Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant noodles, passes away at age 96. Obviously the stuff, or maybe his determination, preserved him.
I remember living off of a case of Cup Noodle during a pretty lean month. Yes, it is only a part of a balanced diet – it’s best to add stuff to boost its nutritional value. Thanks for making something hot and tasty only 3 minutes away.
Happy 2007! Merry 12th Day of Christmas! Best wishes to all!
Actually, if it were up to me, it’d be Christmas all year long. I love the lights and the feelings of peace and goodwill.
Meanwhile, the weather has made it far from Christmas-sy or New Year-ish. Is it me, or have El Nino and Global Warming joined forces to ruin winter in the Northeast? Ohmigod, doesn’t anyone realize that Al Gore might be right?…
PBS – Channel 13 here – re-airing Ken Burns’ Civil War. Episode One ended with this amazing reading of a letter of a Union soldier who died at Bull Run – his words of love to his wife, swearing to be with her again in the afterlife, and belief and pride in his country. It’s timeless stuff. The documentary still has a powerful effect – the feelings of war, loss, love, and politics remain. Great stuff as ever.
Tuesday night – season premiere of “Beauty and the Geek.” It’s an amusing reality show that either finds ways to transcend or perpetuate stereotypes. Can’t be sure which, but it’s a laugh to watch. The guys may be smart, but they find ways to be dumb. One’s a Trek fan who takes his Trek way too seriously (I don’t own a Starfleet uniform and I don’t identify myself as a “Trekker” – I prefer “Trekkie” because my fan-ness is that much lighter – those who do own the uniform and called themselves “Trekkers” – well, I think they are just way too much for even me). One plays a Star Wars band – but seems to function well enough as a person. One’s a Harvard guy who may turn out to be the cute one. The gals – well, one’s identified as a “sorority girl” – so, I’m assuming she’s in an actual college and not bimbo. Some of the beauties otherwise seem to be perpetuating “dumb blonde” thing, but we’ll see – the show’s a good watch and something of a “Social experiment” that “Survivor” couldn’t quite play up (well, as for “Survivor” – I still salute Korean-American lawyer Yul for winning with some integrity intact).
Thursday night – I was watching “Ugly Betty.” Great episode. As she leaves for a new magazine job, Betty reflects on her early days at “Mode” magazine, and how she met Henry, the guy from Accounting. I really am beginning to like this show – very well done.
And in other news in the tv front: the upcoming season premiere of “24” – Jack is Back – Jack Bauer returns to the States after several months of torture by the Chinese government (man, they don’t exactly make Asians look good in this, do they?); and, as usual, America is vulnerable (civil liberties? We don’t need no stinkin’ liberties! Umm – well, what’s Jack defending this country? Just our lives, I guess; we’ll figure out the legal ramifications – umm, later, huh). On a Trekker/Trekkie note: Alexander Siddig, Deep Space Nine’s own Dr. Bashir, may be playing a villain against Jack. Emphasis on the “may” – alleged terrorists on this show have a tendency to become not so Evil and I hope Siddig gets to play a more ambiguous character, since ever since after 9/11/01, he’s been playing these Arab characters who try to be gray.
Plus, Fox’s “The O.C.” will be cancelled. Aww. Too bad. It started strong. I’ve enjoyed the Christmakkuh episodes, and how Peter Gallagher played the amusing Jewish defense attorney from NY who married the California WASP (inspiring O.C. fans to become lawyers, I’m sure), and thinking, “Jeez, isn’t Donovan Tate a little young to play this alleged teenage character’s dad?” and wondering when will the O.C. protagonist Ryan ever stop brooding like an idiot. Ah, well. I’ll probably watch the series finale, in all likelihood, considering that I’ve probably only watching one scene this whole season, and only one episode last season. Disclosure: I lost interest when they pushed Donovan Tate off the show and made Mischa Barton’s teenage daughter character even more of a drunken idiot (why Ryan ever liked her Marissa character, I don’t know).
Slate has the “Explainer” of the Year (which year? 2006 or 2007?) – “Is soap ‘self-cleaning’ because it’s soap?” – i.e., how clean is that soap in the public bathroom? Answer:
It’s dirty, but that doesn’t make it a health hazard. Soap can indeed become contaminated with microorganisms, whether it’s in liquid or bar form. According to a series of tests conducted in the early 1980s, bars of soap are often covered with bacteria and carry a higher load than you’d find inside a liquid dispenser. But no one knows for sure whether this dirty soap will actually transfer its germs to your hands during a wash.
In fact, what little clinical evidence there is suggests that dirty soap isn’t so bad. A study from 1965 and another from 1988 used similar methodologies: Researchers coated bars of soap in the lab with E. coli and other nasty bacteria, and then gave them to test subjects for a vigorous hand-wash. Both teams found no transfer of contamination from the dirty soap. However, both studies were tainted by potential conflicts of interest: The first was conducted by Procter & Gamble, and the second came from the Dial Corp.
Still, there’s no good evidence to contradict these studies, and it’s likely that the bacteria on a dirty bar would just wash off when you rinsed your hands. In other words, you’d be cleaning the soap as you cleaned your hands. (Your hands would probably have been a lot dirtier than the soap to begin with.)
It’s not even clear that you need clean water to get the benefits of a hand-washing. Recent hand-hygiene studies in the developing world have found that washing with soap and water reduces infections even when the water supply might be contaminated. Dirty water, like dirty soap, might not make washing less effective.
Even under the best conditions, washing your hands can actually increase the number of microorganisms present on your hands, thanks to contaminated surfaces near the sink, splashes of contaminated water, or improperly dried hands. (In general, it’s safer to leave your hands unwashed than to leave them wet.) [….]
Still, washing with soap and water has been repeatedly shown to prevent the spread of illness, and may be helpful even when it increases your bacteria counts. That may be because two kinds of microbes live on the hands: residents and transients. (In fact, they can even protect your skin from more malicious microbes.) The transient variety are the ones that tend to cause colds or other infections—the ones you want to get rid of when you wash your hands. It’s possible that the increase in bacteria that can result from a hand-washing is composed of harmless residents, not dangerous transients.According to the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hand-washing remains a very important method of staving off infectious disease, and either bar soap or liquid soap should be used after a trip to the bathroom or before a meal. Local health agencies and inspectors are sometimes more wary of bar soap. They either ban it outright or suggest that the bar be placed on a draining rack to dry out between washings. (The gooey bars are more likely to harbor germs.) [internal hyperlinks removed; check the complete article to links to the research and other stuff]
Well, that’s good to know then. Now I feel better about glowering at an ugly bar of soap. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside on a warm and weird 12th Day of Christmas.
You probably already heard already about Wesley Autrey, the Subway Superhero who saved someone having a seizure on the tracks of the 1 train.
NYT asks if you would have the courage to do it?
He was on David Letterman last night. There were two factors that were to his advantage – that he was a Navy veteran, which provided courage, and that he is a construction worker who is accustomed to working in confined spaces, which enabled him to estimate that he and the ill person would fit under the train. The two other reasons why he did it was that he didn’t want his two daughters to see someone being killed.
The 2 seconds getting run over by 5 subway cars was actually the relatively safe part – the dangerous part was when he had to restrain the other guy for 20 minutes while under the train until they could cut the power. Real heroes are the ones that never ever think that they would. His advice: if you have the chance to be a hero, go for it.
A 15 year old graffiti artist was not as lucky, getting run over by an LIRR train this evening. Two other members of his crew were at the scene. Unfortunately, there were no heroes there.
Welcome to my New Year’s message for 2007. You’re reading this because you played an important part of my life this past year. As is traditional, I give you a few stats and then a little something about what happened in the past year.
Stats for the year:
Miles on a plane: 23,248 (down 17% from last year)
Miles in a Hertz rental car: 1,724
Miles on a Chinatown intercity bus: 621
Miles in a Zipcar: about 4,800
MB of email: 1,044 (up 40% from last year)
Top search words on triscribe.com:
– Inner Universe (have no idea what they were searching for)
– Keira Knightly (from the Pirates of the Caribbean)
– Grassland Bus (bus line between Singapore and Malaysia)
– Alton Brown (host of Good Eats and Iron Chef America)
– caltalpa (the type of tree that was in front of the house I grew up in)
– Dennis Farina (took over for the late Jerry Orbach on Law & Order)
– roast beef (I had a roast beef recipe)
– Incheon (airport in Korea)
– TVB (Hong Kong television)
– kaoliang chiew (sorghum liquor – all of the sting of vodka, with twice the taste of turpentine — not pleasant stuff)
– Baishawan (ghost town in Taiwan)
– Colma the Musical (the rock musical film, based on a city of the dead, is still alive)
Why Water, or YMCA
There’s something about water. I like it a lot; I hate it a lot. I dislike getting wet in the rain, but I find warm sun showers irresistible. I prefer living near a large body of water, preferably on an island or peninsula (people forget that Brooklyn is on an island). On the other hand I won’t spend much time at the sea shore, and then maybe only knee deep. I like being on boats – never had a problem being seasick, no matter how rough the waves. But forget about white water rafting. I don’t swim, and I don’t know how; it’s almost as common as not having a driver’s license in New York.
Last year at this time Pei and I decided to visit Hong Kong. She had never been there before, and I always had good memories of the place, so we made plans to be there for the Dragon Boat Festival. I would take care of the air, and she the land. The water would have to take care of itself.
I would have been happy with the guest house in Kowloon that I was at the last time I was there in 2001. Well, obviously that wouldn’t do with the two of us. P-searched and discovered the best place to stay is not any of the name brand hotels, but the YMCA. While in most places the YMCA is associated with youth hostels, in Hong Kong they operate a three-star hotel with the same harbor side views of the Peninsula next door, for a quarter of the price. The hotel is operated as career training for its members.
The first night there I wanted to do something romantic, like walk along the Avenue of the Stars or go over the Star Ferry, both near the water. P- would have none of it – she was jetlagged and didn’t even want to go out to eat, not to mention go out anywhere else. So, I finally got her to a view overlooking Victoria Harbor – albeit from our hotel room – got down on my knees and proposed to her. That was the secret resolution that I made last year.
Oh yeah, she said yes. We’re aiming tentatively for October 11, 2008 (yes it’s a long engagement). Thanks to all of you that helped me out in keeping the secret from P– — she still can’t believe that everyone knew, including her best friends, random people at events we go to, and even a couple of Christmas parties.
As for a resolution for the coming year, we’re dumping our memberships at the sports club – we’re going to join the YMCA here and going to actually figure out how to swim. Have a happy and prosperous New Year, full of love and life.
Spent New Year’s at home with P- watching NY1’s coverage of Times Square, keeping my dad’s tradition of German hors d’oeuvres – cocktail sausages, cubes of cheese and cold cuts, including my favorite, head cheese (aka souse) — yes I actually like the stuff. Working off a hangover right now.
The annual message will be posted sometime tomorrow after I wake up. Yes, I’m working on it, not to worry.
Friday night – siblings and I went to see the Holiday Lights at the Bronx Zoo (thanks in part to two complimentary tickets courtesy of the Daily News Sweepstakes that I entered – so cool to have won something, even if it is one of those random drawings!). The lights were very nice stuff. The music playing in the speakers had weird stuff – a sort-of jazzy/R&B version of the Rudolph son, an extremely hard-to-recognize version of Mariah Carey’s Christmas song sung by a male singer, and a not-very-good version of Jingle Bell Rock. Weird to visit the zoo at night; although it was nice to visit the zoo at all, since I hadn’t done it in years. The animals in the zoo didn’t seem to care to see people – one tiger sat with his(her?) back to the protective window barriers; the snakes and turtles all seemed asleep. The camels certainly seemed happy to see people, posing just so perfectly; but they (or the neighboring boar) were smelly. Oh, well. A nice holiday thing.
Some notable newspaper reading:
NY Times reports on the re-opening of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The pictures from the accompanying slide show on the Times’ website looks nice.
Awhile back, I watched this Nova episode about dogs on PBS, where the evolution of dogs and why we love them were nicely explained – and the episode didn’t hold back on the perils of dog-breeding and how in-breeding can be perilous if the goal is to produce the purebreed but not done safely. The Times had this sad article on how the excessive dog inbreeding in Japan is problematic. Sure the tiny chihuahua with blue eyes is adorable; but apparently, his siblings may have died because they were hideously deformed. It gets nuts, and then one wonders – do you want to extrapolate as to what kind of values your country has by allowing this to happen:
Rare dogs are highly prized here, and can set buyers back more than $10,000. But the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose.
There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say.
Kiyomi Miyauchi was heartbroken to discover this after one of two Boston terriers she bought years ago suddenly collapsed last year into spasms on the living room floor and died. In March, one of its puppies died the same way; another went blind.
Ms. Miyauchi stumbled across a widespread problem here that is only starting to get attention. Rampant inbreeding has given Japanese dogs some of the highest rates of genetic defects in the world, sometimes four times higher than in the United States and Europe.
These illnesses are the tragic consequences of the national penchant in Japan for turning things cute and cuddly into social status symbols. But they also reflect the fondness for piling onto fads in Japan, a nation that always seems caught in the grip of some trend or other.
“Japanese are maniacs for booms,” said Toshiaki Kageyama, a professor of veterinary medicine specializing in genetic defects at Azabu University in Sagamihara. “But people forget here that dogs aren’t just status symbols. They are living things.”
Dogs are just one current rage. [….]
The affection for fads in Japan reflects its group-oriented culture, a product of the conformity taught in its grueling education system. But booms also take off because they are fueled by big business. Companies like Sony and Nintendo are constantly looking to create the next adorable hit, churning out cute new characters and devices. Booms help sustain an entire industrial complex, from software makers to marketers and distributors, that thrives off the pack mentality of consumers in Japan. [….]
“The demand is intense, and so is the temptation,” said Hidekazu Kawanabe, one of the country’s top Chihuahua breeders. “There are a lot of bad breeders out there who see dogs as nothing more than an industrial product to make quick money.” [….]
The Japan Kennel Club began adding results of DNA screening onto pedigree certificates in April. But that falls short of the American Kennel Club, which discourages risky inbreeding by listing acceptable colors for each breed.
“Japan is about 30 or 40 years behind in dealing with genetic defects,” said Takemi Nagamura, president of the Japan Kennel Club.
Ultimately, animal care professionals say, the solution is educating not just breeders but potential dog owners.
“If consumers didn’t buy these unnatural dogs,” said Chizuko Yamaguchi, a veterinarian at the Japan Animal Welfare Society, “breeders wouldn’t breed them.”
So, you want something rare and unique, but you go overboard in trying to get ahead of the neighbors and wind up with nothing better than theirs, if not worse. Sigh.
NY Times’ Caryn James does a comparison of “Children of Men” the movie (starring Clive Owen) and “Children of Men” book that movie’s premise was derived (written by P.D. James, most famous for her Commander Dagliesh of Scotland Yard mystery series). I had read the book so long ago, and it’s very dark – so I have been wary about seeing the movie. Then again, it has a cool director and Clive Owen, so who knows if I do see it. But, I liked how Caryn James was able to respect both versions as worthy of each other as pieces of art that have their own integrity and commentary on the dark times we live in.
Being a student of American history, and simply a presidential history buff, I watched the Ford funeral ceremonies on tv. The coverage has been a little weird – I feel sad for the Ford family, but the tv coverages push how we’re to celebrate a long and lovely life and, no less important, celebrate America. Or, maybe it’s not the fault of the tv anchors; my cynicism rises when I have to hear certain speakers make it seem like America and Ford were destined for great things (destiny? providence? it got to be a bit much to me). NY Times’ tv critic Alessandra Stanley put it like this: “Death is sad, at least in most cases. But the death of a former president has become an almost cheery television event.”
In the midst of all the sadness and holiday cheer and the madness of our times, let’s wish for a happy New Year.
Had dinner with my NYU circle of writer friends. One of them has a new book out, Your Career Is an Extreme Sport . She also writes for the WSJ – check it out.
I wanted to get the book SSW mentioned, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, because that would be me. It wasn’t in Barnes & Noble yet, so for my winter reading I got What Every American Should Know About Europe. I really don’t know a whole lot about Europe, mostly because I took European History in high school with immersion Spanish. I was pretty good with American History, so I’m sort of OK past 1750 taking it from our point of view, but between the Dark Ages and the middle of the 18th century (or Siglio XVIII as it was called in Spanish), I never really had a good grasp of what was going on. Remedial history for me.
After that dinner, we went out to the nearby Irish pub for a pint, and like a numnut, I left my camera and bag at the Indian restaurant. Today I spent a lot of time on the phone with one guy from the restaurant whose English is pretty much limited to food, and who after 3 phone calls tells me to call at 9:30 pm, I guess when his son shows up. Turns out that they had the bag the whole time, just he couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I make a mad dash back into the city to claim it back. It’s all in one piece, thankfully (P- won’t have to kill me too much).
I was walking back through Times Square to get to the subway and I recall the Daily News mentioning that 1.25 million out-of-towners are here right now. It sure looks like it – check it out yourself:
Invariably I needed to make a pit stop, and thankfully Charmin toilet tissue has rented out a place on Times Square to use the facilities for the holidays. They managed to make relief into a amusement ride. This is actually deluxe – 20 WC closets, a dozen attendants that sanitize the rooms between every use, and of course four rolls of tissue in each room. Over 390,000 people have used the facilities, including 2,000 people from Puerto Rico (that’s a village right there) and apparently 2 North Koreans. This is what the inner sanctum looks like:
If you gotta go, you outta go here – they have to be the cleanest restrooms I’ve ever seen.
New Years’ is in swing – they’re moving in the barricades, the lights and the concrete blocks. If it doesn’t rain it will probably be pretty warm. Not a bad day to stay out for 6 hours.
Xmas gifts included gift cards (always useful); DVD’s (of tv stuff I do watch – always a good good to give to a tv person); and some books (Al Gore’s book, the tie-in to the documentary – should be an interesting read).
December reading included:
“The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage” by ex-inspector general of the CIA Frederick Hitz, on the literary nature of books on spies and how the history of real spies is that much more crazy (or just plain more human in a dimwitted kind of way) than what LeCarre or Tom Clancy or even Ian Fleming may devise. An interesting read, consistent with my whole spy reading kick of late. The book kind of made me want to read more LeCarre, if nothing else; on the other hand, it also felt like the author was still dancing around the flaws of espionage (like, how can a democracy justify clandestine operations or acts of subterfuge that seem to undermine the very ideas of democracy, including – say – accountability?) – but, considering that the CIA had to clear the book – well, I was impressed by the candid tone and that someone with this Ivy-League-trained-lawyer/ex-spy bureaucrat’s credentials actually seems to enjoy reading spy fiction (of the LeCarre or Graham Greene variety, anyway; couldn’t tell if he cared for James Bond stuff at all).
“The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to do What’s Right” by Thane Rosenbaum. A rather irritating read; he’s a law-and-literature professor at Fordham; he’s also a novelist. He writes very well, but he’s clearly bitter about having been a lawyer; having been through a bad experience with the legal system (bad divorce? Bad anything?); and so he goes on this tear over why can’t our legal system be “moral” (but doesn’t really define what is “moral” – maybe he means the Judeo-Christian Western culture sense of it?), with references to how the lawyers on tv or literature are so much more noble with their sense of justice and angst and devotion to “truth.” Rosenbaum didn’t exactly come up with solutions (no one’s saying the system’s perfect; morality is not the same as legality, as they taught us in law school; and I thought he’s a little nuts to suggest abolishing statutes of limitations), but I guess he’s trying to be provocative to get dialog in the legal profession. Oh, well. It’s a different kind of reading to have tried.
“The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. Very good reading on comparative mythology. A classic book that inspired Bill Moyers to interview Campbell and produce the series “Power of Myth” (which I’m currently reading). Campbell focused a bit much of psychoanalysis as a way to analyze myths (too much for my taste, anyway, even if he did have a point that psychoanalysis can be insightful), but his storytelling was superb.
In time for the New Year: January is “Get Organized Month.” Interesting NY Times article by Penelope Green – messes may actually be ok. Considering that I’m a horrific clutter person, I find some sense of consolation in this. Quotes:
“[….]But contrarian voices can be heard in the wilderness. An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.
“It’s chasing an illusion to think that any organization — be it a family unit or a corporation — can be completely rid of disorder on any consistent basis,” said Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, N.H., whose work involves helping people tolerate the inherent disorder in their lives. “And if it could, should it be? Total organization is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictability of life. I live in a world of total clutter, advising on cases where you’d think from all the paper it’s the F.B.I. files on the Unabomber,” when, in fact, he said, it’s only “a person with a stiff neck.” [….]
Stop feeling bad, say the mess apologists. There are more urgent things to worry about. Irwin Kula is a rabbi based in Manhattan and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” which was published by Hyperion in September. “Order can be profane and life-diminishing,” he said the other day. “It’s a flippant remark, but if you’ve never had a messy kitchen, you’ve probably never had a home-cooked meal. Real life is very messy, but we need to have models about how that messiness works.” [….]
Last week David H. Freedman, another amiable mess analyst (and science journalist), stood bemused in front of the heathery tweed collapsible storage boxes with clear panels ($29.99) at the Container Store in Natick, Mass., and suggested that the main thing most people’s closets are brimming with is unused organizing equipment. “This is another wonderful trend,” Mr. Freedman said dryly, referring to the clear panels. “We’re going to lose the ability to put clutter away. Inside your storage box, you’d better be organized.”
Mr. Freedman is co-author, with Eric Abrahamson, of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” out in two weeks from Little, Brown & Company. The book is a meandering, engaging tour of beneficial mess and the systems and individuals reaping those benefits, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose mess-for-success tips include never making a daily schedule.
As a corollary, the book’s authors examine the high cost of neatness — measured in shame, mostly, and family fights, as well as wasted dollars — and generally have a fine time tipping over orthodoxies and poking fun at clutter busters and their ilk, and at the self-help tips they live or die by. They wonder: Why is it better to pack more activities into one day? By whose standards are procrastinators less effective than their well-scheduled peers? Why should children have to do chores to earn back their possessions if they leave them on the floor, as many professional organizers suggest?
In their book Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson describe the properties of mess in loving terms. Mess has resonance, they write, which means it can vibrate beyond its own confines and connect to the larger world. It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin, from a moldy bloom in a petri dish he had forgotten on his desk. [….]
According to a small survey that Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson conducted for their book — 160 adults representing a cross section of genders, races and incomes, Mr. Freedman said — of those who had split up with a partner, one in 12 had done so over a struggle involving one partner’s idea of mess. Happy partnerships turn out not necessarily to be those in which products from Staples figure largely. Mr. Freedman and his wife, for example, have been married for over two decades, and live in an offhandedly messy house with a violently messy basement — the latter area, where their three children hang out, decorated (though that’s not quite the right word) in a pre-1990s Tompkins Square Park lean-to style.
The room’s chaos is an example of one of Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson’s mess strategies, which is to create a mess-free DMZ (in this case, the basement stairs) and acknowledge areas of complementary mess. Cherish your mess management strategies, suggested Mr. Freedman, speaking approvingly of the pile builders and the under-the-bed stuffers; of those who let their messes wax and wane — the cyclers, he called them; and those who create satellite messes (in storage units off-site). “Most people don’t realize their own efficiency or effectiveness,” he said with a grin.
It’s also nice to remember, as Mr. Freedman pointed out, that almost anything looks pretty neat if it’s shuffled into a pile.
That’s right – no anti-biotics would have been discovered if the scientist hadn’t a slob!
And, last but not least: the passing of Gerald Ford. Interesting details on his life; people have this view of him as the not-so-bright man, but he did go to Yale Law for Pete’s sake. And, his historically not-so-smooth actions arguably took courage and ended up not having terrible consequences (pardoning Nixon may have helped the nation move on from the deceitful past – at least, I don’t hold it against Ford for doing it). Heck, apparently Ford’s telling NYC to “drop dead” as the Daily News always had it in the infamous headline ended up being a good move – Ford was apparently trying to tell NYC to get its fiscal act together before he would agree to give financial assistance, which may have led us out of the fiscal basement. Maybe Ford’s legacy may have something to teach a certain current administration? Well, as a student of American history, I’m always happy to keep learning anyway. Time moves on, and it’s the time of year to reflect.
Belated, but not forgotten: the passing of Joe Barbera. Considering how much Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch… Well, salute to the Barbera of Hanna-Barbera.
The soon-to-be-closing of Murder Ink, a NYC mystery bookstore; the NY Times prints the observations of the owner, Jay Pearsall:
A customer who worked at Carmine’s once said it seemed that bookselling must be a lot like tending bar, without the vomit. It’s true that we work hard and fast, serving up recommendations for customers, who sometimes tell us their problems (like the older woman who informed us that the elastic in her underwear had lost its stretch).
But the game couldn’t go on forever. Over the last few years, it didn’t seem to me that there was much that I could do to control the closing of the stores, except to keep adding more flaming torches to the juggling act and await the inevitable crash and burn. It’s become a sad, familiar song on Broadway, and far beyond, that a small, independent store can no longer keep up with the rent. That is why we are closing our doors for good on New Year’s Eve.
Every now and then I comb our apartment shelves for books that I can add to the inventory at the stores. Recently, when I grabbed a copy of “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, I noticed one of my scribbled notes sticking out of it: “Every night, just before I leave the store, I take a seat on one of the rolling library stools and reflect on what a great place this is and how I won’t have it much longer.” There’s also written on the slip, in quotation marks (from the Roth book?): “One can only do so much to control one’s life.”
The soon-to-be-closing of La Rosita, on 108th and Broadway – had passed by it many times. Man, what is happening in NYC? Things closing, but what’s opening?
A Brooklyn Heights story, related to our alma mater law school.
I guess during the holidays, there’s much sadness and happiness, and thoughts abound.
And then there’s this: the Yule Log. Channel 11 aired a great documentary on how it came to be – a little Christmas card to New Yorkers everywhere.
I’ll post a little joy here:
Before he was Dr. House, he was just Hugh Laurie, British comedian, and they’re releasing DVD’s of his old show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.” I liked the review NY Times’ Vincent Cosgrove made of the DVD – and it sounds like it’s a great DVD with a fun bonus of Laurie’s days in Cambridge with Emma Thompson and the others:
LONG before Hugh Laurie was captivating and galling American television viewers as the prickly Dr. Gregory House on Fox’s “House,” he was half of the acclaimed British sketch comedy team Fry and Laurie, along with his fellow Cambridge graduate Stephen Fry. (That’s right: Dr. House’s American accent is fake.) Their collaboration began more than 25 years ago, when both were members of the Cambridge Footlights troupe. They went on to team up on numerous TV shows in Britain, but for American audiences they were perhaps best known as Jeeves and Bertie Wooster on the “Jeeves and Wooster” series on “Masterpiece Theater.” [….]
Thankfully, there are recently released DVDs of the first two seasons of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” the duo’s inspired sketch comedy series, originally broadcast in 1989 and 1990 on BBC2.
Mr. Fry and Mr. Laurie wield words — real or nonsensical — with a precision Henry Higgins would admire. Skewering language, they also conjure a Lewis Carroll-like world. While there are moments of physical comedy, the pratfalls that produce the most laughs are verbal. Sample this prime example of Fry-Laurie gibberish: “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.” [….]
Lamenting TV censors, the two explain that in their next sketch — set in a courtroom — they must use made-up words to describe a crime. Portraying a police officer, Mr. Laurie declares that the defendant called him a “fusking cloff-prunker.” When the judge expresses ignorance of the term, a lawyer (Mr. Fry) defines it as “an illicit practice whereby one person frangulates another’s plimp, my lord. He or she gratifies the other party by smuctating them avially.” Eventually, the bailiff faints.
A bonus on the DVD of the second season is the “Footlights Revue,” first broadcast on BBC in 1982. The performers — including Emma Thompson — are so young that you can imagine them still clutching their diplomas. In one sketch, Mr. Fry, at his mellifluous best, reads from a letter relating his encounter with Count Dracula in Transylvania. Mr. Fry recalls that when the “mighty oaken door” of the castle opened, he beheld the ghastly sight of Dracula’s manservant: “Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of the man’s nose remain forever pasted into the album of my memory.” It’s enough to make the count whirl in his coffin. The rest of us can just have a good laugh.
The most entertaining thing about the Times’ posting this review on-line – well, they put in this clip of Laurie’s singing this hilarious love song (“Mystery… You remain a mystery to me… Different Country. You and I live in a different country… Estuary. I live on a house boat on an estuary…. [You’ve been d]ead since 1973…So why do I still long for you…”). Oh, and trust me – Jeeves and Wooster – too funny. Laurie was great as the total English gentleman idiot Bertie Wooster. Umm, no offense meant of course; just that Bertie really was an idiot… or, as the article notes, Laurie was quite a hoot indeed.