May 2007 Archives

Remember when I was complaining about my gleaming-white new Converse All-Stars and wondering why shoe manufacturers couldn’t pre-distress them, as they do with jeans? Nike’s taken the idea and run with it. According to a brief in the New York Times today:

Last year, for Junya Watanabe’s Spring 2007 show in Paris, Nike recreated its classic running shoes from the 1970s to look as if they actually had been made in the 1970s—with yellowed mid-soles and washed-out suede patches.

Now the box-fresh, predistressed shoes are going on sale for $220 at Comme des Garçons stores next week. A broader release of $120 styles will reach Barneys New York, Urban Outfitters and Scoop stores in July.

A young rep who’s striving to get my boss to sign a multi-ad deal on her firm’s real estate website took him and I to dinner tonight in Atlanta at a tapas restaurant. During the course of the conversation, which became progressively addled by drink, she off-handedly mentioned Spanx. My boss and I admitted we didn’t know what that was, and she described them as “sausage casing for women,” adding “I’m wearing some now!” Which was a bit too much information.

Coney Island is changing. I was there recently and hooking in on the Q train, just past the storefront signs in Cyrillic, you can’t hurl a brick without hitting a vinyl banner draped over available beachfront real estate from Thor Equities, the developer angling for a 10-acre, $2 billion overhaul of Astroland, the area’s central amusement district. This is all slated to go down sometime next year when the City Council votes for the rezoning.

Thor has already thunderbolted a bunch of the grubbier establishments off the island, including assorted food merchants, the go-karts, batting cages and bumper boats, which is a mixed blessing: Coney Island is a shithole. But it’s fun and one of the most relaxing and democratic parts left in the city just because it’s so laid back, welcoming and affordable to everyone. To sashay in with a Cedar Point-caliber water park or Vegas-style vacation destination (as some reports claim), plus the usual luxury condos over ground-level retail, is just going to muck it all up.

If I can be thankful it’s in knowing the iconic Cyclone roller coaster and the Wonder Wheel, which are owned by the city, are staying put, as is the Parachute Jump Tower, also city-owned and doubly protected with historic landmark status. I’ve also read that the Boardwalk staples Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and KeySpan Park, home to the Brooklyn Cyclones minor-league baseball team, aren’t moving. And for those worried about the most venerable of trashy entertainments, an amNewYork article today cites a Thor spokesperson’s reassurances that the developer is “very open” to retaining “quality” Coney tenants, specifically Shoot the Freak.

For about a year I’ve had my eye on a certain Manhattan Portage messenger bag, a gray one with sporty red racing stripe and vivid yellow vinyl lining that waterproofs the interior. I was biding my time because I thought it might go on sale, but it’s held firm somewhere between “too expensive!” and ”but I really want it!” I finally bought it this weekend and was amused to discover it’s named after my sister, Dana.

Every so often, as the song goes, I like to drink my liquor from an old fruit jar, so I mixed a batch of sangria in two Ball Half-Gallon Wide Mouth Mason Jars I bought upstairs at Zabar’s a year ago for no good reason.

Sangria arose as a quick and cheap party punch so conventional wisdom dictates bottom-shelf jug wine and overripe fruit. The soft fruit I’ll allow, but even though I’d be watering down and sweetening up the wine, I didn’t want cheap-wine migraines so I chose Yellow Tail merlot, which is to me on the upper scale of mass-market wines.

Buying my ingredients, I wanted a peach but they’re not in season yet so I selected an orange, a pear and a red apple. The true secret to successful sangria is to let the fruit soak not in the wine mixture solely but beforehand in another liquor. Brandy works best because you can get it cheap and, like the wine, was grapes at one point in its life.

After chopping the fruit and soaking it, I mixed equal amounts into a half-and-half blend of the merlot and lemonade. Then I shook in a few teaspoons of caster (superfine) sugar. (A sugar tip I found online is if you don’t have superfine sugar, which dissolves much more smoothly and cleanly than the typical big-crystal stuff, you can grind down regular sugar in a coffee grinder or food processor.) I screwed tight the metal banded lids of the jars and shook vigorously to mix. Amusingly, prior to my blending, the wine sat haughtily atop the lemonade in a distinct layer as if it would have no relations with that tart mistress Minute Maid.

Because of the lemonade, I found after taste-testing I didn’t need to add any more of sugar, but I figured I could always add more later if the brew turned too tart. Very refreshing, served over plenty of ice.

Another fun evening of karaoke with Katie, Sam and Iggy, and another song to add to my repertoire: “All I Have to Do Is Dream” as popularized by the Everly Brothers. It shares my range and super-whiteness, and how can you frown on lyrics that include the interjection “gee whiz”?

Jason

I’m proud of my submission for this week’s New Yorker caption contest. Maybe I’ll win! Also maybe Maggie Gyllenhaal will invite me over to her place for brunch and a few rounds of Boggle!

K.

You’d probably have more luck sharing a Hot Pocket with Peter Sarsgaard while partaking in a few rounds of virtual tennis on the Nintendo Wii.

I like horror flicks but I’m picky. Formulaic slashers bore me; I think I may be getting too old to enjoy them properly. My more non-typical favorites include 28 Days Later (it-could-really-happen apocalyptic horror!) and Requiem for a Dream (descent-into-drug-addled-despair horror!). I don’t know if either of those are considered horror movies, but I say they are because both make me anxious and sweat profusely. And in my heart is reserved a special space for that rarest of the breed: the horror-comedy. After the The Evil Dead trilogy, I didn’t think I’d be seeing the likes of such a combo meal again, until I watched Shaun of the Dead on DVD tonight.

Not only is it great because it directly references the Evil Dead (and George Romero’s oeuvre) in everything from whip-pans, to an S-Mart style nametag, to a throwaway line about a guy named Ash; it’s also great because it’s British. Plus 10! You could write a dissertation about its jabs at staid limey social mores—the doldrums of the working-class, the stoic mother, the starchy intellectual—but it’s just a bunch of kick ass fun as Shaun (Simon Pegg and his dopey, flatulent friend (Nick Frost) fend off the living dead with wit, a cricket bat, Prince records and shotgun skills learned from video games.

The attraction of barbecue on breezy sun-dappled days like today is enough to draw me to Brooklyn as it did tonight for dinner at the new-this-year Fette Sau in Williamsburg.

Inside a converted garage squeezed between an old apartment building and an auto-body repair shop, the place is decorated like a New Yorker’s idea of an Alabama shotgun shack. The smoker is visible in the back, and seating is a half dozen large, heavy lacquered picnic tables inside and out. The strangest touch is a widescreen television mounted inside a mock hardwood-framed fireplace that loops a video of a crackling fire.

You line up and order your meats and sides based on what’s available behind the thick glass counter. The order is plunked, sans plate, directly onto a waxed paper-covered metal tray. Frills are few. “Can I, like, get the pulled pork on a sandwich?” asked the guy in line behind me. “I can give you a dinner roll and you can make your own,” countered the server.

Seats at the bar are old steel tractor seats bolted to posts. Overhead, battered gramophone horns shade Edison bulbs. Setting the aural atmosphere, ancient tin-canned jingles intermingle with po-boy hits by the likes of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Big Mama Thornton and Creedence. Behind the bar, old butcher’s knives serve as handles for the ten beer taps mounted into the white tile wall. In keeping with the coonskin-cap theme, a Fess Parker is one of the only wines available, but the bar’s specialty is bourbon, dozens of varieties, the names and prices chalked on a giant slateboard.

I’m no bourbon expert so I asked the bartender to recommend one. He immediately grabbed a squat, sharply faceted bottle of Blanton’s. “It’s a steal at $10 a glass,” he said, “and it goes good with food,” a description that did not fill me with confidence in his descriptive skills. “It won’t let you down,” he added, as if sensing I thought his recommendation might.

Tasty, and it did go well with my food, a half-rack of spareribs, charred to perfection. I am a rib extremist: if ribs are of the sauced variety, I want them saucier than Jessica Alba in hotpants (and that sauce better be tasty, not reminiscent of Spaghetti-O’s). If they are of the charred, dry rub variety, I want them not only spicy but blackened like satan’s hooves. Which these were. Spicy and savory though the portion was miniscule for $11. I had a side of beans, too, ladled in a food service cup but rich with chunks of pork and spicy. In keeping with the German name of the place (which means “fat pig”) other sides include potato salad, sauerkraut and, though technically Russo-Jewish, Guss’ famous Half-Sour kosher pickles.

Fette Sau

• 354 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn (between Roebling and Havemeyer Streets)
• (718) 963-3404
• Meal 17 of 52: half-rack of spareribs ($11), beans ($5) and a bourbon ($10).

Window washing? That’s ballsy. Nothing but rickety scaffolding and mere ounces of ballistic nylon straps between you and a plummet to death.

Two window-washers showed up tonight to clean the filthy windows in our office. They brought a harness but left it on the floor just outside my cubicle, where it stayed the entire time they stepped out onto the foot-wide window ledges of the seventeenth floor to swipe at the grime with a squeegee and soapy water while holding onto the sash with their free hand.

This window faces south; the skyscraper looming in the washed-out background, One Penn Plaza, ranks among the city’s top-20 tallest. Standing on our window ledges is not for the vertiginous.

It was windy out today and very sunny and it may have been hard to concentrate with some jackass inside taking pictures of them, but nothing fazed the window-washers. Probably if one fell, the other would be obligated to throw the harness out the window after him for insurance purposes.

“Where you guys from?” asked our not-especially politically correct office manager, after she casually mentioned that a man who lived in her apartment building hailed from Ghana. “Africa,” they said simultaneously and mischievously in accents I couldn’t place. The guy in the yellow shirt thought it was funny I was taking photos and even funnier when I offered to email them to him.

I must move beyond mere ballsiness in reference to these particular window washers and award them the Gold-Plated Brass Balls Award, with clusters and bonus testicle.

If you were to ask a child what she would like to do with her life, she is not going to say “I wanna be a politician.” Which is curious because so much of being a politician is playing dress-up and pretend, as children do. I’m referring here to when politicos look to rustle up some votes in the blue-collar bits of the country. They’ll button up the light-blue denim-ish shirt, maybe get photographed down at the floundering auto parts plant wearing a hard hat. You’ll recall our president dressed up like Tom Cruise in Top Gun and declared victory atop an aircraft carrier.

I was thinking about this brand of playacting when I read about the congresspeople (including Rep. Tim Ryan from my home state of Ohio) taking part in the Food Stamp Challenge by subsiding on $21 worth of groceries for one week, to show that, yes, it is difficult to a.) eat and b.) eat healthily on an allowance so meager (never mind that food stamps are meant only to defray the cost of food).

And when the week is up, the lawmakers will revert to their big-muffin breakfasts and special-interest catered hotel dinners while the poor will remain stuck in a neverending Food Stamp Challenge, among others. The Food Stamp Challenge participants have received a lot of press for their efforts, though I don’t believe they’re raising awareness of an issue; they’re raising awareness of themselves. I’d rather have my politicians well-fed so they’re alert enough to draft legislation or whatever it is they do when they’re not fretting over the price of a box of spaghetti.

There are these Indonesian candy chews I enjoy, Ting Ting Jahe, that are really nothing more than ginger, sugar and starch. They’re chewy, very spicy and refreshing and are individually wrapped in a distinctively bright white paper wrapper with blue checkerboard edging and a disturbing illustration of a sprouting ginger root. Because they’re so gummy, they used to be wrapped in corn-starched waxed paper underneath the white paper wrapper to prevent the transfer of stickiness.

After I opened a bag purchased recently from an Asian food store near Astor Place and removed the outer paper wrapper from my first piece, I was surprised to see not the usual waxed paper but what appeared to be a tenaciously clingy variety of cellophane. I spent the better part of a block trying to pick it off, but it kept breaking off in brittle bits. I threw out this first candy with the aborted wrapper and it wasn’t until I was halfway through picking the cellophane off the second piece that it dawned on me that it wasn’t cellophane at all but an edible starch-based film. Genius! Although when I first put it in my mouth, my tongue and brain conspired to produce a reaction along the lines of “Ew! Cellophane! Spit it out, you nimrod!” Seconds later, the wrapper melted away.

Hard Boiled, notable as John Woo’s final movie prior to his Hollywood-blockbuster directorial career, serves as an action-packed showcase of his signature style combining acrobatic fisticuffs with frequent spurts of slow motion. Also about 230 people are shot dead, if you’re into that sort of thing. The elaborately choreographed gun battles thrill, even though my DVD appeared to be a bootleg with dubbing from one Chinese dialect to another and poorly translated English subtitles. It’s certainly representative of the cop-movie drama, packed with the following cliché plot elements:

1. Our hero (Chow Yun-Fat) has a score to settle.
2. Because a crime syndicate killed his optimistic young partner, who talks lovingly about his children then gets killed in the first 15 minutes of the film, setting up the Revenge Factor.
3. The cocky young replacement partner (Tony Leung) crimps the style of our hero. But they see through their differences and join forces.
4. Bonus: The cocky young partner lives on a houseboat.
5. The crime syndicate features a Boss and a Henchman of the Boss, with renegade flair and long hair to differentiate him from the Boss.
6. A plucky female colleague proves her mettle late in the film: she picks up a gun with a limp-fish grip and shoots dead a bad guy who doesn’t believe she’s capable.
7. All of the handguns fire far more bullets before reloading than one would think possible.
8. And my favorite: imperiled children to magnify our hero’s humanity. In this case they’re quite young: merely newborns in a hospital nursery. The bad guys have hidden a weapons cache in the basement of the hospital, then decide to blow up the whole building. The drawn-out conclusion features SWAT guys getting picked off as they pass the babies out a hospital window down to safety. Our hero rescues the last one personally, leaping through the flames and rubble in slow motion.

I’ve filed away Giorgione as a quaint SoHo-ish restaurant for before or after Film Forum outings. It’s a few blocks away, south and west, but not on the best part of Spring for sitting at the tables outside, even on a warm spring night. At rush hour, a slow procession of surly Holland Tunnel traffic blocks any potentially romantic views.

Inside lingered the smoky scent of a wood-burning stove and an endless Beatles-based soundtrack that mingled singles with comparatively obscure album-track favorites (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Getting Better,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Taxman” and one of George’s electric-sitar freakouts). Tables-for-two, wrapped in gleaming industrial sheet-metal, were adorned with a metal pot in which was planted a fresh herb or spice, a different one for each table. Mine was parsley. All very comforting.

My Carciofi Alla Giudea appetizer (“Roman Jewish-style” deep-fried artichokes) resembled large mutant pinecones, the crisp brown petals striated like wood. I don’t recall ever having eaten a food before that rustled. It was all right but I’m suspicious of deep frying items like artichokes because you theoretically end up eating parts of the vegetable you wouldn’t if it was served fresh, those stems and tougher leaves. The best part of it remained the best part of any artichoke, the heart. In the deep-fried version, the clutch of outer armor spares the center a crispy wrath; instead it turns warm, tender, oily and very delicious. On my previously orderly plate, I left a pile of dead autumn leaves, as if disturbed by a mischievous child.

My glasses of cabernet sauvignon complemented my homemade cavatelli entrée, blended with fresh ricotta, bacon, arugula and pepperoncino, as well as the New Yorker article on the comically puritan life of Milton Bradley I read on the side. Tiramisu for dessert was juicy with liqueur and boxed by small sheets of cocoa-streaked chocolate.

The last piece of this candy stayed stubbornly glued to my plate with mascarpone and as I stabbed at it with my fork, two pleasant young ladies arrived and sat at the table placed a New York-style inch away from mine. I had a woozy conversation with the one about her laptop bag. She said she’d be putting it on the floor between us and that I should know it would be there lest I accidentally step on it. Then she thought better and moved it under her chair, but her purse was already there and the bag poked into the aisle, so she placed it against the wall. Just then the waitstaff dimmed the lights and lit a fire in the wood-burning stove which was, naturally, against the wall right next to the bag. So after confirming with me that it would be O.K., she moved the bag under my chair, a sufficient distance from the flames yet near enough for her to keep an eye on it, positioning it perfectly so that when I rose to leave and bid them a pleasant evening, I tripped over it anyway. With the fire and the ghost of John Lennon and the good food and the ladies, I strode to the subway elated and satiated. Only the next day did I realize my bill, which in my winey haze I had thought excessive, was for a different table. I discerned this after realizing with a start that the polipetti entry on my receipt marked the consumption of two baby octopus salads. I’d probably return to Giorgione anway.

Giorgione

• 307 Spring St. (between Greenwich and Hudson Streets)
• (212) 352-2269
• Meal 16 of 52: fried artichokes ($10), cavatelli ($16), wine and tiramisu.

The Criterion Collection is reissuing The Third Man on DVD. Normally this wouldn’t be news to me. Movie companies are forever releasing then re-releasing films on DVD, adding features, anamorphic encoding, commentary and other goodies to entice fans to purchase the movie multiple times. And the cycle renews itself as studios push new Blu-ray and HD DVD technology.

Criterion has long been the gold standard of DVD releases of snotty films, particularly those from outside the U.S. “Film school in a box,” I’ve heard their releases called, due to their riches of scholarly commentary, documentaries and other highbrow extras. Even their crisp and uncluttered package design calls to mind the classic posters of Saul Bass. Criterion’s most revered and fearful releases remain their works by infamously fussbucket directors. My favorite is their brick-like three-disc edition of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil which contains a lifetime of extras and two separate versions of the entire film.

In short, Criterion is renowned for its definitive editions. I already spent like $50 bucks on the first “definitive edition” of The Third Man in the early ’00s (Criterion’s luxury treatment on disk is reflected on pricetag). The new version contains a bonus disk of juicy new extras, a documentary and commentary by director Steven Soderbergh. I weep zither-sweetened tears.

It’s The Day After Tomorrow and polar melting has disrupted the North Atlantic current. Ocean temperatures drop 13 degrees and the weather of the world goes bananas. Snow blankets India, hail the size of toaster ovens hammers Tokyo and tornadoes raze Los Angeles, pausing briefly to Hoover away the iconic Hollywood sign. Ian Holm, in a wasted opportunity for such a fine actor, plays the Voice of Scientific Reason who offers unheeded warnings then freezes to death with his colleagues in a weather station in Scotland, but not before hoisting a single-malt “to mankind.”

Extra-special wrath is saved for Manhattan. A disgruntled taxi driver once mused, “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” Look out, Travis; here it comes. Tidal waves buffet the city and flood it. Then comes the window-breaking, flesh-stiffening cold: it’s the beginning of a new ice age. Jake Gyllenhaal and his motley band of survivors hole up in the New York Public Library, burning books to stay warm. They bicker, forage for food, get chased by wolves, ponder what the future will hold, etc.

The movie is bookended by a hammy environmental message, particularly at the queasily macho America-will-soldier-on conclusion that has a Dick Cheney-lookalike President admitting "we were wrong" about all that ozone layer and global warming stuff. I particularly enjoyed the phrases uttered in wild-eyed seriousness throughout by environmental scientist Dennis Quaid, who gets to say lots of lines like, “I think we’ve hit a critical desalinization point!”

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the special effects. And in a way I’m glad the filmmakers were aware the CGI served as their leading lady. If they’d bothered adding more dimension to the stock disaster-survival-movie characters and plot, they only would have made the digital enterprise less enjoyable. There’s little chance the actions of Man can compete with the sight of a tidal wave cascading down Fifth Avenue or the Statue of Liberty spiked with giant windblown icicles and buried to her waist in a glacier.

There are poems illustrated with art by the poet himself (William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) and poems as textual interpretations of art (André Breton’s Constellations (1958), which accompanied 23 gouaches Joan Miró had painted earlier) but Dime-Store Alchemy is something more unique and revelatory to me: a prose poem encompassing the life and work of an artist, in this case a sort-of poetic biography of Joseph Cornell written by Charles Simic.

I like Cornell’s work and I know a bit about it but the first I’d heard of this book was when it caught my eye at the Strand a few weeks ago. I bought it and read it and there’s something appropriate about having one artist profile another, as in the actor-on-actor interviews of Interview magazine. On the surface, such a collaboration could be considered a flaky “kindred spirits” match-up. Yet Simic’s story isn’t just an airy rumination, it serves as an ultra-compact biography of the artist, mingled with miniature dissertations on found art and collage, scraps from the artist’s own writing, parallels among the artist’s contemporaries and less likely spirits (like Emily Dickinson), imaginations and recreations of Manhattan in the ’40s and ’50s, and passages as clockwork beautiful and mysterious as Cornell’s boxes. What a marvelous concept and one I’d like to see applied to other artists.

After a recent meal in the Little India section of Jersey City, Katie and I indulged in some pan (also written as paan), which I’d vaguely remembered reading about on Boing Boing a while back.

We ordered them from a Photomat-sized booth across the street from the restaurant that was decorated with Christmas lights and had bodega-like items for sale. The only question the man behind the counter asked was whether we wanted our pan regular or “tropical.” We figured we’d go with the former as we might not be ready to handle tropical just yet. Because the opening of the booth was high, I couldn’t see what he was doing, other than dispensing mystery pastes out of plastic squeeze bottles and sprinkling other ingredients atop vivid green heart-shaped plant leaves. I didn’t know it at the time but apparently the pan variety we had was betel nut, which is betel leaf filled with a betel nut paste and something like 11 secret herbs and spices.

Our pan man then folded the leaf over the ingredients and presented one to each of us tightly wrapped in a square of foil placed in a white Zip-Loc bag the size of a playing card. On the front of the bags, in a jaunty green script, was printed a slogan:

We Do Cater Pan Laxmi Masala
and Fresh Sugar-Can Juice for Any Occassion

Yes, those are sics: sugar can juice and Occassion. Just because my inner copy editor (I call him Alan) wondered whether these errors were indicative of the effects this mysterious object might have on my various bodily systems, including spelling, didn’t mean I shouldn’t give it a try.

You’re meant to tuck the pan in your mouth, suck on it and spit out the juices, just a pinch between the cheek and gum, as those old smokeless tobacco ads used to drawl, but the thing was the size of a butterfly cocoon. I crammed it into my mouth as close to my jawbone as I could muster and imagined I looked like a hillbilly and/or Major League Baseball player. If I’m grasping the pan concept correctly, while it’s in there, it’s meant to invigorate and aid in digestion. In other words, it’s a lot like a digestif. Although with most digestifs, once you’ve taken a taste, you don’t keep spitting it out, unless you’re at some sort of fancy brandy tasting event, and even there, you’re likely not spitting on the ground.

You see, whatever was in that pan gave a Chuck Norris-caliber roundhouse kick to my salivary glands and I was spitting all over the place, in a vivid red hue. I had popped the leafy cocoon in my mouth just as I exited the PATH train at the World Trade Center, estimating the underground walk from there to the A train would span enough distance for my pan to offer maximum effectiveness. It wasn’t long enough; I spit in every trash can on my way and at the base of every pillar. I tried to be discreet and reserved my furtive expectorations for when other pedestrians weren’t walking towards me from the opposite direction. By the time I reached the Chambers Street station, my pan still hadn’t given up, so I directed my ptooey onto the subway tracks. I was hoping there’d be a pack of rats milling around down there that I could take aim at, but the patchouli stink may have been keeping them at bay. As the A train approached, I toyed with the idea of taking an end seat and merely spitting out the door at each stop, but I think that would be frowned upon, even in New York.

Results? My pan made me feel wide-eyed and wired, in an up-late-on-No-Doz sort of way. The taste was hard to describe, but like that of incense, with an oily mouthfeel that lingered on my mouth lining a full day afterwards, even after I brushed my teeth later that night. I’d try it again. Maybe I’ll go “tropical” next time.

I haunted the restaurant supply district on the Bowery early this afternoon for ramekins, convinced I could pay less than the $2 Bed, Bath & Beyond asks per six-ounce model. Many restaurant supply stores are shuttered Saturday, I learned. But these are the places to go if you want napkin dispensers or red plastic squeezable ketchup dispensers or bulk boxes of those tiny paper umbrellas that adorn tropical alcoholic beverages. Ramekins are apparently more exclusive.

Mingling with the skateboarders, greengrocers and craft-sellers on the southwest corner of Union Square, some modern-day hippies held up hand-painted signs that read “Free Hugs.” They wavered expectantly, like athletes waiting for the starter’s gun, trying to make eye contact as pedestrians rushed by from every angle. A woman nearby videotaped the uneventful enterprise, whether a curious passer-by herself or a documentarian affiliated with the group. A tall man on his cell passed a bit too closely to one of the hopeful huggers, an older man wearing suspenders, who advanced with a gesture that was half “see my sign?” and half “I’m gonna hug you anyway!” The guy on the phone smiled but did not break his stride as he held up a Heisman Trophy-style hand meant to signal “no thanks” but firm enough to serve as deflection if necessary. I felt for the old guy but I must admit there is inherent creepiness in hugging a man, a strange man in New York City moreso, wearing suspenders.

Later I tooled around my neighborhood for a slice of pizza for dinner. I had trouble indicating which fruit-punch flavored beverage I desired from the cooler behind the counter. The Hawaiian Punch, the girl behind the counter asked? No, I said, stretching out my arm to point, that one. The Snapple? No, the tall bottle. Here? No, right... down a shelf... to the right. Yes, that one. Let the record show I was thirsting for a Jarritos, el sabor más Mexicano.

At the corner of Dyckman and Sherman, sidewalk entrepreneurs were hawking not only Mother’s Day bouquets of roses and assorted field flowers, but Mylar helium balloons and tiny lace-trimmed satin pillows stitched with “Love you, Mom.” Aww.

You know, short of a Sharper Image Automatic Eyeglass Cleaner, nothing will get the lenses of one’s eyeglasses cleaner than standard dish soap. For some time I’ve used the standard glycerin-based liquid soap in my bathroom, or the bar of Dove I keep in the shower, for purposes of lens-cleaning, but my glasses were always left somewhat fogged or streaky. But dish soap works beautifully. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this. The sheeting action even keeps them streak-free, for a time.

Work lately has been busy and stressful. It’s like ... a carnival game. Maybe whack-a-mole. Or the dunk tank, with a lot of the balls thrown directly at my head. Maybe it’s like whack-a-mole dunk tank, oversized mallets and wooden balls flying all over the place and then when the target’s hit, I’m dumped into the water tank and get electrocuted, because you really shouldn’t submerge a whack-a-mole cabinet.

I like music and I buy CDs. Lots of CDs. No, I don’t think I’m better than you. Somedays I think it’s a foolish investment. I probably buy an average of two CDs a week, mostly used, and I’m proud that many of them, when their cost is divided by their number of tracks, I pay less than I would have had I purchased album from the iTunes Store.

So, wait; I guess I do think I’m better than you.

But really in this space I just want to grouse about compilation CDs, which encompass greatest hits packages, soundtracks and other such collections. I buy a lot of these and I love them because they can serve as great "mix tapes" or collections of tracks that I might be hard-pressed or inconvenienced to find separately. But there can be issues and here are the four main ones.

The Gapless Album. Offenders: the Another Late Night series and the MTV Party To Go series. Gapless albums, which contain no pauses between tracks, are a fact of the music world: many live albums are gapless and classic studio gapless albums include The Beatles’ Abbey Road and many by Pink Floyd. I don’t own any albums from the MTV Party To Go series but they were all produced in the mid-90s, those heady days when powerful, mystical DJs roamed the earth with milkcrates of vinyl in tow. An album where one track flows seamlessly into another? Wow! It’s like bringing your favorite club’s DJ home to your living room, in living stereophonic sound! Nowadays, nobody wants or needs a compilation album where everything segues into everything else because everyone’s trying to make his or her own compilation. Rip a track from a gapless album and it’s tainted by the tail end of the track before it. Give it up, gapless comps; it’s not 1993 any more. We can segue and crossfade ourselves.

The Live Track. Offenders: countless “Greatest Hits” albums. I’m only partially embarrassed to admit I picked up a dirt-cheap copy of the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back soundtrack because I wanted the seldom-anthologized "Jungle Love" by The Time. Nowhere on the tracklisting on the back of the CD is it listed as a live track. And of course it is.

The Poorly Labeled Alternate Version. Offenders: most recently for me, the Tommy Boy Hip Hop Roots compilation, which purports to be a primer of a dozen most-often sampled tracks by hip hop and rap pioneers of the ’80s and ’90s (“Think (About It)” by Lyn Collins, “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” by James Brown). In fact it contains mostly edited/remixed version of those tracks, indicated only by a miniscule credit line on the back of the CD that I initially missed.

The Almost-There Compilation. Sometimes this will happen with soundtracks that don’t include the most popular cuts from the movie or a missing a bunch. Even worse on the non-soundtrack side: trying to find a single album greatest-hits package of certain artists. It can be a nightmare, particularly if the band/artist was on a number of labels. Nine Simone is a prime example. The Kinks are another. My old editor at my job is also a Kinks fan and we were discussing this. At length.

At a glance, the best Kinks comp is The Ultimate Collection, a 2002 two-disc import from Sanctuary Records. I snagged one from the Virgin Megastore on Times Square for a mere $10 earlier this year. Despite my rambling below, as of today, it remains the best Kinks greatest-hits package and you should buy it immediately.

But... there’s always a but. Ultimate doesn’t include the Kinks first two singles, a cover of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” and their first original composition, “You Still Want Me.” Both are included on Sanctuary’s The Singles Collection, the remaining 23 tracks of which are duplicated on The Ultimate Collection. Damn you, Sanctuary.

And although the second disc of The Ultimate Collection includes much of the Kinks’ best work from the late-’70s through the mid-’80s (“Come Dancing,” “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman,” “Living On A Thin Line”), it’s missing key tracks from that era (“A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy,” “Father Christmas”) that are included on Come Dancing With The Kinks: The Best of The Kinks 1977-1986. So I gotta own that one, too.

Then there are missing stay singles and B-sides (“Fancy,” “This is Where I Belong”), which appear on none of the above comps but which are on the older two-disc Kink Kronikles best-of, more than half of which is duplicated on The Ultimate Collection. Don’t even get me started about absent album favorites (“Picture Book,” “Big Sky”).

The bottom line: I must own at least six CDs with much overlap to rip a truly ultimate oeuvre of the Kinks. Someone needs to remaster all this shit and slap it on a deluxe limited-edition five-disc set packed in a velvet box containing extensive liner notes by David Fricke and genuine replica Ray Davies paisley scarf just in time for 2007 holiday giving.

Here is a list of facts based on new legislation in Florida in Utah. Try to guess the identity of the mystery object (the “widget”).

1. Businesses buying widgets for resale must apply for a permit.
2. These businesses must thumb-print sellers of widgets and copy sellers’ state-issued identity documents, such as a driver’s license.
3. Businesses may only issue store credit (not cash) for the widgets.
4. Businesses are required to hold the widgets for 30 days before reselling them.
5. Such laws are becoming so restrictive that some businesses are exiting the widget business.
6. These aren’t airy-fairy laws; they’re being enforced by local police.

So what do you think? Are the widgets guns? Cars? Jewelry?

Nah. They’re used music CDs, according to an article in Billboard last week. Naturally our friends in the music biz say this legislation is "aimed at curbing the sale of stolen goods," meaning bootleg discs. In the used music stores I frequent, bootleg CDs comprise what I’d estimate is less than 1/2 of 1% of total store merchandise. At Academy Records, I’ve noticed the same bootleg R.E.M. concert CD languishing in the bin for the past two months, the bitmapped color cover of a young Michael Stipe regarding me dolefully. The sort of enthusiast who buys dubbed crap doesn’t buy it from used music stores anyway; they buy it from shifty-eyed buskers near Times Square who spread their home-burned Shakira albums upon blankets, so as to bundle up quickly and flee should a cop walk by.

Why are CDs being singled out among other commonly resold merchandise? The implication is that it’s the clout of the music business and its pugnacious lawyers. Most states do have “pawn shop laws” that include at least some of the elements listed above, but they’re not typically enforced. And CDs appear to be getting hit worse than even DVDs and video games; Florida and Utah retailers that resell those items aren’t even required to have permits. All not to mention the hundreds of items that can be resold in a consignment shop or thrift store without any hassle whatsoever from The Man.

I can’t think of an industry more eager to presuppose its consumers are criminals than music publishers. Can’t they continue to brood and sue over online music issues and leave alone dead technology like CDs?

Libeled Lady: they sure don’t make fluffy romantic comedies like they used to. I savored the amphetamine-rapid patter of dialogue forged in the fires of the ’30s; the comedic hits come fast and furious and I wished everyone I knew, myself included, spoke as quickly and with as much wicked cleverness as these characters.

William Powell steals the show as Bill Chandler, a Walt Disney-resembling pencil-mustachioed dandy, alternating between foppishly suave and stammering fall-down goof. He’s macking on Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy), a rich socialite haughty enough to probably set cute baby chickens on fire with merely a glance. She’s suing the New York Evening Star for $5 million for printing a saucy bit of untrue gossip about her. The paper’s editor, Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy), thinks he can nullify the suit by getting a photo of her messing around with a married man, so he puts Chandler to the task—after having the dashing fellow temporarily marry his own fiancée, Gladys (a brassy, sassy Jean Harlow). Hilarity ensues.

At first this film shapes up to be perhaps the only romantic comedy featuring two couples that gives balanced plot-time and screen-time to everyone, which practically never works (like in, say, You’ve Got Mail; although maybe Sideways comes close). But the focus grows to be Chandler and Allenbury genuinely falling for each other, but not before he makes a comic ass of himself. There’s a long bit wherein, attempting to ingratiate himself with Allenbury’s fishing-fanatic father, he pretends to know how to angle for trout. Then the father invites Chandler’s on a fishing trip with himself and his daughter. Whuh-oh! Bring on the physical comedy: lots of Chandler falling down in the rapids and grasping at the slippery fish just out of his reach.

Hello, Hollywood: this movie totally begs for a remake, particularly given the continued prevalence of tabloids skirting legal lines and debutante romance. Yes, it was remade [only 10 years later!] in ’46 as Easy to Wed, but I’m talking a remake now. Additionally I ask: why has not Myrna, as in Myrna Loy, become the new hotness in names for baby girls? It’s got that foxiness-by-association that other old-timey names like Ethel somehow haven’t been able to retain.

The recipe hinted that one chipotle pepper would be enough but this black bean soup could have used at least two. My grocer carried no less than six brands of canned chipotles in adobo sauce, a thick and spicy tomato purée that accents the natural smokiness of the chiles. I made my choice based on a label that appears to depict the cartoon head of Frida Kahlo emerging from a pile of giant raisins.

Andie held a small get-together this afternoon combining Kentucky Derby festivities with Cinco de Mayo. We forewent the mint juleps and knocked back some ghetto sangria of her assembly, fruit juice concentrate revived with a bit of water and a whole lot of “big bottle” red wine. Here’s a serving of it posing next to a colored glass candle holder of Andie’s that splashes little colored ovals of light across the room when the sun hits it.

Settling in for the lengthy pre-race commentary, interviews and pre-recorded inspirational human-interest segments, we got serious and placed our bets: would Katie arrive in enough time? Unfortunately, no. She got caught in traffic on the George Washington and drove figure-eights between West End and Riverside trying to find a parking space. We taped it for her and enjoyed the replay when she arrived. Quite a comeback to have Street Sense rocket up the rail from second-to-last place to win by two-and-a-half lengths.

Later, we played Scattergories. How have I not played this game until tonight? Seeing as it’s been around since when I was in junior high, I’m going to sound like someone’s gramma who just discovered “the internet” while writing about it, but here goes anyway: I have rarely if ever had so much fun playing a boxed game. I laughed a lot and Andie even warned me that I had my “big smile” going, even though we kept rolling awful letters, like “K” twice.

One round of the game, probably meant to take a brisk half hour or so, seemed to last for hours because of the impassioned debate, dictionary consultation and internet searches over challenged answers. Some particularly thorny and/or funny ones:

• Are mushrooms vegetables?
• Can an arm be considered replaceable?
• How many brothers Karamazov were there?
• Is “the airplane” a dance?
• Are garrisons uniformed?

I’d also like to state that a 20-sided die, such as the one used in the game (every letter of the alphabet but Q, U, V and the last three), is an icosahedron, not a dodecahedron as I suspected. I obviously was not an avid player of D&D in my youth.

Strong and nimble men balancing on beams a story above the sidealk assembled a sidewalk shed today that will run the length of my office building’s block on Eighth Avenue. They hefted long and heavy planks and poles that wavered in their grip. Pedestrians underneath glanced upwards with concern and hastened pace. I figure these hard-hatted fellow know what they’re doing although I momentarily amused myself with this thought: sidewalk sheds protect pedestrians from falling construction debris; but during the construction of sidewalk sheds, what protects pedestrians if bits of that structure fall?

Nothing can change the character of a New York City street more quickly than a sidewalk shed. They narrow and confine the sidewalk and make it seem more crowded as fast-moving foot traffic slows and constricts. People congregate under them in inclement weather and smokers seem to clot there at any time. Sidewalk sheds block the sun, the sky, streetlights and the building they serve itself, turning familiar routes strange. At night, bare-bulb lighting beneath makes it seem as if you’re traversing a mine tunnel. Sometimes sidewalk shed structures extend into the street, around obstacles and corners. Combined with eight-foot-tall plywood construction fences, they become miniature mazes. This being New York, these semi-concealed passages soon collect illicitly pasted-up ad posters, graffiti, garbage and a pungent scent of urine. It’s always a shock when the day comes, typically months later, that the shed is disassembled, and the street reverts back to its familiar character.

I stopped by Andie’s after work for a game of 10 rounds of Big Boggle. It’s been awhile and it was a squeaker: she beat me by eight points, 172 to 164. I’d like to say the TV in the background blasting parts of Seinfeld and a basketball game prevented me from realizing my full potential, which is code for kicking Andie’s ass, but I think I’m merely rusty. There’s room for improvement when my highest-scoring words (and my only unique seven-letter finds) are station, setters and mottoes. All else was a sludge of one- and two-pointers.

I received an email from the jokers in the production department this afternoon: “Congratulations on making the cover this month.” Attached was a PDF image of the cover for one of our regional real estate magazines.

Seems this one fellow, a random real estate executive, resembles me.

Maybe. I think he’s more my evil twin. I fancy my ears are more handsome.

I’d been given my dinner and my short, rosy-cheeked server stood to the side with an attentiveness that soon bordered on loitering. She was glancing at me with a faint smile, her hands clasped, so I turned to meet her eye and she came back over to my table. “I get nervous,” she explained in a presumably Greek accent, “when I see you writing in your notebook that you’re a reviewer, maybe.”

I hadn’t expected that. It’s true, I was scribbling in my Moleskine, but I was clumsily transcribing the names of my delicious appetizer and entrée. “I’m on a budget so I keep track of my meals and other expenses,” I lied, because no one wants to admit he’s writing down the Greek word for pork meatballs. It’s a long, confusing pileup of consonants and even deadlier is the one for braised rabbit and wide egg noodles topped with grated cheese, although abbreviated versions of both appeared on my receipt as keftedes and helopites, respectively.

Note to self: writing in my notebook while still wearing my necktie-based work clothes could lead to unexpected perks in newish, eager-to-please restaurants. Although in this case it’s curious my server thought I was a reviewer. Having kept tabs on local food reportage from February through March, I can tell you that since it opened, Kefi has already been kissed full on the lips by the biggest food snots in town. The New York Times reviewer dubbed its menu of “affordable and approachable Greek cuisine” as “immensely appealing,” while managing to squeeze in a Thomas Bulfinch pun, the wanker. New York magazine subheaded with “high quality, low prices, and killer souvlaki.” Time Out New York included Kefi among its precious few Critics’ Choices in its annual Eating & Drinking issue. And I noticed one of those ubiquitous “Zagat Recommended” stickers in the window.

All deserved, I’d say. (Except for the Zagat sticker; even I have one of those.) The meatballs were rich and served in a tomato sauce of whole baked cloves of garlic, scallions, and olives, of both the green and black variety. The rabbit, which I ate in honor of spring finally hauling its sorry ass into town, confounded with disparate ingredients that conspired to throw a happy-times party in my mouth. In addition to the pleasantly gamey shredded meat in a strangely sweet sauce, there were the big egg noodles, small French fried onion rings, fresh shredded cheese, scallions, tomatoes, grapes, leafy greens, minced carrot, strange spices and onions that I swear I could taste had been sautéed in something approaching a cup of butter. In a lively, bright atmosphere packed mainly with locals, the dining area is located down a long hall on the ground flood of a townhouse, stocked with small wood block tables, simple chairs, Aegean blue walls, and waves of white and blue fabric arcing across the ceiling. You should go next time you’re on the Upper West Side with a fistful of cash (they don’t take credit). Bring your notebook.

Kefi

• 222 West 79th Street (between Amsterdam and Broadway)
• (212) 873-0200
• Meal 15 of 52: keftedes ($5.95) and helopites ($10.95).