Handbill Handout

It is Monday night, and I am walking down 47 th street heading for the R train after another great day at the office. Broadway is an undulating mass of pedestrians and I can’t figure out why. It’s Monday, not matinee Wednesday. Then I look in Sbarro ’s and see a line of people stretching out the door and it hits me. The New Year’s tourist army has already arrived. Yes, there they were lining up for their authentic New York pizza experience at a chain joint in Times Square. Well, I suppose one person’s authentic is another person’s fraud, and in any event the pizza at that Sbarro ’s is still probably better than the local Papa John’s or Domino’s that they order from back home. Location lends a bit of credibility too; why I remember rushing to visit the Howard Johnson’s that was right across Times Square from that very Sbarro ’s when word came that it was closing. HoJos . The very symbol of the generification (and yes, I mean " generification ", not "gentrification"...

“A what?” “A ranker. A top 10 or 20 list” “You’re bereft of ideas” “I know” “You’ ve only been doing this for what, nine, ten months and you already don’t know what to do with it.” “Pretty much. And I just did the Facebook thing, so that’ll eat up my online time.” “How’s Facebook going to teach you how to write? How are you ever going to learn anything there?” “It isn ’t, but maybe I’ll learn how to raise Llamas for fun and profit. I hear they have farming courses there. If I can learn how to make money farming, I can quit the rat race and do something fulfilling so I won’t have to inflict myself on the unsuspecting internet anymore” “You moron, those are VIRTUAL farms. There’s nothing to be learned there.” “Oh. So why the hell am I doing it?” “A lot of your friends and family are there. If you communicate via that site you don’t have to call anyone in your family and when you’re at the curling club nobody has to talk to you and you can just watch the hockey games because th...

This morning I wandered into the living room and turned on the television in search of some white noise wallpaper to fill the air while I went about making coffee, tidying up from the night before. Since I recently got upgraded to free HD via my cable company, I decide to put on one of those Discovery Channel stoner -TV spectaculars, "Sunrise Earth". The episode was allegedly supposed to contain Elk wandering about a nature preserve in California. Only problem was, every time I looked over at the TV for the first 15 minutes of the show there were shrubs and cliffs and water and sunrise and no animals. The reason struck me out of the blue. Of course, I said to the Mrs, it's seasonal programming. You know: "No Elk No Elk Noooo Elk No Elk We can't find any God damned Elk" A nice touch on their part. I salute you, Discovery programming people! Oh, and I know what happened to the elk. PBS's "New Scandinavian Cooking" today is featuring...wait for...

Thanks for one of my favorite Christmas stories .

It may come as a surprise to those who know me as a middle aged skeptic (some call me “bitter”), but I was a very credulous child. A true believer. However once one gets to a certain point in kid-hood one becomes doubtful about certain things like the existence of a certain, non-Krampus Christmas figure. It seems silly not to believe nowadays now that everyone can follow the government track of the old guy without having to call a 976 number and pay a quarter a throw like I did as a kid. I mean, if you can follow him on the Web he must be real! Here in New York old St. Nick had severe flight restrictions in those days even though it was the pre-9/11 era. You see, because of the high volume of Christmas Eve air traffic and the usual weather-related delays that the airlines experienced Santa would never receive clearance to enter the airspace until around 3 am when the air traffic was light. So it was that no kid was ever awake to see the man himself dropping off the goods. Well, I don’t...

Everything is better with....

I wonder how many pictures tourists have taken of me. During the holidays the MTA moves my homeward-bound bus stop to 7 th avenue in the northern part of Times Square to avoid the crowds around the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Just about every night that I’ ve taken the bus at least one family of tourists has taken a picture looking south from the uptown side of the bus stop to use Times Square as a background (“look at all them bright and shiny advertisin ’ signs Marge!”), which means all of us waiting at this particular bus stop are now immortalized as background for the family photo. Have you ever looked at the backgrounds of your own vacation shots and wondered about the people you accidentally captured? Made up stories about them maybe? I wonder how many people are doing that to me. Thus far I have resisted the temptation to do something like give the finger or stick my tongue out, though I think that being rude to the odd tourist was a public service. That way th...

It's the weekend before Christmas which in my house means two things: 1. Cooking the items that can be cooked in advance for Christmas Day. 2. Making prep lists for the big day itself. Yesterday we kicked off the weekend by making potage garbure which is a French vegetable soup where first you render some pork fat, then sweat your aromatics and then toss in stock, chopped tomatoes (since it's winter I used canned) potatoes and cabbage. Simmer for a while and then puree. Pretty happy with the way that turned out, especially since the pork fat was rendered off my home made pancetta (which also turned out very well, I'm happy to report) and the stock was the last of the batch I made using of the Thanksgiving turkey carcass. Now we have about 3 quarts of lunches and dinners hanging out in the fridge, though we may serve some on Christmas if we're running short of food (unlikely that that will happen, but you never know). Today we've already completed 4 pounds of Swe...

I hope this snowstorm is bigger than they say. Nature is the only thing that can slow things down in the 21st century. Yes, I am at work right now, but things are winding down as people drift off for the holidays. Business slows in my industry for the two weeks containing Christmas and New Year’s, though in my particular area the day to day stuff never stops and we use the holidays to get ahead of the curve on upcoming projects that will hit the fan come the first Monday after New Year’s. But yes, I will have to deal with commuting home through the mess. Fine. For now, I can take a few minutes and watch the snow swirl outside. Unfortunately, right now I can only watch and not get the full experience. You see, what I really love is the sound of snow. The silence that a nice, thick snow covering provides at the height of a heavy snowfall that doesn ’t have too much wind. It’s a silence that almost lets you hear the plink of each flake as it adds to the pile. It pads and muffles and chan...

I decided to ask Google some important questions and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button to get some answers. Below are five questions and the first sentence from the page that Google gave me, excluding page headlines. What does it all mean? "World's Largest English Language News Service with Over 500 Articles Updated Daily" Does God exist? " A Practical Man's Proof of God " What is the meaning of life? "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" Is there an afterlife? "Ads by Google" What are the winning mega-millions numbers for the next draw? "Get the Lottery Results Delivered to your Cell Phone!" I think I have everything I need to know now. Thank you Google, and thank you Internet. You make our lives better and better every day!

Ken brings all the warmth and joy of the Krampus season with the wondrous power of music . Even if you don't listen, the pictures on the playlist are worth a click.

I can't wait for these pork bellies to dry. One week down, one to go for these guys. 9 days in a pancetta cure, 2 weeks hanging and they'll be ready for fryin' and use in things like the Mrs' wonderful pasta sauces. Yeah, I didn't quite square of the lower one, so sue me. I wanted every bit of the porky wonderfulness. What's up with the title of this post? Well, last night the Mrs., myself and my buddy CS had the pleasure of seeing Neil Young and Wilco at MSG. They weren't together; Wilco was the second support band and honestly I wished they had ditched the other opener and given Wilco a full 90 minutes or more instead of the 50 they got. No knock to the first band, I'm just greedy especially given what we paid for the tickets. Arena rock: not cheap in the 21st century, even in the days of the Great Global Collapse of the Oughties. Wilco were excellent as always, they're the first opening band I've seen in quite some time to almost get an encore...

It’s the time of year where some teenage ne’er do wells spend time and effort stealing religious iconography. I can honestly say that I never did that during my vandal stage. However I did go through a brief stage some 20 years ago or so of collecting traffic signs. It started off innocently enough – sometimes weather or car accidents would knock down “No Parking” or other such signs to the ground. As they were damaged, I figured the city would just replace them with new signs and as a taxpayer (I have the good fortune of being continuously employed since the age of 16) I figured I was entitled to the old one that was just going to get tossed anyway. Once you start with the sign racket. It’s difficult to turn back. A friend of mine during my college years was a much more advanced collector of municipal street furniture. In his room over the years he accumulated a traffic light (which he hooked up plugged in and operated indoors), a fare box from an old bus, a parking meter, a fire...

Decades ago, there was a social custom of sending a Christmas Letter. The Christmas Letter was a document sent out every year where one would chronicle the events of the past year to people who were friends of the family but who lived far away or for whatever reason weren ’t in regular contact. With the advent of constant contact via all the various forms of technology currently cluttering the ether such a thing is an anachronism. However, I still receive the odd holiday missive and I try to write a little something extra to those who I don’t communicate with frequently. Sometimes the letter contains good news. This year for example we found out a waiter friend of ours from Montreal who we don’t see anymore since he quit his job at the restaurant and he lives outside the city is marrying his partner. This is the kind of holiday news that warms the heart Of course, there’s also the other kind. When I was growing up, my mother was good friends with a woman who lived across the street. He...

It occurs to me that while the adage goes "you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar", bullshit probably attracts more than either.

Thank you Homer Simpson for the title of today's homily. The subject is, of course, pig. Food writer and occasional Bourdain straight man Michael Ruhlman expounds on the joys of breaking down a whole pig . That's something I'd like to do, though I'd need some proper tools and skilled friends. You know who you are. On a smaller scale, I continue to stretch every bit of meat that I can. Sunday I made another variant of braised country ribs. Pretty simple - season with salt and pepper, brown for 4 minutes on each side in a screaming hot saucier or saucepan with a little cheap olive oil (remember using the EV stuff for cooking is a waste of money, save it for marinades, dressings, dipping etc.). Then using the same pan sweat a small onion (chopped) a shallot (ditto) and a few minced cloves of garlic. Don't forget a heavy pinch of salt to draw out moisture. When that's all soft and fragrant, sprinkle in some chili powder and cumin (sorry, didn't measure, just e...

You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

First page of the "Everyone" feed on Twitter, 9:20 pm, Monday 12/8/08 MaternalSpark for those of you who pitch bloggers - what #1 thing do you want to see as a result ?#journchat less than 5 seconds ago from TweetDeck xiombarg The new BlackBerry seems to have a 160 character limit to SMS, or at least it counts down from that; perfect for Twitter. less than 5 seconds ago from txt gaylord_focker Work at home jobs Sell Billboards Ads -Looking for Independent Sales Person: We are looking for.. http://tinyurl.com/6nbp8e less than 5 seconds ago from twitterfeed chaluffa homework. AKA sparknotes! less than 5 seconds ago from web devxwill devxwill is currently Online: Playing Fable II About to enter Albion. . About to enter Albion. . (via Xbox Live Nation) less than 5 seconds ago from web NinjaVideoRSS Numb3rs 5x01 High Exposure http://tinyurl.com/5du7xw less than 5 seconds ago from twitterfeed mattbacak @ hhavenwood Ruth Chris ROCKED! Masterminded like crazy! less th...

The late, great Kaos used to say that men under 40 should not wear suspenders or bow ties as part of their business apparel. Don’t know why. He was an accountant at a commodities firm during the 1990s so it’s possible that the people who dressed that way treated him poorly which caused him to create a rule for himself. Since he died before he made 40 there’s way of knowing if he would’ve expanded his sartorial repertoire upon reaching that age. I, on the other hand think there are certain words that you shouldn’t use before you hit middle age. I have reached that wonderful phase of life, and I am proudly using those words whenever I can. One of the words in question is “keister”, as in rear-end, buttocks or ass. Now I know what you’re thinking: why use a word that makes you sound like Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H? It’s an attention getter, that’s why. Nobody uses that word, least of all young people. Throw it in a sentence and watch those heads turn! It’s even money tha...

We had some stale peanuts sitting around the house that I threw out in the yard figuring the critters could use them on a cold winter's day. Why waste food? This picture makes my backyard look big. It isn't. The Mrs. and I own, or rather are able to make monthly mortgage payments on a small chunk of New York City dirt with mid-twentieth century 2 bedroom ranch with a fully finished basement planted on it. It isn't big. It isn't impressive. It is enough. We had lunch with my oldest sister today. She was lamenting the fact that our aunt who passed away on Election Day at the age of 70 opted for cremation. She said "there's no marker to let anyone know she was ever on the planet, and isn't that a shame." I said it wasn't, that a marker doesn't matter, blah blah you know the usual philosophical BS. Then we talked about how the decoration of our parents' and grandmothers' graves were going this fine Christian/Pagan celebratory time of yea...

Today is the day when the Krampus roam. I know, "What's a Krampus"? I gave you a link right up there and here's a news article from Der Spiegel . Too lazy to click? Fine. The Krampus is the dark companion of Santa Claus. Back in the days when men were men, women were women and parents were parents they knew that promising kids gifts at Christmas wasn't enough to keep the little bastards in line. They knew you had to scare the crap out of them as well. So, the Krampus was born. Like all good traditions, the Krampus tradition is now kept up in Alpine regions by young men who get all hopped up on the liquor and whatnot, dress up in costumes and roam the streets on December 5 scaring people, waving chains and rusty nails and occasionally birching people. Sounds like a blast to me. Better than any Christmas party I ever attended. My favorite line from the Speigel article is this: "As with most old traditions, Krampus has been somewhat commercialized and toned down...

Just saw this item in a sports business trade newsletter: "Golf Digest has released its ranking of the Top 15 golfing presidents with President-elect Barack Obama occupying the 8 th spot, between Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. The top-five golfing presidents, as determined by their handicap index, were John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Franklin Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush (Golf Digest)." That's a terrible joke to make about FDR. Golf Digest, shame on you.

Sean Avery is an idiot, but an entertaining idiot. The geniuses who run the NHL are even bigger idiots who couldn't market a Poland Spring stand in the middle of the Sahara. In case you haven't heard, Sean Avery has been given an indefinite suspension by the NHL head office. Did he club someone over the head with a stick? No. Did he hit someone from behind into the boards causing injury? No. Did he commit the unpardonable sin of waving his stick in front of a goaltender in a classic "Does this bother you? I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you..." manner again? No. Sean Avery has been suspended for commenting on the love lives of his fellow NHL players. In case you haven't seen it, here is a transcript (pasted from Yahoo sports) of Sean Avery's unpardonable crimes against humanity: _____________________________________________ "I'm really happy to be back in Calgary. I love Canada," an unprovoked Avery told the gathered reporte...

Wakey wakey. Back to work.

It is a cold, rainy and dreary Sunday in New York. Today is the kind of day that makes you want to hide, stay in bed, hibernate. It is not a jolly start to the holiday season. As soon as I type this, I'm going to make myself some hot cocoa. Comforting and warm. The food I've eaten this weekend had not always been so comfortable. Thursday was headlined, of course, by a large bird. The turkey I prepared was raised on a farm near Syracuse, New York and involved some correspondence between the Mrs. and the farmer as to timing of when said bird would be "processed" (to use the Orwellian term for "killed, plucked and gutted") and shipped to us. We've been getting closer to the meat that we eat having conversations with a farmer at our local market that includes sentences like "We're sending up two more cows and a few pigs next week so we'll have a brisket for you in three weeks" and so forth. Makes one a little more careful in cooking meat be...

Thanksgiving has come and gone. We are officially hip deep in the holiday season. Once you've passed a certain point in life, holiday seasons present are inevitably triggers to memories of holiday seasons past. So it was that I happened to be driving up Lincoln Avenue today and I passed a now-shuttered storefront that once housed one of the two deli/small grocery stores I did time in to earn tuition, book and beer money in the late 1980s. Across the street from that store were high-rise apartment buildings populated by mainly lower-middle-class residents. Blue collar types mainly: postal workers, cab drivers, construction workers and some retirees living on a pension. There were an assortment of interesting and even sordid characters dwelling there. One of them was an older guy whose name none of us in the store new, but who we called Mr. Schaefer . He earned the name via his purchasing habits. Each and every day he would come in and buy two six packs of Schaefer tall boys (16 oz...

To those of hippie age, it's a cliche. But for me, Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie is an integral part of every Thanksgiving. When I was younger commercial radio was not, well, it wasn't what you might call good for the most part but it wasn't quite as uniformly cookie-cutter across the country as it is today. Each Thanksgiving at noon when I was younger WNEW-FM in NY and then later WXRK when it became "Classic Rock" (whatever that is) would play the piece in its entirety and I would make a point of being near a radio to listen. Of course, I owned my brother's old vinyl copy but back then (Old Fogie statement alert!) you got a sense of community by listening to the radio. Rock radio stations would do things like "concert echo" where they would have someone at whatever big stadium or arena concert in the area was going on and they would call in the setlist of the show and the station would play the songs off the records so you could listen in t...

“This place is giving me nothing” I grumbled to the Mrs. over my third Boreale Rousse . We were in the Cock and Bull, a St. Catherine street pub near the Forum that we frequented regularly in the 90s and less so in the 21st century as we got older and her tolerance for smoke declined along with my tolerance for my fellow drunks. However Quebec has recently joined the rest of the nanny states and provinces in banning indoor smoking in bars (which I’m opposed to in principle but as an asthmatic non-smoker thoroughly enjoy in fact, so call me a hypocrite and then call me a taxi ‘cause I’m in no condition to be driving home from this place, no sir) and we have recently resumed our patronage when visiting the former Ville Marie. The Habs were having another underachieving Saturday night, this time against the Bruins. The bigger crowd was in the shiny new sports bar half a block away while the ol ’ C&B was half full at best with dedicated local celebrants of the fermented beverage. ...

Sometimes… Scratch that. Most of the time I forget how awe-inspiring New York City can be. I don’t mean culturally or intellectually or artistically or anything like that. I mean physically. From certain perspectives the sheer mass of the place reveals itself to you in a way that literally sucks the air from your lungs. Last night I was sitting at the back of the third deck of the ferry in a corner seat. The corner seat is a particularly good vantage point because the windows wrap around from the side to the back of that deck and offer a 270 degree perspective of the harbor. The night outside was cold and sharp and incredibly clear. It had the kind of clarity and visual focus that you only get on a cloudless winter night that makes everything look hyper-real with precisely defined borders, clear angles and perfect definition. I looked at a view that I have seen hundreds of times from ballpark in St. George that faces the city but the view was different somehow. I’m only at th...