Category: Brooklyn

Oscars – I thought Jon Stewart did pretty well. The clip montages weren’t that good; they felt like leftovers from the writers’ strike contingency plan.

After seeing the singers/actors from “Once” sing their song, I really want to see their movie. Plus, I liked how Marketa Irglova was brought back on stage to give her speech. “Entertainment Weekly” reports that the move was due to Oscars’ show executive producer Gil Cates’ thinking she ought to get her say, with Jon Stewart’s doing the heavy lifting on-screen to escort her back on the stage. (Actually, I felt awkward that it seemed that most of the women who co-won their Oscars with men got cut off by the music too much on Sunday night, so it was nice that Marketa Irglova got to be the one woman who had a full say to the audience!).

Slate Video on the Amazing Resemblance of the 2008 Presidential Election to the last (fictitious) presidential election on “West Wing” (presuming that this would be a Barack Obama v. John McCain election) – the resemblance to the [Jimmy Smits] v. [Alan Alda] election is indeed eerie!

Frozen yogurt in the City – I’m so behind the trend!

Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman making Roasted Tomato Soup, with canned tomatoes! (plus guest star Mr. Tomato Face in the linked video).

NY Times’ David Dunlap on the “Heritage Trails” sign at the World Trade Center, still in present tense in referring to the site as it was on 9/10/01.

Plus, Dunlap on the 100th anniversary of the PATH – what a history that I never knew about.

NY Times’ Sewell Chan commenting on the amNY article on whether the NY accent is disappearing (by amNY managing editor Rolando Pujol). Well, I may not say “dem,” “dese,” and “dose” like I used to, but my Brooklynese hasn’t quite disappeared, try as I might to lose it. I do agree with Chan though – television may have an influence on homogenizing the accent – but I also think that education as a role too. Because of compulsory education, you’d think that kids would learn to speak in a certain manner. But, accents take a good ear to notice too sometimes, so who’s to say for sure if the NY accent really gone? Hmm…

Regarding that other NY thing – “Law and Order” this Wednesday:

The cops arrested two very yucky murder suspects – the white upper middle class meth addict/prostitute and her man, the Hispanic guy who thinks he’s a ladies’ man in having raped a girl. Detective Lupo resorted to trickery to make the arrest, which didn’t pass judicial (Constitutional) muster. On the law side, ADA Rubirosa may have used a little feminine charm to get the skeevy witness to cooperate; her bit of feminine charm may have gotten her unwanted attention from a creepy male juror; Exec. ADA Cutter manipulated the situation, which pissed off Rubirosa, but instead of going to the judge about creepy juror’s approaching her, she didn’t stop the case from going to verdict.

How much of a conscience does Cutter really have? (or, rather, how far would he go to get convictions, if it means risking the safety of your ADA?). The flirting between Cutter and Rubirosa was cute (well, Cutter is cute), but if he’s serious of more than just a crush on Rubirosa – well, he’s got some serious making up for the mess he made this time. (i.e., why on earth do you keep a creepy guy on your jury, just because you think your ADA’s attractiveness is going to win over said creepy juror?).

Plus, DA McCoy made a trip up to the Bronx to make a deal with the Bronx DA, who evidently doesn’t quite shared McCoy’s desire to get justice against rapist/murderers (at least, not without a deal). Man, is L&O alternate universe NYC weird; it feels like real NYC, but is so not real.

Last but not least – watching the New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Tuesday night on Channel 13/WNET’s Great Performances — that was interesting stuff. I liked the touches of the national anthems, the “American in Paris” and the overture to “Candide” (with the tribute to Leonard Bernstein) – I have a fondness for Gershwin and Bernstein’s hits. I’m still kind of amazed that NY Times’ Anthony Tommasini watched the live streaming on-line broadcast (at 4am?!), but his review was a good read. Plus, he writes:

What the Philharmonic played was just as important as how it played. Here [conductor Lorin] Maazel’s tame choices represented missed opportunities. Presenting the “New World” Symphony made a point, of course. As Mr. Maazel explained, the piece, commissioned by the Philharmonic, was a Czech composer’s symphonic ode to America. And there were valid reasons to include Gershwin’s sassy, jazzy “American in Paris.” Someday, Mr. Maazel said, maybe someone will compose a piece called “Americans in Pyongyang.”

If only he had chosen to include even one short work by a living American composer, perhaps an Asian-American composer. Because the orchestra stuck to staples, the classical music art form came off as unthreatening. New music, by definition, is destabilizing. To have a composer taking part in the program would have been a reminder that the heritage is living, breathing and unpredictable.

Instead Mr. Maazel began with Wagner’s prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin.” Wagner’s career rather undermines the case for the humanizing powers of music. Here was a nasty man who somehow wrote sublime and stirring operas.

Still, the concert was historic. And the image of a major American orchestra as a sleek machine under the control of an imposing conductor was nicely countered by the second encore: the overture to Bernstein’s “Candide,” which, as Mr. Maazel explained, was played by the musicians without a conductor as a tribute to its beloved composer.

After the final encore, an arrangement of a wistful Korean folk song, “Arirang,” the audience stood, cheered and even waved farewell to the musicians. Many of the players visibly choked up, and waved back.

It’s a start.

NY Times’ Daniel J. Wakin’s articles on the concert and the rest of the Philharmonic’s (and the accompanying press’) time in Pyongyang have also been good reads. I’ve been impressed by the whole thing; kind of historic! Although the long term effects remain to be seen, we can hope that art can help thaw cold relations or start new relations between nations.

The reaction to the NBC presentations for this week hasn’t been too pleasant. Reuters’ reaction to the “Knight Rider” movie – “A painfully long car commercial.” Well, yeah, the pacing was not very good and I couldn’t quite care about the characters, but was it a commercial? Too many commercials cutting into the action of the movie, I thought. (and it doesn’t help that the commercials with KITT were slightly more entertaining than the movie). Plus, if the most amusing moment was seeing the characters at the “Las Vegas” casino (NBC synergy!) — it really doesn’t bode much for your movie-as-a-tv-pilot (being hokey worked for the old series; dare we say that we’re an age of welcoming hokey tv? I mean, beyond that in reality shows? I don’t know, sadly, and ratings aren’t revealing much).

David Bianculli says that NBC will soon be known as “Nothing But Crap,” considering its offering of Really Crappy Reality Shows (and the not-very-good Knight Rider movie). I can’t say that this level of crappiness wasn’t long in coming for NBC – sure, “The Office” and “30 Rock” made it better, but the strike derailed NBC’s progress. Too many Law & Orders (the aging original and the ridiculous amount of spinoffs), an aging ER, a pitiful Bionic Woman, and Heroes needing help, stat… well…

NBC still has to keep going with the rest of the year. But is a tv season a “season” as we know it anymore? NY Times announces NBC’s plans for “an endless season” – somehow comparable to FOX’s set up of early fall/late fall/spring releases of shows (which never really impressed me because I still don’t end up very impressed with FOX’s offerings anyway). Apparently, NBC wants to find a way to branch out to other media (Internet, mostly) and get stuff out ASAP:

After months of speculation, NBC confirmed on Tuesday that it would sidestep the annual star-studded “upfront” presentation for advertisers and hold a series of client meetings with media buyers instead.

Perhaps more important for television viewers, the network said it would embrace a year-round prime-time programming schedule, jettisoning the frequently criticized practice of saving most shows for the traditional September- to-May television season.

For several years, the broadcast networks have gradually replaced repeats during the summer and winter months with some new shows, mostly of the unscripted form. NBC’s announcement appears to be a more dramatic step in that direction. The network is already preparing several shows for the summer months, including a second season of “American Gladiators” and a broadcast version of the singing competition “Nashville Star.”

Get ready for “the endless season, ” said Gene DeWitt, chairman and chief executive at DeWitt Media in New York, when the broadcasters “launch programs when they’re ready and promote them when they’re ready. ”

“There are many more opportunities to introduce programs to viewers over the course of a year than over the course of a few weeks in September,” Mr. DeWitt said approvingly of the NBC plans.

The fourth quarter is often the most important of the year for many marketers like retailers and auto makers, Mr. DeWitt noted, but under the current system many of the broadcast shows they are offered from October through December are new and untried.

If more shows are brought out earlier in the calendar year, he said, “you’d have a track record of their performance.”

“We’d have more reliable rating information,” he added, “so we won’t be going into the fourth quarter blind.”

A 52-week broadcast schedule may make it more difficult to track the hits and flops, Mr. DeWitt said, but “it’s the way of the world today; things move faster and we all have to keep up.”

Perhaps you want to move faster; fine. But if you present crap to us, it’s still crap, no matter how quickly you get it on-line or on tv. Have we not learned from the writers’ strike? We (the viewers/purveyors of entertainment) need content – preferably quality content. Or, is that just me wanting something with some quality (even if it’s hokey/campy)?

Personally, I’m not very good at moving faster anyway.

Oh, and breaking NBC news: Jesse L. Martin may be leaving Law & Order! Say it ain’t so! But, I understand if he wants to move on; just don’t be a stranger!

What strikes me as creepy: “Mysterious creatures found in Antarctica.” Look, as long as these are not the aliens posited by “X-Files” or the “Stargate” tv series, I’m all okay – it’s just how evolution can create really weird stuff. Really. Nature is both beautiful, diverse, and plain weird.

Having seen “Michael Clayton” on Monday, I still prowling the web for the reviews (’cause, really: George Clooney’s The Man!) – interesting reading, considering what one may think what the movie’s really saying. Slate has the review of the DVD: Patrick Radden Keefe writes on the movie’s observations on the state of the legal profession [hyperlinks removed]:

Clayton features terse dialogue, a pair of professional killers, and one exploding Mercedes. But beneath the expertly deployed suspense lies something more interesting: an indictment of the mercenary universe of white-shoe law firms and a devastating—and unusually accurate—look at the demoralized lives of the lawyers who work for them. Granted, George Clooney’s Clayton is an improbable 17th-year associate [link from the article, which is a NY Observer article by David Lat – interesting article, I thought, when I had first read it]. But when he says, “I’m not a miracle worker; I’m a janitor,” he could be speaking for the whole profession. [….]

As Clayton, Clooney has the raccoon eyes and zombie mien of a lawyer sucked dry by the job. Look around next time you’re riding the subway, or waiting for your order at Starbucks, and you’ll spot the type. [….]

In Michael Clayton, as in real life, the firm doesn’t employ people so much as consume them, creating a culture in which personal or familial obligations always take second place to work. Like a disproportionate number of lawyers, Clayton is divorced, and in one touching, sadly recognizable scene, he drives his 10-year-old son, Henry, to school, completely lost in his own thoughts as Henry tries to engage him in conversation.

As Karen Crowder, U/North’s general counsel, Tilda Swinton plays the villain. But when we glimpse her alone—while she dresses for work or has a panic attack in a bathroom stall—we realize she’s just as lost as Clayton. “Who needs balance?” Crowder says, when an interviewer asks how she reconciles her demanding job with the rest of her life. “When you really enjoy what you do … there’s your balance.”

When, in a nod to thriller convention, Crowder starts calling in professional hits, it strains verisimilitude. But only just. Her fidelity to the job is absolute—she has nothing else, after all—and she offers a frightening specter of “zealous advocacy” taken to its logical extreme.

Crowder is so tightly wound that she raises an interesting question: Do the studies showing high rates of depression among lawyers tell us something about the profession or the people who go into it? Crowder is a neurotic and a perfectionist; in that respect, she’s the kind of lawyer you want on your team. (She will worry so that you don’t have to.) But if that’s the self-selecting type who migrates to the law, it seems unfair to ask them to be happy as well. “I fear that happiness isn’t in my line,” Benjamin Cardozo observed in 1933, blaming “the disposition that was given to me at birth.”

Whatever the explanation, Michael Clayton offers an only slightly exaggerated portrait of a profession undergoing a kind of slow-motion existential crisis. It does so at a time when in the real world, midlevel associates are dropping out in droves. [….]

Ultimately, Michael Clayton is a movie about redemption—but also about naiveté. As Michael tries to retrace the trail of incremental compromises back to his original decision to become a lawyer, to find the point where his profession and his principles diverged, you wonder why it has taken a manic breakdown and an exploding Mercedes to prompt such basic self-reflection. As Marty Bach, the firm’s unflappable founding partner, Sydney Pollack offers a much-needed counterpoint: a corporate lawyer who loves his life and his work. With his townhouse and his trophy wife, Bach is not lonely or alienated like Michael or Karen Crowder. Nor is he disillusioned about the work he does, if only because he had fewer illusions to begin with. [….]

“The case reeked from Day One,” Bach acknowledges impatiently. “Fifteen years in, I’ve got to tell you how we pay the rent?”

So — do we prefer entering the profession without illusions, or can we accept becoming disillusioned? Can we handle the compromises we make along the way of developing a career? And, surely, it’s not just the lawyers facing these dilemmas? Just my rhetorical questions.

This article in the past weekend’s Week in Review in the Times “The Charisma Mandate” – is it enough for a candidate to have charisma? There are pros and cons to just examining a candidate’s personality. I have to agree with this article’s quoting historian Doris Kearns Goodwin: the ideal candidate would have both charisma and experience/expertise. Kind of hard to find that in one person, but we can wish for that, right? Enter with our eyes wide open. Or, maybe risk being disillusioned. Not sure.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen for Time.com on “Does Obama have an Asian Problem?” Well, it would seem to be that Hilary Clinton has the majority of APA support; but then again, it’s not that monolithic – perhaps the APA vote has more swing to it, and AsianWeek endorsed Barack Obama on the Democratic ticket (and John McCain on the Republican ticket).

Sunday – tea at Sweet Melissa Patisserie‘s Park Slope location.

Sunday night – watched the latest Knight Rider movie. What possessed me to watch…? My explanation: sentimental 1980’s nostalgia and the temptation of seeing how bad it was. Mostly lame, as expected; some thoughts:

Lots of driving around (what else?), and pointless dialog as the daughter of the inventor of (new) KITT had to go rescue her kidnapped dad. Sarah is herself a scientist and a prof at Stanford, but apparently is reduced to being the Damsel in Distress; too bad because she had some personality.

Character actor Bruce Davison does the simple job as the Inventor of (new) KITT.

The (new) Knight Rider, Mike, is the long-lost-son of Michael Knight; Mike lacks the camp factor that Michael had. Mike’s mom had more personality. The Return of actor David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight… umm, not much could be said about it because he didn’t do much.

Val Kilmer as (new) KITT, replacing actor Will Arnett (because Arnett is contracted to do Ford or Chevy (or whatnot) commercials and they weren’t pleased that he wanted to be KITT) sounded bland (or irritated that the NBC folks weren’t paying him more; who knows?).

TV Guide’s Matt Roush’s review made sense about how not fun the Knight Rider movie was. As a pilot for a prospective series, it didn’t make me want to watch more. Sorry, NBC. Not unless you show me that you as a network care about telling a story and having some interesting characters.

Monday – watched “Michael Clayton,” starring George Clooney. Really strong movie. Clooney as Michael Clayton, a son of a NYC cop; a Fordham Law grad; a former Queens ADA; a former federal prosecutor – and he’s now stuck as a Special Counsel at a Big Firm, Kenner, Bach & Ledeen. As Special Counsel, he’s not a Partner (despite having been with the firm for way too long) and he’s not on any litigation stuff – nope, he’s The Fixer, The Bagman, The Janitor. It’s starting to drive him nuts; being with The Firm already took the mind of his colleague, the firm’s litigation partner, Arthur Edens, played by Tom Wilkinson. Edens is a manic depressive, and he went off his meds and made a scene (to put it mildly) during the deposition for a major case for the firm’s client, UNorth. UNorth makes agricultural products that caused health problems for the farmers that made the stuff.

Other stuff: Tilda Swinton plays Karen Crowder, UNorth’s General Counsel – who really crosses some legal ethics boundaries (umm, Karen, no one said that murder is involved in trying to force a settlement for a case. Really!). Firm Partner, Marty Bach, is played by Sydney Pollack – pretty convincing as the partner who has his inklings about how ugly things are but pressing on with business. Bach sends Clayton to clean up after Edens, but Crowder makes things difficult, as the Difficult Client. Lives are at stake. Can you keep a conscience in the middle of such ugliness? Hmm. Clooney as Clayton seemed a bit stilted in some of the reading of lines, but he did such a strong job as the burnt-out lawyer – the one whose life is pretty much falling apart, but somehow he keeps going.

What a movie. Kind of makes one think twice about joining a Big Firm. Manola Dargis in her NY Times review of “Michael Clayton” makes the point of how there were no real good guys in the movie, but Clooney… well, he embodied the closest thing to what was left of Good in the corrupt corporate world. Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman puts an even Good vs. Evil opinion of the movie. (although I still have a hard time believing that a corporation would get its hands dirty in retaining assassins, but hey, who knows? If you’re crazy enough to pay so much for Big Firm Lawyers, what’s to stop you from hiring other ugly sorts?).

Okay, so I’m behind on watching the current season of “Law & Order” (yep, Season 18, people!) – but managed to catch a scene or two. Cute little scene here on NBC.com – (a minute and a half in), where Executive ADA Cutter and Detective Lupo are bonding. Lupo’s apparently taking an evening law student — at the Alma Mater Law School! We got mentioned! High Five, people! A Law & Order character’s one of us! (ok, I wasn’t an evening student, but how often does the Alma Mater Law School get mentioned in pop culture items?).

As I previously noted, the ripped-from-the-headlines plots make the series almost laughable, but the characters – for a show that claims that it’s not about the characters – sorry, it IS about characters. What else would really make me care about a show – characters make the plot work. So, in a way, it has this season. Legal ethics, moral issues – characters being just a bit amusing. Man, is Season 18 turning out to be pretty interesting or what?

Time’s Lisa Takeuchi Cullen posts her observation how APA’s of the 18-25 age range don’t nearly vote as much as we’d like and she embedded an old and strangely campy video from the 2004 Presidential election to encourage APA’s to vote (you can tell it’s old because the video needs to update its collection of APA celebrities; no offense to Russell Wong and Ming Na, but neither of you are quite up on the A-List these days):

This more updated one is less hokey and straightforward:

I liked how the multicultural one has some of the stars from “Ugly Betty” – getting more diversity in our celebrities, are we?…

An “Auntie” of mine passed away this week (it’s a complicated genealogical relationship – the closest “western” description would be my mom’s younger sister’s husband’s cousin.) Her wake ended up being on Valentine’s Day. The nicest thing there was the three frames of photos throughout her life, from the wedding in Jamaica, the ones raising the kids (and a shot of the living room from the old house), and trips to China and back to the Caribbean. She had a good life and a loving family.

Afterwards, P- and I went to Randazzo’s in Sheepshead Bay. Even at 9 PM, the place was pulling a 35 minute wait for their glorious seafood, today being served on actual tablecloths. Normally, if you did not know better, you would first think it is cafeteria-style Italian with its linoleum floors and plain decor, but you would be very wrong. Calamari is not stereotypical here. Their secret red sauce that accompanies the plate is the star. It is thick and rich and must have some seafood stock to pump it up. The advertised cherry stones on the half shell were fresh, meaty, and full of flavor. We shared the lobster fra diablo, which was more than enough for the two of us. We saved some lobster pieces and red sauce for dinner the next night, which we used to cover our own pasta, licking our fingers. Recommended for the seafood, but you’ll have to go elsewhere for dessert. Some reviews gripe about how it isn’t Olive Garden, and that they serve 1950 style 8 oz Cokes out of the cheeky bottles, but deal with it – it’s inherently Brooklyn.

Afterwards, we did a flyby and visited the old digs in Sheepshead Bay. Much has changed, but much has stayed the same. There were a few new buildings, including a large Petco. We had one of our usual late night shopping dates at the nearby Stop N Shop, and we bumped into some people that we knew from NYU alumni (making my random meetup quota for the month). Maybe we’ll move back to the neighborhood.

Are Americans reveling in a culture that’s anti-intellectual? Probably. Education’s not that valued, and (bad) reality tv is probably going to be the downfall of western civilization. Well, that’s my theory anyway.

Kind of creepy: the discovery of a solar system that looks a lot like ours…

Is it a good sign that the writers are done with their strike but can’t remember what they were working on prior to the strike? Hmm. Maybe that’ll mean some of the bad stuff that was on prior to the strike can be scrapped for better ideas.

“Is PBS necessary?” NY Times Charles McGrath says “yes” to NPR but “not quite” to PBS tv. — well, I think it’s still necessary, but as McGrath notes, the Powers Behind PBS aren’t too good at keeping the PBS identity distinctive. I don’t listen to NPR, but I do like Newshour on tv — so I think PBS is still better than some stuff on cable.

Slate on romantic poetry, or Robert Pinsky’s past selections anyway – always good stuff.

And, as another post-Valentine’s thing, TV Guide did a photo gallery of “TV Lovers We Will Always Love” (thought it was amusing that they even included Agents Scully and Mulder – who for years tried to convince people that they were not lovers; then again, their relationship kind of entered the soulmate arena, considering how much they went through (alien conspiracies kind of make relationships too hard), and Entertainment Weekly did an interesting and broader photo gallery of “Pop Culture’s (Fictional) Lovers.”

Sad but true – on Sunday night, it’s the return of Knight Rider on NBC. Good lord, they’re not even using KITT’s old voice. Scary enough, they’re bringing back David Hasselhoff? I’m having one of those 80’s flashbacks now, aren’t I? The previous returns of KITT and friends haven’t been that spectacular (well, the original show wasn’t that spectacular either, but so that goes): the tv movie “Knight Rider 2000” killed off Devon, the principled boss of Michael Knight, and was about a weird year 2000; plus the short-lived (single season) syndicated tv series “Team Knight Rider,” which had a (what else?) a team of talking cars. One character was a possible daughter of Michael Knight. I actually watched that show and thought that it needed … improvement. Having one more go at the Knight Rider franchise? Sigh.

Well, I’m more vaguely curious about the return of The A-Team than a return of Knight Rider.

Mmm…! Chocolate…! Apparently there’s more to milk chocolate than we realize.

As a follow up, Facebook has become more user friendly, having indeed making it easier to leave it, in case one would be so inclined. (and, no, I’m not there yet).

“Pride and Prejudice” on Channel 13 – Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy!… [drool]…

Not that long ago, FC visited the new 2nd Avenue Deli. NY Times’ Frank Bruni went to the 2nd Avenue Deli with Ed Koch, former NYC mayor; Nora Ephron, writer and film director; and Laura Shapiro, culinary history writer. Bruni notes that there will always the diversity of opinion on what is authentic Jewish food, but:

And I realized that we weren’t so much eating in a specific restaurant as passing through a communal storehouse of memories, on a bridge of babkas from the past to the future.

Ed, the most deeply rooted New Yorker among us, said that at the Second Avenue Deli, “I feel very much at home.”

“I walk out,” he said, “and I feel warm, no matter how cold it is.”

Watching some Conan O’Brien late Wednesday/Thursday night – his first show with the writers back. Matt Lauer’s a guest, and some laryngitis is preventing him from talking – so Conan’s letting Matt mime (good Lord…). I thought writer-less Conan during the writers’ strike was hilarious, so hopefully he’ll continue to do well with his writers back.

Yeah, we’ve living in interesting times; kind of dangerous to talk about politics at work, but it’s kind of like a sport half the time. You go to the watercooler after the primaries and analyze the results, as the linked article notes – kind of like how people become Monday night quarterbacks after the football games – and the chitchat either detracts from work or makes us bond and be happier at work (umm, or not).

And, in time for Valentine’s Day: Time’s art critic Richard Lacayo on the color of red, re-posting a post he did from last Valentine’s Day (since he’s on vacation). I liked his selection of various paintings that has such strong red.

Plus – romance in the Metropolitan Museum of Art or other museums, Lily Koppel observes for this NY Times article:

Andrea Bayer, a curator in the department of European paintings, where she has worked for 17 years, is planning an exhibition, “Love and Marriage in Italian Renaissance Art.”

“The museum experience is very relaxing — it’s about wandering, taking it in, allowing for an expansiveness of time,” she said. “Couples tend to gravitate toward art depicting domestic scenes. They connect with them in a way that is easier and less detached than looking at a religious painting of the same period.

“People try to get married here all the time. They come here with a minister or justice of the peace, but security has to dissuade them.”

For singles, it appears to be about the hunt. Museums allow people to explore, looking for something, or someone, that moves them.

“Is there anything hotter than seducing your potential next lover in the European sculpture garden of the Met in N.Y.?” is the way a Facebook group called “Museums Are Sexy” describes itself to potential members. “Or telling your paramour how you feel in front of Venus herself. If nudity, eroticism and nymphs remind you of how much you love museums, tell us about it here.”

I like dogs in general, but I have a soft spot for beagles. Maybe it’s their incredible sense of smell, even compared against other canines, or maybe it is just so cute, but there is so much in one little package.

P-‘s sister’s beagle Shelly can tell when I’m anywhere near her house, and then I always get a warm welcome upon my entrance. (I’m conveniently overlooking the other dog, Mimi the mini schnauzer, who is also real cute and affectionate, but quite frankly not that bright). While Shelly doesn’t normally speak, she can generally communicate what she needs, be it food, snuggling, or being taken out for a walk. When it’s cold outside, there’s nothing more comforting than having a lap full of beagle taking a nap.

Yesterday’s win by Uno the Beagle (a.k.a. Ch. K-Run’s Park Me In First) at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show rivals the Giants’ win over the Patriots. It wasn’t the favorite coming in, being that the poodles were coming on strong, and that a beagle had never won in its over 100 year history. But Uno played the perfect game – a 10 score from the judge, and well-timed baying to the capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden that aroused a standing ovation at his win.

Like that other famous beagle Snoopy, if you give them a chance, they will figure out a way to make you happy.