Who knows where the time goes but my life sounds even more impressive¹ when weeks worth of greatest hits are edited and compressed into an entry. Have I learned my lesson? Will I resume updating daily? Let’s hope so. Hold on as I whisk you back to that magical month of November 2008.

On Halloween, I bade farewell to Inwood and moved into a new one-bedroom apartment in a mostly Caribbean neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I’m on Eastern Parkway a few blocks from the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Prospect Park and various peeps. I can see the Empire State Building from my bed and I’m still trying to get Raul the Lazy Super to fucking install my required apartment-to-front-door intercom/buzzer. Otherwise I’d invite you over in a heartbeat.

On Monday, November 3rd, I happened upon a great New York City stand-up storytelling competition staged by a nonprofit group I’d never heard of before, The Moth. Admission is only $6 and I’ll be attending more of these, for sure. A topic is agreed upon beforehand; at the show I attended, in the crowded basement of Union Hall, it was appropriately “sweat&rdquo). Participants independently develop a five-minute routine mentioning the topic or incorporating it as a subject. The night of the show 10 of them are picked at random from the audience to take the stage and perform; some stories are straight-up personal recollections and most are styled like comedy bits. Judges vote on each participant. Great fun.

The next day, some guy was elected President. I had pizza and beer.

On Thursday, November 6th I waited in an around-the-block line to catch a free Comedy Central “Comedy Hour” taping of a Jo Koy standup routine. His ethnic jokes bored me but I enjoyed immensely the pussy and dick jokes that dominated the second half of his set; they made me laugh those cathartic laughs that purge crankiness and worry from my system.

That weekend, I ate the best jelly donut ever, and you can only get one starting at 8:00 a.m. on weekends at the Trois Pommes patisserie on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, one of Ed Levine’s possibly top-three bakeries in New York City. They go quickly but while they’re available in a small basket on the counter, they’re still warm and filled with a homemade-tasting raspberry jam. They cost $3 each and they’re worth it. I bit into mine with vigor and blasted powdered sugar all over my hooded sweatshirt.

Later the same morning, Saturday, November 8th, I traveled to Edgewater, New Jersey for the annual bluefin tuna carving ceremony at Mitsuwa Marketplace. The crowd there pressed forward around a team of men armed with extremely sharp knives to buy the fattiest cuts of the 400-pound specimen as soon as they were cut. The fish’s head was planted in an ice-filled red plastic bucket to the side where people posed for photos with it. Later I learned that although bluefin is among the world’s finest and exclusive fish for sushi (I ate some at Mitsuwa from a bluefin carved earlier and it was amazing), it’s an imperiled species and that I shouldn’t have enjoyed myself as much as I did. I made amends on our drive back to New York by stopping at the amazing Philippine Bread House in Jersey City and eating an ensaymada, a traditional Filipino slow-death method via five ounces of donut-like pastry that’s fried, sugared and topped with cheese. So bad, yet so good!

On November 10th, I tracked down the small, great and inexpensive Mexican restaurant I knew was somewhere in my neighborhood, Chavella’s.

I now know this about Tony- and Academy Award-winning playwright/screenwriter Sir Tom Stoppard, who I heard November 11th in an interview onstage with New Yorker editor David Remnick: if I took a whiskey shot for every time Stoppard said “as it were,” I would be drunk. But: despite being wickedly smart and well-read, he’s funny and self-deprecating, uncomfortable talking about himself, a topic that arose often about his new translation of Chekov’s play, The Cherry Orchard. I plan to see it after it opens at the BAM Harvey Theater on January 2nd. Stoppard said he’s striving to make it conversational and incorporate contributions from the actors to improve its familiarity. But amid talk of great Russian authors and the challenges translating them, I was most excited by Stoppard’s lowbrow revelation that he not only contributed uncredited dialogue for Sean Connery’s and Harrison Ford’s characters in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but that the idea for the “leap of faith” invisible-bridge challenge was his.

On Monday, November 17th, my boss and eight other people in my office got laid off so the company could save money. But I don’t want to detail that here because you never know who reads what on the internet. Which reminds me: my company is swell and I certainly don’t plan on stealing a bunch of office supplies when we move down to 120 Broadway in mid-December.

That night, I saw Iron & Wine in a sold-out show at Terminal 5. I enjoyed Mr. Beam (and his sister, who sang harmony). He’s a funny guy who’s still in some awe that he can draw such a crowd. He playfully chided the crowd for bursting out into applause as soon as he hit a chord, pausing to say something like, “That’s just one chord! You guys don’t know what song it is!” I was happy he played two of my current favorites, “Resurrection Fern” and “Boy With a Coin,” and he encored on the acoustic with “Trapeze Singer.” I enjoyed his acoustic stuff more than I did the full-band jamboree. Also, I was curious to get to the bottom of the point in his web bio that “[i]n conversations with Sam while mixing The Shepherd’s Dog, he confessed to finding spiritual inspiration in Tom Waits’ pièce de résistance, Swordfishtrombones.” That’s one of my favorite Waits albums but I didn’t notice many connections other than the songs-as-stories and a pleasing amount of marimba.

I organized a Brooklyn bowling outing on Saturday, November 22nd at Melody Lanes in Sunset Park². I like this place and not just because the decor can be summed up by the digit 1989: the music is loud and mostly bad. And there was a young boy at the lane next to ours inexplicably dressed as Indiana Jones. Also, I am happy to report that Al, New York City’s Angriest Bartender, remains just that. At least to me. Here’s what happened when I ordered a pitcher of Bud. Al poured it and set four plastic cups on the bar.

Jason

Thanks. But I’m with a group, so I’ll need eight cups.

Al

[testily] I can’t give you eight cups. You’ll have to order another pitcher and I can give you four more.

Jason

[pause] O.K., I’ll take two pitchers.

Al

Or I can give you these eight smaller cups instead of the four large ones.

Jason

O.K., let’s do that.

Al

So, two pitchers of Bud.

Jason

Well, if I get eight cups, I’ll just take the one pitcher for now.

Al

[exasperated] One pitcher, two pitchers! Make up your mind!

Everyone else in the group who made a drink run reported Al was nothing but pleasant. Short and squat, resplendent in his giant ’80s eyeglasses, red suspenders and slicked-back silver hair. But pleasant, so I guess being surly with me was enough. Later, when I returned to him for another flagon of Bud, he claimed he was out of pitchers and that I’d have to bring him back an empty one.

The next night, I caught the seldom-screened and exceptionally low-budget UK punk documentary from 1982, Rough Cut and Ready Dubbed, which I enjoyed, especially the concert-riot sequences, as well as all of the angst and acne in the talking-head segments featuring Q&A with and concert footage from groups including the U.K. Subs, the Cockney Rejects and the Stiff Little Fingers, and the likes of influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson.

On Monday, November 24th, I bought decor and other apartment stuff at the new Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with a pleasant pit stop at LeNell’s, the best liquor store in the city. LeNell Smothers is a charming Southern woman who poured me several wine samples while a Hank Williams song played. I purchased from her a bottle of Four Roses Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey for purposes of making my own bacon-infused bourbon, plus a pricey jar of genuine marasca cherries from Luxardo for assorted cocktail-development purposes.

I had a deliciously extensive Thanksgiving dinner at Jimi and Will’s newish apartment in Washington Heights. I learned I am not so great at playing Mario Kart Wii. I also made a cranberry relish recipe I clipped from the November 12th issue of The New York Times and it was delicious but next time: less onion.

And the next evening, Friday, November 28th, I finally made it into wunderkind chef David Chang’s reservations-difficult, 14-seat East Village restaurant, Momofuku Ko, thanks to the persistence of my dining companion, Sherry. Upon review, I see my notes on this disintegrate because I can’t read Sherry’s handwriting well, or mine, really; we each ordered the wine-pairing option, which amounted to often a full glass of expertly complemented wine, champagne or sake served with each course. All 13 of them.

And I don’t believe I understood a word the sommelier said. For example, describing a red amid a string of incomprehensible adjectives and Spanish and maybe Spanish adjectives, I picked up on the keyword Mendoza and said brightly to Sherry, “That’s in Spain, right?”³ when what I was actually wondering was “Wasn’t that the name of one of the bad guys in Dirty Harry?”⁴ Surely Sherry, the oenophile among us, did a lot of slow, incredulous head shaking.

Chang’s fixed-price menu, which isn’t printed publicly, changes often, so every day the courses are conceivably unique. We started with some sort of fancy pork rind; a neat cube of moist, peppered biscuit; and a non-jumbo shrimp with tomato chutney. I’m missing some matter in the descriptions there, and some ingredients, but let’s get to the big stuff. The pinnacle was the daikon soup with chunks of lamb belly, fried lily palm and fried purple mustard greens, paired with a Pinot Noir. Sherry said she wanted to lick her bowl after that transcendeliciousness but gave decorum the nod. The most beautiful dish, a smoked hen egg, its yolk broken and burst onto the plate, came garnished with a generous constellation of caviar, fingerling potato chips and sous vide onions and scallions.

Next: hand-torn pasta, cubes of snail sausage and pecorino cheese. Then: monkfish with uni and mitsuba. And: something with pine nuts and lychees topped with finely shaved foie gras which was of velvet-textured tastiness despite me not remembering what it even was.

With the plating of the most pedestrian course—roasted chicken with Brussels sprouts and mushrooms;—we were both very, very full (also: drunk; in retrospect, the stop at Decibel for sake and shochu beforehand was unnecessary). But we had one more entrée to go. It would have top-ranked had we not perceived our corpulence to be approaching that of Henry VIII’s: large shavings of beef cheeks that had been braised for 36 hours, mitake mushrooms and charred jalapeños.

Done? Not yet: two dessert courses arrived with glasses of Muscat champagne and sherry, respectively: mandarin orange sorbet with juniper and segments of bitter orange (mouth-wateringly sweet and sour) and pretzel ice cream (is that correct? or even possible?) with a yogurt-Granny Smith sauce and tiny spheres of deep-fried cheddar cheese. The pleasurable and unusual dining experience flew by and we were at Ko more than two hours; in fact, we literally closed the place.

A few days later I realized the Asian guy behind the counter the whole time whom I’d assumed was David Chang was, in fact, David Chang, which made me wonder whether I should have engaged him in conversation deeper than discussion of Mitchell, one of his chefs, and how he tried to break into the restroom while I was in there.

Update, 3:40 p.m. Hold up: Sherry reports that the guy I thought was David Chang may have been Peter Serpico, shown here. We may never know.

Also: David Chang likes Bob Dylan. The restaurant’s soundtrack is supplied by his personal iPod and I counted no fewer than five Dylan songs amid the shuffle of Joy Division, Public Enemy, Elton John, The Flaming Lips, Neil Young, Jurassic 5, Cake’s cover of “I Will Survive,” and a song named “We Here” from some group from Singapore that Sherry liked.

And that’s not even all I did on my Summer Vacation, I mean, November. But that’s all I’m writing about. Because I don’t tell all. Also, I’m tired. Could I have a more exciting month? Oh, probably. Bring it, December.

Trois Pommes

• 260 Fifth Ave. (near Garfield Place), Brooklyn
• (718) 230-3119
• Meal 45 of 52: a jelly donut ($3) and a coffee ($2).

Chavella’s

• 732 Classon Ave. (between Park Place and Prospect Place), Brooklyn
• (718) 622-3100
• Meal 46 of 52: quesadilla flor de calapaza (cactus flower) ($4.50), a giant bowl of rice pudding ($4.25) and two Pacificos ($4.00 each).

Momofuku Ko

• 163 First Ave. (between 10th and 11th Streets)
• (212) 500-0831
• Meal 47 of 52: a bunch of mind-blowing food and drink ($150)

¹ I know! I didn’t think it was possible, either! [back]
² I am not forgetting my Manhattan-based brethren and will plan an outing with y’all soon. My life is torn; a children’s book written about me would be a tender tale entitled Jason Has Two Boroughs. [back]
³ No. [back]
⁴ No. [back]

I got drinks at Clover Club and dinner at Pó with Allison tonight. Mario Batali was originally the chef-partner but now has no longer anything to do with the place and I’m guessing it’s better for it. I’m pretty sure we shared the white bean bruschetta and that I had the Spaghetti all’Amatriciana, made with onions, chilies and tomatoes but also “guanciale”—unsmoked bacon made from pig’s cheeks—which sounds right up my alley.

Pó

• 276 Smith St., Brooklyn
• (718) 875-1980
• Meal 43 of 52: white bean bruschetta ($2) and Spaghetti all’Amatriciana ($14).

Andrew, Jess and I took part in some more of my favorite New York things and some new ones. We had brunch at the French Roast. We wandered through Central Park where we saw goats in the zoo. At the Brooklyn Museum, we mulled over Judy Chicago’s famous feminist installation, The Dinner Party. Walked the boardwalk and rode the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. Then we returned to Manhattan for a costly dinner of lobster rolls and assorted other seafood delights at Ed’s Lobster Bar and dessert at Cafe Lalo.

Bonus photos: Mine are here and Andrew’s are here.

Andrew, Jess and I took the subway to Williamsburg for brunch/lunch with cocktails at the Roebling Tea Room, followed by a trip to Buffalo Exchange for thrifting. Upon arriving at Beacon’s Closet for more thrifting, we reached an executive decision: Jess would shop and the menfolk would stride briskly across the street to the Brooklyn Brewery for the free tour and, uh, beer. We timed it right, as it began pouring down rain soon afterwards. The tour was static and boring and it turns out the Brewery bottles most of its stuff upstate. I did learn that Milton Glaser designed the BB logo and has a tiny stake in the company. Plus, he gets free beer for life. At least according to our guide. The most of our time was spent quaffing plastic cups of beer from a large, communal table area of the brewery set up much like a beer hall. It was pleasantly crowded with much people watching. I don’t know much about cask ales but I believe the best beer the Brooklyn Brewery makes is a cask ale called Blast. Andrew and I enjoyed several glasses of it. It’s a double IPA, so it’s muscular (nearing double-digit ABV), sharp, hoppy and rich, yet paradoxically but pleasantly smooth, with a nice head. Alas, or maybe not for the sake of my moderation, they don’t bottle it—it’s only available on tap at the brewery and select bars.

Afterwards, we trudged through the rain and made our way to Carroll Gardens for dinner with Allison, Beth and Mike at Frankies, followed by cocktails at Clover Club.

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.

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).

Beth and I headed out to the Siren Music Festival this afternoon a bit late, around 3:30, 4:00 p.m. or so, so we missed Film School, which she’d wanted to see. But I enjoyed catching the end of the Beach House set, and The Helio Sequence, which has the happiest drummer I’ve ever seen. They played a cover of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which was crazy. I bowed to Beth’s wishes to see Broken Social Scene vs. Stephen Malkmus. I don’t know anything about BSS or its songs but it was a raucous show; all that brass and all those guitars, plus Siren’s infamously loud and horrible speakers, made for an overwhelming sound. None of the band’s ladies made it (there was a potshot about how some of them were over on Sesame Street) but the band had a random acquaintance named Audrey come onstage to sing one song; she was wearing a summer dress made of lotteria fabric which was totally boss. We were standing front and center, about three rows back from the VIP barricade, and there was nearly a literal mosh pit going on towards the end. Hot, sweaty good times, although later I discovered some raw-meat red spots of sunburn on my right forearm where I’d accidentally rubbed-off my SPF 2000 sunscreen. Another sting was to see a “bubba,” as Beth called him, wearing a charming racist T-shirt.

Astronomically, summer began last month but technically, it began tonight at the Clinton Hill backyard BBQ bash of Jill, Laura and Liz.

These girls totally need their own Sunday morning cartoon, in which they fly around the five boroughs, enacting drudgery-busting Super Party-Powers and Dance Magic on an unsuspecting public. Their relentlessly promoted merchandise would include T-shirts, puffy stickers, Lite-Brite templates, breakfast cereals, Colorforms and a very special After School Special, The Girl Who Drank Just Enough.

The party featured 60+ guests, grilled meats (fake and real) with a bevy of sides, fresh summer tracks on the jambox, a jumbo tub of iced beers, and Citronella candles and Tiki torches in the chair- and blanket-strewn backyard, which was accessible by a fire escape ladder I was convinced someone would fall from and crack their head but no one did.

Fashion note: although white leather plimsolls soil quickly with New York grime, they retain Dance Magic.

Dana and I stopped by the Roebling Tea Room on a lark for brunch. I liked this place. High ceilings, large arched windows, filled with light, main room has a long bar. The wainscoted walls in the large front room are papered in an old pattern of an English foxhunt. An intermediary area in the back has couches for sitting around with tea or a cocktail. In the back is a smaller room when we sat, open to a fenced-in patio area with a few picnic tables, and divided by windows with flowers and ivy in planters. It’s tight seating but relaxing.

The small menu, which changes daily, is typewritten—items and descriptions from the black ribbon, prices from the red—with quirky spacing and exciting spelling mistakes (“raisen,” “brussel sprout leaves”).

Dana had the baked pancake (cleverly billed as “A Big Baked Pancake,”) which spanned her plate and was easily enough for two. Although billed as featuring stewed rhubarb, it was made mostly with stewed pears, which was disappointing but still tasty. My baked cheddar eggs were simple and satisfying, and had two whole hard-boiled eggs buried in a ramekin of baked cheddar cheese. Another ramekin of grits arrived on the side, accompanied by thick slices of raisin-fennel toast and apple butter.

I drank a refreshing Pimm’s (made with the gin-based Pimm’s No. 1 Cup, cucumber and lemon-ginger tea). Dana had a Supercoffee, a mug of amped-up Irish coffee with whiskey, Irish cream and Grand Marnier.

Roebling Tea Room

• 143 Roebling, Brooklyn, NY
• (718) 963-0760
• Meal 32 of 52: Baked cheddar eggs ($8.50), a side of bacon ($2) and a Pimm’s ($7).

Before the Takka Takka/Ohbijou show tonight ¹, Beth and I stood at a table upstairs at Union Hall, rain-dampened but enjoying a Triple Threat (three Sliders with a bit of sharp cheddar and one measly B&B pickle slice apiece, with thick, heavily seasoned fries on the side) when this speedy/shifty dark-eyed fanboy sidleed up to our table and asked if we were going to see Takka Takka downstairs because they were starting in 10 minutes.

Yeah, we’ll make our way down there, we told him. He replied that he was a big fan of Takka Takka. And they’re starting shortly. Downstairs. In 10 minutes. The guy was lingering and I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I said cheerily, “Are you in the band?” That quieted him down. He smiled, muttered something about being a fan and shuffled off to bother another table.

When we arrived downstairs, the fanboy was already down there. “Hey!” we said, as if we were long-time friends. As we got the backs of our hands stamped, he seemed to be having trouble getting in and I hoped he wouldn’t ask us for help. He was pestering the hand-stamper about his Takka Takka love until the guy snapped, “Why don’t you go away?” It didn’t appear the superfan even had a ticket. We slipped past him and stood up front waiting for the show to start.

And here’s the punch line: the fanboy was the bass player for Takka Takka. His name is Grady, which seems about right. We weren’t sure what to make of all of this other than it was pretty awesome. We couldn’t even make eye contact with Grady after that because he played most of the set with his back to the audience.

Ohbijou was good, too: happy songs by happy people. I suspect it’s because of the Canadian connection but they reminded me of Arcade Fire—the whole strings, guitars, banjo, keys and pep thing—if Arcade Fire were happier, apolitical, not flush with cash and fronted by a short woman who rarely made eye contact with the audience. She didn’t have much to shy from; the crowd bolted after Takka Takka and there appeared to be more photographers (three) than there were people there listening to the music. (The crowd included more than three people but they talked loudly among themselves as if the band they’d theoretically paid to hear was a distraction.) I enjoyed especially their last song, which I think was called “The Wood Song,” for which five of the seven band members produced drumsticks and provided a beat by striking random wooden objects nearby, including an amp housing, a pillar and the wall behind the tiny stage.

Union Hall

• 702 Union St. (at Fifth Avenue), Brooklyn
• (718) 638-4400
• Meal 29 of 52: a Triple Threat ($11) and a few beers.

¹ Don’t worry; I’d never heard of them, either. [back]

Far, far away from the big city’s tall buildings, grit and ugly people, Carroll Gardens is a magical fantasy land of tree-lined streets, beautifully refurbished brownstones and young, attractive parents with their young, attractive kids in tow. Lucali, the neighborhood pizza joint I ate at tonight, was chock full of these people and I felt like an interloper amid their friendly neighborhood conversations when my companion was a lively but essentially inanimate farce by Evelyn Waugh. I’m terrible guessing people’s ages, especially children’s, so I can report only that they ranged from that age where you can barely stand and spend most of your time walking into stationary objects, and that age where you’re distracted and breakdance around on the floor because you suspect it annoys your young, attractive parents.

The space for Lucali used to be a candy store and the present owner bought it because he didn’t want a bank or fast-food chain moving in and dumbing down his ’hood, which is admirable. A giant, unadorned window frames the restaurant’s front, under a large awning where the families waiting for their table gather to sit and chat. A pressed tin ceiling and walls of plaster and brick frame surround worn wood floors and tables. On the tables are candles, dim lights overhead, but the interior must be one of the darkest non-fancy restaurants I’ve been in.

The simplest menu ever is chalked on a slate on the wall: pizzas are $20, large calzones (which I suspect are folded-over pizzas) are $19 and small calzones are $10. That’s it. You can also get a can of soda but why bother when there’s a bodega a few doors down for BYOB service. Young dudes brought sixes of beer and larger tables had multiple bottles of fine wine. The food satisfied though my allegedly small calzone approached the dimensions of Neil Armstrong’s lunar bootprint. Made with ricotta and other cheese, plus fresh mushrooms and a plate of sauce on the side, t’was tasty.

Walking back to the F train afterwards, someone on President Street had fanned a few dated computer programming manuals and an Emile Zola paperback on a stoop for anyone to take. More young families with strollers passed, then a dude on a skateboard letting his leashed, jogging dog pull him down the street.

Lucali

• 575 Henry St., Brooklyn
• (718) 858-4086
• Meal 28 of 52: calzone ($10).

Allison and Jovito staged a mini dinner get-together at their apartment tonight, the centerpiece of which was lamb burgers made with fresh mint, cooked and served “Slider-style.” They were amazing, especially topped with the co-op bacon Angela and Chris supplied. Chips and homemade salsas complemented the meal: a black bean variety from Laura and a garlicky mango-guacamole from Angela. For dessert, Chris supplied his patented Rice Krispies Treats made with Fruity Pebbles. How were they? I tasted a rainbow of fruit flavors. “It’s like there’s a party in my mouth,” I said, and Chris completed, “and everybody’s invited.” The rooftop deck of Allison and Jovito’s apartment building affords kick-ass views of the city and environs. If I had a deck like that, I’d be up there all the time, hypnotized by the lazy parade of incoming flights.

I like it when I get a roll of film developed and there are shots on there I’d forgotten. Case in point: this photo that I took last September of the eerie New York Port Authority Grain Terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

So BKLYN #2—a dinner awash in a frisson of samosas, homemade curries and exotically spiced soup, and cardamom coffee—totally rocked, but the talk of the dinner was cham-cham we had for dessert.

Have you eaten this before? Is it an elaborate prank-food? Chris was fairly certain the Indian lady at his local Indian store recommended it to him just to see if a Westerner would purchase these vaguely doody-shaped donut-things, dripping with a naughty sucrose syrup. Indeed, each appeared to contain enough sugar and fat to send even the paunchiest average American into a porky coma. And this coming from a guy (me) who’s previously eaten clumps of brown sugar directly from the bag when there’s been no other food in his apartment.

BKLYN #2

• Angela’s apartment
• Meal 22 of 52: a bunch of awesome homemade Indian food. Also, cham-cham.

I must be getting older or more mature because it used to be, when I splurged at a bar, I’d make the bartender reach a little higher for the whiskey bottle. Lately that’s been replaced with ordering expensive speakeasy-era cocktails that focus on craft.

That’s the deal at Weather Up, which opened in late February in Prospect Heights. Old-timey goodness with new-timey prices! But so refreshing. You can get an aviator for $15, the most expensive drink on the menu (most hit $11), which includes a small-print warning on the menu alluding to its mind-bending potency. I started with a Presbyterian, a refreshing rye and ginger cocktail in a skinny Collins glass that included a candied ginger garnish, a single, long cuboid ice cube and a long metal straw (with a spoon at the tip to aid stirring) that I bit before realizing its composition. If I wanted to buy it, there were unbitten models available for sale for $5, said the bartender, who apparently gets many such requests.

Depending on the drink, the ice is delivered in different forms: a popular form is hand-chiseled and I don’t think I’ve ever before seen a dandy bartender hack away at a chunk of ice with a bar-spoon as James the bartender did tonight. Some dude sitting nearby alleged he was getting hit by the chips.

Like its ilk (Pegu Club or Little Branch leap to mind), Weather Up is quiet and cozy, and but even smaller and more warm: boxed lights glow from the ceiling, and white, rectangular ceramic tiles arc from the walls across the ceiling, which reminded me not so much of New York City subway stations, but those of the Paris Metro.

The Red Hook Park Vendors, which I’ve enjoyed before, have been granted a six-year reprieve from being overtaken by generic highest-bidder food concessionaires, reports Eater today. Hooray!

It appears there will be changes, though, as per the euphemistically worded sentence attributed to the executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park in the press release:

We have the best intentions to create an even better food market with the assistance of New York City Parks and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

In other words, maybe we, the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, will no longer knead pupusa dough barehanded and serve slaw directly from open Coleman coolers. Eh, whatever. I don’t know about your body but mine is a versatile machine that can handle all manner of “improperly” prepared foods. It’s all part of the charm and can’t possibly be less healthy than the bathwater hotdogs and horsemeat kabobs you can purchase daringly from any city-sanctioned push-cart vendor here.

As I foretold, Allison staged the first installment tonight of the Brooklyn Sunday Night Dinner series, BKLYN #1, a potluck with a “local/sustainable/seasonal” theme. It went down at the Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy apartment of her and her boyfriend, Jovito. I love this part: the building used to be a Tootsie Roll factory.

The dinner party included Allison and Jovito, my friend Beth and I, Allison’s friend Angela, and her sister Laura. Also present were the resident tabby, Ra, who warily shares space with the resident shelter-mutt, Manute. He’s a blend of black Lab, Great Dane and black German Shepherd named after Manute Bol because both are long-legged shot-blockers who like having their bellies scratched.

We started with three New York state sheep’s milk cheeses, Berkshire pork prosciutto and membrillo (quince paste), purple grapes and candied walnuts. For "local" drinks, we drank rye-stiffened Brooklyns throughout the evening, inspired by a recipe Allison procured in an entertaining fashion. On Tuesday, she and Jovito attended a reading featuring Brooklyn-based cocktail authority David Wondrich, whom I’ve written about before. As he signed her copy of Imbibe!, she mentioned the upcoming dinner and her consideration of serving locally invented cocktails, namely Manhattans and Jack Roses, the latter a classic New Jersey drink in honor of Jovito’s home state.

Wondrich concurred then rattled off the ingredients for a Brooklyn, a cocktail curiously absent from his book. Realizing the recipe would be a tall order to remember, he removed a piece of paper from his pocket and scribbled it down. Meanwhile, Allison told him I’d wanted to attend the reading but couldn’t, then blurted that I had a man-crush on him, so after laughing nervously, he autographed the recipe as a sort-of-wish-you-were-here keepsake.

The man-crush thing is true. What human wouldn’t lovingly admire another who can mingle alcohols to their tastiest and most potent permutations? Although I had to tell Allison that men will not often admit a man-crush to one another. Regardless, it netted me a scrap of cocktail ephemera that I’ll treasure always until I spill bitters on it. Here’s a scan of it. You’ll notice Wondrich spelled liqueur wrong, unless liquer is an archaic cocktail-maven spelling.

After the first round, shaken with ice and served in old-school coupes, Allison deviated from the handwritten version of the recipe to the one I’ve reproduced below. I must say that rye in its 100-proof form is excellent for clouding one’s mind in the best way possible.

Ah, and for the food. Beth made butternut squash soup with a plain-yogurt and cilantro topping. Laura made a shredded carrot and toasted almond salad. Angela made a Sicilian-style potato gratin with capers and Parmesan. Allison made tender, braised short ribs with chocolate and rosemary. We also had baguettes with Brooklyn-made butter. The dessert course brought out ice cream sandwiches made from oatmeal toffee-chip cookies and almond/English-toffee ice cream from the Adirondacks. I supplied my Gâteau Aux Pommes apple cake, made with apples and eggs from upstate New York. In short, great good, great drinks, great music, and great company.

Brooklyn Sunday Night Dinner

• Meal 12 of 52: a heap of delicious food, home-cooked by friends.

On a quiet side street of Park Slope lies Palo Santo, a small, low-key Caribbean-inspired restaurant with murals and points of turquoise on the brick walls, tables and chairs crafted from salvaged wood, and glass-topped tables like specimen drawers, containing assemblages of antique bric-a-brac that recall Joseph Cornell’s picture boxes.

The food’s eclectic, too, with a focus on seasonal, locally sourced, organic ingredients. Whole baked plantain, served in its skin, were delicious. Rabbit tacos featured moist masa tortillas the shape of drink coasters. And fillets of mackerel arrived atop black olives, whole string beans, blue potatoes and wafer-thin slices of pickled watermelon radish. A bottle of malbec complemented it all nicely after a server supplied a sample to ensure it was a keeper.

Palo Santo

• 652 Union St. (between Fourth and Fifth Avenues), Brooklyn
• (718) 636-6311
• Meal 8 of 52: plantain, tacos, fish and wine.

A 30-seat Williamsburg outpost of Dumont proper, Dumont Burger has an comparatively small menu, but features the two post popular Dumont dishes: the burger and the mac-and-cheese. Beth tried the former and I tried the latter and we’d proclaim each of them delicious. The mac was sadly made with radiatore pasta (the spiral-ly kind) and not the proper elbows, but happily made with cubes of bacon, and both cheddar and Gruyere cheese. To drink, I had a Czech lager that the bartender recommended and the name of which I now forget, but it was dark and delicious and served as her answer to my frequent request, when I don’t see the familiar face of Guinness, of “Give me the darkest beer you have on tap.” It was cold in that place, with the constant coming and going and the door of the curtain insufficient to prevent arctic gusts of wind from entering and eddying around.

DuMont Burger

• 314 Bedford Ave. (between South First and South Second Streets), Brooklyn
• (718) 384-6128
• Meal 3 of 52: mac & cheese ($11) and a beer.

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.

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.

After drinks at an East Side bar, the R train ushered Megan, Vincent and I out to far-flung Sunset Park, Brooklyn, for an exciting apartment-warming party thrown by Carmella and her roommate Helke. Lots of great drinks and conversation and you can’t go wrong with any danceworthy party mix that combines Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott with Kraftwerk.

I was to meet Megan and Vincent for dinner at Bonita in Fort Greene, only when I showed up, they didn’t seem to be there, despite cellphone discussion indicating otherwise. Were they at the Williamsburg location? They assured me they were not. I even asked the server if the place had a patio out back that I wasn’t noticing. Those sly devils: they were sitting on the same side of a table in the far back, purposely obscured by a partition, and I’m sure the look on my face was priceless when I stuck it back there.

We enjoyed the spicy alcoholic beverages, our hearty traditional Mexican entrees and an especially awesome pico de gallo that turned out not to be complementary. Megan tried a mysterious, unlabeled salsa-like condiment resting inconspicuously in a chutney-style container on the table and it was possibly the spiciest thing she’d ever tasted.

Afterwards we enjoyed drinks, company and a mangled communal slice of red velvet cake in a plastic clamshell container for a friend of a friend of a friend’s birthday celebration at Frank’s Cocktail Lounge on Fulton Street near South Elliot Place. The email invite referred to it as an “old-man bar” and New York magazine’s review praised its “truly authentic kitsch,” which all just means it’s a bar not a marketing department’s approximation of an Authentic New York-Style Bargoing Experience. It featured basic, relatively cheap drinks, generous pours, a small stage in the back for bands, and a poster-based decor that appeared to have been selected and arranged by someone with as much design sense as your dad. I liked the plastic bowl of complimentary snack-sized bags of chips at the bar. Frank, a man in an electric blue suit, leaned on the wall near the stage and kept an eye on things. He ordered our group a free round and after we called our thanks, he nodded in our direction.

Bonita

• 243 Dekalb Ave. (between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues), Brooklyn
• (718) 622-5300
• Meal 45 of 52: Two baskets of chips with pico de gallo for the table ($11), an order of vegetarian tacos ($7.50) and two caipirinhas ($7.50 each).

Never in the illustrious 2.75-year history of the 52 Meals Project has a restaurant I wanted to attend been closed upon arrival. Until tonight.

I’d called ahead to get the hours for Cafe Glechik, a Russian place on Brighton Beach recommended by a Russian ex-coworker, and a woman had, in hesitant and broken English, claimed the hours of operation for Saturdays were “10 to 7,” which didn’t seem right. The place was shuttered and locked upon arrival; so much for the plastic bottle of cold Smirnoff in my bag (Cafe Glechik is B.Y.O.B.). Which lead to another first of the 52 Meals Project: in a strange and unfamiliar neighborhood, how does one find a decent place to eat when all appears closed or bodega-related?

Why, stop a stranger.

“How about . . . that guy,” Carmella said, pointing to a random pedestrian in the fast-moving crowd on the sidewalk of Brighton Beach Avenue. He was a solid man, stubbly and balding, with a furrowed brow, as one often is in this city while striding purposely forward with a briefcase. But after I excused our intrusion and explained our plight, he was happy to discuss our options in a thick, Eastern-European (Russian?) accent. The Russian restaurants on the Boardwalk are fancy, he said, and too expensive, which he defined as having entrees in the $20 range. He was keen to steer us toward a Turkish restaurant instead, but supplied directions for both it and the Russian joints before we parted ways. Carmella and I decided to give the Turkish place a try and biked off to Istanbul Restaurant.

Our waiter, Sohrab, had a mystical stare that seemed to pass through us as he took our orders and presented our dishes; we thought maybe it was a Turkish thing but probably more likely drugs. I had the baby lamb shish kebab, which arrived, as the menu promised “grilled to delight” while Carmella opted for the Izgara Köfte meatballs, which were actually mini meat patties. Everything was O.K., perhaps bland, and we weren’t flabbergasted; the presentation wasn’t engrossing, either, as both of our entrees arrived with the same slaw-based accouterments and garnishes, as if churned out of a cafeteria assembly line.

The view from our sidewalk seating of the bay was picturesque, with a mist in the distance and low buildings lining the water, strangely pretty and unlike New York, resembling Amsterdam, or California, we thought.

I notice now, at the bottom of the receipt, the slogan “Our place is yours until you are full.” We certainly were, but I can tell you there’s nothing better to burn down a belly of Turkish meats than to take an hour-long bike-ride through Brooklyn on Ocean Parkway, home to the nation’s first bike path, upon which we ignored the “bicycles permitted on west mall only” rule and discovered that Carmella’s newly installed dynamo-powered bicycle lights don’t work despite looking really cool.

Istanbul Restaurant

• 1715 Emmons Ave., Brooklyn
• (718) 368-3587
• Meal 43 of 52: shish kebab ($15.95), cheese roll ($6.95), Ispanak (spinach spread) $5.95 and two glasses of red house wine ($6.75 each)

I met Carmella this afternoon at the Red Hook Ballpark, where I’ve been once before, for a sunny, hearty lunch of grilled corn-on-the-cob and Salvadoran pork-and-cheese pupusas while kids played soccer on the field nearby. We biked over to check out the monolithic New York Port Authority Grain Terminal nearby, then pedaled up to Borough Hall for the Brooklyn Book Festival, where we learned many of the panels require free but advance tickets and waiting in really, really long lines.

Franny’s pizza reminds me of Grimaldi’s, which is probably some sort of massive insult to New York pizza-eating elite, especially because it’s a hipster joint in Park Slope. I’ve been meaning to go here since learning, in January 2006, that they don’t deliver. My pizza was up to snuff: thin, lightly charred crust, super fresh rounds of cheese, whole leaves of basil. It wasn’t segmented into slices so I ate the whole thing with a knife and fork, which involved a lot of scooting the pizza around on my plate. I wanted a fresh cocktail in the mojito family, so I tried one of the house drinks, the Sparkling Mint, which in addition to mint, lime juice and mint syrup, was made with the Champagne-like Prosecco and Cynar, for which I required a translation from my server. She described the Italian liqueur as having the flavor of “bitter artichoke”, and yet I still ordered the drink, and indeed, was refreshed by it and its strange bitterness. For dessert I had the panna cotta, which I’d describe as a creamy flan, topped with a grape syrup. Yum.

Franny’s

• 295 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn
• (718) 230-0221
• Meal 36 of 52: Sparkling Mint cocktail ($11), pizza ($15), panna cotta ($8) and espresso ($3.50).

I made my way in the cold rain to Fort Greene for dinner at Habana Outpost, which is just a block away from The Smoke Joint, the BBQ restaurant I went to earlier this month. I’d made a note then to return because Habana Outpost appeared to be a visual cross between a Havana bar and a music video by The B-52’s. I forgot all about it of course, but then Time Out New York did a mini writeup on it this week, so I figured someone was trying to tell me something and I’d better go.

Orders are placed and beverage collected at the counter inside, then you walk your meal ticket outside to the cooks inside the bright red mail truck parked in the restaurant’s courtyard. The grilled corn-on-the-cob sprinkled with crumbled cotija cheese and spices: so good. The Cuban sandwich, roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and chipotle mayo lovingly smooshed between two big pieces of toasted flatbread, was satisfying though nothing out of the ordinary.

Because of the rain, it wasn’t as hopping out there as it can supposedly get, though there was a D.J. and a few stalwarts huddled under the tables with umbrellas. In nicer weather, they hook up a blender to the stationary bike near the fence and you can pedal-blend your own margarita. There’s a bunch of other hippie crap, too: biodegradable plates and cups and silverware, a recycling station that’s just plain confusing if you’ve been drinking, and some strange restrooms that are like corrugated sheet metal outhouses located out back. On Sundays, they show movies outdoors, projected on the side of the building, but apparently not when it’s raining. I can’t imagine this place stays open in the winter, but if it does, it loses a full half of its charm.

Habana Outpost

• 757 Fulton St. (at South Portland Avenue), Brooklyn
• (718) 858-9500
• Meal 35 of 52: Cuban sandwich ($7.25), corn-on-the-cob ($2) and some beers.

I caught another free concert at McCarren Park Pool this afternoon with Beth and friends. As before, we delighted in spotting noteworthy fashions among the crowd both impressive and wayward, including bikini-clad ladies in cowboy boots, some dude in corduroy short-pants and two sets of sneakers featuring an eye-searing array of DayGlo.

After sitting around near the back of the pool to better people-watch and listen to the openers (one of which resembled the Polyphonic Spree and covered Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” to much delight and confetti), we moved front and center for the headliner, Blonde Redhead. As the crowd waited for the band to take the stage, the guy to the left with the shaved head and the foam earplugs was engrossed in EJ Hobsbawm’s potboiler, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality while the girl to the right wormed her way through a soduku. The guy directly in front of us, in shades and curly blonde hair, grabbed any beach balls that bounced his way, deflated them and snuck them into his backpack.

I’d heard of Blonde Redhead but hadn’t heard them until today, very lush in both lowercase and capitalized forms of the word, blending Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, with ethereal vocals by a self-admittedly drink-addled Kazu Makino (depicted below), and from the Pace brothers, washes of electric guitar with odd effects and solid, crafty drumbeats, plus a few odd synths and samples thrown into the mix.

After refreshments at a local bar, Beth, her sister Katie, their friend Brett and I were famished and spotting a restaurant name similar enough to the girls’ own last name made the selection of Raymund’s Place automatic. It featured an animal skull mounted festively on the wall, which pleased Beth, and served Polish home cooking. We feasted on potato pancakes, beet soup and pierogies, those doughy lumps of goodness I remember fondly from Parma, Ohio. The pierogies at Raymund arrive not only with a bit of sour cream, but a small side of bacon bits nestled in their own liquid grease: genius.

Raymund’s Place

• 124 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn
• (718) 388-4200
• Meal 32 of 52: potato and cheese pierogies with cucumber salad and beets ($6.75).

The Smoke Joint, a new BBQ place in Fort Greene, has been getting press lately over what “style” of barbecue it serves. Where another rib place would drawl on about Texas or Tennessee, the guys at Smoke Joint have seen it fit to reply, bluntly, that their BBQ is “Brooklyn style,” whatever that might be. Even after eating it, I don’t know, other than it’s cheap and delicious and I’d get it again. Juicy, spicy and tender summed up my “tips and bits,” which didn’t seem to be a hearty portion for $7 at first, but which probably works out to nearly a rack of ribs, without the bones and large fat deposits.

The styling of the place is as no-nonsense as the food: functional-basic décor, regular tables and chairs with a semienclosed, sort-of porch area sticking out into the sidewalk and napkins that appear to be the same tri-fold paper towels dispensed in restrooms. Even the soundtrack is straight-up classic radio: Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps,” the Raspberries’ “Go All the Way,” Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” and the 11-minute-plus version of Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.”

The Smoke Joint

• 87 S. Elliott Place, Brooklyn
• (718) 797-1011
• Meal 31 of 52: “Tips and Bits” ($7), a beer ($4) and BBQ beans ($3).

Mezcal’s, in Park Slope, has a dining area out back, on a fenced-in patio snuggled between two quiet apartment buildings. That’s cool.

Mezcal’s Mexican Restaurant

• 396 Fifth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn
• (718) 965-6050
• Meal 28 of 52: quesadillas rancheras ($5.95), black bean soup ($3) and two margaritas ($6 each).

Beth and I hung out at the Siren Musical Festival on Coney Island today, the highlight of which was M.I.A., who almost didn’t make the show because of her troubles securing a visa to re-enter the U.S., possibly due to her dad’s association with a militant Sri Lankan secessionist group.

She’s been a darling of the music critics with her electronica/hip-hop/Bhangra (lotsa tabla!) blend of bass-thumpin’ body-rockin’ singsong such-and-such and sometimes she reminded me of the saucy chant-rap of Missy or, uh, J.J. Fad, which I mean as a compliment. She performed her hits but I’m behind the times and didn’t recognize anything other than what I believe was a crawling cover of the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?” The crowd at large was deeply into the performance and its composition was likely among the most diverse at the Festival, lamented in recent years as the sort that gathers for whiny white-boy rock. This crowd, in which we were sandwiched tighter than panini cheese, experienced breakouts of freak-dancing, crowd surfing directly over our heads, on-point sing-alongs, religious ecstasy style arm flailing, beachball batting, and more pot-smoking that I’ve experienced at a concert in recent memory. Two crackers in front of us shamelessly sparked up and later became deeply entranced by their gallon jug of Poland Spring water, then did that thing where you become momentarily hypnotized by your own fingers.

Another guy in front of us sported a blonde Mohawk and was hoisting above his head a giant circa ’85 boombox, Lloyd Dobler-style; it wasn’t playing anything, he was merely hoisting it, as one might hoist a lighter at a particularly rambunctious rock concert.

M.I.A. busted out fresh threads for the occasion. If I had to describe them in one word, it would be “sequins.” Vest with gold-sequined shoulders. Tight pants fully spangled in black sequins. And Chuck Taylors coated in silver sequins; they glinted in the setting sun when she occasionally propped one up on the monitor speaker. She also wore a cap that she appeared to have swiped from the captain of Captain & Tennille, then adorned it with a red feather, and at one point she had her DJ pause so she could apply some lipstick and don a pair of Grace Jones-style sunglasses. There were some technical difficulties with a malfunctioning microphone and Siren’s requisite crappy sound doesn’t bring out any subtleties, but the DJ kept the beats flowing and M.I.A. rocked the mike with but only a few brief breaks. Good show. Check out some much better photos of it here.

The forced variety of my meals resolution obscures the fact that one of my favorite food groups is Latin American, usually Mexican. Also, I just don't eat a lot of it because the real deal is tough to find in New York. That changed today when I stopped by Red Hook Park to enjoy lunch from the Latin American food vendors there. Bienvenidos Red Hook!

Man, what a find. The vendors began ostensibly, about 10 years ago, I’m told, to feed the soccer players and fans at the adjacent field. These days (roughly May through September, on the weekends) most people show up for the food. Flanking the southeast entrance to the park are about a dozen vendors—Mexican, Ecuadoran, Salvadoran, Chilean—each set up under a makeshift tent, usually a temporary aluminum frame propping up a tarp or plastic roof, under which the food is prepared and distributed from long folding tables. Adjacent most tents are communal tables and chairs; upon placing an order, you’re asked, as you are in restaurants here, “to stay or to go?”

Selecting a vendor to patronize wasn’t difficult. I don't know if it's because I hail from a corn-intensive part of the country, but whenever I catch that robust aroma of a foodstuff featuring fresh-cooked corn, whether corn on the cob, cornbread or cornmeal mush, I get a little slobbery. That’s what drew me to one of the Salvadoran pupusa tents, which had its own array of aluminum foil-skirted griddles lined up on a folding table. The saucer-shaped treats of masa (corn dough) tortillas sandwich a selection of toppings, including beans, white cheese, a variety of meats, and unexpected vegetables, such as zucchini and loroco flowers. Each is made to order, so it takes shape slowly.

It was worth the wait for the nicely browned, bean and white cheese variety I ordered, crispy, delicious and filling, with the cheesy-beany guts creeping out the sides of the squashed disk. The elder woman of the tent who scooped the dough from a large bowl, rolled it into a ball, and passed it to the ladies on the grill to flatten, fill and fry. She formed the doughballs rapidly, without even looking at her hands or the bowl, while carrying on conversation with customers in both Spanish and English.

You could call this street food (and it’s certainly cheap and filling like street food), but the atmosphere is accommodating and communal like a picnic, and not just because it’s in a park and there’s some dudes playing soccer right over there. The spicy purple-cabbage slaw was resting in one of those 20-gallon plastic utility tubs with rope handles and my tangy-sweet cashew fruit drink was dispensed from a large picnic-style beverage dispenser.

If the vendors of Red Hook Park sound appealing to you and you are a New York local, I urge you to go while you still can. I’ve since read a Grub Street article from earlier this summer that reports the Department of Parks and Recreation will not renew the vendors’ permit because it would rather ferment a bidding war among commercial concessionaires, presumably the ones that serve the same food and drink at seemingly every street fair in New York. As it stands, September 8th will be the final day for the current vendors. This angers me and I am interested in expressing my displeasure to Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Julius Spiegel, ideally by punching him directly in the cock.

Red Hook Park

• corner of Clinton and Bay Streets, Red Hook, Brooklyn
• Meal 27 of 52: two bean-and-cheese pupusas, a side of purple-cabbage slaw and a cashew fruit drink ($5.50).

During the rolled-shirtsleeves vigor of the Great Depression, the WPA built a pool at McCarren Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, larger than three Olympic pools combined and able to hold 6,800 swimmers. Long since dry and in disrepair, it’s become a skateboarders’ paradise and a venue for free open-air movies and concerts. The scabs of aquamarine paint stuck to the ground still smell of chlorine.

Beth and I took the G train over there after lunch for a concert series featuring three bands we’d never heard of. It was free and the weather was sunny and breezy, so why not? Illinois reminded me of a more cheerful, less reverby My Morning Jacket. Dengue Fever arrived billed as ’60s-style psychedelic-Cambodian pop-rock, which made me expect a southeast Asian version of Os Mutantes, but their loungey background music inspired no body rockin’.

The main attraction, Man Man, cranked a rollicking set with barely a breath between songs that included speed-metal fist-thrusters, tribal drum-and-bass and lurching Tom Waits-style wailers with junkyard percussion, xylophone and gruff vocals.

During the quieter moments, Beth and I discussed Vice-style “Dos & Don’ts” in reference to the innumerable hipsters on hand, paying Joan Rivers-caliber attention to the vintage housedresses and ironic T-shirts. Hipster boys, those skintight jeans gotta go; although if anything about the sight of your Slim Jim legs makes us happy it’s that your sperm may be dying horrible boiling deaths and preventing procreation of yet more tightly trousered young Turks. Hipster girls, we love you but sometimes you try too hard. Take a look in the mirror before you go out and subtract one article from your Punky Brewster stylings, whether it’s that orange Pleather belt the width of a snowboard or those crocheted florescent yellow-green leg warmers.

And the tats. My goodness, what variety. It’s no more just stars, flaming skulls and "Winona Forever"s. One guy’s leg featured that iconic sketch from the cover of The Little Prince. A+, you lovably obtuse rascal. Another fellow’s lower-leg ink depicted the bugeyed head of a Boston terrier hidden among a swirl of paisley curlicues. I remain uncertain whether this is a Do or a Don’t.

At one point, as I stood in line for a frosty cup of Brooklyn Ale, I overheard a young couple behind me discuss the SummerScreen film schedule:

Girl

How about Night of the Hunter?

Boy

That has a lot of killing. I don’t know if it’d be good for the kids.

Girl

How about Purple Rain?

Boy

No, they shouldn’t watch that. They should be introduced to violence before they’re introduced to Prince.

What a fiasco for me to subway from home to Park Slope with insufficient planning. The A train magically became an F train south of Fourth Street, so I thought I could transfer to the M at Delancey Street. But there didn’t seem to be a way to take that train downtown from that station and regardless, I learned, the M only runs on weekdays. Criminy. I hailed a cab instead and for most of the ride the driver complained about the suicidal nature of New York City bicyclists as he attempted to ram a few of them off the road.

Lunch at Maria’s Mexican Bistro was spicy and tasty, once I got past a short and snotty young woman who squinted at me as if I were a cretin when I asked her how to get to the restaurant’s secluded patio. In fairness, it’s more of a walled-in garden area than a patio, but still. To show us she cared, the same woman took our order, brought us someone else’s entrées, then whisked them back and eventually got it right.

My vegetable tacos were made with what tasted like homemade corn tortillas and the vegetables were unassailably fresh. Good margaritas, too.

Maria’s Mexican Bistro

• 669 Union St. (at 4th Avenue), Brooklyn
• (718) 638-2344
• Meal 26 of 52: margarita ($6) and vegetable tacos ($6).

I started late getting out to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, then had to deal with an inoperable 1 train, a poky local A and a Q that puttered across Brooklyn like the Little Engine that Could. When I arrived at the end of the line, I had to pee something fierce but the crowds and the parade creeping noisily and colorfully down Surf Avenue blocked my way to the restrooms on the beach, so I headed into town to find a public restroom. I think it was Woody Allen who once said that you can’t consider yourself a true New York City walker until you know all of your options to pee en route. So true. A half-dozen blocks inland, wondering whether the alleys and tall bushes I passed would offer enough cover, I found a McDonald’s. It wasn’t an original idea and I had to wait in line for a solid 20 minutes.

By the time I’d returned to Surf Avenue, the bulk of the parade had passed, and there were only a few stragglers, mostly paunchy, tattooed sirens and a Neptune boasting an iridescent trident and more back hair than befitting the god of the sea. I walked the beach, ducking Frisbees and darting children, and waded in the surf for a spell. On the subway ride back, I found Sam[antha] had left me a voicemail about an impromptu mini karaoke gathering with her, Iggy and myself, so I called her back and we arranged to meet at Japas 55.

We sealed ourselves in our regular private room for a few hours. In honor of Katie, we poured one out and opted for a rousing group sing-along to one of her standards and favorite Elvis song, “Suspicious Minds.” Then we called her and sang directly into the phone, adjusting the lyrics slightly. You may know the part of the chorus that goes like this:

We’re caught in a trap
I can’t walk out
Because I love you too much, baby

We changed that last line to, “Because we love you too much, Katie.” (Later I learned she listened to our serenade while sitting on a PATH train lingering at the World Trade Center station, holding her phone to her ear for the length of the song as she laughed but said nothing, which may have caused a few fellow passengers to nervously shift away from the crazy lady.)

Surprisingly, Sam, Iggy and I had even more fun when we ventured out of our room into the higher-pressure but much, much cheaper common area. Because the photos I took of Sam and Iggy dueting didn’t turn out, let’s just say this is a photo of them, even though it’s actually two strangers we met who belted out heavenly harmonies, in Japanese, no less. It captures the Sam and Iggy spirit, at least.

After a few songs, Iggy ingratiated himself with a drunken Japanese family, headed by a Dad with a Walt Disney moustache and a wavering stance. Every time his teenaged son sang a song (in Japanese), Dad would walk around the room proudly stating, “That’s my son!” The kid was really good but Dad’s boasting would have soon gotten annoying. Luckily for us, by his second round of praise, Dad also refilled everyone’s mugs at his end of the bar from a pitcher of cold Sapporo. In addition, for our little group only, he bought a giant round of the most potent sake I’ve ever tasted, with the bite and mind-jellying vapor action of low-grade jet fuel. After a few unsteady sips, Dad had planted his elbow atop the bar to try and prop up his head on the back of his hand, only he kept nearly missing. It was clearly time for the family to go, so we engaged in hugs, handshakes and vague promises to email each other our incriminating photos. We immediately claimed as our own the four untouched glasses of sake that the family left behind.

Here’s a picture of Iggy taking a picture. It’s good his eyes are obscured because to look into them is to look into the diamond-hard eyes of Lucifer himself.

A time later, a small group of actor/singer theater types arrived and sat near us. One gentleman, short with a red ballcap, was so moved by Sam’s strong rendition of perhaps the best Power Ballad ever, “Alone” by Heart, that he earnestly and sincerely asked her permission to sing it, too. (“That’s such a great song!”) Sam agreed and it was eerie that this guy nailed all the high notes, which she appreciated but which kind of wigged-out Iggy and I, and probably Ann Wilson, too, had she been around and tanked on sake.

I know a lot of people in the book business and I would have guessed that the book release party I was invited to tonight, for a picture book about Brooklyn strongman Charles Atlas, would have been a prim, family-friendly affair decked out with cake, stuffed animals and furniture with a minimum of sharp edges. Well, there was a cake, shaped like Charles; I got a mangled piece with one of his eyes. But other than that it was a funtime Brooklyn apartment party with no kids in sight and lots of literate, attractive hipsters. Could Knopf have done better? I doubt it.

The party was in the slightly grubby Spanish segment on the fringes of Williamsburg in the basement of an apartment building. On our way there, before stopping at a bodega for Tecate, we passed the fruitcake factory depicted below, which I like to imagine is haunted. It sure looks that way in my grainy, ominous photo. When has there ever been great enough demand for fruitcake to necessitate an entire factory, one member of our band wondered later. A fair question, and possibly the reason the factory is abandoned and haunted, or so I’ve heard.

We learned the party building overlooked the Hewes Street stop off Broadway on the J line when we made our way through a thicket of bicycles and up several flights of ancient wooden stairs to emerge on the roof with a panoramic view of Brooklyn, and Manhattan in the distance, with various bridges and airplanes visible. We were suprised to learn the group of party people on the roof actually belonged to a different party somewhere in the building, so we eventually retreated back down the spooky stairwells to the basement.

In the den area, someone was projecting episodes of The Prisoner from a PowerBook onto a painted brick wall, interrupted intermittently by shadow puppets and also when a millipede skittered onto the floor from under a couch. The apartment’s resident cat pounced on the insect and ate half of it. As the other half of the millipede attempted to escape, someone stepped on it.

There was plenty of beer and liquor, wine and champagne, and some PathMark brand cheese balls that were too salty. And speaking of salty, I enjoyed this note, scrawled on an envelope and pinned to a wall near the bathroom.

Megan led us on a grand walking tour of Williamsburg that ended up lasting longer than expected when she discovered the restaurant she’d chosen for our group had newspapered windows and a curt notice of closure from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. So instead she led us further and deeper into Brooklyn, and after asking several pedestrians and drivers stopped at lights for directions, passing under the BQE several times by my count, learning there are actually two Grand Streets, plus making our way through a neighborhood of Puerto Ricans getting juiced up for their home country’s big pride parade tomorrow, we came upon Taco Chulo.

By then we were all hungry enough to gnaw off our own legs so it worked well that the food there is delicious and inexpensive, though we quickly sought to nullify the latter half of that value by purchasing a large amount of liquor. Any Mexican restaurant that offers tequila flights, as this one did, cannot go wrong by me, so it was a special bonus to discover the food was also great. Our chips came with the freshest salsa I think I’ve ever tasted. I had a vegetarian burrito, which can be pedestrian enough, but the starkly fresh pico de gallo punched it up, with shredded cabbage, sliced radishes and sautéed potato chunks livening the taste and texture of the refried-bean-and-avocado base. They’re as large as the ones at Chipotle but much more flavorful and textural and I didn’t feel like a McDonald’s-supporting stooge when I laid down my $7.50.

Here I am sitting at the table making a face about something. Definitely not the food. Very tasty, Taco Chulo.

Taco Chulo

• 318 Grand Street, Brooklyn (between Havemeyer and Marcy Streets)
• (718) 302-2485
• Meal 18 of 52: probably like a whole basket of tortilla chips ($1 per basket), a flight of tequilla (three one-ounce shots for $13) and a vegetarian burrito ($7.50).

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.

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).

Late one recent night in Brooklyn, Ned needed to get from one end of the Slope to the other, so he hailed a cab. Of all the taxis in all the neighborhoods in all of New York City, he walked into Philip Frabosilo’s, an overt Christian who preaches to his fares, dishing out smiley-face advice, miniature paperback bibles with orange covers and hand-labeled copies of his own documentary/biopic, Rolling for Jesus. He gave Ned a copy of this DVD after not charging him for the ride, so it was practically a given that it would be first-up in the rotation for Ned’s Movie Night II tonight.

Phil, who’s had his medallion about 37 years, has removed the partition from his cab and tricked out the interior with dozens of photos, inspirational messages and Beanie Babies, in order to utilize it as a “ministry for Jesus.” A big part of this is acting as a bread truck, stopping by breakfast cart vendors and relieving them of their day-old donuts and bagels. He loads the stale dough into plastic bags, crams them in his trunk and tools around the city donating them to the poor, if a fare happens to take him near a shelter or homeless person. In between stints preaching at storefront churches and missions, Phil takes his rods to the East River and fishes for striped bass. (Thank god he doesn’t eat his catches or attempt to multiply them because they’ve got to be among the filthiest, garbage-choked creatures in all the land.)

Most of Phil’s preaching is Praise the Lord boilerplate but when the camera catches him in slightly less scripted moments, he tosses out funny and confused metaphors, like how he’s “discovered that most New Yorkers are like clams, way down at the bottom of the ocean.” Phil’s married but spends more time at his Mom’s place, where she handles all of his taxi and ministry-related paperwork from her kitchen table and owns some of the coolest, most hideous wallpaper ever.

Most of the times he’s shown with his wife, it’s in 30-year-old wedding photos. She’s interviewed separately wearing a denim shirt that she appears to have embroidered and sewn a bunch of decorative buttons to. In the movie’s best line, she admits, in a statement phrased like a question, “I’m proud of Philip but I’m not [pause] proud of Phillip.” Earlier she’s admitted they have a constant “hot and cold relationship,” in part because Phil’s Mom lives in the same apartment building and demands a lot of his time, and in part because they ‘re both argumentative types.

From the documentary, here’s what would seem to be a typical exchange, best imagined with thick New York accents:

Phil

[proudly waves tube of heat-and-serve biscuits] I bought buttermilk biscuits.

Phil’s Wife

[defensively] For who? What kind of diet are you on?

Phil

These were three for a dollar!

Phil’s Wife

Yeah?

Phil

So I bought four of them.

Phil’s Wife

So who are they for? You buy me diet bread [angrily shakes loaf of “Light Style Wheat” at Phil] and then you buy buttermilk biscuits! Where is the logic?

For the requisite bad movie segment of Movie Night, Megan couldn’t locate a copy of Riding the Bus With My Sister on short notice so she settled for Gigli, which also features an offensive rendition of a mentally disabled person, in this case played by Justin Bartha as a watered-down Rain Man. An ultra-guido Ben Affleck mocks and manhandles the kid while getting cutesy/obnoxious with J-Lo in some of the most stilted dialogue ever scripted. After about 20 minutes in, two things became clear:

1. The Christopher Walken cameo would be the movie’s high point.
2. Ned’s head would explode Scanners-style if we didn’t play another movie fast.

So we put in Jesus Camp. You know those kids in the Middle East who are taught that it’s a good idea to strap on belts of handmade explosives to kill their enemies because their god (who apparently is not the same as their enemies’ god) will smile upon them and grant them afterlife bonus prizes of virgins, goblets of honey and all the free cable television they can handle? The evangelical Christians shown in this documentary are just as scary, if not moreso. In one scene, one of the adults even compares the teaching of their children to the education of young holy warriors. And these folks aren’t strangers living in a desert halfway around the world; they’re from Missouri and more powerful than bombs. The movie reminds that the growing ranks of this “religious right” helped bring our current president to office.

Cute as the devil and just as spooky, the spawn of the adult evangelicals attend bible camp, pray, attempt to convert strangers, speak in tongues, weep in religious ecstasy and talk in ways that sound well-coached. (There they are, praying for the souls of the unborn near the abortion clinic, just like regular fifth-graders.) They’re largely home-schooled and essentially brainwashed by their parents and teachers who keep them closeted from the world in their homes and communities. They’re not even allowed to read Harry Potter books (although some of them do anyway).

I have questions and comments for this film: foremost, what were the filmmakers’ motivations for making it? There is no voiceover, few text overlays other than a handful of stark facts about the staggering numbers of evangelicals in the U.S., and no commentary, other than occasional footage of Mike Papantonio, co-host of the Air America Radio program Ring of Fire, during a live show on evangelicals during which he takes their calls and intelligently knocks holes in their dogma.

Also, I’d be interested in seeing what happens, Seven Up!-style, once these kids hit puberty and/or a time when they might have an option to experience the world beyond all they’ve ever known. Do many of them wise up and leave it behind or do they go on?

Finally, as with any documentary, I wondered about what was left unfilmed or on the cutting room floor and what was magnified by selective editing. When we watched the deleted scenes on the DVD we saw the kids goofing around and playing like normal kids their age; but none of this made the movie, where they’re presented as robots.

Ned’s a Herzog fan (you may recall we watched that director’s Grizzly Man during Ned’s inaugural Movie Night) so we caught the first bit of The Wild Blue Yonder. Brad Dourif stars as a wild-haired, conspiratorial and shifty eyed alien, as if he’ll steal your wheel covers as soon as your back is turned. Then there was a bunch of NASA space travel footage cut in and I lost track. You can slag Herr Herzog as you please but you cannot deny the man takes creative risks and keeps his work always unexpected.

To cap the evening, Ned and Megan were shocked and appalled that neither Katie nor I had ever seen H.R. Pufnstuf (“Sid and Marty Krofft?” they asked, dismayed as we shrugged.) I’d try explaining it but mere words cannot do justice to something so surreal. The pilot episode from 1969 that we watched is an acid-tinged version of The Wizard of Oz, so at least I had a shaky point of reference amid the lumbering Muppets, an amphetamine-cranked witch, singing flute and rapscallion British boy.

For sustenance during this marathon session we ordered in from Song, a fine, very tasty and cheap Thai restaurant. I ordered my favorite Thai dish, tofu pad see ew, which is flat rice noodles, broccoli and bits of grilled scrambled egg in a sweet brown sauce. I would have tried the tasty-looking som tam grated papaya salad but like a lot of Thai food, it was rife with chopped peanuts.

Song

• 295 5th Ave. (between First and Second)
• Brooklyn, New York
• (718) 965-1108
• Meal 10 of 52: pad see ew ($6.50).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wanted pizza for lunch, but where’s the challenge in that, so I took the A train over to Brooklyn to get some Grimaldi’s. Although the pizzeria has been around in New York since the ’60s in various guises, Grimaldi’s has been in its current location since 1990, but under slightly different names, a result of the usual factions and legal squabbles of successful family-owned businesses.

They promote themselves as being “under the Brooklyn Bridge,” which they aren’t quite, but close enough, and they’re definitely a draw for hungry local businesspeople and tourists too. As I stood outside waiting for my carry-out, what appeared to be an entire class of rowdy grade school students attempted to enter at once. Just as quickly, they exited, followed by a surly fellow in a black Grimaldi’s T-shirt, who explained to their leader that eight of them could enter at a time.

Grimaldi’s is famed for its oven-fired pizzas, which you notice as soon as you step in the large square dining room. The stone oven is straight in the back, behind the buffet-like station where dough is tossed and toppings applied, and you can see the flames lick at the arms of the guys who shuffle the pies in and out of the coals.

The signature taste of these sorts of pizzas is a slight sootiness. Check out the nearly burnt crust in the lower-right corner of the photo. What’s great is that it’s gently charred on both sides, but not burnt to a crisp. The bottom is speckled with ash while the edges boast deliciously crisped blisters where the dough has bubbled up and singed. The crust is slightly puffed and crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside and not at all greasy. We’re talking about an inch wide on the edge all around the pie, which is my kind of crust.

Grimaldi’s also uses fresh mozzarella, placed in thin-sliced rounds on the dough, appealing in its fresh white color and chewy texture, in contrast to the greasy goo that blankets most chain-store pizzas. The mushrooms were fresh, the pepperoni thick, and a few basil leaves were sprinkled about, lending a tannic tang.

It’s not all fun times at Grimaldi’s. Lunch is very busy but dinnertime gets so bad they bring out the crowd-control stanchions to the sidewalk. The prices are moderately high; $12 nets you a toppingless 16" small pie. And there’s a laundry list of “no’s”—no slices, no credit cards, no delivery, no reservations, and no entire classrooms attempting to enter at once. But I can put up with it all because the place offers one of the tastiest pies I’ve sampled.

Grimaldi’s Pizzeria

• 19 Old Fulton St. (“under the Brooklyn Bridge”)
• (718) 858-4300
• Meal 24 of 52: small pepperoni and mushroom pie ($17.40).

The three-day Animation Block Party wrapped tonight at the BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn with a screening of 15 animated shorts, each under 15 minutes.

The biggest draw at the event, which focused on narrative works, was Henry Selick’s first solely computer-generated production, Moongirl, a fairytale of a hayseed kid who catches a jarful of fireflies. He’s spirited to the moon and meets its keeper, a girl named Lorelei who lights the satellite using the insects and an enchanted carousel. Selick made his fame as the stop-motion animator and director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, but the imaginative design and movement of his characters doesn’t translate well digitally. The large-headed kids of Moongirl are too smooth-featured and creepy, like those dolls whose eyes roll open when they’re held upright. Matters aren’t helped by dialogue stuffed with wide-eyed kid-talk clichés. As the credits rolled, I was surprised to learn the dreamy orchestral score was provided by They Might Be Giants in what’s the least They Might Be Giants-sounding music I’ve ever heard from the guys.

One of my favorite shorts was The Wraith of Cobble Hill, directed by Adam Parrish King, a film student who submitted it as the thesis project for his master of fine arts degree at the University of Southern California. He also submitted it to Sundance earlier this year and won a Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking.

It’s refreshing to have a production of wire, latex and clay mimic life instead of the surreal cartoon universes of Selick or Aardman. The antihero here is Felix, a Brooklyn teenager who lives with his apathetic, alcoholic mother. He’s entrusted by the owner of the corner bodega, from whom he shoplifts regularly, to watch the store while he’s away on vacation. The story’s quiet resignation, like something out of Raymond Carver, is a tiny epiphany of trust and duty.

It’s filmed in 16mm B&W on a Bolex, the Fisher-Price My First Camera setup of film students, but the smudged, vignetted look of the picture works in its favor, contributing to the settings of a wet winter and bleak urban interiors. King handled the sound design, too, which is amazing, especially the music and voices Felix hears muffled through the walls of his apartment. There’s some wonderful incidental dialogue, too, as Felix and his friends climb a fire escape to their building’s roof to drink 40s and he debates the merits of Space Invaders with his incredulous friends.

Sprinkled among more staid or experimental works, the funniest short of the evening was The Moustache Contest by artist, animator and comedian Mike Hollingsworth, a black-and-white stick-figure production. It revels in the ridiculousness of four sea creature buddies who challenge each other to grow the baddest-ass moustache. You can watch it here.

The most informative short and one of the most beautiful was McLaren’s Negatives, a 10-minute documentary about the films of Norman McLaren, directed by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre using footage of and narration by McLaren, as well as his own animation techniques. These involved drawing directly on film, producing thick-lined rotoscopes, even generating sawtoothed music by hash-marking the soundtrack portion of the physical filmstrip as one would transcribe notes.

Girls with various combinations of dyed hair, tats, fishnet tights, short skirts and attitudes forcibly copped from Joan Jett. On roller skates. How could I pass up a chance to see a Gotham Girls Roller Derby match?

It was the Bronx Gridlock versus the Brooklyn Bombshells at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, so I took a nearly two-hour subway trek out there, spending most of my time held up by construction-related slowness and lounging around the bowels of the West Fourth Street station waiting for a train that never arrived. (Note to self: the B train doesn’t run on weekends.)

The venue, Schwartz Athletic Center, was the most architecturally sexy college basketball arena I’ve ever sat in. It used to be a grand 4,000-seat movie theater called the Paramount and the high, domed ceiling and parts of the upper walls still drip with golden rococo scrollwork and reliefs. During basketball games, an organist plays the giant four-keyboard Wurlitzer that was built to accompany silent films. The theater’s plush chairs have given way to bleachers that flank the court and seat 1,000, which they did tonight for the sellout crowd. Most of the fans rooted for Brooklyn, although there was a guy down in front hoisting a yellow posterboard that read “Bombshells’ Mom Smells” on one side and on the other, “We’ve got Bronxitis!,” apparently a loud, obnoxious affliction.

The announcer warmed up the crowd and introduced her color commentator, a confused-looking sportscaster from a local Fox affiliate. Each team member was called forth individually by name and catchphrase onto the rink, a rubbery blue covering placed over the basketball court with an oval track marked in theater-style pathway lights. All the derby girls choose their own numbers and names, half of which are puns; I was partial to Anne Phetamean and Penny Larceny. Although it seems to be a semiprofessional affair, I overheard a fan mention that the teams have to pay for the venue, don’t get a cut of ticket sales, and must foot their own insurance and equipment fees when they join the league. So it’s kinda like A League of Their Own, but with more piercings.

Before calling the start of the bout, the announcer offered a prediction in earnest that “both teams have a similar skating style, so it’s really going to come down to a mental game.” That was funny to me but I was in no position to agree or disagree, as I’m unfamiliar with the sport. Gameplay and strategy were lost on me despite a full explanation in the program, illustrated with diagrams of team positions and referee penalty signals. I learned that both hands over the ears, for example, is the refs’ call for “whining.” The basics of the game resemble NASCAR racing: round and round an oval track with most excitement inspired by crafty maneuvering and spectacular wipeouts. There’s elbowing and checking aplenty, girls tumbling down and hitting the ground with a sweaty slap or bowling over some poor photographer on the sideline. Shoving plays an expected defensive role and doubles as an offensive maneuver to advance a teammate into a better pack position.

The halftime show was performed by a tall, skinny, frizzy-haired blonde, clad in aqua-sequined hotpants, a pink bikini top and abdominals visible from the cheap seats, who hula-hooped to the club remix of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Then both team’s cheerleaders preformed a dance routine, one group in Bettie Paige hairdos and black Lacoste-ish shirt-dresses, the other in red kerchief do-rags and tan Dickies coveralls.

By the time the two 30-minute halves concluded, Brooklyn had lost a heartbreaker to the Bronx, 69 to 87, but most everyone in the stands had a rowdy good time reveling in the badass splendor.

I lathered up in sunblock for a brief afternoon constitutional at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for the Renegade Craft Fair.

I think that “Renegade” in the title is a ruse to spice up something not normally considered exciting, like calling contact bridge FULL CONTACT BRIDGE!. All of the goods on sale from the 200-some vendors did have a indie, Williamsburg sorta flavor—lots of ’50s patterns and designs, lots of punk and DIY—although it was almost exclusively stuff for ladies: purses, T-shirts, jewelry, stuffed animals and knit things.

It was a blazingly hot and humid day, and being in a park featuring little more than softball fields and not much shade, most of the vendors operated from small booths, in lean-to tents or at tables under dainty handheld parasols, all of which served to shield an array of Victorian-alabaster skin, vintage ’60s sundresses, tattoos and Bettie Page haircuts.

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

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

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

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

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

Do I love Brooklyn because of or despite the fact that every fifth girl has the haircut of Karen O? Is it fond memories from my unspeakable past? Or is it that I always seem to be drunk every time I’m over there?

I’m not sure, but the place lifts my spirits. In Williamsburg, at least, there’s a warm blend of youth, beauty, oddly Midwestern architecture, and the Manhattan skyline, the sight of which at night is like one of those dreams where you’re floating above your own body.

I was in town to catch the Found Footage Festival, which I first saw last summer on the grassy playground of an automotive high school. Tonight it was held at Galapagos Art Space, which is disguised as a dark bar, complete with an abstract, scrim-like artwork hanging over a large pool of water near the entrance, and small spotlights with colored gels over them in the restroom, so you feel like you’re peeing on the set of a Broadway musical.

The Festival is a combination of rummage-sale finds, industrial and in-house training films, exercise and instructional tapes, infomercials, smudgy dubs of home movies, religious shows and public access television, and other random bits. Like last time, two of the festival’s curators (who collect and edit the footage), Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, were onstage to banter back and forth between segments and interject Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary.

The footage was 95% new, opening with a perennial classic: Winnebago sales video outtakes starring Jack Rebney, world’s angriest RV salesman. There’s a short version online, but I must warn you that Jack has what you might call a potty mouth.

Another great sequence tied together unfortunate and surreal public service announcement tapes featuring celebrities, including Henry Winkler as the Fonz telling kids it’s “not cool” to be touched in your “special place,” Alvin & the Chipmunks and Alf warning against the dangers of smoking reefer and Beverly Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley cautioning against improper handgun usage.

The best was a disturbing but sincere how-to video from the late ’80s with instructions on how to hypnotize women into sleeping with you, if you happen to be a gawky gentleman in stone-washed jeans. The narrator for this video, who sits in a chair before a crackling fireplace, resembles Satan.

After work, I took the F train over to Park Slope in Brooklyn and had fun escaping from the aboveground Fourth Avenue/Ninth Street station, which resembles a haunted castle. I was on my way to Ned’s, who resembles Keith Haring¹ and is the brother of a friend, Megan. In addition to the siblings and myself, Katie showed up. Until they left to go see Munich, some sub-letters of Ned’s from Amsterdam were hanging out, too: Antony, Rosa and their white yarn-haired dog, Max. Actually, Max didn’t go to the movie, instead staying with us and moping around for lack of attention after we stopped petting him.

After we determined Franny’s, one of the area’s most-lauded newish pizza joints, didn’t deliver, we pored over a flurry of takeout menus and settled on Aunt Suzie, Ned’s favorite Italian restaurant. My eggplant Parmigiana was rich and tasty! They were out of tiramisu (blast!) but the replacement cannoli were mighty good; Aunt Suzie doesn’t fill them until they’re ordered, so the shells stay nice and crisp.

We convened at Ned’s primarily to watch Trapped in The Closet, R&B musician R. Kelly’s “hip-hopera,” which began its deformed life as a music video, expanded to several and is now available in 12 “chapters” on DVD. It is the foresworn duty of Ned and Megan to promote Trapped in the Closet as the next so-bad-it’s-good Rocky Horror Picture Show-like cult classic. I think they’re on the right track; it’s already been mocked by South Park and Mad T.V. (“Trapped in the Cupboard”).

Man, is it ever bad. It’s like a poorly acted community theater play without dialogue, only R. Kelly’s monotonous describe-the-action song lyrics and the rare sound effect. He stretches a lot on these rhymes, pairing “Beretta” with “dresser” at one point, or when he can’t think of one, rhyming the same word. He also has trouble pronouncing the “th” in certain words, like “baffroom.” He plays the lead character, Sylvester, as well as “the narrator.” The plot, a convoluted tale of infidelity, is pitted with gaping holes, unlikely coincidences and a cast of characters that grows larger and more caricatured until it includes a woman named Bridget, which necessitates the rhyming inclusion of a midget and subsequent appearance thereof.

We decided we hadn’t enough punishment and watched the whole thing again with director’s commentary, which is R. Kelly sitting in a darkened room, smoking a cigar and watching his film on a widescreen. He turns around frequently to mug at the camera, explain what’s going on in a particular scene and why it’s genius, and talk about the “cliffhangers” that join the chapters, one of which involves a woman brandishing a spatula, which he speculates is a cliffhanger because it’s not a cliffhanger, an anti-cliffhanger, if you will. The whole mess culminates in a comment along the lines that “the whole world is trapped in a closet” and a threat that he will continue releasing Trapped in the Closet chapters until he is stopped.

We followed this up with the documentary Grizzly Man which is about Timothy Treadwell, who lived among the giant grizzlies of Alaska under the guise of protecting them, even though they live in a national park and exist in numbers great enough that it’s legal to hunt a certain percentage of them each year. Treadwell captures frequently amazing footage of the bears, particularly a scene of two of them rearing up and attacking each other on a beach, where they resemble extremely tall sumo wrestlers. But most of it is Timothy’s self-videotaped ruminations on himself and the bears, which he’s given cutsie names, and scenes of him getting really, really close to them and then acting surprised when they lash out. Not to ruin anything for you, but Treadwell and his girlfriend end up getting killed and eaten by a bear, their remains, collected from the ground and the euthanized bear’s stomach, filling four garbage bags. Idiots.

We agreed that if we would have been in high school, our assignment at this point would have been to compare and contrast the two movies, focusing on the narcissism of the protagonists. Instead, Katie, Megan and I took the F train home because it was like 3 a.m. at that point. Good times.

Aunt Suzie

• 247 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn (Between Carroll and Garfield Place)
• (718) 788-2868
• Meal 6 of 52: eggplant Parmigiana with salad ($11.90) and half a cannoli ($2.90 for whole cannoli).

¹ Katie and I had each met Ned once before and I had mentioned to her earlier the Keith Haring comparison. She wasn’t in a position to agree or disagree because she didn’t know what Keith Haring looked like. Then, when we arrived at Ned’s apartment, what should he have hanging at the end of a hallway but a large, framed Keith Haring print. That still doesn’t help out Katie with what Keith Haring looks like, but maybe it suggests Ned is aware of the connection. I don’t know; I forgot to ask him. [back]

Last night, I went over to Brooklyn for the Found Footage Festival, part of the Rooftop Films Summer Series. The festival collects videotapes found in the garbage, bought at garage sales and thrift stores, and submitted by disgruntled editors. What’s presented is about 20 straight bits or collages made from the footage, spanning every video genre: home, music, exercise, promotional, how-to and industrial training, taken mostly from the medium’s heyday in the ’80s.

More than 300 people showed up, most sitting in the provided rows of folding chairs, while latecomers took up the ground in back atop blankets. The film was shown under the dark skies of Williamsburg, on a screen erected in the grassy side yard of Automotive High School, the auditorium of which features amateur oil paintings of cars through history, and which boasts a shiny, full-scale model of an internal combustion engine right around the corner from the restrooms.

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, two curators of the festival and the guys who cull through hours of footage to select the bits played at the festival, hosted the event. They interjected jokey comments during many of the segments and enacted cheesy radio DJ-style banter in between. They were self-deprecating, too, pointing out multiple times the clips were “stupid” and “irritating.” Maybe, but some were very funny.

The series kicked-off with the music video for Mr. T’s lovingly gruff song, “Treat Your Mother Right!” followed shortly by a festival favorite, Federated Mutual Insurance Co.’s on-the-job preventative-safety video, “It Only Takes a Second,” depicting lousy actors getting maimed and otherwise injured in comical ways.

Nerds in the audience appreciated the clip from the 1989 “Secret Video Game Tricks” viedo which cheerfully delivers the infamous 30-guy code for Contra¹ and the excruciatingly long level select cheat for Ikari Warriors². It’s hard to believe kids had to get information like this from instructional videos like these (and books) in the pre-Internet glory days.

The greatest crowd reaction came from some snippets of exercise videos featuring elderly celebrities including Ed Asner defeating the “stress monster” and Murder, She Wrote-era Angela Lansbury clad only in a towel and taking a relaxing “mini massage with aloe lotion.” Just about as many people shrieked and averted their eyes during that segment as they did during one that innercut three disparate videos: footage from the “best costume” portion of a “Mrs. Wisconsin” contest, a spirited demonstration on how to fillet a live fish, and instructions for using an erectile-dysfunction penile implant, its pump action activated by squeezing the scrotum.

I also liked the instructional video for Wendy’s grill cooks in 1989 featuring a magical rapper and hamburgers with animated faces rhyming about their levels of doneness. Another crowd pleaser, billed as a 1983 Brazilian Board of Tourism video for Rio de Janeiro, features a young, pre-star Arnold Schwarzenegger mangling Portuguese pronounciation and getting frisky with the local ladies. “My favorite body part is the ass,” he blurts at one point, making me wonder why no one cited this fine piece of filmmaking during his grope allegations in 2003.

When I first read about the Found Footage Festival, I wondered if there was any connection between it and one of my favorite magazines, Found, a scrapbook-like collection of salvaged print and photographic detritus. There isn’t a direct connection, but the magazine’s editors did send the festival’s curators a home video purchased at a Michigan garage sale, which was then incorporated into the festival’s footage. Entitled “Memorial Day 2000,” it documents the exploits of a bunch of rednecks vacationing with their RV, drinking, puking, mooning, mud wrestling, cursing, lighting things on fire, jumping through said fire, and other fun hillbilly activities. Apparently, a few people in this video are currently kindergarten teachers and not amused about the ongoing public displays of their rowdiness.

Closing the evening was a flurry of curse-heavy outtakes from a promotional Winnebago video featuring Jack Rebney, the world’s angriest RV salesman.

Good show!

¹ Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start. I’m told that any fan of console video games in the late ’80s has this sequence, known as the Konami Code, forever burned into his brain. [back]

² Up, Down, A, A, B, Left, Right, A, B, Up, A, Down, Right, Right, Left, B, Up, Left, A, Right, B, Left, Right, A, Left, Up, A, Down, A, Right, Left, A, Start. [back]

Since seeing it last summer, I’ve wondered about the history behind the parachute jump tower at Coney Island. Sure enough, in today’s City Section, the New York Times printed a brief history of the landmark in an article by Jake Mooney entitled “Famed for What’s Up Above, Fixing What’s Down Below.”

The 262-foot-tall tower, originally designed to train military paratroopers, opened as a ride at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. After the fair, the owners of Steeplechase Park bought it for $150,000 and moved it to Coney Island. The park shut down in 1964, and the parachute jump stood unused on an increasingly desolate stretch of land. The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s decision to designate the tower a landmark in 1977 was overturned, but the status was restored in 1989, and it stuck.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation completed a $5 million restoration of the tower in 2003 and last week, the Coney Island Development Corporation announced a winning design for the “Parachute Pavilion,” a shopping and visitor center that would be located under the jump, which won’t be reopened as a ride. I have mixed feelings about this project, which is a small part in the much larger effort to revitalize Coney Island as a tourist attraction. The place surely is dumpy and worn, but therein lies its seedy charm. Scrubbing it down and gussying it up for the tourists will only stamp out the spookyness and magic.

I forged out into the bitter cold to catch the 7:30 p.m. performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Overall, it was very well done: genuinely funny dialogue (it’s a comedy, after all), minimal yet appropriate sets, with cleverly designed lighting and projections to recreate the Forest of Arden, where most of the play takes place. The director knows his stuff; he’s Sir Peter Hall, former head of Britain’s National Theatre and a Tony award-winner for the original Amadeus.

Unfortunately, however, his 22-year-old daughter played Rosalind, the female lead. In general, I didn’t like her overexcited performance, with its breathy phrasing and needless extension of the last syllable in each sentence. She reminded me of Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare In Love or Emma—just a bit too dramatically British, so filled with wide-eyed wonder for the world that she’s in danger of bursting and besmirching the front row with a syrupy goo. On a positive note, her initial meetings with her interest, Orlando, were well played with the physicality of a young couple hesitant in love.

Those scenes, along with some of the hammier roles (particularly Touchstone the jester and Jaques, the world-weary curmudgeon who gets the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech) reminded me well that reading Shakespeare’s plays, as so many are forced to do in high school, is an exercise in futility. They were never meant to be read; they are meant to be seen performed, with everything Shakespeare never specified: detailed stage direction; pauses, timing and phrasing; body language, gestures and interaction; the use of props and song; and many other nuances. Even if 400-year-old unrhymed iambic pentameter makes you squinty with incomprehension, the best performances of his plays reveal the dialogue through action; you may not understand all the words, but you get the gist through the performance. This version of As You Like It certainly fit the bill in this respect.

I was also reminded that for every phrase Shakespeare gave us or popularized, he provided others that still stir the mind. On the greatest-hits side, in As You Like It alone (one of his “lesser” plays, no less), we get “laid on with a trowel,” “motley fool,” “we have seen better days,” “neither rhyme nor reason,” “too much of a good thing” and “for ever and a day.”

But we also get fresh observations on life and love (Rosalind’s “how
full of briers is this working-day world!” and Orlando’s “What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?/I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference.”), brief and beautifully turned descriptions (“desert inaccessible”), ruminations on growing old (“my age is as a lusty winter/Frosty, but kindly”) and quips I’d like to add to my everyday speech. On the subway, for example, I yearn to shout, “Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens.”

I went to the theater directly from work, and not having had any dinner, my tummy was making angry noises ’round ’bout 10:30 when the play ended. I went back to Manhattan to Diner 24 (102 Eighth Ave. at W. 15th Street). The décor is Midwestern retro-pop, with portions of exposed, rough stone wall reminding me of the Big Boy restaurants from my childhood. The place specializes in “comfort food,” classics like meatloaf, chicken pot pies and something called Disco Fries. I had the Cuban sandwich and it was O.K., but a bit dry and unflavorful. The highlight was the caipirinha I drank, which swept my memories momentarily back to Brazil.

I left the diner around 1:00 a.m., and on my ride back home, I sat across from a bum stretched out sleeping over four seats stickered with the MTA’s strictly ornamental “Priority Seating/for persons with disabilities” labels. He was perched precariously close to the edge, and like clockwork, at the W. 66th Street stop, he rolled right off and gently hit the floor. (Being New York, no one in the car gave this sudden development any more than a passing glance, if that.) But there were no injuries to this motley fool, because at that point, with him splayed confusedly on the ground, I could see he was wearing no fewer than two pairs of pants and at least three sweatshirts. He lay there silently for awhile, as if pondering this cruel fate, then got back up, stretched out again across the seats and fell back asleep.

I met up with friends for happy hour drinks at Anytime, that cafe I hung out at in Williamsburg earlier this month after seeing The Life Aquatic. Mmm...$1 Pabst Blue Ribbon-in-a-can. And $1 Heineken pints! And four plates of appetizers for under $15! Brooklyn, I luv you and your frequent cheapness.

Several more friends were supposed to have shown up, but they all bailed with excuses of the weather. It was pretty nasty, one of the first days of significant snow accumulation for the city. (Sorry, Ohio.) Temperatures were punishing, in the low 20s, but feeling about half that because of the Jack London-style wicked winds penetrating our very souls and causing us to stoop and shiver uncontrollably like some old rummy on a bender.

The allure of The Trash Bar, a Williamsburg dive, can be summed up in three words: free tater tots. They’re not just any tater tots, kept neither in a bowl on the bar nor under a heat lamp. When you order a drink, you ask for your tater tots, and the barkeep will pop them in the deep fryer. Three-and-a-half minutes later, they’re served up piping hot, a pile of them heaped in a small plastic basket lined with tinfoil and accompanied by ketchup still in the plastic Heinz squeeze bottle.

Those are some tasty tater tots, crisp on the outside, rich and potatoey on the inside. Also, after midnight, cans of PBR are $2, which isn’t such a bad deal, for New York.

I was there tonight to listen to Pillow Theory, a band featuring Kelsey, a good friend of Andie and Katie. After my trip on the L and walking 10 blocks through cold, misty rain, I got to the bar around 9 p.m. and had a beer while watching National Lampoon’s European Vacation on a soundless TV above the bar. I was supposed to meet up with the rest of my group for the musical entertainment and it didn’t occur to me that I had to pay a $5 cover charge and enter through a curtain into a seedy back room to watch the band. I did this, getting a 1.25-inch square black stamp on the back of my right hand that inexplicably read “Staple This To Your Face.” The back room was darker and seedier than the front room (but not as seedy as the restrooms downstairs), with a dizzying disco ball, seats that had been removed from cars serving as comfy chairs, and a tiny open bar in the corner that had more PBR and gins-and-tonic.

Kelsey’s band played for about an hour and the hipsters bobbed their heads appreciatively. They rocked out, as I remember them doing the last time I saw them, with Kelsey’s versatile voice ranging from strong and clear, to falsetto, to screaming. Watching the drummer was amusing, his Vishnu arms battering his squat kit with vigor and accuracy.

Afterwards, we moved back to the outer barroom area, got our tater tots and had some more to drink. I called a car for my trip back to the mainland and the speed with which the driver showed up (under five minutes) and his agility timing the lights on 10th Ave. in Manhattan was impressive. Got back around midnight, happy and sleepy.

Sherry and I attended the 7:00 p.m. showing of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou at the Loews on W. 34th Street. You’ll like it too if you’re a fan of director Wes Anderson’s previous films, particularly The Royal Tenenbaums, and prefer Bill Murray in his latter-day Lost In Translation and Rushmore-style roles.

There’s childlike wonder in the way Anderson films scenes on a giant set featuring a multistory cutaway of Zissou’s ship, the Belafonte, as well as the short, stop-motion animated scenes of fantastical fish, like the Crayon Ponyfish (a rainbow-colored seahorse), the Hermes Eel and the elusive Jaguar Shark, which Zissou is hunting because it ate his best friend. It’s tough not to describe Anderson’s movies as quirky, but they are, with their painstakingly detailed sets and framing, somewhat stilted dialog, abundant use of whip-pans and handheld shots, and a wispy excuse of a plot in which an oddball assortment of characters can interact.

The soundtrack, as in Anderson’s other movies, features burbly electronic noodlings by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, while the usually varied mix of obscure rock from the ’60s and ’70s has been supplanted by renditions of classic David Bowie songs played on acoustic guitar and sung in Portuguese by actor Seu Jorge (from the amazing City Of God).

Afterwards, we went on over to Sherry’s old hometown of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and met up at Anytime with some of her friends, all of whom were Cleveland expatriates, so much of the conversation centered around our lives there. After having a bit to eat and drink, we walked over to the Antique Lounge, on Berry Street. Prior to 2002, it was a password-protected dive where you could score some blow, but it’s been renovated as a low-key, quiet place featuring antique velvet couches on which to lounge, affordable drinks, a pool table and a good jukebox. I liked it, although the place wasn’t as packed as it reportedly gets on weekends and it was like an icebox in there.

Around 3 a.m., Sherry’s friends decided they’d had enough to drink and needed to return home to make some prank phone calls, so she called a car for them. Then Sherry and I had another drink and stuck around talking until our songs had played-out on the jukebox, then made the long trip back to the island around 4 a.m. with a bunch of other animated, bleary-eyed hipsters on the L train.

Remember when you were in Cub Scouts and the highlight was when you and your dad got to design your very own Pinewood Derby car? It turns out that, like bowling, Pinewood Derby is another low-impact sport that’s been revitalized and semi-ironically embraced by the hipsters.

Tina’s sister Lauri and her husband Jason invited me tonight to watch the finals of the Brooklyn Gravity Racers which, on paper, sounds suspiciously like the Pinewood Derby.

Well, it’s exactly like the Pinewood Derby, except all the cars are built and designed by arty types. Quite a few of them were still shaped like motor vehicles, but the best ones managed to truly warp that naked block of pine. The best in this class included an actual taxidermied NYC rat hot-glued to the base car model; a car body designed to resemble a piece of sod on top of which perched little toy birds with motion-activated sensors that made them chirp when you walked by or when the car was in motion; and one resembling a human foot.

Wacky they might be, but the designers seemed dead serious about the competitive nature and painstaking detail of their vehicles. I spoke with a guy named Bill, whose car, which I unfortunately didn’t see, resembled a sperm. I asked him, in my patented semiserious way, if he had included a flagellum, and it turned out this was a major stumbling block for him. His original design featured a tiny mechanical flagellum, but it made the car unexpectedly flip over on occasion, so he had to settle for a flagellum-like fishing lure, except that it was still mostly florescent green because the white paint he had carefully applied did not adhere to the rubbery surface.

Checking out the dozens of cars stacked neatly on their shelves before the race was the highlight of the evening, because let’s agree, racing the cars down that steeply banked track (shown in the crappy photo above) not only takes five seconds, it’s of interest only to whoever designed the cars, and sometimes not even then. Fortunately, there was a bar right next door with $5 Guinness on tap.

On a side note, all those attractive, funny, smart, single women that you can never seem to find anywhere? It turns out they all hang out in Brooklyn. Man, nobody tells me anything.

This evening, Tina, a friend from Cleveland who now owns her own design studio in New York, invited me to her sister’s husband’s art exhibit, The Smile Project, at the Green Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The project involves two squat, bulbous robots, Neil and Iona, that interact with each other and the audience, by moving their heads, swiveling their bodies around, cycling an animation of a mouth on the TV screens that serve as their heads, and occasionally speaking. They were wired to a computer off to the side and naturally I was interested in how they worked from a technical standpoint, but the artist was in demand, conversation-wise, and I never got to speak with him.

It seemed timely to see a robot exhibit since I had just read about the MIT engineers who developed a prototype robot that walks on water, much like a water spider. I mentioned this to several people in the gallery, but no one seemed as excited about it as I was. I did get to speak a lot with Tina’s friends, most of whose names I’ve forgotten, but it was a funny coincidence that her friend Ben was a web designer, so we could talk about shopping cart systems and CSS.

We hung out for awhile, drinking Bud from cans and wine from those red plastic cups. I briefly met Tillamook Cheddar, Brooklyn’s most famous dog-artist, outside her new store, which is right next door Green Gallery. She had her own photographer, who was crouching on the sidewalk talking sassy fashion shots, but was a bit standoffish to anyone else who wanted to pet her. I think the fame has gone to her head.

Afterwards, we went to Sea, an Asian restaurant designed to resemble equal parts ’60s bachelor pad and Buddhist temple. It was just about too hip for me, but I was impressed by the reasonable prices (at least when compared with Manhattan)—bottled imported beer was $4 and my sautéed eggplant and tofu dish, seasoned with garlic and sweet basil, was $7.

I was initially alarmed that one of Tina’s friends who joined the dinner party was wearing a watch that appeared more expensive than the entire contents of my closet and also had a sweater tied around his neck like he was Gatsby or something. But it turned out he’s a real estate lawyer, so I unexpectedly had a lot to talk to him about. He was funny too; after we’d been seated for dinner, the first thing I made sure I asked him was what his favorite lawyer joke was. An oldie but a goodie: “What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.”

I hardly had a chance to speak with Tina, so I agreed to make the long haul up Long Island to visit her next weekend and catch up. Our group split early, but I had a voicemail on my cell from Andie to hang out with her and her posse back on the island. Waiting for the subway, a frizzy haired gentleman was bobbing his head, tapping the time and vigorously slapping out a sweet version of the T. Rex power ballad “20th Century Boy” on his acoustic guitar, for which I dropped a dollar in his case, the first time I’ve appreciated subway music enough to tip.

After receiving further instructions on the night’s festivities via my cell at Union Square, I went up to Brother Jimmy’s where Andie, Katie, Erika, Sam and Carolann were enjoying post-BBQ beverages at a sidewalk table. Eric joined us a bit later and we all partook of a fishbowl filled with a potent, pineapple-based alcoholic concoction, as well as a small, rubber alligator.

This afternoon, Katie, Megan, Sam and I went down to Brooklyn for the 4th annual Siren Music Festival, a day of free concerts at Coney Island. That’s a long-ass ride for us islanders, even on the “Express” Q train we took, but everyone was chatty and in good spirits, and the ride didn’t seem that long. Plus, the bonus of those outer-borough trains is that they travel aboveground, so there’s scenery to view.

Although I’d never been to Coney Island before today, it’s seemed to me I had, in a dream; it’s one of those places. It’s the lights, the neon and the seediness. A lot of the signage, sideshows and rides look as if they haven’t changed since Weegee was there in the ‘30s, photographing the summer crowds on the beach and the boardwalk.

The place was set up perfectly for the concerts because you could easily enter and exit either of the two stage areas whenever you wanted. It was a good thing. I had said earlier that I wanted to catch the Fiery Furnaces at 2:00, but after a few songs, I felt let down by my choice. I thought we’d hear some sassy popsongs from their debut album, Gallowsbird’s Bark, but the band stuck with the crowd-disgruntling, keyboard-heavy, prog-rock opuses from their new album.

So Katie and I bailed to ride the Cyclone and we didn’t regret it. A hand-pained sign above the track reminds passengers to keep dibs on their hats, glasses and wigs. The guy operating the hand brake was lumpily fat enough to qualify for one of the freakshows. We waited several revolutions to get the front seat of the first car and had enough fun that we rode twice — after your $5 first-ride fee, you can cough up $4 to save your current seat for a second ride.

In between the other afternoon acts, none of which we had any interest in hearing, we got hot dogs at Nathan’s. That was exciting, but not as exciting as Megan, Katie and Sam doin’ Tha’ Butt.

We ate our food and walked down the boardwalk, where we appreciated the suave salsa stylings of Santos & The Romantics. The Atlantic was frigid but not enough to deter the kids and overweight adults; we stuck to wading barefoot in the shallow surf.

Megan wanted to see Electric Six at 5:30 and it was a real crowd-pleaser. During guitar solos or breaks in the songs, Dick Valentine, the lead singer, danced around like an imbecile, did sit-ups and stretches, and occasionally fired off brief non-sequiturs ([pointing into crowd] “You, sir, resemble Bjorn Berg.”). He introduced new songs by noting, “This is a new song. It’s gonna blow yer dick off,” and got the crowd rowdy by playing plenty of hits, especially “Gay Bar,” a timeless tale of a guy, a girl and a gay bar.

We saved our spots for Mission Of Burma, which played from 6:30 to about 7:30. They were the oldest group at the festival but they rocked-out. There were some strained high notes and flat singing, paired with a pretty lousy sound mix, but they’re essentially punk, so that sorta stuff doesn’t matter. Plus they had a mighty energy and an endearing sheepishness — at one point between songs, they stopped to take snapshots of the crowd (“We’re such fucking tourists,” said Clint Conley, the bass player.). And they played my three favorite songs, the goosebump-raising “Trem Two” and the gleefully angry, crowd-shoutin’ anthems “Academy Fight Song” (an R.E.M. concert-cover staple in the ‘80s) and “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver.”

After Burma, we scouted out some beers, which proved harder than expected. We settled for bottled Heinekens poured into waxed coffee cups and caught the last half of the Death Cab For Cutie set, which began at 7:30. We spent the better part of two songs muscling through the thick crowd to get a closer view of the stage, but I was happy to catch two of my favorite songs, “Photobooth” and “The Sound of Settling.” I dig their earnest singing/songwriting, awash in tales of drunken nights, summer love and heartbreak.

The music was perfect to end the evening. The sun had set, the breeze was cool, the crowd was sandwiched between the Cyclone on one side, coaster cars regularly rattling by with riders screaming, and on the other, the slowly rotating, 150-foot-tall Wonder Wheel lit-up in pink and green neon.

Afterwards, we tooled around and brown-bagged some more beers that we procured from a bodega. We drifted by the vendors in the now-deserted stage areas and checked out the cheap T-shirts and sunglasses. After much searching, Katie tracked down a funnel cake.

We took it down to a bench on the boardwalk to eat and watched an informal volleyball game on the beach. Some folks next to us were playing salsa music on a tinny boombox.

It may have been the dark, the beer, or both, but we swore we saw Ric Ocasek walking down the beach with a woman who was clearly not his wife. Before we could investigate, it started raining and there was an exodus to the trains, which we joined.

Tired and sweaty, I got back to the apartment at midnight, although it felt much later. There was a lot of sand in my shoes.