August 2008 Archives

After a satisfying breakfast of blueberry pancakes from our propane-powered Coleman stove, a day of excitement followed on Indian Lake, with swimming, canoeing, motorboating and plain old relaxing.

I’ve been surprised that there have been next to no mosquitoes or black bitey flies here, the latter of which Indian Lake is apparently infamous for. I hasten to add that if you are skittish about daddy longlegs (and I am not), camping on Indian Lake may not be for you. Even though they’re of the comically harmless variety, many of them frequented spots where one often does not like to find arachnids, such as the picnic table, the inside of a tent and one’s hair.

We closed the night with a rave that included glowsticks, flaming stick-juggling from Josh, black lights trained on our bedsheet-banner that we'd strung between some trees and painted with florescent paint, flashing lights, a hula hoop, and house music blasted through a boom box. We also played the song “What What (In The Butt)”, which was greeted with such vigor that it became the official song of Giardiasis Island, narrowly edging out “Indian Lake,” the top-10 hit of 1969 by The Cowsills.

Susan drove me in a Zipcar from Chelsea to Orange, New Jersey this morning to pick up our van for our camping adventure to Indian Lake, located in the Adirondack Park Preserve. We do not recommend the Subaru Outback, our sole Zipcar rental choice. It’s got a crazy, semiautomatic shift option and before we realized it existed, we wondered why the car was revving and sounding as if its gears were processing a 10-pound bag of unshelled walnuts. Also, it’d been poorly cleaned after its previous occupants. In the glovebox, we found a nest of receipts, a half-smoked Newport and a CD-R of the Linkin Park album Minutes to Midnight which Susan later regretted forgetting to take with her.

After a pause at a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru for coffee and the cruel truth that the chain refers to the cake donuts I favor as “old-fashioneds,” we reached Epic Auto Rental, which is located next door to a grocery store named Super Supermarket, which in what’s surely a record concentration of superlatives in New Jersey, is located next door to Super Discount Liquors. Epic is chiefly a repair shop and looks it, which worried us. But it opened at 8:00 a.m. sharp as advertised. Unfortunately, our van wasn’t ready to be rented as it was being driven in from a satellite location so we were over an hour late driving into Manhattan to return the Zipcar and pick up the camping crew from outside Vincent’s apartment on Second Avenue. To smooth things over, Epic upgraded us for free from a minivan to a 12-passenger Ford Econoline van, I believe it was, which was a good thing, as we had more stuff than we’d planned to cram in there.

The drive upstate was mostly uneventful. Our longest detour was to the Wal-Mart in Saratoga Springs, where we purchased provisions and ate a late lunch at the in-store Blimpie. I snuck next door to The Spirits of Saratoga Wine & Liquor to pick up my friends Jack Daniel’s and Jose Cuervo, plus a bottle of Captain Morgan Parrot Bay coconut rum, the Official Sport Beverage of Susan and Toisha, our trip’s organizers.

When we arrived in Sabael, a hamlet on the northwest side of Indian Lake, we unloaded our supplies from the van to the marina launch, then from the launch across the dock to our two canoes and 14-foot aluminum Smoker Craft utility boat. The guy behind the counter at the marina office, who’s lived since birth at Indian Lake, recommended not drinking the lake water, either pointedly or by accident, as a previous camping group had allegedly contracted Giardiasis, or “beaver fever,” a disease that caused equal amounts paranoia and running jokes among our crew.

The first approach to the island as the sun set was marvelous. Oriented roughly north-south, it’s long and narrow, a quarter of a mile long and 175 feet across at its widest. (You can see it on a map here; you’ll need to zoom-in manually.) Although skirted with small cliffs and boulders, a pair of tiny patches of beach serve as excellent landings for the boats. At the north and the south tip is a cleared campsite with a fire pit and grill, and an outhouse. In between the camps lies a dense forest of underbrush, pines and white birch. And it’s all ours for $36 a night.

By the time everyone and everything we needed was on the island, night had fallen, but we squeezed in a dinner of brats cooked over the northern site’s campfire. Although our island is known officially and sadly as “sites 7 and 8,” I’m confident a motion to rechristen it Giardiasis Island will meet with approval.

Wonder what Barack Obama and John McCain might have on their iPods? Wonder no more, as Blender.com asked the two for their top-10 tracks.

I imagine these to be extremely careful choices, vetted and massaged by no fewer than a half-dozen campaign staffers.

And it amuses me to envision McCain rocking out to “Dancing Queen.”

One of my favorite things about Southern California is the architecture and the signage frozen in time. And having recently rewatched The Karate Kid, I like this site that revisited the film’s locations and found little had changed in 22 years. Daniel’s new apartment building (shown as “a dump” in 1983, mind you) and his high-school (the real-life version of which has since closed) look exactly the same. Must be the lack of humidity.

On a nightstand in my room at the DoubleTree in Southern California is a plastic-sealed Sani-Cloth HB germicidal disposable wipe, next to which is a survey card, placed there “to understand the importance of providing a remote control disinfecting wipe to our guests.”

I am not picky with business-travel hotel rooms. I’ve stayed at places for less than $40 a night, places with carpet best described as “mangy” and furniture you couldn’t give away on craigslist. When I travel for business, I require a bed, a bathroom and quietude. That’s it. Germ content, much less that of my remote control, doesn’t enter my mind. I’d say I’ve given more thought to the following elements of hotel room cleanliness, although more as flights of fancy than concerns of an obsessive hand-washer.

• fecal matter content of comforter and chair cushions
• urine residue content of ice bucket and coffee carafe
• entertainingly contagious fungi thriving in tub
• mite population of pillows and mattress
• those three black hairs of indeterminate origin, clinging to the sides of the sink

A helpful tip: while charging a digital camera battery, leave the camera's battery hatch door open. This inspires one to remember to put the battery back into the camera. In theory.

I managed to toss my camera, battery hatch open and empty, into my suitcase during a preflight haze before dawn this morning. Now in Southern California, I realize my camera's battery is still merrily charging away back in New York City.

On the plus side, I had In-N-Out Burger for lunch. Just don't expect any photos like before.

I enjoyed this story, posted on August 22nd to CNN.com.

Typo vigilantes banned from national parks

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP)—When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense.

Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty August 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park's Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks.

Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs. They were interviewed by NPR and the Chicago Tribune, which called them "a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation."

An affidavit by National Park Service agent Christopher A. Smith said investigators learned of the vandalism from an Internet site operated by Deck on behalf of the Typo Eradication Advancement League.

Authorities said a diary written by Deck reported that while visiting the watchtower, he and Herson "discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, contained a few errors."

The fiberboard sign has yellow lettering with a black background. Deck wrote that they used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with correction fluid and added a comma.

The misspelled word "emense" was not fixed, Deck wrote, because "I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further. ... Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight."

Deck and Herson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to vandalize government property.

They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park or modify any public signs. They were also ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the watchtower sign.

The TEAL Web site now has only this message: "Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come."

BKLYN potluck #3, the Fort Greene Park BBQ, went well, resplendent in breezy sun-dappled conversations, grilled and barbecued meats, chocolate-dipped strawberries, a variety of salads and marshmallow Golden Graham treats.

For me a highlight was the afterparty with Allison's pisco sours. I insist you whip up a few now. With all that fresh lime juice, it's the bracing taste of summer in handy coupe format. The swirl of cinnamon and bitters floating atop the frothy head of egg white resembles a distant galaxy as photographed by the Hubble telescope.

Pisco Sour
2 oz. pisco
1 oz. fresh lime juice
a pinch less than 1 oz. simple syrup
1/2 egg white
bitters (angostura are traditional; Allison used Fee Bros. Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters)
cinnamon

Shake the first four ingredients with cracked ice and strain into chilled coupes. Add two to three dashes of bitters on top and a dash of cinnamon; swirl the two together with a toothpick if you want to get fancy (and you do).

Who says the credit crunch is all bad?

After a late brunch this afternoon, Tina and I checked out the “Golden Legacy: Original Art from 65 Years of Golden Books” exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. I enjoyed seeing original artwork from The Poky Little Puppy, Scuffy the Tugboat and one I’d completely forgotten until I saw the illustration of a bunny in a yellow shirt and red overalls hiding under a mushroom from the rain, I am a Bunny. It was written by Ole Risom and illustrated by Richard Scarry in 1963 and it was a weird emotion to remember after many years the simple story of a bunny that looks forward to the changing seasons.

Tina and I roamed the museum, dodging children that ranged from Alien-style speed-crawlers to Dora-loving shriekers, and ensured the hands-on interactive exhibits were jerk-proof. Alas, we found this clown that is not only creepy but that can almost spell “tits” with its rotating letters.

Because I hadn’t ridden my bike since autumn but had planned a trek for today, I wheeled it uptown for maintenance by my friend Joe (not to be confused with my Toledo-area Joe).

Joe is a computer programmer. He sudos fearlessly and has a two-monitor setup at his home workstation, just like you see in the movies.

He’s also an avid cyclist and owner of multiple bikes, including one that literally folds in half. Joe builds these bikes from scratch, most recently for his girlfriend and friend-of-mine, Kelly. Given rims, tires and a pile of spokes, Joe has even handmade wheels, which I didn’t even know was possible. But it’s all for fun and he’s adept at it.

After raising my bike from his kitchen floor with a lower-tech version of a garage lift, he degreased then regreased my chain, realigned my brakes (the grip of the rear one was exerting less force than an arthritic grandmother petting a kitten) and balanced the off-kilter rear tire. All the while, he explained what he was doing and why so that I might do it myself and drip filthy bike grease in my own apartment.

I took notes. I learned Simple Green is the best, most cost-effective degreaser. I learned that chains should be cleaned ideally every two months of regular riding or every 60 miles. I learned a little bit of chain grease goes a long way. I learned which screws and nuts to tighten or loosen to improve braking performance. And so on. I think he may have thought I was kidding but I told Joe he should have Kelly video-record his sessions on bike building, maintenance and riding technique, then post them to the internet to educate biking beginners or provide more savvy cyclists with handy tips and tricks. I envision this miniseries as This Old House, but instead, you know, it’d be called This Old Bike and star Joe as the affable host with reassuring facial hair who can explain things like gear ratios in plain English.

During Joe’s tooling and advising, Kelly heated up a raspberry pie she’d returned with from a recent Hamptons vacation and served it with coffee for breakfast. (“You boys need your sugar!” she chided.) Alas, she couldn’t make the bike trip with Joe and I because she had auditions.

Kellyless, we made our way from Inwood down the Greenway on the West Side. Many families were capitalizing on the sunny, breezy weather by barbecuing and picnicking along the path and many of their children attempted to die early by inadvertently flinging themselves at us just as we were passing them.

Once downtown, we cut crosstown just north of the World Trade Pit at Warren Street. There, a short cyclist with a soft Southern accent noted that he’d been ticketed several times by a cop for riding his bike across the West Side Highway crosswalk. We walked our bikes across the West Side Highway crosswalk.

We boarded the Brooklyn Bridge, dodged hundreds of pedestrian tourists, including the many who were unaware a full half of the walkway is dedicated to bike traffic, and stopped near the midway point to view Olafur Eliasson’s temporary public-art project in the East River, The New York City Waterfalls, cycling cascades of water from scaffolding nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty. From the bridge, you can see three of the waterfalls; the fourth is under the bridge.

Because our pie-energy had waned, Joe asked for a lunch recommendation, and after entering DUMBO, I found Grimaldi’s without much trouble. But even at the relatively weird dining hour (around 3 p.m.), a large, waiting crowd spilled down Old Fulton Street. We instead chose Front Street Pizza for a few slices (with one topping, $3 each) and some glimpses of a sweaty Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire on the TVs mounted near the ceiling.

Crossing back into Manhattan, we rode our bikes under the bridge to better view the waterfall there. We noticed a half-dozen fire trucks, lights flashing, idling nearby and moved in closer to investigate. Around the bridge’s tower foundation nearest shore paced an FDNY rescue boat, two NYPD speedboats, a motorized black rubber raft with wetsuit-clad police divers, and a police helicopter that flew under the bridge, twice, while apparently searching the site or just showing off. When the divers reached one of the speedboats, they boarded and began operating its winch. “Oh boy! They’re going to bring up the body now,” we thought. But no: the cops merely winched the raft into the speedboat, then left, as did all of the other craft.

Returning up the East Side, first on First Avenue, then back on the Greenway, we passed a Native American ceremony, complete with garb, headdresses, music and dancing. After a pause for sports drinks to replenish our electrolytes and quench our man-sized thirsts, we headed further north then cut back to the West Side through Harlem. A darting squirrel in Marcus Garvey Park ran onto Joe’s foot while he was riding, which was a neat trick that surprised Joe and squirrel in equal measure.

We eventually made it back to Inwood, so that I might tell my tale, and I’m pretty sure I sunburned myself again, plus my ass hurts; I’m walking like John Wayne and I think I may have bruised my prostate or something. What caused this? Here are some theories:

1. My bike’s frame is too small for my build. Perhaps my form is warped and causing undue ass-stress. Based on my inseam, Joe recommends a 20" frame; my current frame is 17".
2. My seat sometimes shimmies when I’m riding; also, I discovered it can rotate like a periscope. Joe was initially alarmed about this because you don’t want a seat to fly off and leave your large intestine vulnerable to perforation by your seat-post. However, he believes my particular post problem can be fixed by buying a new one for about $7 online.
3. My seat is not providing the cushioning my ass desires. But Joe doesn’t think that’s the problem; he’s a proponent of smaller seats. The wider models favored by the elderly and wide-assed can throw a rider’s form out of alignment and allow for too much stray movement.
4. I have a delicate ass. Do my pants need better padding? Should I eat more donuts to fortify my ass region?
5. I’m already a pain in the ass. I just wanted to get this one out in the open before any of you could suggest it.

Regardless of my pains, I look forward to future adventures with my biking buddies.

To sup with Vincent is to surpass post-battle Valhalla in decadence and splendor. We’d planned to feast on boar and bong the blood of our vanquished, but the wormhole to Asgard never materialized, so instead we ate medium-rare steaks cut into sensibly sized pieces and drank beer at Angelo & Maxie’s, Vincent’s neighborhood steakhouse. It’s no Asgard, but it’s air conditioned, and they played Tone-Loc.

Angelo & Maxie’s Steakhouse

• Park Avenue South at East 19th Street
• (212) 220-9200
• Meal 41 of 52: a crock of French onion soup ($6.50), a 13-ounce grilled filet mignon ($30.95), a side of sautéed mushrooms ($7.95) and two pints of Guinness.

The Nolita bookstore at which my friend Katie works is changing its name from McNally Robinson to McNally Jackson and to celebrate, they closed early tonight and held a private party.

Esther K. Smith had tables set up in the center of the store where guests could illustrate their own mini picture books on a rectangle of heavy-stock, accordion-folded paper. Materials included many kinds of paper, markers, stickers and ink-stamps. Esther advised me personally that it’d be easier to use my glue stick if I placed the items I was gluing on the table instead of holding them in my hand. My book turned out well; it’s the story of a bunny, the collage illustration style loosely inspired by my favorite children’s lit illustrators, Ezra Jack Keats.

Other authors stepped-in as bookstore staff for the party, recommending books and taking photos of people holding their favorite book; under pressure, I chose to hold The Great Gatsby while forcing a unnatural-looking smile. Colson Whitehead, an author and journalist who has received the MacArthur “Genius” grant, was assigned to pour champagne and seemed bemused by his task.

Allison, who’s reading the new compilation of Kingley Amis’ previously out-of-print essays on spirits in the material world, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, told me he mentions a drink called Evelyn Waugh’s Noonday Reviver. You will agree this is the best name ever for a cocktail; however, you may be in disagreement or disgust over its composition: gin, Guinness and ginger beer.

But it got me thinking: although the U.S. doesn’t savor beer-based cocktails, other countries do.

The one I always think of first is Mexico and its michelada, which is beer and tomato juice or Bloody Mary mix. These were popular among the young natives when I visited Mexico for my previous job a few times earlier this decade. Some of the guys there had even tweaked the recipe to pair beer with Clamato, a blend that Anheuser-Busch began distributing nationwide under the name Clamato Chelada early this year. But at the time, the guys I was with didn’t exactly have a name for it. I’ll never forget this exchange:

Jason

What’s that?

Mexican businessman

Beer and Clamato.

Jason

What do you call it?

Mexican businessman

[brief, thoughtful pause] Beer and Clamato.

I know in Europe, various shandys (beer and lemonade) are popular. Allison reports that there’s a radler (the general German name for shandy) that intermingles beer and 7UP (“disgusting”).

I also recall beer and cider as a popular combination, possibly in Ireland, unless I just made that up.

What other exciting beer combinations have you tried or heard of?

Rachel’s birthday party at Arte Café! At each seat, the guest’s name was written on a slip of paper and affixed to a purple ribbon tied around a cellophane-wrapped homemade chocolate chip cookie that’d been hand-dipped in white chocolate and rainbow sprinkles. I had mine and half of Tina’s as an appetizer. For dinner, I had the melanzane parmigiana (baked eggplant with tomato sauce and parmigiano), a bunch of cheap red wine and 1.5 vanilla cupcakes from bakeshop chain Crumbs.

Arte Café

• 106 W. 73rd St. (off Columbus Avenue)
• (212) 501-7014
• Meal 40 of 52: baked eggplant ($16).

My one-word review of The Dark Knight: meh. It’s too long. It contains too many action sequences filmed too closely, with quick cuts, in low light. Famous dead person Heath Ledger was fine as the Joker but I don’t know if it was enough to combat Christian Bale’s Batman, which was boring and brooding. (Say what you will about Michael Keaton’s Batman, I liked that as Bruce Wayne he was a goofy, quirky-eccentric. Bale’s Bruce is a brooding, cocksure grump, a combination of emotions I didn’t even think possible.) And his gravelly, seemingly digitally lowered voice is distracting. Worst, for an action movie, none of the action thrilled me; I felt floaty and detached from the fights and chases.

The standout moment of the outing by far was the extended cut of Barkin’ Marty Scorsese’s "Silence your Cell Phone" PSA from Cingular buried amid 20 minutes of already-forgotten trailers and commercials. His speed-freak direction is hilarious.

Marty

[interrupting mom tucking her son into bed while having his Dad say good-night to him via cell phone] No, no, no, no, no, no... look, the plot of this phone call just isn’t working for me. I’ve seen it a million times.

and

Marty

[to mom] You: you’re trapped in a loveless marriage. Totally loveless, okay?

It was the first time I’d seen it and I laughed a lot. And compared with emotions elicited by The Dark Knight: 0.

Google is more than a search engine; it’s got a bunch of handy built-in tools accessible merely by using certain keywords in a regular Google search. Don’t most people know about these? If not, there’s a list of them here. Applications and websites exist to do the same things as these shortcuts but I prefer Google’s because they’re “self-contained” in any browser with internet access. My top-three most-used are these.

1. Dictionary Definitions
   
   Example: define: lenticular
   
   I use this feature constantly at work because unlike my Mac at home, there’s no dictionary application I like on my Dell. (If you even think of suggesting Word’s built-in dictionary/thesaurus, I will punch you in the neck.) If you use this feature without the colon, you only get the first definition if there’s a list of them; I prefer using the colon to get (typically) a bunch of definitions from various sources.
2. Weather
   
   Example: weather cleveland
   
   Much more efficient than slogging through a variety of screens at weather.com. Gives you the current weather, condition, wind and humidity, as well as the highs/lows for the current day and the following three days, plus graphical representations of the condition.
3. Unit Conversion
   
   Example: 3.60 cm in inches
   
   I used this one just a bit ago to determine the face-size of a watch I was considering buying. (It’s 1.41732283 inches, in case you were curious.) Many units are represented, so you can even do cooking conversions: 8 tablespoons in cups. And I appreciate that Google can convert numerals from Arabic to Roman: try 2008 in roman.

Ah, the Ramones: the original dysfunctional punk family. They seem to have been always ugly and always in disagreement with each other, as evidenced in the documentary I watched tonight (End of the Century: Tommy, the spokesman and early producer; Joey, the group’s gangly heart-and-soul; Johnny, the sour decision-maker; and the seemingly brain-damaged troublemaker Dee Dee. But I always appreciated their aesthetic, in light of the frequent mockery that they knew only two (perhaps three) chords: “You don’t have to be good—just get out there and play.”

I’ve previously enjoyed the sister location of Frankies 457 Spuntino so I thought: why not try the original in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Brick walls, wood floors, pressed tin ceilings, and all that—lots of young couples, with or without stroller-bound kids. There’s a large square picture window centered in the back overlooking a patio garden area, where there’s also dinner seating; less than a block beyond that, over a high wooden fence, F/G trains pass by regularly on an elevated track, the setting sunlight glinting off the sides of the cars. It’s strangely scenic.

My friend Jill and I started with the cured-meat tasting. We’d heard a rumor Frankies’ cures its own meats so I asked our server to describe the assortment and reveal which had been cured on the premises. He admitted that only one of the soppressatas had (I forget whether the spicy or the sweet) but that most of the rest hailed from the storied Faicco’s Pork Store. It was all good.

As an entrée, I got the homemade cavatelli with browned sage butter and slices of hot sausage (also from Faicco’s). Although scrumptious, the cavatelli were the size and density of lead fishing weights—like mini gnocchi—and I could only eat half my dish before I was stuffed. She had the sweet sausage, roasted red peppers and onions over pine-nut polenta and it was a delectable vision in red sauce.

We walked up to Clover Club afterwards for cocktails are were sent by the hostess behind the velvet curtain to the back room, where I hadn’t been previously. There’s a smaller bar back there, with a fireplace, about ten comfy wide-seated stools, plus a few comfy couches. It’s much quieter than the front room and it’s club policy that no one’s may stand, so the area stays spacious and relaxing. We had two cocktails each. Though not a fan of gin, Jill enjoyed her bramble, and ordered for me the Improved Whiskey Cocktail, banking on my love of rye; a nice choice!

Frankies 457 Spuntino

• 457 Court St. (near Luquer Street), Brooklyn
• (718) 403-0033
• Meal 39 of 52: cured-meat tasting ($12) and cavatelli ($15).