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Wednesday night – ABC aired a two-hour, commercial-free tribute to Peter Jennings – “Peter Jennings: Reporter” (to remind us of those specials he used to do, “Peter Jennings: Reporting.”). Poignant stuff – his colleagues and friends expressing themselves about the man they admired and respected. The clips of his finest moments – Challenger, Millenium New Year’s 2000, and Sept. 11, 2001 – and I wondered what might have been (if he had covered the South Asia tsunami, the passing of the Pope, and the London bombings). And, some clips of his “Reporting” specials (“The Search for Jesus” was a good one to show of clips). The tributes made the point that Peter worked hard and believed in standards.

One of those Peter Jennings memories of mine – just before the original Gulf War, he had a special to educate kids and adolescents about the Middle East. Being the age I was back then, it was enlightening to have watched. There was something reassuring about Peter, that Dan or Tom didn’t do for me (ok, so there was Peter’s handsome good looks and sophistication, but that’s besides the point). And, Peter did stories – the world news stuff – that others didn’t really do (I didn’t truly appreciate that until I got old enough to appreciate the NY Times and the Jim Lehrer news in-depth coverage). And, of course, those times of watching him do the presidential campaign coverages. Sad to have seen a clip of him and David Brinkley doing an Election Night coverage and realizing both are now gone.

Summer reading – On Monday night, I finished (finally!) reading “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Huge thick book (even for a paperback). Harry’s clearly an adolescent, angst and self-absorption and all – somewhat justifiably sad and angry all at once. The adults’ dilemmas were also finely drawn (not bad for a book from Harry’s perspective – one could feel Prof. Dumbledore’s pain, and that of everybody else’s). But, I kept wishing for an editor who could have cut the book somewhat – no offense intended to J.K. Rowling, but Books 4 and 5 were really thick books. The brand spanking new Book 6 is in the “To be read” pile – dare I pursue it so soon?

In the meantime, I read “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” by Vonda McIntyre in the “Duty, Honor, Redemption” compilation edition of the novelizations of the trilogy films (II, III, IV). As noted in a previous entry, these were great novelizations. It had been awhile since I last read “II” or watched it, but the book feels a little dated.

The characterizations were nicely consistent to what I’ve seen or read in other Trek novels or movies/shows (Spock at this point was accepting his role as friend/ officer/part Vulcan-part human; McCoy being, well, himself; Kirk dealing with age, mortality, and loving every minute of being the leader), but some stuff felt a little odd (like must David Marcus, Kirk’s son, be that hostile about Starfleet? It’s a “military” but hardly the secret police of a dictatorship). I didn’t remember Scotty’s nephew being that young in the movie – the book made him a teenage cadet, a la the kid cadets of Russell Crowe’s movie “Master and Commander” and Saavik, in the book, was an extremely young lieutenant (umm, Kirstie Alley in the movie as Saavik wasn’t that young).

My guess is that McIntyre was buying into Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s idea of a Horatio Hornblower/coming of age model of naval training, with literal children training aboard the vessel. If that’s the case, why wasn’t Saavik made an ensign rather than a lieutenant? (actually, I have no idea how young lieutenants are in the real military, so …) – Eh, whatever. Fortunately, years of modern Trek (in books and movies) kind of changed the portrayal Starfleet training (i.e., making Starfleet Academy more like the modern West Point or the Naval Academy, an elite college, so it’s not like you have 14-year-old kids training like you had in the Horation Hornblower era of the 1700’s and 1800’s). But, these are mere quibbles – the book was vivid stuff, and made Khan (if it is possible) even more vicious by taking an inside look from the view of the people he led. “II” was a nice subway read.

The passing of Peter Jennings. Being the news addict that I am (and living without cable), I grew up watching Peter Jennings. He was, as they say, suave and sophisticated – I mean, come on – it was “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.” Not just Nightly News, but World News (no offense to Tom Brokaw, but I seriously watched more Jennings than Brokaw). As I grew older, I realized he wasn’t infallible (he could be a little pedantic, and that Canadian accent made you wonder – is it alien or charming?) – the NY Times’ Jacques Steinberg captured it right:

As an anchor, Mr. Jennings presented himself as a worldly alternative to Mr. Brokaw’s plain-spoken Midwestern manner and Mr. Rather’s folksy, if at times offbeat, Southern charm. He neither spoke like many of his viewers (“about” came out of his mouth as A-BOOT, a remnant of his Canadian roots) nor looked like them, with a matinee-idol face and crisply tailored wardrobe that were frequently likened in print to those of James Bond.

Though his bearing could be stiff on the air (and his syntax sometimes criticized as being so simplistic as to border on patronizing), Mr. Jennings was immensely popular with his audience.

During a trip last fall through Kansas, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the weeks before the presidential election, he traveled at times aboard a coach customized by the news division to trumpet its campaign coverage and frequently received a rock star’s welcome when he decamped.

For example, in the parking lot of a deli just outside of Pittsburgh, where he had come to interview a long-shot candidate for Congress whose threadbare headquarters was upstairs, Mr. Jennings found himself on the receiving end of several hugs from loyal viewers.

“He’s so handsome,” one of those viewers, Vilma Berryman, 66, the deli owner, observed immediately after meeting him. “He’s taller than I thought. He speaks so softly.”

“I feel like I know him,” she added. “He’s just so easy.”

Like all of the Big 3, Mr. Jennings was not without his detractors. Some critics contended he was too soft on the air when describing the Palestinian cause or the regime of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro – charges he disputed. Similarly, a July 2004 article in the National Review portrayed him as a thinly veiled opponent of the American war in Iraq.

The article quoted Mr. Jennings as saying: “That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public.”

Mr. Jennings was conscious of having been imbued, during his Canadian boyhood, with a skepticism about American behavior; at least partly as a result, he often delighted in presenting the opinions of those in the minority, whatever the situation.

And yet he simultaneously carried on an elaborate love affair with America, one that reached its apex in the summer of 2003, when he announced that he had become an American citizen, scoring, he said proudly, 100 percent on his citizenship test.

In a toast around that time that he gave at the new National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he described his adopted home as “this brash and noble container of dreams, this muse to artists and inventors and entrepreneurs, this beacon of optimism, this dynamo of energy, this trumpet blare of liberty.”

Mr. Jennings’s personal life was at times grist for the gossip pages, including his three divorces. His third wife, the author Kati Marton, whom he married in 1979 and divorced in 1993, is the mother of his two children, who survive him. They are a daughter, Elizabeth, and son, Christopher, both of New York City. He is also survived by his fourth wife, Kayce Freed, a former ABC television producer whom he married in December 1997, and a sister, Sarah Jennings of Ottawa, Canada. Having prided himself on rarely taking a sick day in nearly 40 years – and being dismissive, at times, of those well-paid colleagues who did – Mr. Jennings had missed the broadcast and the newsroom terribly in recent months.

When he got to be in the gossip pages and faced criticism, I realized that Jennings was human. In an era where the Anchorman isn’t what it used to be, maybe that’s okay. But, in times of trouble, there was Jennings being reassuring while realistic. It didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes and entirely credible. NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley notes:

He was not warm or cozily familiar. He was cool and even a little supercilious. If you invited Peter Jennings into your living room, he would be likely to raise an eyebrow at the stains on the coffee table. He was not America’s best friend or kindly uncle. But in an era of chatty newscasters, jousting analysts and hyperactive commentators, he was a rare voice of civility. [….]

What Mr. Jennings had that will be harder to replace was a worldliness that was rooted in his personality and also in his rich background of experience in the field.

Mr. Jennings, who died on Sunday, worked hard his entire life to overcome a flighty beginning: he never attended college, and got his start on Canadian television with the help of his father, a senior executive at the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Mr. Jennings became famous as the host of a dance show for teenagers and was only 26 when ABC News recruited him to be an anchor, more on the basis of his good looks and smooth delivery than anything else. He made up for it later, working as a correspondent in Vietnam, Beirut and Europe. His colleagues teased him about his dashing trench coats, but nobody looked better in Burberry or in black tie. [….]

Brian Williams on NBC is as natty, self-possessed and buttoned-down as Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Jennings combined. Charles Gibson, who stepped in most often to replace Mr. Jennings when he began cancer treatment, proved a comfortingly familiar, competent face. For now at least, Bob Schieffer at CBS has introduced a no-nonsense note of the elder statesman after the nightly roller-coaster ride that was Dan Rather.

All of them remain in the classic anchor mold, but not one of them has the hauteur and dignity that Mr. Jennings brought to the news. Network newscasts have lost much of their audience and authority, but throughout all the setbacks, erosions and even his own fatal illness, he never lost his uncommon touch.

Ironically, another network’s commentator did it nicely – MSNBC’s commentator Michael Ventre says:

The last trustworthy American was born a Canadian.

Peter Jennings became an American citizen in 2003. But before that, he was an honorary American, one of the small handful of people we went to for the truth. And he came through. He never lied to us. He always gave it to us straight. [….]

Jennings made fewer headlines than his broadcast brethren. He did in network news what Spencer Tracy once advised a fellow actor to do: “Find your mark, look into the camera and tell the truth.”

Now media consultants will panic to replace him, like they’ve done in the aftermath of the Rather exit. They’ll look for new ways to present the news.[….]

Spin will be the order of the day. Never mind that folks have less faith in the news media now than ever. The idea is to jazz up the broadcast while softening the edges, not break stories. Network suits are able to do this now because the last trustworthy man in America is no longer with us.

He was our Cronkite, even if people didn’t realize it, or took him for granted. He will be missed, and network news will never be the same.

You scored as Gunshot. Your death will be by gunshot, probably because you are some important person or whatever. Possibly a sniper, nice, quick, clean shot to the head. Just beautiful. Posion 73% Gunshot 73% Bomb 67% Natural Causes 67% Cut Throat 53% Disappear 53% Stabbed 53% Suicide 47% Disease 40% Accident 40% Suffocated 40% Drowning 27% Eaten 13%

How Will You Die??
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I didn’t know what kind of tree was in front of my childhood house. It stood nearly 3 stories above the ground, with heart shaped leaves and white flowers. I didn’t realize what it was until one appeared in an episode of This Old House – the Northern Caltalpa. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to confirm it.

NY Times’ Joseph Berger writes on a NYC thing (or, more broader, an American thing) – where else can you find a Tibetan making pizza; an Indian making an egg cream that he learned from an Italian who learned from a Jew; and a Hispanic making sushi?

Daily News rates NYC pizzerias. Food writer Irene Sax reports:

At Di Fara in Midwood, Domenico DeMarco has been making pizzas all by himself for 40 years. On the window are pots of fresh rosemary, basil and oregano, in the back are cartons of San Marzano tomatoes, and in no place is there any attempt at decor or even housekeeping. But the pizzas that come out of Dom’s clunky metal oven are sublime: big, charred pies with thin, flexible crusts; a sweet sauce made from canned and fresh tomatoes, and a cheese topping that mixes fresh and buffalo mozzarella with a final toss of freshly grated grana padana. Think of the classic New York pie and then add a halo.

Franny’s on Flatbush Ave., on the other hand, is a New York pizzeria with a yuppie edge, opinions about sustainable agriculture, a romantic back garden and, usually, a line out the door. But despite the glitz, what owner Andrew Feinberg takes from his wood-burning brick oven is a pie that has a chewy, featherlight crust, a thin slick of bright tomato sauce and just enough melted mozzarella to fill your mouth. Although you may dream about that charred and smoky crust, you can’t ignore the beautiful toppings. Order a clam pie, seasoned with parsley and hot peppers, and you’ll know you’re in the presence of greatness.

Which of them makes the best pizza in New York? They both do. Di Fara is the peak of a New York tradition going back to Lombardi’s in 1905. Franny’s is the best of a new wave that blends innovative ingredients with traditional methods. They’re both in the New York style. […]

We sent reporters to all five boroughs with this assignment: Order two pies – one plain, one with toppings. Rate the plain, or margherita, on a scale from one star (edible) to four stars (incredible). And while you’re at it, take note of the quality of the toppings on the other pizzas.

When all the reports were in, we sent a second team to revisit the two places that had rated four stars. What they discovered surprised them. It turns out that New York doesn’t have one best pizza. It has two. And though they’re both in Brooklyn, they couldn’t be less alike. [….]

Think of this the next time you order a slice:

How is the crust? Pale or charred? Thick or thin? Rigid or flexible? Does the point flop over when you pick it up? Can you taste the wheat?

How is the sauce? Are the tomatoes fresh or canned and, if canned, are they from San Marzano? Seasoned with how much salt? How much oregano? Are fresh basil leaves laid on top?

What about cheese? Is it processed or fresh, sliced or grated? Is it even mozzarella? And does it sit in discrete little islands or has it melted all over the pie?

Finally, and trickiest: How is the balance? This turned out to be more important than we expected. Once we were in the field, we discovered that a pie with a perfect crust could be ruined by a dull sauce or a too-heavy blanket of cheese. A pie with world-class toppings could have a leaden, cracker-like crust.

Why no slices? Because slices are a different food. They are twice-cooked, once in their first baking, then when they are reheated. The second blast of heat makes both the crust and the cheese get harder. It’s not a bad thing – Di Fara sells fantastic slices – but not the same thing as a whole pie.

It’s no surprise that both winners are in Brooklyn. Despite stellar places like Nick’s in Queens and Una Pizza Napoletana in Manhattan, we found that Brooklyn’s quality was the highest in the city.

What was surprising was that it’s possible to eat almost endless amounts of pizza and not get sick of it. And, it seems pizza isn’t fattening: On a day when I had it for both lunch and dinner, I lost a pound. (Of course, I didn’t eat anything else.)

But the real surprise was the difference between good, better and best pizza. “I used to grab a slice if I was in a hurry or if I was hungry after a movie,” said one of the reporters. “Now I know how much goes into it. There are people out there who really care about using the best ingredients and doing everything by hand. They are true artists.”

The pizza diet. Hmm. I’m glad they gave Brooklyn’s Grimaldi’s three stars and thought they were a little hard on V&T Pizza (the undergraduate Alma Mater’s local thing up on W110th St in Manhattan; but, the local favorite really is Koronet, for the huge bargain for the big slices; no one may credit the ‘hood for its spectacular palate).

Daily News’ Lisa Amand profiles this guy who will be giving tours of Brooklyn’s best pizzerias:

To Tony Muia, a slice of pizza is like a vitamin: nourishing and an essential part of every day.

The 41-year-old Brooklyn-born Muia is so into pizza he gave up a career as a respiratory therapist to dedicate his life to preaching pie to the masses.

When his Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour begins tomorrow, he’ll be spreading the gospel about the borough’s prowess when it comes to tossing around dough. He’ll also be following in the footsteps of his favorite matinee idol, another Brooklyn Tony who devoured slices two at a time while strutting down a Bensonhurst block in “Saturday Night Fever.”

Muia, who grew up in that very neighborhood, got the idea for the tours after years of showing out-of-town friends hidden spots throughout Brooklyn that serve out-of-this-world pizza.

The first stop on his four-hour tour will be at the legendary Grimaldi’s, where the ancient coal ovens keep the Neapolitan pies coming.

They’ll also get a little history between slices.

The tour weaves through Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge, checking out Diamond Jim Brady’s former home, a “really cool” tiny Revolutionary War cemetery and the Army terminal where Elvis shipped out to Germany. It also hits Brooklyn landmarks, movie locations and lesser-known nabes (like Bath Beach and Gravesend).

The bus will also cruise down Bensonhurst’s main drag. As they pass the famous Lenny’s Pizza, the opening scene of “Saturday Night Fever” will play on the bus’ screen, showing John Travolta bopping down 86th St., stopping at the sidewalk window to tell the pizzaiola: “Two, two. Gimme two.”

Muia will be taking his tour to one of his favorites, L&B Spumoni Gardens, again on 86th St., for two Sicilian squares. Muia has frequented L&B for more than 30 years.

“All you do is come here and people-watch,” he says on a sunny Saturday, surveying the al fresco scene where extended families fill the picnic tables, feasting on tomato-red rectangles, heaping plates of pasta and baked clams. [….]

Muia knows it’s not just tourists but even New Yorkers who need help navigating deep Brooklyn instead of focusing merely on trendy neighborhoods; though Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tours will pass through Dumbo to point out locales from “Scent of a Woman” and “Once Upon a Time in America.”

Could he do a similar tour in Manhattan? “Fuhgeddaboudit. Everyone knows the best pizzerias are in Brooklyn!”

“Must See Dogs” – cute movie. An alternative from the usual summer blockbusters of blow-’em-up stuff and superheroes. Diane Lane and John Cusack playing cute. Some cute dogs. A moment of wondering if Cusack will act in other stuff than romantic comedies (I’m sure he has, because I enjoyed him in “Runaway Jury” – he just does romantic comedies very well). A fluffy nice movie. Very much a chick flick, with heavy doses of reminding me of “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail” (well, for the latter’s Internet factor). Nothing brain taxing or Oscar nominating though.

“Wedding Crashers” – also not brain taxing. I mean, seriously not a thoughtful movie. Unless you come out of it thinking about weddings in a different way, as in “Geez, this ain’t boring if you just mingle by making up stories about yourself and lie to the men and women here for kicks. Oh, and accept that weddings are fun. And love your wingman.” Vince Vaughn – funny. Owen Wilson – umm, yeah, funny, but it’s weird to be reminded that the leading man is indeed getting in on years to be still doing the hijinks. And Christopher Walken not acting like a total weirdo.

“The Tao of Pooh” – by Benjamin Hoff – I took a class on Taoism in college, and it amazes me that this little book, using Pooh as the allegory of all allegories, captured everything about Taoism (well, with the exception of how sex and other consumptions may come into play, but basically getting the point about the Way). I read it in one sitting yesterday. Kind of hard on Confucianism (I doubt that Lao-tzu really cared about being in competition with Confucius, and Confucius probably cared less about the guy who was the equivalence of his Oscar or a happy-go-lucky hippie weirdo), but I’d highly recommend “The Tao of Pooh.”