed by “Is it worth it?” or a derisive snort. The best part of my wait, other than watching small flocks of people cutting into the front of the line, was when some tourist lady passing by stopped an elderly local man with a flower-laden pushcart and asked him if she could take his picture. Then she did so, without waiting for an answer and after physically maneuvering him into the frame so her photo would look more symmetrical. Offhandedly she asked what the flowers were for. “Funeral,” the man said. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” the woman gushed, grasping the confused man’s arm, who was likely only a deliveryman.

Eventually I reached the serving table with its bustle of service and hungry people pressing foward while waving greenbacks. The namesake dish from Peking Duck House was worth the wait and I’d be willing to entertain an entrée portion. The samples today were small and wrapped in a sort of tortilla along with some crisp julienne cucumber. It was tender and just sweet enough, with crackly tasty skin. Wish I would have gotten two.

I followed this up with another respected Chinatown classic, Big Wong King, which offered a selection of roast pork, roast pig (which is apparently something different than roast pork), roast duck and BBQ spare ribs. I opted for the ribs and it was a moist, plentiful portion, tasty and dyed that mysterious Chinese Meat Red.

Lung Moon Bakery on Mulberry Street displayed a marvelous spread of goods and after I selected the angel food cake, craftily baked into squares of wax paper to resemble a tiny bouquet for ease of eating on-the-go.

To help wash this down, I walked over to buy some Black Bubble Tea from Ten Ren’s Tea Time, passing along the way several roving segments of Chinese Dragon, which reminded me of the arcade game Centipede.

Bubble tea, which I understand to be a tired novelty at this point in its lifespan, is milky iced tea in which is floating large caviar-like beads of flavored tapioca. You get a triple-wide straw to suck up these bubbles along with your tea. If you’re lucky, you inhale them directly into your respiratory system.

Other than arriving on-time, hungry and ideally with someone else to talk with in line, the best recommendation I can offer for Taste of Chinatown is to take your meal to eat over in nearby Columbus Park. It’s cliché to call one landscaped parcel or another in Manhattan “a gem,” but I’d call it that anyway and overextend the metaphor by adding “recently polished.”

Although it was designed by celebrated Central Park co-architect Calvert Vaux, Columbus Park opened in 1897 adjacent the unsavory Five Points neighborhood, which features into Herbert Asbury’s book The Gangs of New York and Scorsese’s film of the same name. The park was so filthy at the time, it was dissed in print by no less than Jacob Riis and Charles Dickens.

Well after the turn of the century, improvements arrived in slow order: a limestone rec center in the mid-’30s, a playground and basketball courts in the ’80s and ’90s. Then, last year, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation injected the north end of the park with improvement funding. It now features a plaza with benches, chess and picnic tables, new landscaping, fencing and lighting, and the final element under construction, a handsome stone pavilion. There’s also a soccer field, open to the public but not dogs, with the greenest, most evenly cropped grass I’ve yet seen in Manhattan; I had to touch it to convince myself it was real. You will trust me when I say this is grass to make a hard-boiled golfer jealous. I am clearly an idiot; the grass is fake.

Despite these agreeable surroundings, there were few people from the festival eating in the park. It was mostly Asian guys at the picnic and game tables, playing what may have been Go Xiangqi with small, illustrated discs. These old guys’ discs were wooden and their game drew only three onlookers, including myself. (That’s the pavilion in the background.)

Meanwhile, groups of young turks playing at other tables boasted professional engraved disc sets, as well as small entourages that would call out suggestions, praise strategies and heckle failures, like a Greek chorus, only in Chinese.

I blew out of the Town just as the bitterly cold rain blew in around 3:00 p.m. I read later in The New York Times that by 3:30, the intensified rain caused many restaurants to pull in their tables, effectively closing down the festival early. But there will be another one in October. I’ll be back, Taste of Chinatown. I’ll be back.

Taste of Chinatown

• Meal 16 of 52:
• Peking Duck from Peking Duck House, 28 Mott St. ($2)
• BBQ spareribs from Big Wong King, 67 Mott St. ($2)
• angel food cake from Lung Moon Bakery, 83 Mulberry St. ($1)
• Black Bubble Tea from Ten Ren’s Tea Time, 79 Mott St. ($2)

I know when it’s Springtime in Midtown because the city lovingly plants strong-scented purple hyacinths and vibrant yellow tulips in the giant concrete planters lining the segment of Eighth Avenue on which I work.

If you pay close enough attention to their beauty, they’re enough to take your mind away from the scabby beggars, methadone-addled smacksters and Boschload of humanity surrounding you on the sidewalk.

And then, just like last Spring, and likely many before that one, by later the same day, cretins will have dug up and stolen most of the hyacinths. They’ll be completely wiped out within 48 hours, divots in the dirt where they were recently planted. The tulips are left untouched by human hands, and by the sun, too, apparently, because they will brown, wilt and die within the week from the lack of light penetrating the densely skyscraper-lined avenue.

Here’s another way you can tell it’s Spring in New York: not only is Spring in the air, but so are thrusting pug rumps.

Two of my favorite brands are getting huge boosts for their popularity. Modo & Modo, maker of Moleskine notebooks, is putting itself up for sale because it no longer has the capacity to meet demand. Last year, it sold 4.5 million notebooks worldwide, more than half of those to the U.S. market, according to the London Daily Telegraph. And the company currently only has 13 employees!

On the local front, Daisy May’s BBQ, known by regular readers as a general favorite of mine and the first meal in the first 52 Meals Project, has recently expanded its dining arrangements. Previously, there was nowhere to sit inside, just a narrow lunch counter to stand at; fair weather would bring a blessed few picnic tables outside on the sidewalk. Now the place has been expanded inside to include cafeteria-style service within a pinewood dining room housing 48 seats at communal tables. They have also begun serving whole pigs.

Kudos to these establishments on their continued success. In both cases, I think the goods are slightly more expensive than one would expect to pay, but worth it because of the quality.

Maybe it’s a lifetime of brainwashing by commercials for Minute Maid and breakfast cereal, but I’ve always had the sense that breakfast must be enjoyed in sunlight, glinting though white-curtained windows off those syrupy griddlecakes and beaming through an iced glass of orange juice. Brunch, too, I seem to have been informed, should be an a.m. affair. But why? Nighttime is often the right time when I have a hankering for French toast.

As on Saturday, I tried again in the late afternoon to purchase a loaf of challah at Zabar’s. Challah lovers must be early risers. The store had one loaf left, but it was “water challah,” lamented my clerk, a bored looking Latino youngster. “No egg,” he added before I had a chance to ask. What do I know of challah? I bought it.

Man, I thought Catholics had it going on in the religious-holiday bread sector. My Mom used to make this glazed braided bread that somehow had whole pastel-dyed Easter eggs embedded in it. But this challah took the cake, as it were. Lightly sweetened, nice crackly glazed surface, simultaneously light and firm in texture, a complex curvature of a pleasing symmetry. I knew it made good French toast; I’ve been to fancy restaurants, too. But I’m thinking it should be a requirement now that I’ve tried it myself, and much more cheaply than a restaurant equivalent—my whole, Chihuahua-sized loaf was only $3.

Here’s the recipe I tried, via megnut.com and written by Bob and Melinda Blanchard from their cookbook Cook What You Love (2005).

The recipe’s authors stress that you use unsweetened coconut instead of the easier-to-find sweetened variety, which they say is too moist and makes the bread soggy. The original recipe called for 1 1/4 cup of coconut and three cups cornflakes, but I think that’s too much, which is why those measurements above have been adjusted. After quadruple coating my egg-dipped pieces of bread, I measured the leftover coconut/cornflakes combo and had just over two cups to spare, which I was loathe to save for reuse because it was tainted with egg snot.

The recipe is messy and it’s not just that you’re getting egg goo and coconut all over your hands. Inevitably, some of the cornflakes come off in the skillet and char until they’re tasty butter-blackened bits of carbon.

But the messy prep is worthwhile for a bruncheon feast both succulent and scrumptious, crisp on the outside, still a bit chewy on the inside. They kind of have the texture and outward appearance of crab cakes. I’d definitely make this recipe again.

Thank You for Smoking, which I saw tonight, is a consistent, constant farce, yet doesn’t so much mock the bullheadedness and influence of the tobacco lobby as it shows how easy it can be to convince anyone of anything.

Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a smooth and confident Big Tobacco lobbyist not nearly as despicable as his characters in Neil LaBute’s late-’90s double-whammy of In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. His only friends are key lobbyists for the alcohol and firearms industries; they go out for dinner together regularly and call themselves the M.O.D. Squad, for “Merchants of Death.”

Although the film’s pacing is so speedy and the dialogue so crackly (via the screenplay adapted by 29-year-old director Jason Reitman), there’s a lot of humor milked from some obvious setups that seem like little set pieces: Nick somehow emerging victorious from a live talk show panel that includes health professionals and a bald teenager with smoking-induced cancer, Nick following-through on his brainstorm to get cigarette smoking back into movies, Nick paying off a cancer-ridden former Marlboro Man (the crusty Sam Elliott), Nick embarrassing his young son (Cameron Bright) during Bring Your Parent to School Day. If fact, some heartfelt moments that keep the movie from descending completely into pure satire are when Nick spends time with his estranged son, in whom he instills confidence and a spookily strong ability to debate and question authority.

Other strong performances include William H. Macy as a Grape Nut senator from Vermont who’s Nick’s most outspoken opponent until a wicked turnabout, and J.K. Simmons, who plays Nick’s boss, Budd “B.R.” Rohrabacher, combining nonstop R Rating-justified cursing with the rapid-fire bluster of his Jonah Jameson character in the Spider-Man films.

I was digging through some archived mix-CDs of mine and found this one from circa 2001, a blend of songs I put together as the official soundtrack to my old cartoon, Joe Clipart.

The songs are goofy pop nonsense, all chosen under the guise that they’re ones the cartoon’s protagonist would listen to himself; in fact, many of them are directly referenced in the cartoons.

The mix doubles as a fantastic Spring-weather soundtrack, so I’m presenting the tracks here for those of you with speedy connections, corrupt consciences and a strong stomach for late-’80s early-’90s top-40.

And don’t forget: there ain’t nothin’ wrong if you wanna do “da butt” all night long.

Katie, Kelly and I saw the new 35mm print of Days of Heaven tonight at the Film Forum. Terrence Malick is the J.D. Salinger of directors: reclusive, revered (often overly so) and with few finished works to his name, having only cranked out four features in my lifetime. After completing Heaven in 1978, he wouldn’t direct another film for 20 years, The Thin Red Line.

Heaven’s dialogue could fit into a short story and the editing is choppy. Much of this has to do with Malick’s infamous style of rolling for miles of film, sometimes without a script, then creating the story in the cutting room. As such, his films aren’t as much plot or character driven as they are expressionistic meditations on life and death, alternating between carefully composed widescreen landscapes and the minutiae of nature, and culminating in sudden manmade savagery.

As for that plot, Bill (Richard Gere, when he was a strapping, handsome lad) and Abby (the oddly pretty Brooke Adams) are iterant laborers harvesting wheat in Texas in the days before World War I. Although they’re lovers, they pretend to be brother and sister, which leads to an entanglement with the farm’s sickly owner (Sam Shepard), who fancies Abby. Linda Manz plays Linda, a chain-smoking tomboy in her early teens who may or may not be Bill’s kid sister. The length of the film features her voiceover, like a New York-accented version of Huckleberry Finn, grammatically askew but clear-eyed and frank, meditating on her and the other laborers’ station in life. The movie winds down with plagues of fire and grasshoppers of Biblical proportions and concludes with a pair of inevitable deaths.

This is a film truly made to be seen on a large screen, with shots of trains traversing the countryside, herds of buffalo, infinite stalks of wheat undulating in the breeze, the sprawling fields dotted with workers at dawn and dusk. The background of most of the harvest scenes features the overseer’s looming farmhouse, lonely in the distance and lit at night, with the angle and Gothic shape of the one in Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. Much of the dialogue seems poorly recorded, but it may just have to lend even more weight to the sounds that serve as themes in the film: the spinning meteorological whirligigs atop the farmhouse, the whirling white noise of the mechanical threshers, the buzz of insects descending, the wind.

After the film, we wandered the neighborhood to find a quiet place to enjoy a drink. Kelly chose Jekyll & Hyde Pub on Sixth Avenue and although she’d been there before, Katie and I hadn’t. It’s like T.G.I. Friday’s of the Damned inside. The menu is generic burgers and fries, but you go for the funhouse ambiance. Televisions mounted near the ceiling loop trailers of old black-and-white B-grade horror films, and all around on the walls and shelves are skeletons, macabre artwork, preserved insects, phrenology busts, and other carnival curios. The restrooms are hidden in a back hall behind a long wall of bookshelves and the staff isn’t supposed to tell you where they are exactly. You end up full of drink and addled, with a desperate need to pee, then find yourself fumbling with the book-lined walls for a secret latch or lever and pining for the aid of Nancy Drew.

To decide who would pay for the first round, I challenged Katie without warning to an arm wrestling duel right there at our table. She’s surprisingly strong. The matched ended in a draw, although to Katie’s credit, she partially lifted me out of my seat with the power of her mighty forearm.

Kelly ran into an actor friend of hers named Jason who works the pub part-time as the voice of several monster heads mounted on the walls. To explain, much of the décor at Jekyll & Hyde’s—skeletons, mummies, werewolf heads and such—is rigged with hidden cameras and speakers, and has eyes and a mouth that can be animated remotely. In a secret control room upstairs are video monitors, animatronic controls and microphones to make the things “speak” at just the right moment. What this boils down to is you’re some Australian tourist trying to eat your $12 hamburger, when suddenly the werewolf head mounted to the wall above your table comes to life and starts making fun of your accent and taunting you to get up and dance along to Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” until you finally just get up and do it.

After his Australian taunting, Jason came back downstairs and told us a bit about his acting career. For one of those true crime programs on cable, he’d played a Missouri teenager who bludgeoned his parents to death with an axe handle. But his most recent gig was starring in a Troma Entertainment film called Poultrygeist!, billed as “the world’s first horror-comedy film to feature zombie chickens, American Indians and a bit of singing and dancing!”

After a plate of curry fries and several beers, we left around midnight, disappointed that the previously agreeable temperature had dipped to near-winter levels.

The gods were punishing me for waiting until this morning to complete my taxes because Jimi invited me over for a Easter brunch of homemade waffles that I had to begrudgingly decline. But later in the afternoon, by which time I’d checked my math and wrapped up the paperwork, Katie called to invite me to a Film Forum outing.

We had originally planned on going to the Chipotle around the corner for dinner, but Katie decided it’d be cheaper and better to “go local” and eat at Fresh Tortilla Express around the other corner. It’s Mexican food, made by Asian people and depicted on a menu board above the counter in unappetizingly color-leached photos. But it was cheap and tasty. I noticed the dish I wanted and eventually ordered, guacamole nachos, had a small dot next to it on the menu board, as did several other items. What did it mean? Bonus side dish? Extra-spicy? Recommended? I had the following exchange with the two Asian people behind the counter, both of them wearing white paper hats.

Me: What’s the dot mean?
Man: Dot?
Me: The dot next to some of the menu items.
Man: Dot?
Me: [pointing to dot] That dot.
Man: [to woman] Dot?
Woman: No dot.
Man: [to me, in satisfied agreement] No dot.

At home later, I was looking at the carryout menu and discovered that the dots mean the dish is vegetarian. I also found this aggressive and curiously written warning:

NOTICE BEWARE OF IMITATORS USING OUR MENU
“Fresh Tortillas”
to Provide their foods. Make no mistake, we are the one & only restaurant on Varick Street who can guarantee our high standard of quality. If you encounter any imitators, please inform us by calling 212-242-3520 so that we can take legal action against them

I think that I speak for myself and for the legal council of Fresh Tortilla Express when I say “Dot!”

Fresh Tortilla Express

• 206 Varick Street
• (212) 242-3520
• Meal 15 of 52: guacamole nachos ($4).

Andie invited me over for a picnic lunch in Central Park. She advised me to apply sunscreen and I was glad I did because it was nearly 80 degrees and very sunny outside. I wanted to borrow a cap from her as well, but we couldn’t find one suitable for my husky head. Fortunately, the small rock outcropping we staked out just west of the Ross Pinetum was partially shaded and included a randy flock of pigeons that attempted to mate with one another. We ate sandwiches and pasta salad purchased at Broadway Farms and played a game of Travel Scrabble; Andie kicked my ass handily.

Afterwards, we set off in search of challah bread for a French toast recipe I wanted to try, but despite the Jewishness of the Upper West Side, could find none. In fact, the bread lady at Zabar’s not only told me they were sold out for the day but corrected my pronunciation of challah. The way I’d explain it is that it’s like “holla” only the H should be pronounced like you’re trying to expel a wayward gnat that just flew into your throat.

Andie and I then checked out the charming Westside Books on Broadway between 80th and 81st, which has a nice selection of used literature at reasonable prices. There are books atop books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves downstairs, and all the way up the tall, narrow staircase leading up a loft housing the “underground” books, comics, first editions, large art books and, in a dark corner, a life-size cardboard cutout of Angelina Jolie from Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. I snagged a paperback of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop for $7.

We were allowed off work at 1:30 today on account of the Easter holiday. It was gray, cold and drizzly so I went over to Norman’s Sound & Vision for used CDs to improve the mood.

I found Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required, which I purchased mainly for one of my favorite songs of his, “Don’t Lose My Number.” (I laughed when I read All Music Guide reviewer Stewart Mason’s gripe that “it’s never satisfactorily explained who Billy is and why he shouldn’t lose Phil’s number.”) Also, for $4, I picked up the soundtrack for Wonder Boys, which features some fine Dylan songs.

I decided to walk all the way down to Soho to check out the new Ben Sherman store, which opened late last month. Moseying down Bowery, I stumbled upon the restaurant supply district, where one can purchase chairs, tables and lighting for one’s bar or restaurant, or even those cartoonish statues of chefs or pigs, which are sort of like giant lawn jockeys, that you can put outside of your establishment to attract customers and vandals. One shop had several of these figures set out on the sidewalk, shrouded from the weather in translucent plastic, so that they resembled standing corpses.

Despite being the first standalone store for the brand in the U.S., the Ben Sherman store is nothing special. It’s on Spring Street between Broadway and Mercer and decked out in the area’s standard boutique format: lots of space for just a small bit of merchandise, a skew towards women’s apparel over men’s, distressed hardwood floors, cooler-than-you staff spending most of their time talking amongst themselves, etc. I shouldn’t have been surprised that they didn’t have a sale section. I’ll have to keep combing Filene’s, Macy’s and Urban Outfitters for true deals on those shirts I like.

Long a holdout to the world of mp3s, Apple Corps, the Beatles’ publishing company, has revealed it will (eventually) start selling the group’s songs through online music services.

The biggest winners aren’t the consumers, however, but the headline writers, who have been patiently waiting at least three years for this momentous event.

• Beatles Coming Together Online, E! Online
• Beatles set to join online music revolution, Reuters
• Here comes the sun: Beatles online soon, Mobilemag.com
• Beatles fans get ticket to (digital) ride, USA Today
• Beatles love me digital, iTWire
• Twist and Shout: Beatles’ Songs to Be Released Through Music Services, Gearlog
• Meet the Beatles, Online (Someday)!, Designtechnica

Ha ha! Get it? There are Beatles song and album titles in those headlines!

But will the songs be available on the iTunes Music Store? There is lingering bitterness between the two Apples, my favorite example of which is Apple Computer’s infamous sosumi system-error sound effect. During the most recent trial between the two, which recently wrapped, Apple Corps accused the computer company of violating a 1991 agreement by using the Apple name and logo to sell music downloads. There won’t be a decision on that until after Easter.

But the best part of this news is that if the remaining fab lads and assorted executors can demonstrate a warm embrace of the cold, cold digital world, might other top holdouts follow? There still, for instance, aren’t any legal digital tracks available for sale online from Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, AC/DC or Metallica.

After work today, I was totally in the groove to get my taxes done nice and early. I had all the paperwork spread out on my new table, instruction manuals open, pencil at the ready. And then I noticed that according to my W2, I only made a few thousand dollars last year. Now, I don’t make a lot of money, but I had a suspicion I made slightly more than that. Turns out that when our company was acquired last year, we were issued another W2 for the money accrued under our new corporate moniker, a W2 I either misplaced or was never issued. Damn. So much for that.

What’s this también I hear so many people in my neighborhood talking about? And where can I get one?

Parts of V for Vendetta I liked: Natalie Portman plus a British accent and minus her hair for a chunk of the film. A gloomy near-future London in which there really is hope in the proles. Stephen Rea, perfect as the determined, hangdog inspector Finch, bent on solving the mysteries behind V (Hugo Weaving) and revealing the truth about a corrupt government. A dark blend of current fears: pandemics, torture, terrorism, totalitarianism.

Not so great: Weaving in a mask the entire film. I don’t deny the man can act, but I want to see his face while he’s doing it. The mask worked for me about as well as the one Tom Cruise (or his body double) wore during most of Vanilla Sky, which is to say not at all. And what the hell was up with that scene with V knocking down the giant batch of black and red dominoes set up to form his logo? I thought that for that entire five-minute sequence, with the tight intercuts and voiceover, that I was watching the movie’s trailer, not the movie. Also: man, that’s one long movie. Perhaps too much chatter and not enough knivery and other assorted CGI shenanigans.

Manhattan power couple Sam and Iggy invited me out for another one of their famous Leisure Time bowling extravaganzas. (Off topic: Check out the high-profile missing apostrophe on the Leisure Time website: “We’re not your parents Bowling Alley.”)

As my high-school bowling club coach, Sister Marie, used to say: “Bowling is fun.” The groop included Sam and Iggy, myself, Ritchey and two young ladies who were rock climbing chums of Iggy’s and also both PHDs, which made me feel inadequate on several fronts. One had never bowled before, which resulted in some amusements. The other had bowled often before and had this awesome exaggerated stance that contorted her body, upon release of the ball, to precisely resemble the form of that golden statuette guy typically found atop bowling trophies.

I drank too much beer and ripped off part of my thumbnail like I usually do while bowling. I do trim my fingernails beforehand, but it doesn’t help prevent rippage. I must have a vitamin deficiency or genetically brittle nails.

Vatan Indian: a restaurant after my heart. Consider: excellent, varied and all-you-can-eat vegetarian Indian food; a nice price; cozy, open atmosphere; and some of the best service I’ve had in a restaurant of any nationality.

It’s a strange concept: a prix fixe multi-course meal for $22.95 per person, but you can request more of anything you like, from any of the three courses at any time, whether appetizer, entree or dessert. Most of the greatest hits of Gujarati and Punjabi food are represented: miniature samosas (like something Totino’s would concoct), puri (small puffballs of whole wheat bread for sopping up other dishes), bhaji (sautéed spinach and chickpeas), kheer (sweet rice pudding), all manner of chutneys and other spicy sauces, homemade mango ice cream, chai tea with ginger, cardamom and milk.

Our server was extremely attentive, replenishing our metal cups of water constantly, replacing napkins, patiently explaining what the devil we were eating and bringing more if it was tasty.

Nice decor, too, with floral prints, various Indian gods and goddesses, all servers decked out in traditional dress.

With my dinner companions, Jimi, the Man and Mike, we sat in an elevated, three-wall-enclosed booth with a low square table that we sat cross-legged at (after removing our shoes) . If you’re old, or made a reservation (which various websites say you are required to do, but which you’re not), you can sit at a table, but what’s the fun in that? If your party is but two, you want to request the romantic table under the giant fake tree.

To amuse ourselves while waiting for the cab and during the ride crosstown, we invented and played a fast-paced game of wit and cunning that I will call “Which is Worse.” Two comparable New York City irks are presented; a debate ensues as to which is more heinous. For example, here are five rounds we played:

1. On the subway:
   1. A beggar with a prepared speech.
   2. A beggar with a musical act and/or something to sell.
2. Also on the subway:
   1. People who take up more than one seat.
   2. People who cling to a pole.
3. On the weekends:
   1. Fat, Midwestern tourists.
   2. Riffraff from Jersey.
4. People who ride bicycles:
   1. On the sidewalk.
   2. Against traffic.
5. Presented by Jimi for your consideration:
   1. Dykes with guns.
   2. Drag queens.

Correct answers:

1. B. They’re more in-your-face and harder to drown out.
2. B. They take up more space and create more of a bottleneck.
3. B. Tourists have an excuse for their stupidity. And tourists at least know they’re tourists.
4. A. More annoying, although more satisfying accidents result from the against-traffic buccaneers.
5. A. Because, you know, they got guns.

Vatan Indian

• 409 Third Avenue (at 29th Street)
• (212) 689-5666
• Meal 14 of 52: a whole crapload of Indian food ($22.95).

Andie gave me a copy today of Tom Tomorrow’s most recent book, Hell in a Handbasket that she had him autograph for me personally (“Hi Jason!”). It was after an in-store event at her bookstore and he had been packing up and getting ready to leave when she asked him to sign it. He got into a brief huff that he had to unpack his bag for his Signin’ Pen, but he did it, because Andie is very convincing.

Perhaps the first book I had signed, back in April 1998, was Revenge of the Latchkey Kids by Ted Rall, a Dayton, Ohio native and one of my favorite contemporary cartoonists. I spilled coffee on the book, a hardcover first edition, shortly before the signing. Ted not only inscribed his name and drew the head of one of the strip’s characters, he wrote, “Don’t drink too much coffee!” The damage has become one with the value, like the crack in the Liberty Bell.

Another cherished autographed book is Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, which I chronicled here. That one I had read months before it was published via a typographical error-ridden first proof paperback temporarily filched from Andie. My autographed hardcover is still wrapped in a plastic Barnes & Noble bag and sits untouched on a shelf in my closet.

Others include a signed Dave Barry anthology from Joe and a Great Movies volume autographed by Roger Ebert from Andie.

I’ll add the Tomorrow book to these others, which strikes me as a strange cache for me to have. I’m not big on collecting things. I’m a utilitarian fellow and I like for the things I own to have some use, not just an existence.

A childhood collection of mine was matchbooks. I suppose it’s stretching it to say those would be utilitarian to a smoker, grill guy, arsonist or pyromaniac. More recently, I collected old consumer-model Polaroid cameras, the majority of which still work, although securing near-extinct film for them is a chore in this digital age.

I never understood the rigmarole of collectors amassing, say, action figures in unopened packaging or rare stamps or whatever. What’s the point? You get to look at them and brag about them, and your relatives, who never liked you much to begin with, get to sell them for a profit as soon as you die, probably from all that time you spent in your rec room with tweezers and museum-grade, acid-free archival slipcovers.

Which is why autographed books make me uneasy. They’re my first true decorative collection. “But Jason,” you say, “you can read a book.” Not an autographed book I can’t. I end up paging through it, if at all, with exceeding care, as if it was a Gutenberg bible, pages as dry and fragile as autumn leaves. I’m paranoid I’ll get too much finger oil on the cover, crease the pages, or loosen the spine so the thing lollygags and starts shedding pages. I don’t know why I should feel this way. Perhaps it’s because I’m a fan of these writers and their works are almost hallowed to me in the way that celebrities are hallowed to people who obsess over the Post or People.

How’s this for a wacky movie plot pitch:

1. Take the wandering gunslinger Clint Eastwood played in those Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns.
2. Transplant him to present-day Manhattan.
3. Profit!

Imagine my surprise when I learned this had been done nearly 40 years ago in a movie called Coogan’s Bluff, which I saw tonight at Film Forum as part of the ongoing Don Siegel retrospective.

All this time, I had assumed Eastwood’s occasional spells of cinematic cheesiness started with Every Which Way But Loose, in which he costars with an orangutan named Clyde. But Coogan’s Bluff debuted 10 years prior to that, before Dirty Harry and just after The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Up until this point in his acting career, Eastwood seems only to have starred in Westerns and a few other period dramas, so it was weird for me (and likely audiences in 1968) to see him embody his familiar character in a contemporary setting.

Eastwood plays Walt Coogan, a Phoenix deputy sheriff visiting the Big Apple to collect an LSD-addled prisoner, James Ringerman, played by John Stroud. Coogan butts heads with the gruff NYPD Lieutenant McElroy (Lee J. Cobb) over procedure and jurisdiction. The prisoner escapes Coogan’s custody and the two play out the remainder of the film in a game of cat and mouse on the gritty streets of Manhattan.

As he blows into town, Coogan’s sole possessions are a battered briefcase and his Man With No Name repertoire of squints, teeth grits and that low, slow voice that moves precious few words. He’s decked out in pointed cowboy boots, bolo tie and what appears to be the same chocolate-brown suitcoat and pants combo that he wears as Harry Callahan. In a running-too-long running joke, every New Yorker assumes this wardrobe means he’s from Texas. “Phoenix,” Coogan replies, each time more wearily than the last, at one point joking, “We’re part of the Union now. We’ve even got running water and/or electricity.” He sports that windswept pompadour, kept in check under a tan Stetson, unless he’s in the company of a lady. For those familiar only with Eastwood’s currently mummified mug, to gaze upon his smooth, unlined face in movies like this is mindbending. He was one handsome bastard. At certain angles, his youthful visage conjures that of Ewan McGregor.

The movie includes some fine New York touches: a cab driver stringing Coogan on a longer-than-necessary route (“Tell me, how many Bloomingdale’s are there in this town?” “One. Why?” “Because we passed it at least twice.”), an off-camera “Shaddap!” breaking up a loud conversation between Coogan and his woman in his hotel room doorway late one night, some gay guy who’s getting booked at the police station looking Coogan up and down and exclaiming, “All that and two-inch heels!”

Fans of Classic Eastwood will not be disappointed to hear that he gets into a Big Bar Fight in this film, complete with pool cue battery and the heaving of a bad guy through a window.

The city gets a costarring role with some of its iconic scenery, including the Midtown skyline and the Chrysler Building as Coogan arrives via helicopter onto the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building). The environs of the Cloisters figure prominently into several key scenes, including one at Linden Terrace, where Coogan breaks out the I-Know-the-Bad-Guy’s-Out-There-Somewhere gaze over the city below, which I found amusing because he’s looking directly at my block. “He’s not in Inwood, Coogan,” I felt like shouting. “Try one of the more photogenic neighborhoods.” But wouldn’t you know it, Ringerman’s hideout is inside the Cloisters, behind the iron gate that he’s able to raise and lower like it’s part of his kiddie fort.

Coogan flushes out Ringerman using his wily Apache tracking methods, then the two break into a wild motorcycle chase through Fort Tryon Park, speeding down narrow paths and scaling flights of stone steps. Only those familiar with that park will see this scene as one giant continuity error. My thoughts ran along the lines of, There they go, over the Terrace towards the Cloisters. And now, inexplicably, they’re headed south with the George Washington Bridge in the background.

Overall, I enjoyed the film, laughing a lot, and at the spots during which I was supposed to, not because the movie has aged poorly. Although in that respect, most embarrassing are the cringe-worthy depiction of the “hippie scene” and the treatment of women in general. Without doubt Eastwood is one smooth criminal with the ladies, but here he crosses the line to creepy letch as he paws an attractive probation officer (Susan Clark) and later sleeps with her 24-year-old charge (Tisha Sterling) to extract information about her boyfriend, who happens to be Ringerman.

I saw Coogan’s Bluff as part of a double feature with the other film Siegel directed the same year, Madigan, starring Richard Widmark as the rule-breaking Detective Madigan, Harry Guardino as his partner, Detective Rocco, and Henry Fonda with an utter lack of emotion as the by-the-book police commissioner. It’s a paint-by-numbers cop thriller, although more leisurely paced than a similar film today: the detectives have a whopping 72 hours to apprehend their suspect, instead of a mere 48. Also, perhaps it was fresher back then to have a phrase like “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?” shouted during a car chase.

The movie features more lovely New York City locales, most memorably the Wonder Wheel, the Coney Island boardwalk, the A train station at 59th Street and Bethesda Terrace with its centerpiece angel fountain.

An NYU grad I know recommended this college-grubby West Village haunt to procure tasty cheesesteak sandwiches. It was decent, but not what I expected from cheesesteak. It started with the usual thin-sliced ribeye with cheese, but also a huge gob of marinated onions, spicy pepper relish and served on a round poppy-seed Kaiser bun. It more closely resembled “cheesesteak sloppy Joes,” and was even served with a Wet Nap (for the sloppiness) and two chocolate-mint candies (for the onions). I don’t know if this is a good or a bad sign for business, but half of the already-small shop has been overtaken by a startup bakery that specializes in miniature cupcakes.

BB Sandwich Bar

• 120 W. 3rd St. (between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue)
• (212) 473-7500
• Meal 13 of 52: cheesesteak sandwich ($4.50) and a bottle of Boylan orange soda ($2.00).

Just so there’s no confusion, this is the instruction manual for the table I bought at Ikea.

And this is an instruction manual for the similarly named singer.

For even more Björk/Ikea, read this.

Act I. Excerpt from an Associated Press news article, March 29.

When it comes to dirty, cancer-causing air, New York City is the worst of the worst: the city with the greatest risk, in the state with the dirtiest air, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

New York is followed by California, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey for the dubious distinction of having the worst air, according to the EPA’s data. The best air was in Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana.

[According to George Thurston, a professor of environmental medicine at New York University], living in a heavily polluted city like New York is roughly equal to living with a smoker.

Act II. Excerpt from a Reuters news article yesterday that I read coincidentally after my most recent BBQ outing.

A compound formed when meat is charred at high temperatures—as in barbecue—encourages the growth of prostate cancer in rats, researchers reported on Sunday.

Their study, presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, may help explain the link between eating meat and a higher risk of prostate cancer.

It also fits in with other studies suggesting that cooking meat until it chars might cause cancer.

Act III. Caption options.

• Daddy’s prostate is the size of a Valencia orange.
• That savory smell is my hand stuck in the grill.
• No prostate, no problem! Dig in, ladies!
• You can’t spell grill without girll.
• No, honey, only male mammals have a prostate, the gland surrounding the neck of the bladder that secretes a component of ejaculate.
• At least we don’t live in New York City.

Exeunt.

Katie kept the stuff I bought at Ikea yesterday in her car until she got off work early this evening, then drove up to my place and we unloaded it. Katie gets irritable when she’s hungry and she was hungry. Me leading her around Upper Manhattan to restaurants that didn’t seem to exist or had two-hour waits didn’t improve matters.

Then she realized that we were in the vicinity of Sylvia’s, Harlem’s famous soul food restaurant, but that she didn’t remember exactly where it was. Fortunately, while tooling down W. 125th Street, we caught a glimpse of its lights off on Lenox Avenue. And we arrived just in time, 7:45 p.m.—they stop seating on Sunday nights at 8:00.

While waiting for our table, we started out at the bar with some expensive but tasty rum punch. Although an apparent advantage of arriving at Sylvia’s later is that the crowds aren’t as intense, they also plan for the food to run out at the end of the night. So they didn’t have the pickled beets I wanted as a side. More heinously, they had run out of mashed potatoes; Katie mentioned several times that her gravy-smothered chicken steak would have been even better had it only a dollop of mashed potatoes. Instead she got the candied yams, which she recommended, just as I can recommend my black-eyed peas and macaroni-and-cheese, made with real cheddar (which you’d think all restaurant mac-and-cheese would be, but you’d be wrong).

For my entree, I got the ribs, of course, and I highly recommend them. In fact, they are sneaking into my top three. Thickly sweet-sauced, tender meat, not too fatty: perfecto. Also, love the full name: Sylvia’s World Famous Talked About Bar-B-Que Ribs with Her Original Sassy Sauce. Entrees also come with your choice of mimosa or Bloody Mary, a nice touch.

The layout is utilitarian but family friendly, with tons of tables, and chairs that look like they were swiped from a chain hotel’s ballroom. The brightly painted walls are hung with framed photos of Sylvia, who has owned and operated the place with her family since 1962, posing with a variety of celebrities.

Sylvia’s

• 328 Lenox Avenue
• (212) 996-0660
• Meal 12 of 52: rum punch ($10) and bar-b-que ribs entree ($12.95 with corn bread, a bloody Mary, mimosa or soft drink, and two sides).

It was a beautiful warm spring day today; what better a time for two young Americans to go shopping. I took the PATH train to Katie’s new apartment in Jersey City early this morning and after hopping in her car and stopping for beverages and bagels, we got on the turnpike and headed to Elizabeth, home of Ikea.

We ended up missing our exit because we were talking about a flurry of unrelated topics: the recently released 9/11 911 recordings, Malcom Gladwell lurking in the cafe of Katie’s bookstore, and the 101.1 Jack FM robo-radio station playing as the backdrop to our chatter. So we took what my dad would call a scenic route through Elizabeth, which seems to have an obsession with recycling. After it became obvious we wouldn’t be finding our way to Ikea via the Elizabethan backroads, we relocated the turnpike and got back on it, advancing to the correct exit.

For my first time to Ikea, it was a marvelous experience. I thought the whole outfit would resemble a Home Depot, but only the last bit does, when you get to strain yourself hefting large flat boxes of unassembled furniture onto your cart right before the checkout.

We spent the bulk of our time in the showrooms upstairs, each of which is packed with all manner of Ikea merchandise. You can hang out in a kitchen, for instance, that’s constructed, furnished and lit like a movie set, and inspect the knife block, wall clock, wine rack and window curtains—everything, all for sale. If you open the cupboards, why, there are Ikea dishes and glasses inside. Signs on some rooms exclaim hopefully, “Buy this whole room for $800.” In addition to several kitchens, there are fully furnished home and corporate offices, boutiques, bedrooms, bathrooms, board rooms, living rooms, dorm rooms, kids’ rooms, ultility rooms, laundry rooms, wine rooms, closets. Each leads directly into another, swarming with dazed shoppers, and there is no escape from the circuit. Your mind starts swimming with unpronounceable Scandinavian names in soul-soothing Futura and you feel as if you’re trapped in the infinite dream house of a man named Sven.

But when you get down to it, most of the stuff Ikea makes is cheap and nasty. The company relishes in the impression that its merchandise is handcrafted by tall Aryans in lab coats when in fact the majority of it is “designed and commissioned” by the Aryans, then manufactured by less tall people in Asia from the finest plastic and laminated particle board. What I found most valuable during my showroom appearance, in lieu of ordering from ikea.com, was testing sturdiness and quality. The word I overused today was “flimsy.” I sat heavily in chairs. I eyed imperfections in glassware. I opened and closed drawers. I rambled about the room of kitchen tables, shoving and taunting the merchandise like a furniture pimp. I scoffed a lot.

I took notes and consulted with Katie, which was another nice touch over online shopping: getting an immediate and trusted human opinion with more style savvy than my own. In return, I advised on her purchases, which included a reading light, a coat-hanging unit, a dish drying rack and a bathroom mirror to replace her ugly existing one, which we were amused to discover was made by Ikea.

It was a long day. I think we spent six hours there. We had to stop halfway through to rejuvenate with coffee in the cafeteria, resplendent in the faint odor of meatballs, and listen to a couple on drums and accordion riff through polka adaptations of songs like Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.”

As for my final purchases, I settled on a sturdy birch kitchen table that had Björk in its name, which of course helped seal the deal, and a wooden chair with padded slipcover that combines a paradox of comfort with construction that prevents slouching. How European! I picked up a lacquered wood tray for breakfast in bed or dinner while couch-sitting. The three large glass jars with stopper-top aluminum lids I got will be perfect for holding dry ingredients like noodles, sugar and flour. I located a similar model jar, but tall, in which to store my spaghetti. And for only $4.50, I picked up a set of six red wine glasses so I can cease drinking my shiraz from tumblers like a wino. My sole impulse purchase was a small clock, on clearance sale for $2.99, that sports the plastic boxiness and primary colors of Lego bricks. I shall place it in my bathroom where it will complement my brightly colored fish motif.

After we returned to Katie’s apartment, I goaded her to pry off her old bathroom mirror, which is adhered strongly and directly to the wall, using a paint-can opener, but she only succeeded in cracking the thing and getting glass slivers all over her sink. For a late dinner, we carried out a large mushroom and fried-eggplant pizza from Lombardi’s which we ate listening to Beck and Kate Bush, while Katie’s cats sniffed around her new purchases.