Self-Aggrandizement: Best Archives

typifying
Filed Friday, January 21 in Best.

Though I may, through this site (or, plausibly, in real life) come off as an insensitive prick, in fact, one of the few things I do well is empathize.

I don't mean empathize as a synonym for sympathize, as in sharing someone else's pain, but rather empathize in its purest sense, as in divining what other people are thinking, seeing things from other's perspectives.

Tailoring a sales pitch on the fly to an audience, or searching out the perfect birthday gift, I'm grateful for this knack of putting myself in other people's heads. But, like most things in life, it cuts both ways. Given the weight I put on what other people are thinking, I inevitably end up worrying about what other people are thinking of me.

This manifests itself in small, bizarre ways. Hearing female friends mock the wall-eyed guy at the end of the bar, for example, I'll start to convince myself that perhaps I, too, have some horrible lazy eye and yet have never been told as much, even though it's been secretly discussed for decades by friends and family behind my back.

I can usually cast aside such fears with a moment of reflection. I've seen countless pictures and videos of myself, and I'm sure that in at least the majority of them both of my eyes are looking more or less in the same direction.

Which leaves me to fixate instead on the things I hear and deduce on a regular basis. Some of them ("has anyone ever told you that you look like Matthew Broderick?") don't imply much beyond their surface content (I apparently look kind of like Matthew Broderick). But others I can't keep from analyzing, from tearing apart for their loaded meaning.

One I've heard a lot recently is, "I'd be really, really curious to see who you end up marrying." I've gotten this one, even in just the last month, more times than I can count. I think what this actually means is, "you seem like a judgmental asshole with bizarre and inscrutable dating criteria that make it nearly impossible for me to figure out your 'type'".

I must give off this impression in spades, because if I comment on liking a girl I've just met, friends usually react with, "really? I thought you didn't go for [taller / shorter / thinner / curvier / blonde / brunette / smart / dumb / etc.] girls." As I don't think I say such things directly, I'm curious as to which obliquely snide comments or quirky reactions lead people to those strong impressions. Whatever it is, it's powerful stuff. When people make such comments, there's almost an air of helpful reminding. "Actually," they seem to say, "despite the comment you just made to the contrary, I'm pretty sure you don't like her after all."

Hearing this from enough people, I start to suspect they're right. Maybe I don't like smart girls. Or stupid girls. Or tall blondes or short brunettes. I have absolutely no idea. Looking back through the wreckage of relationships past, I can't quite make sensible patterns emerge.

Which is exactly the point. Perhaps the reason people so quickly rule out possibilities for me is that I'm so slow to categorically rule them out myself. My dating life, taken together, is an enigmatic, jumbled mess. Not a clear shape, but a muddy splatter.

Which makes what people tell me I am (or, more frequently, am not) looking for far more interesting, gives me license to listen carefully to friends' constructive critiques of my crushes. Not because it's likely to yield clues in my own search, but rather because it might give me a glimpse into theirs. Given the spattered mess of my own love life past, I seem to have inadvertently become a walking relationship Rorschach blotch.

gotham high class of '96
Filed Wednesday, November 10 in Best.

See also: subsequent 'yearbook' installments two, three and four.

As promised, the first chunk of Gotham High's '96 yearbook. Go dawgs!

Chip "Jazz Hands" Goldberg

Activities: Drama Club (Vice President); This Box is Getting Smaller! (Amateur Mime Club, Founder); The Bowl Of Nuts (Acapaella Singing Group); Daddy Warbucks, Fall Production of "Annie"; Willie Lohman, Spring Production of "Death of a Salesman"; Hamlet, Winter production of "Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead"

Superlatives: Most Likely To Entertain

Next Year Will Be: Waiting tables in New York

Quote: "No day but today!!!" - Rent

Tripp "Cold Trippin'" Taylor III

Activities: Thug Life Hip-Hop Culture Society (Secretary); Math Team

Superlatives: Most Street

Next Year Will Be: Attending Morehouse

Quote: "I ain't mad at 'cha. Got nothin' but love for ya." - Tupac

K.C. Leviner and "L'il Stuey"

Activities: Hunting And Fishing Club; Survivors Of Incest Association

Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Grandmother Before Age 35

Next Year Will Be: Working at Winn-Dixie, breast feeding

Quote: "If you see Sherman Meadows you tell that asshole that i'm not gonna leave L'il Stuey in a toilet at a Burger King bathroom no matter what he says. And my baby needs a daddy. Please come home - my momma said you can live with us." - K.C. Leviner

Amber Cocks

Activities: Cheerleading Squad (Captain); Drill Team; Homecoming Queen; Prom Queen; Fashion Club

Superlatives: Most Likely To Fuck A Baldwin Brother (If She Hasn't Already)

Next Year Will Be: Moving to New York or L.A. to model and be an actress and stuff

Quote: "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends." - The Spice Girls

Donnie "Tay-Tay" Taylor

Activities: Special Friends Club; Special Olympics (Track & Field); Hall Monitor; Study Room Monitor; Bus Monitor; Inspiring Everyone

Superlatives: Biggest Inspiration

Next Year Will Be: Greeting at Wal-Mart

Quote: "I like sauce. I like sauce from apples. Sauce from apples is my favorite. It tastes good. It feels good in my mouth. Apple sauce! Apple sauce! Apple sauce! When I'm alone I can fly." - Donnie Taylor

eyeballing
Filed Friday, November 5 in Best.

Having spent much of my life in photography (and now, in film), I'm anal about seeing with clarity and vision. Which is why, despite my prescription being repeatedly described as 'totally pansy' by those who really need their glasses, I wear mine all the time. I have since getting my first pair, in eleventh grade (bought, initially, to help me read the board from my customary back row seat, rather than force a move to the front).

To be accurate, throughout most of college, I actually rotated contacts in about half the time. But, since moving to New York some three and a half years back, I slowly drifted away from rotating. Perhaps it was my hectic bags-below-the-eyes-inducing schedule, the irritating grit of city air, or a desire for the faux-intellectual look a good pair of spectacles provides. Whatever the reason, contacts fell by the wayside.

I realized as much earlier this week, and have since been trying to work them back into use. And, by and large, it's been an excellent change. The only downside: I awake constantly throughout the night, suddenly convinced I forgot to remove the contacts before going to sleep, which might leave me hours deep in irreparable corneal damage.

I should, at this point, admit that I'm a complete and total hypochondriac. The combination of medical knowledge, vivid imagination, and general neurosis conspire to convince me - often aided by Google symptom-searching ("headache and slight fever? I knew it! Malaria!!!") - that my world is coming to a slow and painful end.

This is particularly true with contacts, due to a booklet I once read at the optometrist's on the potential dangers of sleeping in contacts not approved for 'continuous use'. In pictures and gory written detail, the booklet laid out the risks of 'serious eye infection' and 'abnormal corneal blood vessel growth'. It is the second that most plagues my imagination, as the line between vodka-induced harmlessly bloodshot and slept-in-contacts-induced abnormal blood vessel growth is a distinction admittedly beyond my abilities of accurate self-diagnosis.

Fortunately, unlike in the case of goiter, femoral hernia, or any of the other afflictions I might woefully cast upon myself, shaking slept-in-contacts fears should be rather easy - if I'm not actually wearing the contacts as I sleep, I'm fine. Less fortunately, my contacts-less vision is good enough that, in a darkened room without any distant objects to stare at, I'm often unable to decide whether I am, in fact, wearing them or not, at least without repeatedly poking myself in the eyeball.

Because my contacts are one day disposables, I've now stumbled upon a workable solution: after removing them, I leave them on my night-stand. Waking up at three in the morning, then, I'm able to simply look over at them, slowly drying out, to relieve my worries and put myself back to sleep. Gross perhaps, but certainly better than abnormal corneal blood vessel growth. Or, at least, better than fears of it. As is the case with most of my hypochondriacal self-diagnoses, I happily doubt I'll ever have the chance to experience the real thing.

how to not shoot yourself in foot
Filed Friday, September 3 in Best.

Dear Fellow Liberals:

In 2000, after the polls closed on election night, every single television network was calling the race too close to call. Then, something strange happened. The election statistician at Fox News, who just happened to be George W. Bush's cousin, called the race in favor of Bush. Within minutes, all the other networks similarly started calling it a Bush win. Aside from the AP's article the following morning - which rightly called the count still too close to call - Bush was the presumptive President-elect.

And that too-early call by the networks colored the dispute over the next few weeks. Had things been up in the air still, it might have been a fight between two candidates. Instead, with Bush called the winner before the votes were even counted, it became a fight between the next President and a bitter loser unwilling to gracefully throw in the towel.

I bring this up now as a reminder of how powerful expectations can be. By and large, we get what we think we will - especially in the world of politics. Which is why I find the current liberal defeatism particularly distressing. My friends - intelligent, well-reasoned people - are heading off to protests, all the while saying Bush is almost certain to win.

But the thing is, he isn't. With two months to go 'till election day, the two candidates are consistently polling within the margin of error. And, from the perspective of the incumbent, historically that's not a very good place to be - especially when matched up against a candidate (like Kerry) who's seen his numbers swing up during the final two months of hard, pull-no-punches campaigning in every single one of his prior races.

In other words, this is Kerry's race to lose, not the other way around. But we jeopardize that edge every single time we sigh, throw up our hands, and brace ourselves for four more years of Bush. If you're going to play to win, you've got to say so.

That's particularly important in a race where a Kerry victory hinges on undecided voter turn-out. According to the contours of the latest WSJ/NBC poll, 70 percent of them think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and a very large majority have an unfavorable view of George Bush. By all indications, undecideds are going to break hard for Kerry, but only if they think it's worth their time to head out and vote - only if they think the race is still in their hands, rather than more or less already a Bush win.

Which is all to say, if you want Kerry to win, start talking like he will. Heaven knows the other side takes that approach. The only difference is, in our case, we're probably right.

Sincerely,

josh

over-sharing
Filed Thursday, May 27 in Best.

There was a brief stint, after graduating college and transitioning the Silicon Ivy Venture Fund from active investing to working with existing portfolio companies, that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with my life. In its support stage, the venture fund wasn't really a full time job, and the market wasn't right to raise a second fund. I knew I wanted to start another company or two, but I was entirely unsure of what, exactly, those companies were going to be.

I related as much to Mark Gerson, a long-time friend, one night over dinner. Mark had founded and was running the hugely successful Gerson Lehrman Group, a boutique investment advisory firm that works with some of the nation's best hedge funds and mutual funds. As I had helped Mark out in the earlier days of his company - lining up some of their first clients and early employees - he offered to return the favor, by bringing me in as the firm's Senior Technology Analyst.

In some ways, the job was perfect - I was overpaid, underworked, with about as much power and autonomy as I could hope for in a company that I didn't run.

And I was miserable.

I always knew, at some level, that I was a pioneer, not a settler; that I had to mark out new territory, make new things, rather than just expand existing things ever onward and upward. But I didn't realize how much taking a 'real' job would chip away at me. The psychological stress of being an employee, not an employer, weighed on me constantly, manifesting itself in remarkably strange ways.

Unlike in my current job, where I rarely spend more than a half hour seated at my desk - wandering off instead to internal meetings or external business lunches and dinners - at Gerson Lehrman, I spent most of my day sitting in front of a computer monitor, banging out reports, fielding calls, and generally being (or at least feigning being) productive. And, as a result, I drank lots and lots and lots of water.

Perhaps it was sheer boredom, the lack of anything better to do. But each morning, I'd open up a Crystal Geyser bottle, start sipping away, and soon find I was refilling it from the water cooler throughout the day at nearly half-hour intervals.

As a result, my primary cause for leaving the desk was heading off to the bathroom. And in those bathroom trips, something strange started to happen. Despite definitely having to go, my bladder was suddenly shy. At first, I couldn't start peeing when someone was at the adjacent urinal. Then I couldn't pee if there was anyone within the entire bathroom. Eventually, that parauresis slipped over into my non-work life as well - even in bar and restaurant bathrooms, I couldn't pee when someone else was around.

As strange as it may sound, I didn't think much of it at the time. The problem snuck up on me gradually, and like the proverbial frog in the slowly heated pot of water, I didn't notice it had happened until I was already in deep.

Then, after a little less than a year, I had a series of small epiphanies. I knew I wanted to make movies. I knew I wanted to publish books and release CDs. I knew I wanted to keep working in entrepreneurship and technology, though in ways that helped the world. The Paradigm Blue companies were born. And I couldn't wait to get them started.

I was worried about telling Mark that I'd be jumping ship, worried that he'd somehow be insulted by my suddenly moving on. To my pleasant surprise, however, his reaction was exactly opposite; he was enthusiastic, supportive, offering to help in a slew of ways as I set about getting the first company, Cyan Pictures, off the ground. And while I offered to stick around for another few months if they still needed assistance, he graciously said he'd be happy to let me head off at the end of the week, as he knew I'd be eager to get down to business.

I remember walking out of his office, stopping briefly at my desk, and then realizing I had to use the bathroom. And I remember, vividly, walking into the crowded bathroom, walking up to an empty urinal, and peeing away with reckless abandon.

The shy bladder was gone, and it hasn't, not even once, come back since.

blog zen
Filed Wednesday, May 19 in Best.

"I just never knew that so much went into organizing a wallet. I would assume that an afternoon with a three year old would produce more material."
- Senora Juego, in an astute comment on yesterday's post.

***

I'll be the first to admit that, when I write nearly a thousand words about wallet maintenance, it's not because I'm wildly passionate about the subject. Instead, it's what happens when, sitting down at the computer, I realize I have absolutely nothing to say.

***

Writers block is a fact of writing. Anyone who writes regularly, who routinely starts new pieces from scratch, has - at least on occasion - faced the terrifying nothingness of a white screen or blank piece of paper.

Novelists bitch and moan about it, drink themselves to death as a result. Working journalists, conversely, tend to simply slog their way through, quality be damned; a deadline's coming, they ain't gettin' paid unless they turn in two thousand words, and so they might as well just put something onto paper.

And, in that sense, we webloggers are nearly journalists. The deadlines may be internal, driven by a sense of obligation to regular posting. But they weigh down none the less. The blank screen looms, and we simply write the first thing that pops into our heads. Quality be damned.

***

Often, when I talk to people who've just taken up blogging, they'll tell me that they don't intend to blog for long. They'll simply go until they've told all the stories they've, for years, wanted to tell. And then they'll quit.

Invariably, this never happens. Through the process of blogging, they come to realize that, in our small daily adventures, the minute facets of our lives, there are literally thousands upon thousands of stories and speculations to tell and share. We could never possibly run out.

And yet, day by day, it's often difficult to see those facets and adventures. They're too small to us, too constant, too much a part of life.

***

There is an old Koan about a young monk who, seeking enlightenment, asks Master Dae-Ju to tell him the path to Zen. Dae-Ju replies, “Zen is very easy. When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep.”

We spend all of our lives doing things without really doing them. We go through the motions. We walk through our parts. But are we really present?

If this is the path to Zen, it's also the path to blogging well. To find material, we needn't change what we do, merely the way we do it. Fully experience each day, and surely in each lies a story worth telling.

Of course, like any truth, it's easier advice to mouth than to follow. Unlike Zen, though, blogging provides constant feedback in that pursuit, a daily test of how well we've stuck to the course of fully living. Do I have a story to tell? And, if not, is it really because nothing happened to me in the past twenty-four hours? Or is it because so much happened that I somehow missed it all, even as I marked my way through?

***

Keeping a weblog, then, is easy. When inspired, write; when finished, stop. Live through today. Return tomorrow. You'll doubtless be inspired to write again.

back pocket
Filed Tuesday, May 18 in Best.

Dear fellow men:

In case you have not already realized it, women are checking out your ass. And, frankly, if your wallet is so overstuffed as to appear that you've developed a large, cancerous ass-cheek growth, you're probably not helping your cause.

So, if you're looking for love, or simply looking to not be labeled 'ass-cheek growth guy' by the group of cute girls at the end of the bar, it might be time to slim down your billfold.

Thus convinced, start the process by examining the wallet itself. If it is made from cordura (or, really, anything other than leather), you will not have even the vaguest of chances of sleeping with any woman who sees you remove it from your pocket. (In fact, this applies even if the woman in question is a member of PETA; I am fairly certain there's a special exemption to their animal cruelty platform that allows the purchase of leather wallets to keep guys from looking like complete doofuses.)

Also, if you have a crappy five-dollar wallet, every single woman who sees it will instantly know it's a crappy five-dollar wallet. Women spend huge percentages of their adult lives idly searching for the perfect purse and handbag, across thousands upon thousands of stores. They have examined more leather goods in a single afternoon than you have in your entire life. They know the difference. Your five-dollar wallet isn't fooling anyone but yourself.

Additionally, if your wallet is tri-fold, multi-fold, or in any way resembles an origami project, trade it in for a plain old fashioned one that simply folds in half once. Obviously, the more you fold something, the thicker it becomes, and some wallets are a good inch and a half deep even before you start filling them up. If you're still at a loss, just buy this, which I've owned for the last eight years. Thanks to, as you're about to learn, not overstuffing, it still looks new.

Onto what goes into the wallet. To gauge where you stand, remove everything from you wallet, and make four piles: one for money, one for credit cards / id / etc., one for receipts, and one for anything else. These piles are likely rather unwieldy, which is exactly the problem. The goal here is to put as little of what's in those piles back into the wallet.

Start with the money. That's the one thing that incontrovertibly belongs in your wallet. Everything else should be subjected to close scrutiny.

Next work your way through the card pile. From it, place in your wallet: your drivers license, your atm card, one or two credit cards, your metrocard (if you are a New Yorker), four of your business cards, and your health insurance card. That's it. Put everything else in your desk drawer. Seriously.

You simply cannot afford to stuff you wallet full of things you don't truly need. You don't, for instance, need to carry twelve different credit cards all at the same time. At most, you need one for personal expenses and one for business expenses. If you're worried about maxing out your limit (which, frankly, you probably shouldn't be doing in the first place) you can swap the nearly maxed card for another unused one from your desk drawer as necessary.

You also don't need things like your Blockbuster card or your museum membership cards; if they can find you in their computer system given your ID, you shouldn't be schlepping their plastic around. Even if your grocery store doesn't allow you to key in your phone number for rewards club savings, say, you still likely don't need to take your grocery rewards card with you everywhere. If you're just 'stopping by' the grocery store, you're unlikely to buy much; when you head out for a big shopping run, you take the card out of your desk. The rest of the time, you leave the card, and most others, at home.

Now the receipts. Take all of them, put them in a file somewhere, and never, ever again put a receipt into your wallet. Put new ones in your front pocket, then add them to the file when you get home. Receipts are the single largest cause for outlandishly overstuffed wallets. And there is absolutely, positively no reason for carrying those receipts around. Most guys have returned perhaps two items in the past five years. When return number three rolls around, you can damn well pull the relevant slip from the file. The rest of the time, the receipts add bulk, look stupid, fall out everywhere, and generally detract from good wallet housekeeping.

Now the miscellaneous pile. If it doesn't already include it, take a single check, a $20 bill and a $100 bill, and fold them together. Place this in one of the inside pockets of the wallet. This is 'emergency' money, or, more to the point, 'cover dinner after your credit card is declined so that you and your date don't end up in the kitchen washing dishes' money. Not much else from the miscellaneous pile should be added back into your wallet either. If you want to carry pictures, limit yourself to one of your significant other, and one each of any children you have (and know about). Nobody wants to see even the first photo, so please don't torture them with a stack.

That's it. Keeping your wallet organized is easy: aside from cash, and replenishing your stack of business cards, do not put anything new into your wallet. Try it for a few weeks. Then head back to the bar where the cute girls secretly taunted you for your unwieldy buttock-bulge, observe the newfound respect your svelte wallet and resulting slim line engenders, and ask the cutest for her phone number.

And, even then, place the phone in your pocket. Not in your wallet.

freeloading the big apple
Filed Monday, March 29 in Best.

As Times columnist Charlie LeDuff famously observed, "New York is a lot like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you taste." Sadly, with the cost of city living perpetually on the rise, that observation holds now more than ever. Which isn't to say, however, that our fair city can only be enjoyed with a wad of $100's in your back pocket. With a bit of ingenuity, and a willingness to depend on the proverbial kindness of strangers, anyone can live the good life in New York for essentially no money at all. 'How?', I hear you ask. Read on.

Step 1. Eating

Your first stop: high end grocers. The Amish Market, Whole Foods, the Chelsea Market - any of these is packed with enough free samples to make a meal. The secret to avoiding incurring the wrath of salespeople is to look genuinely intent on shopping. Carry a basket. Put things in. Eat some free samples. Take things out. Head back for more free samples. Voila.

Of course, sometimes even the cheapest of individuals feels the need to sit down for a meal. That's where churches and synagogues come into play. Nearly all are brimming with lunch discussions and potluck dinners. Proselytizing and pizza. Can't stomach the holier-than-thou moral integrity these people beam as you take their food? Head over to a twelve step program meeting instead. Plenty to eat, and certainly nobody ready to judge.

Once the weather warms, you can also pop into Central Park looking for barbecues. With a big drunken crowd of revelers, nobody's going to stop the one guy they don't completely recognize in line for a burger.

Bonus tip: looking for dessert? Ten cents will buy you a cone at your neighborhood ice cream store. Then simply request a taste spoonful of all 31 flavors. Compacted together, those little bits easily add up to one (deliciously free) full scoop.

Step 2. Drinking

Of course, real New Yorkers know that food stands well behind drink in the order of life, so you'll be pleased to hear that unpaid liquor flows freely throughout the city. Start the evening at a Chelsea gallery opening. Wander around, glass in hand, squinting thoughtfully at the carefully framed spray-painted sweat socks and the like. If a salesperson stops next to you, look slightly towards them, shake your head slightly, and say something like "intriguing..." That should buy you plenty of time to grab another glass.

If you're a mid-day drinker (or, as we in the know say, alcoholic), kill pre-gallery time at open houses. Scour the Times for any residence listed for more than $2M, then dress the part and bring a date. Free drinks (and, likely, freshly baked banana bread, to scent the house with domesticity) are yours for the taking.

Like to smoke when you drink? Well then Mayor Bloomberg's done you a world of good. No longer able to smoke comfortably indoors, a crowd of addicts has doubtless packed near the doors of whichever establishment you're frequenting. The brotherhood of nicotine, strengthened through months of such enforced outdoors huddling, means you can bum away with reckless abandon.

Step 3. Staying Fit

All that free food and liquor gone straight to your hips? Don't worry friend, because fitness can be had on the cheap in NYC as well. Your first path: trial memberships. Every gym in the city offers them, from one week spans all the way up to a free test month. With over 400 'health clubs' listed in the phone book, by skipping from gym to gym, you can stay fit well into old age.

But let's say you're the trendier sort, perhaps looking to do a bit of soul-soothing Yoga (to balance out the karmic wrongs engendered by all your freeloading). No problem! Just head onto Friendster (you knew it had to be useful for something) and search for the word yoga. There's at least a 50% chance that any females living in Williamsburg whose names pop up are instructors-in-training, looking to log teaching hours. Free private instruction, yours for the taking.

Step 4. Entertainment

Feeling fit, feted and faded from the past three steps, you're now doubtless looking for a bit of fun. Fret not, as New York is known around the globe for its excellent theater, attracting uneducated yokels the world over to things their simple minds couldn't possibly comprehend. This month, head over to the American Airlines theater about an hour after the crowds first file in, and you'll doubtless find a hearty Midwestern couple jumping ship at the first intermission, muttering about why this Pinter fellow can't seem to just tell a story. Ask them for their tickets, and as your daily good deed, point them to their hotel two blocks up Time Square, lest they wander all the way down to TriBeCa before realizing they don't have a clue where they are. Don't worry about the missed first half; most playwrights save the best for last anyway.

Looking for lighter fare? Loiter outside the city's larger movie theaters, looking for women in their early twenties wielding clipboards. They're recruiting for test screenings (a misnomer, as distributors really couldn't care less what you think) for pre-release films. Sure, there's a better than 50% chance whatever you end up seeing will star Ashton Kutcher, but it's free, free, free!

Step 5. Edification

Feeling a bit punk'd by your film, you'd best set out to feed your brain. Head over to Barnes & Nobles, which I encourage you to view as your free lending library of brand spankin' new books (with only small deposit required). In short, buy a book or two that seem interesting. Read them on your own time. Come back several weeks later and say, "I read these two books; they were quite good. But now I'd like to abuse your overly generous return policy to trade them in for two others." Repeat ad infinitum.

If timelier information is what you seek, head down to your neighborhood coffee shop, on weekdays after 11:00am, or weekends after 1:00pm. Copies of the city's countless newspapers doubtless lay strewn on the floor. With a bit of search, you might even find one in which the crossword puzzle hasn't already been partially filled in (erroneously, of course, and in ink).

Step 6. Utilities

Tired out, it's time to head home. Sadly, no tips on how to go rent free, as that pesky landlord fellow seems to get a bit snippy if you try. And don't even bother trying to stay with friends - New Yorkers have a nose for the sort of houseguest likely to overstay their welcome. You won't make it past the buzzer should you hit their front door with bags in tow.

Utilities, however, are a bit more flexible, at least so long as you're willing to whine your way to success. Free phone minutes, months of cable service, they're all yours to be had if you can put the fear of you leaving for a competitor into their customer service rep's mind. Complain, complain, complain. If you're a real New Yorker, it should come easily.

Step 7. Style

Caught yourself in the mirror while wheedling your cell phone company and realized your look's way out, did you? Then it's time for a bit of discount store arbitrage. Pop into Syms or Century 21 and stock up on discounted designer couture. Then train on out to the Nordstrom's at the Short Hills Mall, which sports a return policy even more generous than the Barnes & Noble kindness you previously abused. Enough cycles, and you've pocketed enough money to make the eventual purchase (from the initial discount store, naturally) more than pay for itself.

All dolled up, your unkempt 'do likely looks out of place. Happily for you, New York is full of hairdressing schools looking for victims, er, volunteers to help students hone their scissor skills. Still, word is out and New Yorkers are broke, so waiting lists have begun to spring up at most such establishments. If your mane begins to look too shaggy to weather the wait, I've also heard excellent things about the trainees at either of the city's fine dog grooming academies.

Postlogue
So, there you have it. With no money down, this little beauty of a city can be yours, all yours. Or course, at some point you'll likely realize that all the time spent trying to live on the cheap could instead be channeled more effectively towards such fruitful pursuits as, say, looking for a job, or marrying an investment banker. Even then, only enough scrill to swim through (a la Scrooge McDuck) will lift you into the holy grail of New York High Society. Think Eyes Wide Shut, though with women WASPy enough to write thank you notes.

[Word to Yoav "King of Cheap" Fisher, who helped brainstorm this piece while brewing coffee late yesterday evening.]

classical excitement
Filed Thursday, March 4 in Best.

Just got home from a dress rehearsal for the New York Centre Symphony's concert tomorrow night. On the program is Schumann's beautiful Cello Concerto, and while the soloist is astoundingly good (off a recent Carnegie Hall solo performance), the rest of the orchestra, who received their parts only two rehearsals back, is sounding a bit rough. So, this evening, unwilling to settle for a sub-par performance, the conductor ran the group again and again through each difficult transition and harmonically complex section. Somewhere along the way, however, he apparently lost track of the time.

By 9:50, we had still yet to run cleanly through the entire piece in one go, and so we were giving it one more try. Midway through, the building manager, wildly irate, popped through the balcony door to scream down that we'd only booked the space only until 9:30, and that the entire building was set to close in just ten minutes. The maestro, unwilling to stop without at least one smooth run-through under his belt, looked up briefly, turned back to the group, and kept conducting.

Meanwhile, up in the balcony, the building manager continued to shout, showering down obscenities until spittle literally flew out of his mouth. Seeing the conductor was, none the less, still rolling ahead, the building manager pulled the ace from his sleeve: if we didn't stop immediately, he'd turn out the lights and lock us in. Even then, the conductor seemed unwilling to put down his baton; knowing the building manager would have to come down to our floor to turn off the lights, he simply watched the door and started speeding up the piece.

By the time the building manager emerged downstairs, we were on the last page, flying ahead at a frenzied pace. The poor soloist, likely pushed by the technical demands of the piece at even a normal speed, looked ready to crack, large beads of sweat forming on her forehead as her hands flew over the cello's neck. One eye on my music, another on the building manager, I watched the man lumber around the back of the hall as we blazed through the final restatement of the theme. We hit the last chords just as the lights went out, the sound of Schumann resonating in the dark.

I don't know if the building manager next made good on his threat to lock the group in; I was already standing by the end of the last note, case in hand, and was out the door by the time I took the horn off my lips. Still, I promise I'll never again complain when rehearsals seem dull; it's apparently much better than the alternative.

urinal etiquette
Filed Monday, March 1 in Best.

While I was at Yale, the neuroscience major was tied in to the psych department. Because of that, neuroscience majors were required to take a few 'soft' psych classes. Which is how, in my sophomore year, I ended up in Psych 150 - Social Psychology. Frankly, I hated the class. The research we studied was garbage, and the teaching was at a third grade level. When we were assigned a final project - executing a piece of original field research - I realized I had my chance to let the teacher know what I thought of the class. In an effort to mock the careful study of the inane that characterizes social psychology, I chose the topic of urinal etiquette. Ironically, I got an A.

---------------------------------------------------------

The "Number One" Social Norm

Very few social norms are completely rigid; most are violated, at least occasionally or under special circumstances. Riding in an elevator, for example, people will speak to each other instead of simply looking at the door if they already know their fellow riders. Occasionally, even strangers will strike up conversations during an elevator ride. Other norms, like eating with utensils or not sitting on the table, are sometimes ignored as well. Although the violators may be looked down upon, these violators do exist. However, up to the time of my experiment, I had neither seen nor heard of anyone breaking the strict laws of urinal etiquette. For the benefit of my female readers, I must first try to explain the tacit yet complex code that governs men’s room interactions. Central to urinal etiquette is the ‘veil of silence’ that descends upon men in public bathrooms. Female friends have, on occasion, reported actually speaking to each other between stalls, which is frankly inconceivable in the men’s room environment. Male best friends, or even brothers, upon meeting in the bathroom will usually ignore each other completely, perhaps acknowledging each other with a subtle nod. Strangers in the bathroom will never speak to one another, unless politeness dictates a curt ‘excuse me.’ Even these small recognitions are lost when either party is actually using the urinal. At the urinal, people will not make eye contact, and almost never even look to either side. Usually, while urinating, men look straight ahead, scrutinizing the tiles or wallpaper. Looking down, except when zipping or unzipping, is also frowned upon. Another key aspect of urinal etiquette is that of urinal selection. The rules of selection are most obvious in a nearly empty bathroom. If a man is to enter a standard four urinal bathroom while another man is using one of the end urinals, the first man will usually select the urinal two away from the occupied urinal. Choosing the urinal immediately adjacent to the occupied urinal might be seen as a sexual advance, while choosing the farthest away urinal might be seen as an act of blatant homophobia, or some expression of contempt for the individual already urinating. Knowing this, men entering an empty bathroom will even consciously choose an end urinal so as to make urinal selection as painless as possible for anyone who might enter while the first person was still urinating. In bathrooms of other sizes, and in increasingly crowded bathrooms, even more complex formulas govern urinal selection. However, in all situations, the basic principle of creating distance between individuals applies. This basic principle was the first that I violated. Armed with this knowledge of basic men's room conduct, I set upon my mission of systematically breaching this and each of the other tenets of bathroom behavior.

I began my research in the Commons bathroom, beneath Woolsey Rotunda. This bathroom proved to be an ideal site for field research, since the bathroom is rarely crowded, often used only by one person at a time, but still visited fairly frequently. The bathroom consists of a row of eight urinals, facing four toilet stalls at the far end and a couple of sinks closer to the door. In my first set of trials, I decided to violate the situational norm by selecting a urinal directly next to someone else. I waited by a column in the Rotunda, across from the stairs to the bathroom. When a subject would enter the empty bathroom, I would follow him down several seconds later, and take the urinal immediately next to the one my subject was using. Although the reaction that this caused varied, all of the subjects made small moves to create personal space, rotating slightly to face away from me; several subjects also cleared their throats. However, only in one of my five trials did the person I was next to demonstrate unambiguous discomfort. Within ten seconds of my taking the urinal next to him, he zipped his fly and hurriedly walked out of the bathroom without urinating.

I decided to up the ante in my second set of trials by simultaneously violating a second urinal norm, silence. The normative social influence of the situation was so powerful that I myself felt noticeably uncomfortable during these trials. In this experiment, as in the last one, I followed the subject down and assumed a position next to his. In this set of trials, however, I also addressed the subject with either a quasi-rhetorical remark (‘The weather is really terrible today”) or a direct question (“What are they serving for lunch today?”). None of the four subjects that received the indirect remark responded verbally, but the remark seemed to trigger an even greater level of discomfort than my presence alone. One of the subjects chuckled nervously (similarly to the nervous participants in the Milgram ex[eriment), while another stopped urinating within seconds and walked out quickly without washing his hands. The direct question created an even greater reaction. Perhaps this is because the question brought the norm of urinal etiquette into conflict with conversational norms. Usually, not answering a direct question is considered impolite; in the men’s room, however, the ‘veil of silence’ is rarely broken. In the case of two of the four subjects that I questioned, the conversational norm took precedence. However, while responding, both of these subjects looked deliberately away from me. (It should be noted that, despite speaking, I looked directly ahead for these trials.) The other two subjects, those who ignored my questions, also turned to look away from me.

In my third set of trials, I decided to break the third major principal of urinal etiquette by looking at my subjects. Although I intended to run four trials this way as well, I ended up running only two. The second subject, a middle aged physical plant worker, reacted so strongly that I decided to terminate this part of the experiment (mostly for my own safety). The first subject responded to my glances in a manner similar to that of the subjects in the previous set of trials. He coughed nervously, rotated away from me, and left the bathroom very quickly after finishing. The second subject, however, confronted me directly. “You little faggot – what the fuck are you looking at?” he exclaimed. In this trial, I was the one beating a hasty retreat! Fortunately, I escaped unscathed, and with a greater appreciation of the strength of the social norm of urinal etiquette.

Obviously, the normative social influence of urinal etiquette is quite strong. The more interesting question is why. In my opinion, the source of these norms is the biologically driven instinct of self preservation. Culturally, we are conditioned to feel most exposed when naked; pants unzipped, using the urinal, people feel particularly vulnerable. Without any physical divide between the urinal user and others, the urinal user creates personal space in an effort to feel safe. This space can be both physical, in the sense of choosing urinals farther away from each other, and cognitive, by ignoring all of the social norms that acknowledge another’s existence (i.e. eye contact or conversation). Unlike in other social situations, where an invasion of personal space would simply trigger movement away to reestablish a comfortable boundary, the urinal user is fairly stationary. Except for shifting body orientation, there is very little that can be done to reestablish personal space once that space has been violated. This explains the stronger reactions from the subjects that I spoke to or looked at; their personal space violated once physically, violating their cognitive personal space moments later constituted an inescapable double invasion. Clearly, the issue of personal space is at the root of urinal behavior

To gather further support for this theory, I decided to run one further trial. This time, I used the bathroom next to Davies Auditorium. This bathroom is smaller than the Commons bathroom, with only three urinals, all of which are separated physically by wood dividers. In the four trials I executed in this bathroom, I also took a urinal next to the subject, and again addressed the subject with the same quasi-rhetorical remark as before (“The weather is really terrible today.”). In this case, however, three of the four subjects responded (as compared to none in the Commons experiment). The subjects here, even the one that did not respond, showed relatively lower levels of discomfort. Also, until I spoke, none of the subjects appeared nervous or uncomfortable at all. In this situation, the physical wooden dividers between the urinals created the personal space lacking in most urinal situations, thereby negating the strong reactions usually caused by my urinal etiquette violations. Such results support the theory of bathroom behavior as an attempt to generate personal space, perhaps driven by the desire for safety.

wining
Filed Thursday, February 12 in Best.

Earlier today, Geese Aplenty's Greg was kind enough to suggest a list of erudite-sounding wine descriptors he uses to cover the fact that, when it comes to wine, he doesn't really know what he's talking about.

Which, on the one hand, I very much appreciated, as I rarely know what I'm talking about, on pretty much any subject at all. But, on the other, I also recently discovered that, when it comes to wine in particular, not knowing what you're talking about doesn't seem to matter.

Just a few weeks back, I was lucky enough to attend the in-house wine tasting of a high-end liquor distributor. Convening a panel of exceedingly educated palettes (plus a few idiots like me, dragged along for the ride), the tasting was used by the distributor to decide how much of various vintages to order, and where to set prices.

I can say, without a doubt, the evening was the most unintentionally funny of my life. I knew it was starting well when one elderly taster (memorable otherwise mainly for an exceedingly intimidating set of bushy eyebrows) described the first sample, a merlot, as "certainly, a slutty little wine." While the evening only improved from there, it peaked when another gentleman described one particular shiraz as "a bit like opening an umbrella on the streets of London on a summer's day, just as the fog begins rolling in."

As I stifled laughter, the distributor smiled broadly and scribbled copious notes. One can only assume an open-umbrella-in-the-mists-of-London shiraz is bound to be a big seller.

sushi nyc
Filed Thursday, February 5 in Best.

New York City has a serious sushi obsession. And rightly so, considering it was here that Americans, some forty years back, first tasted the inimitable combination of raw fish and vinegared rice.

Only in the past few years, however, has the sushi trend really exploded. Now, new Japanese restaurants pop up literally weekly; Chinese, Thai and Korean restaurants have begun installing sushi bars as well, apparently courting the "all Asian people look the same to me anyway" corner of the market; even corner delis have gotten into the act, stocking their refrigerators with (rather disturbingly aged-looking) inari and California roll.

The question, then, is no longer "where do I find sushi?", but "where do I find good sushi?" Hence this guide. Armed with an expense account and fond, fond memories of the sushi I ate while living in Japan, I dined around New York City in search of the very best maki and nigiri, then summarized the best of the bunch herein. Itadakimasu!

Unbeatable:

After hitting nearly thirty-five different restaurants, three stood head and shoulders above the rest. Predictably, they aren't cheap. However, sushi, even at its most expensive, is still well short of haute cuisine prices - a dinner at any of these three restaurants can be had for about $60 a head.

Sushi Yasuda (204 E 43rd St, 212.972.1001):
Without a doubt Sushi Yasuda is the king of New York City sushi. I said so when I first reviewed it, shortly after its opening two years back, and this year's Zagat (unfortunately, from a reservations perspective) officially agreed. Chef Maomichi Yasuda, (who trained at Hatsuhana at the same time Nobu's Nobu Matsuhisa did, though now takes a much more traditional approach then his colleague), starts with one of the city's widest assortments of extremely fresh fish, then serves up slightly smaller than average pieces that literally melt in your mouth. Along with the flawless sushi, try the nameko (mushroom) miso soup to start and certainly don't miss the green tea mochi ice cream for desert. The perfection is in the details: the chefs vary the size of the sushi according to the size of diners' mouths; a different type of tea is served with each course; the minimalist blond wood decor perfectly reflects the simple perfection of the food. Book in advance, or learn Japanese and kiss up to the Maitre D' (my favored approach).

Tsukiji Sushisay (38 E 51st St, 212.755.1780 ) :
Exceedingly good sushi that comes in a close second to Sushi Yasuda. The sushi chefs at Sushisay are required to train for a minimum of five years at the restaurant's Tokyo branch, which pretty much sums things up - sushi doesn't get more authentic than this. With a beautiful back room, Sushisay also makes a great location for small private parties or business functions.

Nobu / Nobu Next Door (105 Hudson St, 212.219.0500)
The sushi itself is perhaps a notch down from Sushi Yasuda's and Sushisay's, and trying to book a table is a great reminder that you're not an important person, but the exceedingly inventive fusion dishes help Nobu (and the essentially identical Nobu Next Door) live up to the hype. As pretty much every restaurant guide says, go "omakase," and take whatever the chef recommends.

More for the Money:

Fortunately, there's excellent sushi to be had at a slightly lower price-point as well; both of these mini-chains serve up dinner for about $25 a person, even without a reservation made weeks in advance.

Haru (205 W 43rd St / 280 Park Ave / 433 Amsterdam Ave / 1327 3rd Ave)
In a word: reliable. The selection isn't unusual, but the nigiri is always expertly prepared, extremely fresh, and reasonably priced. Nota bene: The lines are considerably longer at the (original) 3rd Ave location, though the food is equally good at any of the four.

Yama ( 122 E 17th St / 38-40 Carmine St / 92 W Houston St)
The lines can be (literally) around the block, and the atmosphere is more trattoria than traditionally Japanese, but the sushi is excellent, ridiculously large (perfect for those who complain about not feeling full after a sushi dinner) and fairly priced. The appetizers, too, are well above average - consider the Japanese eggplant with miso paste for a start.

Bargain Basement:

If you're jonesing for sushi but will be paying with assembled change rather than dollar bills, either of these places can scratch the raw fish itch for under $10.

Takahachi (85 Ave A)
Worth the trip down to Alphabet City, as there's certainly a lot of sushi for the money. As you might expect, lines can get ridiculously long later in the evening, so it's best to either go early, or resign to the wait. While their sushi is remarkably good for the price, there's also an assortment of similarly wallet-friendly high-quality non-sushi entrees - the beef sukiyaki and tempura soba, for example, are both strong choices.

Go Sushi (982 2nd Ave, 511 3rd Ave, 3 Greenwich Ave, 756 9th Ave)
Frankly, their sushi isn't terribly good, but for sushi dinners starting at $6, what do you expect? The fish is fresh if somewhat inexpertly prepared, so while your palate might suffer the lack of quality, your intestines won't.

Not Sushi:

Believe it or not, the world of Japanese cuisine extends beyond the sushi bar. While a full summary could easily justify another entire article, here are two excellent (though not sushi-focused) spots more than worth the trip:

Saka Gura (211 E 43rd St.)
This one's a bit tough to find, as it's located in the basement of a nondescript office building. Brave the fluorescent lights in the building's entry and the industrial concrete steps heading down, however, and you'll enter another world entirely - a slice of 18th century Japan. More importantly, a slice of 18th century Japan that serves up the city's largest selection of Sakes. Try the tasting sets, which give you little glasses of three or four different vintages; if you're looking for food as well, it's all very authentic - the best bang for the buck are the exceedingly large bento boxes, a favorite with the Japanese ex-pat crowd.

Hyotan Nippon (19 W 52nd St.)
Like sushi, Japanese noodles (soba and udon) can be found all over the city. Nowhere, however, are they served better than this. Nippon makes their noodles in-house, using buckwheat and rice imported from their own fields and paddies. On icy winter days, take the noodles in soup to warm you through; conversely, noodles served cold are a traditional Japanese summer dish. The only danger: after eating here, you may no longer be able to stomach your corner noodle shop's pale-by-comparison attempts.

on making potato latkes
Filed Thursday, January 29 in Best.

It is the fourth night of Chanukah and my apartment is empty, my roommates having gone off to their respective families for Christmas. The block of 51st Street outside my front window is oddly quiet as well, as if my neighbors have left to make room for the holiday inflow of tourists that swarms our little island, packs Times Square and Rockefeller Plaza, both a few blocks away.

It is nearly 7:00, and though the sun has set two and a half hours ago, I am only now getting ready to light the menorah. It is a traditional one - wrought brass, burning oil rather than candles. I fill the four rightmost cups, then the shamash, the taller 'helper' flame, placing a floating wick in each. I recite the prayers, rote, in Hebrew: Blessed are you, Hashem our God, king of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments, and has commanded us to kindle the light of Chanukah. Blessed are You, Hashem our God, king of the universe, who wrought miracles for our forefathers in those days at this season.

Carefully, I lift the menorah from the stovetop and carry it over to the kitchen window, placing it facing outward, so that passersby on the street below can see it. I turn off the overhead lights, and stand for several minutes in the dark, watching the five smalls flames flicker, leap, and dance for their reflections in the pane of window glass.

:::

I sit down at my desk, intending to slog away at a pile of work, but instead drift into thought about Chanukah - or, more accurately, about Chanukahs past. About, as a child, standing in the kitchen with my family, crowded around several lit menorot, singing. About laughing and clowning in the living room as we exchange gifts - my mother, every year without fail, affixing all the bows pulled from any of our gifts to her hair. About sitting around the table, eating the traditional Chanukah latkes - potato pancakes cooked in oil.

And, unexpectedly, I'm swept by a wave of homesickness, a sudden welling burst of holiday loneliness. I decide the only thing I can do is to create some Chanukah joy in my own home. I decide, in fact, that I'll make a batch of latkes myself.

:::

It occurs to me, however, that I've never actually made latkes. Certainly, in years past, I'd always helped my mother prepare them, but my assistance was solely limited to peeling potatoes. Still, I reason, latkes certainly aren't a complicated dish: coarsely grated potato, onion and egg, pan-fried in lots of oil. I should be able to handle it. I call my parents home to inquire about the proportions - how many eggs exactly? - but as they're out, I decide to simply fake it.

:::

Walking to the Food Emporium, I realize the unfolding latke misadventure might make for good reading. And, at first, the idea gives me pause. I wrote online for years before even obliquely referring to Judaism. Posting about the topic still makes me vaguely uncomfortable, as if it's something I shouldn't share, or at least shouldn't advertise, about myself. We Jews are a culturally paranoid people - it's easy to think everyone's out to get you when, for centuries, they were. These days, bludgeoned as children by hundreds of Holocaust documentaries, we grow up with the message that, sometimes, being publicly Jewish can be rather bad for your health.

With a bit of thought, however, I conclude my tacit 'don't ask, don't tell' policy simply supports anti-semitism. Instead, I decide to push for understanding through openness; if Chanukah is something I'm thinking about, a part of who I am, certainly, I should be willing to share that.

:::

I return from Food Emporium with five exceedingly large potatoes, one large onion and a dozen eggs. Setting them out on the counter, I wash my hands, then scrub down each potato thoroughly. The peeler isn't in the drawer where it should be, and I spend several minutes searching for where my roommates might have placed it. Eventually, I find it - an OXO Good Grip, courtesy of my father, who is obsessed with kitchen gadgetry.

I peel the potatoes over the sink, thinking about the years of potatoes peeled in my parents house. Perversely, I miss the old, less-effective peelers we owned when I was still very young - sparely built metal ones, with orange plastic handles. I have a sudden flashbulb memory of rummaging through the drawer to find them, looking for one of the two right-handed peelers rather than the left-handed one. Which, it occurs to me, was a rather odd possession, considering that my entire family is right handed.

:::

Quartering the peeled potatoes, I place them into a bowl of water to keep the air from turning them brown. Then, without the Cuisinart we always used in my parents' house, I pull out a metal hand-grater, and begin coarsely grating the first potato quarter. I'm careful with my strokes, watching out to keep my knuckles from dragging across the sharp edges, but it is still repetitive, vaguely meditative work.

In the quiet, I begin to think about the story of Chanukah. Or, rather, about the stark difference between the version we Jews learn as children, and the full, historically accurate one that some of us discover as adults. Observe:

The kid version: An evil Greek ruler, Antiochus, tries to destroy the Jewish people. He takes over the Jew's holy temple and turns it into a shrine to himself. The brave Maccabees, led by Judah "The Hammer", revolt, fight back, and eventually win, reclaiming the temple. The ner tamid - the temple's eternal, holy light - has been extinguished, and all the vessels of oil (used to fuel the light) have been shattered. After much search, a single intact vessel is found; though it should last only one night, it miraculously burns for eight, long enough to harvest and press enough olive oil to keep the light burning.

The adult version: The majority of Jews are - much like today - highly integrated into Hellenic Greek culture. They make major contributions to the arts, science and philosophy, and are increasingly involved in sports and popular culture. The Maccabees belong to a violent fundamentalist minority group, the Hasmoneans; they travel around, using violence and murder to coerce integrated Hellenistic Jews back to a segregated, traditionalist lifestyle. Antiochus comes to power, and people recognize him as basically a nut-job - I mean, the guy renames himself Epiphanes (meaning, literally, ''god made manifest'), believing he is a human incarnation of the god Zeus. As a result, he takes stupid military risks, which, combined with the fact that everybody is out to kill him, leads the Hellenistic Jews to figure he won't last long. Further, while he does ask the Jews to bring him offerings recognizing his divinity and put his picture up in their temple, he's otherwise fairly tolerant, and certainly never violent towards the Jewish people. They therefore decide to simply ignore Antiochus for a couple of years and wait for him to get himself killed, letting things return to their previous, unharried state. The Hasmoneans, however, have other ideas. They organize a military revolt and take Jerusalem by military force (causing Antiochus' troops to defile the temple in retreat). The victorious Hasmoneans then secede from Greece and revert the country into a fundamentalist state, cutting off outside communication, outlawing much of the intellectual progress made by Greek Jews, and more or less setting the Jewish people back a couple hundred years.

In other words, if the Chanukah story played itself out again today, I doubt I'd be rooting for the Maccabees. And I certainly wouldn't be frying up potato pancakes in their honor.

:::

I grate as I think, and after several minutes I've made it through the first two potato quarters, knuckles unscathed. Still, I regard the bowl of potato quarters skeptically, trying to avoid estimating how long all that grating is likely to take. Suddenly, it occurs to me that perhaps I do own a Cuisinart. I seem to vaguely recall my parents shipping me their old one a few years back when they replaced it with a newer model. While I've never before used it, I can sort of picture unpacking it from a box full of styrofoam peanuts, and so begin diving through the back of less used cabinets.

To my delight, I find the Cuisinart wedged between an unused toaster and a coffee maker (the result of three roommates worth of appliances moving into one kitchen). I dust off the body, wash out the top, then plug it in. Gaining a whole new appreciation for the miracles of technology, I polish off grating the remaining eighteen potato quarters in less time than it took me to hand-grate the first two.

Pouring the grated potatoes into a strainer, I wash off the starch, then dump them into a large bowl. I'm amazed by the amount of grated potato generated from the five potatoes I started with - the bowl is nearly overflowing. I can't help but laugh, thinking my mother would be thrilled, serving waaaay too much food being the hallmark of Jewish-motherhood.

Once I've peeled and Cuisinart-ed the onion, I decide to dump everything across to a soup pot - the largest container I own - lest I spill over the edge while mixing. I crack in one egg, then another, stirring them through with my bare hands. The mix looks about right, so I pull out a pan, fill it with olive oil, and put it over a burner at high heat.

:::

As the oil begins to sputter and sizzle, I start to reconsider my Chanukah objections. Certainly, I appreciate any number of other Jewish holidays whose origins seem a bit dodgy to me. Consider the holiday of Yom Kippur, the 'day of atonement': while I do believe in some sort of underlying 'force' in the universe, I certainly don't believe some old guy with a long beard is sitting up there in a chair, judging on that holiday whether I'll be smote in the coming year because I've eaten too much shrimp. Still, come Yom Kippur, I pray and I mean it. I'm pleading for forgiveness - perhaps not from 'God', but certainly from the best, most Godly part of myself. Which is to say that, though I don't take the Torah literally, I do take it seriously. I never cease to find value in Jewish tradition, in Jewish practice, no matter the underlying motivation that brings me to it.

Which, frankly, isn't too unusual. After all, Judaism is a religion that values action over faith, sort of a "feel the doubt and do it anyway" kind of deal. Even the word 'Israel' itself means ''he who wrestles with God'. In other words, questioning, considering, doubting - they're all at the heart of what it means to celebrate a holiday as a Jew.

:::

With the oil bubbling, I pack the first latke - balling a small handful of the potato mix, flattening it out, then tossing it into the pan. Though it sizzles and browns nicely, when I try to flip it, it disintegrates, turning from latke to hash brown. I figure the mixture needs a few more eggs, and crack in another two.

The next pass works a bit better - the latke stays together through flipping - though I seem to have packed it a bit too thick, as the outside singes before the center is cooked through. I toss three thinner latkes in, pour in a bit more oil and let them cook. They come out golden brown, not quite crisp. I lay them on a paper-towel-covered plate to soak up excess oil, then break off a piece of one. It's still hot from the pan, and I burn my mouth slightly on the first bite, but don't mind at all. It's absolutely delicious.

:::

Once I get the hang of it, I fall into latke autopilot, quickly browning up the rest of the batch. I realize I've neglected to buy sour cream or applesauce, and so am left to down a plateful straight, no chaser.

Still, I enjoy them, in part because they've come out much better than I'd have expected, in part because they taste like Chanukah to me, because they taste like home.

photo fiction
Filed Thursday, January 29 in Best.

He only thought about her when the weather turned cold, when the sudden appearance of fur-lined boots clomping on pavement, of breath steaming visibly from lipsticked mouths, of wool gloves and scarves rustling quietly against thick winter jackets added together to conjure up her memory.

Even then, she came to him in pieces: the soapdish hollow of her clavicle. She came to him in sideways glances: pretending not to look back over her shoulder as she tossed her hair. She came to him as single words spoken, as textures he could almost feel pressed against his fingers.

When she came to him like this, he would stop midstride, concentrate, try to coalesce the parts of her into a full, vivid whole, before the jostling passersby could bring him back to the present, where he stood alone on the sidewalk, feeling oddly hollow, a dull, cold pain in his stomach, his throat, his chest.

how to cut things
Filed Thursday, January 29 in Best.

Open your knife drawer. Take out the contents. Place them in the garbage. Then head off to a kitchen goods store to buy some real knives.

The good news is, you don’t need many. Four high quality blades will do you worlds more good than a whole drawer full of crappy ones. I’d recommend Wusthoff Tridents, classics used by chefs around the world. But really, any knife hot-forged from a single piece of metal, whose blade runs the length of its handle (riveted in) should work. High carbon stainless steel is the best choice, with plain carbon blades a close second – standard stainless steel should be avoided, as it can’t easily be sharpened. Also steer clear of any blade advertised as never needing sharpening; you similarly wouldn’t buy a car that claimed to never need servicing. Most importantly, the blades should be heavy – the more weight they carry, the less work you’ll have to do to cut with them.

The four knives you need:

A chef’s knife (also called a cook’s knife), in either 8” or 10”. The longer, being heavier, makes cutting easier. If you’re willing to splurge, move up to the 10” wide, whose slightly thicker, heavier blade yields – you guessed it – even less work. If you’ve not used one before, you’ll likely look at this blade for the first time and think, “holy shit, that’s one big knife. I don’t need a knife that big.” Wrong. This knife is your new best friend; you’ll be using it for nearly all your slicing, dicing, shredding and mincing, with occasional light chopping thrown in as well. Once you cut with this thing, you’ll never go back. Thusly, if you buy only one new knife, this should be it. One more note: if you have big hands, make sure the blade is wide enough at the heel (the point closest to the handle) that your knuckles don’t scrape the cutting board as you push forward.
A 3-1/2” paring knife (all these measurements, by the way, are the length of the blade, not the entire knife), your workhorse for detail tasks (like - surprise, surprise - paring).
A 4-1/2” utility knife, which can double as a peeler, disjoint chickens, and dice small things that don’t warrant the full chef’s knife treatment. You can replace this with a slightly longer knife if you’d prefer – Wusthoff makes a great 6” sandwich knife (which, as it isn’t serrated, I can’t imagine anyone actually uses for sandwiches).
A big serrated knife, to use on the sandwiches you aren’t cutting with the sandwich knife. It also works on anything else with a skin, crust or rind (tomatoes, breads, citrus fruits, cheeses, etc.) where a bit of bite helps. You can’t go wrong with a classic 8” bread knife, though as long as the knife is well made, you have a fair amount of flexibility in terms of length and design.

That’s it. If you’re looking to carve birds, filet fish, or slice up meat in general, you may eventually want to buy a specialty blade or two for that purpose. Otherwise, you’re set.

How to Hone a Knife

While you’re discarding things from your knife drawer, toss any sort of automatic sharpener – it will grind too much away, and quickly ruin your knives. Instead, pick up a sharpening steel – one of those long metal rods you see chefs bandying about on cooking shows. To be correct, these don’t actually sharpen your blades – that involves scraping enough metal off to dull the knife, then carefully reshaping the curve of the edge (which you should have done at a cutlers once every year or two). Instead, your knives cut because they have tiny microscopic teeth along the edge of the blade; each time you cut, those teeth get pushed out of alignment. Honing, then, simply lines the teeth back up, allowing the knife to cut much more easily. Since a sharp knife is both safer and more efficient, it’s worth honing your knives each time you take one out – it only takes a few seconds.

To do it, hold the sharpening steel vertically, tip down on a towel on a non-skid surface (like a cutting board). Pick up the knife by the handle, and put the heel of the blade on the steel, top of the blade leaning out at a 20 degree angle. Then draw the knife back in a downwards arc until you reach the tip of the blade (see diagram). Repeat once or twice or each side and you’re ready to work.

Using a Chef’s Knife

First, how to hold the knife, which is probably radically different from what you do know (likely either wrapping all four fingers around the handle, or perhaps laying your index finger along the top of the blade – either way causes you to tense up you wrist and arm, which makes cutting excessively tiring). Instead, place your thumb and forefinger on either side of the blade, just in front of the bolster (that thick section at the heel). Wrap your remaining three fingers lightly around the handle – as your first two fingers provide all the hold you need, these mainly provide stabilization.

Now on to the cutting. Here’s the big change: don’t press down. I repeat: don’t press down. Pressing tenses up your arm, requires lots and lots of work, and goes contrary to the design and purpose of your knife. Your knife is meant to cut down by being pushed forward. (For golfers, this is a bit like how swinging through the ball – rather than trying to lift it – takes advantage of the lofted design of the clubface and makes your swing much easier.) Initiate the cut at the tip, then push the knife forward across the food until you reach the heel. Again, don’t press down. You’ll be amazed to discover how well this sucker cuts through things on its own, so long as you push forward and follow through. If you reach the heel before you finish the cut, don’t try and keep cutting as you pull back. Your knife isn’t made to work that way – like a saw, it’s meant to cut only on the forward stroke. So simply pull straight back, and repeat the smooth forward push.

For big items, start with the tip of the blade on the object:

For smaller ones, start with the tip of the blade on the cutting board:

In either case, push forward not down. It's definitely worth testing out the technique on a few stalks of celery. See how little downward pressure you can use if you concentrate on a smooth forward push and follow through. You’ll be shocked, both at how easy it is, and how evenly you can cut things.

Though celery practice will likely make you fall in love with your new chef's knife, sadly, that one blade probably can't be used on everything you cut, which means sooner in later you’ll need to use:

The Smaller Knives

These little suckers come in handy on all kinds of tasks – any, essentially, which either require increased dexterity, or where the fact that you (rather than the weight of the knife) are doing all the work won’t tire you out. You can use them to dice small onions and shallots, disjoint chickens, pare apples and tomato, or peel vegetables.

Unlike the chef’s knife, which has only one grip and one main technique (with the tip-up and tip-on-the-board variations), the smaller knives are held and wielded in a large variety of ways. To learn them all (as well as a number of other skills – such as perfect julienning, cubing, and dicing), sign up for a short knife skills class at your local culinary academy. It’s a fun evening very well spent. While I’m tempted to try describing a few basics here, I suspect my poorly written descriptions might cost a reader or two their fingers. Speaking of which:

How to Keep Your Fingers

Sharpen your knives. Dull blades make you push harder, which leads to slippage.
Never use a big knife to cut something you’re holding in your hand (i.e. a bagel). To cut that bagel, place it horizontally on a cutting board, hold it in place with your open palm, and cut through horizontally with several strokes.
Keep knives sheathed (to protect the blades) and in locked cabinets if you have children (to protect your kids)
Point the tip down, whether carrying the knife or leaving it in your dishwasher or drying rack.
Don’t carry a cutting board with a knife on it, and – if you do – for god’s sake don’t try to catch the knife when it inevitably falls off.
Don’t leave knives in the sink – when you’re done with them, wash them, dry them, and put them away, as water stains carbon blades
And, basically, don’t do anything with a knife that would cause your mother to shake her head reproachfully at your idiocy. Trust me. I know that shake all too well.

the hell's kitchen museum of curious deaths
Filed Thursday, January 22 in Best.

Welcome to the Hell's Kitchen Museum of Curious Deaths! Or, at least, to the online version of it. In fact, the HKMoCD initially existed in the real world, in our fair apartment at 360 W. 51st St., New York City. It was located there for just one evening, as the backdrop of our Halloween shindig, the Hell's Kitchen Museum of Curious Deaths All Hallows Eve Tour and Punch Party. We went full out for the event, repainting walls, removing all the furniture, tweaking every detail possible for the most complete transformation.

The following afternoon, as we slowly sobered up, we began to realize that, at some point, we'd probably need to put back our couches, beds and bookshelves. Having expended too much time and energy to simply scrap the Museum's content altogether, however, we decided to recreate the experience online. That's what's going on here.

Even More Introduction

The Museum was in large part modeled after the New York Tenement Museum, so it depended significantly on the atmosphere of the apartment itself, rather than simply upon the exhibits presented. Sadly, given the limitations of the web medium, we can't recreate that here. We have, however, as a bare minimum, included below the floor plan of the Museum, as posted near the Museum's entrance:

In the real world, the Museum's exhibits were broken down by room, with each representing a major inhabitant in the apartment's history: first the McGuinn family (from 1856-1906), then Joseph Leibenz (1907-1954), and finally "Gay Johnny" in the modern era. Online, mainly due to laziness, we've lumped the exhibits together as one unmanageably long page of text.

None the less, we hope you'll enjoy the show.

McGuinn Family; The Builder of 360 W. 51st St., 1856-1906

Seamus McGuinn was born in 1810 on the southeastern coast of Ireland in the small town of Kinsdale, near Cork. McGuinn first came to the states in 1830 as a deckhand on board the Caelan Kavanaugh, a merchant ship that regularly sailed the north Atlantic route. In 1834, he married a woman in Newton, Massachusetts, though she died just seven months after their marriage, in the cholera epidemic that swept through Boston that year. McGuinn later joined the Royal Steam Packet Company of Dublin and was promoted to boatswain, sailing the charter voyage of a new route to New London and New York.In 1846, McGuinn became captain of the Fiona Iverna, a clipper with regular service between Dublin and New York. At that time he was nationalized as an American citizen, and moved into a shared townhouse on the corner of Bethune and Washington in the far West Village. He was a popular fixture of the neighborhood, as his name was listed on the register of several private drinking establishments, one of which, on the corner of Perry and Bleeker, was known to be a brothel.In 1852, a disagreement over a cockfight sent McGuinn looking for housing in the area outside of what was then the city. He built a large wood-frame structure on a parcel of land on the current 50th street and 10th avenue block. The area was still being used as farmland at the time, but as the streets were laid out, businessmen bought up parcels of the land. McGuinn settled there with a group of seamen who were eager to purchase land and establish homes away from their work. They purchased a small farm from a Dutchman named Dekker and subdivided the property. McGuinn lived in a wood frame structure he built there, until it burned in 1855.During that time, McGuinn fell in love with Dekker's daughter, and on his 45th birthday, he married the 17 year old girl, Wilhemina Dekker, known as Winnie. He wrote of her often in his diary and bought her fine items of clothing.

1856: Movin' on Up

When, in 1855, their home was destroyed by fire, Seamus and Winnie decided to build a multi-family dwelling for upper-class Irish nationals. They constructed the building currently located at 360 West 51st Street and moved into the first floor apartment. Winnie soon insisted that they move into an apartment further from the street noise, but not so high that they would have to walk up many flights of stairs.Soon after the building was completed, Winnie gave birth to two twin girls, both of whom were stillborn. Seamus insisted on a male heir, and though he believed his wife to be hysterical with grief over the deaths of the twins, he insisted on a male heir. Subsequently, Winnie gave birth to two daughters, Rhiannon and Treasa and a boy, Hamish.In 1867, Seamus was murdered under unusual circumstances. Suspects were numerous, as many in the community resented his wealth and prosperity, rare for an Irishman at the time. Among the suspects were his own wife, who resented both her servitude to him and the age difference between them, and his son Hamish, who cared deeply for his mother Winnie, and loathed his father's tyrannical dealings with her. Seamus was murdered with the spindle of a spinning wheel, gouged through his skull, between the eyes

1878: Movin' on Out

Following his father's death, Hamish took ownership of the apartment, where he looked after his aging mother. His sisters moved into a residence nearby, and Hamish purchased a dry-goods store with part of his inheritance that all three children helped run. Hamish began taking classes at Columbia College, preparing for a degree as an accountantAfter a torrid affair with a Barnard student, who later committed suicide, Hamish dropped out of classes. He subsequently squandered his inheritance in the bars by the port, seeing his sisters increasingly infrequently. In 1874, his mother Winnie died of neglect. Hamish became a drifter, finding his way to the American/Canadian border, then vanishing completely.

Caoilainn and Fionna McGuinn, 1857

The twin daughters of Seamus and Wilhemina McGuin were stillborn in 1857. Wilhemina insisted on naming the infants Caoilainn and Fionna, claiming that “angel-babies need names just the same as grownup-angels.” Caoilainn and Fionna were buried in a potato patch less than 100 yards from this spot, where there is currently a Go Sushi. In February of 2001, a customer of the restaurant fainted after receiving his sushi box. When awoken, the man insisted that he had seen two dead infants, nestled between his soba noodles and spicy tuna rolls.

Hamish McGuinn, 1872

Hamish McGuin, son of Seamus and Wilhemina, became estranged from his remaining family after the unfortunate spindle-death of his father. An impulse buyer with a sweet tooth, Hamish spent much of his inheritance on one-cent taffy and grapes. In later years, Hamish became afflicted with dementia, drifting through New York state. He was last seen selling his “sweetbreads” in the restroom of a cigar shoppe near Niagra Falls.

Seamus and Wilhelmina McGuinn, 1856

Devout Irish Catholics, Seamus and Wilhelmina (who converted from Dutch Protestant) were practitioners of “Fockleyr Gaelg” a Gaelic tradition of spouse shaving. Using warm lather and a straight-edged blade, Wilhelmina (or “Winnie”) would shave Seamus' beard in the style of the day; Seamus would reciprocate by shaving Winnie's stomach hair in the outline of President Franklin Pierce, also the style of the day.

Musical Instruments, 1858

The McGuinn family loved to play music together on Tuesday evenings. The instruments here constitute what old Seamus called an "Irish Orchestra".His diary entry from February 23rd, 1873 reads: "These damn children can't learn to play music like I listened to in the bonny dales of Eirin. The way they play, it sounds like a bleating sheep being taken from behind. It's a damn shame my own children have to be such a humiliation to our countrymen, most of whom can barely afford to play a potato-chip can on the sidewalk outside the White Horse Tavern. It's a blessing I got the clap a few years back from the red-head milliner in the Bloom's dry goods so's I can't hear the bloody racket."The McGuinn children never became musicians.

Rhiannon and Treasa in Tambourine Class, 1867

Rhiannon (lower left) and Treasa McGuinn (upper row, center) participated in a music class for untalented children. Instruments used in class included tambourines, pebbles in bags, pieces of bark, and snap-peas. Later in life, Rhiannon became a world-traveler and married a Swedish herring importer and haberdasher. Her memoir, entitled “My Life With Tweed Pants and Fish,” was published shortly before her death. Treasa became a bohemian, moved to a one-bedroom apartment off of Washington Square Park, and helped found the Society du Lesbos. Treasa never saw Rhiannon again, but whenever she tasted fish she would think of her sister. Both lived to be 105.

Society du Lesbos, Date Unknown

Founded by Treasa McGuinn in the late-19th century, the Society du Lesbos, an organization comprised of mustache-wearing women, was devoted to discussing the politics of sexuality, gaining women's suffrage, and wearing funnels as hats.The Society du Lesbos made their presence well felt in New York by writing petitions, leading discussions in Washington Square Park, and eating a ton of pussy.

Wilhelmina McGuinn, 1874

After her husband's untimely death, Wilhelmina let her body hair grow wild and became a taxidermist, first as a hobby and then, showing remarkable skill, as a career. She worked until her dying day, and in her obituary it was written that her “workspace was filled with wire, tow, string, and wet clay, the pelts drying on wooden forms and the bird skins turned inside out, dusted with cornmeal and arsenic; scraping-knives in the skulls of deer, the odor of stale meat and green bone, the rank odor of water birds' flesh, almost black with oil.”As per her last request, Wilhelmina's daughters had her stuffed and sent on a freighter back to the Netherlands, where she was placed in a tulip garden outside of Amsterdam and fashioned into a windmill.

Neighborhood Stories: Ginny the Librarian, 1896

This photo of Ginny the Librarian, emerging from her place of work, was on the cover of “The New York Times” on March 11, 1896. At the time, Ginny the Librarian was also known as “Bedbug Ginny,” blamed for the bedbug epidemic of the spring and summer of 1896, having apparently spread more than just the joy of reading.In addition to whoring her way through the five burroughs, Westchester, and must of northern New Jersey, Ginny was able to speak six languages (including American sign language), and spent her spare time using a homemade press to convert the literature of Hawthorne and Melville to Braille.

Neighborhood Stories: Li'l Baby Jennifer, 1887

The entire city of New York waited for four sleepless days in the summer of 1887 as Li'l Baby Jennifer, who fell into an open well, became a symbol of the city's hope and tenacity.The fire department spent almost 80 hours attempting to rescue Li'l Baby Jennifer. When she emerged in the arms of a fireman name Giuseppe Cammarino, the entire city sobbed at the sight of what appeared to be a dead child.In fact, Li'l Baby Jennifer was actually not dead, just very, very tired. Her parents, who owned a coffin factory, posed the sleeping Li'l Baby Jennifer in her coffin-bed for this photo, which was on the cover of the August 7th, 1887 issue of the “Hell's Kitchen Farm Bulletin.”Li'l Baby Jennifer died four months later from malnutrition due to a lack of water and food.

Society & Culture: Oyster Eating, 1898

This woman enjoyed eating oysters, as did many other Americans at the turn of the century. Oysters are high in protein and are plentiful off the waters of Long Island.Nothing else is known about this woman, except that she may have enjoyed her oysters with ice cream and lemonade.

Society & Culture: Woman With Beads, 1924

This woman with beads, named Woman With Beads, sold her necklaces at a cute little boutique in SoHo, though everything was overpriced, and they didn't even have Manola Blahnik or Versace back then, so who really gives a shit?Woman With Beads, whose people were raped and slaughtered by White explorers who “discovered” that there were already natives living on “their discovery,” got her revenge by ripping off dumb tourists with her overpriced shitty necklaces. Disney is currently developing a computer-animated film about Woman With Beads' adventures in capitalism. The voice of Woman With Beads will be performed by Brittany Murphy.

Josef Lieben, Entrepreneur, 1906-1955

The Early Century

The building was sold to the Josef Lieben, a german Jew from Prussia, whose cloth manufacturing facility on 38th street and 8th avenue was doing well. His mother had fallen ill, and he wanted to open the building as an insane asylum to help care for her and the other Jewish ladies in the neighborhood, which was diversifying rapidly and growing fast.By 1936, Josef Lieben had managed to build a clothing empire, with retail stores in Cleveland, Syracuse, Buffalo, Pittsburg, and Detroit. His factories, though run by women and children, were cleaner and better managed than many factories that were operating at the time. However, Josef's heart was in caring for the elderly and the deranged. His asylum, here on 360 West 51st Street, was his refuge from the stress of managing his businesses. His mother welcomed him with open arms and the two would spend long afternoons on many days of the week, hoarding money and spinning dreidel. Josef would never make a decision without seeking his mother's guidance, and so much of his time was passed in his mother's quarters, here on the third floor.Lieben's fortunes shifted in the depression. His stores fell on hard times and Lieben resorted to selling bubble tea from a streetcart on the Lower East Side to pay the debt service on the apartment building. Lieben was later murdered by a ruthless Chinese street gang.

Joseph Lieben and Fritz, 1910

Joseph Lieben (left), who never took a wife, is shown here with his manservant, “Fritz.” One of the leading entrepreneurs of turn-of-the-century Hell's Kitchen, Lieben was successfully able to convert 360 West 51st Street into a combination high-cost insane asylum and low-cost brothel. Referred to in the press as a “scoundrel and a robber baron of flesh,” Lieben claimed that it he did it all for his mother's well being. Joseph Lieben disappeared in 1918, and three months later his top hat, his cane, and his moustache were found behind a Chinese laundry on Mott Street. It is believed that he was murdered by a hit-squad sent by the infamous Ghost Dragons, a gang that ruled Chinatown, and controlled the New York shizophrenic-whore industry with an iron fist.

Schizephrenic Whores, 1917

These deranged women, wives and daughters of wealthy Connecticut businessman, were placed in the care of Joseph Lieben, who promptly converted them into garden-variety hookers.The one in the middle had Tourettes, and could swallow a whole potato. The girl on the upper right had seven distinct personalities, and was double-jointed. The little slut sitting Indian style in the front took an entire group of Navy-men at the same time, then stood up, wiped herself off, and asked if they knew where the Army base was located. Modern statistics weren't kept at this time, but it is estimated that the one on the lower left spread syphilis to the entire west side of Manhattan.After Lieben's mysterious disappearance, all of these women were returned to their parents and husbands in Greenwich and Westport. Later evaluation revealed that they were all, in fact, sound of mind.

Uta Leiben (mother), 1914

Very little is known about Uta, the mother of Joseph Lieben, except that she collected hats and lived with a wooden husband.She is mentioned only once in period newspapers, and the article describes the unfortunate circumstances surrounding her death: “Uta Lieben, a woman aged 78 years, attended a hypnotist's exhibition the other night, and while laughing heartily at the antics of the subject under hypnotic control, was seized with a severe fit of coughing which became hysterical and has continued without stop…Unless the coughing can be cured shortly the results will likely be fatal.”Lieben died three days later, leaving 39 hats and her wooden husband to goodwill.

Uta Leiben's Wooden Husband, 1920

Uta Lieben's wooden husband, whom she referred to as “Franz Appledong,” was born of a forty year old hickory outside of Albany, New York.Both a xenophobe and proponent of the eugenics movement, Franz the wooden man despised Cigar Store Indians, and showed his spite by sitting rigidly and silent.In 1954, Franz Appledong was turned into two-dozen shoehorns, and he now resides in New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Illinois, and American Samoa.

Gay Johnny and the Yuppie Brigade, 1955-present

Hell's Kitchen gets its Angel Wings

The second half of the twentieth century saw some remarkable changes for Hell's Kitchen. All of the jews moved to the Upper West Side; all the Italians moved into Brooklyn; the Irish divided up the city into six-block quadrants, with each family assigned the task of managing an Irish pub in their quadrant, to serve as a cultural education center and conversation house.With all the ethnic turmoil, the neighborhood became very dangerous. The new Port Authority bus terminal attracted crack pushers and winos, because poor people take buses. Kids in the nieghborhood began attending the Juliard School for dance and musical theater, quickly leading to their joining gangs and fighting each other in a neighborhood wide, large-scale performance art project called West Side Story that involved stylized knife fighting and re-interpreting Shakespeare.Lured by the musical theater, the Gays came into the neighborhood and opened the Electric Banana Bar on 50th street. After the Gays came the creative capitalists, who, like gays, moved in with their Starbucks and their flat-screen televisions. These were the quarter-life crisis Yuppie Brigade who now live in over forty percent of the Hell's Kitchen housing stock. 360 West 51st Street was bought by a white-bread dork named Jeffrey Shotwell, who owned the building until last September, when it passed back into mob hands. Brusco Management now runs the property.

Local Flavor: Gay Johnny

[Image to be added shortly]

Gay Johnny was a prickly pear, who spent the early part of the 1980's instilling fear in the residents of Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood that he controlled with a tightly clenched fist, and sphincter.Both a chicken hawk and a “bottom who preferred skinny, uncut, adolescent tops,” Gay Johnny fed his crack habit by slinging his butt around like a walking advertisement for a proctologist's office. From the seedy dive bars across from the Port Authority Terminal to the hidden alcoves of the local Boy's Club, Gay Johnny got around.Johnny had an appetite for crack cocaine and looked for the white rock on most afternoons, trolling for tricks to calm his craving on Ninth Avenue between 46th Street and 57th. He'd find horny uptown sugar daddies, and lure them back to his pad (which he called the "Gotham Sugar Shack", a name that remains to this day), trading sexual favors for money, alcohol, and drugs.Gay Johnny also enjoyed doing the Sunday crossword (he was a classics major at Cambridge), building houses with Habitat for Humanity, and stargazing on his roof.On February 9th, 1984, Johnny was registered missing by the man who lived across the way — Ian, a Scottish actor who continues to live in apartment 3B. Ian was out to locate some inexpensive cans of tuna when he discovered a stench worse than the dented canned tuna in his grocery bag. Gay Johnny was dead, and, worse, he had been so for some time.None the less, according to his wishes, Gay Johnny's prostate was donated to scientific research.

Reverse Mimes, 1968

The men in this photo, taken in 1968, may appear shocking to modern audiences.What modern audiences don't realize is that these men are actually “reverse mimes”. During the Summer of Love (in 1968), their group performed on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to absolutely no success whatsoever.“It's performance art, people! Don't you get it?” they were heard to yell at the horrified crowd, shortly before they were pummeled to death by hippies tripping on angel dust.

household vignettes
Filed Wednesday, January 14 in Best.

While here in Palo Alto, I'm staying at my parents house - in my old room, in fact, though by now my mother has co-opted the space into her office, replacing dressers with file cabinets, piling her paper and research materials onto my emptied bookshelves. The room's front window has been replaced by a much larger one, the overhead light changed, but my bed still dominates one corner of the room, exactly where it sat when I was growing up.

Working from home during the day, between calls and emails, I catch myself simply wandering around, gauging the feel of rooms, of closets, corners and small spaces. Absently, I pick up old knick-knacks to test their weight in my hands, to see what memories might be hidden inside. I crouch to feel the texture of our living room carpet, and can feel again the rug burns from wrestling around on the floor, afternoon after afternoon, with my younger brother.

A few things I noticed this morning:

1. Bedroom Tassel

Bedroom Tassel

My Freshman year at Yale, as first semester moved towards a close, my parents and I developed a running joke throughout my calls home. "I can't wait to sleep in my own bed," I would tell them, the dorm by then still not quite feeling like home. "Actually," my father would reply, "we're taking out your bed. I think we're going to replace it with a Javanese Gamelan. But you can sleep on top of that."

There were other, similar, threatened changes as well, and my response to all of them was the same: "I think you should keep the room unchanged, in perpetuity. Just hang a tassel from the ceiling and make the room into a shrine to me." I was remarkably good-natured about it, I think - I even offered to let my parents keep the money made by charging admission to the shrine.

For a month or two, the joke played on: shrine vs. Javanese gamelan, et al. When I finally came home, dragged my duffel bag into my bedroom, and looked up: hanging from the ceiling was the much discussed red shrine tassel. Apparently, the week before my arrival, my parents had actually headed into Chinatown and picked one up.

To this day, the sight of that tassel makes me smile. It's a reminder that, in my case, the inevitable turning into my parents might not be so bad after all. And that, no matter how office-ified my old room becomes, with the tassel hanging, it's still, deep down, my very own shrine.

2. Backyard Playhouse

Backyard Playhouse

When I was seven, and my brother four, my father decided to build us a playhouse in the corner of our backyard. He built it himself - technically with my help, though I can't imagine the seven year-old me provided much actual assistance. I do, however, vividly recall both painting the house's exterior, then heading down to an airplane parts junkyard in San Jose, where we picked up a variety of cockpit parts (a control stick and wheel, a handful of mismatched gauges) which we mounted to the inside walls.

My brother and I spent countless hours piloting the house to the moon and beyond, defending it from oncoming imaginary hordes, or just hiding from our parents to secretly discuss whatever issues dominate the minds of six and nine year-old boys.

By now, the house is hidden away, tucked behind a bench and a small potted tree. Inside, the linoleum floor is peeling, covered with dried leaves, a few old toys still in a basket in the back corner. My head brushes the roof (at 5'6", an unusual occurrence!). Still, in there, I can't help but feel vaguely delighted, ready to head up to the moon, or just to cause juvenile trouble all over again.

3. Garbage Shed

Garbage Shed.

Towards the front of the backyard is a small roofless shed, gated off from the rest of the yard, to hold garbage cans and piles of recyclables. Before my parents replaced their wood-burning fireplace with a gas-burning faux-fire, we piled firewood out there, and the memory of constantly finding black widows in the pile still raises the hairs on the back of my neck whenever I open the shed's gate.

I must admit, I've always been rather arachnophobic. Sure, I can play tough, carry out the requisite boyfriend duty of spider-removal. But the sight of those eight segmented legs always secretly makes me shiver. Other phobias, I've systematically, purposefully overcome - I initially took up climbing, for example, to conquer a fear of heights. But I'm happy to stay a bit scared by spiders. Or, rather, I don't see any need to get buddy-buddy with them - I do my own thing, they do theirs, and we're cool. Still, if I'm sitting in my parents backyard, and I notice the garbage shed's gate is open, I'll always head over to close it. Just in case.

david newman: the interview
Filed Wednesday, November 26 in Best.

It is Thanksgiving day, 3:42 pm. At 5:00, twenty-some guests will be arriving for dinner. My brother David, unshowered, in sweats and a pit-stained undershit, lies on the couch watching football, Green Bay versus Detroit. Detroit is winning, 13 to 7. In the other room, my mother is yelling for us both to come in and help set the table.

Me: Dave, mom's yelling for you.

David: [silence]

Me: Okay. In that case, let me interview you for my website.

David: Nope.

Me: You realize I'm going to write about this either way.

David: [silence]

Me: So, basically, I should just say that you spend all day lying here, watching TV with your hand in your pants?

David: [turns to look towards me for the first time since I've come in. Winks. Goes back to watching TV.]

Fin.

Figure 1. Subject in Natural Habitat

color me clueless
Filed Tuesday, September 30 in Best.

Recently, I spoke with a female friend in the midst of planning out the repainting of her apartment. All the rooms would be white on three walls, she told me, with the fourth a different color in each. She then proceeded to list off the colors for various rooms - the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom - hoping to give me a sense of what the final results might look like. And while I nodded my head in understanding as she went through the list, expressed appreciation for the keen visual sense it clearly evidenced once she had recited through them all, I must admit I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

In short, we guys suck at color names. Sure, we might be able to tell you that 'cerulean', 'periwinkle', 'aquamarine' and 'robin's egg' are all shades of blue; but if you were to line up four color samples, there's not a chance in hell we'd be able to figure out which is which.

The problem, I suspect, stems from our Crayola'd youth. While most girls had the six-thousand crayon pack (the one with the little built in sharpener), we guys had the eight crayon standard. Inevitably, we'd even lose one, and not know the name for 'orange' until our early teens.

At which point, even if we were to studiously review every crayon out there, we'd still be doomed to fall horribly behind. Because, once high school rolled around, girls began to pore through the J.Crew catalog, the Banana Republic or L.L.Bean. And while we were just beginning to wrap our minds around the difference between 'orange yellow' and 'yellow orange', girls were contemplating 'heather', 'oatmeal' and 'burnt sienna'.

Sure, a few lucky guys have caught up - graphic designers, for example, or professional painters. But even for them, I suspect it's a bit like learning a foreign language; no matter how good your Swahili, you'll never truly sound or think quite like a native speaker.

In other words, for even our best and brightest, we guys are pretty much a lost cause. We'd blush with embarrassment about it, but, frankly, we're not entirely sure what color we're supposed to turn.

stranger than fiction
Filed Sunday, September 14 in Best.

This afternoon, walking in the door to my apartment on the way back from a jazz gig with an all-lesbian big band, my roommate Colin stopped me to ask if I thought we might be willing to adopt Steve Buscemi's cat.

underwear
Filed Sunday, August 17 in Best.

For whatever reason, we guys often form bizarre attachments to pieces of clothing, strong emotional connections that effectively prevent us from noticing their increasingly well-loved condition. Favorite t-shirts yellow at the armpits, favorite jeans fray at the hems and zipper, yet we can't possibly imagine actually retiring them. And nowhere is our love more apparent than with underwear; given the choice, we'll keep washing and wearing a trusty pair of boxers until it's disintegrated to nothing more than a waistband and a few hanging threads.

As women rarely hold such forgiving opinions of overly scruffy clothing (and underwear in particular), it behooves any guy with an eye towards impressing the ladies to (at least occasionally) view the contents of his closet (or, at least, his underwear drawer) with a cool and dispassionate eye. This very morning, I did so myself, examining each pair of boxer-briefs, and I'm afraid the results were not good:

Total Pairs: 11*
Pairs in Good Condition: 2
Pairs in Acceptable Condition: 1
Pairs with Weirdly Ruffled Waistbands (ed. note: due to elastic losing it's stretch after too many washings): 3
Pairs with Small Holes: 3
Pairs with Holes in Front Large Enough that the Proverbial Mouse Might Escape the Proverbial House: 2

As much as it pains me to say it, I think it's time for a serious drawer cleanout and underwear shopping spree.

* This is nearing the bare acceptable minimum number of pairs. Guys mainly do the wash only after running out of clean underwear, re-wearing all the cleaner looking pairs inside out, and then sometimes even wearing bathing suits as underwear. Clearly, then, the more pairs owned, the less frequent the need to do the wash.

mail bag
Filed Saturday, August 2 in Best.

Earlier this week, I received an email from one Paul V. Urbanek that I below reproduce in its entirety:

Josh Newman is an unmitigated knob. What a narcissistic, little poser bitch.

I must admit that, finding the message in my inbox, I suddenly felt oddly flattered. Not only did something about me, a complete stranger, stir up in Paul the desire (or perhaps even the need) to send off such a charming missive, but my online persona apparently irked him sufficiently to even whip out the thesaurus in search of the perfect 'knob'-preceding word.

Still, warmed as I was by his effort, I must admit that Paul's work fell a bit short of my high hate mail standards. I'm lucky enough to receive a piece or two every couple of months, and some of them are really, remarkably, treasurably good. Sure, Paul might lack the biting wit (or perhaps simply the intelligence) to really tear into me in Shakespearean style. But, at the very minimum, he could have at least put some effort into structuring the email properly. I mean, consider how much more effective it would have been if written in the second person and ended with a complimentary closing:

Dear Josh Newman,
You are an unmitigated knob. What a narcissistic, little poser bitch.

Drink bleach and die,

Paul

Sure it's a hate letter; but it's still a letter. There's an etiquette to these things.

thanks, i think
Filed Thursday, June 19 in Best.

Heading to Rite Aide to pick up a few last pre-trip essentials, I passed a group of black high school girls on their way home.

"Hey mister," one of the girls shouted, "for a white boy, you got a pretty cute ass."

now you've got it!
Filed Monday, June 2 in Best.

In response to one reader who suggested that blogging about my love life effectively rules out a future in politics:

Exactly.

where's my camaro?
Filed Monday, May 26 in Best.

Confirming my fear that Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese (which I secretly enjoy immensely) is the white-trashiest of macaroni and cheeses, the back of the box I just prepared is emblazoned with: Velveeta. Ain't No Substitute.™

In other news, I'll be spending the rest of the afternoon grooming my mullet and shopping for a new double-wide.

the smoggy air, traffic jam, suburban sprawl blues
Filed Thursday, December 12 in Best.

Despite my initial plan to stay in LA only through today, I've since rearranged my schedule, and will now be sticking it out in the smog capital of the world through December 20th. Which leaves me, first, in a bit of a bind from a clothing perspective - my Tumi rollaboard barely fits four or five days of clothing, so expanding the trip to fifteen will leave me recycling clothes at a rather alarming rate. ("Didn't you wear that sweater yesterday? And Tuesday? And last Monday, Thursday and Saturday?") Second, I fear sticking around for such an extended stretch may push me dangerously close to my absolute Los Angeles lethal overdose limit.

Sure, LA has its upsides. Warm weather. Beautiful beaches. Vacuous, surgically enhanced, bottle-blonde aspiring actresses ("Like, ohmygod, I was totally Juliet in my high school's "Romeo and Juliet" too!"). But after a few days, the downsides begin to grate on me. A thirty minute minimum drive from anywhere to anywhere else. Monotonous, vaguely run down, bizarrely never-ending suburban sprawl. Really, really bad bagels. And a complete and total lack of cultural life. ("Why go to the symphony when so many films have great orchestral scores!")

And, worst of all, film people, nothing but film people, as far as the eye can see. In New York, running an indie production company is quirkily cool. Sort of unusual. Here in LA, nothing could be more painfully run-of-the-mill. I get the sense that, say, a tax accountant could do tremendously well at bars here. ("You add long columns of numbers all day long? That's so exciting!") In fact, for the duration of my trip so far, I've been introducing myself as a forensic diver - you know, the guy who has to fish up the corpses whenever the cops or the FBI are investigating a death in the water. Business has been slow in the East River, I've been telling people, ever since Giuliani started cracking down on crime. Which is why I headed out to LA; jet ski accidents, I'm sure, are the future of the industry.

Of course, even the cachet of such an illustrious imaginary career can't save me; it's hard to schmooze it up an LA night club when you spend most of the evening huddled in the corner, clicking your heels, thinking of New York City, and chanting softly: "There's no place like home... there's no place like home."

i won't grow up
Filed Thursday, December 5 in Best.

Today being the first real snow of the season, I did the only sensible thing: constructed snowballs from the snow on my windowsill, and pelted passersby on the street below.

a sunday morning bedroom conversation
Filed Monday, May 27 in Best.

Her: So, you always get what you want?
Him: Pretty much.

button me up
Filed Friday, May 24 in Best.

About a year back, I made the rather poor decision to purchase two custom-made suits. Actually, in most senses, the decision was quite a good one. Those two bespoke suits have since become my favorites, drawing frequent compliments and holding up better than any other suits I've owned. The problem, however, is that I'm now ruined for life; I'll never be able to go back to buying suits off the rack.

In fact, I can no longer even really appreciate my other, previously seemingly fine, suits. While I'd love to toss them all and start again from scratch, the dictates of cost prevent me. Instead, I've simply been going through and upgrading those older suits slightly, adding to them the most important mark of hand workmanship: wor

typifying Filed Friday, January 21 in Best.

gotham high class of '96 Filed Wednesday, November 10 in Best.

eyeballing Filed Friday, November 5 in Best.

how to not shoot yourself in foot Filed Friday, September 3 in Best.

over-sharing Filed Thursday, May 27 in Best.

blog zen Filed Wednesday, May 19 in Best.

back pocket Filed Tuesday, May 18 in Best.

freeloading the big apple Filed Monday, March 29 in Best.

classical excitement Filed Thursday, March 4 in Best.

urinal etiquette Filed Monday, March 1 in Best.

wining Filed Thursday, February 12 in Best.

sushi nyc Filed Thursday, February 5 in Best.

on making potato latkes Filed Thursday, January 29 in Best.

photo fiction Filed Thursday, January 29 in Best.

how to cut things Filed Thursday, January 29 in Best.

the hell's kitchen museum of curious deaths Filed Thursday, January 22 in Best.

household vignettes Filed Wednesday, January 14 in Best.

david newman: the interview Filed Wednesday, November 26 in Best.

color me clueless Filed Tuesday, September 30 in Best.

stranger than fiction Filed Sunday, September 14 in Best.

underwear Filed Sunday, August 17 in Best.

mail bag Filed Saturday, August 2 in Best.

thanks, i think Filed Thursday, June 19 in Best.

now you've got it! Filed Monday, June 2 in Best.

where's my camaro? Filed Monday, May 26 in Best.

the smoggy air, traffic jam, suburban sprawl blues Filed Thursday, December 12 in Best.

i won't grow up Filed Thursday, December 5 in Best.

a sunday morning bedroom conversation Filed Monday, May 27 in Best.

button me up Filed Friday, May 24 in Best.