November 2007 Archives

Friend, is the URL for Jason’s Journal confusing for you to remember? Do the words tumble in your mind so you find yourself blundering to jasonclipart.com, jcavaricci.com, jokeupart.com or an Eastern European porn site?

Well, the porn I can’t help you with. But if you simply can’t recall joeclipart.com, fret not, for I’ve directed my own IT Guy, Jimi, to secure a bonus URL that will redirect you to the site you’re reading and loving right now: www.jasonmania.com. At some time in the future, I may separate joeclipart.com from jasonmania.com with alternate content, but for now they both bring you to the same thrilling destination, chock full of anecdotes on meals eaten, films watched and shenanigans enacted.

For those wondering about the origin of this new name, Jasonmania is an occasional nickname for me invented by my boss’ boss, who, in perhaps typical head-boss fashion, has annoying nicknames for everyone in the office and often shouts them across said office, usually when the employee in question is on the phone. So admittedly the new URL is most convenient for him, but I like the alliteration and that my name’s in there; perhaps you will, too. Give it a try; that’s one smooth URL.

Visions of Christmas Vacation danced in my head as I learned, via a press release issued yesterday by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, that each November and December, about 10,000 people are treated in hospital emergency rooms for falls, cuts, shocks and burns related to holiday decorating. And Christmas trees, typically the sort that are around on Valentine’s Day and as dry as the face of Tommy Lee Jones, ignite and kill 10 people annually. I’d like to say this is why I don’t decorate for Christmas but really I’m just lazy.

Well, I asked for it. Traditional obscurity-fame-fall-redemption biopics of bands and musicians like Walk the Line and Dreamgirls are formulaic and boring, while sticking to hagiographic, melodramatic facts (Control) isn’t much more interesting. Where was my musician biopic as unpredictable and engrossing as the musician and his music? It’s right here—I’m Not There—and it’s not for everyone.

Although you don’t have to be a Dylan fanatic, it helps in order to pick up on all the references: to his lyrics, to famous moments in his career, to photographs and album covers, to direct quotes from the duo of documentaries, both D.A. Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back and Scorsese’s recent No Direction Home. (In a nod to the latter, Julianne Moore plays a flaky version of Joan Baez, unintentionally funny and complete with turquoise jewelry.) As for specific references to Dylan’s life, a music-store-type guy behind us murmured aloud most of the references and musician cameos (There’s Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth! There’s that guy from My Morning Jacket!) I only picked up on the broad ones: Dylan drunkenly accepting an award and making a contentious comment about the Kennedy assassination, Pete Seeger brandishing an axe to cut short Dylan’s electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival, that kid who shouted “Judas!” during a concert, the motorcycle accident, and so on.

Cate Blanchett, recreating the mean-spirited, drug-addled Dylan from Dont Look Back, gets the meatiest role with the most screentime, and her Dylan is the most Dylanesque with its tics, slouches and shades atop a curly head of hair. (I’m thinking Oscar nomination; the academy digs actor-factors like weight gain, mental retardation and other feats of physical derrring-do, including gender reversals.)

Most reviews you’ll read of the film state that the Richard Gere segment, in which he plays a sort-of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid-era Dylan, is confusing, extraneous and should have been cut. I agree and add that it brings the film to a halt with its languid pacing of long takes and Gere riding around on horseback in search of his lost dog, which is as interesting as it sounds.

Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a version of Sara, Dylan’s first wife with whom his relationship soured in the mid ’70s, and I gotta tell ya, that woman is hot. She’s got this weird angular beauty to her face that results when you frappé the DNA of France’s ugliest man and most beautiful woman.

I’m Not There hops around between Dylans a lot and can be hard at times to follow but I relished its momentum and its wholly fresh take on an equally cryptic subject within the tired biopic genre.

In a rush to catch I’m Not There at the Film Forum, Katie and I didn’t have time to give Home Restaurant its due, but Katie deemed it “cute” and I’d add “cozy,” with its locally sourced home-cooking dishes, scuffed wood floors, mismatched dinnerware and sconces, and generally laid-back attitude (their business card notes, “Fine Wine. Fine Ketchup.” Katie had the smoked duck salad with grilled apple, candied cashews and orange vinaigrette and said it was tasty. My mac-and-cheese was cheesy with a crunchy breaded topping that also included tomato and my hot mulled cider hit the spot for the chilly evening.

Home Restaurant

• 20 Cornelia St.
• 212-243-9579
• Meal 50 of 52: small mac-and-cheese ($10) and hot mulled cider ($8).

The Criterion Collection finally (well, back on September 4th) released its “director-approved edition” of Night on Earth, perhaps my favorite Jim Jarmusch film. Attentive readers will recall my sister purchased a no-frills European version of the film for me last year when it was still unavailable on DVD in the U.S. (Now Island Records only needs to re-release the out-of-print Tom Waits soundtrack; somehow I snagged a pristine used copy a few years ago for about $8, but copies now on Amazon.com are pulling down no less than $29.99.)

As with Criterion’s edition of Down By Law, one of the most engrossing features is an hour-long audio-only segment in which Jarmusch answers viewer-submitted questions about the film at hand and other random topics, resulting in erudite ruminations packed with curious trivia.

I listened to this Q&A for Night on Earth tonight and, most crazily, Jarmusch reveals that the New York City segment, in which a fare convinces a cabbie with both poor English and driving skills to move over and let him take the wheel, actually happened to him late one night on the Upper West Side many years ago.

He confirms what he’s said in interviews before, that shooting films in moving cars (instead of using in-studio tricks like rear projection) is a major pain in the ass. Camera rigging mounted on the sides of the cabs prevented the actors from exiting in less than 20 minutes, which proved amusing when a tow-line broke one night in Helsinki, depositing an actor-filled vehicle on an active trolley track.

Lighting and sound design in moving cars at night proved tricky too. Light rigging attached to the roofs, just out of frame, bounced combinations of gelled light onto the actors inside, specific to the city: pastels in Los Angeles, for example, and a harsh green cast in New York City. (Jarmusch took pains to blot out the actual cast of New York City at night—orange—because he can’t stand that color, according to longtime director of photography Frederick Elmes in another commentary on the DVD.) The cars in which the actors were towed during filming had a camera mounted where the hood and engine had been removed, necessitating post-production addition of all engine and transmission sounds.

Although Jarmusch wrote the initial script in English (in a mere week, he says), he worked closely with translators and the actors themselves in the Rome, Paris and Helsinki segments to revise the dialogue, ensuring the language and slang were correct. And although it would seem otherwise, Roberto Benigni’s manic monologue was only somewhat improvised by the actor and mostly based on a script outline Jarmusch and Benigni had developed in advance, based on many of the actor’s jokes and habits, such as only driving the wrong way down one-way streets late at night in Rome.

Also, Jarmusch prefers Carl Perkins over Elvis and his favorite Clash album is Sandinista!

Over Thanksgiving I thought about growing a beard, as I often do on vacations to which my Gillette Sensor is not invited, but I wussed out and nixed it this morning. This guy I work with, who’s my age and also from Ohio, decided to go full-force and arrived today clad in a five-day scruff that caused a mild stir. For him it may have been mark of freedom; he recently joined our company after a multiyear career in politics, a profession for which facial hair hasn’t been kosher since Lincoln, and even he may have sold poisoned milk to schoolchildren. Sideburns recall malaised memories of Carter while moustaches have concealed career-warping secrets from G. Gordon Liddy through Bernie Kerik. Full beards are reserved for the lowest depths of political misery—2001-edition Al Gore, anyone?

Free from such associations and aspirations, you’d think a beard on someone who fancies himself a writer would be only appropriate, as the profession in general agrees that a facial bloom large enough to house a family of starlings is next to godliness.

With me it’s more an issue of aesthetics. Know that my facial hair is red for some reason and would therefore grow in like this guy’s, contrasting vibrantly with my thinning blonde top. I could go with the shaved-head/full-beard combo but then strangers on the street would step aside, presuming I’m on my way to clear-cut a forest or suplex a masked villain. Maintenance would be an issue; I wouldn’t be able to let a beard rage Chia Pet style, lest I become too mountain-man. Then there’s the eternal Lady Factor to consider: facial hair either inspires growls of primal passion or women would just as soon a guy tape a bunch of Brillo Pads to his face.

I don’t know; what do you think? Bearded Jason: hot or not? Christmas vacation is coming soon, another ripe opportunity to bust out that beard.

There was a family sitting near me on my flight from Denver to New York City this afternoon, Mom and Dad a row back and their two young daughters sitting next to me, TALKING VERY LOUDLY TO EACH OTHER. It was like a one-joke Saturday Night Live sketch that went on too long. I thought at first they were kidding, but, no, they were ALL-CAPS LOUD. And they weren’t angry, they were chatting about the banalities that people usually do on planes, only VERY LOUDLY, like:

Mom

[Hands magazine to older daughter.] COLLEEN, READ THIS ARTICLE ON BEARS. IT’S REALLY INTERESTING.

Colleen

[15 minute pause as she reads the article, quietly.]

Mom

WELL, WHAT DID YOU THINK?

Colleen

I NEVER KNEW THAT ABOUT BEARS!

And:

Brenda

THERE ARE OLIVES ON MY SANDWICH.

Colleen

MOM, ARE THERE SUPPOSED TO BE OLIVES ON BRENDA’S SANDWICH?

Dad

BRENDA, I THINK YOU HAVE MY SANDWICH.

Holy cats it was annoying. I got no sleep because I kept getting shouted awake.

Shopping in downtown Laramie, Wyoming, this afternoon, we spotted qualifiers for the Just Because You Spellchecked category. Inquire should have been used on this sign for the Herb House; enquire is for the British and illiterate.

This next one’s ironical appearing in a store selling mostly magazines and books; it should of course be Classic or, really, the non-redundant Literature. At any rate, Ayn Rand doesn’t qualify for either.

This one just makes me snicker. Good gas prices, too.

Nothing goes better on a cold, late-autumn day with Rocky IV on T.V. than a tasty beef stir-fry made by my brother Andrew, and this apple cake I made, the French of which I can’t pronounce other than to proclaim it “tasty.”

It sported a crusty, caramelized edge where the apples and the raw sugar did the nasty up against the buttered sides of the Pyrex baking dish. The majority of the cake itself was very moist, which I hadn’t expected, on account of the canned pineapple (which I couldn’t even taste) and the shredded apples. Appletastic!

The sauce was simple and effective. I am an apple brandy convert, and better to buy Calvados than some obscure old-lady schnapps of the type that’s used for a recipe calling for one teaspoon, then collects dust in a cupboard for the next 15 years. After refrigerating the leftover sauce, it solidified into a sugary, fatty mass that would cause the veins in a coronary surgeon’s forehead to bulge alarmingly by merely looking at it.

The recipe comes from chef Laurent Tourondel, as served at the BLT Market, and taken from the November 12th issue of New York magazine. I followed the directions to the letter except for the crème fraîche, but the dessert was just fine without it.

It’s Thanksgiving and I can’t help but notice the staggering, nearly 50-degree temperature difference between New York City and Laramie, Wyoming this afternoon: 64° in Manhattan, 15° in Laramie. But we had a delicious Andrew-prepared dinner of turkey with cornbread stuffing and giblet gravy, mashed sweet potatoes, broccolini and cranberries.

Entertainments, too. A great game even slightly better than karaoke is SingStar, which we played on the PlayStation. You’re judged on your accuracy to hold a tune on a variety of pop songs, the lyrics of which scroll karaoke-style as the song’s official video plays in the background. Battle Mode allows you to square-off by singing alternate verses with a partner. We particularly enjoyed the B-52’s “Love Shack” and Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on SingStar Rocks! and A-Ha’s “Take on Me” and U2’s “Vertigo” on SingStar Pop.

The grumpy editorial assistant I work with attends renaissance fairs, or “ren fairs,” as she calls them. After I’d asked whether she costumes herself as a wench at such events, she told me no, but added there’s a practice there called wenching for which a gaggle of ladies costumed in the hottest Middle Ages couture circle some dude and kiss him until he blushes, like a G-rated gang-bang. And I had wondered why nerds were such big fans of renaissance fairs. I’d look up “wenching” via Google in order to supply you with linkage, but there are some things I just don’t want to know more about, and wenching is one of those things.

Japanese engineers have developed a musical surface called “melody roads” that recalls rumble strips except with grooves cut and spaced precisely to recreate notes when a car passes over them at 28 mph.¹

There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan, one of which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Notice of an impending musical interlude, which lasts for about 30 seconds, is highlighted by coloured musical notes painted on to the road.

Which reminded me: I needed to get cracking with the on-the-road music-mixes for my Thanksgiving vacation to our nation’s Square States beginning tomorrow. I’d made a mixtape for Dana and I to listen to, but I was already getting bored just looking at it, so I did the next best thing: I solicited mixtapes from two of my coworkers, prescreened for their excellent musical tastes and in-house ability to quickly crank out playlists of driving songs before I fly out of New York tomorrow.

My directives were loose, though I cautioned, “Transitions are important, as is verve. The songs don’t necessarily have to be about travel/driving unless you are some sort of Clever Dan.” I concluded: “I will repay you by either saving your life someday when you least expect it or by giving you a gift-wrapped box of Jell-O brand Pudding Pops. But only the plain kind, not the swirly chocolate-vanilla kind.”

I got S.’s first. She lives for shit like this and admitted as such. I’m a big fan of covers, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the Arcade Fire song is by the Talking Heads, the Nouvelle Vague song is by Tuxedomoon and I think she slyly chose the M. Ward song “Sadie” (originally by Joanna Newsom) because the original version fits the criteria for her Album-Song Name Game. S. was originally going to have “The Passenger” in her mix, then pulled it when she saw it in my own; then she included the same Clap Your Hands Say Yeah song I’d originally been considering for my own mix. Weird.

I nearly didn’t think I’d get one from K., but he passed his disc over at the last moment, scrawled in blue Sharpie with “JaYo’s 2007 Thanx Giving Trip Mix.” Lots of drum-machine beats with bloops and bleeps recalling Postal Service mating with My Bloody Valentine, mixed with some sort of mopey stuff, a wholesale swath of Diamond Dogs, stray weirdness and unexpectedness. Had I mentioned “Against All Odds” was my favorite Phil C. song? Or is that everyone’s favorite Phil C. song?

And here’s mine. I like how all three of us included at least one track from the ’60s/’70s amidst a lion’s share of tracks from the current and previous decade, in order to show our tastes have a range, or something.

¹ Via the article “Japan’s Melody Roads Play Music As You Drive” by Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent for The Guardian, Tuesday, November 13, 2007. [back]

My trusty wool winter coat has seen me through every winter I’ve lived in New York (and a few in Cleveland) and has been looking rattier and rattier for it. This is true especially in the inside of the coat where the quilting has worn away and it resembles a bunch of rat pelts sewn together. Time for a new winter coat, one to withstand the brittle temperatures of Colorado and Wyoming, where I’m headed for Thanksgiving.

I took a PATH train to Jersey City after work and it’s convenient that the first stop on the Jersey side is directly across the street from the Newport Centre mall. There’s a Sears there, unlike anywhere in Manhattan, and I purchased a hooded quilted down jacket from the Lands’ End store. It’s rated to keep me warm in -5° weather with a light layer underneath and as low as -20°, pending additional layers. I like that it’s lightweight, has a rain/snow-resistant nylon shell and a set of two pockets both inside and out. Monetarily, I like the fact that, like New York City, there’s no sales tax on clothing in Jersey, plus the fact I was able to snag $10 off at the register after I convinced the salesperson to apply to my coat the $10-off-your-next-purchase coupon she gave me.

Jason

When will the hipster girls adopt those giant, 1980s-professional eyeglasses? Or have they and no one briefed me?

S.

You totally missed the boat. Those are, like, so 2004.

Jason

I’ve been out of it since I let my style consultant go. Desiree spent all her time at sample sales when she should have been attending Fashion Week, planning my winter wardrobe and answering the phone in my apartment-sized closet. Lately, I’ve been using American Apparel ads to let me know what’s cool.

S.

So how come I haven’t seen you at work donning a pair of royal blue tights and nothing else?

Jason

I was totally wearing royal gold tights last Friday. Occasionally I would cup my breasts and arch my back, alive with pleasure. Then I was sent home early.

S.

I can’t believe I missed your shenanigans. If you canned your former assistant, you need a new one, right? Can my nametag say “Fashion Consultant Extraordinaire”? Or maybe “Roving Ambassador” would be nice.

Jason

I dub thee “Roving Ambassador.” Go forth and spread thy riches of snark, fashion sense and myrrh.

Ali, Sherry and I chaperoned the 16th birthday party of the kids of Andie’s boyfriend Eric. O.K., let’s be honest; Ali did all of the work. She stamped hands (no re-entry!) and handed out the raffle tickets at the door while monitoring the balconies for illicit activity. At one point, there was a vigorous makeout session going down on the west balcony, but she let that one slide. We were also on the lookout for substance abusing, dirty dancing, trash talking, F-bombing, close dancing and general hormone raging, although that one’s not really to be helped when you’ve got a bunch of teenagers bouncing around to the danceworthy tunes of yesterday and today.

Prepping some mix CDs for the drive my sister and I will take in Colorado and Wyoming next week for Thanksgiving, I conversed by email with a coworker about mixtape¹ gimmicks, such as having songs on a travel mix focus on driving, typically via an allusion in the song’s title. The robots at Tiny Mix Tapes have been churning out mixtapes like these for years.

My coworker countered with a still gimmicky but more clever idea for a work-in-progress mix that’s perfect for the music lover, and specifically, the album lover. There are three criteria each song on this mixtape must meet:

1. The lyrics of the song must contain the exact name of the album it originally appeared on.
2. The song’s name may not share the album’s name.
3. The song “obv. must be good.”

Got it? You’ll note that rule two disqualifies many songs. For example, “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere” by Neil Young with Crazy Horse won’t work. Although it contains the exact lyric “everybody knows this is nowhere,” the album on which the song originally appears is titled Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

An example of an acceptable song would be Elvis Costello’s “Alison” because it contains the lyric “my aim is true,” which is the name of the album “Alison” appears on. Another would be Modest Mouse’s “Bury Me With It,” which contains the lyric “good news for people who love bad news” and appears on the album of that same lengthy name.

Genius, especially because, unless there’s a site listing such songs that I haven’t found, it’s nearly impossible to cheat with Google. Or at the least, it would be time consuming; most song-lyric sites bristle with pop-up ads and devote separate pages to each song on an album. No, for this game you must have knowledge of often obscure album tracks. The only three I could think of at work today are from albums I listened to a lot in high school and college:

• “Oh My Golly!” by the Pixies, from the album Surfer Rosa
• “Cannonball” by the Breeders, from the album Last Splash
• “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, from the album Nevermind

Now go check your record collection and suss out more songs that fit the bill.

¹ I know they’re all digital or CDs now and I don’t care. “Mixtape” sounds better. [back]

I attended my first sample sale today. They’re a fact of life in this town, especially around my work neighborhood, the “fashion district.”

I’d been tipped about a Ben Sherman sale in particular, and it was located on the second floor of a nondescript building on W. 36th Street, right around the corner from where I work. I checked it out today at lunch, lucking out by not wearing my coat or taking my bag: they make you check everything at sample sales and there’s a big ol’ long line for that.

It was bustling but not maddening, crowd-wise. I didn’t buy anything. I couldn’t get excited about any of the shirts. Pants would require try-on and there were no changing rooms, as I’d been pre-warned. I considered something I actually need, a winter jacket, and they were all $55, down from $150-$250. But they’re all too stylish for me; in fact, everything for sale, even the highly popular $5 racks for sample and “slight irregular” items, were too stylish, which is code for “ugly.”

Did I mention that I’m a lousy clothes shopper? A chucklehead in the production department emailed me this hastily Photoshopped cartoon after learning of my fruitless journey.

For what’s nearly a comedy of manners with stereotypes as thick as mama’s meat sauce, Divorce, Italian Style sports wicked-good dialogue (the screenplay won an Academy Award in 1962) and fun physical comedy.

In the Sicilian summer heat, everything about Baron Fefè (Marcello Mastroianni) seems at rest. His eyes are hooded, a cigarette in a long holder dangles from his mouth and his moustache lounges limply on his lip. His movements are minimal, almost regal. An occasional tic, a twitch of his cheek, substitutes for a raised brow. His libido, however, remains active. Spurning his clingy wife Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), a large-toothed woman with Kahlo facial hair and a braying giggle, he lusts after his teenaged cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli) who lives across the way.

But divorce is illegal so Fefè upgrades his active imagination to murder schemes; for a crime of passion, he can get out of jail in three years, with good behavior. All the action’s in his head, in voiceover and dream sequence. Rosalia dies unlikely, black-comedic deaths: early on, he pushes her into a cauldron of boiling tallow, while later, at the beach, she’s buried alive and screaming in quicksand.

Then he learns he might not have to do anything. After discovering a cache of old love letters in the attic, he locates Rosalia’s ex-flame (Leopoldo Trieste) and hires him to restore the family manor’s frescoes, conniving to reignite passions that will justify his wife’s murder.

Fefè’s voiceover is at its funniest when he imagines his own trial, at which his lawyer’s impassioned statements to the court are revised and restated as quickly as Fefè alters his calculations, deciding, for instance, that his gun will be hidden more poetically in an antique credenza than a modern end-table drawer.

The plan backfires when she skips town with her beau. Fefè feigns depression and locks himself in his bedroom. Gossips brand him a cuckold. His social club is displeased. The town’s don whispers suggestions on how he might solve his little “problem.”

Fefè ends up shooting Rosalia, but not before the painter is shot moments earlier by his own disgruntled wife. And as planned, Fefè’s out in three, marries his cousin and lives happily ever after. That is, until the movie’s parting shot: in the Sicilian summer heat, her mind’s on another man.

I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.

Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency (1957)

S.

You may now make fun of me: I’m officially moving to Brooklyn. (No, it will not be Williamsburg.)

Jason

It pains me, how much of a hipster you are. You’re like an alcoholic, but for coolness.

S.

Good burn there. My witty retort will be one of those l’esprit de l’escalier things. Fucker.

Jason

Isn’t that just like a Brooklyn hipster to interject a casual email with French.

You know what’s a pain? Turning a screw into a wall and finding out what you thought was concrete and/or brick is plaster. Although my apartment’s walls are nicely painted and appear rock-solid to the naked eye and knuckle, I am finding its materials of construction would appear to be 90% plaster and spackle. I’ve researched the issue and tried using those plastic insert screws but the problem I’m having is that either the hole I drill is too large for the insert to fit snugly/effectively. Or, if the hole is just short of being too large, the insert won’t fit at all. Then when I try to gently hammer it in, it buckles or warps so there’s no way a screw could ever fit into the insert. Certain walls of mine are now more scarred and pockmarked than Manuel Noriega’s face. On the plus side, for these inept acts of home improvement, I’ve borrowed Kelly’s drill, the innocent email exchanges for which smacked of unintended innuendo. (“I also have a zillion bits and a screwdriver kit with this nifty poseable extension socket, so you can screw or drill in an area you can’t really get your hands in.”)

I hung out with Beth, Aaron and Nick tonight at the Illinois/Menomena concert at Webster Hall, home of New York’s kindest bouncers and most expensive Jameson ($10 per plastic-cup squirt). Illinois sounded 1000% better than they did at McCarren Park this summer, based on Webster’s superior sound system. Menomena made me tap my foot with its beat-loop-based alt-rock sort of sound. Multifunctional, too: the drummer sang, the keyboardist played guitar and the lead singer played bass, sax, occasionally twirled drumsticks and sort of resembled my younger brother. As Aaron suggested, people of our age are required to be enamored with the sort of band that would parody itself via The NeverEnding Story on its MySpace page.

I learned only recently that my apartment building has a laundry room! Other than location-location-location, an elevator, and maybe rent control, nothing lifts a New Yorker’s spirits more about his dwelling than on-site laundry facilities. Although the basement in which my laundry room is situated is slightly less comfortable than the basement of Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs. I’m serious. Through a maze of twisty passages, there are heavily padlocked doors, flickering lights, exposed wires, odd noises and so on. I will not be surprised to find a warm, Snuggle-fresh skull in a dryer.

Not only couldn’t I sleep on the three-hour-plus flight late Tuesday night from Miami to Chicago, the temperature disparity wasn’t fun, either, with Miami at 70 degrees versus a brittle 35 in the Windy City. It was past midnight, the ride downtown from O’Hare was hectic, I was tired from work and a rotten cold, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Most of the hotels downtown here filled months ago for Greenbuild, the 20,000-attendee green buildings conference I’m attending at McCormick Place, so the colleague who booked our group’s rooms got stuck with the James, a boutique hotel with rooms designed like Spartan-modernist time-capsules from the 1970’s, lounge music piped in everywhere and a lobby crawling with a clientèle resembling skinny, black-clad models from Eastern Europe. I would not be joining this fun however, for there was no room at the inn. The James had overbooked but swiftly put things right: I was given a voucher to stay at the Allerton Hotel. The Allerton upgraded my room to a suite, comped my first night and offered my stay today for the same cost as my room at the James. The James paid my cab fare, too; the hotels are only a few blocks apart, but it was a nice touch. When I returned from the conference last night, there was an apologetic voicemail from a manager at the James and an envelope had been slid under my door. It contained a gift certificate from the James good for a one-night stay in a “loft suite” there.

My second brush with commendable customer service arrived at dinner last night. Hoping to knock-out my cold with a one-two punch of tequila and spice, I tried Su Casa, operated by the same company that runs Pizzeria Uno (now known as Uno Chicago Grill) and Pizzeria Due, the latter of which is right next door to Su Casa. The salsa was spicy and my enchiladas cheesy, but right after my entrée had been served, I was asked to move from my wobbly table for two to a booth across the room to accommodate a party of nine rowdy ladies with stereotypical Southern accents. I didn’t mind doing this but they made a big deal about my “inconvenience” and the manager stepped over to let me know my meal was on the house. I only had to pay for my several margaritas, which helped inspire a full and restful night’s sleep at the Allerton.

Turns out it was probably best I didn’t stay at the James after all. The Chicago location has only been open less than a year and they’re still working out some kinks of room design. A colleague of mine who’s staying there reports that she accidentally yanked a towel rack off her sliding shower door, thinking it was a handle; then, for good measure, a 100-pound panel of the door jumped its track and almost crushed her, which would have been a terrible way to go: naked and flattened dead in a hotel-room tub, eulogized by soothing lounge music in the background.

Bill Clinton delivered the keynote address at Greenbuild, a conference I’m attending today and tomorrow at McCormick Place in Chicago, but I heard only faint bits of that famous voice from a floor away because I was on my phone the whole time with I.T. Guy, who tried but failed to diagnose why my work laptop wouldn’t connect wirelessly to the internet.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has sued Frank Gehry for leaks, mold, masonry cracks and drainage problems in the architect’s Stata Center, which opened at the university in 2004 with a price tag of $300 million. Gehry, in his characteristic low-bullshit manner, has told the press that problems in a building as complex as the Center were inevitable. In other words, there will be problems with most any Gehry building.

When Gehry’s Peter B. Lewis Building opened on the campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, I recall reports of snow and ice collecting in the roof’s strange nooks, then shooting off to narrowly miss pedestrians below. M.I.T. echoes this quirk with the Stata Center, noting that “sliding ice and snow from the building’s window boxes and other projecting roof areas” have caused structural damage and blocked emergency exits.

And in the classic example that I recalled when watching Sketches of Frank Gehry, Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles had a skin so shiny and angled so perfectly that on sunny days it would temporarily blind passers-by and heat adjacent sidewalks to molten temperatures.

Critics argue Gehry favors form over function. Gehry argues that clients such as M.I.T. are cheap, having rejected building elements that would have prevented design malfunctions. (Although in the case of the Disney Concert Hall, he paid handsomely to have the super-shiny surface sandblasted.) I don’t know which side is right, but when you’re dealing with an architect who has modeled buildings from crumpled wads of paper and has (proudly?) likened the Stata Center to “drunken robots,” you’re bound to get projects with quirks.

During this difficult time of the screenwriters’ strike, I’d like to offer my services as a writer, much like the “scab” players who offered their services during those uncertain weeks of the 1987 NFL season. Let me “tackle” your writing project with gusto. I will score you many “touchdowns,” “win the game” and earn your praises, your “cooler of Gatorade dumped over my head when I least expect it,” if you will.

Every neighborhood in New York has one of these places: the mysterious Chinese/Mexican restaurant. I don’t know what the connection is: hearsay informs that they were started by Mexicans working in Chinese restaurants, where the former picked up the latter’s culinary secrets and set off to open their own combo restaurants. Or it’s the other way around; I think I’ve only ever seen Asian people in the kitchens of these places. They all have the same lousy backlit photos of their featured dishes, bland decors, prominent what-to-do-if-someone-is-choking posters and conspicuous notices of regular inspection by the health department. I don’t even know the name of this place and I walk by every time I get off the A train at 190th Street and cross Broadway. What more do I need to know? It’s my local Chinese/Mexican restaurant.

You don’t want to eat-in unless you enjoy chipped formica booths, bad fluorescent lighting and a constant stream of delivery guys and neighborhood folks stopping in for carry-out. If Edward Hopper had painted Nighthawks today, he’d have set it in a Chinese/Mexican restaurant, not the least of why because there aren’t many/any genuine diners left in New York City. I tried a black bean burrito, which had a lightly toasted (fried?) flour tortilla, and, on the Chinese side, some tofu and steamed vegetables. Cheap, basic, hearty: the perfect delivery-food/carry-out.

That Local Chinese/Mexican Place

• on Broadway, just south of 193rd Street
• Meal 49 of 52: black bean burrito (cheap) and steamed vegetables with tofu (also cheap).

The benefit of having a coworker who spends a lot of time in Brooklyn is her restaurant recommendations. I’m still digging into the list she supplied me that led me to try Bonita last month with Vincent and Megan, and then Maggie Brown today for a late lunch/early dinner with Beth. I’d been told Maggie’s specialized in what was termed “fancified mac and cheese” style dishes, home-cooking made with locally sourced ingredients, and including actual mac and cheese, which I ordered mainly because its topping of toasted breadcrumbs, bacon (yes!) and onions, the tastiness levels of which made me overlook the fact it was made with shells not elbow macaroni, as proper homemade mac-and-cheese should be. I started with something called the “deviled egg of the day” which I believe was normal deviled eggs with a touch of pesto in the yolk mixture.

It’s a small, cozy place that does a bang-up brunch business for the locals. I arrived at a dead-zone time when brunch was still being eaten but no new patrons were allowed inside so the restaurant could take out trash and prep the dinner menu. Once seated, we noticed the skull of some unfortunate animal, tastefully mounted on a plaque, eye sockets trained over the room, which pleased Beth, as animal skulls often do. Grandma-style parlor chandeliers hovered near the ceiling and the wallpaper resembled repeated velvet Rorschach blots in time-forgotten shades of purple and green. The floors are scuffed wooden planks and the trio of booths feature distressed leather upholstery and tabletops of heavily lacquered wood slabs that are easily three inches thick. Rustic touches here and there included mason jars of cherries and olives at the bar, behind which the liquor bottles gathered snugly on neatly labeled glass shelves. The music was an 80’s pop combo of perennially hip or hip-with-passage-of-time cuts (David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” “What I Am” by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians) mixed with songs from the same era that certain people may be ashamed to admit appear on their iPods (“Love Is A Battlefield,” anyone?).

We topped the evening with two poorly rolled games of bowling at Melody Lanes in Sunset Park. Waiting for a lane to free up, we knocked back some plastic cups of beer at the bar, staffed by an alternately jovial and angry old Danny DeVito-shaped guy with a New York accent, big eyeglasses, suspenders and receding, slicked-back gray hair who remembered my name then laughed and flipped me off when I couldn’t remember his. Throughout the evening, over the Mr. Microphone-quality PA system, we heard his increasingly surly requests for delivery of clean pitchers. After lacing up and navigating the computerized scoring system, I managed to knock down a few pins here and there, and turkey without capitalizing on the following frame. I mixed it up with a pink 10-pound house ball and, most importantly, had fun. The couple at the lane next to ours featured a young lady with a formless, prim toss that netted an impressive number of strikes, while her guy was aiming more for her attention than the pins as he unleashed a sidearm whip that looked like the beginning of a face-bruising karate move but failed to topple much wood.

Maggie Brown

• 455 Myrtle Ave., Fort Greene, Brooklyn
• (718) 643-7001
• Meal 48 of 52: deviled egg of the day (four halves) ($4), mac and cheese ($9) and some drinks.

Angry fathers who assert that their disobedient children have rocks in their heads or “rocks for brains” aren’t far off point. An item in Wired last month noted that our heads, specifically our inner ears, contain what the American Hearing Research Foundation calls “ear rocks,” bits of calcium carbonate known as otoconia. (Although “rocks” may be literally generous; otoconia is Greek for “ear dust” and a Google scan of scientific literature favors the marginally larger descriptor “crystals,” not rocks or even very small rocks.)

Whatever their likeness, the ear rocks rattle around our heads and help us maintain balance, sense gravity and track linear acceleration, the latter of which, if my powers of science and analogy are solid, is similar to an accelerometer, like the one in the Wii Remote. Vertigo may result from ear rocks falling into the wrong canals of the inner ear. But unlike the Wii Remote, ear rocks are unlikely to fly across the room as a result of sudden erratic movement by their owner. Rock on, ear rocks!

Jason

All this chatter about vajayjay leads me to wonder whether an appropriate male-counterpart word should be panini.

O.

I always thought that was the plural form.

Jason

Panini is the plural of panino so if we're getting all William Safire, it should be the latter. But panini is better because: 1.) everyone calls the sandwich that, and 2.) it has that repeated syllable at the end like vajayjay.

O.

Then shouldn't it be penini?

Jason

Yeah, O.K., maybe.