Good Friday

From a bus on West 23rd Street, Good Friday afternoon.

Light and Shadow

PALAU DE LA MÚSICA CATALANA

Holiday Parting Shots

A nod to the Holidays as we slide into 2016.

Happy Holidays!

Hold Steady

Homecoming show at Music Hall of Williamsburg last week.

 

 

LOUD show (ears took a couple days to recover), tons of energy, amazing material. Lots of bro energy, and the rowdiest pit I've seen at a straight up rock show in a long time, but such a good show!  You cannot go wrong stuck between stations with these guys. Opener So So Glos even louder than the Minneapolis-by-way-of-Brooklyn main event.  

Still bummed that I missed the Replacements show this summer where The Hold Steady opened (but at least I missed it for the exceptionally good reason that I had a show of my own). The Music Hall show was a good way to remind us to keep on rockin' in the New Year.

When You Spend New Year's Eve in the Company of Children

You might end up with a sparkly tattoo on your forearm.

Not that that's a bad thing.

Thankful

I am thankful for a lot (overwhelming evidence from all quarters to the contrary).  So, while we can't and shouldn't ignore the reality (as opposed to the cartoon pageant version) of the Pilgrims or the rest of the European occupation of this continent and the one to the south, we can still make use of a national opportunity to express gratitude.

Small dinner, as Thanksgivings go, with Bruce and Caroline from the building, and Caroline's brother and his girlfriend.  Lentil soup, mussels, turkey roulade, roasted root veggies, mashed potatoes, green beans, brussels sprouts, sweet potato pie & pine nut tart for dessert.  We shared the cooking tasks, and it turns out that the brother is a wine distributor, so there was a bunch of that flowing.  Much to be thankful for.

Put together a thanks-themed disc for the hosts.  Didn't think they'd cue it up for the event, but toward the end of the night they did play it. If you want to play along at home, this year's offering worked out to be:

Vince Guaraldi - Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Theme
Nancy Marano - Thanks A Million
The Silos - A Few Hundred Thank You's
Led Zeppelin - Thank You
M.T. Thomas/CSO - Thanksgiving and Forefather's Day movement from Charles Ives' Holidays Symphony
The Beatles - Thank You Girl
Sinéad O'Connor - Thank You for Hearing Me
Johnny Cash - Thanks A Lot
The Books - Thankyoubranch
Alan Titus/Norman Scribner Choir - Gloria/Trope: "Thank You" from Bernstein's Mass
Talking Heads - Thank You for Sending Me An Angel
Big Star - Thank You Friends
Bonnie Raitt - Thank You
Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
My Morning Jacket - Thank You Too!

Happy V-Day

1/4/14

Just a few words to ring in the New Year/celebrate this numerically rare date.

This Holiday Season was up and down, to say the least.  To cut to the most important chase, my Grandmother died last Sunday at the age of 91.  It wasn't what you'd call unexpected, but the grief has been nonetheless profound.  At the same time, there is a lot of life there for all of us to celebrate, and as my dad put it: "By now, she'll be directing the choir up there."

That said, there was a lot to celebrate in general too.  A fantastic T-Day in the Catskills; wonderful Thanksgiving and Chanukkah celebration with Joe and Andrew in L.I.C.; great music from Lucius at Bowery Ballroom and Yo La Tengo at the Bell House (though of course those shows gave me more than a few pangs of a different kind of grief over Maxwell's and the YLT benefit shows); stunning Shaw from the Bedlam company; impressive original work (again) from the Representatives; brilliant poetic theater from Dominique Morriseau and the LAByrinth in Sunset Baby; another moving musical from the Public with Fun Home; Mark Rylance's Richard III to bookend the Twelfth Night we caught last Thanksgiving week in London.  Good movies and friends and New Year's Eve with Les & Megan in the Village.  And the warmth of the Christmas celebration in New Jersey cut through both my and Cory's colds.  (Well, kind of.  We're still struggling to shake those off a week and a half later...)

Speaking of London I haven't even gotten into this year's (well, last year's, at this point) trip!

So, just a little on that now - a few shots from early in the trip, and one from the end of it.

The Saturday after we arrived, we took a walk over Tower Bridge to visit the Maltby Street Market, where we enjoyed, among other things, some food and libation.

Little Bird gin bloody mary.

And on the last day of the trip, we took a trip to the National Portrait Gallery.  Here's a shot Cory snapped of me and my rally beard with a picture of Will Ferrell.

Miss you, Grandma.

Holiday Interlude

You probably know this already, but Duke Ellington thought that 13 is a lucky number and thought that Friday the 13^th is a particularly lucky day.

I think he was right.

So to celebrate this particular Friday the 13^th right now in the Holiday Season, I refer you to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s version of The Nutcracker Suite, which if you don’t own already you should run out and get a copy right now. 

In the meantime, here’s a video of Wynton Marsalis and I’m guessing it has to be the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra doing the overture.  


There are plenty of other viddies on the internets too, but you really want to get the Duke’s recording.

Happy Friday the 13^th!

4th of July (weekend) Madison Square Park

Before this "Hundred and Ball Sweat degrees" heatwave, it was, well, still really hot.

To get through it last weekend, we were back in the Old Country.  The weekend before that, we Honored America by sticking around and watching fireworks.  And on Sunday, I took a stroll to the park and had a beer and read the paper, then Cory joined in and we had concretes.

 Sondheim and Chicago vied for stupid puns to be included in the title of this post.  Instead, I just went with a decidedly post-Sandy Springsteen reference.

A fine afternoon by the Shack.

Big Week, part two (the Food Episodes)

More on last week's happenings:

Tuesday was an epic dinner at a fancy restaurant.  The kind of meal I don't get very often.  And by 'very often,' I mean 'ever.'  Friends took us out as a Big Thank You to Cory for a Big Favor, and it was incredible: course after course of the most amazing food.  Even the dishes made from ingredients I don't usually like were great - cranberry 'snow' with beet puree? Bring it.  And the stuff I do like?  My brain and body almost exploded.  Oysters unlike any I've ever had, poached lobster that made me question my place on earth, an egg cream that made me pine for days that never really existed. (An egg cream can do that?  Apparently it can.)

Wednesday night I had off.  Sort of.  I took advantage of the freedom to do prep for the dinner I made for Valentine's the next night.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get home until later than ideal on Thursday, so I needed to cover some ground ahead of time.

Here's the thing about that: we don't usually do much for V-day.  We acknowledge that it exists, we mention it, we wish each other the happiness of the day, but we don't historically make much of it.  And by 'historically,' I mean 'ever.'  Or, more precisely, 'so far.'  But this year was a little different.  For whatever reason, we decided to have an extra-special-nice dinner in.  So I did a bunch of prep on Wednesday and when I did get home on Thursday, I did my magic in the kitchen.  

And for kicks in the wake of our other-worldly meal on Tuesday, I put on my best 'fancy waiter' as I'd bring out the courses.  You know: weight slightly forward, hands gracefully floating the dish to the table, describing it in a hushed throaty half-whisper.

This is a Perfect Valentine Manhattan, adapted from the classic recipe with Hudson Manhattan Rye, Dolin Dry Vermouth, Carpana Antica Sweet Vermouth, peychaud and orange bitters, and Morello cherries.

Watercress soup, with a whiskey cream. (This was actually an exciting discovery, and is a strong contender to be T-Day worthy...)

Haricots verts (ok, they were green beans - hey, I'm in 'fancy waiter' mode.) in a Kürbiskernöl and lemon glaze.

Roasted fingerling potatoes with tarragon and thyme.

Filet mignon with mushrooms, adapted from a recipe by James Beard.

Vermont ice cream, made with milk from happy cows and rich organic chocolate.

Ok, I punted on dessert and went with Ben & Jerry's.  Still, it was a pretty good meal.  A Happy Valentine's Day.

No visual stimulation for you today - I haven't been feeling the 'take pictures of food' thing lately. I'm sure I will revert.

Stay tuned...

Taking Stock

Getting to that part of the year where one takes stock.  It's been a rough fall-into-winter - the Storm, the shootings, the subway pushings, the other evidence of Humanity's lack of humanity: these affect everyone, irrespective of what might be your personal drama (or family drama, or work drama, or some version of 'all of the above').

Let none of this mute your comfort and joy.  Breathe in the beauty, live deeply, gather ye rosebuds while ye may.  Or anyway, that's one idea.

Back to London.

The first viddy I put together uses a lot of images from the first couple days which are already represented here, so I'm going to skip that one for now.  Here's one that's more food-centric covering the T-Day redux and the German Holiday Market on Southbank, along with shots from Bermondsey and Rotherhithe showing Execution Dock (where pirates would be hanged in gibbets) and the ruins of Edward III's hunting palace, including Holiday imagery that it's not quite too late in the Season to put out there.

Enjoy.

Last Weekend: or, The Much-Needed, Absolutely Essential Return of T-Day

Yes, it was time once again for the Best Holiday of the Year to roll around.  T-Day made its triumphant return, to Cape Cod this time.

I did not take many photos this year, and those I did were on the phone camera rather than the camera camera, but here's Ye Olde Cape Cod Beauty in action:

We didn't know how much we needed it until we were there, but we really had to get out of the City in the wake of the Storm and the emotional agita of the Election.  [Do I need to tell you how much more tolerable it was to deal with the removal of our car and the reconstruction of the 'boken knowing that We the People had won victories for women, gay rights, reform of drug laws, access to health care, and so on?  I don't think I do.]  

The drive up was late and great.  We left after work last Thursday.  Definitely emotional pangs picking up the rental car.  Yes, yes, I know - it's just a car, an inanimate object.  Sue me for having a sentimental weakness for her.

I will paraphrase an email I wrote to the T-Day crowd: 

Lola was hit by Sandy, Lost in the Flood, shot down in a Meeting Across the River (although that probably actually refers to the other side of the river), caught in My City of Ruins, drowned in the Land of Hope and Dreams, and probably a half dozen or so other Jersey Strong Springsteen songs that would make some semblance of sense.

I'm not saying I'll never mention her again, but here is the last photo I took of her, going off to the Scrap Auction for Charity in the Sky:

Not for nothing, there is a wrong way to do this.  We had a very good experience with the NPR/Car Talk donation program, but not before we had a very bad experience with these other guys.  To recap: these guys good; these guys very, very bad.

But I digress.

We rolled into the Big T-Day House at about 12:30 Friday morning.  Hugs, food, drinks, banter started right away and lasted for four days.  Also pinochle, poker (for the first time at T-Day! I did alright.), a Murder Mystery Role-playing game (another T-Day first.  Turned out I dunnit.  I also invented a drink called the Dead Louie.  Recipe available upon request.)  And even yet still more food.

This year featured the central turkey meal, naturally, and the increasingly count-on-able Shrimp Bahaiana, Rosemary Bread, Kentucky Chocolate, etc.  I made a sweet potato soup, but didn't take a photo of it.  It looked just like a pot of soup.

I did consider the frittatas I made the morning after the big meal to be suitably photogenic.

This is the meaty-one, with two kinds of linguica (many thanks to Rich!)

And here's the veggie one, after it was cut. 

Both had onions & shallots, peppers, portabella mushrooms and plenty of cheese.  The veggie one also had olives to fill it out a little.  No potatoes or turkey, because in an attempt to minimize leftovers we only made two turkeys and about 7 pounds of potatoes.  The potatoes were gone the night of the Feast. The minimal remains of the turkeys were scraped from the container by the time I got the veggies chopped.  So be it.

And that's that.  All hail T-Day.

Frankenstorm

The Storm is on its way and everyone knows it is on its way.  You've pulled out the E. Power Biggs, stocked up on the water, beer, and snacks, and hunkered down, Northeast.  So now, we need to focus on the gravest danger of them all: Storm Zombies.

This is surely the riskiest Storm Zombie moment of our lifetimes, with landfall scheduled to come mere minutes before Halloween, and the freakish Frankennature of the colliding hurricane, cold front and low pressure center almost certain to lead to Electrical Incidents of the kind that are simultaneously lethal and re-animating.  So take the precautions and protect yourselves and your loved ones as much as you can.  A few things to remember:

• As with all zombies, the only sure way to stop a Storm Zombie is decapitation.  A machete is your best bet, but if, like most city dwellers, you don't have one of those lying around, make sure you know where your largest butcher knife or cleaver is.  The undead flesh and bone is much easier to cut through than a live person's, but you'll still probably need to get in three or four hacks - be persistent!
• They're after brains.  In the event of a zombie encounter, wear a hat or, better yet, a helmet.
• The subway is probably the most dangerous place for the next few days - all that rampant electricity, plus those dark damp tunnels are already a natural home for the zombies.  Use your head (without being conspicuously brainy - see above).
• If a family member or loved one does get Zombified, eschew impulses of mercy.  Put sentiment aside and be strong - remember, you'll be saving them from an interminable future of insatiable brain-lust.
• That said, be very certain before you start getting all stabby and slashy with family members.  Your brother-in-law is probably not a Storm Zombie.  His usual, hollow-eyed look is not enough of a symptom.
• Under no circumstances should you have sex with a zombie, no matter how tempting.  It almost never ends well.

That's it for now.  There's lots more information out there if you are still craving defense strategies.

Be safe, be well, and may all your problems be imaginary.
 

Holiday Festivities

Are you rockin' the Holiday action? I know you are.

Quick rundown of some of what's been going on:

Hanukkah Nights 2 and 7 were spent with Yo La Tengo - great shows, natch. Please send lots of good healing mojo to Ira the K.

Christmas Eve in Dumont with Cory cooking and eating the Feast of the Seven Fishes with Cory's Italian Family. All went well in spite of a small, shall we say, disagreement with a can opener.

Christmas morning I woke up way too early and couldn't fall back asleep for a long time, so I watched the last hour and a half of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Of course I did.

Later on, after waking up for real and having some steak and eggs (for some reason, I was craving a cowboy's breakfast) I called the folks and the grandfolks and then it was out to Paramus for Christmas presents and dinner with Cory's Extended Italian Family. Jollity ensued.

Boxing Day was chill; bit of running around looking for a place serving brunch food in the 'boken on a day that wasn't technically a weekend day but sure felt like one. Wound up at the diner. Later on, caught War Horse at the cinema up the street from BoHome before going to Maxwell's for dinner and the show.

And now it's back to work. I'll leave you with this holiday message from the world of Pop.



If my eyes and the internets don't deceive me, this is a poster from 1972 wishing "Season's Greetings from Ardent Records" We can only hope it's the real thing.

Celebrate

In honor of Thanksgiving, which will see me with my family for the first time in a looooooong long time (since high school? Is that possible? I can't think of a time since then that I spent Thanksgiving with my blood relatives except for Freshman year of college, and that was when Dad came out to Boston to have Turkey Day bachelor-style):

And also in honor of Carrie, with whom I saw La Boheme last night, and who I think would approve:

Goodnight Irene

Easing out of what was a great week of vacation, capped by a very intense couple of days of travel and hurricane-fatigue.

We had a wedding to attend in Connecticut yesterday. And although it was a four hour drive (plus a ferry ride from Martha's Vineyard) to get there, we made the somewhat questionable decision to leave the reception early enough to get back in the car and bolt to New York before the really heavy stuff hit. That's right, we figured our best bet was to drive into Hurricane Irene, on the logic that we wouldn't be able to get through if we waited until today, and, well, we really wanted to get home.

In retrospect, it was the right call. The drive was hairy (lots of rain, roads already flooding, defogger overworked) although I have to say the traffic was lighter than I've ever seen on those roads. As in, scary empty on I684, the Hutch, the Saw Mill and the Hudson. As in, one of those spooky apocalypse movies "empty-but-for-other-crazy-people" empty.

Hoboken was closed off altogether - evacuated, cars off the streets (including the parking spaces), so that wasn't even an option. As it happened, we made it to Chelsea in a couple of medium-tense hours, got a parking spot for Lola on reliably high ground, unloaded and unpacked (including the four gallons of spring water we brought home from Massachusetts), filled the tub with water, made sure the flashlights were handy, and absorbed from TV and the internets all the reasons why we probably should have stayed away. We had considered staying with friends in New Paltz and just sticking it out until Monday - it's doubly good we didn't do that, since New Paltz actually seems to have been hit with at least as much flooding as New York.

Woke up to see the rain mostly gone but the wind still in full vigor. Laid low for a while, then went to Kelly's for a bad weather movie party. Exhausted now, and not sure if the trains will be back up tomorrow. Watching the VMAs for some reason and about to fall asleep. Kevin R. Free gets some points for pointing out via Twitter that pop culture itself jumped the shark. Take a moment to mull that with me.

And while I love what Anthony King tweeted about the storm ("If Steve Jobs was still CEO, iRene would have been HUGE.") if we're going to be disappointed that this storm wasn't more disastrous than it actually was, that's the kind of disappointment I can live with pretty easily.

Goodnight everybody.

Long Weekend

Beautiful day in New York today: hot, sunny, mimosa-worthy; kind of perfect for what is treated as the unmeteorological-yet-quite-official First Weekend of Summer.

Relaxing morning followed by a nice walk to brunch followed by a lingering and even nicer walk to run some errands and now we're back in Chelsea listening to Django Reinhardt and about to get ready for a Sweet 17 birthday party for one of Cory's clan.

Very sad to read about Gil Scott-Heron last night. He had a hard life in a lot of ways, but did some very good, very important work. Very happy to have shared some time on this earth with him.

For him and for the day, here are a couple shots of a sculpture in a park in San Francisco - called Ecstasy in its current incarnation, it's a repurposed and reclaimed piece that Karen Cusolito and Dan Das Mann originally did for a huge Burning Man project. Fortunate to have crossed paths with this beautiful work while it was out in public.

Some Kind of Sunday

Ok.

I have my Packers t-shirt.

I have my GO PACK GO sign.

I have all the fixings for a big vat of chili.

My friend (from Green Bay, no less) who is hosting the party is putting together a big spread of Wisconsin cheeses to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

There will be beer.

One of my best friends who is doing very well in acting is THERE in Dallas playing in a 'celebrity' flag football game and gets to go to The Game too.

That is all. Carry on.

Oh wait, one more thing:

Go Pack GO!!!!

Holly Daze

Well, I've been fairly lousy at keeping up with this particular outlet recently. I didn't even bother to celebrate (or even notice) that my last post before this one was my 500th post. And I am NOT one to miss out on an opportunity to celebrate something.

That said, I have my excuses (there are always excuses). The holidays were busy as all get out; I had out of town guests of various shapes and sizes; there were social engagements at every turn; we had to go to Paramus; we had a blizzard; I was short-listed for a Nobel Prize; it was chaos!

I'll fill in some of the blanks in the coming days, but for now, here are some headlines:

• Yo La Hanukkah - the annual Maxwell's 8-night orgasm of music and fun. We caught two of the shows: one was great, the other was unbelievably awesome
• Real Hanukkah - fewer latkes this year, but we still brought out the celebration for the Festival of Lights
• Alvin Ailey - I got to go to a few shows this City Center season, including by great good fortune both opening and closing night. Both were great, although Judith Jamison's farewell show was really over the top special and wonderful
• Julie! And her family. We had pizza and saw Lombardi. Nice.
• Davin! In town on a mission or three
• Wedding in Westchester
• Holiday music and movies - in both live and recorded form, it's an annual tradition and a half. This year's highlights included: the choral group Angelica on the UES; a Renegade Cabaret performance on 14th Street; Oy to the World, volume 13; The Bishop's Wife at Chome on Christmas Eve; Christmas in Connecticut with Kelly (at the beginning of the Blizzard!)
• True Grit in Bkln w/Dominic
• The Big Christmas Gathering
• Black Swan with Susan & Daniel
• The Big Parental Visit - delayed along with several thousand of our closest friends by the same Blizzard, but still very fun
• New Year's Eve - Ailey for the folks, Patti Smith for us (along with Sue and Steve and Beth B.) A splendid time was had by all, in spite of some in-crowd obnoxiousness (did they forget what show they were at?)

So - there that is. I'm sure I'm forgetting some really important stuff. More to come...