Landmarc

OK, this is probably the last restaurant review for this trip – although I can’t promise that.

I think that one reason that restaurants are so important in NYC is because apartments are so small. For most people having dinner with 6 or 8 other folks in their home just isn’t a possibility without a lot of advance planning.

There aren’t kitchens to handle the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving dinner, there aren’t dining tables and there’s simply not space. So you meet in a restaurant, which is more desirable than a bar because YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHOUT TO BE HEARD.

Although NYC as a rule is much louder than southern cities. Not just the traffic and sirens and stuff. The people The locations. It operates at a higher volume than some of us are used to.

So Thursday night was designated as someone's - who happens to live in the same house that I do -- Birthday Dinner. Being a New Years Baby, he sometimes gets slighted in that regard with all the other festivities of the holidays, so it’s nice that someone takes the effort to make it special.

In this case, it was our friend Richard who picked the restaurant and made the reservations at Landmarc (www.landmarc-restaurant.com), which is up just off of Columbus Circle and overlooks Central Park (sort of – it kind of looks toward the Trump building next door and, if you lean a bit you get a pretty good shot of the park). That didn’t matter, though – we were there for the food and the company more than the view.

Landmarc is located in a building that’s about as close to a mall as NYC tends to offer – several high end stores in a building with a common area that’s covered. The difference is that instead of a food court, there were a couple of coffee shops where you sat down and ate. Also there was an art exhibit going on.

Not coloring pages that go on the trays at restaurants, or anything that you pay a dollar to sponsor a balloon with your name on it for the March of Dimes or anything, but an honest-to-goodness art exhibit.

By Salvador Dali, to be exact. You could get right up next to a variety of sculptures, painting and other things to see them. Some were even for sale. We opted out of a roughly 16 x 24 framed painting that was priced at $120K.

The colors just weren’t right for our house, after all.

There was a Christmas decoration show going on, too, and if I can ever upload the @#($*&#(@& video I’ll put it here.

One of the fun things about NY Restaurants is that lots of them have “signature drinks” in their bars. Their mixologists have come up with creative ways to combine liquids, usually one of which is flammable, to encourage you to eat more food and drink more liquor.

In Landmarc, they had two that were exceptional. One was called a “Light and Stormy”, which had ginger in it and would be especially good on a hot summer day and another was a “Malus Martini”, which tasted EXACTLY like a slice of apple pie, complete with a paper-thin slice of apple floating in it.

The really fun thing about Landmarc was their deserts. They’re all small – meaning that they’re reasonably sized portions that humans could actually eat without going into a diabetic coma. They have little ice cream cones – which most of us opted for – that were reminiscent of those we bought from the Ice Cream Truck growing up. They also offered a “one of everything”, so you could sample all the different deserts – lemon tart, crème’ brulee, chocolate mousse, apple pie, among others, and brought something that none of us had ever experienced before – banana cotton candy.

Dinner was over by 10:30, we said our good-byes and made plans for the rest of the weekend with the group and stopped at Posh (a bar – www.poshbarnyc.com) for a drink.

DID I MENTION LOUD?

I carry earplugs when we come to NYC. They don’t even try to be subtle. They’re the orange safety plugs that stop about 35 dB. It’s still very loud.

We weren’t there long and walked back to our apartment (at 43rd and 11th, if I haven’t said that before), stopping only for coffee filters and bagels so we don’t have to go out in the morning.

Walking Around Food in NYC

This is turning into a food blog to some extent. Sorry about that, but for all the bad stuff I said about Eataly, I don’t want to give the impression that there’s nothing to eat in NYC.

The truth is, there’s so much to eat in NYC you can’t possibly get through it all.

Sometimes, the fun is just to walk into a place and order from the counter, especially these little hole in the wall dives with their health department ratings tucked up a bit obscurely.

I figure I’ve had all my shots. Like in school, I’m satisfied with a B- or above. C or below and it’s probably not worth the risk.

As a result, I had an incredible slice of chicken and broccoli pizza for lunch while walking down the street the other day. I went into a place that seemed somewhat busy (like on the interstate, look for the traffic because the locals know where to eat), and the guy at the back who was the Pizza Maestro was creating half a dozen different delicacies.

He greeted me cheerfully, asked where I was visiting from (what, is it tattooed on my forehead?? – oh, wait – I had a camera) and when I started to order immediately cut me off and said, “Nah, you don’t want dat. Here, this is just out – one of my best.” And as a result I had Chicken and Broccoli pizza which was fantastic.

The amazing thing was that while I waited this guy, who seemed to be having a good time at his job, greeted no less than half a dozen people by name and in at least 3 different languages. He flirted with the girls, chatted with the guys and changed from one language to the other without the slightest hesitation.

And some people have the audacity to think that one language is sufficient.

The day before, after I came out of B & H Photo, I decided I was going to just pick the next place that was from a different country. As a result, I ended up with Pakistani food.

Nothing was familiar. I couldn’t have told you if it was chicken, beef or fish. I could tell that it wasn’t pork because there was a sign indicating that the meat was all halal, meaning that it was prepared in accordance with Muslim law, kind of the way kosher Jewish food is prepared specially (if I understand it correctly).

Anyhow, you got a big pan of rice and two “toppings” for $7.99. The young lady looked at me funny when I asked for the least-spicy choices and said simply, “All Pakistani food is spicy. That’s what makes it Pakistani,” so I asked her to just choose her favorites for me, figuring that the Great God Prilosec would save me from my own stupidity later.

I still have no idea what I ate for lunch, but it was very good. I suspect it was goat, just because it’s white meat, she said it wasn’t chicken and pork is forbidden under Muslim law. Both had significant amounts of curry, meaning that my sinuses were cleared out for quite a while.

Who’da thunk lunch could be such a grand adventure?

Local Transportation

New Yorkers are losing patience with the snow. The prepared, rallied to meet the crisis, and now they’re just getting mad as hell because it’s still inconveniencing them.

Traffic, which is exciting in the best of times, is now frustratingly slow for drivers who find that instead of 3 or 4 lanes, the have half that – and half a lane is considered by many to be more than enough. Of course, some of those are starting to be blocked off with barricades for the New Years festivities.

Drivers also find that, while a snowplow may have, “. . . . been run down every street,” as the Mayor claims, the streets are most assuredly NOT clear, especially if they’re side streets in industrial areas. Even if they are, it just takes one person to gum up traffic for blocks.

That’s a lot of responsibility on some people.

One discovery that I’ve made in all of this is that the horn on a car is to make sure that people know they’re being sworn at, even if they don’t speak your language.  If you don't speak, say Turkish or Mandarine Chinese or Pakistani and someone is yelling at you for your stupidity, you might not fully comprehend the facial expressions and hand gestures, assuming they are a local custom from that person's land of origin.  Accompany those things with a car horn, though, and there's little need for context or syntax.  The meaning is immediately apparent.

The subways are running normally, at least as best we can tell. City buses, on the other hand, still have issues.

Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon we decided to try a cross-town bus, just to have the experience and because we hadn’t tried the bus system yet. They take the same MetroCards as the subway, and you’re supposed to be able to get transfers between them so you can get from one place to the other without having to repay the fare.

This apparently involves standing in line to get a transfer, though, as best we could tell.

We just wanted to ride a few blocks because we were tired of walking. So we found the stop for our bus, saw the schedule that said a bus would be there roughly every seven minutes and waited.

20 minutes later, the M-42 came by going the right direction. OK, we’ll give them a bit of slack because of the weather and the traffic. They said on TV there might be delays.

The driver shouts out to the waiting crowd, “This bus is ending at 8th Avenue. If you’re going further than that, you should wait for the next bus.”

We were, so we did.

For about 30 minutes. That schedule posted on the sign is apparently about as fictional as the lane lines painted on the roadway. It’s puffery designed to lure you into a false sense of security, just like the delusion that if you call 311, someone will actually address the issue about which you are concerned.

The bus finally got there, though, and we climbed on and swiped our card.

Nothing happened, at least until we were told by the driver that the card only had 50 cents on it.

Bus fare was $2.35.

Each.

We were put off the bus, getting “those looks” from all the other people who were already on (and it was packed) and those behind us in line, whom we had to squeeze past to get back off.

It’s every bit as humiliating as going through the checkout line in the grocery store on a busy Saturday morning, only to have your card declined and no cash in your pocket.

You want to say, “Wait, there must be a mistake,” but nobody around you believes it and they just want you to get the heck outta the way. You didn’t have enough money, probably living beyond your means – if you’da planned better, you’d have bus fare.

It’s always the ones with the nice clothes and electronics hangin’ off ‘em who don’t have money to pay for essentials. They probably got beer in the fridge and cigarettes on the table, too.

So we slunk off the bus, because they don’t sell passes on the bus and you can’t pay in cash. You got to have a magic card.

After that, we walked down a couple of blocks to the subway station and bought more rides on our card. The station was packed, and full of people who were buying a single ride ticket.

At first, this didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. The lines are long, and it's something of a hassle to get the card filled for each ride.  After all, most of us don’t just put one gallon of gas in the car when that’s our mode of transport. Why not buy a ticket that will last a while instead of the single ride thing?

Then it hit – you DO buy just one gallon of gas if that’s all the money you have. It’s the 30th of the month. For lots of people on public transportation, there ISN’T money to buy more than that single ride, at least not until the first of the month hits in a few days.

Many of the subways will be free over the New Years holiday, so they can squeeze out a bit more value in the transportation budget that way.  Otherwise, they'll either be staying home or walking a lot.

There’s a dose of reality you might not run into every day.

After we got out of the subway station, we found another bus stop.

And waited.

After 30 minutes, we decided that we were tired of standing around, and it was just easier to walk home so we headed that way.

But from now on, we’ll keep a tighter reign on how much money is on our MetroCard – and might be a bit more patient if someone ahead of us doesn’t have enough on theirs for a ride.

Lunch at Becco

OK, now let’s talk about Thursday's lunch.

We had reservations at Becco (www.becconyc.com) for 12:30.

Wow. I mean WOW.

I talked about Lydia earlier with regard to Eataly. Let me tell you – Momma got her son and his bud beat all to pieces when it comes to a restaurant.

There was a pretty substantial walk-in crowd here, but what we noticed was that you got to sit in a back room if you had a reservation. This is much quieter than the front dining room and has this great pyramid-skylight so the space is really amazing.

White tablecloths. Real silverware and glasses on the table. A waiter that was Johnny-on-the-spot to take care of his tables. Interestingly enough, we overheard him say he gets off early for New Year’s Eve, because they’re closing down “around 10”. This led to the question of course, as to when they normally close – sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning.

I’ve never comprehended supper at that hour of the night. Breakfast, maybe – but supper, now. It just goes to show the cultural differences that exist in the world.

Anyhow, first they brought a basket with 3 different types of bread in it (including these amazing pencil-thin crunchy breadsticks), a bowl with a homemade hummus for dipping, and a bowl with 3 or 4 different types of olives – and an empty bowl, which we figured out was for the pits from the olive.

OK, here’s the etiquette question from someone who didn’t grow up with olive pits as a normal part of the diet – do you spit them out on the plate, take them out with your fingers, or is there some particular utensil of which I’m unaware for this task??

We opted for the “fingers are useful, but use your napkin a lot” approach.

The menu had dozens of choices, but neither of us had to look any further than the very first thing. They offered a sampling of three different types of pasta – the choices change daily, complemented by an assortment of Italian wines that were pretty reasonably priced.

In fact, there's probably 50 choices for $25 a bottle of italian wines that Lydia has picked specially for this restaurant.  Wines which would probably be significantly more expensive elsewhere.

You start off with an incredibly good Caesar Salad with homemade croutons (after all the bread) and then when you’ve finished that the waiters come by with the first of the pastas. Ours were spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce, a swiss chard and cheese ravioli and some little squiggly pasta (Fusilli? I can never keep them straight) with a bolognese sauce.

The servers were quite obviously groomed by someone with an attention to detail. All had high-end haircuts, wore starched white shirts, black slacks and a necktie.

Not a cheap tie, but an Italian silk tie, in different colors – but they were all tied so that there tended to be a pretty big knot at the neck, but the tie was about 4 or 5 inches shorter than you’d normally expect it.

After watching a bit, we figured out this was intentional – it was to keep the tie from dragging in the food when they leaned over to serve it.

After you finish your first round of pasta, they come back offering you seconds on anything you want.

Yes, we did, although we both knew that we’d regret it later. Topped it off with Cannoli filled with buffalo ricotta cheese and pistachios for desert, too.

Lydia has figured out that if you do good simple food, just like on her television show, people will come back over and over. She’s got it right.

A Walk on the Wild Side

I picked up a woman Thursday morning. That’s something that hadn’t happened in years, but there she was in front of me, and what could I do?

I never thought of myself as being cougar bait before, and didn’t imagine that I’d be so compelled to interact with a woman who was easily 20 years my senior but there she was, smiling sheepishly and what could I do?

I melted, took her hand in mine and we set off strolling down the street arm in arm toward her apartment after a few seconds conversation. We both knew, I think, that it wouldn’t be a lasting relationship. Instead, it was mere happenstance, a dalliance that presented itself and was an opportunity to be taken immediately and without forethought.

Now, before anyone jumps to any conclusions about lifestyle changes, I have to tell you that the interaction was purely physical. Had she not looked as she did nor been the "type" she was, it probably wouldn't have happened.

It was also entirely weather related.  Blizzards make strange bedfellows, to steal a phrase.

She was petite, about 4'11, in a camel wool coat with a plaid beret and cap setting off her outfit.  She'd obviously taken pains with her appearance before setting out this morning.

And there she was, sprawled on the street after a spill received while trying to climb over a snowbank half of her height.  She lost her footing and took a spill in the snow, scattered her bags around as she went down. 

I wasn't special, but merely available.  She simply needed someone to balance against as she was helped up, dusted off and continued across the street.  Anyone in sensible shoes who had a bit of balance and traction would have been welcome.

I just happened to be there and was raised right, so I got to help her up and across the street, after which we continued our separate ways, our physical interaction fleeting and complete, just to be a warm memory as we went on with our respective lives..

Eataly

Sometimes, figuring out where you DON’T want to go is as important as determining where you DO want to go.

We’re fans of cooking shows on television. They’re easy, you can doze off and it really doesn’t matter (unless you’re actually making whatever they’re showing) and if you miss something you can go online and get the details.

We especially like Lydia, who is this kind of homely little Italian grandmother. She’s been on television for years, and some of her things are actually do-able, unlike some other shows that require ingredients that aren’t carried in the local grocery and, when found, cost more per ounce than gold, silver and platinum combined.

Mario Batali and Lydia's son have a new restaurant.....store......all wrapped together in New York City, called Eataly. We thought we’d go check it out. The concept sounded fund – it’s essentially a high end kitchen store with several restaurants incorporated throughout it.

What a major disappointment. This is Yuppie Italy, but not much more.

You go in, and it’s extremely confusing. This is in part because it’s huge. You wander through the masses of people (granted, it’s probably better to go at 10 am on a Thursday than 7 p.m. on any evening) in search of sustenance amongst the goo-gaws everywhere.

After a few minutes of wandering around, we kind of figured out how the restaurants were set up. Essentially, it was a big food court from a mall. Lots of different locations, with some kind of common seating areas.

Except some of them weren’t seating areas – they were standing areas.

Standing up to eat is fine for some things. A burger, pizza – food that is traditionally wolfed down on the way somewhere else.

Entrees at these places topped $40.00 a head. I got no qualms paying that for a good meal – but darned if I’m going to stand at a counter to eat it for that kind of money.

The other thing was that you had to buy different types of food from different locations (just like a food court) and had to pay them out separately. Thus, you got wine from one, fish from another, pasta from yet another. Given the lines at each of these places, the result could easily have been that the three of us had different meals at different times in different places.

After a brief confab to look at the options, we opted to go somewhere else. A place a few blocks away called “Friend of a Farmer” which was great.

And we got to take our coats off and sit down to eat.

http://eatalyny.com

Halo Salt Spa

Part of the joy of travel is you get to do things that, if you were home, you’d be inclined to go, “What kind of damned-fool idea is that?”

When you’re away, though, it sounds like it might be kinda fun.

Our friend invited us to join him in a “Salt room”, which is supposed to mimic the natural salt rooms found in some cold climate a thousand feet below ground and be good for asthma and respiratory conditions. The difference is this is a street-level storefront in NYC.

The company is called Halo Salt Spa. (http://www.haloair.com/), and the concept is pretty simple. They aerosolize salt and poof it into the air in a room with you. Rooms have what looks like salt sprayed on the wall like popcorn ceiling, although I suspect this is more a stucco prop than the real thing. The same is true of the “salt” on the floor although I admit I didn’t taste either one to make certain.

What you could tell, though, was when the ionizer was squirting salt dust into the air, because you could see, smell and taste it.

The rooms are set up for one or two people – I went alone and the other two went together. There’s a big television in the room (with a decidedly dusty/salty sheet of glass over its case – I can’t imagine that the salt in the air is good for those electronics!). You go sit on the lounger for an hour, breathing.

Yup, that’s it. We’d put our coats in a locker, which unfortunately had my glasses as well, so I had to just punch buttons on the television remote until something happened. Turned out, that was kind of a waste anyhow because there was nothing interesting on (that I could find, anyhow). I ended up watching a rerun of “American Pickers” (I think it’s on NatGeo or the History Channel) with the sound off while I listened to a book on my iPod (which I had thought to grab).

I guess as an homage to the fact that the natural caves are in northern climates, the place was chilly. There was a blanket on each of the loungers to use. 50 minutes later, they come through on an intercom and tell you that your session is over and it’s time to check out.

Does it help? Who knows? I don’t doubt that they were doing what they said, because you could both see the salt coming out of the vent and you could taste it on your lips and skin afterwards. I don’t really have any breathing problems, though, so don’t know if it made a difference there or not. It can’t hurt, though.

The other question – even more importantly – is whether it’s worth $65.00 to breathe salt for an hour (cheaper if you buy packages).

Before anyone starts with the judgmental stuff about, “. . . .more money than common sense,” I’ll point out that we didn’t pay that. Our friend got a "Groupon” (http://www.groupon.com/ - but it's only in larger cities -- sign up – it’s worthwhile) that gave a huge discount. New businesses, especially, use this service to offer a great deal to try to get you in to try them out. The sessions were supposed to be $18.00 each with the coupon, which is cheap enough that we’d try something new to see if it is worthwhile.

The bonus for us – the technician up front said that there was a problem with the ionizer in the double room during their session, so they’d comp them with two more free sessions – our friend who lives here can use them – and the cost was effectively reduced to just under $11.00 a session.

Not a bad deal at all for a new experience.

The Devine Sister

Sometimes, the best plays in NYC aren’t on Broadway. They’re tucked back in tiny little theaters that are “off Broadway” – which, we’ve learned, has nothing to do with the actual location of the theater but everything to do with the seating capacity. If it’s a Broadway production, it means it’s in a theater that seats at least 500 people. Off-Broadway is 99 to 500, and anything smaller than that is going to be difficult to find since it’s likely in someone’s living room.

Sometimes, productions held in these tiny venues are the most fun to go to, because you are completely involved with what’s happening on the stage – especially since this may be within “spittin’ distance” for some of the performers.

This got us to the VanDam Theater (on the street of the same name) for a 3:00 matinee Wednesday Afternoon. The play was “The Divine Sister”, and was recommended by friends who’d seen it.  That's how you usually find these productions -- word of mouth.  They have little or no advertising budget and are tucked away in venues that are obscure, to say the least.

If you’ve ever seen any of those nun movies from the 50’s or 60’s, with those great classic actresses in them – Rosalind Russell, Mary Wickes, Julie Andrews – you would recognize bits of this play as spoofs on them.

The music was lifted from several of them, although the words were redone with a big dose of cynicism added. The “Mother Superior” was also the author of the play – and he (yes HE) was great at it.

The story line was typical – sort of – The convent / school was desperately in need of money for repairs, there’s a wacky novice who’s problematic (and dressed like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”) a frustrated Mother Superior and her sidekick who also happens to be the Coach for the girls wrestling team (and who channels Mary Wickes from “The Trouble with Angels” perfectly).

Then the stories start to get mixed up. There’s an albino monk who makes appearances and is working with a German nun sent from “the head office” (and who does a knockoff of Gilda Radner that is dead-on) but who turns out to not really be a nun and wants to take over the convent because they think the bones of Jesus’ unknown sister (Joyce) are buried under the convent.

The story line gets more and more ridiculous, but it is hysterically funny and the actors were great. If you are of an age that you watched any of these movies growing up you couldn’t help but catch the references to them and smile.

The other thing that I enjoy about works like this is their creativity. The stage would have easily have fit in our living room, and was pretty simple – backdrops that were spoofs on a church’s stained glass windows, gates (on rollers) to indicate the front of the school and a concrete fountain / bench to represent a courtyard inside the school. When you had to go to the rich Jewish widow’s house (I told you that it was a complicated story line – she was an atheist and they wanted a donation from her, but it turned out that she was Mother Superior’s mom – and the grandmother of the ditzy novice) a curtain came down to represent wallpaper and a little settee was rolled out. It was all very simple, but done so well that you knew instantly what was going on.

This isn’t a play that’s every going to make the big theaters. If it did, it would lose it’s magic. But it’s an excellent production and well worth the price of admission.

If there was any complaint at all, it was that the theater (which had visions of former opulence) was apparently the prototype for airline seating. I couldn’t sit with my back in the chair without my knees pressing against the seat in the row ahead. Fortunately, it wasn’t a sellout and we were near the back. I moved a row back to some empty seats, much to the relief of the poor teenager who was much taller than me and who was crammed in there as well.

The joy of a matinee performance is that you have the evening left to do other things after it's over.  Which is exactly what we did.

Wednesday in New York

When we travel, our days start a lot slower than at home. It’s much easier to lie back and relax a bit when you’re not confronted with laundry that needs washing, a kitchen in need of cleaning or a lawn that needs mowing. You can lounge around in your PJ’s drinking coffee without guilt because there’s nothing that you HAVE to do.

So it was with us on Wednesday. He has school work, of course, and we both have work issues that never completely go away, but usually we can take care of most of those immediate issues online in a few hours. By 11ish we’re ready to get shaved and showered and head out in search of food.

So it was Wednesday morning. Nothing in particular on the agenda until after lunch, so we just explored a bit.

It’s warming up, so things are melting. It’s hard to say if that’s worse than the snow or not. Those puddles at the curbs are now becoming vast oceans so it’s harder and harder to walk around them, and the streets are clearing up pretty well so the drivers are going faster and getting more aggressive. They don’t seem to cut the pedestrians a lot of slack, apparently because they aren’t in the crosswalks.

Of course, you can’t be in the crosswalks because either you can’t find them under the snow or they’re underwater.

Spiderman

Tuesday night, we went to see a Broadway show – Spiderman. A group of us went, catching dinner first at the Café Edison at the Edison Hotel. At dinner, we were talking about this show, and how it hadn’t gotten spectacular reviews. I turned to Steve, who was sitting next to me and works for the New York Daily News, and we talked about how much easier it is to write a sniping, nasty review of something rather than a good one and how unfortunate it was that people didn’t avoid that.

Turns out, I have to eat my words. Sometimes a play ends up with bad reviews because it really deserves them.  Fortunately, reviewing plays isn't my job.  I only offer opinions as someone who's paid the price of admission to a play and knows what I enjoy and what I don't.

We were supposed to go see this play when we were here before Thanksgiving, but the show had problems. Lots of them. OSHA kept shutting them down, as did the NY Department of Labor.

That can’t never be good.

Any Broadway play is expensive, but this one has exceeded all other plays and is just having a hard time getting off the ground. Because of the aerial stunts involved, they’ve had to remodel the theater substantially.

And they keep dropping the stunt men.

Not just little drops, or slips off the stage like you see on Funniest Home Videos that make people gasp and then laugh. I mean big splats from 30 feet in the air that send people to the hospital and break bones and which come with the announcement, "Please stay in your seats to allow the EMS workers clear access."

This is of substantial concern given that many of these stunts have Spiderman (there are a dozen or so of them in the show, in addition to the main character) and several other main characters swinging out over the audience. It’s not just the front rows that are in peril, either. The entire orchestra section (the lowest level of seats) are at risk.

Jokes about hard hats and sitting under overhangs were pretty prevelant. A lady behind us heard our conversation and said, “Oh, great – and I’ve put my kids out there so they could see better.” Our largely childless group pointed out that children heal quickly, but that didn’t seem to make her feel any better.

I had wondered how they were going to make an entire musical out of a comic book story. Turns out, it’s harder than you’d think. They had to cram a scant 2 hours worth of content into a 3 ½ hour performance, a feat made possible by re-using dozens of gags, props and actions from lots of other plays.

These weren’t just polite nods to prior plays, like you used to get on black and white television, a kind of tongue-in-cheek homage to classic gags and plays from the past. It was a wholesale rip-off of recycled props, lines and stunts that seemed quite obviously there to simply fill up time and space.

I will give them credit, there were lots of special effects, and some of them were pretty good even if they were recycled. Most of them functioned as expected, with the play being stopped only one time when a prop failed to work properly. At the end, a net that’s supposed to come up like a spider web got caught on something and wouldn’t function. The play was stopped for a few minutes while they worked around that.

The play isn’t officially “open” yet, so that in itself isn’t necessarily a huge issue. But it was certainly indicative of the problems they’ve had all along.

In a musical usually you come away with at least one “toe tapper”, a song that sticks with you and kind of carries you out the door. Not so with this one. It was more of a rock opera, so lots of times it was difficult to understand the words and melodies in the key of “R-flat” seemed to dominate.

The other thing was that the whole play read like more of a “Saturday Night Live” skit than a continuous story line. Lots of vignettes strung together, but without a whole lot more in common than, say, their annual Christmas show.

Oh, and IT WAS LOUD

DID I MENTION IT WAS LOUD?

REALLY, REALLY LOUD.

I like theater. I’ll sit through a train wreck and find something enjoyable about it most of the time, but I have to admit it was hard to find much redeeming about this show. The props were pretty nice – they had unique ways to get the perspective of being high above the city down although you sometimes felt like you were being stood on your head, and the effects weren’t bad, but otherwise, it just wasn’t there.

Had it been on television, I’d have changed the channel. As it was, we just sat through it thinking about how much it really did resemble a train wreck, and we just couldn’t look away.

Still, it was an experience to talk about. I can’t say that I’d recommend the show to anyone. If it were on video, I would wait until it hit the $1 bin before I bought it, and even then I might feel that I’d wasted a buck.

The company was great, though, and it created the camaraderie that comes only from enduring a common tribulation.

I’m sure we’ll be talking about it for years.

B & H Photo

I’d heard about this place, and happened across their store in our neighborhood while out adventuring on Tuesday.

Wow.

This place is big, which is amazing for a store in NYC. It’s probably the size of a good sized grocery store in North Carolina, and employs primarily Orthodox Jewish men. That in itself wouldn’t seem unusual except that they tend to dress traditionally so most are wearing a yarmulke (the little beanie, for you Baptists who are confused) and have the curly locks on either side of their face.

The other thing that might hit you as unusual if you were shopping there is that they close the business by sundown on Friday and don’t re-open until Sunday to observe the Jewish Sabbath.

For those who haven’t been there, think “Best Buy”, but maybe without refrigerators or appliances or movies. Those things might have been there, but I didn’t see them.

They have tons of customer service reps, who, unlike many of those at big box stores, were actually able to answer questions about the products and make recommendations. I went in with the new video camera I mentioned earlier – the one I can’t operate – looking for a protective lens cover. It has a manual cover which I forget to close part of the time, usually before putting the camera in my coat pocket. I want to keep from getting fingerprints all over the lens.

I walked in with my camera. A nice security guard directed me to the area for the things I needed, and there were all types of Disney-esque ropes to keep the potential hordes of shoppers organized at each of the counters, where there were actually staff available.

The young man who helped me – Shaya – had a typical New Yorker’s brusqueness, but wasn’t unpleasant.  He interrupted as I started my explanation.

“Gimme da camera, lemme see.”
“Yeah, we got dat. $10.00. Here.”

Now, many times that would have ended the transaction. The clerk, having given the minimum attention required, could dismiss me and go back to their other tasks.  That's what would have happened in most big box stores

But he then asked, “Have you got a carry case for it? We got dees for $10.00 you want a blue one to match the camera?”.

Breathing between sentences is apparently unnecessary, as he could get the words out during the pauses so prevalent in a southerner's speech.

I loved his accent, if you can’t tell. Each potential purchase was followed by lightning-fast entries onto a computer keyboard and the merchandise being pitched into a green plastic bin.

He then talked about the camera, how it was a decent model for the money, and asked, “You got one o’ deese grippers?” meaning a flexible tripod that can be wrapped around things to steady the camera.

As it happened, I didn’t, but I wanted one.

“Here, lemme check, I tink we got blue ones, make it all match up for ya’s.”

More entries in the computer, and as I get out my credit card he says, “Don’t pay me, pay up front.”

I start to reach for my selections, but he’s pitched it all in the bin and says, “Take this (handing me a register receipt), it’ll be waiting for you up there.” He then puts the bin onto a conveyor belt, where I watch it cycle through this series of different belts and trolleys that look like something off of a Bugs Bunny Cartoon. After a few seconds, it’s gone out of sight, lost in the maze of the contraption and among the dozens of other green bins that are circulating.

I make my way to the front, listen to the directions that tell me to go to the next lighted cashier where this Lilliputian young lady is barely able to see over the counter. She rings me up and gives me yet another receipt. I then got directed back to another counter (wait for the light again) and give them my paperwork while a little grey haired man who communicates only in monosyllabic grunts goes back to find my bin which has magically appeared with my merchandise. A quick count and I’m on my way out the door as he says the only word I recognize -- "Tanks."

It sounds much more confusing than it really is, but it was pretty fascinating to watch. It was wonderful to experience a sales clerk who was knowledgeable about the merchandise and was obviously there to encourage me to buy stuff. After all, he up-sold me from a $10.00 lens cover to $35.00 worth of stuff. 

It was also a pleasant experience to be recognized by the staff through a glance, nod of the head or other greeting as I walked through the store.  No less than five people asked if I needed assistance.  For all the talk about how rude New Yorkers are, it wasn't happening in this place of business.

I “beeped” as I went out, so the security guys looked in my bag, talked about how the thing went off all the time and sent me on my way, again with a pleasant exchange.  No accusations with their eyes or attitude, just a routine thing that happened all the time.

It was great to be in a store that had enough staff to meet the customer’s needs, where they weren’t busy talking with each other about last night’s dates or rolling their eyes over how you were inconveniencing them by actually coming into the store. The transaction was not rushed, but certainly didn’t take any longer than necessary. It was exactly the way I learned to treat customers when I worked retail at Montgomery Wards years ago.

If all stores learned to treat their customers this way, they might experience a bit more customer loyalty from them.

I’m certain that I’m now on their mailing list, so I’ll undoubtedly be back in the future, either over the internet or in their store.

Life after the Blizzard

Although the blizzard of 2010 is over, the record 20 inches of snow that NYC experienced is still having a significant impact, especially in our neighborhood.

Hell’s Kitchen still has a lot of industrial blocks. While some of these things have changed from their original purpose as a manufacturing plant of some type, they still tend to be extended storage buildings, shipping points or plants of other types.

That would normally mean that they may be operating on a somewhat limited schedule, but with a blizzard it tended to mean that NOBODY was working in these places.

So how does that affect us, you ask? After all, we’re not likely to need anything from those places.

Here’s why – everyone is responsible for clearing the sidewalk in front of their business. If they’re not open and don’t clear the sidewalk, you suddenly come to a 4 foot drift 50 feet long and have to figure out how to get around it.

This meant that while I was out wandering around I sometimes had to go a couple of blocks out of the way to try and get to my destination.

The other thing that has become increasingly important – in terms of looking where you’re going, at least – is that the curbside “lakes” of slush are getting both bigger and wetter. There are times that you have to walk several feet around where you’d normally try to cross because there’s no canoe available to carry you.

This is really, really important because those puddles are becoming more than boot-deep in places now, and they still have icebergs floating in them. Given that it could take a while to get home and change socks, keeping the ones you’re wearing is pretty important.

The other thing that’s fun to watch is how aggressive the pedestrians get toward the cars. In good weather, it’s pretty universal that pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks. Those walk/don’t walk signs are sacrosanct, and you don’t go against them unless you’re absolutely sure that it’s clear.

But cars are stuck, there are fewer lanes available because of abandoned cars and snowbanks, so sometimes they stop in a crosswalk or keep going when pedestrians have the light.

Some people yell at the drivers. Some swear, which can be somewhat lyrical with a big-city accent. One whacked a car with his bag of stuff while doing all of these things, which was pretty entertaining to watch. Of course, the driver took little or no notice. There was no consideration given to stopping his vehicle.

Yesterday, I talked some about the services and the job they were doing. I thought they were doing pretty well, but the news programs and our dinner companions last night gave a different perspective. They’re absolutely blasting the local governments for failing to respond, and unlike a few years ago, they’re documenting their positions with photos and videos that they both post online and send to the television stations to be broadcast.

Probably the most damning pictures were the ones that someone took of a City yard, that showed DOZENS of vehicles with snowplows all parked in their barns and not being used. Suddenly, the claims that the cities couldn’t keep up with the snow were starting to ring hollow and it begins to look more like a decision not to act rather than an inability.

In NYC proper, the major streets and many of the side streets are open, but in the suburbs and residential neighborhoods many people still have snowbanks taller than a man that need navigation.

The forecasts are for increasingly warm weather, culminating with a high of 50 degrees on Saturday (just in time for the New Year’s crowd). The lows are supposed to warm up after today so they won’t go below freezing, so maybe the melt will continue at night as well.

Hell's Kitchen

When we come to NYC, we tend to stay down near Greenwich Village, or Chelsea. The neighborhoods in NYC are very distinct, and if you get in the wrong one it’s like being in a foreign country and not understanding the language very well.  You may well think you're ordering chicken and find out later that you had goat for dinner.  Not inappropriate, but sometimes a bit surprising.

We sometimes stay in a hotel, but if at all possible we like to use someone’s apartment. It’s not that you have that much more room – the studio apartment we’re staying in now is about the size of a hotel room, except it does have a little kitchen attached to it – but usually it’s cheaper (or free, if you have friends that are very generous) and a bit more in touch with the neighborhood than a hotel.

This is, after all, peoples’ homes and it’s not all transient folks just visiting. You don’t tend to get loud people in the hallway at night, they know you at the security desk (if there is one) and your host tends to leave notes about where to go for local diners, grocery store, cleaners, etc. – anything you might actually need.

One thing this has led us to do is start packing less, on the theory that we can drop clothes at the laundry down the street, pick them up later and we don’t have to tote all that. We can barely get by for a week in a carry on suitcase now, and that should make things a lot easier.

New Yorkers have a wonderful theory about laundry.  You take it all down the street to a service -- not just your dry cleaning, but socks, underwear, sheets and everything -- they wash, dry and fold it, charge you by the pound and return it to you in a lightweight duffel bag.  Nobody has a washer and dryer, so you don't have to feel guilty about sending all of your laundry out.  How easy is that?

This time, we’re in Hell’s Kitchen, which is in the throws of regentrification.

For those unfamiliar with the lingo, that means that people with jobs are buying up the dilapidated property from folks who may not have a job or landlords who have gotten tired of the hassles of dealing with tenants, giving up their nights and weekends for several years (not to mention all of their available cash and whatever they can squeeze onto a credit card) and improving the property in hopes of increasing the resale value.

As a result, neighborhoods tend to improve because you get rid of empty buildings with broken windows, etc. People who actually own the buildings live in or near them, meaning they have a personal incentive to reinvest and improve the property.  The blight is at least relocated, if not eliminated.

Hell’s Kitchen is a neighborhood of Manhattan covering that area between 38th and 59th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. It’s just west of the Times Square Theater District and just north of Chelsea. It was known for years as having been run by the Irish American Mob, and served primarily as a location for support industries – transportation, hospital and warehouses – for the midtown Manhattan business district.

All good crime-family type industries that make money!

There were several versions of the story about why this neighborhood came to be called Hell’s Kitchen. Some say that it’s after a bar that had that name. Another version says that Davy Crockett named it (yeah, the one from Texas fame), making reference to the “Five Points” part of the City and saying that the Irishmen who lived in the area, “ . . . were too mean to swab Hell’s Kitchen."

The version I like best is that “Dutch Fred the Cop” was talking to his rookie partner as they watched a small riot take place in the neighborhood.

Notice that the senior cop did NOT jump into the fray – he simply watched for a bit, letting the participants burn themselves out for a while.

Anyhow, the rookie said, “This place is Hell itself,” to which Dutch Fred responded, “Hell is a milder climate. This is actually Hell’s Kitchen.” Given that air conditioning was unknown at the time and kitchens were absolutely miserable, especially in the summer, I think this is probably likely. It makes a good story, anyhow – especially with a main character named “Dutch Fred the Cop”.

Hell’s Kitchen is now the up and coming neighborhood to be in, with new buildings, significant renovations and a substantial deviation from the earlier crime issues that existed.

Our accommodations are in a relatively new high rise building at 43rd and 11th. We’re on the 4th floor, which we’ve learned is still high enough for the wind to whistle through and to get a good view of the snow on the ground below.

It’s very nice, and much like a ship’s cabin you learn to be judicious with what you bring in and overly neat in keeping the place organized or you’ll soon be overwhelmed by the clutter. I forgot my collapsible mesh laundry bag, which is about indispensible for corralling dirty clothes when we travel.  Whoda thunk that a laundry bag would make a difference in the quality of your stay?

If you’ve followed my earlier blogs, you might have noticed that there aren’t nearly as many pics on here as we normally take. This is unfortunate, given that we have a brand new video camera as well as our regular camera with us. Of course, I have no clue how to operate the new camera and there’s little likelihood that I’ll read the book, preferring to use the time honored method of randomly pushing buttons and swearing loudly when it doesn’t do what I want.

One of us, though (and it ain’t me) can usually upload pics from the camera to the internet.

That is, he can if he has the cable to mate the camera and the computer together. The same cables which are unfortunately bundled together and sitting on my desk at home. They should have been mailed to us yesterday, though, and we’ll hopefully get them tomorrow and can try to remedy that.

In the meantime, I’ll try to remember that a video camera also pics up audio and keep the swearing to a minimum, at least when I’m the videographer.

The Aftermath of a Blizzard

It takes a tremendous amount of energy to traverse NYC without public transit. We found that out when we went to meet friends on Monday evening. Walking through 20 inches of snow is tough anyhow, even with some of the sidewalks cleared up.

Things had finally broken loose from the ice and snow – somewhat when we ventured out about 6 in the evening. There are about 20% of the normal number of cabs you would find, but they won’t go down some streets. Interestingly enough, a lot of them aren’t running the meter, either. You tell them where you want to go and they quote a flat price for cash. I suspect this avoids payments to the cab companies, but leave that for them to work out amongst themselves.

We walked over to the designated meeting spot – a bar called “G Lounge” (225 W. 19th, between 7th and 8th) that we’ve gone to many times before. It’s bright enough and quiet enough (at least early in the evening) that you can both see and hear the people you’re talking to without having to shout like you’re at a football game. It gets louder and darker as they go into evening mode, of course, but by then it’s time to leave anyhow.

After drinks with friends four of us headed off to one of NY’s traditional diners (called “The Dish” (201 8th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd) we walked through the snow a bit and realized that this was hard work. You have to alternately “high step” through the deep parts and watch your footing in the slush and “cleared” places that were starting to refreeze.

The major streets have been cleared somewhat. I don’t mean to diminish what the crews have done – they have moved a butt load of snow. I think every municipal truck or vehicle that can have a snowplow bolted to it has one, and is running down the street moving the snow. They’ve clearly thought this out and are using their equipment efficiently, unlike cities in the south that seem to be amazed that it might actually snow in December.

It’s a bit odd to me to see a garbage truck with a snowplow and chains on, going down a city street throwing a wall of snow 8 ft. tall. There is a kind of poetic beauty to it, though. Beauty that is juxtaposed against the mountains of snow-covered trash that exist, garbage collection and recycling having been suspended because of the weather.

It’s especially exciting if you happen to be in the direction the snow is being thrown as the trash truck runs 20 miles an hour down an ice-covered street.

The problem with this, though, is that it’s creating these mountains of ice along the curbs. Most businesses have cleared their sidewalks, but there’s still the Alps to cross whenever you go from one side of the street to the other – about a 4 ft. dam of ice and snow. Some places have paths worked through them, but other times you have to walk around at your own peril. By the time Tuesday morning hits, those things will be frozen into glaciers, presumably moving toward the sea and scouring the curbs of flotsam and jetsam as they make their way along.

There are also wicked puddles of melted slush at some of the curbs, as one in our party found after he slipped and went to his knees. No injury other than to dignity, but a bit more damp than one would prefer.

After dinner, it was just too cold to stay out or go anywhere, and too difficult to get wherever we might have wanted to go anyhow. Subways and buses were still on limited service and delays (although we honestly didn’t notice any problems there in the neighborhoods we traversed). Lots of things were closing down by 9 or 10 p.m., which is early by NYC standards.

We opted for a conveniently available cab, ironically with a driver from a country that never sees snow. He had 4 wheel drive and felt entitled to use it so that he could run at his normal speeds despite the ice and snow, and of course the traffic lights, which are only the merest of suggestions in good weather, bore no meaning whatsoever under the current conditions.

This put a number of pedestrians at risk, leading us to the conclusion that it was worth the $10.00 to get a ride home rather than try to walk it since a lot of the other cabbies seemed to have the same idea and our black coats did little to make us stand out from the shadows. Being splattered across the hood of a car is not the way to end an evening out if it can be avoided at all.

It seems a shame to be home in bed by 11 when you’re in New York City, but sometimes maturity means being able to say, “This ain’t safe, and I’m tired anyhow. Let’s go home and go to bed.”

So that's what we did.

A Blizzard in New York

So we missed Christmas, but that doesn’t mean that the entire week is a bust. We tend to go to NYC between Christmas and New Years. The weather coming in, though, meant that we needed to be flexible in our plans, lest we lose most or all of our vacation to weather delays.

An inch of snow sends Charlotte into a fit of apoplexy. 6 inches would make them catatonic, not to mention closing the airports in NYC should the blizzard beat us. As a result, we made some quick calculations and took a risk, catching a shuttle to the airport and changing to an earlier flight.

This time, we’re staying in a friend’s apartment while he’s gone to sunny Florida, so we didn’t have to worry much about availability. His apartment was already vacant; we had the keys so it was just a matter of getting his OK for the early arrival, which wasn’t a problem.

If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll know that we’ve done this before. We now have enough friends and “friends of friends” in NYC that we can often scrounge an apartment for less than the price of a hotel room, which is undoubtedly the major expense in the trip.

Shifting flights wasn’t a major problem, since US Airways had waived change fees in light of the upcoming blizzards and was encouraging people to travel early. We even got first class upgrades!

Supersonic jets move faster than weather systems, so we went out in the snow but then were ahead of it and landed with nary a raindrop on the airplane at LaGuardia. Our ride had been changed once we were assured of a seat on the airplane (which was held about 20 minutes to accommodate some 40 people coming in from France – talk about looking ROUGH – when we tracked it back, our estimation was that they left Paris about 5:00 in the morning.)

The apartment, which we’d seen before, is decent. A queen size bed, couch, wireless internet access, decent kitchen and bathroom and a 52 INCH TELEVISION. It’s like sleeping in a drive-in movie to some extent, but it’s great. The owner of the apartment tells us that the television was a holdover from a former, much larger apartment.

We throw off our bags, grab some food at the diner across the street and go off exploring as the weather station blares the alert about 65 mph winds, blowing snow and the need to stay indoors.

HA! There weren’t a dozen snowflakes blowing around in the breeze. This was NOT going to interfere with our vacation.

After piddling around much of the day, we went out again about 5:00 in the afternoon to do a bit of exploring and gather more food. We were not about to miss a meal because of the weather, that’s for sure

As is our norm, we had a destination picked out for dinner, a place called “5 Napkin Burger” for what would become obvious reasons. On the way there, we had a unique experience.

I’d seen “thundersnow” before; actually, I’d heard it but hadn’t ever really seen the lightning that I knew had to be there. While walking down the street, thought, we got caught in a thundersnowstorm. It was amazingly beautiful – huge flashes of lightning, that sparkled off of the snowflakes and accumulated snow, making them look like diamonds floating in the air, followed by booming claps of thunder that made you duck your head and flinch.

After we arrived at the restaurant, we had a couple of martinis (for purely therapeutic purposes, of course – to calm our nerves after the thundersnow) while we waited on our burgers led us to begin to appraise the weather situation again. Now the television was saying that we were looking at sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts and it was looking like that was exactly what was happening outside.

Thoughts of other ventures were abandoned in favor of going home and hunkering down for a while.

The thing about a blizzard, as long as the power stays on, is that it’s really not that scary in a big city. We could see people moving on the streets, including some very ill advised ones who were insisting on taking their cars on the roads still.

By 11:30 we’d heard all the weather we needed, recognized that over 1,000 flights had been cancelled and that the airports would soon be closed. Even the subway and buses were closing down, since they couldn’t navigate the weather.

We called it a night and went to bed.

This morning, the extent of the storm was pretty obvious. Twenty (20) inches of snow is a lot by any estimation, and that’s what they finally said happened a few blocks away in Central Park. The city was essentially shut down.

Except that New York is the city that never sleeps, so “shut down” by their standards means “still pretty darned busy” by everyone else’s standards. There were still food delivery guys on bikes trying to make deliveries. Diners were still open. But vehicles were stopped.

Here’s a hint. “Lexus” does not mean “All Terrain Vehicle” in any language. I think it means “Abandoned on the side of the road in a blizzard” though, in some obscure dialect.

The snow was gone, but the wind was still blowing fiercely when we ventured out about noon on Monday. They were still calling it a “blizzard”, even though nothing new was falling from the sky and the sun was out part of the time.

We learned that what doesn’t look like so much snow from the 4th floor, where our apartment is, is really a LOT of snow when you’re on the ground trying to walk through it. So much so that sometimes you have to turn around and walk around the block because it’s easier than trying to climb a mountain of snow and ice left by the plows.

So we walked down the street to another restaurant, this time called “Print.” It’s in the lobby of a hotel, is kind of funky and was actually pretty nice – on 11th at 48th, for those trying to find it. There, we first applied antifreeze to get our blood moving and then followed that with an amazing butternut squash soup and a $17.00 hamburger.

Get used to it, that’s New York City. It was a very good burger, though.

Things we noticed were the number of cars that were simply abandoned in the street, their drivers unable to coax them any further. Even the yellow cabs you normally see everywhere had been abandoned during the evening, although most of them were at least curbside. City busses didn’t fare so well, often stopped across more than one lane of traffic and just sitting there.

I have no idea what you’d do if you were on your way home and the bus dropped you off in the middle of a blizzard blocks from anything familiar. The one bad thing about where we are is that its several blocks to a subway station, so there was a long cold walk potentially there for anyone in that position.

If you’ve never had to walk in a dress suit in a snowstorm, I can tell you from my own experience that it offers little in the way of protection.

The television said that every inch of snow costs the City $1 million in cleanup expenses. That doesn’t take into account lost revenue because people aren’t buying things, paying sales tax, etc.

$20 million is a lot for something you want to try to get rid of as quickly as possible.

So by 2:30 or so, we’d made it back to our apartment, partially frozen (our antifreeze had worn off by then) and ready to commit the adventure to print and upload the pics.

Well, we would, except that the cable for the camera is still on my desk in Hickory. The problem with not having enough time to pack and follow your normal routine is that things get left behind.

Thanks to the wonders of his blackberry, we have a few picks to share, though.

Now it’s time for a nap until we meet our friends for dinner a bit later.

We are staying at the end of this street -- 43rd and 11th Ave.....affectionately known as "Hells Kitchen."  More on that later.

Christmas Lost

We missed Christmas this year.

Well, we didn’t miss all of it. Just the part that involved travelling to Forest City (North Carolina) on Christmas afternoon.

Our holiday tradition is somewhat fixed after more than a decade. Christmas eve is at our house and may include whomever we find along the road. Although it’s primarily us, the kids, their mom, grandmother and uncle, there are transients that pop in from time to time.

When I first moved to North Carolina, I tried to go back to Oklahoma at Christmas. That got more difficult when my family unit expanded, and frankly, the weather in Oklahoma sucks in December. After getting iced in for an extra 3 days last time I was there, we agreed that holiday visits aren’t practical, and it’s better to plan the trip when it was likely to be able to do something besides sit huddled in the house, trying to trick mom into looking away so we can push the thermostat up beyond 60.

Part of the North Carolina ritual has changed since the kids were little. Then, it involved a karoke machine at times (and I truly hope that the video of those events have been lost to the ages). Presents from Oklahoma are opened, and the kids get one thing from the parents. Meals have ranged from a Norman Rockwell recreation with enough china, crystal and silver to make Martha Stewart roll her eyes at the excess to pizza delivered and eaten off of paper plates.

This year the group was small, so we were all able to eat around the kitchen table. We opted to cook in with fairly simple fare – chicken pie, some veggies, and deserts cut way back from the diabetic coma-inducing extravaganza it’s been in the past.

Christmas morning we travel to the kids and their mom’s house for breakfast and Santa. Some things you don’t grow out of, although the nature changes. Presents include more clothes and less toys now, and college favorites come into play – Taylor is NC State, Jordan is UNC and Caleb prefers Duke.

Christmas morning now comes later than it used, to, as well. Mom told me once that she knew we were all grown up when we preferred to sleep in on Christmas morning as opposed to get up and open presents. Instead of a 5 a.m. trek across town, we now can venture over about 8 and still be greeted by sleepy faces and bedhead.

This year, the weather came into play. It started spitting snowflakes about 10:00 Christmas morning but, unlike most snows in the south, this one didn’t disappear. It got worse, and the forecasts were pretty gloomy as to what was going to happen, calling for 4 to 6 inches of snow by the time it ended.

Now, to those from the north this doesn’t seem like much. The weather channel said someplace in Idaho as going to get 6 to 12 FEET of snow in the next 24 hours. To places where snowplows are unknown and a medium jacket will suffice for most of the winter, 6 inches of snow is a catastrophe.

To be exact, it was the first time in 47 years that measurable snow fell on Christmas day. About 7 ½ inches worth of it.

There wasn't a gallon of milk or loaf of bread to be found anywhere in Western North Carolina or most of Virginia.

This affected us because the last third of the Christmas ritual takes place at the in-laws, in Forest City, NC. Although this is kind of south of Hickory, very close to the South Carolina border, it’s further into the mountains and tends to get more snow than Hickory. Given the forecast, and the fact that it takes a minimum of two cars (usually 3) to transport us all, a decision was made not to drive down.

The return trip, over potentially icy roads through the mountains and in the dark, was simply too risky.

Of course, it’s disappointing. Last year we went to his grandmother’s funeral a mere two days before Christmas. The last of that entire generation disappeared during the subsequent year with three subsequent funerals of her last sisters, meaning there would already be empty spaces at the table. To take away half of the two younger generations was a drastic change to everyone’s expectations.

There’s something about celebrating Christmas on the actual holiday that is important to families. In my own, we abandoned much of the practice for several years. Both brothers are in law enforcement – their junior status on the force meant they would likely draw Christmas day duty. As a result, we frequently slid a holiday celebration one way or the other, or adjusted it during the day to make time together. The ability to celebrate on the actual Christmas Day has come back to them now, but I’m not there to participate. The next generation down are early in their careers, so they sometimes have to miss things as well.

It’s disappointing to miss Christmas with his family, though. Those who were local to Forest City went ahead and met; after all, enough food for an army was already prepared and half the troops weren’t going to show up.

We’ll make it a point to meet sometime in the next couple of weeks, but it won’t be the same since the decorations will have been put away and the once-a-year Christmas treats will be gone.

It will, however, be a chance to get together, to visit, and to once again enjoy being a family.

My Absence

It’s amazing sometimes how you go along and life just takes over, so when you look up you realize that you forgot – or just didn’t make time – and something got left behind.

So it is with this Blog. The last few weeks have been kind of chaotic (more than normal) and the Muse chose to visit others. When I write and “hit the groove” (undoubtedly an ancient reference to when music came on plastic or Bakelite disks and an actual needle touched it to transfer the sound to the speaker) it flows. I sit down, begin to type and all sense of time is lost. When I look up it’s either been minutes or hours and I have some content – usually enough that I need to cut it down. I feel relaxed and satisfied with the what I’ve accomplished.

When the Muse doesn’t come, though, it’s pure torture. Words are elusive and avoid falling into place. Grammar and punctuation rules that I routinely follow sit just out of reach, available, but it takes an effort to get them like a television remote that has been magically transported across the room sometime after you have tucked your blanket around your feet.

Part of the reason for the delay is that I just wasn’t in a happy place in my mind for a while. The topics which were inspiring weren’t light and entertaining, they were tending toward the dark and disappointing. Someone commented that “CornerAt8th” seemed to have become the “CurmudgeonAt8th”, and that’s not what I wanted.

The problem with that is that it’s exhausting to always be in a rage. You can’t concentrate, and when you finish instead of being invigorated you’re drained. My way of coping with this is avoidance. It’s not a perfect way to deal with things, but it’s worked a lot of times. There truly are many things that, like an annoying little brother, will go away if you ignore them.

Overall, I’d rather turn an average event sideways and laugh at it. There’s enough dreary news in the world and I think we need to laugh at ourselves – and others, because heaven knows that there are people that sorely need to be called out and laughed at in public – in order to keep some sense of sanity.

The other thing is that a person can only stare at a computer screen for so long before you go “snow blind”. Lately, my real job has entailed lots of document drafting. Not the kind where you can build on earlier projects, change the names and move on, but the kind where you have to slog through each and every sentence in every paragraph to make sure that you’re consistent throughout and that you’ve covered all the points you need to address.

Last week, I generated about 48 pages of that kind of content on three different projects, so by the time I quit each day the thought of looking at the computer again kind of made me queezy.

It’s almost a new year, though, and time to suck it up and start again.

Besides, I have all these opinions saved up to share.

Whipped Lightning

There’s a new product on the market just in time for the holidays. It’s called “Whipped Lightning”, and is alcohol infused whipped cream in a can. 18% grain alcohol, in fact – that’s 36 proof, if you’re counting, which puts it about three times as potent as a bottle of wine.

Ostensibly, it’s for use in making cocktails.

Nobody believes that, of course. It’s really just another time saver.

Anyone who’s come home after a night of too much drinking – or home from a really bad day at work -- and dug through the fridge to find something to eat and noticed that can of whipped cream hiding in the door knows what I’m talking about.

It’s there, leftover from some celebratory event, and we all SWEAR that we are not going to eat it directly from the can, but we all know that, like a recovering junkie offered a fix, there’s going to be a time when we succumb and mainline the stuff, praying there’s enough left to get a buzz on.

I suspect that more whipped cream in a can is eaten directly from the can than is actually put on other food products, the same way that more peanut butter is eaten from a spoon while standing in the kitchen than anyone ever thought about being spread on bread and becoming a sandwich.

We need not discuss other uses for Whipped Lightning that numerous teen T&A movies have made popular for it's tamer cousen Whipped Cream, but it’s not much of a leap of the imagination to see that adding alcohol IN the whipped cream probably just takes one step out of the process.

No mention as to what that would do to the calorie count, though.

It’s hard to get a buzz off the pure sugar, although after a while things are vibrating around enough that you feel like a hummingbird. Adding alcohol to the product is bound to be a real product improvement.

This product comes hot on the heels of the ban against alcohol infused caffeine drinks that have become popular. These are presumably great because they let you recover from a hangover at the same time as you’re getting it.

If only.

Whipped Lightning is only available by special order in North Carolina right now, but that’s OK.

It’ll give me time to dig out my recipe for homemade pudding. We’re about to kick it up a notch.

In the interest of being helpful – because I know that a lot of you are going to be trying to find this stuff and order it – the website is http://www.whippedlightning.com/.

Anchors Away!

So in interesting little tidbits of information, we see one of Holland-America’s passengers on a recent cruise was a bit of a prankster.

It seems that one night – while still dressed in his tuxedo and undoubtedly buzzed on several overpriced drinks – he went to the top deck and threw off a lifesaver.

Not the candy, but one of those round things that’s supposed to attract the sharks while you’re waiting to be fished out of the ocean.

Given that cruise ships have more cameras than a comparably sized bank, the people watching the screens somewhere in the bowels of the ship realized that one of their floaty things had gone astray, so they turned around to pick it up.

Nobody would ‘fess up to having thrown it in the water, so the Captain, in something of a fit of pique that was probably not going to please the passengers either, made everyone turn out to their lifesaving stations so that he could do a head count and make sure that nobody had fallen over.

This was at 7:30 in the morning.

And it took 90 minutes.

My recollection is that Holland-America is not especially generous with their coffee, either, so one can anticipate all those passengers in their jammies standing there waiting to be counted were not in the best of moods.

I can't say that I blame them, though.  Making everyone else stand around for an hour and a half to figure out if anyone is missing -- while continuing to go forward in the ship -- is more of a temper tantrum than a safety protocol.

If he threw it in the water before 5:30 in the morning, and they're not counting heads until 7, it's a cinch that any passenger who was out there has already become breakfast for the sea critters. 

Given Holland-America’s predilection towards elder guests, it’s not hard to imagine the ankle scrapes from wheelchairs or cane whacks that happened at breakfast later that morning.

It seems that just throwing the float overboard wasn’t enough for our little prankster, though. Sometime during all of this (before the roll call, but after the float – about 5:30 in the morning) he donned a pair of work gloves that he found either as a disguise or to protect the $80 manicure that he’d gotten in the spa earlier.

He then entered a restricted area and dropped the rear anchor.

While the ship was moving.

For anyone who has ever wondered what would happen if you threw the car in Park while going down the interstate, this would be a “must see”. Would it come to a stop, or would it go around in a big circle like on the cartoons? Either way, there’s going to be a LOT of excitement for a few minutes there.

I didn’t know that the anchors carried enough chain to reach the bottom out in the middle of the ocean. I just assumed those were for relatively shallow water use.

Mr. Personality apparently owns a 50 foot yacht that has a comparable anchor system, so he knew how to release it and was explaining it to his girlfriend, who accompanied him on the trip.

It’s good that he’s got enough money to own a yacht, because he now faces felony criminal charges that carry a $250,000.00 fine and up to 20 years in jail. He’ll be needing money from the sale of that boat for his defense.

Sometimes it costs more to get a lawyer to take your case just because everyone realizes that the client is so stupid that it’s going to take a lot more effort than with your garden variety criminal.

If I represented him, we’d rely on the “dumbass defense”.

“Your honor, my client did it and pleads guilty to the lesser included offense of being a dumbass. Please don’t send him to jail, though, because pretty boys who have their own tuxedos and 50 foot yachts don’t tend to fair to well in jail and get traded around for cigarettes.”

I bet they’re going to revoke his Captain’s Club membership, too.

Of Trucks and Dogs

OK, let me start by saying that despite all the excuses and disclaimers, it was all my doing and is entirely my fault that I ended up in the situation. I recognize that. I accept that.

The difference is, I’m willing to talk about it and all of the rest of the people who have done EXACTLY THE SAME THING just sit there in silence.

It wasn’t especially early, and I’d had enough coffee that my brain was mostly functioning. After taking a friend out for our annual birthday breakfast, I had to visit the SuperMega Hardware to get a new space heater.

The old ones, aside from dimming the lights in the entire neighborhood when they kicked on, tended to make the circuit breakers blow.

Even the oversized ones that I put in to prevent just that occurrence.

I’d shopped them up both online and in the stores and found the one that would hopefully work to warm us a bit without making the electric meter spin out of control. They didn’t have it at the SuperMega Hardware by our house, so I had to go to the one across town on the highway.

I was actually very pleased with myself. Breakfast finished at 8:00, I popped down the street to SuperMega Hardware and was in and out by 8:30 having resisted the lure of all the cheap tools and other sparkly things that go in a shop that are already set out for the Christmas sales. Indeed, having gone in for one item, I was leaving with only 4 (including my originally intended purchase).

For someone in recovery, this isn’t falling off the wagon. This is a wonderful accomplishment.

Baby steps.

Anyhow, I had a 9:00 appointment so I couldn’t really troll the aisles for bargains as I have so many times before. There was plenty of time to load my meager purchase in the car and get back to the office, but no time to waste, either, so I headed out to the parking lot toward my truck, which was conveniently outside the exit door.

I circled around to the passenger door and opened it to put the stuff in.

It’s hard to say who was more surprised, me or the ancient beagle that was asleep on the seat.

Fortunately, the dog was so old that his reaction wasn’t one of protecting his turf. It was more, “Could you close the door? There’s a draft in here and I was napping in the sun.”

My own immediate thought was, "We don’t have a beagle. Why would someone decide to dump this poor dog out and leave him in my truck?  Why didn't I lock the doors?"

The Beagle's true daddy, however, happened to be coming out not far behind me and wondered --aloud, no less, and in a tone of voice that would  brook no baloney -- what I was doing getting into HIS truck.   A truck which, coincidentally, was the same year and color as mine.

As we all stood there kind of surprised, my jaw agape as I tried to focus my brain on some type of rational explanation, the truck’s true owner realized I wasn’t stealing his beloved hound, but was about as shocked as the dog was.

Explanations and apologies were offered as I shamefacedly saw my truck parked a couple of rows away and headed off toward it.

You can always tell mine, because since I got it there’s been a red-tailed hawk’s claw with native American beadwork around the ankle hanging from the rear view mirror. Because the talons are sharp, there’s also always been some type of stuffed creature in it – Santa, a leprechaun, the Easter Bunny – usually something sacred and seasonal, but most recently a lamb that’s better at staying in the claw as we ride along than some of the other things.

I could see it shining across the parking lot as I hurried to leave.

When I got there, though, my new clicker wouldn’t open the door. Neither would my key, but I noticed that some idiot way on the other side of the parking lot had set off his car alarm.

Then I realized that maybe I didn’t have enough coffee on board yet. That, or my vision has gone beyond simply needing reading glasses to function, because that wasn’t my claw on the mirror, it was someone else’s fuzzy dice.

Oh, and the idiot with the car alarm was me.

So now I had to go back past the man and the dog – both of whom were laughing and shaking their heads, having first watched my retreat and then hearing the alarm in front of them – to get to my own truck which was flashing it’s lights in an attempt to further draw attention and humiliate me.

So I slunk across the parking lot as quickly as I could with a cart which has one wheel that refuses to track properly and flung my stuff in MY truck, realizing that I can’t possibly go back to SuperMega Hardware for a while.

At least until I’m sure that the dog has gone on to his reward and I can have a custom paint job done on my truck so that it no longer looks like every other burgundy Ford in the parking lot.

DISCLAIMER -- I am not under oath when writing this.  I am also not telling which parts are slanted a bit, or what I left out.  Some truths we take to the grave, that's just the way it is.

A Peanut Butter Exam

It was probably somewhat inevitable. The first indignity usually comes about puberty, when the doctor says something along the lines of, “. . . turn your head and cough.”

This, of course, is nothing compared to the indignity that comes a few years later, when he says, “. . . . roll over on your side and pull your knee to your chest.” At that point, he will proceed to first to wash his hands in ice water, after which he will dry them in a secret manner taught in medical school designed to make the fingers swell to four times their normal size.

Finally, as you’re trying to “just relax” while he goes for your tonsils from the back side, the doctor invariably decides this is the perfect time to start to chat about sports, or the weather, or the yard, or just about anything under the sun, again under the guise of distracting you.

Here’s a hint. Most of us don’t want to chat. We want you to get in there, do your business and then get the hell out. Then tell us clearly when you’re done (there is NOTHING more surprising or unpleasant than a second opinion at that particular time, especially if you’re not expecting it) and let us put our pants on while we regain some sense of dignity so you can talk to our front side instead of our back side as we finish up.

Yoko, the puppy, has learned that he, too, must suffer a similar indignity. It seems that Pugs and many small dogs are prone to some genetic problems from their shape.

They tend to breathe and snore loudly because their faces are so flat. When he looks up to get a cookie, it sounds like he’s purring as he breathes. They get eye boogers and have to have the little folds on their facial wrinkles cleaned out and they’re ALWAYS hungry and are prone to obesity.

The most unfortunate of their problems, though, is that they get obstructed anal glands, which causes them to scoot their butts along on the carpet in a way that most of us find distasteful.

It's not that I blame him.  After all, who hasn't suffered through a batch of prickly heat that has caused you to want to rake the skin off your bottom?  It's painful and will drive a person -- or a dog -- to distraction.

But there are some things that you do alone, in your room, with the door locked and not in the living room with an audience.

With a resident nurse, though, we have all the necessary accoutrement to avoid an office call and a $23.00 charge to “express” his anal glands. Sort of our version of cutting unnecessary healthcare costs, which is especially good since he’s uninsured.

It’s not a difficult process from the provider’s point of view. Rubber gloves, paper towels and a bath towel are really all that is necessary. The problem is he’s not any more thrilled over the procedure than any other guy is. Unlike most adult humans, he also doesn’t have any interest in exercising self restraint and lying peacefully on the table.

It is therefore at least a 2 person process, made more palatable from the dog's perspective by the presence of a toy filled with peanut butter placed strategically to distract his attention. We got the idea from the vet, who squirts spray cheese on the examining table and smears it around to keep him occupied while she’s working.

Face it, appeals to everyone’s baser instincts usually help a bit. Gluttony is a strong motivator.

Maybe next time I have to go in for a physical, I’ll take some cheese-like food in a can or peanut butter stuffed into a rubber toy for a distraction.

It certainly can’t make thinks any more unpleasant.