Handbill Handout

Following a downer of a post, some good news. We won after all. This is from the WFMU home page: "We Made It! Thanks to all our 2008 marathon pledgers, as well as those people who pledged to JM in the AM's belated marathon finale last week, WFMU has now exceeded our 50th Anniversary Fundraising goal by over $158,000! We are continually astonished by the enthusiasm, generosity and kindness of our listeners.....Thanks again for keeping WFMU alive and well! "

I really wanted to believe Staten Island Chuck . I wanted an early spring. It is, I suppose another sign that I’m getting older. I used to really enjoy the winter time. I liked snow. I liked the stillness and shimmering beauty a good blizzard brought. Of course, we don’t really have those in New York anymore. Winter is now a raw, rainy knife to the bone marrow. It’s slick and inconvenient and sickness-inducing and uncomfortable. A cheerless gray slog, especially once the holiday season is done. I had hoped to leave it behind this weekend as we went to the Union Square Greenmarket armed with spring recipes for pea dishes, ramp dishes and asparagus dishes. Forget it. None of that was in evidence at the lone produce purveyor that decided to show up on Saturday. It was still a depressing array of all root veg, all the time. The bison vendor was still selling hot broth (under salted but not terrible). Dogs were still bundled in winter coats. It won’t go away. Then again, it’s p

Yes it’s true . I can honestly say I’ ve never eaten an Egg McMuffin . Never even tried one. Long time readers may recall my antipathy toward eggs which some would say disqualifies me from being a true gourmand, whatever the hell that is. That’s all right with me. I’m just a guy who likes food. The passing of Mr. Egg McMuffin reminded me that Easter has just passed for most Christian denominations. I had a bit of a different upbringing around that holiday since my family wasn ’t particularly religious and my dad usually got some time off around then so many Easter mornings were spent in campgrounds. The possibilities of hiding eggs on a campsite are infinitely expanded over to those in a house so it was possible for parents to keep kids occupied for much longer than they would be at home while they had a second cup of Maxwell House and another Kent while trying to orient the rabbit ears on the crummy black and white TV we dragged with us on every trip. When we weren ’t camping on Eas

I was wandering through a street fair on a residential street on the North Side of Chicago, somewhere in Wrigleyville or close by. There were lots of good food stands, people having yard sales, and kids and dogs playing in the street. I had less than a day in town on a layover, and I decided to try to give a friend a call to meet up but my cell phone wouldn ’t work. Since it was a newer model with a Qwerty-style keyboard, I tried to text and found that the damn thing wouldn ’t turn on. Instead, I decided to head for the roundhouse that I’d be bunking in for part of the 18 hours I’d be in town. It was getting cloudy anyway and I didn ’t feel like getting caught in the rain. I got to the roundhouse and walked in without knocking. Down a long flight of wooden stairs in a giant, domed room filled with furniture covered in sheets there were six beds, a couple occupied. One of the occupants greeted me and I felt like I knew who it was though I couldn ’t see the face. Someone else cam

Curling season is winding down for another year so it’s time to reflect on what’s past and what I still want to do in the few years that I intend to continue playing the game: I want to curl in Canada, preferably at the PEI Summer Spud. The City of Ottawa might be fun too but the level of curling there is way over my head and it's men's curling. I'd rather curl with the Mrs. up north. I would love to curl in Europe, preferably at a less-competitive/more drinking bonspiel. I want to get one more member of my family to try the sport so at some point I can enter a bonspiel or play in the club’s Saturday night league as a family unit. I’d like to extend my “curling footprint” in the US; the furthest I’ve gone to curl is Knoxville. I want to go watch the Brier live and in person, though I guess that can happen after I stop playing. I want to get 10 years under my belt at the PCC Stone so I can get my mug and retire! I think that’s about it. What I want to know from anyone wh

That’s this season’s Montreal Canadiens slogan , and you could almost believe it. Every game is sold out, the atmosphere is always electric, and the television networks (particularly the French language channels) are filled with coverage. So of course it made total sense when we went to La Cage Aux Sports in the Bell Centre on Saturday night after the Habs shootout win over the Bruins and found not a single television showing the late Hockey Night In Canada game. Montreal, it’s quite a city of contradictions, isn ’t it? HBO’s Boxing After Dark was the viewing of choice accompanied by loud, throbbing dance music. I had forgotten what a weird place Montreal could be. Is there really that much of a boxing crowd in Montreal that putting that on in a sports bar in the arena of the most storied team in hockey history makes any kind of sense? Or were they just trying to drive out the hockey crowd so they could go home? The funny thing was is the fights were pretty darn good, so good

One of the defining characteristics of America is that there’s so much of it. You can drive hours in any direction and still be in it, and here in the early 21st century there’s a numbing sameness to just about every place outside of the oldest parts of the oldest cities. If you live in New York City you can leave town in any direction on an Interstate and drive for hours on a treadmill of strip malled suburbia Any direction but North that is. Strike out from the city about 9am and fight your way through New Jersey traffic up to the New York State thruway northbound and by noon you can be in the stunning Adirondacks traveling one of the most scenic roads on the planet. Keep going and by 3pm you can find yourself in a place totally alien to your fellow Americans. A place that is always my first or last stop when I visit the city that for me is home but not home, the city I can always visit but never live. The city is Montreal, and the place is Marche Atwater . It’s a smell that ge

Scene: 2 people sitting on a bench near the slip 2 doors in the Whitehall street ferry terminal. One is 50 something construction worker, the other a 30 something male dressed in business casual attire and wearing white ear buds 30: Is this the door for the next boat? 50: Yeah, that's what they said. 30: All the renovations they do and they can't even put up a sign where the next boat is going to be. I remember in the old terminal they had "Next Boat" signs. They'd light up, and you knew where to stand; now you got nuthin . 50 Yeah well look they do all these renovations and they can't even keep the pigeons out. I mean look at the feet on those things. They ain't right. They're diseased. But you can't touch 'em or they'll lock you up 30: Yeah 50: Look at that one over there. His feet are all messed up and he's just sittin ' there. But try to take a kick at him and they'll put you away. (Bird suddenly flies to far sid

Concept: since Bravo repeats every episode of Top Chef a kajillion times, you can have the experience of watching the episode with me any time by following along with this blog entry. Basically, it's a Dark Side Of The Moon-Wizard Of Oz concept. You know how you're supposed to start DSOM at the moment Wizard Of Oz goes into color and there's a weird synchronicity between the music and the movie? Well that's how this works. The numbers next to each reaction correspond to minutes past the start of the episode so even if you recorded you can "sync up" with me. Sound fun? Here goes: Top Chef Season 4, episode 2. (Spoilers ahoy, by the way) -1 yell at wife to turn off weather channel and put on Bravo 0 last week's recap. How come the winner of the challenge didn't at least get Padma's new cookbook or some autographed smack from Bourdain or something? 4 one of the chicks is wearing those 70s sunglasses. Does anyone think that's attract

Warning: If you do not find life completely absurd and are uncomfortable talking or thinking about death, I suggest you go here or here and check back tomorrow for another entry. Pete (occasionally known to some as Kaos ) would’ ve been 41 years old today. Would’ ve if cancer hadn ’t pushed him off the planet at 34. I’m going to tell a story that he would absolutely hate me to tell, mainly since the punch line revolves around his death. Who likes a story that ends in his own death? Even though pretty much everyone’s story ends that way, near as I can tell. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed for the first time. Pete worked there at the time, and as word spread of what happened I frantically tried to contact him at his work and home phone numbers leaving messages in both places (bear in mind this is 1993 – neither of us had mobile phones). I got a call back a few days later; he was fine of course. What happened? He and his coworkers evacuated and went to a bar, (where else?) whe

I wonder if I wouldn ’t be better off working some overnight job somewhere. Yeah, it’s supposed to screw you up, shorten your life, blah blah blah but I don’t buy it. I do think that most people are day people but I think some of us are night people. Maybe not night people the way this guy thought of them, but night people in the sense that we’re more comfortable when it’s dark and quiet out. When you can hear the hum of the streetlights. When you can hear a train from over a mile away. When the endless onslaught of meaningless information slows down and you can, heaven forbid, think for a minute. In my high school and college days I worked overnight shifts at two jobs. The first was at Dunkin Donuts as an assistant baker. The second was at a deli/convenience store when the owner briefly opened for 24 hours to squeeze a few more bucks out of the place. The deli job was relatively uneventful, often during the warmer months I’d get to just sit on the step outside the store for

If you aren ’t from New York City and there’s an event that makes you want to come here, it probably makes most of us who live here run the other way. I mention this because today is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. A day where we celebrate all things Irish by having bridge-and-tunnelers join forces with the omnipresent tourists to thoroughly infest the city with their strollers, slow walking and upward stares causing pedestrian movement to congeal like chicken fat on cold stock. That brew is seasoned by the AAA (Amateur Alcoholics Association) who take this day as their cue to drink just enough alcohol to clean out their systems of any remaining foodstuffs from the holiday season three months past. Unfortunately for the rest of us, said cleaning tends to take place on moving public transit vehicles or sidewalks. On days like this we grab onto manufactured traditions as comfy, fluffy security blankets even if those traditions have absolutely zero basis in the stated tradition of the h

Today is one of those gleaming, grey-blue gunmetal mid-March days where you don't know quite what to do. It's cold and dank but the sun is warm. Bits of dead leaves and winter debris blow around your feet but the crocuses and daffodils are starting to push through the sloggy used-coffee-ground earth. It's a day that progresses with a sense of unreality, confusion, neither here nor there. A mixture of a vague sense of hope and fear. Not fear-fear, more a gnawing sense of annoyed dread like Monday morning when the alarm clock goes off tempered by the realization that maybe this is a short week or that you're going on vacation soon. Do you want to get up and tease the good from the muck or roll over and wait, hiding until the good part comes? Then you realize you can't hide, you have to face the mixed bag times like this bring. You wobble around, grasping for something familiar to ease your way through it. I'm making a pot of chili. How about you?

There’s nothing like writing a bunch of tips and not being able to follow them and winding up in pain because of it. But before I complain, let me say the Bob and the band were amazing last night. Absolutely incredible. I’d say a good chunk of the crowd was my age or older but regardless of that the band hit a run toward the end of the main set climaxing with the Husker Du classics “Celebrated Summer” straight into “Divide and Conquer” (a song I’d never heard live) and suddenly it was 1987 with people pogoing and chunk of the crowd in the center surging toward the stage. Funny seeing so many balding heads in a crowd like that. Even Bob glanced down at the “pit” for a minute during his solo and laughed. An old fart with a grey beard who could still bring it better than most of the bands that owe him their sound today. Jason Narducy was terrific on bass and sang the strongest backing vocals I’ ve ever heard any collaborator of Bob’s sing on stage. The-dude-who-was-a-last-minute-

I’m going to see a middle aged guy play loud guitar and yell for 90 minutes tonight. Unlike many of my peers, I’m not seeing a band in some sports arena over overpriced theater. I’m going to a good, old fashioned stand up and drink 1,000 people maximum capacity music venue. Of course, at my age you have to have a plan for a venture like this, particularly on a work night. Since I still engage in this activity a handful of times a year, I have developed my own particular method for approaching the evening. So, here are some Tips For The Middle-Aged Guy Going To See A Band At A Club 1. If you’re gonna drink, drink before you go in the club – this is absolutely crucial unless you happen to be independently wealthy. If you’re a long time night person like me, you’ve probably developed a certain tolerance to fermented products. That means if you want a proper show-quality buzz, you need to find a bar beforehand. If you live near the venue (or have a friend that does), a few pops at home

The Treaty Stone was my college bar. It’s gone now. It became a bunch of different bars after I graduated, all of them far cleaner and with more upscale clientele than the bar I drank in during my lager days. I’m not even sure if the building exists anymore. The Treaty Stone made your average McAnn ’s look upscale. The Treaty Stone was one of those places people with more money would walk right past. The Treaty Stone was the kind of place where I wouldn ’t dream of drinking anything but beer straight out of the bottle today but freely drank tap beer and shots decades ago. The urinals were filled with ice and the kitchen had been closed years before and now served as a free bedroom for any homeless guy willing to clean up the place at closing in exchange for a table to sleep on. So who drank there? Poor college kids and homeless guys. The bums would cash their welfare checks at the pawn shop next door (a pawn shop complete with brass balls hanging out front) and drink it. The poor colle

You know New Yorkers are a bit off their rocker about pizza when one of the first things to hit the dreaded blogosphere after their governor is implicated in a sex scandal is a bit on a foodie website saying, in essence, “ We shoulda known he was no good because his favorite pizza joint is upstate”. I guess I should’ ve seen it coming. Pizza is as New York as, well, stepping off the curb while waiting for the light to change or being annoyed on the bus by three loud cell phone conversations in three different languages or buying a plain black umbrella during a rainstorm for twice the price that it was yesterday when the weather was sunny. My earliest happy food memories are of pizza. There was a small place, long gone now that had the red and white checked tablecloths that we’d go to as a treat when I was a pre - kindergartener . There was the time we went to the Nathan’s that expanded into a pizzeria when I was around 10 and my father convinced me that I wanted a lot of hot cr

I work in midtown Manhattan. Have for a lot of years now. Like any other old person, I’ll tell you that it ain ’t what it used to be. That’s not a positive statement or a negative statement. It is merely a fact, like what time the sun rose this morning or whether it rained yesterday or not. Then again, I guess those facts depend on where you are. Then again, so does what I said. Despite the Disney-like, squeaky clean faux New York that exists in Times Square itself bits of real life still exist on the perimeter. There’s a panhandler who works the back entrance of my building. Not sure it he has some kind of mental handicap or if he’s affecting one; he stands out there every evening and says over and over again “Spare some change…..spare some change”. Like any businessman he keeps regular hours. If I work very late he’s not there, and he takes off on the holidays. I know this because he wasn ’t there on Columbus Day last year. Maybe he’s from Canada and was celebrating Thanks

$19,000 short . They would've made it except for the terrible tragedy leading to the suspension of the JM in the AM fundraising. Damn. I'm hoping that post-marathon pledging gets them to the goal. Really, between the loss of 6 hours of morning drive fundraising, being knocked off the air by a windstorm for an hour Sunday afternoon and losing and hour of the overnight due to Daylight Savings this should be regarded as a win. I'm pretty sure it's the most money they've ever raised during the marathon. But it still feels like a loss because we didn't hit the million.

Today is the last day of WFMU's annual fund raising marathon. It's a marathon that has been full of adversity (the station's FM transmitter was off the air for an hour Sunday afternoon due to a blackout in West Orange) and tragedy . In my younger days, the feeling of elation that came from one of my favorite sports teams winning a championship was unrivaled by any other. As I got older, and especially once I began working in the TV business my ability to feel that feeling outside of an immediate moment in a game virtually disappeared. I see the world of sports now for what it is: a bunch of well-branded corporations competing against each other in a contrived setting with the primary objective of generating revenue streams for their owners, sponsors and participants. So I may get absorbed into an actual contest but once it's over the feeling is more "so what else is on?" rather than the joyous afterglow or crushing depression that followed in the past. T

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Once upon a time, I was fortunate to be part of a curling rink that won an event in what is essentially the Northeastern US Men’s Under-5 years-of-Experience Curling Championship. I know, you're thinking of the immortal words of Derrick Coleman. "Whoop- de -damn-do. " Despite my general indifference to the outcome of the competition part of these things (I’m just there for a good party), I must admit I felt lucky to be part of that team and proud of what we accomplished. The coolest thing about it is that when you win one of the four events at that competition your name goes on a trophy that travels to the home club of the team that wins that event each year. So now, my name is engraved and traveling around the Northeast US, kind of like a flat brass Waldo or Carmen Sandiego . At other clubs, you win an event and maybe your name goes on a trophy in their bar. Not this one. It's a road trip every year! Of course, to 99% of the people who ever see the trophy, the only n

A sad day . Who knows if it was good for me? Who knows if it was bad? All I know is that I spent a large chunk of my early high school years playing games. The old kind that didn ’t involve computers. Way, way back in the Reagan era early teen-age losers like me would gather in bedrooms and basements and murder entire afternoons playing elves or dwarves and later super heroes or space adventurers or World War II generals. Parents around the country freaked out fearing that we were learning to be pagans or forming cults and getting into human sacrifice. Since I happened to be the child of a man who was an avid sci- fi reader and a woman who believed that anything that encouraged the use of a person’s imagination was a positive I didn ’t have to deal with that. They thought that it was better that I was in some safe basement being a geek instead of drinking beer and/or smoking non-tobacco substances in the woods. Of course, that put me behind the learning curve I would have to

Wd-50 gets what it deserves . Captain Bruntastic even makes the eggs the centerpiece of his rave review. "At once concise and comprehensive, it’s perhaps the tidiest Benedict the egg-loving world has ever known. It’s quite possibly the best, yielding more yolk, more hollandaise and a more pronounced juxtaposition of textures in each bite. And it’s a window into what makes WD-50 and Mr. Dufresne, its chef, so amusing, important and rewarding. He pushes hard against the envelope of possibility and the bounds of conformity to produce food that’s not only playful but also joyful and even exhilarating, at least when the mad science pays off. " Somebody else mentioned them earlier.

The Times does a re-review of wd -50 tomorrow. Eater predicts 3 stars. One one hand, I'm rooting hard for that to happen because I've eaten there twice and completely enjoyed both meals. I'm not sure everything I ate was food in the conventional sense, but both meals made me alternately happy, thoughtful and satisfied. The most recent meal finished with probably the best dessert courses I've ever had in my life. Maybe better than Per Se . Unlike many restaurants, the celebrity chef/owner is actually in the kitchen at wd-50 often as well. Although he wasn't the last time we ate there, dessert god Alex Stupak was, fresh off his win on Iron Chef America. On the other hand, 3 stars means my next meal there will probably be on a Monday at 5:30pm. Oh well.

We ate the remainder of the pork bellies last night and it was a real learning experience. My first suspicions were confirmed - they do go better with a nice mixed green salad. As an added bonus, the Mrs. made a terrific Dijon -balsamic vinaigrette that I tossed the greens in before topping the plates with the freshly crisped and heated-through belly. The bellies themselves were much tastier this time as I trimmed off most of the thick fat layer and also split them horizontally before searing them off in my cast-iron skillet. The way they were sold to me was in thick slabs that had alternating muscle and fat layers and it dawned on me that "hey, that's not how bacon looks!" So for next time I now know to slice the pieces horizontally at the start of the process. What this did was give one a nice, thin crispy-creamy fat layer on a nice, now-thicker-than-the-fat layer of meat. Of course, now I have a zip-top bag in the freezer containing about a third of a pound of tri

The battle with The Line Lady continued this morning. The bus arrived and I saw it was virtually empty so of course I decided to be "polite" and hang back. As usual, the Line Lady glared at me as I held my left hand out in an "after you" gesture. Then she sprung her trap. I didn't know that she has an Assistant Line Lady. After I let Line Lady go, a woman she had been talking to stepped back from the door and said in a loud voice with a triumphant tone "Go ahead, you've been waiting!" The young woman behind her practically walked into her back and looked visibly annoyed. At that moment, I realized what the plan was: "Use the polite fat guy as a blocker for the door-jumpers!" I was being used to cut off a person who was trying to step on the bus before it was their turn! A cloud momentarily obscured the sun. A chill breeze whispered through the bus stop as I stared at the A.L.L. for a confused moment. Then, I hung my head and sheepishly s

After 3 days of curing, an overnight braise and crisping up the fatty side, I can report that the bellies were indeed quite tasty, but the yield one gets may not justify the time spent. There was quite a bit of fat still in the belly pieces that we wound up not eating (though I suppose I could've harvested it for some kind of spread). The meat that was there was delicious and actually quite filling for its size. I'm also thinking that we made a bad choice of sides (potatoes and roasted broccoli). Not that the sides weren't good, (they were great, actually) it's just I'm not thinking the bellies would've been a better match over some kind of salad greens, maybe arugula, something like that. We do have 2 servings worth left of the cured, braised belly in the fridge so perhaps during the week we'll sear it off and serve over a cool salad with a nice, fresh made vinaigrette. I'll report back on how that goes and also post some pictures of the process f