Pride 'n cheese

Early fog, then rolling thunder with startling flashes of both horizontal and vertical lightning and a plague of steady downpours with occasional penny-sized hail stones and you have a nice recipe for staying home; eating unhealthy food; guzzling down diet soda and watching a lot of television (mmm…a macaroni ‘n cheese challenge on the Food Channel), reading a not-great sci-fi novel named Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, going over The Sunday NY Times (not quite cover-to-cover, but close) including zipping through the puzzle (in pencil), and standing aghast and thrilled at the windows, while nature wipes out baseball games, parades and any sort of incentive to hit the sidewalk for any reason at all. Oh, yeah, did I mention the teeming 71%+ humidity? I pity (and admire) the boys and girls trying to show-off on 5th Ave. and Christopher St. today and those brave souls sheltering on the curbs under useless umbrellas. Me, I’m proud to be an American.

Full Speedo Head

It’s a fact of growing older. Over time, weight gain is almost inevitable for everybody, not just the elderly male population. But those of us in that particular category have it especially tough. The only solution, besides tempting damage to bone and sinew at the gym, is to learn to live with it and, mostly, develop a don’t-give-a-damn attitude. If you really don’t care what people think, and obviously I don’t, it can be very liberating. A waist is a terrible thing to mind. I suppose a time will come when the truth in the mirror might make me put away swimsuit briefs for good but, sorry folks, until some body part fails me utterly, it’s still full Speedo head.

Once in a while, a beverage with style. Once in a blue…

Each time I have dinner at Moutarde, a French restaurant on 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I order a Blue Moon Belgian-style wheat ale, on tap. It has a gorgeous musky color (and aroma) and is served in a tall glass with a slice of lemon impaled on its edge. Mmmm, tasty. What the heck; if Moutarde has it on their menu it’s got to be for sale somewhere around here. I went on Blue Moon’s website and not only found several local outlets but found out that their recommended slice-of-citrus for this ale is orange, not lemon. I’ll stick with the lemon…it’s already tried and true for my individual palate. I was so impressed by Blue Moon’s website that I bought the t-shirt.

Falling for Waterfalls

Four of these “waterfalls” are being switched on today. The work of Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, they will rise (and fall) for three months this summer and give us New Yorkers another reason to get out and about. The coolest one I think (well, the only one I’ve actually seen working so I probably shouldn’t jump to this conclusion) is the one that looks like it’s flowing from the underworks of the Brooklyn Bridge. I’m saying this because the BB structure itself gives the waterfall some context…the other three sort-of flow from thin air, albeit in a monumental way, and are more reminiscent of a fountain than a waterfall. Still impressive though, since they range from 90 to 120 feet high they prove, yet again, that size matters. After getting over the bladder-effective observance of so much rushing water I was thrilled by Mr. Oliasson’s nice idea and, once again, truly appreciate that gang over at The New York Public Arts Fund for going along with it. My NYC tax money, well spent.

The calla lilies are in bloom again...

Although the hydrangea and the dahlias are starting to make an appearance, the current stars of my backyard are the calla lilies. I’ve never tried growing them before and I put the bulbs in the ground last year purely on spec. I totally forgot about doing so until I invaded their space this spring when planting more mundane ground cover and accidentally unearthed one of the bulbs, which had a nice root system already established. An oops-moment that is fairly common in gardening. Well, at least in mine. This photo doesn’t do them justice because the camera simply cannot capture the subtlety of color transitioning from porcelain-white at the base of the flower through a luminescent pink to an otherworldly magenta. I think I should start giving 25-cent mini-tours. What a bargain.

The Red Horny

Every man, I think, must at some point prove his manhood. For some it involves feats of derring-do (feats of derring-do…heh heh…I can’t think of the last time I ever saw that in writing) like climbing mountains or diving the depths of the ocean or skiing down precipitous slopes…flinging, as they say, caution to the winds. Proving yourself; proving your maleness. Even the less athletic have this urge but the proof can take different forms.

I think owning the car-of-your-dreams fills the bill. In a recent discussion among certain members of my posse this subject came up. All of us own cars and a couple of us have fairly nice ones, but not one of us has a car they are totally in love with.

Admittedly, in my own case, I’m at the stage where utility and function overcomes visual beauty but, still, there are cars I wouldn’t mind parking under my bed if I could rationalize the expense. But, sigh, these days it is just so economically practical to make room for the whole Magilla and I have given over to that philosophy without too much regret.

For about six years of my life I got lucky. I bought a brand new, red, 1964 Chevy Malibu Super Sport convertible (white top and a red interior) with white wall tires and wire wheel hubcaps. It was truly the car of my dreams at that time and I took care of it like it was valuable jewelry. Of course gas was cheap and taking joy rides was exactly as described. I tooled around California with my sideburns blowing in the wind, a barely concealed smirk of satisfaction tugging at the corners of my mouth. My monthly car payments, although amazingly low by today’s standards, were the horrible reality--but that only mattered on the first day of the month.

I owned that car for six years but that dream ended due to grand theft auto and, consequently, I never again lusted after any particular set of fancy wheels. But I did have the dream for a while. And it was sweet.

Into the Woods

I don’t play golf and never have (except the miniature version). I don’t watch golf on television. I buy into the quote that golf is “a nice walk, ruined.” Sunday and Monday I watched golf on television for about five hours each day. Only one man in the world could cause this phenomenon in my living room and in my competitive brain. Frankly, I swear he has a pact with the devil. Although a player of genius he still gets the lucky bounce. His ball caroms off a tree and bounces back onto the green. His ball hits the flagstick and drops in the hole. He is golden. Some people resent this man for his chutzpah, his prowess, his luck and his success. There is an acronym bandied about by the unwashed and the unholy among sports fans and, as far as I know, professional golfers themselves: “ABT” (Anybody but Tiger). That’s so amazing to me and I don’t really understand the resentment. I say may his sheen abide forever and I’ll give up a Sunday, any Sunday, to watch.

Ya Gotsta Love 'Em!!

Together 50 years, Del Martin (seated) and Phyllis Lyon exchanged marriage vows in San Francisco. I guess to various religious doctrines they are now legally living in sin. Warms the heart!

Update, August 28, 2008: Sadly, Del Martin passed away yesterday of "existing health problems." She was 87.

Cast in bronze; worth your wait in gold

These whimsical cuties are made of bronze, are shiny from the caresses of thousands of passersby and are situated in a subway stop of the Metropolitan Transit Authority in Manhattan. They are sculpted by Tom Otterness and are part of his “Life Underground” series. It’s worth getting off the A, C, or E subway trains at the 8th Avenue/West 14th Street station just to take a tour of the platform. These little critters are hidden around corners, high on girders, coming up out of the platform itself and just generally giving us some badly needed respite from the cares and casualties of our individual worlds. You go Mr. Otterness! You go MTA!

At my fingertips

This is my new bowling ball. It’s a 15 lb. TraXion Reactive 0.45 made by Ebonite in the U.S.A. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! I am trying a finger-tip grip (self explanatory) this summer in preparation for blowing away all competition in the fall. For those not privy to the details of my life in this particular gutter, I won the “Most Improved” bowler in my league this year, going from a 145 average to a 163 average over nine months. This sounds trivial I know and, well, maybe it is but it was an ego boost and also added a bit of moolah to the prize money. I’ve only bowled with this new ball for three nights now and have pretty much fallen flat on my face (not literally) but I’m getting the hang of the insane hook a finger-tip ball creates. Although I’m not doing very well (yet) I love my new ball because of its potential and well, yes, just because it’s pretty. I know this subject is way high (or low) on the boredom-meter so I promise I won’t give bowling updates herein unless something spectacular happens to merit inclusion. In the meantime, I love my beautiful new blue ball!

Update Thursday June 19, 2008: tonight I bowled a 602 series (159, 223,220) which is the highest series of my entire LIFE! Well, it meant a lot to ME and I give my beautiful new blue ball full credit.

Gore 10, Solomon 0

Almost every Sunday Deborah Solomon conducts interviews with a variety of people, in reputation large and small, in the New York Times Magazine. Limited to one page they rarely have much depth and are usually only there because, like a dog intimately licking itself, they can be. I wish I knew how to attach stuff in a blog because Ms. Solomon has an interview with Gore Vidal in today’s issue and it’s worth anybody’s while to make the effort to read it.

Mr. Vidal toys with Ms. Solomon like the big, curmudgeonly cat he is (the interview is titled, perhaps deliberately, “Literary Lion”) and he not-so-gently nips her perky backside, drawing blood in a fairly casual way. You’ve got to hand it to her, though, because he not only takes her down a peg, he undercuts her entire ladder, but she soldiers on despite his distaste and he is, obviously, only putting up with the entire process because he has a new book coming out this week. Since her column concludes with “Interview conducted, condensed and edited by…” her sense of humor has to be terrific or, conversely, she only glimpses the forest for the trees and is as stupid as a box of (blonde) hair.

Where's My Pepsi?

Can this be just a coincidence? Six weeks ago I couldn’t find it at my local Key Food in Brooklyn. Last month, while in Florida, my hosts could not find it at any of those huge Publix stores which usually have everything you might even fantasize about wanting. What’s going on?

So I’ll bitch to Pepsi directly, thinks I; maybe they’re just phasing it out because of unsatisfying sales totals—understandable reasoning. Navigation of their website (which is really nice) proved frustrating because when I finally reached the page to post questions I was advised to click on “Pepsico World” and then the “Help” button. Oops, there was no help button. I’m an admitted techie dunce but I just couldn’t find it so, after several attempts, abandoned the quest.

Looking elsewhere, I found a distributor of Pepsi products that stocks all of their brands. Oh, cool, thinks I (I have stopped using “kewl” because it’s so, well, uncool). Eek, two cases of 12 cans each, which costs a mere $11.78, carries a walloping shipping charge of $37.55. Nuh UH!

This happened to me once before when my favorite carbonated soda was Canada Dry’s diet cranberry ginger ale. Its disappearance from my local shelves drove me into the arms of Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry and then to Diet Pepsi Lime. But now, oh noooooooo! I know, I know, I drink way too much carbonated soda, whether it’s the diet stuff or not…I know it can’t be all that healthy for me. But Diet Pepsi Lime keeps me kewl, er, cool and I like the taste. Where’s my Pepsi?!!!

Update Wednesday, July 30, 2008: The void has still not been filled. I've taken to buying limes, the real fruit, and squeezing 'em into bottles of Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi; two fresh limes per one two-liter bottle seems to be the right ratio for my taste. Luckily limes are cheap right now. I know, I know, Coke puts out a Diet Lime Cola but, frankly, it's not my cuppa tea.

An Impressive Erection at Rock Center

Do you remember the scene in the first Jurassic Park movie when Laura Dern orgasmically plunged her arms up to her pits in that very impressive pile of Triceratops dung? I somewhat feel the same way about this new piece of “public art” that has been erected at the 5th Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens in Rockefeller Center. I mean practically anything can be impressive if it’s piled high enough.

Designed by Chris Burdon (mostly known for artistically inflicting pain upon himself), “erected” is the right word. Named “What My Dad Gave Me,” it consists of a million, or so, replicas of Erector Set pieces and stands 65-feet high and deliberately mirrors the Rock Center building at the other end of the Channel.

Although impressive, it reminds me that as a child I was never a part of the Erector Set set, preferring the much more tactile friendliness of Tinker Toys. Now there is something I would like to see; I mean an orgasmic pile of Tinker Toys. I could appreciatively plunge my pits into that.

Pied-a-terre for a mere bagatelle?

Since this building is right on the traffic circle around the Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn (that's one leg of the memorial arch on the left), over the last couple of years I've had many an occasion to see it rise from the rubble of the neo-classical buildings it replaces (see the building to the right). Across the street from Brooklyn's Main Branch of the Public Library and just down Eastern Parkway from the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens it is, and was, a common and major site for sore eyes. I guess it's not all that bad (although personally I think it's somewhat out of place) the architect is Richard Meier and, after all, Mr. Meier is all about sleek and gleaming facades.

The reason I'm giving it some attention here is that the building is nearing occupancy status (this Fall) and it is now appearing in full page ads in the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. Here's the lowdown: One Bedroom from $950,000; Two Bedrooms from $1,100,000; Three and Four Bedrooms from $2,500,000; Penthouse's with Park, Harbor and City views from $3,000,000. Even though I can't really imagine which harbor they could be referring to (the Grand Army Plaza is a few miles inland), it seems like a steal, right? Well, maybe to your pocketbook/bank account, but before you reach for your checkbook I would like to call to your attention the ominous sounding "from" in that price list. Where comes that "from?" If I were you I would think twice about purchasing a pied-a-terre (whatever the hell that is) in this building. There is a major snarl-up around that traffic circle every day and it ranks highest in the city in accidents. On the plus side, you would get a lot of use out of your library card!