January 2007 Archives

At the mere suggestion of sleet early this morning, which at least one local newscaster took the time to define as “freezing rain” in case his viewers were unfamiliar with the curious meteorological phenomenon, Atlanta whipped itself into a lather and cancelled a bunch of schools. It was for nothing because the temperature didn’t drop to freezing, so the city was instead treated to a bitterly cold incessant rain. I’ll bet the classroom-free schoolkids today will still be talking about this day well into their 80s, the Great Freezing Rain Fiasco of aught-seven. I didn’t know Atlanta ever even got this cold, but it does, a few weeks a year. And I had been hoping for a reprieve from the New York chill.

That didn’t matter much because I spent most of my time indoors at meetings, typically every hour on the hour, except when my boss and I were late, which was always, a combination of the meetings running long and excessive travel time. The meeting overtime was because most all of the folks we met with, discussing an event we’re planning in the city later this year, were more cordial and helpful than we thought they would have been. My boss and I initially found it odd that most of the executives we spoke with managed to explain whether or not they were a native of the city (and if not, how long they’d lived there and from whence they came) very soon into the conversation, but it seems Atlanta’s a lot like New York in that most of the people there aren’t from there originally but love it anyway. One transplant from Chicago certainly didn’t miss that city’s winters and he noted frankly that race relations in Atlanta are ages ahead of those in the windy city.

The native Atlantaeers were stereotypically warm and charming, with accents like butter on warm flapjacks and fun names, too. We’re having breakfast tomorrow with a gentleman named Bubba, for instance, and I tried but failed to get a meeting with a fellow named Paisley.

The travel time challenge was exacerbated because my boss is as deft with directions as I am, a chilling fact. This despite our GPS, the exact model I had in Miami, and just as good at leading our spunky red Ford Escape on wild goose chases, including the one where it deposited us across the street from where we were supposed to be, which took us seven minutes of wandering around the sidewalk to realize. Also, Atlanta has more than 40 streets named Peachtree, none of which feature peach trees and several of which confusingly turn into each other. It’s a world of difference if you’re on Peachtree Street Northeast or West Peachtree Street or Peachtree Road and so on.

Because of our hectic schedule, we didn’t get to sample any fine local cuisine, dining tonight at the local branch of the Palm Restaurant steakhouse chain. For dessert, I amused and saddened myself by ordering a thick wedge of S&S cheesecake which, like me, had been flown in from New York City about a day earlier.

My boss and I flew into Atlanta tonight on business. It’s my first time in the city other than its hectic airport and I am told the nickname “Hotlanta” is no longer in vogue; one properly refers to the city as “the ATL.” Please make a note of it.

It seems I’ve only ever seen Judi Dench in her roles as a matron beyond reproach or royalty, as proper and as classically British as a bone China cup of tea at 3 p.m., so I was refreshed and alarmed to find her in Notes on a Scandal as Barbara, a literate, bitter loner with a pruny face and harsh lipstick. By day, she teaches history to a public school class of motley teens she hates. At night, she records her thoughts in a diary, stickering the pages with tiny foil silver and gold stars.

A lot of space and stars get dedicated to Sheba (Cate Blanchett), the school’s pretty young new art teacher, as Barbara becomes intrigued, taking the wispy, ineffective woman under her wing by describing herself as both mother superior and battle axe. After spotting Sheba shagging a young student in the school studio after hours, Barbara realizes she can blackmail her way into a deeper relationship. “You must inform me of everything,” she orders Sheba one night over drinks, her creeping lust barely suppressed. After Sheba bemoans how she’s compromised her marriage, family and job, Barbara reassures her, “Oh, you poor thing. I want to help you,” which is so decidedly untrue it makes the audience cringe. Once Barbara has confirmation of the affair (and later that it has continued in secret after Sheba swore she’d end it), Barbara worms herself deeper into the poor girl’s life and records more creepiness in her diary (“I always knew we’d be friends.”).

In short: deserved nominations for best screenplay and supporting actress for Blanchett. And an even better-deserved best actress nomination for Dench. Will she win the real deal since taking home best supporting actress for her piffle of a role in Shakespeare in Love? Will she square off against Helen Mirren, star of critic-favorite The Queen, in a battle of the Brits? Yes, I think so.

I did feel unsatisfied by the ending but since I can’t think of a better way the lose ends could have been tied, it’ll have to do for now.

About the score: Have I mentioned how much I hate Philip Glass? His composition for Notes on a Scandal is as blatant as most of his work, flush with strings and brass that alternately noodle and swell, steamrolling what’s onscreen instead of complementing or suggesting it, as a good score should. It’s as if every moment of action is a cliffhanger. A quarter of the way into the film, I was exasperated. I wanted to grab the metaphorical sledgehammer of a score and knock Glass in his literal nutsack with it.

A philosophical French sci-fi film noir inspired by a Paul Éluard poem? Now we’re talking. With a vision strange and new, Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville conjures a not-too-distant future despite taking place in black-and-white on the rain-dampened streets and in the mod buildings of mid-’60s Paris with minimal dressing.

Weren’t elements of this plot swiped for an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation? A omniscient computer named Alpha 60, like a digital Big Brother, controls the city’s pill-popping technocratic inhabitants and speaks to them in French with a electronically processed voice that sounds like a belching toad or a deeper version of Boussh. There are few outbursts in Alphaville because there is no memory of the past or hope for the future, and those who behave illogically are condemned to death, as are those who use forbidden words, such as love, why or conscience; revised dictionaries are issued daily so the populace can keep up. The executions are carried out as entertainment at an indoor Olympic swimming pool. The free spirits are lined up along the edge and allowed some final words, which they usually reserve to rally against their hive mind oppressor, then they’re shot. After they topple dead into the pool, a team of synchronized swimmers leap in and perform a routine. Then the audience applauds.

A secret agent by the name of Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is dispatched to Alphaville and soon sets out on a mission to bring down Alpha 60. Donned in fedora and trenchcoat, he moves about the city under the guise of a newspaper reporter, packing a 35mm Agfa and a revolver, both of which he fires often and with little notice. A classic film noir hero, he’s a hard-bitten chain smoker with a face as chiseled and weathered as Robert Stack’s.

Despite his impassiveness, he has more emotion than anyone else in the city, even more so after he meets Natasha (Anna Karina), a pretty confidante and guide. Alpha 60 is intrigued and has Lemmy brought in for questioning. It begins as boilerplate: what’s your name, where were you born, how old are you. Sensing a higher intelligence, Alpha 60 moves to philosophical abstraction:

Alpha 60: Do you know what illuminates the night?
Lemmy: Poetry.
Alpha 60: What is your religion?
Lemmy: I believe in the inspirations of conscience.
Alpha 60: Do you make any distinction between the mysterious principles of knowledge and those of love?
Lemmy: In my opinion, in love there is no mystery.

With that last answer especially, Alpha 60 is convinced Lemmy is lying and a bad influence. Realizing he’s worn out his welcome, our hero guns his way out with little resistance, killing the computer’s inventor/controller for good measure. The hold on its collective mind severed, Alphaville’s populace staggers around dumbfounded; most of them, we’re told, die eventually. Lemmy steals a car and hustles Natasha inside. As they speed off back to the outlands, he warns her not to look back and she says for the first time, “I love you.” Awww.

Although I can see how you could disparage Alphaville as oh so very French with its pointed artiness and meandering musing, I found it engrossing and entertaining enough.

Mmm. Who likes cornbread? I find it particularly tasty drizzled, when warm, with real maple syrup, on a cold night, as the perfect complement to chili. I made a pan tonight from the simple, serviceable recipe on the back of my bag of Indian Head brand Old Fashioned Stone Ground Yellow Corn Meal. It’s even better, I discovered, when I mix into the batter about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of whole corn kernels.

The Japanese chain Muji will open its first two U.S. stores in New York City, reportedly as early as later this year. To date I’ve been buying my Muji stuff, mainly pens for myself and socks as gifts, from the extremely limited selection at the MoMA Design Store. Here’s one of my Muji pens.

The brand, the name of which is an abbreviation of the phrase “no brand” in Japanese, is known for its lack of logos and simplicity, encompassing clothing, food and all manner of decor, utensils and office supplies.

William Gibson wrote a novel with a heroine who “likes Muji because nothing there ever has a logo.” He’s also mentioned the chain in an article he wrote in 2001 for The Guardian:

Muji [...] calls up a wonderful Japan that doesn’t really exist. A Japan of the mind, where even toenail-clippers and plastic coat-hangers possess a Zen purity: functional, minimal, reasonably priced. I would very much like to visit the Japan that Muji evokes. I would vacation there and attain a new serenity, smooth and translucent, in perfect counterpoint to natural fabrics and unbleached cardboard. My toiletries would pretend to be nothing more than what they are, and neither would I.

A news item on Pitchfork today notes that Tom Waits has won another lawsuit brought by him against a consumer goods company for appropriating his voice or music for an ad. That makes a total of four such suits won: two against auto manufacturers (Opel and Audi), one against Levi’s and the first and most infamous against Frito-Lay.

Forget the fact that from day one, Waits has made it plain that he will never license his songs or his voice for advertisements (though his songs have appeared in movies and TV shows). What junior ad execs out there think the man’s voice could shill anything to a Kelly Clarkson-loving public short of an ineffective new brand of cough lozenges?

Bless him, but he sounds like that guy in the rusty white Econoline who tricks kids inside with promises of popsicles. He’s got the mug, too. A jury member in Waits’ suit against Frito-Lay took a look at him in court and assumed it was a criminal case. (“[W]hen he left the court the first time, we thought he was getting away,” the juror recalled.)

It’s sport among the Waits faithful and record reviewers to describe his voice. Feel free to select one word or phrase each from column A, B and C to make your own descriptor.

Or just listen to this 1.3 MB mp3 of his song “Anywhere I Lay My Head” from his 1985 album Rain Dogs. Ah, Tom. Your voice doesn’t make me hunger for Fritos and for that I am indebted to you and your pugnacious lawyers.

Stopped by Mayrose for dinner tonight. It’s a no frills place, with black and white hexagon tile floors and cathedral-high ceilings. Tons of choices of “comfortable food,” as the menu calls it; it used to be called “diner food.” But whatever. I got the mac-and-cheese and it arrived sizzling in an oblong ceramic dish resting ceremoniously atop a doily on a plate. Very satisfying.

The soundtrack echoes through the space created by those high ceilings, a K-Tel hits compilation of ’50s and ’60s pop: “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets, “Runaway” by Del Shannon, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” by the Platters, “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys, and so on.

Mayrose

• 920 Broadway (at East 21st Street)
• (212) 533-3663
• Meal 4 of 52: mac and cheese ($9.95) and a bottle of Brooklyn Lager ($5))

I ordered Neil Young’s 1992 album Harvest Moon from a third-party seller on Amazon.com about a week and a half ago.

This past weekend, I found a used copy of the CD at Academy Records and bought it, figuring I could use the copy I’d ordered online as a gift.

Last night, I realized with a start that what I’d ordered was also a used CD and therefore unsuitable for gift-giving. I would be stuck with two Harvest Moon CDs!

Today the shipment arrived and something happened that’s never happened to me with an Amazon.com third-party seller before: they sent me the wrong CD, a used Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show greatest-hits collection.

Ha ha!

As it only cost $3.25, it’s not worth my trouble to return it.

Also, apparently “Cover of the Rolling Stone” wasn’t Dr. Hook’s only hit. An older, lightly acid-toasted coworker of mine at least appreciated hearing “Sylvia’s Mother” for the first time since the year of my birth.

Lately Andie has been considering bangs, which apparently are again in vogue. Critics claim “an instant tuneup to any hairstyle!” and “look better in berets!”

I told Andie I’m all for it. For inspiration, I emailed her this photo of Jane Birkin and her bangs from the ’60s. Jane was known then as a singer/actress although her performance in either field could be described as “insubstantial,” or, better yet, “breathy.”

I’d say she’s more famous for appearing nude on film and nearly so on her record covers. The Vatican, the BBC and several countries censured one of her singles, not for the cover, but the orgasmic lyrics and moaning therein. And as legend has it, Hermès named one of its most exclusive bags after her.

I am confident that, with bangs, Andie can meet or surpass these achievements in foxiness.

When I first saw Superman II as a kid, it bothered me the way Zod, Ursa and Non so callously killed those astronauts on the moon. That they were allowed to drift off into space, dead or nearly so, was especially disturbing to me.

Now what startles me, rewatching the movie for the first time in years, is to learn Richard Lester, the guy who directed A Hard Day’s Night, directed the reshoots for this troubled sequel and added most of the annoying camp. I also learned that, like the original, Superman II was written by Godfather author Mario Puzo. That’s weird.

Finally, I noticed that the camera Lois uses at Niagara Falls is a late-’70s OneStep Polaroid Land Camera with rainbow “racing stripe,” a model I own as part of my Polaroid collection.

[See here and here for the two other entries in the Kid Fears series.]

I’m torn. I consider myself a progressive gentleman, one who respects women and strives to treat them equally. On the other hand, I know the perils of being a “nice” guy all the time, and I’m not adverse to occasional hot girl-on-girl action. To put these conflicting thoughts from my head tonight, I dampened my nervous system with Pabst and cheap whiskey to better enjoy the nubile young ladies of the Pillow Fight League duke it out.

This was in Brooklyn at Galapagos and only the second-ever U.S. outing for the Canadian league—the other was last night, which sold out and inspired tonight’s rematch.

It’s really just wrestling, set up Fight Club-style in the back room of the bar on a ring of mats surrounded by a tightly packed crowd of 200. The big difference is that each fighter, with punny name and matching costume, can use her regulation pillow as an extension of her limbs.

The tourney began with a ceremonial appreciation of our neighbors to the north: a singing of the Canadian national anthem over a slideshow of things proudly Made in Canada: mounties, hockey, Pamela Anderson, etc.

The five-minute bouts pitting the practiced pro players against each other were fast-paced and fun, but the giddy excitement came from the amateur fights, involving local ladies who had filled out a consent form in advance and presumably never pillow-fought at the professional level before.

After the first two amateur contenders wormed their way out of the crowd to the mat, the announcer introduced them by their freshly chosen fighter names: Jersey Girl and Orange Crush. “Fuck Jersey!” shouted a Brooklyn patriot in the audience. “Check her for weapons!” hollered another. “I love you, Orange Crush,” someone added meekly.

As if they were entering lockdown, they were instructed to remove their jewelry, watches, belts and shoes. (Obligatory jerk in audience: “Take it all off!”)

Both wore jeans but the similarities ended there. Jersey Girl, who wasn’t doing much to dissuade a certain stereotype, had on a black CBGB tank top that revealed bra straps and muffin top, while her thong and requisite lower-back tat were also visible. Orange Crush was slim and prim with reddish hair and a cozy gray turtleneck. She looked exactly like Julianne Moore. So the best thing ever was her response to Jersey Girl’s first strike. Imagine striding up to the actual Julianne Moore on the sidewalk as if you wanted her autograph or to praise her work in The Hours, but instead whaling her full in the face with a pillow. Since most of my photos from the rumble turned out as smudged and posterized as Stag at Sharkey’s, here is a visual aide to help you imagine the situation.

What I’m getting at is that Orange Crush wasn’t expecting to get whomped upside her head as quickly as she was. Maybe she wasn’t expecting it at all. But she was pissed and with eyes blazing like her now-mussed hair, unleashed a determined retaliation, thundering down short-armed blows on Jersey with the heft and fury of 1,000 sledgehammers. The crowd howled. It ended badly for Jersey, her face mashed to the mat. She wasn’t pinned for the count, but the judges gave the edge to Orange Crush, possibly because they feared for their safety.

Helping the contenders stand again, the ringmaster asked how they felt, for the benefit of the audience. “Awseome,” said Jersey Girl. “Fucking exhausted,” said Orange Crush, out of breath. The ringmaster got back on the mike for the color commentary: “The first thing the amateurs learn is: you gotta do cardio.”

The next pair of amateurs clearly had learned from the first. Although they started by sparring in place, swinging widely, they graduated soon enough to include fancy footwork. Then the girl who went by the name Sugar Glider, six-feet tall and dressed in a rust-colored terry dress from the ’70s, leapt on her much smaller opponent, collapsed her like a tent, then pillow-garroted her until the ref counted off three. Now that’s entertainment.

There were many young couples in the audience of 200, but a fair sprinkling of guy’s guys, resplendent in their stubble and major league ballcaps, the sort of fellows you could bet had a Sports Illustrated Football Phone in their not-too-distant past. But this being New York they were blessed with a higher wit.

“My inner lesbian’s so aroused right now,” the tough guy to my right said to me. Turning back to the action he yelled “Hump her!”

I overheard others armchair-quarterbacking like the tournament was a warped match of the NBA or NFL, things like “Carbon Monoxide’s cute but she didn’t bring her A-game” and “That Betty Crocker don’t take shit from no one.”

Stepping out at one point to get another drink, I saw a guy standing near the door considering purchase of a late ticket. He asked another exiting guy “Is it fun in there?” The guy walking out looked at the questioner as if he was a cretin. “Hell yeah,” he said. “There’s girls beating the shit out of each other.”

Attention! This post contains the following words and phrases that some readers may find objectionable or funny: “tentacle porn,” “pubic hair,” “ass hair,” “penises” and “cooter.” Also the words “fuck” and “finger” as verbs.

The Museum of Sex: what a great idea. Where else can you finger the cooter of a Real Doll without spending $6499 to own one? I don’t know, although I made sure I washed my hands thoroughly with soap and hot water afterwards.

The temporary exhibit on the ground floor, “Peeping, Probing and Porn: Four Centuries of Graphic Sex in Japan,” displays the full range, from woodblock prints to looping videos of modern anime. As is often the case, the older stuff is more intriguing.

When Edo (present-day Tokyo) first expanded from a backwater fishing village to a teeming metropolis, young men packed up and moved there for opportunity and to fuck around a bit, figuratively and literally. Edo became known as the “City of Bachelors,” inspiring a booming sex trade, then, in the natural progression of things, copious pornography. The first mass-produced porn, commissioned by the rich or sold as cheap prints to the masses, chiefly depicted the wide caste of prostitutes, from streetwalkers to live-in courtesans, doin’ it with a variety of men. Many prints concern the popular fetish of voyeurism, whether through mirrors or peeping perverts, as well as what’s perhaps the first instance of tentacle porn, from 1820 by the same guy who woodblocked the famous Beneath the Great Wave off Kanagawa.

I found it interesting that pornographers in early 19th century Japan had no qualms depicting pubic hair of either sex, male ass hair or penises the approximate height and girth of the owner’s head. Strangely, they became more conservative in certain narrow respects as the centuries advanced, until, for example, the depiction of pubic hair was banned or at least restricted in modern times.

My brother Andrew at Side Cut Metropark, Toledo, Ohio, 1978.

Early this month, I happened upon two flat wooden crates someone on my street was throwing out. They’re in fine shape and I believe they date from the ’60s; each was made to hold and transport two dozen glass Pepsi bottles. I decided they might come in handy, so I brought them back to my apartment.

I didn’t feel like doing anything as obvious as using them as curio cabinets. After all, each of the 24 compartments is curio-sized. So I asked this girl I work with for advice. Her qualification is that she’s crafty: she’s made her own jewelry and purses and was one of the first contestants on Craft Corner Deathmatch. (In her haste trimming something, she sliced her finger and bled all over her project; she didn’t advance.) She instantly thought of three options:

1. Arrange tall clear glass candleholders in some of the slots and use it as a centerpiece for a table.
2. Hang the crate on a bathroom wall and store rolled-up washcloths and small toiletries in the cubbyholes.
3. Drape a strand of Christmas lights inside the cubbyholes then cover the front of the crate with a piece of vellum or other translucent paper/plastic for use as a decorative light.

What great ideas! I ignored them all and ended up “making” the obvious curio cabinet, which involved me standing one of the crates on end and cramming assorted small objects I had lying around my apartment into the cubbies, including Homies, miniature bottles of Tabasco sauce, an old watch, a rubber stamp and some miniature loteria cards. That stuff counts as curios, right?

I don’t know why this pops into my head now, but back during an early semester of college, I was assigned to write a biography on a favorite contemporary writer and I chose Dave Barry, whose writing I was enamored with at the time. I remember learning about his own influences as a writer, so I read them as well for research. I don’t remember them all, but Robert Benchley and Woody Allen were prominent among them.

I specifically remember reading an essay Allen wrote for the New York Times in 1972 called “A Brief, Yet Helpful, Guide to Civil Disobedience.” Here’s a segment of it:

A fine example of a demonstration was The Boston Tea Party where outraged Americans disguised as Indians dumped British tea into the harbor. Later, Indians disguised as outraged Americans dumped actual British into the harbor. Following that, the British disguised as tea dumped each other into the harbor. Finally, German mercenaries clad only in costumes from The Trojan Women leapt into the harbor for no apparent reason.

This closely recalls a bit from a column Barry wrote in the late-’80s called “Way to Go, Roscoe!”:

We’ve been trying to get tax reform for over 200 years, dating back to 17-something, when a small, brave band of patriots dressed up as Indians and threw tea into the Boston Harbor. Surprisingly, this failed to produce tax reform. So the brave patriots tried various other approaches, such as dressing up as tea and throwing Indians into the harbor, or dressing up as a harbor and throwing tea into Indians, but nothing worked.

Did Barry subliminally borrow the structure of Allen’s joke? Is the joke a traditional one? Or would it have come up for anyone who thinks long enough about the humor quotient of the Boston Tea Party? I at least think Allen’s bit is funnier, because of that “for no apparent reason” that pops up at the end.

The merino V-neck sweater I’d had my eye on for the past month reached what I hope is a rock-bottom sale price, down to $29.99 from $49.50, so I bought it over the weekend before my size disappeared. It’s the same style as the gray sweater and black sweater I have in constant rotation. But it’s a fresh cyan color. I wore it today to work and, just between you and me, I had hoped someone would comment on it. But no one did. I’m not seeking your sympathy; what I think I wanted was recognition from my coworkers that I really am capable of buying new clothes every once in awhile.

Interesting reportage by Sam Roberts in the New York Times today, that 51 percent of American women live without a spouse:

For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results. [...] Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

Although that’s a revealing, far-reaching statistic, I can’t believe the Times chose a photo of a single woman petting her cat to illustrate the article.

“Better than a photo of her eating a pint of Häagen-Dazs,” the photo editor probably reasoned.

I had high hopes for what would have been the first use of scented outdoor advertising in the United States, the campaign that was announced in November as part of the California Milk Processor Board’s “Got Milk?” campaign. If it would have succeeded, the scent of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies would have flooded select San Francisco bus shelters, under the assumption that commuters and the homeless would suddenly have a hankering for the scent of a tall, cool glass of milk. (Better yet, they would buy milk. Also, possibly, some cookies.)

But because of public outcry over “potential allergic reactions to scented products,” the Municipal Transportation Agency ordered the cookie-scented strips removed a day after they were adhered to the shelters.

I learned of this news reading one of those “well, duh” Times trend articles (“Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Now Likely to See an Ad” by Louise Story) about how public advertising is as pervasive as pollen in Spring. We now have it printed on eggs (CBS TV shows), subway turnstiles (Geico), Chinese food cartons (Continental), the trays used in airport security lines (Rolodex), those paper examining-table covers in doctors’ offices (Disney and Tylenol) and barf bags on airplanes (no one will admit to this one).

“Ubiquity is the new exclusivity,” quips one spunky ad agency jerk interviewed for the article.

Makes me wish I’d kept better track of the Public Displays of Advertising I’ve read about and experienced here in New York. The city’s of course home to some of the country’s most powerful ad agencies and one of the most diverse target markets, so the number of marketing stunts here are unsurprising. Even Kurt Russell couldn’t escape.

During the winter of aught-five, for example, HBO promoted Deadwood by plastering the seats and walls of an entire subway train with adhesive decals to make it resemble an Old West saloon. Granted it was the shuttle running between Times Square and Grand Central Station, the shortest train on the shortest route in the city, but it still made a splash.

We’ll take nearly anything; the city nearly agreed to allow advertising on its toll plazas, then figured its citizens had enough distraction driving angrily while checking their voicemail.

Other than the recent public-crapper campaign by Charmin, other local greats I recall since I’ve lived here are skywriting to promote some forgettable TV show, Marriott plunking down a bed on the sidewalk right outside the Marquis on Times Square, Snapple launching hot-air balloons in Bryant Park and Ocean Spray recreating a cranberry bog outside Rockefeller Center.

Why can’t people claim allergy to this crap? I am often amused by it but just as often it makes my head hurt.

Portrait of the father as a young hunter-gatherer.

I’d rather have seen Spike Lee’s biopic on James Brown, but because that directorial decision was made as the Godfather’s body cooled in its solid-gold coffin and production won’t start at least until next year, I settled for Dreamgirls, a fictional biopic of the Supremes.

Like that famously popular girl-group, the Dreamgirls change in sound and personnel as they turn successful. The original lead is Effie White, the strong girl with the belt-out voice, played by popular American Idol karaoke participant Jennifer Hudson. At my screening, her centerpiece songs were lavished with heart-swollen applause by the audience. It’s deserved, I think. Because I’m writing this later than the datestamp implies, I can tell you that Hudson has since won a Golden Globe for her role, but even had I not known that, I’d have predicted an Oscar nomination.

Effie’s got soul but Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx), the group’s wolf-eyed manager, wants the top-40. He entangles himself in backhanded business tactics of payola and mafia funding to build his empire. Most egregiously, he fires the superior Effie and promotes Deena (Beyoncé Knowles) and her mass-appeal voice to lead, echoing what happened in reality with Diana Ross.

It’s a strange meta-commentary on the continued homogenization of pop music that the bland Beyoncé, a real life singing sensation, is promoted as a radio-friendly unit shifter. And although the audience knows this from the get-go, Deena is slow. With spite, Cutis reveals to her late in the film that he’s been using her for her voice, which he admits isn’t that great anyway; she’s the only one, onscreen and off, who’s shocked.

The funniest run in the movie also has to do with the commercial realities of pop music, showing how white singers appropriated songs by black musicians, cranked out watery blue-eyed versions and propelled themselves up the pop charts. Curtis makes the point that “Hound Dog” wasn’t originally by Elvis, it was by “Big Mama” Thorton, a large, growling black woman, and as such, considered a “race record” with limited appeal. The cracker with the swivel hips and curled lip turned that around and set the standard for rock musicians to pilfer the riches of their R&B forbearers.

As James "Thunder" Early, a James Brown-Little Richard hybrid for whom the Dreamgirls sing backup until they eclipse him in fame, Eddie Murphy injects the film with a randy comic zip that makes his downfall even sadder. (Like Hudson, Murphy also won a Golden Globe and there may be an Oscar waiting for him as well.) He begins as a king of chitlin circuit but as the market shifts, finds himself marginalized. He turns to drugs and is relegated to croon showtunes on the Vegas circuit. With ants in his pants one fateful night, he bursts of out his new straight-laced, white-friendly persona into a shouting soulful stomp, gets down and gets funky with his horn section, then drops trou on live TV. He shocks the audience and he’s fired on the spot for breaking character.

Featuring as many songs as Dreamgirls does, most are forgettable and produced (ironically?) in the bland style the film protests. And as much as I tried to suppress my prejudices, the very idea of musicals still bothers me—that people will exchange dialogue then burst into perfectly synchonized song without skipping a beat. Dreamgirls also puts some couplets of dialogue to song (usually Effie’s), a more unnerving tactic than head-on musical numbers.

Finally, I must say that if the costume and/or makeup designs for this flick don’t get Oscar nominations, there is no justice in this world. Both chart a perfect course from the cake-frosting colors and frills of the 50s, to the slim, mod styling of 60s to the flared and sequined ’70s. The getups depict the advance of years better than any nudge of prop or dialogue could. The parade of couture progresses seamlessly, save those tight red vinyl wrap-dresses from the ’60s that make the plump Hudson resemble a really comfy La-Z-Boy.

Tears of the Black Tiger was a spur of the moment choice. Of Film Forum’s three now-showing movies, I liked its stills, poster and capsule quotes best. My challenge was that this may have been the first Thai film I’ve seen, so I wondered how much of it was conventional for Thai film and how much of it was merely weird, because the whole thing was pretty weird.

Most every shot and many plot elements are straight from Sergio Leone’s westerns except taking place in present-day Thailand. Then everything’s all hopped up in saturated Technicolor and heavily stylized violence, like exaggerated spurts of food-coloring-red blood and creatively unlikely deaths, swiped from Tarantino or from the grindhouse slasher flicks he stole them from. So not only do you get things like standoffs with Leone-style crosscut closeups of the gunslingers’ eyes and hands hovering near their holstered guns, you get contemporary slow-mo follow-the-bullet shots or shots that manically follow the bullet’s path as it pings off various objects before dispatching a bad guy in a lively fashion.

The plot’s mere icing on the pineapple upside-down cake: the female lead, Stella Malucchi, is sought after by her sweetheart since childhood (Chartchai Ngamsan, the Black Tiger of the title) who has since folded himself into the roving band of renegades that killed his father. Also vying for her affections is her new fiancée, the ambitious police captain (Arawat Ruangvuth) who’s closing in on the Black Tiger gang. Malucchi spends her screentime weeping silent, theatrical tears at her window or lying on her bed in gauzy closeups copped from nameless B&W romances of the ’40s. She’s taken a page from that era’s Elizabeth Taylor playbook of luxuriant lazing and precision eyebrow maintenance.

When a character laughs in Tears of the Black Tiger, it’s usually a guy and it’s always a laugh forcibly expelled from deep in the chest and sounding exactly as it’s written (“Ha ha ha!”), which made the audience laugh, but not because what the character was laughing at was funny. We also laughed at the campy ridiculousness of the acting, the hammy line readings, the blatant Once Upon a Time in the West ripoffs, and the rubbery mugging and worst-ever pencil moustache of the Black Tiger’s sidekick/eventual turncoat. I grumbled about the score, which was lively and appropriate enough, though it sounded like video game music, like the producers couldn’t afford an orchestra, so they settled for a Korg.

I may be disappointed to later learn not all Thai movies are this bendy and unexpected, so I’ll savor it as memory permits.

Fandango, which I use to reserve tickets for many of the mass-market movies I see, recently added a feature that remembers the theaters you frequent, then provides a quick link to their showtimes. Strange that the character should sort-of resemble me, with the big lips and chin, and messy blonde hair.

He looks even more similar if I Photoshop my glasses onto him.

Last weekend, someone asked me how I find the restaurants I eat at for my various failed and ongoing meals projects. I have three primary sources: advice, serendipity and media.

First, the advice of friends and coworkers. Hey, they wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t share at least some adventure for experiencing exciting new dishes and places to eat.

Second: serendipity. The average block in New York City must contain about seven eating establishments, so I’ll merely walk around an unfamiliar part of town to spot new places to eat at.

Third, and my most common source of inspiration, is local media. I find dining leads in locally produced blogs and city news pages online. I discovered my most-recent 52 Meals Project restaurant on some New Yorker’s Flickr photostream. More often, my leads stem from commercial media sources. The online edition of New York magazine contains my favorite and most fruitful restaurant write-ups. Overall I find the magazine’s content too glib and targeted above my pay grade, but I respect most of its themed food listings and capsule reviews, especially within the “Best of New York” section, which are pithy and accurate.

I enjoy the 500-word “Tables For Two” review in The New Yorker, although each week it makes me wish the magazine would include more than one restaurant write-up per issue. Time Out New York is another classic source, especially its annual Cheap Eats issue. And although I don’t consult its restaurant reviews regularly, I find gold in the occasional “100-best” lists featured in The Village Voice.

I attended a panel discussion tonight at Cooper Union, produced by the New Museum and the Cooper Union School of Art that attempted to answer the question “Is provincial a bad word?”

It was billed as a “Hot Button! panel” and that to me conjured something different and exciting, but it was a standard panel and not even much a discussion. As part of their introduction, each panelist was allowed to talk about themselves then go off on their own prepared tangent about provincialism, so the introductions alone took over an hour. What that left was little time for actual debate or interaction between the panel. The moderator, who was the chief curator of the New Museum, didn’t do much moderating, although I was amused when he used the phrase “every cliché in the book,” which is a cliché itself. I will admit that I spent most of the time in the lecture hall proofreading and editing a printout of Dana’s letter of intent for grad school.

Some of the most thought-provoking points were made by Nicolai Ouroussoff, the New York Times architecture critic, who argued that the world’s capitals “have become playgrounds for the rich” and morphed into safe, sanitary and generic archetypes, where there may be little difference between Times Square and Shanghai. (His line of reasoning reminded me of William Gibson’s statements about the erosion of the “specificity of place,” which he made during an interview I attended about a year ago.) Ouroussoff directed much of his spite toward New York City, which he says has completed its architectural history and isn’t interested in adding to it, unless it’s cookie-cutter design or monuments like the Freedom Tower, the design of which reveals “more about our paranoia than our best values.” (He was a proponent of the original Freedom Tower design and has done little to mask his disgust with the concrete-buttressed stronghold currently on the drafting table.) He added that, ironically, provincialism is “never an issue in this country except in the mind of New Yorkers.”

Instead, “tertiary cities,” mostly in Europe, are the best in which to “relocate creative energy” for architecture, while some of the best work in this country is being put up in Los Angeles (although Ouroussoff suggested much of this had to do with that city’s freedom from the sort of land constraints that bedevil development in New York).

Something another panelist mentioned in passing that intrigued me (and which I hadn’t heard of despite my real estate background) was Orange County, China, a replica of American suburbs built in China for the rich. It reminded me of the philosophy behind Celebration, Florida as an improved re-creation of small-town American life that may have never existed.

Broken Flowers is a loose collection of long, nearly motionless takes, awkward silences, deadpan dialogue, a great soundtrack and no resolution. I liked it, but I like director Jim Jarmusch’s style. He’s not for everyone.

The film stars Bill Murray, still in his ruminative, sad-sack phase, taking a road-trip he’s goaded into by his friend and next-door neighbor, Jeffrey Wright. Murray aims to glean whether one of his four ex-flames could have written him an anonymous letter on pink stationary that alludes to a son he was responsible for producing a few decades back. He looks for clues during his visits but mainly learns how the women, and by extension, himself, have grown into their lives over the years.

A mesmerizing extra on the DVD is a stitched-together mini-movie consisting of a second of footage of the slate getting clapped for every shot in the movie. Not every scene, every shot. It’s like a flipbook version of the whole film.

The ’50s were swell if you were a white kid growing up in Iowa. That’s the essence of Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir, which I finished reading tonight.

As he does in his popular travel narratives, Bryson blends in large chunks of factual background information. In writing about far-flung or under-covered travel destinations like Iceland, the Appalachian Trail, the whole of Australia and nooks of Europe, this works, but here it can break the mood or feel like padding. For instance, in reminiscing about his favorite comic book characters, he veers off on a discourse of facts about how many were produced in their heyday, when and why their downfall began, the Comics Code Authority, and so on.

When reflecting on his rambunctious childhood, he exaggerates like a grandpa spinning a yarn (particularly heights and distances) which made me wonder which of his facts were presented warped by the haze of years or embellished with artistic license.

The conceit of the Thunderbolt Kid of the title feels as it may have been added late in the writing process, maybe to give the book a point of difference in its marketing and to disguise the fact it’s in essence a wistful memoir by a baby boomer. The only interplay of the Thunderbolt Kid with the narrative is an occasional mention at the close of a chapter, wherein young Bryson switches into his imaginary superhero persona to zap a teacher or another authority figure he’s deemed stupid.

The final few chapters, which tip into the early ’60s, are tacked-on and rushed, especially the sudden bit about his integrated middle-school, although they do include the early misadventures of his best friend, Katz, who as an adult was Bryson’s surly and funny travel companion in A Walk in the Woods.

Ultimately, I prefer Bryson’s fish-out-of-water travel tales to his childhood adventures. (I like any fish-out-of-water travel tale, which is also why I’m a fan of the fiction and non-fiction of Douglas Adams). But Iowa in the ’50s is too much a confined white-bread universe in which nothing entirely unexpected or exciting happens.

Like many in my Moosewood cookbook, this recpie makes a hearty cold-weather soup. And, say: saffron is costly. I’d never used it before but knew of its legendary expense. The kind I bought was $2.49 for a half-gram pinch packed in a tiny plastic box. That works out to $2,258.89 per pound, if my math is correct.

I stopped by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum today for the National Design Triennial 2006, a rambling, bombastic exhibit on three floors that covers the design of just about everything: architecture, media, advertising, software, lighting, fashion, ceramics, furniture, fabrics, tools, maps and packaging. It’s a hit-or-miss jumble and on the second floor at least, there’s a slew of commercial filler: Nike sneakers, Apple’s iPod, an ad campaign for Court TV and more. Next to enlarged screenshots of some Google sites (including the new Google Picasa, which gets no explanation at all), an earnest placard notes that “‘google’ has become a widely accepted verb found in dictionaries.” Wow, really?

A centerpiece of the show was Sgt. John Blackwell, a life-sized digitally animated character that processes questions asked of it and responds verbally. The placard explains the U.S. Army joined forces with Hollywood to develop the serviceman to substitute for a human during training or informational sessions, which is a fine idea in concept.

Dressed in helmet and fatigues, the sergeant hovers directly in front of you behind a glass pane in a semidarkened open-backed booth. His numerous polygons shift slightly as he waits for your input, for which you hold down a red button while speaking your question into a microphone. He replies with a prerecorded response ideally appropriate to your question. When I arrived at the booth, there was a dad there with a very young girl who he got to “speak” into the microphone as he struggled to mash the button while holding her to the mike.

Girl

Gigaablagh.

Blackwell

You wanna know how I’m talking to you right now? Just ask me.

Girl

Hurnablahjk. Dit dit.

Blackwell

You wanna know something about my technology? Why don’t you ask me?

Girl

Palatalata dommmm. Bbb bbb bbb.

Blackwell

[leans forward testily] Why don’t you just Google it?

Girl

[looks confused, taken aback]

So what you’re most likely to hear is one of the sergeant’s pat responses when he doesn’t understand you or have an answer in his library of responses. The avatar “learns” and although that process isn’t explained, I assume it involves recording the keywords and questions the system doesn’t understand, then having a human filter through them to potentially provide software recognition and a response. I’d love to be the peon charged with reviewing those tapes.

To help cut down on unanswered questions, there’s a list of leading questions posted near the sergeant’s microphone, along the lines of “What is your name?” and “How does your technology work?” At its heart, the sergeant is a much more expensive version of the classic text-input psychologist computer program, ELIZA.

Despite his stunted conversational skills, a lot of people wanted to chat with the sergeant so I didn’t have as much face time as I’d have liked. He did tell me that he’s been in the army five years and joined after seeing Saving Private Ryan, a movie I would have guessed deters enlistment. Having warmed him up, I asked him his position on gays in the military. He offered a random canned response, so I asked again in case he was dodging the question or lost in thought about his technology. He responded, “Not to be cocky, but I’m programmed to help my flesh and blood brethren at war and in peacetime.” You heard it here first: no more of this “don’t ask, don’t tell” crosstalk—Sgt. Blackwell and the U.S. Army are gay friendly and not adverse to some cocky shenanigans.

A slightly less interactive exhibit that caught my fancy at the Triennial was an installation by Electroland that wraps along the inner wall of the museum’s grand staircase in a long white acrylic lightbox. As you ascend or descend, evenly spaced vertical fluorescent tube lights mounted in the lightbox “follow” you, fading in and out as you move, while the system plays an ascending or descending musical scale. It gets cacophonous when there are a lot of people on the stairs at the same time.

Some other cool stuff that would have been even cooler had it been operational was the transparent kayak that weighs only 26 pounds and folds to fit into a backpack, as well as the underwater robotic lobster that can gauge pollution, locate mines and liberate its crustacean cronies from restaurant holding tanks.¹

Comparing the Triennial to the ITP Winter Show I attended in December, the latter exhibition boasted a scrappy youthful exuberance, many more hands-on or active exhibits and not a whiff of commercialism, making it the larger success.

¹ I may have made up one of these features. [back]

If the first explorers of this landmass had showed up 500-some years late this Sunday, sailing up the Hudson and docking in present-day west Chelsea, I think after disembarking a few avenue blocks inland, they would have named their new world “Brunchland.” (Maps would further indicate “Here there be condo construction,” crude illustrations of long-necked cranes poking through the clouds.)

What I’m trying to say is, in this piece of Manhattan, there are many choices for brunch, a meal with a compounded draw when unseasonably balmy weekend weather makes visions of bacon and flapjacks dance in one’s hypothalamus. How to choose a place? Serendipitously, I had earlier come across a local girl’s Flickr page featuring artful macro photos of brunch entrées and accoutrements tagged cookshop. I looked up the place. The website was designed well enough, I liked the cut of their logotype and the menu enticed me, so I hit OpenTable and made a reservation.

I had the cornmeal pancakes with lemon butter and pear compote, rounded by a plate all-American bacon and a cuppa coffee. Yeah! The food was fine and I really liked the atmosphere of the place. It’s on a quiet, unassuming block of 10th avenue, a thinly trafficked neighborhood of townhouses and churches to the east, while to the west lie the warehouses and light industrial buildings of numbered days near the High Line, which I could see from my seat.

The restaurant’s interior is large and open, with cream-colored walls and industrial-style waxed poured-cement floors. The tables are close but not right on top of each other. Décor and furniture feature clean, simple lines. Best, the entire southern and western walls are floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the morning sun and perk up the atmosphere. On a bright day like today, everyone and their food was sexily softboxed. Two British ladies at the table to the left of mine spoke of scones, herbal flu remedies and Amsterdam while across the way, young Turks in Chucks downed coffee and expelled excited chatter.

The waitstaff weren’t bothersome or wankish, dressed in jeans and light-blue Oxford shirts, with long white aprons tied around their waists. Mine managed a trendy new shoulder grasp so natural I wasn’t unnerved by it.

I heartily recommend Cookshop as a prime brunch destination, whether by yourself, with friends or family. It’s bustling but not oppressive, conducive to conversation and people-watching, and priced well enough.

But enjoy it while it lasts, maybe, for this is a neighborhood in transition, with grand plans to revitalize the High Line as a pedestrian parkway, flanked by upscale residential, retail, restaurants and hotels, and new home to Frank Gehry’s first building in Manhattan, the near-completed headquarters for Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, located only a few blocks from the restaurant. Ten stories or so of concrete wrapped in a curiously gradated white glass facade, it’s meant to conjure a ship in full sail. (Hard starboard! AMF Chelsea Piers Lanes off the bow!) Mainly you notice it because it’s A Frank Gehry Building, with strange surface materials and funhouse angles, sprouting from the bland landscape. As I’ve noticed with photos I’ve taken of previous Gehry buildings, this one, when framed without scale-establishing or other surrounding elements, resembles a rendering or sci-fi structure.

Cookshop

• 156 10th Avenue (at 20th Street)
• (212) 924-4440
• Meal 3 of 52: cornmeal pancakes ($12), bacon ($5) and coffee ($2.75).

I always have fun at karaoke but usually so much fun—also alcohol—that I remember little the next day, when my voice resembles Marge Simpson’s and my head contains fading waves of “Forever in Blue Jeans.” This is bad because karaoke success depends on consistency. Sure, you can go off on a bender from time to time and sing wild songs, but you should at least:

1. Have a signature, well-practiced song or two with which to impress and/or make the audience overlook your shortcomings.
2. Know your weaknesses in terms of song selection and pitch and so on.

So when Samantha and Iggy invited me out tonight for the happy-hour special at Japas 55, I took advantage of the small-group dynamic to whip out my notebook and record what everyone sang. I’ve recreated the playlist below. This is useful, believe me, because looking at it now, I remember much more clearly what worked and what didn’t.

For instance, anyone vaguely familiar with the White Album can sing the first part of “I Will” by the Beatles, but for those such as myself not intimately familiar with it, confusion sets in by the middle-eight. Same thing with Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face,” which has a tricky rapping bit towards the end that I forget exists until it’s too late.

Another problem I recall by this list is my trouble sticking to one style of singing. For instance, “Ziggy Stardust”: Should it be sung with British accent or without? The correct answer is “with” but I couldn’t make up my mind and meandered back and forth. Even worse was Björk’s “Hyper-Ballad.” I kept threatening to select a Björk song (“It’ll be fun, right?”), then I did, thinking either I would receive backup or it would be an amusing trifle, neither fantasy of which came true. For you see, I realized too late that Björk is the only person who can sing Björk songs. The sole constant in my delivery was shifting from cloying falsetto to my “normal” singing voice, bending and cracking as if I was hitting puberty over and over again. I made even myself nauseous and if Björk would have happened by, she would have punched me. And then Matthew Barney would have dumped a bucket of petroleum jelly on my bruised head.

“Here Comes Your Man” was my biggest success, in part because no one ever picks that song and even people who don’t know the Pixies or hate them in general cannot deny the tune is catchy pop greatness. (The lyrics are another story.) In general, too, country is good for me (“Folsom Prison Blues” and “El Paso”) because of the repetition and lower-voiced simplicities therein. And if you wonder why I chose to sing “Thirty-Three,” no one’s favorite Smashing Pumpkins song, it’s because that is my age. Oh, I am clever. Also, Billy Corgan generally sings with a range poor and/or basic enough for anyone to mimic. (I feel the same way about many songs of Bono, which is why I favor U2’s “One.”)

But enough about me. Turning to the people in the room who could really sing, Iggy proved he is a master of style, voice and pitch, sliding seamlessly from Barry White (complete with lusciously deep voice and spoken-word asides) to Michael Jackson (with ad-libbed hoo-hooos). He is king of the soulful oldies: see his choices from the Platters, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, etc. Ain’t no mountain high enough for Iggy to conquer. For those of you who do not know him, I should point out that, as near as I can see, Iggy is not black. But I feel he should keep holding out for an honorary designation from the NAACP.

Samantha has a repertoire of awesome signature songs, particularly Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic,” which reminds me of The Motels’ “Only the Lonely,” another song she rocks on. She is queen of the strong voice, staying on key and hitting high notes with laserlike accuracy. As special bonuses, she will take requests (her skin-tingling rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s “All Through the Night” is a favorite of mine) and also dance along at no extra charge. For instance, she did the Robert Palmer Video Girl moves at my request during “Simply Irresistible” and, on her own, grooved “She’s a Bad Mama Jama” like a Fly Girl on Red Bull. She’s not too cool to provide backup (the repeated Les yeux sans visage in “Eyes Without a Face”) and graciously sang a Rod Stewart song Iggy accidentally keyed-in (“Love Touch”) even though she thinks Rod is a wanker.

And O those starry-eyed duets: “I Got You Babe” (more cute than corny) and “Groovin’” (self-explanatory). Well done, kids.

For the closer, “Sweet Caroline,” we belatedly activated a feature present on most newer karaoke units that tracks a singer’s key, tempo and portamento. (Portamento? I think that’s what it was.) When the song’s over, you receive an animé bar graph speckled with Japanese characters and a number. Ours was 83, which is good, I guess. We need to investigate this feature further.

As our night of song drew to a conclusion, I proved I hadn’t lost it in matters of quickly forgetting. It wasn’t until I had nearly said my final goodbyes to Sam and Iggy, heading up Eighth Avenue to the subway, before Iggy gently pointed out I hadn’t paid for my share of the festivities. That made me feel like a jerk, but it was not my intention to flee the bill and I explained more or less accurately that I usually have a stranger or someone such as Andie handle delicate financial matters when I’ve been drinking. “Here’s my wallet,” I’ll say, handing it over. “I trust you.”

Does an organic beef patty free from antibiotics, hormones, nitrates and fillers, sandwiched in an all-natural wheat bun made without artificial ingredients and refined sugar, taste any different than a burger that may contain these assaults to the average Whole Foods Market shopper? I don’t think so. Better Burger’s 1/4-pound burger was a fine specimen and all, chargrilled and topped with the usual fixings (onion, pickle, lettuce and tomato; cheddar or jack cheese $1 extra). But it was not gustatorily flabbergasting.

On the other hand, the fries suffer. Billed proudly as “air-baked NOT FRIED,” they illustrate why you shouldn’t fuck with the way certain classic foods are prepared. Partially heat a bag of frozen French fries in the oven, cool them, then reheat them in the microwave and you will experience a taste and texture similar to Better Burger’s fries. These sad, dry pieces of potato yearned for a dunk in a sizzling pool of cardiovascular-crimping oil

I did like Better Burger’s condiment counter: a lineup of self-serve varieties in stainless-steel pump-action dispensers, including “karma ketchup” (the one I tried, spiced with curry, onion and coriander), spicy ketchup, chipotle-honey mustard, spiced wasabi sauce, vegan mayonnaise and so on, as well as plain-old (organic) ketchup for the traditional and the wary.

Better Burger

• 178 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street)
• (212) 989-6688
• Meal 2 of 52: burger ($5.95) and fries ($2.75).

Ah, to be young and Warren Beatty in mid-’70s Los Angeles. His character in Shampoo, a hairdresser who dreams of one day opening his own salon, alternately coifs and beds the decade’s leading ladies, including Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie and Princess Leia.

What a handsome rake he was. If you attempted to recreate his high-volume hairstyle today, now-bannned emissions from the cases of Aqua Net alone would require a team of short-sleeved nerds from ILM to tease a googol-haired digital ’do via supercomputer. His frilly white Keith Richards blouse-shirts and turquoise rings and bangles are also beautiful, while his bluejeans appear to have been decoupaged directly to his legs and pelvis.

After flimsy excuses and broken promises but plenty of casual pre-AIDS sex, Warren is caught in flagrante delicto by girlfriend Goldie and the man whose mistress he’s schtupping. Goldie hurls a lawnchair through the poolhouse window in disgust. But Warren hasn’t learned much from his escapades other than his heart is temporarily broken and he won’t be getting the loan for his salon from that guy after all. As he observes early in the film, “After a while, women get to be an occupational hazard.”

For sexy, open-faced sandwiches on toast, you cannot beat the Blue Ribbon Bakery Market, a tiny extension of the Blue Ribbon Bakery, the full-fledged restaurant down the street. The market outpost in the West Villiage is a sandwich joint with no seats inside and a small wooden bench outside.

What friendly countermen! Greeted enthusiastically by them as a repeat customer was a tall, trim man in a suit who, with a plum British accent, ordered “a small flaxseed,” closed the paper-wrapped loaf in his nearly empty black leather briefcase and left without another word. He was followed by a perky and chatty young lady with springy black hair who ordered “a new cheese” on her usual sandwich (“surprise me!”) then quipped that she should just have a percentage of her paychecks sent directly to Blue Ribbon. “I can give you our routing number,” one of the clerks replied.

I had a gloriously delicious sandwich involving toast slathered with “three onion cream,” piled with shavings of fresh, house-smoked salmon and sprinkled with capers and minced purple onions. I inhaled that thing, despite the fact my attempt at a clever photo makes it resemble a wound of some sort.

Blue Ribbon also crafts sandwiches made with pork, duck, smoked trout or sturgeon, fancy ham and pickled tongue. Other toppings include a variety of raw honey from Mexico and a range of churned butters.

Blue Ribbon Bakery Market

• 14 Bedford St. (near Downing Street)
• (212) 647-0408
• Meal 1 of 52: smoked salmon sandwich ($8.50)

Groggy and leaden from New Year’s alcohol and festivities, I guessed Alfonso Cuarón’s new dystopian-future film Children of Men would match my mood this drizzly, foggy evening and I was right.

The plot is simple: a perpetually haggard Clive Owen protects an expectant mother (the somewhat wooden Claire-Hope Ashitey) and later her newborn daughter, too, in a near distant future. The world has fallen except for Great Britain, now a police state taken to caging refugees and shipping them to internment camps. Also there’s no one alive under 18 and women are unable to get pregnant, which makes Clive’s mission crucial, apparently.

Everything in the movie’s world existed vaguely to me because there’s little back-story (or if there was, I missed it), leaving me to wonder: What’s the deal with the children? What are Clive’s motivations? (We learn later he and his now ex-wife (a robotic Julianne Moore) lost a child, yet get no insight from Clive other than a furrowed brow.) What is this possibly nonexistent Human Project to which Clive is hustling the mother and child?

Even not knowing these details, the film’s more style over substance, free from the obvious philosophical debates of dystopian sci-fi fare like Gattaca. But what fine style it is. Cuarón’s future vision matches much of the present with overcast skies, graffiti-scrawled buildings and streets strewn with garbage. There’s guerilla warfare, burning piles of diseased livestock, signs urging the public to report suspicious activity and glimpsed images that quote those of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The cars even resemble shitkickers from the ’90s with added plastic fins and retrofitted digital display screens inside. The most futuristic elements are the omnipresent billboards and TV screens that loop jingoistic PSAs, grim news headlines and commercials for plastic surgery, mood-altering drugs and, of course, the Gap.

As these elements pile up, Children of Men clarifies as a straightforward chase movie taking place in a fever dream of the present. There are a few expertly cut sequences involving humorously small but crucial physical impediments to Clive & Co. that nearly end their escape as the bad guys advance haltingly in the background. It’s like a nightmare of being pursued by something evil but only being able to move forward as if walking in high water. And at the conclusion, there’s a firefight that matches the intensity and body count of the battle scenes from Saving Private Ryan. Riveting! Bad times for Children of Men’s characters means good times for the audience.